A Ball with No Chain

3

Because life is not complicated enough, hasn’t reached the fever-pitch of insanity with too many hobbies, I just bought a used BMW 1200 GS. I guess $4 gas pushed me over the edge. I have to say, it was weird topping off the tank this morning and seeing the pump register 2.7 gallons.

Catalina Getaway

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Five guys, five days, a whole lot of poop. The trip was Two Harbors on Santa Catalina, just a lazy week of island living. Subject matter was “a life in exile” from the books of Ezekiel and Daniel. Excellent teacher and guardian of decorum was Miz Nataroonie. 

Time Capsule

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With the floor open and some critical wiring exposed it was natural to detour our plans and re-wire the ceiling fan in the room below. When that sub-project was done it was time to button up the floor with a fresh sheet of 5/8″ plywood. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to leave some hidden treasure…in

Golden Rays

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                Looking at this photo of migrating Golden Rays published in the Telegraph, I can’t help but feel that there is more driving our planet than random happenstance.

Open-Beam Flooring

Once you commit yourself to a certain level of perfection in a project you find yourself captive to forces beyond your control. This is what happened when I pulled up the carpet in Norah’s room. There was a soft spot between two sheets of plywood. It looked as if someone had dropped an 18 lb.

And How’s YOUR Weekend Shaping Up?

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I want to be at 24,000 words today with my shitty first draft But of course I have to finish the flooring, molding, touch-up spackle and painting of the writer’s lair. But since we have the dumpster only until Monday morning, what I really need to be doing is pulling up carpet in the entire upper

Progress Report

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How is the novel coming? Thanks for asking. IT SUCKS. Of course the most important part of any good writing is the writer’s lair. Which means that I have to install laminate flooring. On the entire upper floor…because once you’ve done one room you really kind of have to do all the rest of the

A Novel Idea

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Because there is not enough pain and suffering in my life, I’ve decided to write a novel.  It’s turning into a big yak-shaving project. As one might expect. More than anything what I need right now is a set of flat washers. So that I can shim the latch-strike on Norah’s door. I know, I

Double Wash Out

1

Thanks to a freak storm, the Habitat Works Memorial Day Weekend Tamarisk Extirpation Pack & Die trip has been canceled. And I bought an expensive new sweater from Patagonia for the occasion.  Then Doug called and asked if I wanted to climb some real rock up near Wheeler Gorge. Sure! Why not? First time for

Caving on the Ultralight Backpacking Stove

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Alright kirby, you win this time. I completely wimped out on the DIY ultralight backpacking stove challenge. I sawed a clean hole in the bottom of a Diet Coke can and used my Dremel to drill 24 pinholes around the shoulder using the super-useful templates at Zen Stoves. But then something happened. While I was out

Crooked Business

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Kieran Healy at Crooked Timber has a thread about this type of attack. He doesn’t have a solution but it sheds a little bit of light. He seems to believe it was a problem with Dreamhost. This makes me wonder if Bluehost has been hacked, or if the hack was a php exploit. (Not that

I’se Been pwned!

I’ve been blogging sporadically so it took me a while to notice that the Google ads on this blog have been advertising a big breakfast of pharmaceuticals. My first thought was “hallelujah, I’m going to be rich!” Overnight my site became a billboard for SPAM, and any minute the cash should come rolling in. But

War on Crap: Delicious Library

I have hundreds of books, stored in boxes and lying all about. It would take three lifetimes to read them all, if I was dedicated. Which I’m not. So now it’s trench warfare in the War on Crap, Spring cleaning my book collection one title at a time. But the battle is going well, thanks