This is week 98 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment. This week is clocking in at a little over 26 pages.

Sunday (Day 679): Easter Dinner And The Lack Of Free Space

#1GF! got up almost immediately, but I, lay in bed. I was tired but couldn’t seem to sleep. By the time I realized that there was no valid reason for me to be in bed, #1GF! was already preparing lasagna for Easter dinner.

#1GF! left to pick up her mother and I stayed and cleaned up. The biggest things I did while she was gone were to shower and make a cracker plate for the small Easter dinner we had planned.

My parents and #1GF!’s mother arrived at almost the same time, and while we were all sitting around the table, and the neighbor next door came out of her house and waved. I had my back turned, but the laughter got me to turn around and find out what was going on. Everyone at the table was waving out the window.

Because I’ve always lived where houses are built in very close proximity to each other, there has always been an unwritten rule that people pretend not to see each other if there’s a pane of glass between them. I suppose it’s a way to give people the illusion of space where there isn’t any to spare. That idea got thrown out the window for a brief moment, and everyone thought it was funny as hell.

We had a non-traditional Easter dinner of lasagna, salad, and sausages at the early hour of 1PM. For dessert, we had a key lime cheesecake, apple pie, and cookies. There would’ve been more food, but I did a fairly decent job reminding #1GF! of the small number of people that would actually be sitting around the table.

Once the bellies were full and the dishes clean, my parents headed out, and #1GF! and I drove her mother home. When we returned, we watched The TV Set, which would’ve been a lot worse if it wasn’t for the all star cast. We followed that up with a couple of episodes of Mad Men because someone said that I looked a little like the main character. I don’t see a close resemblance, but then, we all like to think we’re beautiful and unique snowflakes.

Monday (Day 680): Wall To Wall Words

I wrote LOR from 8AM until 7PM. The only distraction was a large, three masted schooner sailing by in the distance. Other than that, the day was wall to wall words.

Tuesday (Day 681): Lucky Jetpack’s Writing Clothes

To start the day with a mess of fun, I read a book of interview questions while I ate my breakfast. I thought of answers to some of the tougher questions, and contemplated using a thoughtful pause and saying “homemade chocolate chip cookies” if asked what my biggest weakness was instead of the typical dodge and parry of “here’s a strength that I’m masquerading as a weakness”.

I had forgotten that I was supposed to take #1GF!’s mom to her appointment, so after my shower, I started putting on my writing clothes. “What?” you say. “Writing clothes?” Yes, like all successful writers, I only write in a turtle neck and a tweed jacket with patches on the elbows. Pants are always optional for writers, but I tend to wear them anyway.

Ok, so my “writing clothes” are simply jeans and a T-shirt. Both probably have holes in them because, if I’m writing, no one is going to see the holes and make me sit through a required Bon Jovi joke. The clothes are a step up from “working in the yard clothes”, but a step down from the T-shirt and jeans I wear if I’m leaving the house. Why the hell am I telling you this? When did I come up with various classes for jeans and T-shirts? Oh, man. What has happened to me? See kids? This is what happens when you work from home for an extended period of time. You start categorizing things that do not need to be categorized.

When I realized that I had to go out, I changed into extremely similar, yet differently categorized clothes, and left the house to pick up #1GF!’s mom. I was out the door before #1GF!, which only happens rarely these days.

Thanks for this, said #1GF!.

“Gah,” I said with a wave of a hand. I realized that my quirks may be stemming more from turning into an old man than working from home.

“No, I appreciate it,” said #1GF! earnestly.

“Pfftkkh. I don’t mind,” I said to her with a scrunched up face that would’ve been more in place at a lemonade social at an adult community in Florida.

I picked up #1GF!’s mom, drove her to her appointment, and then sat in the waiting room with the other people. It was as uneventful as waiting rooms are.

MISSING DATA 98-681A

I got home around noon and went through more interview questions and eventually finished the interview book. I didn’t know if I was prepared for interviewing, but it felt like I was prepared, which seemed more important.

