Saturday we did a lot of errands, and after getting home we did a bunch of work in the backyard. Finn and Jen worked on shoring up and mulching the rear flowerbed while I looked over the rear of the greenhouse, which had blown out during the last windstorm.
When I’d removed the middle polycarbonate panel last spring I made it very difficult to replace due to the way the greenhouse was constructed: the panels slot into a thin channel at the top and bottom, and are sandwiched in between two vertical rails. Because I couldn’t fit the panel back into the top last fall, I sort of half-installed it and hoped it would stay in place, which it obviously didn’t.
I took the panels apart and reinstalled the two sides with new screws, and then thought about how I was going to work with the center section; ultimately I reinstalled the chickenwire plug and put the panel behind that to hold it in place. The eventual goal will be to cut the middle panel down to an 8×8 square and reinstall the top section permanently, then find a way to put the bottom half in as either a door or a removable panel.
While I had the back walls off I removed the insulation blocks from the south wall, which had been left over from before we moved in. It’s amazing how much more light gets in there now, and it’ll get even better after I’ve replaced the plastic. It also laid bare just how janky the footings are (the wood along the bottom in the picture above), so I’ve got to get on replacing those first when the weather is a little warmer.
Sunday we were invited to brunch at the neighbors’, and planned on making some egg nog french toast to bring. Jen and I made the nog from scratch on Saturday evening (result: it was tasty but it’s much easier to buy it at the store) and Sunday morning I cooked them up before we walked over. There were a bunch of families we haven’t seen in months, and while the kids all ran and played outside we adults ate and drank and caught up. Somewhere around 12:30 or so I noticed I had a pleasant day drunk on, and a little while after that I was convinced to have an Irish car bomb/cement mixer with a bunch of other folks (I declined the second one). We stayed until about 6:30 and walked back home, pleasantly squiffed, ordered a pizza, and kissed the rest of our day goodbye.
Which meant that this morning, my birthday, I was feeling a little rough when I first woke up.
I’m really not on Facebook at all these days, but my account is still there. I had to pop in there to look something up this weekend and noticed Bennett had mentioned me in a post: apparently someone is selling a cab top that looks like it was painted purple the same day as my Scout. I’m half tempted just to buy it even though I don’t have a bulkhead to go with it (the section that sits between the bedrails).
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
That’s the shower tile as it stands today. Brian is coming back to finish the area down to the floor and around the bench, and then he’s going to grout the walls. Then he’ll lay the floor in and grout that. We have a rough quote on the glass door, which is not cheap, but it will highlight the interior of the shower perfectly as you walk in the door.
Jen and I spent another weekend almost completely consumed by grading student work. We did get out here and there but it wasn’t at all what I hoped we’d be doing, for the second week in a row. We’ve been trying to line up things for Finn to do while we’re busy but it’s hard to stay focused when there are kids running around—who inevitably come to us to help them find something to do.
I’m at the point where I’m doing twice as much work to teach than I did my first semester; as we’ve gotten more involved in refining the rubric and syllabus and have striven to offer constructive, helpful feedback (going so far as to add a third project into my syllabus to give students an earlier idea of how they’re doing) the workload has quadrupled. Jen and I are conscientious about how we grade our work, so we double-check each other’s grading and notes, which adds more time to the process. And Finn sits idly by, bored out of her mind. Saturday was a mixture of rain and sunshine, and even though it was cold and damp we should have been outside hiking somewhere, not stuck inside.
I turned to Jen Sunday night and told her I’m thinking about quitting teaching. Finn’s life is flashing past me, and I’m not spending enough time with her right now. It’s breaking my heart.
One thing we did do as a family is go to see a matinee of How to Train Your Dragon 3. The three of us have been hooked on the series since Finn was old enough to appreciate it, and it was one of the many things we shared with the Morrises (I can’t hear the phrase “DEPLOY THE YAK” and not think of Rob and Zachary). The final movie in the series was good. It hit all of the main plot points and character beats as a good movie should; there were callbacks to the original movie that old-school fans appreciated, it definitely hit us in the emotional core (my family is pretty heavily invested in these characters, after two movies and three TV series) and it wrapped things up in a solid way that felt right.
