One year ago today: January 24, 2016, Capability Brown.
Five years ago today: January 24, 2012, definitely worth your time . . .
Nine years ago today: January 24, 2008, 10x stronger than steel.
Random years ago today: January 24, 2007, another almost band.
MORNING
Brrrr, but on the bright side, you don’t need a screen door on a day like this. A thought occurred to me. I think I’ll build one screen window frame from solid oak, just to see how it looks. I’m thinking ahead to the porch trim, and I would have plenty of oak to make everything from railings to the window screens—if they look okay. It would involve investing in a small (12” or 13”) wood planer, but that would pale against the cost of buying even cheap trim for the porch. Have you seen what they want for solid wood these days? Gulp.
Hold off on the wildflowers. It was down to 54°F overnight. The package directions are very clear. Do not sow the flowers if the daily temperature of the air or ground falls below 60°F. The scenery is great. It’s going to have to do without my wildflowers for a bit more. Still, this is paradise for mid-January anywhere else in this country.
It was still breezy so I did small projects. One was to measure the total length of screen I’ll need to put mosquito net around all the windows. There are eight windows and two doors, and I would like screens on all of them. It works out to 36 feet with a small margin for error. Examining the mechandise, the dark mesh is definitely better looking. It comes in two standard colors, charcoal and easy-vu black. They’re virtually identical, but I’ll buy the one that is available in the widths I’ll need for both the house and later the porch.
The hours on these windows is a curious figure. I had to hand scrape the glass because it was dotted with tiny flecks of some pale yellow paint, but of a color that matches nothing on the house. It was like they got sprayed with some compound that stuck. Thus, I count the hours repairing and scraping, but not the time cleaning the glass afterward. Cleaning is routine and does not increase property value. Hence today, I logged only two hours.
Being a single-serving kind of guy, I’m more likely to cook chicken parts than the whole chicken. Except today. Anyhow, my favorite part is the boneless, skinless thigh, which I buy in bulk, frozen. In there I unexpected got a package of those pork rib thingees, you know the ones. They are pressed meat in barbeque sauce to hide the taste, kind of in the shape of an ersatz rib. That’s a large package. Would you like some? Breakfast, no problem, that’s what I had today. Fried, microwaved, how would you like yours? I can even varnish them if you want.
Italian tactical lantern pistol.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
NOON
Why did I skip siesta? It took me much longer to put in the two hours today (almost twice that) and now I’m exhausted. But a good kind of exhausted, like a job well done. After determining the windows had only two paint layers, I inspected the entire exterior. Here’s a shot of one of the worst peeling areas after I hit it with the scraper a bit. Again, two layers of something, but the inner coat is so thin the wood grain shows through. Was it a thin primer? Some of it peeled off with the paint to expose the bare wood, shown here. And it is in not too bad a shape at all.
Did you catch the mainstream media trying to downplay Trump’s impact by showing pictures of empty ground at the White House? Ha, they were caught taking the pictures at 8:30AM before the tumultuous crowds showed up. And they got caught. They kept repeating the crowds were bigger at the last president’s ceremony, but didn’t mention that time it coincided with MLFK day. Sneaky, that press. It’s no longer an excuse to say they are just trying to sell newspapers. They have crossed the line and are now actively engaged in harmful political interference. Sic Trey Gowdy on them, I say. (I don’t especially like Gowdy, but the libtard insiders are terrified of how bad they look trying to lie to him.)
The screen door is not forgotten. I hauled it out from under the storm tarps after the sky cleared in the late afternoon. It was a darn good fit considering my skills, but it needs a trim. It transpires that although my measurements were careful, I was never able to get the joints to seal really tight even using the clamps. Chalk it up to inexperience. I want a watertight door, so you can see the areas where the seams have been patched with Hard As Rock. It hasn’t been sanded yet and the door would probably fit if I had an oscillating tool to get the frames down to bare wood. Nor do I have a hand sander—no, I’m not sanding that door or anything by hand. Phooey on that.
I’ll go see the guy later this week. After a quick phone talk there’s a chance he’ll be nowhere near good enough. That’s not a barrier and everybody knows somebody, so don’t rule anything out. He sent a partial song list and he plays the slow ones, but that just makes it easier for me to be the stage darling. The time and place for slow music is not on stage with me, especially if you think you are the star of the show.
The Cuban with the loud motorcycle is back, so expect to see the cops up the road all the time again. That guy never learns. He regularly disappears for a month or two, so guess what people are thinking? He always tears up the road a block from here at 7:00PM. Where he goes is a mystery, there are no cantinas anywhere near this part of town. He goes past the church and causes a ruckus. I can hear him because of the big empty lot next to my place. Ah, he won’t last long, they never do.
Elliott, from out west, was on the phone. I’m to look up some suppliers for him and we got to talking the one subject we are past-masters at. The declining condition of women’s bodies after they hit 24. True, neither of us are movie stars, but we have the standard defense for that. Neither of us is saying we deserve or want anything based on out looks. That is a gigantic factor in any comparison. We agreed, Scarlett Johanssen has dropped out of the race. She’ll stay in her lane, however, blocking the way for a younger, prettier babe, which is hard to complain against considering that’s what old Scarlett did.
Do you know who said this: ““I don’t talk about politics because it might influence other people. And I don’t think that I know enough yet in life to be telling people who to vote for.” That was Taylor Swift in 2012. That’s evidently too long ago for Streep and Johannsen to remember having read it.