I checked my site stats, read my mail, fixed a WordPress issue for a reader, and then called for another replacement on a smoke alarm that had started complaining about being broken. It’s so nice that they’ve given voices to smoke alarms these days. Instead of listening to an annoying beep, you get to hear an annoying person telling you there’s an error.

I asked the lady on the phone if it was typical to have multiple alarms go bad, and she admitted that it wasn’t. I thought about changing my name to Lucky. Maybe Lucky Jetpack. Of course, I’d have to register jetpacks.org, but the name would be future-proof when the awesome future that we’ve been promised since the 1950’s arrives. I’ll have an awesome name and a flying car, and I’ll probably end up sitting in the car port to avoid going into the house and facing the eternal bickering between the dishwasher and refrigerator. Go go gadget future.

I didn’t know what to work on, so I dug in and continued developing one of my book ideas. I write more in one LOR post than I have for the book, but it was getting harder to track the different scenes in a text file. I imagined that as the words piled up, it would only get more difficult.

I installed yWriter, to make tracking scenes, chapters, and characters a lot easier than in a text file. It’s a decent (and free) piece of software for anyone who is thinking about taking on a book. I don’t know if it will help in the long run, but there’s been a lot less scrolling and hunting for scenes since I started with it.

Once #1GF! got home, we ate dinner and watched Chuck. I used to like the show for its geeky angle, but I think the show may have jumped the shark when it started including more over the top ridiculous spy stuff than geeky humor. It doesn’t seem like it will be long before the show will be awarded that Friday night at 9PM time slot and quietly fade from public memory.

Wednesday (Day 682): Suiting Up Like Mechagodzilla

I woke up at 5:45 and the sky was blood red. The trees were outlined black against it, making it seem almost apocalyptic when viewed from somewhere outside of the South Pacific. I thought about waking #1GF! to see it, but there are plenty of nice looking sunrises and sunsets here, and they’re not as rare as a good night’s sleep.

After I got up, I spent a fair amount of time reworking my resume. Once I got it to where I didn’t think it would get any better without stapling a twenty dollar bill to it, I deep cleaned the printer a couple of times to avoid any possibility of smudges. I printed out a few copies on unnecessarily watermarked resume paper, polished my shoes, put on a suit, and went to an informal meeting about a job. It was odd to be in a suit again without it requiring a gift or a charitable donation, and a lot less uncomfortable than I expected.

In the two hours that I was there, I was interviewed by four different people and told that I had an impressive resume. The job sounded really interesting and seemed to fit my more “jack of all trades” skill set, so everything seemed to go pretty well.

On the other hand, you never really know with job interviews. Maybe “you have an impressive resume” is new business code for “you have dangling booger on the edge of your nostril that hypnotically goes in and out every time you breathe”. I haven’t dedicated much time to corporate jargon in the last couple of years, so I can’t be sure.

I didn’t understand why, but I was tired afterward. I didn’t think that I had the right to be, because in my mind, I hadn’t really done anything all day. I prepped a resume, got dressed, and had a meeting. Big whoop. Not once did I lift anyone over my head, save schoolchildren from an overturned bus, or fight Mechagodzilla for control of Tokyo. Not once.

I decided to drop by my parents’ house on the way home, and pounded back a black cup of coffee. It didn’t seem to help. I showed my father my resume, and pointed out what I thought was a neat little trick that I threw into it. He had seen a lot of resumes over the years and admitted that the addition was pretty effective and something that he had never seen before. I was glad that I had opted to include it at the expense of the extra page.

I stayed to talk for a bit, and by the time I got home, it was well after 6PM. I took off the suit and had leftovers with #1GF!. I stood at the counter eating (which inexplicably has been my preferred eating position since my teenage years) and watching the neighborhood kids ride their bikes up over our lawn. They weren’t riding up the driveway and a little on the grass. They were riding the hills in our lawn like a dirt track.

“They really like riding on our lawn, don’t they?” I asked #1GF!.

“They do,” replied #1GF!, while dividing her attention between watching the kids outside and deciding which of the leftover containers would be her dinner.

“I thought about saying something, but I probably did the same thing to my neighbors when I was a kid. I don’t want to be that jerky neighbor that won’t let kids be kids.”

“Yea, and it’s not like we have a nice lawn, anyway.”