But it was lacking the careful pace of the first movie, which took time to slowly show us the wonder of the relationship between a boy and his dragon, and how that in turn affected his relationships, as an outsider, with his community and his father. The first movie (I rewatched a bit of it last night as I cleaned up my desk) moved slower, took time to develop the stakes, and also let us breathe. It showed us how wonderful the world it created was, asked us to notice the details, and gave us time to appreciate them. I felt like the new movie was following a producer’s note that simply read, “MORE DRAGONS”. There was so much going on in every frame that it felt hard to keep up with what was happening. The only time I really felt like it was slow enough to let me appreciate the story was at the very end, and if I hadn’t been so familiar with the characters from my previous experience I wouldn’t have cared half as much.
The IPWhatever is kegged and carbed, and I tapped it on Saturday afternoon. In terms of taste, it’s pretty nondescript. Even after I’d dry-hopped it for much longer than I’d intended, the flavor is still pretty bland. But it’s got a hell of a kick–I never did a final gravity reading on it (because, after I’d fucked it up, what’s the point?) but it definitely hits me when I finish a pint of it. And that’s good timing, too, because the grapefruit IPA is just about kicked.
Our neighbors on the right side, who have been in the house as long as we’ve lived here, recently moved to an assisted living community and put their house up on the market. We were in New York when they held the open house, so we didn’t get to walk through it, but we told a bunch of friends and our brother and sister to check it out. Having walked through the downstairs a few times I didn’t see any huge problems, but everybody we know said it was more work than they were willing to take on. As it turned out there was a bidding war on the first day and it’s going to settlement this Friday. Apparently the buyers have kids a little younger than Finley, and they’ve had several people come by to look at the place, who we can only guess are contractors. I hope they’re normal and we can get along with them.
We had friends over for drinks and dinner last night and they brought the fixings for several different delicious cocktails. One of these was one I haven’t had, called War of the Roses, which features Pimm’s, gin (which I rarely drink), elderflower liqueur, and lime juice. It sounds like it could be very bad but it tastes very, very good.
I got a text from Brian yesterday with the photo above; he drive to Delaware and took possession of a beautiful 1968 Scout 800 painted white over red, which was previously restored a couple of years ago. It’s in fantastic shape and looks like it rolled off the factory floor (with a custom bumper, modern soft top, and bigger wheels). Due to scheduling and weather I haven’t been able to see it in person yet but I’m hoping we can organize a meetup sometime soon.
He’s already made a list of upgrades he wants to make. The rollbar in his Scout is only a single hoop, and because he wants to be able to take the whole family on the road, he wants to upgrade that to a family-style cage like he put in Chewbacca. I’ve been wanting to upgrade my rollbar with something more stout, as well as adding shoulder belts. GRC Fabrication makes rollbars for the 800 and Scout II that we’ve both been looking at, and if he pulls the trigger on a kit from them I’ll probably go in on it with him to save on shipping costs (and we can weld them up and install them at the same time).
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
Friday night Finn had karate down in Columbia and the timing was such that we decided to splurge on something I’d been talking about since being laid up in the hospital: hitting the Red Lobster. Laugh all you want, but after two weeks of eating nothing, the commercials for LobsterFest looked really good. We walked in expecting a particular atmosphere but were pleasantly surprised by how upscale it felt. The food was about as good as Sysco-trained chefs can prepare seafood: the lobster was chewy and doused in butter, which did not live up to the visual hype of the commercials. Jen and I walked in with our eyes open, however, so our expectations weren’t completely shattered, but I think Finn expected more from the Ultimate LobsterFest.
