Finn catches up with Grand via the web. (I have a shot of her doing this with my folks too, but they are so dark as to be invisible).
MAKE: Blog: $0 digital pinhole camera. I am so totally gonna try this when I get home.
70° days are rare in Maryland this early in March, so this weekend we tried to balance spending as much time as possible with Finn and as much time as we could outside in the fresh air. Saturday was dedicated to long-overdue yardwork, which consumed a good portion of our afternoon, but, what a beautiful afternoon to do it!
I made the mistake of wearing work jeans, and after a half an hour raking leaves off the foundation, I had to switch to shorts because I was too hot. We had five inches of snow last Monday. I am surprised I did not blind the pilots of overflying passenger jets with the sunlight bouncing off my pale knobby knees.
Anyway, while Finn slept off her second breakfast, Jen and I filled twenty bags of leaves from the back of the house, the driveway bed, and the odd area under our back porch, which seems to attract all of the loose leaves in this zipcode like a great sucking vortex.
Once that was accomplished, we three got a bite to eat, changed our diaper, brought the swing outside, and commenced to cleaning out the sad, dilapidated tangle of weeds that was our garden while Finn supervised. I cannot describe to you the sense of satisfaction it gives me to look out on that bare patch of earth and know the neighbors aren’t cursing us under their breath anymore.
While raking up the leaves, I reflected on the sad harvest we reaped last year (mainly due to the toll taken by varmints), and decided that this would be the year I modify our greenhouse to grow vegetables properly. Doing some research, I found online suppliers who sell polycarbonate glazing and ventilation systems, which will be an up-front investment and take some engineering to install, but should turn our useless sealed hothouse into a productive greenhouse.
Meanwhile, I straightened up the pots and barrels and soil and made way for seedlings.
Then, I moved out to the garage and straightened up as much as I could around the Scout without actually diving into doing something on it. I did break down and disassemble some of my new parts–but I’ll go into that elsewhere.
Sunday we got the girl up early—or is that the other way around?—and made preparations to take a long walk around a lake in Columbia before doing our grocery shopping. After her first bottle of the day, this child, who almost never stops moving, did something she’s never done with me before—she leaned her head down onto my chest, under my chin, and quietly nestled up against me for three of the longest and best moments of my life.
Once we got out onto the trail, she was fine for the first fifteen minutes or so, but soon decided she wanted to be facing forward, which meant we wound up carrying her like a football for two and a half miles. Once out of the stroller, she was her usual observant self, appraising each new passerby with a taciturn stare, careful to warn away strange ladies who, no doubt, were plotting to rush over and pinch her chubby pink cheeks. Touch my face and I will projectile vomit all over your track suit, that glare said. And it worked.
Jen and I are afraid nobody will ever see the inside Finn, the girl we get to see who is giggles and smiles and gets so happy her entire body spasms repeatedly like she’s hooked up to a car battery. When she’s around us, she’s Miss Congeniality, and when she’s out in public, she’s Steve McQueen, staring down a hostile world with those steel-blue eyes and a .44 magnum. I will show you proof that she can smile:
After our return to the car, we hightailed it over to the grocery store, where Mama stayed with her in the parking lot while I hustled around and got our shopping done. A quick trip to the health-food store, and we headed home for a three-hour nap and some more yardwork: the front hedge got cleaned out, the greenhouse got a final sweep, and the toolbench in the garage got cleaned off.
About the time I was finishing up for the day, Finn woke up for dinner: avocado and pears. MMMMMMMMM, avocado. And then it was bathtime, and as soon as she was diapered and dressed, it was time for sleep. I’m exhausted just writing about it all.
This weekend is supposed to be warm and bright, and it can’t come soon enough. The snow melted off in yesterday’s balmy weather, revealing piles of dead leaves I still have yet to rake. I’ve been ignoring the yard since last fall, and the bill has finally come due; doing some basement straightening last weekend, I found an entire box of yard waste bags just waiting to be used. I think we will also have to get Her Highness outside for an afternoon in the yard—maybe while we clean up the garden? I predict the fresh air will do us all good.
In other news, I traded some time with a long-time client for a used but shiny G4 tower that was sitting in their old production room, unused and unloved. After a five-minute drive swap last night, it replaced the ancient G3 tower we’ve been using as our music server, and now paves the way for future data storage. (The 11-year-old G3 BIOS doesn’t recognize drives over 120Gb in size, which sucks when I’ve got two 250GB drives sitting idle and in an age when terrabyte-sized drives sell for less than $100).
Finally, I’ve been obsessing over getting out into the garage and working on the Scout. I’m going to do some test runs with the wire wheel on some of the spare parts I got last weekend, vacuum the floors and bed, and take stock of what I’m working with a little better. My plan is to run up the engine for a while until the leak appears, then try to determine where it’s coming from. If it’s just the gasket, that should be easy to order and replace. If not, I’ll lay hands on a used a water pump in the next week and swap that out instead.
I’m using Adobe’s CS3 suite pretty regularly on my MacBook Pro now, and let me just say, it is a GOOD THING. Boot times measured in seconds, faster UI interaction, and, best of all, I don’t have to waste minutes of my day waiting for older, non-Intel applications to wake up and run through the emulator.
Other than that, it’s nose to the grindstone, baby.