“Ah, very true,” I said while raising a fork as if to salute to the good point.

We sat down with our leftovers and watched the second disc of Mad Men. As much as I thought the first disc was neat for being set in the 1950’s, the second disc seemed to be really slow. I spent a couple of episodes waiting for something to happen.

“I don’t know about this show,” I said to #1GF! as I took the disc out of the player. “There sure seems to be a lot of kissing.”

“It’s a drama,” replied #1GF! as if I should’ve known that a lot of kissing would be part of the deal. “What did you think it was going to be?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s sort of like the The Sopranos, but no one gets whacked. Without the whacking to break up the kissing, it’s sort of a girlie show.”

#1GF! rolled her eyes.

“I’m just saying. It’s only the second disc and the 50’s novelty has already worn off. Unless something happens soon to balance out the kissing, I’m not going to be interested in it. It’s Desperate Housewives in the 50’s.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“It’s true. And I don’t know about that main guy looking like me. My chin is not that big. And if I had stubble like that, I would have the best, and fastest growing beard in the world. I would use a natural gift like that to its full, world dominating potential.”

“Ridiculous.”

Thursday (Day 683): A Man Of Mystery

I drove #1GF!’s mom to her appointment and got there within five minutes of her scheduled time. I was proud of my expert timing even though it was more likely a fluke. When #1GF!’s mom was called in, a lady in the waiting room whispered to her companion, “That must be her son.”

I look nothing like #1GF!’s mom, so I thought it was an interesting observation. I thought about smiling and responding, but I thought that it might be fun for the lady to try to figure out the truth. I grinned and kept my nose in Asimov’s Foundation And Empire. I reread the same line over and over while wondering if my hearing was really good, or if the woman’s stage whisper was intended to be overheard and responded to.

#1GF! showed up five minutes later, so I wondered if the woman was revising her story. I hoped that the small mystery took away some of the boredom that waiting rooms generally blanket people with.

#1GF! returned to work, and I took #1GF!’s mom home. On the ride, she told me that she had told the someone that I was #1GF!’s husband because she didn’t know what to call me.

I think of #1GF! and I as married couple and accidentally refer to myself as her husband on occasion (although I am corrected), so I didn’t mind.

“Why didn’t you tell her that I was your daughter’s personal chef? Or maybe her house boy?” I asked.

#1GF!’s mom chuckled. “Oh, I wish I thought of that.”

When I got home, I had a PB&J, checked my e-mail and site stats, and started outlining LOR Week 98. I thought about putting on a pot of coffee because I felt like I needed some caffeine, but I knew that I wouldn’t waste whatever I made, and I always over-make. I could see myself sweating and babbling on and on about talking to inanimate objects rather than see the coffee go to waste. I opted for a cup of tea.

I had promised to whip up a simple horizontal menu for Michelle over at co-ob. I’m a little rusty when it comes to Blogger internals, but it wasn’t difficult to figure out. I had the menu set up in a half hour, and I worked it into her site.

She seemed happy with it, so I logged out. I put the scrap of paper that held her password into the shredder, like anyone would break into my house for the sole purpose of stealing the password to her site. I suggested that she change her password in case it had been intercepted or logged at some point between her and me. It’s the paranoia of a security guy.

I played a little Quake at night, and managed to get in a couple of games before the site went down for maintenance. While I was waiting, I came up with a solution of how to add Better Blogroll directly to a page instead of the sidebar. It was something that a few users had asked for over the last few months, so I thought I should post something on it. I worked on the solution, wrote it up, and added it to the Better Blogroll page. By the time I finished, it was already 10PM.

Friday (Day 684): The Caveman Gym For Weirdos

I wanted to gather some ideas on what to do with our patchy little plot of land, so I was on the computer looking up landscape plans before #1GF! left for work. I didn’t find anything that interesting, so I looked into free landscape software. That search was even less fruitful.

I pulled off the information superhighway and went outside to stare at the yard for a while in hopes of coming up with a couple of ideas on my own. The more that I looked at it, the more I found wrong. When I turned my attention to the house to give myself a break, I found even more problems.

