Pitchfork did a great interview with Turnstile on the eve of their new album release: it’s great to see them repping Baltimore and getting their due. I really hope they are able to keep their feet on the ground and stay connected to their roots—it sounds like it’s working.
I had grand plans to get lots of long-standing house projects accomplished on Saturday, but was ony able to finish one of them. I’d finished hanging all of the under-cabinet lights last weekend but still had to do the four cans in our glassed cabinets on either side of the sink and the facing wall. I’d used plastic-friendly spray paint to paint them black and after a week of curing, the paint was ready to handle. With all the practice I’d had with the other lights this went pretty quickly, and within an hour or so the lights were in place.
Next up was the bathroom heater, which has been suffering from a faulty thermostat for years. I got the oscillating saw out and trimmed out the edges to make it easy to remove, then unboxed the replacement I’d gotten at Lowe’s only to realize it was 1″ smaller in each dimension (the measurements were for the cover, not for the box). After a trip to the internet I learned the original manufacturer isn’t carried by the big box stores anymore so I’d have to spend $180 plus shipping on a new one, or $80 for a replacement thermostat from Amazon. Wisely I chose the latter. It won’t be here until next week, which sucks.
* * *
Sunday we got dressed up and walked across the street to the church, which was hosting an Iftar dinner at the end of the Ramadan fast. This is the third Iftar dinner we’ve attended; they are organized by a local mosque and Turkish cultural organization who promote interfaith events. We met a nice woman during the opening remarks who sat on the pew next to us, and I invited her to sit with us at the table we’d staked out. She and her husband lived in China for 15 years before moving to the US; both have a PhD in linguistics. We were fascinated to hear of their time in China; her husband wrote the first Turkish to Chinese dictionary. I was seated across from a nice man who came to America and taught STEM in middle and high schools until COVID hit, and then pivoted to his own business laser-engraving headstones. It was lovely to meet new people and learn about their lives, as well as Muslim tradition, and it’s something I look forward to every year.
* * *
Meanwhile, my ribs are almost back to normal. I can walk stairs two at a time again, lift most objects, and get out of bed without feeling like I’ve been shocked with a car battery. I spent most of Sunday crawling through a couple of cars in a junkyard, and with the exception of yanking the dashboard cover out of a Nissan Versa with my hands, I didn’t feel it at all. Even standing up from under the car wasn’t hard—I felt it more in my knees than my ribs, which was a nice change.
I’m not sad to have this one going through my head this week: Beck’s Dreams, from the 2017 album Colors. Beck’s catalogue has always been pretty reliably good stuff, especially after Sea Change, and this album has more standout tracks than clunkers. No Distraction and Seventh Heaven are also fantastic tunes. This video is a live recording; I’m told his concerts are fantastic to attend and he puts on an excellent show.
Finn is not a huge fan of chemistry this semester. Her grades have wobbled between “terrible” and “passing” with peaks and valleys along the way, and we’ve had to stay on top of her studies every night to keep things on track. I can understand her indifference; chemistry was never my strong suit (I had no patience, a raging case of ADD, and a terrible grasp of basic math) but the stuff she’s learning is light-years beyond what I was exposed to in my school. She completely surprised me last night, however, when I showed her the latest iteration of my silicone mold project.
So far I’ve done three metal pours after I got a silicone mold to set properly. The first pour was terrible because the metal didn’t find its way down into the cavities fast or smoothly enough before hardening, so I pulled it out after it cooled and re-melted it. The second time I used the sharp end of a file to guide it into the cavities but the fill was still inconsistent. So I pulled the metal and took the time with an X-acto knife to carve out all of the edges of the mold as much as possible to open things up. Then I did a third pour in three stages. This one was much more successful but still didn’t fill the entire mold. I’ve learned it’s very hard to control molten tin before it cools—I suppose I need to get it hotter than I have been—but even then I’m not thrilled with the results. The tin is very malleable when it’s cooled, making it easy to bend, and my design has a lot of small, easily bent details.
Showing this to Finn, she was fascinated with the cast and asked to make some molds and casts of her own. After I mentioned I was thinking about making some kind of small smelter to try aluminum instead of tin, she idly suggested I try using resin instead of metal.
Sometimes she surprises me with her wisdom.
Resin looks to be a much easier substance to work with, is tintable, and the heat resistant variants get closer to the melting point of tin: I found one at 300˚F, which I think would be good enough for something mounted on a metal box in direct sunlight. It’s worth a shot in any case, so I’m going to pivot to chemistry and leave my foundry days behind.