Saturday morning Jen mentioned to me that she was having pain in her abdomen, on the right side, where the appendix lives. She’d had it since the previous evening but it was getting worse, and had made an appointment with her GP for the early afternoon. We got packed up and went through the abbreviated testing they can do at a doctor’s office on a Saturday (that place was a ghost town; no wonder modern physicians’ practices can’t compete with 24-hour clinics) where the doctor told us it was most likely a UTI but couldn’t rule out the appendix, or a kidney stone, or something more sinister with an ovary. Their lab doesn’t take our insurance on weekends (again, what’s the fucking point of a consolidated physician’s office if they don’t stay open when people are sick?) so our choices were a 24-hour clinic or an ER. We’ve had middling success with the local Hopkins-affiliated ER, so, worried about possible emergency surgery, we elected to drive to the Hopkins ER downtown.
So at about 3:30 we walked in the door, registered at the desk, and proceeded to wait. It was an hour or so before they called Jen back to get some IV fluids, and the PIV they put in was as painful as her abdomen. The only bright spot at this point was watching a woman down the hall scream curses at the nursing staff about having to pee while rattling the handcuff attaching her to the bed. They made us wait in the hall until after dinnertime, when a male nurse came and shooed us back out into the front waiting area. Here we sat and waited, and waited, and waited. As the sun went down and the air got colder some of East Baltimore’s finest wandered in and joined us; a heavily tattooed man sat down next to me and engaged me in lively conversation about his life, his patent (for a vibrating interchangeable tongue piercing), his jail time, and his pending lawsuit. In the corner, two intoxicated men shared dinner and then made edits to their cardboard panhandling sign with a sharpie. Another man sat at the center of the area staring blankly at the same page of a crumpled magazine for six hours, pretending he was a patient, reeking of hobo piss.
Poor Jen dealt with the hard plastic chairs this whole time, her abdomen still hurting, and finally had to have the nursing staff take the PIV out because she couldn’t bend her arm and it was hurting. Finn watched a couple hours of America’s Got Talent and then curled up in my elbow as it got past 11PM. By 12:30 we were ready to just bail but one of the nurses told Jen they were 1/2 hour away from taking her to a bed. At 2 we were finally led back to a room and the girls laid down on the bed and napped while I sat in the chair and tried to doze. A doctor came in at 3:30 and asked the same questions the GP did, and then disappeared for an hour. Another pair of doctors came in and looked her over, and then a third, and then they finally decided they didn’t know what she had but needed Cipro to take care of it. By the time we got home it was 6:30 and we all shuffled straight into bed.
I had standing plans to help Brian H. and a crew of Scout friends remove the rear end of his Edsel on Sunday morning, but after our adventure I couldn’t face up to a 9AM wakeup. I slept until 11 and made it over there at about noon; when I got there they had the axle out, the springs off, and were cleaning grease off the pumpkin. We hung out and shot the shit for a while, he treated us to lunch, and then we looked over his car. An Edsel is a magnificent thing to behold in person. It’s all compound curves and 1950’s craftsmanship, which means one square foot of it has more style than an entire modern dealership. He’s got a lot done but has a long way to go; it’s a New Hampshire car so there’s rust in every corner.
From there, Brian T. and went and got a beer and caught up, which was a really pleasant way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
I don’t look at Facebook anymore these days, but my profile is still live so all of my links still exist. I glanced at my profile last night to check on something for my Dad’s service, and another post caught my attention, which led me to the obituary of an old friend who died of cancer last fall. I had no idea. Jason and I were friends from back in the SystemSource days, when he was a programmer and I was a designer/front end builder. We formed a company with our friend Dan and did a bunch of projects, as well as played a lot of pool, drank a lot of beers, and had a good time. I met up with him six or seven years ago in the city for a drink to catch up, and I did know that he was in the hospital for brain surgery a couple of years ago (I sent him a T-shirt of his favorite football club). But I had no idea it had gotten that bad. I don’t know how to reach out to his widow to apologize for missing this, or what to even say. Fuck cancer.