Just as I was starting to get sucked down into the whirlpool of issues that have swirl around our house, #1GF! called. She tried to convince me that everything would work out, but that whirlpool was fast becoming a whirlpool of quicksand, and mentally, I was neck deep.

I got off the phone, and remembered the Calvin Coolidge quote that I heard of through Christopher Kimball of Cooks Illustrated. It has helped me clear some of the mental log jams that can keep things from flowing smoothly:

“When you don’t know what to do, do the work in front of you.”

The first thing that I looked at was the old, cement garbage can buried in the yard. I knew it was full of fetid, standing water that could end up being a miniature sex farm for mosquitoes this summer. It may not have been a priority project, but a log jam is cleared one log at a time. I bailed the cement container out and removed the rusted can that hadn’t been useful since long before I was born.

I looked into the two inch thick cement cylinder, and realized that unless I dug it up or broke out the bottom, the standing water would return the next time it rained. I looked at the hole and decided that breaking out the bottom would be easier and less time consuming than digging up (and trying to dispose of) the whole cylinder. I just needed something heavy enough to break two inches of concrete set two feet in the ground.

And that’s the point when Yankee ingenuity and civilized behavior went their separate ways. I had dug up a tribe of fence posts with a balls of concrete on their ends when I took down part of a chain link fence last year. All of them made it into the renovation dumpster, and one was inexplicably tossed out and left in my yard. Since then, I haven’t had a clue of how to dispose of it, so that fence post has been laying in various positions around the yard, helping to keep neighborhood affordable.

Like a freeloading house guest that had overstayed its welcome, that fence post was finally going to earn its keep. I picked it up by its metal post and dragged it across the yard towards the hole. With its weight, it clawed the ground like a crazed hippie being dragged toward a shower.

I dragged it to the hole and flipped it in so it stood like the the biggest, yet least appetizing stick of rock candy that anyone had ever seen. I wrapped my arms around the cement and dropped the against the bottom of the hole repeatedly. It was as difficult as doing a set of squats, but like I was doing them on some sort of fence post squatting machine at a caveman gym for weirdos.

If any neighbors were home from work, I imagined that the constant thunk of the heavy post against concrete would have them looking out their windows to see what their weird new neighbor was up to this time. After a few sets of pile drive squats, I felt the post break through the concrete and stick into the mud with a welcome squish. “Oh, yes,” I thought as I watched the last bit of standing water immediately drained out.

I heaved the primitive tool out of the hole and let it fall to the ground. I laid on the ground and stuck my arm into the bucket to my shoulder to lift out any loose pieces of concrete. The only piece that was loose ended up being smaller than my palm, but I had to take a victory where I could.

The bottom was at least a foot wide and cracked, but none of the other pieces would move more than a fraction of an inch. I threw the small piece of concrete aside and hoisted the pile driver back into place. The cycle of breaking and digging out the pieces of the container took a couple of hours before the last piece was out. I lifted the last piece out with more force of will than leverage.

I cast the last piece into the pile that had slowly been forming, and sat on the metal cover (that I had somehow popped off at some unspecified point in the process) next to my new, two and a half foot deep concrete hole. If I only had something to fill it in with.

I went to the home store and picked up six bags of stone and some landscaping fabric. I figured that the rocks would provide drainage, and the landscaping fabric would keep that drainage from getting clogged with dirt.

I went home and lugged the bags across the lawn two at a time like I was at another exercise station at the caveman gym for weirdos. I lined the hole with the fabric, and poured four bags into the hole. I was about to drop the last two in, when I thought occurred to me.

I have had a lot of drainage issues in the yard, and was standing on ground that was so wet that it had been a mud pit since we bought the house. I looked at the rivulets carved into the mud from the base of the nearest downspout. The downspout must’ve seen the look in my eye, because despite its normally staid appearance, looked a little panicked.

“Oh, no, don’t look at me. I’m fine the way I am,” implied the drainpipe in what I imagined was hollow, and slightly tinny voice.

“I’m the owner of the house, and you’re a downspout,” I thought. “You will be assimilated into this project.”

After two hours in the presence of someone who had no qualms about using a fence post to pile drive concrete, the downspout knew better than to continue.