“I Keep Forgettin' I Forgot About You.”
NIGHT
I should have gone to Karaoke. Instead, I’m curling up with a good book or three. That makes the story of the moment the window screen wing nuts. These are the hardware I keep calling turnbuckles when I know that is wrong. This close in shot shows the fairly good condition of the underlying wood. This paint was recently scraped away, I’ll try taking a heat gun to it soon. To get an idea how long the whole house is going to take. These wing nuts are $4 per set of 4 but nobody likes the bent-nail arrangement.
Here’s some dumb philosophy, so Ken, if you’re reading along, don’t get embarrassed when you can’t keep up. I figure there are many different ways to stay at home, see. I’ll give you a list of the ones I can think of off the top of my head, and you figure out which applies to me. Ready? You stay home because:
A) you want to stay home
B) you will yourself to stay home
C) you are a TV addict living in denial
D) you have no friends
E) you have no money
F) you are under house arrest
G) your wife won’t let you go drinking
Did I ever tell you how Friday is stay-home got started? When I worked summer jobs through university, all the cowboys in town got paid on Fridays and hit the pubs and clubs. No way could I compete with the way they spent money, plus these were western towns where drinking and violence are related forms of entertainment. To get my meaning, it’s important you follow that thought. In my formative years, men were indoctrinated that “getting women” was a function of spending money. Don’t laugh, many of these men never learn any different. Both my brothers fell for it.
When I was eleven, I did as careful a study of this thing called sex as was possible for an eleven year old. I only wish today I’d known how far ahead of the pack I was at the time. I looked to see what the older teens were doing. This was what caused me to start my own music band, you may recall. By the time I was twelve, I had created my own band, an accomplishment that stands to this day ahead of my contemporaries. I knew I could never compete with the cowboys nor did I want to. There was a reason the local companies didn’t hand cowboys a paycheck until after quitting time on Friday. Most of them would be broke by Saturday morning.
Note that cowboy is a figurative term. There were no such things in over 50 years in the area, but there were plenty of bullshit cowboys. You know, the hat, the boots, but in reality worked the oil rigs. Self-styled tough guys. The worst was a mixture of the two. The “cowboys” who worked the rigs and only got to town once a month—which turned every single woman over 22 into an instant hooker. Oh yes, I saw all this by the time I was 11.
There was also a nut-box myth that Friday was the best day to pick up women. It’s kind of self-perpetuating, right? If you only go out on that day and blow your whole paycheck, it would indeed seem so. Myself, because I nearly always went to the library on Tuesdays after work, I would then go out for a beer, still in my work clothes, maybe a little dusty or muddy. It didn’t take me long to figure out not only was I meeting just as many or more women, they were higher class and far less prone to falling for fancy duds. As an aside here, I remind the reader that I slept with every woman I dated until I was in my 30s, that’s right, every last one. Then I met Marion, a bombshell babe, who I never regarded as more than a sister. She remains the only exception.
By the time I was 30, it was Tuesday or Thursday, because those were the days I took evening courses and I’d stop at the campus pub, which was always in those days well stocked with younger single women. I was aging but the women I liked were not, so I was always in and out of some kind of rock band whenever I didn’t have a steady. Later in my career, those became library days, which became today, where I go to the library almost every day. It’s not my only habit, read on.
I was something like 35 before I stopped going to Denny’s for coffee every Sunday morning, and I would drink refills until I finished the crosswords, sometime three hours. When I worked for the corporation, I’d stop for a drink five-six nights per week, but usually had some work with me. So, the question remains, what day is it I go on the prowl?
Saturday. It’s always been my favorite day to hit the town. My ideal weekend would be to play a Friday gig, make good tips, and then go downtown on Saturday. Let somebody else play that show, and I find the Saturday patrons are a little more civilized. They stop in after the movies, or it seems, just aren’t as tired and stressed. As far as meeting women, however, there is no day pattern to it. There is no day pattern, or I’d have spotted in and hubbed that day. Nope, meeting women is solely determined by whether or not I meet an attractive gal that day. And for me, that is random. Alas, until you hit 35 or so, you have no idea how random it becomes.
ADDENDUM
For those of you getting weary of the varnish jokes, I’m finally down to half a pint. You have to use it, you can’t store varnish in the can. Also, stir slowly, don’t shake the can, or you’ll get bubbles. Tell you what, how about another set of sawhorses? Everybody compliments my amber colored sawhorses. Also, our long lost buddy, the guy who visited here in September after 45 years, he’s got himself a real life adventure.
One of his friends bought a cabin, similar to this one, but on a stretch of coastline in the Alaskan panhandle, accessible only by boat. The nearest civilization is in Canada, some town called Prince Robert where everything arrives by shipping container except the people, and there is some question about that. No wonder I haven’t heard from the guy. He reports the building needs major reno and he’s spent his vacation working on it. He’s not a picture taker, but I’ll press him for some. When I worked for the corporation, a good fifth of the men I know who retired selected a life miles from other people. Hell, I was only there 15 years and I came to the same conclusion.
However, I need certain conveniences and I have an aversion to living too far way from services that take the hard edge off living. Incidentally, I met a gal from Davenport today. She seems nice, but you talk about old fashioned. Don’t get me wrong, I’m old-fashioned, but that has never stopped me from progressing with the useful parts of modern society. Useful would not include things like credit cards or dumb phones, but quick, name me the top ten of anything today. Ha, gotcha!
Last Laugh
(Ha, how did we miss this one?)
Return Home
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