Update on the kitchen lighting: everything under the cabinets is installed, and the old garbage has been cut away and tossed. I’m using heat shrink butt-weld connectors to join the wiring up with the speaker wire they ran behind the cabinets in 2004, which doesn’t thrill me, but given the low voltage these LED lights demand I’m not as worried as I might be. Something that is shocking, though, is how BRIGHT these lights are. They outdo the old halogen bulbs by a factor of about five. I wasn’t able to find lights by that manufacturer in black, so some plastic spray paint had to suffice. Four of these go at the top of each of the glass cabinets, and I still have to put those in.
The next project is to replace the wall heater in the half-bath downstairs. The thermostat on this thing barely registers, so you can crank it all the way to 10 and it’ll have a long hard think about things before it decides it might kick on. This should not be the case, because the porch areas are generally 10˚ cooler than the rest of the house in the wintertime. And nobody enjoys a frozen toilet at any time of year. The trick with this installation is that the heater went in before I put the headboard on the wall, so it’s going to involve some careful deconstruction of the heater unit to avoid ruining the woodwork. I did inquire into what a replacement thermostat would cost but found that the part itself cost as much as a new heater, and that there were so many different versions of this heater produced I wasn’t sure if I was going to find a compatible part.
My ribs are feeling better after a week of low-impact activity. I’ve learned to pull my knees up to my chest and pivot my entire body when I’m rolling over in bed as opposed to using my core to do the work for me. Stupid stuff like pulling the handbrake on the OG-V , pulling on my socks, and taking stairs two at a time are still out of the question, but I’m not as stiff as I was last Friday. Sneezing still sucks, though.
Friday morning I drove up to the Towson library, loaded a file onto their 3D control computer, hit START and reviewed hundreds of applicants for a graphic design position based in Africa as two new dealer badges printed in a slightly larger size. After the fiasco with my first silicone mold attempt destroyed the first badge and the second printed too small, I needed a couple of examples to work with. Luckily I was able to reserve a block of time long enough to print one decent example, abort a second misfire, and print a third excellent example slightly larger than the original. After work I sanded down the rough edges, built a proper mold box out of foam core and hot glue, and mixed up a new batch of silicone after I’d let it warm to room temperature. After pouring it, I set it on a seed starter mat to keep warm overnight. Saturday morning, the silicone at the top is hard to the touch—unlike my first attempt, which took five days and a heat lamp to finally set.
The next step is to go and find a cheap used pan at the thrift store and melt a lump of lead-free tin I bought from Amazon. This will get poured into the mold and, hopefully, provide me with a metal version of the dealer badge that will stand up to heat better than the plastic will.
* * *
The under-cabinet lighting in our kitchen has been dimming and dying for several years now, especially after I switched the annoying halogen bulbs out with LEDs. They are small round unmarked pucks connected by wire snaked in and behind the cabinets and connected with a bespoke two-prong plastic coupling, making their removal or replacement impossible—there is no manufacturer information to trace back to to match the couplings. So I’m resigned to swapping the 20-year-old pucks out with new LED units and splicing the old connectors onto the new units. This does not thrill me, but LED carries very low voltage (the original lights go through a big brick of a transformer, while the LEDs plug right into the wall) and I’m confident in my soldering and splicing abilities. It’s just going to take a lot of time and crouching under cabinets, which is going to be murder on my ribs.
It’s been a week since I went snowboarding and I think this might be the first morning where my rib is feeling better. The larger soreness and pain in the overall area disappeared on the second day, but I’m still feeling a sharp jab right under my armpit, at probably my fifth or sixth rib. Yesterday morning I woke up feeling really good laying in bed next to a snoring Hazel, and yawned deeply, which seemed to aggravate it almost immediately for the rest of the day. On top of all this, the girls and I went to the local pharmacy and got our Covid shots Friday afternoon. Without thinking about it, I got mine in my left arm, so Saturday I felt sore pretty much all over my body. I fought through it and worked outside for the entire day, because I spent all of last week trapped behind my desk. Despite all of this it felt really good to be outside and moving around, even though by about noon, all I wanted to do was go inside and take a nap. Today it’s sore but not actively reminding me it’s there, so I’ll take it extra easy and see if I don’t make it angry again.