“That’s right,” I thought. “Resistance is futile.”

It was eight feet from the downspout to the concrete barrel, and if I dug a trench and ran a pipe between them, I could potentially solve at least one of the downspout issues that made my backyard look like a wet satellite photo of Mars.

I left the gym for weirdos and went back to the home store to see what I could buy to make this happen. I went to the pipe aisle, where I got indecisive about what kind of tubing to get. There was corrugated and PVC, and a ton of different fittings to choose from. I wasn’t sure what would be best to use, and I didn’t want to waste too much time exploring all the interesting possibilities in the world of drainage. #1GF! had no idea that this project was going on, so I had to either complete it, or at least make it look like I knew what I was doing by the time she got home from work.

I grabbed a flat head shovel to dig the trench (I’m amazed at how many simple and useful things went missing in my few year lapse in homeownership), and then stared at various rakes and garden tools with just enough longing to make them all feel a little uncomfortable.

To connect the trenched pipe to the rock filled bucket, I needed to cut a decent sized hole in the concrete side of the bucket. Like a stone age man, I walked into the tool section and picked up a single masonry chisel. I needed to cut a four inch hole through two solid inches of concrete, and at the time, a chisel seemed like the perfect tool.

It was a chisel that was made for masonry. It said right on it. Somehow, I think that I translated “masonry chisel” into “this chisel is tipped with diamonds that shoot rare, laser guided, stone eating piranha that eat through concrete like butter wrapped in cream cheese”. Considering the $5 price tag, my translation made it seem like the bargain of the century.

I went home and dug a trench from the downspout to the container, and I wish that I could say it that the one by one by eight foot trench took me less than two hours. I now understand why people rent gas powered trenching tools. I moved the metal cover of the trash container to the edge of the trench and sat on it once again.

For the next two hours, I chipped through two inches of concrete with a hammer and a chisel. I can’t imagine that the neighbors were psyched. Ping ping ping ping [pause] ping ping ping ping [pause] was all they heard over the next couple of hours.

I would conservatively estimate that I hit each index knuckle on both hands between three and four times each. Every whack would drive dirt deeper into folds of my bleeding knuckles, but had the benefit of making me less susceptible to each subsequent blow. By the end there wasn’t even a pause between hitting the knuckle and the next ping of the hammer against the chisel. Ping Ping thump ping. There wasn’t even an angry growl when metal met flesh.

In the end, I had what amounted to a two inch by three inch hole through the two inch thick side of the bucket. I had been chipping away for hours, and it was doubtful that the time and effort required to expand the hole would be worth it. I knew that the connecting pipe would probably be four inches in diameter, but I figured that I could flex it and jam it in if necessary.

I was out of time, anyway, and #1GF! came home looking for an explanation for the new pile of dirt and the muddy lunatic sitting next to it. Concerned looks were at a minimum, partly because I had a good enough handle on the project, and partly because I gave the drainpipe and the owner of the caveman gym for weirdos looks to keep them quiet while she was there.

#1GF! and I went to the home store, and I picked up the four inch pipe and a rake. By the time we got home, it was too dark to finish. I washed up, and ignored being tired. I figured that #1GF! spent the day working and building a baby, so if she wasn’t tired, neither was I. We went and ate dinner at a local restaurant simply to avoid cooking.

We got home at around 9PM, and while I my fatigue was starting to show through, I wouldn’t admit it. I eventually lay down on top of the covers, because that isn’t really considered going to bed. At 9:15, I was fully clothed and asleep on top of the covers. I had to get up to brush my teeth.

Saturday (Day 685): Mars And Venus: An Interplanetary Tour

I woke up at 6AM without the alarm because I had fallen asleep so early the night before. I lay there thinking about all the things that I had to do. I got dressed and immediately started back on the drainage issue from the day before.

I took the tubing out of basement and laid it in the trench for a test fit, and trench didn’t seem deep enough when I considered the rocks and dirt that would need to go in with it. I made a mental note and then moved on to figuring out how to get a four inch tube into a two inch hole. I cut slits in the end of the tubing and tried to jam it in for a few minutes, but it wasn’t flexible enough that it was ever going to fit. I should’ve seen it coming. I went back in the house.

