Along with getting work done on the trucks, I took care of some projects around the house, some of which were on the 2026 list.
First and foremost, Hazel got a bath. She has smelled like landfill dirt mixed with old socks in a bag of moldy Cheetos for the last two months, but I don’t like sending her out into 30˚ weather soaking wet after a bath. I took advantage of the warm weather to scrub the stink out of her fur and let her dry off in the warm sun on the back porch. I’m sure she quickly rolled around in the mud to spite me.
I pressure-washed the dirt and green algae off our front stairs, which has been bothering me since November.
I climbed out on the roof and replaced the section of aluminum siding that was blown off during the windstorms in December. The aluminum itself was AWOL until last week, when it magically appeared in the flower bed below the den, as if to say, it’s time to get me back up there, Chief.
Along with that, I pulled the rest of the fiber tiles off the attic ceiling down and stacked them by the stairs. I couldn’t bag them for removal, but that will be the next step in cleaning out that space.
The greenhouse has been straightened up for the first time in three years. My residual anger from the Caterpillar Massacre of 2022 seems to finally have subsided, and I was able to get in there and clean things out. I even put three of the bins out on the table in the center and considered buying a couple of bags of soil and some tomato seedlings just to have something growing in there again.
All of the neighbors’ leaves that have collected under our back porch are now bagged up and ready for the County to collect on Thursday morning. And there are three contractor bags full of garbage from the garage and greenhouse ready to go as well.
What a long, strange trip it’s been so far.
PS. my phone and email have been flooded with well wishes this morning; I can’t tell you how much that means to me.
oooooh, this essay on technology is really good: it puts the state of current technology and its cross-section with society in really clear perspective. I won’t spoil it for you: it’s a great read.
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Apparently The Kids have found a couple of classic rock songs to replace the guitar freakout in Free Bird to accompany their Insta reels: I’ve heard Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls repeatedly to describe Gen-X related topics they have no firsthand experience with. Now it’s stuck in my head. I didn’t like this band when they were big, and I was sick of this song when it was popular. Goddamn it. [Cues up a Spotify playlist to wash the dirt out of my ears]
The court deposition videos of DOGE members being questioned about their activites were posted last week by several of the agencies targeted, and on Friday a judge ordered they be taken down. The reason given was because “publication of the videos could subject the witnesses and their family members to undue harassment and reputational harm,” according to the government complaint. Because sometimes the internet can still be awesome, the videos were archived and posted elsewhere, as well as torrented, ensuring they’ll always be available.
I don’t know what’s more maddening, the fact that the government is more concerned about the safety of these privileged white men than all of the people that were fired, or the fact that they’re so bored-looking as they struggle (and fail) to define what DEI even means.
The Baltimore Banner does a quick article on independent restaurants in Baltimore County worth checking out. Some of these are close, some not so much, but there are a couple I’m interested in.
It was almost 80 degrees here in Catonsville yesterday, so I pulled the Scout out of the garage after work, buttoned the sides of the soft top up, and pointed it north on the Beltway for her first drive of the year. I had a class scheduled after work up at a gun range north of the city: a free seminar on how to clean a shotgun. The class was run by the armorer at the range, who is the son of my CCL instructor, and about 20 of us found seats at clean worktables, waiting to begin.
Around me, the other guys pulled fancy new shotguns from expensive cases: tactical models with pistol grips, camouflage-patterned hunting models, and military-style breaching models with flashlights and shell clips. I pulled Dad’s humble New Haven 600, a Mossberg 500 license-built for department stores in the 1970’s, from its simple bag and waited for our first instructions. I’ve known that it needed to be taken apart and cleaned ever since I brought it home: the action was caked with carbon and dirt, like it had been fired for several years, dragged through mud, and stored in a garage.
I also brought Dad’s cleaning supplies, so I started by polishing the crusty barrel to a mirror finish with a brass brush. The armorer walked over and I saw his eyebrows jump as he took in the condition of the rest of the gun. I explained where it came from and asked him not to judge me, and he chuckled as he broke it down so I could clean each part individually, assuring me he’d seen and heard worse. Over the course of an hour I was able to get the firing pin assembly, bolt, trigger group and receiver cleaned for the first time in decades, making a small mountain out of filthy cleaning wipes on the table next to me.
