Saturday morning I drove down to Lexington Park with the OG-V packed to the gunwales with tools; we’re in the middle of a long-term project at the FiL’s house to replace the garage door original to the house with a modern mechanized version. This began two weeks ago with the drywall project, and after we got the go-ahead from the installers, it was time to move to the next phase: moving the Chrysler out of the way.
When last I left the Chrysler, I was looking at the brake system. Because it had been parked in the garage with the emergency brake on, three of the four drums were frozen to the pads. I’d put the front passenger wheel up on a stand and commenced to whacking it with a sledgehammer, but couldn’t get it to release. This was after several heating and cooling cycles, and at the end I’d actually taken a chunk out of the edge of the drum. So I bought and brought a set of four heavy-duty wheel dollies on Saturday, figuring they would be better than nothing. After hoisting the broken door up and out of the way, I moved stuff around and swept around the car. I had all four wheels up on the dollies within an hour, and moved a bunch of stuff out of the way before breaking out the tow strap.
I was a little nervous about using the OG-V to pull with, but the Scout is down with some unknown leakage (more info on that to come) and the new CR-V doesn’t have a trailer hitch yet. I had Jen’s sister come out and keep an eye on things, and after a lot of starting and stopping we got it out of the garage and onto the uneven pavement where it began to jump off the dollies when they got bogged down in divots and sand. The Honda did fantastic pulling the heavy beast; I never should have doubted it. The Chrysler is now far enough away from the door that there should be room to make a mess without coming near it. Then we used leverage and gravity to move his other disabled car, the Escort, down to the bottom and up behind the Chrysler, leaving a wide lane on the left side.
Humorously, I brought a car cover I was using for the Travelall, which fits with room to spare. It will not fit the Chrysler. It’s not long enough. So I rigged it up with a tarp in back and a box in front (to keep the radio antenna from poking a hole in the cover). With that done, I moved everything in the front of the garage to the back, clearing out the space for the installers to do their thing, and closed the door. After taking care of some other housekeeping, I hit the road for home.
In two weeks, I’ve got to head back down with another car full of tools, put the Chrysler up on jack stands, and beat the shit out of the three bad drums with a sledgehammer. At this point I don’t care if they split in half; I need them off to free up the wheels, because the dollies will not work going back into the garage—it needs to be on its own wheels. Beyond that, I’m going to have to buy a winch and anchor it to the floor with some beefy bolts to get the car back inside.
A follow-up to my Lowe’s rant from Friday: I rented a truck from their local store (cheaper than U-Haul) at 6AM with my brother-in-law and loaded it with all the supplies unavailable in Southern Maryland. We drove south and stopped off to pick up a drywall hoist right before the bridge in Solomons, making it to the FiL’s house by 8:30. By 9 we had all the supplies loaded into the garage and got straight to demolition.
What we had to do was pull down and replace 5 sheets of drywall that had gotten water-damaged from a leaky roof. This was complicated by the fact that the garage, while much cleaner than it had been two years ago, was still full of stuff, and that the original drywall on the ceiling was hung with 4×12′ sheets. (I remember seeing 4×12′ drywall sheets years ago at an old-school lumberyard, but not anytime recently). We started in the middle and worked our way to the front, getting three and a half sheets hung by 2PM, then made a dump/lunch run. After eating—and a very well-timed ice cream sold by an honest to god ice cream truck—we got back at it and hung the final two sheets. Then we raced back over the bridge to return the drywall lift before the rental store closed, returned to FiL’s house to replace two sheets on the wall, repaired his overhead shelves, and put everything back in the garage. We hit the road at 7:15 and made it back to Lowe’s by 9:30 to return the truck.
It was a job worth doing, and my BiL was super helpful the whole day, but it absolutely wrecked me. I was pretty useless on Sunday, mainly puttering around the trucks and doing some small jobs in the garage. While the drywall hoist was absolutely the best possible thing we could have rented, all the ladder work and moving stuff from one place to another took its toll on me. I’m glad it was a three-day weekend because if I had to go back to work today, I would have been a zombie.
But the garage should be good for a contractor to come in and install an automatic door and opener, something it’s desperately needed for years now, and it will be useful for tool storage and supplies. And that will unlock the ability to get other things done inside the house, which is also desperately needed.
