I got bloodwork back this morning, and some things are looking up and other stuff is kind of meh. White blood cell counts are rising slowly, but not where they were 10 months ago. Lymphocytes spiked to almost where they were in 2017 before radiation and chemo—a good sign. However Neutrophils are back at their 2019 levels, and red blood cells and platelets dropped slightly. When I see my oncologist in October for the 4-year checkup, I’ll get some more information on what all this means.
Somehow, the axis of the earth shifted beneath my feet, and I didn’t feel a thing.
When I was a teenager, in the heady days of MTV and before the second wave of video games hit, we had only a few things to do to get out of the house. When we were too old to build forts in the woods or make jumps for our bikes, we bugged Mom or Dad to drive us to the Mall, where we could go hang out and wander for hours and maybe meet up with our friends and not look like miserable lonely schlubs. I’d spend a half an hour in the Koenig Art Emporium, looking at brushes or expensive oil paints; I’d go to the poster store and maybe buy a cardboard-backed picture of a Porsche or a Lamborghini. I’d go to one of the two music stores and agonize over whether I should spend $15 on a cassette that might only have two good songs on it. And I’d always stop at the Gap.
The Gap was my touchpoint for fashion in the 1980’s; I wasn’t a Chess King guy (we quietly made fun of the pleated slacks, Capezio and black fedora set in our high school) and I had more style than Sears or K-Mart offered. The Gap was always mobbed. They played decent music, and all my friends and I bought clothes there. I worked for months to afford a fleece-lined denim Gap jacket. I had the Gap’s version of Jams when Jams were cool. I had multiple Gap polo shirts, alternating those with J. Crew polo shirts which hid my pencil neck—I only popped the collar a couple of times, I swear.
I still buy Gap jeans, as they have a wide selection of available styles which still tend to fit me in a 25-year-old way and not a Dad way, and usually it’s a breeze to buy them online during a sale and have them delivered—if they don’t fit, you run them back to the store. After I had a wave of knee blowouts in my “work uniform” this winter, I ordered three pair to replace the fallen soldiers. Two fit as advertised, but one pair was so skinny as to be latex, and I can’t rock that look without major ball squishage (I’m so old I remember when the Gap’s clothes were all 14 sizes too big). They’ve sat in the bag patiently, waiting to go back for a couple of months now, and my blood draw this morning took me in that general direction so I stopped in to the mall to return them. Donning my mask I noticed several shuttered storefronts (the beads and baubles store is gone; the Apple store moved further down the row and has been replaced with a Lululemon store. Macy’s is closed, darkening one whole wing.) When I reached the storefront where the Gap was, I was faced with a boarded up wall.
I was momentarily flabbergasted. Having a mall without a Gap is kind of like having a hand with no thumb; inconceivable to a child of the 80’s like me. They’ve been in dire straits for a long time now, so I can’t say this is a complete shock. But I figured with Columbia’s clientele and proximity to middle-class shoppers, this would be one store that would have stayed open. The closest I’ve got is a factory outlet in another nearby mall, and hopefully they’ll honor the return. If not, I’ll have to squish my balls into some skinny jeans and pour another one out for the inexorable march of progress.
Here’s the first real test of the heat matting I’ve done on a day measuring 92˚ (102˚ with humidity) and after a five-mile ride into and back out of town: the heat matting is averaging around 100˚ along the trans tunnel and up the firewall, while the bare metal is around 115˚ at every point. I’d call that a success!
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
Last night I filled a box with four carefully wrapped, priceless reels of our family history and got it ready to ship to Kodak for transfer to digital video. In all, there’s about 100-110 minutes of footage spread across each of them. They’re going to return a couple of thumb drives and a download link along with my reels, and I’m hoping the money spent will be worth it. I have no idea what quality to expect, but I’m hoping the result will be better than anything I can do myself. Dad tried transferring stuff to VHS back in the day but we all know how that technology made out; I’d rather have this digital so I can update the format if I ever need to.
After busting my ass in the heat painting the house, I did some organizing on Sunday to go through all of my camping gear and figure out what we’ve got and what we might need. It’s all been spread out across the basement and garage since we went last time, so I feel a lot better about having most of it in one place, ready to go. This time I’m dealing with teens who have been glued to their screens for two years, so it’s going to be a much trickier situation to navigate. Just as I’ve gotten them to detox and see the beauty of real world, it’ll be time to throw all our shit back in the truck and head home. I hope they don’t band together and kill me; my safety is dependent on the fact that they can’t drive a stick.
As I was working all weekend, I found that I needed to keep pulling my glasses on and off to focus on small details, and I finally got fed up with it. It’s been an issue more and more, and while part of me is still too vain to admit I need bifocals, the time has come. When I do the bus renovation with Brian, I’m going to need a set of safety glasses, so I thought I’d be smart and have a set of progressive lenses built in to them to avoid this issue. But that means I need a prescription. I’ve got an appointment today to have an eye doctor test my reading vision, and I’ve found a place online that will cut me safety glasses for less than a fancy set of designer frames. So we’ll see if I can wear a set of bifocals without throwing up all over myself.