“I have to go to the store,” I said to #1GF!.

“What? Why?”

“I need something to step that tubing down to fit the hole. It’s not going to work the way it is. It just won’t fit.”

“Ok,” said #1GF! “Want me to go with you?”

“Nah, you stay here. I’ll be back soon.”

I went to the home store and looked for something to step the pipe down to smaller size. I went through all sorts of fittings and couplings and came up empty. I even ventured into other departments to hack something together, but I couldn’t find anything that seemed like it would do the trick.

“If the hole was big enough, you wouldn’t need to be wasting time looking for a coupling,” I thought. “Just get something to make the hole bigger.”

I was a little concerned that I referred to myself as “you” rather than “I”, but didn’t have time to debate psychology. I had a project to finish.

I walked over to the hammer drills, which have the ability to drill through brick and concrete. They started at $70 and went up to $300. Even though it was on the low end of the scale, $70 seemed like a lot of money for a tool that I might not use again. I walked back to the couplings to take another look. The inventory hadn’t changed, and they hadn’t put any new miracle couplings out since I had checked five minutes before.

“If the hole was big enough, you wouldn’t need a coupling,” I thought again.

That nagging voice telling me to stop hacking and do it right won out. I bought the cheapest hammer drill I could, and three more bags of rocks before heading home.

A hammer drill is better than a chisel. A lot better. It goes through two inches of concrete in minutes instead of hours. Unfortunately, it goes through concrete 5/8 of an inch at a time. Even with the addition of a power tool, it was still slow going. I had to drill a ton of small holes and then chip between the holes with the chisel.

I hit my hand once, and didn’t acknowledge it beyond the fact that I noticed I got fresh blood on the chisel that looked like I had been using it for years instead of a single day. As I hammered away, I thought that Michaelangelo didn’t have a hammer drill or power tools and he sculpted very large and incredibly detailed sculptures out of solid rock. I had power tools and electricity, and couldn’t make a four inch hole.

I went back and forth a number of times trying to make the hole big enough, and would still be fractions of an inch off each time. I finally decided to make the hole an inch bigger than I thought I needed, and the pipe fit through fine.

#1GF! would occasionally pop open a window tell whoever was on the phone to hold on for a second so that she could ask how I was doing. I think she was simply checking to make sure that her baby daddy hadn’t inadvertently hammer drilled himself into a bloody mess in a newly formed ditch in her backyard.

“Um, is that a snake by your foot?” asked #1GF! in a tone that was calmer than any other sentence I’ve heard her utter containing the word “snake”. She lifted the phone to her mouth again without looking away. “What? Yes, mum, a snake.”

I looked at my foot. There was a garter snake with its head cocked to strike the sole of my work boot. “So it is,” I said and casually chopped it’s head with a hand shovel. “So, it isn’t.”

I felt a little bad because I’ve had bigger boogers than that snake, and it couldn’t have done much damage even if it were hanging off of one of my nostrils. I picked it up by the tail and tossed it into the leaves for some bird to enjoy. #1GF! closed down the window and went back to her conversation.

I dug the trench a bit deeper and graded it. Then, I wrapped the pipe in landscaping fabric and covered it with gravel. I got the hose and tested the new system. The water went down the pipe and into the bucket. Check. The well rapidly drained. Check mate. Everything seemed like it was working, so I grabbed my homemade box sifter and sifted the pile of trench dirt back into the trench.

“That’s a nice dance,” said #1GF! as I shook the dirt back and forth through the sifter.

You watch,” I said between the rapid twists. “This dance is going to sweep the country and ruin the moral fabric of the nation.”

#1GF! turned her attention away from my hypnotic midsection, just long enough to note that the gutter was leaking. I was tired enough to start stumbling over things, so there was no way that I was cleared to climb ladders and start looking at gutters. I tacked it on my list of things to do, and went back to my sifting shimmy.