This weekend was a busy one, mainly because it was Jen’s birthday. So that meant it was good busy. We started off Saturday morning with a walk down the street for coffee with the dog, and circled back home to shower and change. I had several surprises planned so I told her to dress casually and I’d take care of the rest. I drove the girls into Columbia and we stopped at a new health-food restaurant for breakfast smoothies, and then I dropped her off at a spa on the lake for a manicure and facial. Finn and I went over to the giant thrift store and then a used book store to kill time; I could easily have spent another hour looking through CDs.
Jen emerged from the spa with a healthy complexion and pretty pink nails (one of which caught on the zipper of her purse and had to be repaired later). We got a brief lunch at the Whole Foods and then drove into Baltimore and Second Chance to find a matching lockset for a closet door I just hung in the bedroom; the door came without hardware so we browsed the bins of old guts until we found a match, and then pored over a giant display case of crystal doorknobs until we found a matching pair we liked with setscrews.
Second Chance is expanding, and they’re growing their collection of Old Baltimore artifacts: they have the original City Pier signage from Fell’s Point (the City Pier is now expensive condos, which was invevitable, I suppose) and the small U from the Domino’s Sugar sign in Locust Point—which is probably 10 feet tall and very impressive.
By then it was too late to do anything else before dinner, so we headed back home and took our time getting ready. I had reservations at a Spanish-menu restaurant in town, and it wasn’t until we pulled into the parking lot that I realized it was in the building I used to work in before I moved to WRI. Dinner was delicious even though the place was a bit overwhelming, and we left feeling stuffed and happy.
Sunday we took our time getting up and moving. After walking the dog I took Jen back to the spa to have her nail repaired and we went back to the smoothie place to try out their sandwiches, which were also healthy and delicious.
Back at home, I gathered my tools and pulled our failing 20-year-old microwave off the wall above the stove with Finn’s help. When we got it out of the way I disassembled a wooden baffle in the upper cabinet covering the vent hose and measured the cabinets once, twice, thrice, and four times before being comfortable with the position and orientation of the mounting bolts and electrical cord. Saying a prayer, I drilled three holes in the cabinet and had Finn help me heave the new unit up into place. By some miracle, all three holes lined up perfectly, and we had the new unit powered up in place in minutes. I re-assembled the baffle with the nailgun and covered the hose back up.
From there, I cleaned up the kitchen and all of my tools and headed upstairs to pull the closet door off its hinges. The house is out of square just enough that the bottom of the door scraped the floor when it was about halfway open, so I put it on sawhorses and trimmed 1/4″ off the bottom. Back upstairs I rehung it, tested the swing, and then installed the new(used) lockset. Finally, I thinned out the paint and brushed a final coat of high gloss white on both sides. It’s the first time we’ve had a door in there since we moved in, and it took a little getting used to. But it looks good, and it fits the house. It feels good to knock these projects out quickly. And it’s nice to have a little less chaos inside the house. Happy birthday, Blondie.
I’ve been spending a lot of time away from the computer in Portugal for both mental and practical reasons; I spend most of my waking hours in front of one on a normal day so it’s great to look up from the keyboard and not think about looking back down for several days on end. I have had to consult it here and there (where are we going? is there street parking? what time are the tickets? do we need ID to get in?) but I’ve tried to keep things as non-technological as possible. My Instagram feed is pretty quiet as well.
We’re back in Porto, where we have an apartment lent to us by friends, for the first time in five days, and we’re sitting on the couch relaxing while a tiny European washing machine gurgles on the patio next to us. Today’s itinerary is “fuck-all”, as we’re catching up from some travel through Portugal, into Spain, and back again, and waiting for clean clothes. We put about 745 miles on a rented Peugeot 308, staying in hotels along the way, and we got to see some amazing sights. Portugal is like what Ireland would be if it was in California: there’s another castle over every hill, except that they’re still in excellent shape and not surrounded by sheep. I’ll write more about the details later.
I made a conscious decision not to bring a ton of cameras on this trip after talking it over with Jen. Instead, we both upgraded our aging iPhones to new 15 Pro models, and I’ve used mine as my primary since we’ve been here. I also brought Dad’s 35mm Minolta X7000 and my DJI Action camera, but that’s the extent of what I’ve been lugging around. It’s weird not to be using a dedicated camera for the first time in 25 years, but what I’ve been getting out of the iPhone has been pretty damn good. And I’m not ashamed to say we’re leaning into the selfie on this trip, as we don’t have a lot of current shots of the three of us.
There’s rain pattering against the windows right now, in spite of the forecast that called for cloudy skies but no rain. I’m waiting out the wet stuff so that I can go back outside and continue truck-based activities in the hope that I can wrap things up this weekend. I took the day off yesterday to rest up a little bit and cover some errands, which was a good strategy in hindsight.