Seeing how the gun came apart was very helpful for me—I’m more than willing to disassemble almost anything, but where firearms are concerned, I want to know exactly how it comes apart and goes back together before I put a round in it and pull the trigger. Eventually I’d like to replace the original wooden forend on the gun with something lighter, and I knew before the class that removing it requires breaking the gun down almost completely. At the end of our time, he came back over and complimented me on the cleaning job I’d done, and then I watched as he expertly re-assembled the gun and racked the slide with a satisfying clack-clack, as opposed to the muffled whup-whup it made before.
I said my thanks, packed up my stuff, and enjoyed a twilight ride home with the warm wind in my hair.
This week’s brainpan echo: Fu Manchu, Mongoose. I have a deep love for stoner rock: bluesy, distorted, repeating riffs with nonsense lyrics and a driving beat. Fu Manchu has been around for decades and brings the thunder on this track; their killer-to-filler ratio is much less than a QOTSA or Clutch, but when it works, it works.
All things considered, I had a really good weekend. On Saturday morning, I woke up at zero-dark-30 to drive down to Annapolis and pick up Zachary for another snowboarding day. We were able to get to Pennsylvania, get our gear and be on the slopes by 8:30.
Years ago, when I was mountain biking regularly with Rob, he taught me everything about how to do it right. Being a full 6 inches shorter than me, and having spent a ton of time on the West Coast biking on original trails, he knew what he was doing and would launch himself down mountain sides with abandon—but the key was that he was always in control. He showed me how to lean all the way back in the saddle and control my balance on the bike itself, anticipate obstacles and the right way to get over them, and just to generally not be afraid. After riding with him for a couple of seasons, I could keep up with him and follow him down steep mountainsides without blinking—often we found ourselves laughing the harder things got.
With Zachary on Saturday, we started on the intermediate slope and I followed behind as he snowplowed back and forth to get his balance and technique sorted out. We ditched our heavy winter gear after the second run, opting to go in longsleeve shirts under the warm sun, and by the fifth run he started carving back and forth—and I had to work to keep up with him. I found that I had to push myself to stay behind him, and that old familiar feeling of unease and exhilaration put a smile on my face. We went nonstop from 8:30 until about 3PM, and I tapped out when my right leg (my steering leg) started getting wobbly. Zachary did one more run by himself (another excellent sign) and we packed it in at 3:30. He’s ready to level up to the advanced slopes, and I’m going to have to spend some serious time this summer working on my core and leg muscles to be ready to follow him down those trails next season, as well as screw up my courage to follow him, just like I did with his dad 30 years ago.
Sunday morning Finn and I woke early, got some breakfast, and took Hazel for a hike in Patapsco State Park near the house. It was a beautiful day to be outside, and we got to talk about a bunch of different things while waiting for Hazel to smell the smells. She was happy to be out on the trails, and even though she claimed she wanted to walk as far as possible, I could tell she was gassed when we got to the top of the steeper climbs. I’m resolving to make hiking a weekly activity, both to get her out of the house, but also to try and re-connect.
Back at home, I put the carb back on the Travelall, drained as much gas out of the tank as possible, and did a wet compression test on the Scout 800. After monkeying with the distributor for a bit, I finally got it running! Once I sorted that out I jumped in and got it in gear and moving forward and backwards. This is a HUGE relief, and I’m extremely pleased with myself for sticking with it and diagnosing all of the issues up until this point. Now I need to sort the front brakes out to get at least a little stopping power, and I should be able to pull it around to the garage and swap vehicles out.
Back inside after the sun went down, I sat on the couch and mindlessly surfed the web with the dog snoring next to me, feeling the soreness in my entire body—my legs, arms, hands, back, neck, and brain. It’s been a while since I’ve gone that hard and it left me righteously tired. Given how fucked up current events are right now, it was good to have a bunch of wins close to home.