We had dinner and drinks with the parents of one of Finn’s friends on Friday night, leaving the girls with her older sister. Taking full advantage of the situation, we adults hit a restaurant downtown and ordered cocktails and generally had a fantastic time having adult conversations. Among many different topics, we talked about firewood, and they mentioned they had five chainsaws, and did I want one of them? Sure, I said, I’ll take a chainsaw if it allows me to chop up the four huge rounds we’ve had sitting in front of our woodpile since the trees came down. We stopped in for a last cocktail and R. found my present in his basement. It’s a Makita DCS 430, manufactured somewhere around 10 years ago, with a 16″ bar. It’s in excellent shape, but needs a fuel system flush and some new chain oil. I’ll look it over sometime in the next couple of weekends and see if I can get it running, and maybe I can clean up the backyard over the Christmas break if I’m lucky.
Saturday Finn and I were up and out early to head over the bridge for a Dickens of a Christmas, a holiday-flavored festival in Chestertown. We met up with Karean and Zachary at Brian’s house and the six of us rode over the bridge into town to see the sights. The festival isn’t as sprawling as the Harry Potter event they put on in the fall, but it’s still a blast, and everyone there commits to the era-specific details: the number of people walking around in tophats and bustle dresses and greatcoats almost outnumbered us normal people. We wandered the streets, playing games, snacking on food, and looking at the exhibits. As always it was great to hang out with friends, and we stayed out as long as we could in the cold before packing it in.
Sunday I slept in to recover from the previous two days while the girls went to church. In the afternoon we drove in to Baltimore to fulfill our advent calendar activity: ice skating in the Inner Harbor. There’s a wonderful rink built right between the two buildings that’s perfect for an afternoon skate, and it was just warm enough to be comfortable (well, that and the bike tights I was wearing under my jeans). Finn and I did a bunch of laps around the rink and I tried to get her to learn the proper way to skate. When we’d had our fill of that, we exchanged our skates and walked down the pier to the Christmas Village, a German-themed market set up right on the water. We’d been told the latkes were good, and that there was a big tent where we could get warm, and there were, and it was, and it was good. We strolled through the market and got some excellent German beer and a bunch of latkes and listened to a live band playing. By 4:30 we were ready to call it a day, and headed back home to get warm in our own house.
Thanksgiving is behind us, and we enjoyed a wonderful day with Karean and her family in Easton. This was our two-year anniversary of Friendsgiving, which was just as warm and welcoming and hilarious as 2016. We laughed and drank and ate, and even though there was someone important missing, we filled the house with love.
The rest of our holiday weekend was pretty quiet, and that was good. We took in the matinee showing of the new Fantastic Beasts movie (verdict: not as good as the first; too rushed, not enough time with our characters. Visually pretty. The way the story was left made Finn nervous.) and spent the rest of the day lazing around the house. Saturday was project day at the house and then we made an abbreviated but delicious Thanksgiving meal and had the Gebler clan over for dinner.
After a busy couple of days of fabrication, the shelving I’m building for Jen is nearly complete. Finn and I did some scouting for wall anchors and found an excellent product that only required a 7/32″ hole, and so all four brackets are firmly mounted to the wall. Before I put them in for good, I lopped about 1/4″ off their ends with the angle grinder and beveled the edges.
Meanwhile, Finn filled the nail holes with putty and I showed her how to use the random orbital sander to smooth the whole thing out. Later in the day I routed channels out on the back for the brackets. On Sunday afternoon both shelves got a coat of white paint outside, while the weather was 60˚.
Also, Brian stopped by on Friday morning to look things over in the bathroom and visit with us for a little while; his tile estimate is roughly $500 less than the quote I got locally, which is excellent news. He’s thinking he can get started as soon as the order comes in, which means we might be showered up by Christmas. I can’t think of a better present than that.
Saturday was looking pretty grim for most of the morning but around noon the clouds seemed to burn off and we got some sunshine. Which is great, because the high was 48˚. Even so, six Internationals showed up, including Bennett in Heavy D, Steven G. in his Scout II, Dwight R. in his shiny Scout II, Paul S. in a glorious lifted Travelall, another guy whose name I missed in a second D-series pickup, and of course Peer Pressure.
We hung around the parking lot for an hour or so, talking trucks, and then went inside for some barbecue. As always, it’s great to talk with old friends and make new ones too.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.