Once the trench was covered, I still had a bunch of dirt left over. Dirt piles make mud piles, so I decided to sift some fresh dirt into the row of indents that marked the locations of the fence posts that I pulled out last year. I dumped the unsifted rocks in a pile in the back because I didn’t know what to do with them. Oddly, I thought that the sifted dirt in those holes looked like less like a wrecked lawn than progress.

#1GF! can’t stand being idle when other people are working, so I asked her to stick some extensions on the other downspouts, and maybe start planning planting beds using the garden hose to mark the edge. Once I was done all that I was going to do, I left the caveman gym for weirdos and joined her. We came up with some interesting ideas, but never really solidified a plan.

#1GF! and I put all the tools away, and I went inside and turned my clothes inside out to avoid getting mud all over the floor. I looked at the cuts and blisters on my hands, and they were as angry and raw as a grounded teenager. When you have open cuts that are more ooze and mud than skin, you know it’s not going to be pleasant to rub a rough washcloth on them.

I looked at the washcloth. “The dirt has to come out,” I thought. Instead of gingerly going around the cuts removing bits of dirt a little at a time, I scrubbed. It probably hurt a little more, but it was a lot quicker and more effective than going carefully. Pain is merely weakness leaving the body. Or so the saying goes.

When the cuts were cleared, I scrubbed for at least five minutes straight to get rid of the brown patches extending in a semicircle from my second knuckle to my thumb on both hands. I stopped scrubbing when I realized that the circles weren’t dirt, but the start of a couple of bruises. By the time I was done, my hands were clean, but rough enough to stick to fabric like Velcro.

I took a shower, got dressed, and gelled my hair up so that I wouldn’t look half as tired as I was. I knew that #1GF! wanted to get some baby registering done, and I didn’t want her to worry about whether I was tired or not.

We grabbed a cup of coffee for me on the way, and I felt bad about it because #1GF! couldn’t have coffee and she was probably tired too. While I was working in the yard, she had taken it upon herself to clean the house and make a baby at the same time. And she didn’t need a cup of coffee. I felt shame.

We went to the baby store, picked up a pricing gun, and tried to finish off our baby registering. Let me say this: Even though I’ve somehow ended up on the receiving end, don’t think that I think that showers are any less of a ripoff. Whether wedding or baby, showers are the biggest ripoff in the modern world since Sea Monkeys. It’s like begging for gifts, where people don’t get anything in return.

The only reason that I can back registering is that someone told me that certain people are going to buy you stuff anyway, so you might as well give them an idea of what you’d like. It’s the only reason it makes sense. That, and the pricing gun looks sort of like something out of Star Trek, so I can hold it at waist height when firing at items and say corny things like “Set scanners to stun, Dr. McCoy”.

Even though I feel like I’m on a foreign planet when in a baby store, my mission was to get through the registry as pleasantly and efficiently as possible. And maybe to sit in some of the glider rocking chairs because those things make baby shopping tolerable. We didn’t have much left to register for, but we plowed through that list in pretty good time.

When we reached the parking lot, it started raining. I was a little sad that I wouldn’t be able to see my new drainpipe install in its first test, and hoped it passed. On the way home, we went to the home store once again to pick up a little grass seed so that I could tackle grading and seeding the Lollapalooza mud pit of a back yard we have.

We watched a little TV after we got home, and I noticed that my muscles were starting to ache a little. I would unexpectedly grunt at small movements that should not require grunting from anyone younger than 93. When I got into bed, I had trouble sleeping because of all the projects that I felt like I should be doing.

What I Learned

• You can do a lot with an old fence post and some gumption.
• A chisel is not the proper tool for drilling through concrete. A hammer drill is better, but not great for anything greater than 5/8″.
• There is an unwritten rule where occupants of houses of close proximity are supposed to pretend like they can’t see each other if they are separated by a pane of glass. I thought that rule was universal. It is not.
• I have an impressive resume?
• yWriter makes organizing a book a bit easier.
• Mad Men may not be as good as I thought.
• Chuck may be jumping the shark.
• I can now make a horizontal menu for Blogger users.
• Better Blogroll can now be added directly to a page.
• I learned a lot about getting water away from the house.
• If it happens often enough, even a hammer to the knuckle loses its punch.

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Posted in Leisure