I took advantage of a break in the hot weather on Saturday to continue painting the house and got a lot more done than I thought I would. First I had to build a leveling platform for the front porch roof, as it slopes down from the front and from both sides, which makes reaching the edges of the second story eaves difficult. I knocked together some scrap wood in the garage, hauled the ladders, compressor, and platform around to the front of the house, and had both edges of the second story knocked out by about 2PM. This included a second (third, actually) coat of white paint on all of the eaves across the front of the house.
Then I moved everything to the back corner and started the complicated ladderwork to get the siding painted there. As mentioned before it’s very tricky because there are three wires that reach the house on that corner, no level ground to place a ladder, and no easy flat surfaces to lean a ladder on. I got most of the siding done with some careful placement before the compressor tripped the circuit for the third time, and I finally realized it was overloaded when the connection between the cord and the extension cord started throwing smoke (and it burned my finger). I’ll have to temporarily unplug the refrigerator and some other small stuff and see if that helps make the compressor any happier.
By the time I finished I was absolutely exhausted. The weather had been nice but all that ladderwork took it out of me, and I was moving a lot of heavy stuff around all day. We ate a quick dinner and then went over to the Gebler’s house for a birthday party for Ruby, who turned 4 (she shares a birthday with Aunt Renie!) where we let Hazel run free in the backyard while the kids played and we drank beer and relaxed. It was after 10:30 and a set of skinned knees when we packed up the car and returned home.
It was with great delight that I read Disney was producing a streaming series based on the Mysterious Benedict Society, a series of novels we read as a family after we finished the Harry Potter books. It’s the story of four gifted children with different skills who come together to solve a mystery. We started it during my stint in chemotherapy, so I have memories of falling asleep on the bed as Jen or Finn read their chapter, lulled peacefully into oblivion by the gentle story and the sound of their voices. The series is excellent so far. Although several of the adult cast were not who I saw in my head, I like them more and more. They’re doing a great job with production design and story, and I hope it maintains its quality until the end of this series.
Another new favorite: Clarkson’s Farm, on Amazon Prime. Most people write off Jeremy Clarkson as a blowhard English television presenter (and to be fair he’s said his share of stupid and racist things) but, as with Howard Stern, I think he’s mellowed and matured as he’s aged. The new series began filming in 2019, right before COVID, showing how he took over management of his huge farm in rural England. As with a lot of his best work on Top Gear, it’s less about poking fun at the subject and more about skewering himself—here showing his audience just how hard farming is, and just how little he knows about any of it, even though he’s owned one for over ten years. It’s a wonderful window into rural England—and fun to watch.
Yesterday, July 4, was a beautiful day. The weather was in the mid 80’s, the humidity was low, and I was exhausted from a very small parade party we hosted, where I drank more than my usual amount of beer and saw more than my usual amount of people. I was prepared to sit on the couch and play The Division 2 all afternoon but realized a perfect opportunity was escaping me, so I went out and started cutting heat matting down on the Scout.
First I put a section on the inside of the passenger door, which has always sounded like a dumpster being dropped off a bridge when it closes. I’m a pro at breaking down Scout doors so this took little time, and after I’d wiped the interior down with acetone the heat matting went on very quickly.
Then I started working on the driver’s firewall in sections. It took some time and some trimming, but I got the main section of the vertical rise done all the way down to the high beam switch over to the rise under the gas pedal.
On Monday I got back at it, beginning with the passenger’s side. First I ripped out all the vestigial IH padding I could reach and first washed the firewall, then rubbed it down with acetone before spraying the rusty areas with Eastwood encapsulator. It looks like the welds going up the side are a little crusty, and I think there’s probably more where the windshield meets the firewall—but that’s for another day.
While I was in there I pulled the passenger vent out, cleaned it up, sprayed the backside with encapsulator, and left it to cure.
While that was drying I unscrewed the transfer case knob and pulled the trans tunnel cover off, giving it the same treatment: a scrub with some Simple Green, a rubdown with acetone, and drying in the sun.
Then I used the outline of the case to cut a section of mat and applied it to the underside of the cover, cutting out the holes with a sharp boxcutter. It’s always looked like shit—it’s not the standard International green they used on base-model trucks but some kind of baby-poop brown, so I sprayed it with black paint and let it cure.
Back in the truck I started cutting sections of mat out and matching them to the geometry, working from the outside inward. It all went pretty smoothly, and when I’d covered the front section I was faced with the side of the trans tunnel. Should I cover it? Looking inside the trans tunnel, I saw that the previous owner had carefully undercoated as much of the underside as possible, which meant I wouldn’t be able to get the matting to stick under there. I decided that comfort outweighed aesthetics for the time being and cut a section for the interior to keep passengers from burning their legs.
And, because I didn’t really want to burn my legs, I put a matching section on the driver’s side. Finally, I cut a section for the area over the top of the tunnel, and put the remainder of the matting away.
Replacing the trans cover was a great moment, because after I’d washed the shift boots and put new stainless screws in, the cabin of the truck looked completely different.
It’s good to have that done, and I’m hoping it’ll make a big difference when it comes time to drive to Ohio. I don’t know how I’m going to hide all of the foil, but I’m hopeful it will beat back the heat.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
