idiotking

Today I’m on Week 27 of my Invisalign trays, which means I’ve done a half a year with them so far. Looking at both the trays and my teeth I have to be honest and say that I don’t see a huge difference yet. This is not to say that my teeth don’t hurt on Thursday mornings when I take the new trays out; my eyeteeth are screaming bloody murder for the first 2-3 days and then things settle down. There was a period where I was certain my two front teeth were straightening out but that seems to have stalled as the trays continue to push my side molars out to make room for everything. I was getting discouraged, and then went for a checkup to the orthodonist, who assured me everything was going smoothly. The then handed me three more boxes of trays and sent me home. I opened up the final box to compare the trays and saw that by week 70(!!?!!) things should be straight and even. If my shitty math is correct, I’ll see a major improvement by next October.

* * *

I drove down to Bob’s on Saturday to continue working on the drywall in the upper hallway, and I took the CR-V. Curious to see what kind of mileage she was getting, I noted the odometer reading when I filled up before leaving town and then when I topped it off before returning home. She’s getting 22.5MPG, which is right in the middle of the US Department of Energy’s listed averages for the model (technically she’s doing better than the other manual models listed). For 150K miles, that’s a good sign; the engine still has power and the clutch is still strong. We did notice that there’s some water intruding into the cabin on the driver’s side at the bottom of the door, so I’ll have to look into a replacement gasket for the door to see if that seals things up.

* * *

Bob’s hallway shaped up a lot better that I was expecting; he’d asked us to pull the wallpaper off the walls a couple of months ago and mentioned hiring someone out to do it; I don’t want to subject workmen to his supervision so I’ve been tackling a lot of this stuff myself. The wallpaper came off after some pretty bloody fighting, leaving a cratered battlefield in its wake. I hit all of the walls with an orbital sander and then mudded the divots to smooth things out. After block sanding it all, I primed everything twice and fixed a couple of small issues in a few areas. All that’s left is a 5″x5″ square of 3/4″ drywall to patch a hole and a small area over one door, and the whole thing should be done. Next I’ve got to climb up into his attic and reorganize the insulation, which is all cattywampus and not covering the ceiling evenly.

A couple of months ago I took advantage of a sale offered by Kodak, the folks who digitized four reels of 8mm film from the Dugan family archives, and sent off the remainder of our family film—eleven reels in total. Nothing much happened for a while, but to their credit they sent me an email every couple of weeks with an update. I got an email notifying me they’d started digitizing last week, and with the space of four days I got download links for all of the reels and a box UPS’d back to the house with our film.

Overall, I’m pleased with the results, but I would have appreciated it all more of they’d focused everything better. I understand that there’s grain in the film, and that the light meter on dads camera wasn’t reliable, but I feel like I’m able to get sharper results with his old projector than they did with whatever system they used. I set up the projector in the den while watching football yesterday and waited for darkness to test out the focus: I was able to get a clean sharp image on a simple white background, but when I tried recording it with the DSLR I got very noticeable flicker. They must have some kind of interpolating software to remove that flicker, which could be the reason the images are blurry.

I’ve seen a lot of old film run through image processing software, both to clean up and sharpen the footage; I wonder if any of it is available at the consumer level…

Here’s a picture of the load-in for Bob’s house on Thursday evening. I met up with Christi and Rob and we got a ton of things done—but there is, as always, more to do.

I drove three hours up into the Poconos to look at a crusty truck on Sunday, hoping it would be good enough to drag home, but unfortunately it wasn’t. I was able to make the best of the trip by scooting through the Delaware Water Gap to visit our house in Hackettstown, where I went to elementary school up until the 5th grade. A lot has changed there and much is still the same. First I stopped off at the old house to see how it looks: it’s in good shape!

1981

2022

What strikes me the most is that a lot of the trees I remember are gone. The willow in the front yard I fell out of is long gone. All of the tall oaks in the neighbors’ yard to the east are gone. The house to the north looks like it was completely overtaken with new construction. And the overgrown forest and park down at the end of our street where I played Little League baseball and rode BMX bikes has been leveled and cleared, probably for some kind of new development.

Driving around town was wild. It looks like it’s doing very well—the fact that they have the M&M Mars plant anchoring the town is key. Main Street is busy and all the storefronts are full. My middle school is still standing, and still handsome despite the ugly emergency stairwells bolted to the front of the building. The winding route to my elementary school looks almost exactly the same. All of the buildings on the way still stand, and the path up the hill from the dropoff circle is still there. As I drove out of town I found myself passing the VFW hall where I raced my soap box derby car, the Dairy Queen next to the river where we celebrated little league wins, and the Walmart that used to be a Jamesway.

I’m glad to see the town doing well. Sometimes I wonder how our lives might have been different if we’d stayed there. Hackettstown wasn’t perfect but I have lots of good memories from there.

I’m sitting on the couch in the living room with a very discouraged Hazel curled up next to me, listening to the rain fall outside. She went out for a very quick pee and came right back up onto the porch to be let back inside. The girls are still abed, and Bella is in the hall crying to be let in the bedroom, but aside from that it’s quiet.

I drove down to St. Mary’s yesterday to spend some time with Bob and continue demolition on the guest bathroom. After ensuring he’d eaten breakfast and taken his morning pills, I dragged my tools upstairs and commenced to cutting the remainder of the concrete into smaller chunks I could pry out with a bitch bar. When I’d hauled all of that downstairs I pulled up the tarpaper and surveyed the damage to the subfloor: it was rotten mostly between the toilet and the shower, with some intrusion into the center of the floor. So I cut a 48″x32″ section out of the center, went to Lowe’s for some wood and Panera for some lunch, and fed the both of us. Then I cut the wood down in the driveway, added a port for the toilet pipe, and laid it in with some 2″ screws. With the hole in the floor covered, I finished removing wallpaper and got the whole room cleaned up.

The floor will wait until the shower guys finish their work (they’re cutting everything out and replacing it as part of their contract) and then I’ll piece in the rest of the floor before laying tile board down on top of it. In the meantime I’ve got to clean the walls up, use some mud to smooth them out, and put a coat of paint on them.

After cleaning things up, I packed the truck, made sure Bob had everything he needed, and beat feet for home. It was supposed to rain as soon as the sun went down, but all I hit were some sprinkles 20 miles from home. The truck continues to run smoothly and reliably. I even enjoyed a working heater valve and a headlight knob that doesn’t fall off in my hands anymore. It’s the little things.

Today’s plan is to take things easy. I’ve got a few small things to accomplish around the house but I plan on watching a little football and generally relaxing.

Namesake

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