I had a set of new Invisalign trays waiting for me to pick up for a week; about a month ago I put in a new top tray and it clearly Did Not Fit, so they re-scanned my mouth and made some new ones for me. I’ve got 27 more to go, which means I may be done with these (barring any adjustments) by October or so.
Sometime in January I noticed the wood threshold between the office and living room had shrunk, leaving wide gaps between it and the floor planks. The mice in the ice room have been busy despite the bait I’ve left them, and our terrier mutt has been worrying at the gaps for several months now. I have a thin strip of oak I have to cut down to set into these gaps, but I have to wait until she can go outside, as the table saw in the basement scares the crap out of her. The other night she woke me out of a sound sleep to jump off the bed into the darkness. Groggy, I got up to investigate and found that Bella had caught a mouse, brought it upstairs to show us, and was releasing it to play when it snuck under the door to escape. Following her instincts, Hazel immediately chomped it. I picked it up with her empty water bowl and hurled it out into the backyard. Hopefully, now that it’s warming up, the mice will evacuate and we can go back to normal levels of anxiety.
Meanwhile, I had the radio on in the garage the other day and this song from the ’80’s came on, and now it is stuck in my head and it is not even the best song on this album and I am kind of in hell:
We had our first real snowfall in something like 700 days, so naturally we had to get out there and get some sledding in. I sanded and waxed the rails on our wooden sled, dug out the car, and we headed over to the local community college to meet up with the Geblers and get some runs in.
Greased Lightning did not disappoint. I had an envious kid ask me if our fast wooden sled steered; I told him to hit an antique store and get one for cheap.
On my third run or so I ran into a jump someone made, and the sled stopped while I kept on going. Laughing, I picked myself back up and walked back up the hill. Later I realized that landing on the snow had broken the zipper on my jacket and shredded several of the down pockets at the bottom, as well as popped one of the lenses out of my glasses that were in the pocket.
A few runs later, Finn drove our plastic sled directly into a tree and gave herself some mild abrasions on her chin. We returned home to get some hot chocolate and attend to the patient. I went online and found The North Face Renewed, where they repair and re-home used gear. I got a replacement jacket for $100, which is half of what a new Patagonia is going for (and from what I’ve read those don’t hold up very well). I’ve had this jacket for (5? 6?) seasons and it’s been great, so I figure it will be the new work jacket.
We went out for brunch the day before Christmas and had a wonderful time at a new restaurant.
Today we went to Annapolis to have tea. It’s pretty amazing how full you can be from a tray of sweet and savory treats.
Christmas at the Lockardugan compound is behind us, and we all had a great day together. Finn came downstairs late as is their prerogative as a teen, to a lit tree surrounded by presents and a happy crackling fire in the fireplace. As usual, they had the lion’s share of gifts, but that’s part of the fun of being a parent. We lounged about the house for the rest of the day in our pajamas, enjoying the ability to relax. Jen set up a roast and I helped put together the sides, and we sat down for a lovely Christmas meal together at the table.
I bought Jen a second gallette iron from eBay way back in July or so, and finally was able to give it to her. Last year she made a batch but was complaining about how long it took to accomplish with one iron, so I immediately made a note and set up a watchlist on eBay. This one was priced well below all the others and came in the original box, so I immediately pulled the trigger and hid it in the basement for months. The look on her face when she opened it was priceless.
I also got her a new iPad for Christmas because she typically wanders the house with her AirPods in and something playing on her phone. I figured she would enjoy having something with a larger screen to watch while she’s in the kitchen or at her desk, or merely sitting on the couch. We attempted to merge her settings over from her phone on Christmas day, but her iCloud account has been completely jammed full for months now, and there isn’t enough room to back up her phone, so it refused to merge her account information. This meant she needs to clear data off her phone, and we all know how painful it is to do that by hand on a tiny screen. I used a spare drive to back up all of the photos, but we’re going to need to set up the iPad manually, which is always a drag. When that’s done she can use it to go through her photos faster and easier.
On a side note, for months I’ve been wondering why my Keychain passwords weren’t showing up on my iPad, and while I had some time I looked up the solution: signing out of my iCloud account on all my devices, restarting them, and then signing back into each one in the proper order. Kind of a pain in the ass, especially because it forgets all of my Wallet settings—my debit cards and Maryland ID. Once I’d done that, though, all my passwords appeared on all devices; hallelujah.