* * *
I’ve been working on a new project: pouring a silicone mold of the 3-D printed dealer badges I made. I bought a simple mold kit off of Amazon last week, boxed in a square on a piece of scrap wood, mixed the silicone, and poured it on Tuesday evening. The silicone didn’t set overnight like it was supposed to, and a little reading revealed that that was probably due to the cold in the house, or perhaps my imperfect non-scientific mixing process. The silicone is supposed to be mixed according to weight, which is about as easy as measuring the volume of a sneeze. I put the mold on top of a radiator in the spare bedroom and let it heat up for a couple of days until the top was tacky to the touch—by then it should have been completely solid. To get it to firm up, I put it down on the workbench under a photography bulb and let it sit for a couple of hours. What wound up happening was that the silicone heated up to the point where it started melting the PVA plastic underneath and the whole mold basically fell apart into a sticky glob. So I’ve got to go back to the drawing board. I’m going to make an appointment to go back to the library and spend a good three hours printing a new version of the badge, then remix some silicone and try to set it up for success this time.
* * *
Sunday morning the cats and dog seemed to be really interested in the fireplace. Sipping my coffee in the den before the girls got up, I heard a flurry of commotion in the living room and investigated, but found nothing. Nox sat in front of the fireplace, staring into the glass as if he was watching a really good episode on TV. The sound was not a cat sound, and the dog was laying next to me on the couch, so I was perplexed—but saw nothing wrong.
Later in the day the same thing happened, but this time I was in the room. Both Hazel and Nox were glued to the fireplace window. I heard a fluttering and realized there was a bird trapped behind the woodpile. I got my welding gloves from the garage, we shooed the animals away, and I opened the glass to find a very frightened, very tired catbird waiting to be released. He fluttered over to the window and sat on the sill, so I opened the one next to him and gently shooed him outside, where he flew up to sit on a branch on the oak tree. By the time I made it around to the back door, he was gone.
A brief internet search for the symbolism of meeting a catbird brings up as much contradictory information as a horoscope. It could mean good news, it could mean deceit; it could be a harbinger of new relationships or it could warn against manipulation. I choose to believe he was sent as a reminder for me to stick my head into the flue and check on the chimney, which is clean and clear.
* * *
Finally, I’ll leave you with this retro commercial from back in the days of beepers. Someone on a video I was watching referenced it, and I LOL’ed just as hard watching it yesterday as I did back in 199-whatever.
Here’s some clips of some of our runs yesterday. Your host wiping out and cracking ribs is at about 6:20. Gnarly dude!
Here’s an earworm I’ve got at least a slight connection to: the Drop Nineteens just re-released their demo album from 1991, which was reviewed by Pitchfork over the weekend. In the recap the reviewer mentioned a vocalist named Hannah who joined the band briefly during that demo session, who then left and transferred into MICA while I was there, and who came through the design program a year behind us. I knew her from the scene and remember hearing she’d sung on an album by a famous band (I’d heard it was the Sneaker Pimps) but this makes much more sense now.
Anyhow, the song Daymom is really good—it’s got a lot of the things I know and remember of the music from that time. It’s got a very chill vibe even though the tempo is fast, and I’m a sucker for a double layered male/female vocal with bass guiding the melody. There’s a lot of Cure/New Order happening here, and that’s not a bad thing.
In a rare case of planning ahead, I had a stacked four-day weekend full of learning, entertainment, and adventure. Friday, I did the HQL course to get my license sorted out, as mentioned earlier. On Saturday I was in the car headed down to Southern Maryland to visit with my father-in-law, take him out for some Mission Barbecue, and go through his mail. We sat and talked for 2 to 3 hours, mainly me listening about his history in rural Pennsylvania, and then I drove back home through cold dark rain.
Sunday, we hosted Karean and Zachary to go to see the Lion King at the Hippodrome in Baltimore. This required a ton of housecleaning, which mainly fell on Jen, but I threw in that morning to finish up the last minute stuff for their arrival. We were also finishing up an overhaul of the guest bedroom, following a remodel we did last year where the new color turned out to be a bit too vibrant and a couple of values too dark. It was a nice color but made the room feel smaller. We bought a lighter shade of the original color and I rolled it on three walls, leaving one for an accent. Jen framed two pieces of art we bought in Portugal and bought a third for over the bed. After sewing up the new blackout curtains and building a roller shade for the bathroom door, the whole room really came together. Jen picked out fabrics and colors that accent each other and it really feels great in there now—much lighter, larger, and complete.
