Month: May 2017
Yesterday I woke early, intending to blog about my peaceful, happy Memorial Day weekend. Before I could sit down to it, I got word from a friend that another friend was racing to the scene of a family tragedy. One person was dead. Another’s life would be irreparably altered, not for the better. Torn between my personal contentment and my friend’s catastrophe, what could I write? Nothing at that moment and even now nothing more than some cliched observation on life’s vicissitudes. Even the phrase “life’s vicissitudes” seems gratingly pat and bromidic. I don’t know the circumstances of the tragedy…
6 CommentsToday we worked nine hours, by far our longest day on the Great Foundation and Screen Porch Project. When I say “we” I really mean we. The Wandering Monk got very serious about utilizing my minion services. I got very little rest and no blogging time. But the Room with a View is now becoming a room that has a view despite having (almost) a complete wall on it. From the outside, looking in through the future screen porch: From the inside as the Monk packs up for the day: Isn’t that door a beauty? I’ve had it for nearly…
6 CommentsJohn Lott gives that stats for what ought to be obvious: The U.S. does not have a murder problem. Certain counties have a murder problem. (And no doubt also certain neighborhoods within those counties, and certain individuals within those neighborhoods.) Ooh. That hurts: “I threw away $4.8 million in bitcoin. (H/T MtK) Fairly decent article about the knife-rights movement. Mixed blessing. Pitbull saved from death row is now a drug warrior. (Tip o’ hat to PT) Attempted murder survivor tells women to fight back via her Fight Like Girls program. Nobody can give a pat definition of happiness. At least…
13 CommentsNews that two women were mob-hounded out of their harmless burrito business on the grounds of “cultural appropriation” made me wonder if it might be time for some good old table turning. If opening a burrito truck, wearing hoop earrings or holding a yoga class is an offense severe enough to drive pitchfork- Twitter-wielding mobs into the streets onto their pricey iPhones, how far is this scary, authoritarian mania going to go? There is not one of us — including these “cultural appropriation” witch hunters — who doesn’t use aspects of other cultures every day of our lives. So. I…
25 CommentsSorry. That probably sounds like an uber-dramatic headline that ought to be over some long article about the Deep State and dark conspiracies within government. Maybe another day. Today it refers to nothing more than the Great Foundation and Screen Porch Project, where strange things have begun to happen as we jack up the rear wall. That all the drywall seams in the bathroom have popped I don’t mind. No surprise there. We were jacking right under the bathroom and such is to be expected. That’s why smart people (i.e. people not me) fix the foundation first. But the troublesome…
5 CommentsYesterday we entered the trickiest part of the Great Foundation and Screen Porch Project. It went … about as you’d expect. From the pictures and the headline, you might have thought the first portion we took on was the tricky one. That part certainly made us think. And rethink. And think some more. But we got that solved. We have that side, the bedroom/screenporch side, on jacks and partly leveled. Now we move along the same back (north) wall to where the rot is only slightly less bad, the ground clearance considerably less, and plumbing is in the way of…
7 CommentsYesterday was the trip to the Actual Big City. It was long, tense, exhausting, but ultimately productive. I’ll write more about that later. For now I can only say I was literally staggering with both mental and physical tiredness when I got home and this morning I feel as if I could sleep all day. Sleeping all day isn’t in the cards, however, as the trickiest part of the Great Foundation and Screen Porch Project begins today and I will be on minion duty. In this phase of the project I might not be contributing much labor, but the Monk…
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