Tuesday, May 4, 2004
Almost But Not Quite
Since I got home from work at 4:15, I've been on my knees doing two things:
A. replacing the wooden base molding in the kitchen and B. scraping the nasty
glue-carpet residue from the front step.
Altogether, it took me about four hours.
The molding turned out great, but I shouldn't be trusted with power
tools.
The things I was doing with the miter saw, well, they're not appropriate for any
weblog.
And I was home alone.
Sawing outside while it was sprinkling.
Our realtor is stopping by tomorrow at 3:00 p.m.
He's going to shoot a picture of the front of the house.
An entry
is creating a stir over at the weblog for EN106.
The face-to-face semester ended for me this morning; exams will trickle in from
the online crew through the weekend.
All that molding stuff and glue scraping: my knees are swollen like seedless
grapefruit.
Resorted to some kind of glue-softening gloop for the splotches of resistance on
the front step.
The gloop ate through my rubber gloves, probably altered my fingerprints.
Collin's entry
from yesterday inspired me to mess around with a sideblog today during
lunchtime.
Following Anders
Jacobsen's example, I learned that without succumbing to php, I could create
a second, stripped-down index file for the second blog, save it as an .shtml
file, then script it as an "include" in EWM.
Okay, so this is horribly unintelligible.
It ended up looking like this.
Maybe I'll grow a sideblog (what for?) or an embedded photoblog (yeah!) one day.
Yesterday, it was switch upgrades.
Out with the two-slotters; in with the grounded receptacles.
Technicality: They're grounded through neutral, but it still prevents electrocution
for the most part, so says my brother who showed me how to wire the
switches.
Main thing is for the appliances and such to come on when they're plugged into
the new switches.
And nothing in the house should emit smoke.
The important election-contest
was much quieter today than yesterday.
I was pleasantly surprised to find, upon review, that EWM doesn't have any
off-topic, meandering posts.
None!
And only one
random picture of dinner.
Tonight, sandwiches: near-Elvis sandwiches stacked with
whatever we pulled from the fridge and smashed between two slices of potato
bread.
Twenties for a moment: tomorrow would be my 30th birthday, except that I ascribe to the notion that there are no birthdays after 29.
Posted by Derek Mueller at May 4, 2004 10:40 PM
to Under a Bushel
Yeah, 30 is a toughie for men. Happy Birthday, anyway, Derek.
I can remember a conversation with a colleague in the bar still across the street from the campus when we were both 29. [Our birthdays were a week apart.] We felt a lot of anxiety about turning 30 and talked about it for a couple hours. By the time I was 32, I couldn't figure out what the issue was.
Here's my hunch: for men, while you're still in your 20s, you can pull the "I'm just a kid--I'm young and having fun" ploy and get away with it. After 30, that move seems unseemly. And, I think, most of us grieve that little loss.
Posted by: John at May 5, 2004 5:01 PMThanks for the birthday wish, John. It's been a terrific day--perfect weather, getting lots of stuff done, incredible meal (my friend stirred up berere sauce to go with injera--a rare treat). I didn't think much of my birthday until the fine people in my everyday life (bloggers aside) started humming about whether it would be a big event/crisis to roll the odometer into a new decade.
Rather feels like I've been thirty since my early twenties...twenty-three to be exact. Took on a whole bundle challenges back then. Now, seven years since, I have a few grey hairs sprouting on my head. My knees, shoulders, ankles and back ache from time to time. Respect, reverence and admiration come next, I hear.
Posted by: Derek at May 5, 2004 10:58 PM