Sunday morning we got churched up and drove into Baltimore at noon for the 1 o’clock show. This marks the third show we’ve seen at the Hippodrome and it never fails to deliver. This show was amazing: it’s the traveling Broadway troupe and they do an incredible job. The costumes were breathtaking and the set design is incredible. I would bet it’s even more inspiring on a large Broadway sized stage (the Hippodrome is a smaller, Vaudeville-era venue) but we enjoyed every minute and a double Vodka Matata (vodka, ginger, beer, and lime) made everything even more pleasant. After the show, we drove to a fancy Ramen restaurant in the inner Harbor and loaded up on noodles, pork rolls, and gyoza. Properly stuffed, we headed back to the house, got in some warm PJs and caught up on the couch before getting to bed early for the next day.
Monday’s activity was driving up to Roundtop for a day of snowboarding. Finn declined to go so it was just Karean, Zachary and me. We got our rentals sorted out, accompanied Karean to the bunny slope, and gave her some pointers to practice on before her lesson. After watching over her for a run or two, Zachary and I broke off and hit the blue slope. After he got his confidence under him, we really started having fun. The mountain was pretty empty, which was fantastic: the lift lines were almost negligible and we didn’t have to avoid crowds of people on the way down. The snow was typical manmade Eastern stuff, but there was enough down that it wasn’t a sheet of ice and it was cold enough outside to not be slushy and wet. But after enough people went down the slope it started getting rough in patches as they dug in and started making grooves.
On my third or fourth run, I was switching directions, my board caught an ice ridge and I flipped downward on the mountain landing on my left side with my arm underneath me. It all happened very fast and I didn’t have time to cushion myself, and I got the wind knocked out of me. My ribs felt very sore and tender, but I got up and kept boarding. Zachary and I got about seven more runs in before lunch and the grin on his face got bigger and bigger with each ride down the mountain. We did about five more runs after lunch and wrapped things up at three, meeting Karean up in the bar above the lodge. Zachary is really into snowboarding, and I’m going to redouble my efforts to get him out at least twice a year.
My ribs are very tender this morning. It’s mainly the fifth and sixth, directly under my left arm on the side. Jen found me a Lidocaine patch and I put that on last night before bed; I’m going to keep applying them until the soreness goes away. If I had to guess, they’re either bruised, or possibly fractured, but there isn’t much any doctor could do other than tell me “don’t fall on them”.
I spent four hours on Friday talking to a nice older man about guns. Specifically, we talked about a handgun qualification license, which I’ve been interested in getting for a while now, but have been stalled by for different reasons. This course was very good. He’s been training for forty years, so the class went by smoothly and he filled it with a ton of good information. We went over safety first and he had me handle several different types of actual guns after we talked about correct grip and fit. It turns out my long fingers require a fat grip to get my finger in the right place on the trigger. We talked about the dominant eye in relation to sighting and I learned my left eye is dominant, which made him suggest I learn to shoot with my left hand, something I was not expecting. Then we went downstairs to the range and reviewed range safety before he had me set up and fire three different pistols: a SIG chambered in .22 for target and stance practice, a SIG 365 chambered in .380 and a Glock 48 chambered in 9mm.
The .22 was easy to shoot and got me set up for the larger calibers. He had me shoot 10 with both hands in a combat grip, then 5 with my right hand and 5 with my left. I got the best results with my left hand, followed closely by the dual grip.
The .380 also felt very good—it’s a smaller frame but fit snugly in my hands—and I found the amount of recoil to be just right. I got a good grouping with this one as well, better than the .22, actually. I was very impressed with this pistol, and it’s a modular design which allows for longer and wider handgrips in various sizes, and can be chambered in 9mm. It’s also smaller size, which is good for concealment, but at the end of the day I’m not interested in carrying it.
The last Glock I shot years ago, a 17, I didn’t like so much because the grips didn’t fit me well, but I also found out yesterday that I was holding the trigger wrong. My finger was hooked around the trigger past my first knuckle, when it should have been centered on the first pad. This 48 had a sleeve over the grip and fit much better, and I got a very clean grouping in the 9 ring. As much as the other guns were good, I think I would go with the Glock and get it set up for my hands better.
So next up is a fingerprint card, and then I send in my paperwork to the State Police to hopefully get approved.