One year ago today: February 16, 2016, bith-skith.
Five years ago today: February 16, 2012, the big pistachio helping.
Nine years ago today: February 16, 2008, Internet sting instructions.
Random years ago today: February 16, 2015, off to Winter Haven.
MORNING
For those of you who need to get told off, please skip ahead to the addendum. It’ll straighten you out. For the rest, work along with me today on the windows. Sealing up that north wall was an inspired little idea. The room now has an equilibrium, rather than the feeling you are being watched from all sides. The window cutout are being marked today, but then things stop unless I make a run to the lumberyard. And I haven’t hit any major obstructions yet. Just slow down, I have to divide each job into bite-sized pieces. As a renovation, I often have to move other things out of the way several times. Let’s keep this fun, I mean where else you gonna get a fine picture of a puttied window frame?
But what’s kicking me is that bedroom floor. It only looked bad, and as I go to put in the last of the shims, I realize I should have leveled the outside to itself and then concerned about the interior floors. It was not obvious until I raised the lowest corner to level, but here we got one of those live and learn situations. I learned the hard way. No matter how crooked it looks or how level it measure in the short run, don’t fall for it. Put up stakes around the entire perimeter, and if the windows look misaligned, run a second string there as well.
It seems obvious now, but remember when I started, I did not know what I was up against. I didn’t know the sand was 65 feet deep, I didn’t know the siding had been put on straight after the walls were already a little crooked. Or that the corners sank more than the mid-walls, or that I would be working by myself. Give me a break here, at least I got this far. Learning the hard way is, for whatever they say, still an extremely effective technique. For me, I mean, not Ken. He does it the hard way but without the learning part.
Ah, the Internet when used properly—what I have is a 9-3/4” Bailey Bench plane. It sells from between $49.08 at Wal*Mart to $84.10 at Grainger. So my ten bucks was a bargain, new in the box.
Remember I asked about a vacuum hole-digger? Have you heard of Hole-Vac? Turns out there is a vacuum device to dig holes, though I wonder how well it works. This may be worth a try. I’ve noticed the sand in my yard is bone dry except after a rain. Since everyone else is on the same ground, how come nobody I ask has any clue as to how to do it? The government buildings, schools, churches, and libraries are plainly not settling any.
Wyoming, again.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
NOON
As the renovation job continues to dominate this blog, the high points of the day center on what I learn. These are those wingnuts for holding the screen windows into the frames. It escapes me what I paid for the other set, but it was enough to get a squawk. Something like $4.00 a pair. So when these went on sale for 74¢ I grabbed the whole box.
Not the least sleepy, I sat down and totally planned out the cutout window openings for the east or master bedroom. If it was new construction, fine, but respecting the existing frame, means I have to double up the jacks and cripples plus use some metal brackets that no carpentry book calls for. Further, I had to buy the above supplies at the expense of getting any work done. But you should see the heavy duty scraper I got. Between that and the 50 grit sandpaper, let’s see how the window frame restoral goes.
This building has no headers above the doors and windows. Thus, I spent a two-hour coffee break planning how to frame in the new window cutouts. Otherwise, there will be seven foot unsupported section of wall and that’s too precarious for me. I designed a method whereby I remove only one stud or support at a time, slowly working across the opening. And I plan to place double studs around the hole, again for safety.
“If I worked as hard as you do, I’d get as little done.”
NIGHT
Zeke, the grey cat. She a.k.a. “Misty” was supposed to wait until tomorrow for treatment. She was in too much agony, so I applied the liquid, which then said keep her isolated from other cats fir a day. After treatment, she decided she could move in. I think it’s an older female thing, one treatment and they think they own you. I had to take a broom and convince her otherwise. I finally locked her in the back bedroom when she wouldn’t stay there on her own. Didn’t I read cat fleas can spread to people? Either way, I’m not taking the chance. I put a flea market towel down for her, she found it mighty quickly and finally shut up.
We may be a step closer to a fancy Kuerig coffee maker here, my little unit that’s been through at least eleven years with us finally gave up the ghost. That’s the little white maker that’s seen tea at every band practice, heated water for hot chocolate, and who knows how many times clogged the filter so all the water stayed in the upper half, then drains the grains when you give it a poke. If it is unrepairable, out she goes. Coffee makers are like women with tattoos. Keep them only as long as they do the job.
Last, for now, the person who has been going through the candy jar and picking out the yogurt buds better not let me catch you. My candy jar is a very scientific mix of jelly beans, trail mix, licorice, and skittles. Substitutes are allowed but the ratios stay put. So whoever it is, stop hitting the trail mix. I reached for the jar (it’s actually a stainless steel can) and found no yogurt or peanuts, but you left the raisins. And I know it wasn’t Zeke.
ADDENDUM
Here’s a stern lecture concerning something a lot of people do not grasp fully. I do not watch television and I have never watched television. This means there are deep, intractable differences between how I think and the TV-watcher thinks. You decide who is right. I’ve walked past it [television], of course, that is unavoidable, but that hardly counts. Well, there are a lot of people too wrong-headed to comprehend what this means. They conclude I missed the 6:00 o’clock last night or something. They are such morons they cannot fathom it means a fundamentally different lifestyle and outlook. It means that TV watchers and I do not even think with the same brain neurons.
It would be wiser to regard me as “misinformationally inert”. If I hear about it nearly twenty years later than "everybody else", take your first impression and consider the opposite. Rather than conclude I missed some suburban bus, is it possible the damn thing wasn’t worth anything for the first twenty years? That I had better things to do and something that takes twenty years to get my attention says it all? Yeah, consider that. Consider that no matter how educated or intelligent a person may be, if they still watch television, what does that say?
And lately, he’s been hitting the same topics more often. I’ve heard the show before, but I figured it was some hillbilly up in Bushnell red-assing off his front porch. Why? Because that’s what I intend to do. Get myself a porch, a rocking chair, and start red-assing. I mean, even worse than I already do. But no way I’m moving to Bushnell. Just knowing it’s up there near Orlando is good enough for me. Just y’day he brought up a new subject that I know I wrote about in 1982, though I called it something different and my complaint was about the effect, where he’s an insider and can dwell on the cause. Dang, I forget, but it might come back to me.
As I was saying, he’s an insider. His perspective is definitely constrained that way. When he talks about the man on the street, it’s from the way he [Markowski, thinks the man] should see things, not how he does. Er, that’s why blogs like this are so important. I think, even as children, we all get fed up with people who answer our questions in the light of what they think is correct, or makes them look like responsible adults. You know what I’m talking about.
Last Laugh
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