Adventures in (Crawl) Space

I’ve been putting this off, and I would have put it off again yesterday, after being the first to bring it up, if Lynn weren’t such a taskmaster. Okay, she isn’t, but she did say, “Let’s do this. Right now.” And she meant it. Which is how we found ourselves, for the first time ever, […]

Petty For Gifts

Lynn and I received a gift box yesterday, a gift box consisting of several smaller gift boxes all tied up in a festive ribbon. It was from Straw and Timber Craftsmen, Dusty’s company — I was going to say “that built our house,” but since it’s a never-ending process I might need to say “is […]

Feeding the World

I was in high school when I discovered the Boomtown Rats. Now, this is “discovered” as in Columbus “discovering” the New World. Since he encountered people already living in this New World, they presumably knew of its existence. So other people knew about the Boomtown Rats, but when I “discovered” them, it opened up a […]

A Broken Electrical Record

I used all my blogging time writing the following e-mail to electrical people (Dusty, Lena with the local solar company, Roger at GCEA, and Peter, who will hopefully come save us from all this). I doubt you care, already being up to your eyeballs in my electrical complaints, but it’s all I’ve got for today. […]

Moody With the Blues

I have just, for the second time in two days, reset the garage breaker. Yesterday I feel sure it tripped by dint of me closing the bay door on my way to work (without either garage heat source turned on). I’m going to hazard a guess that it blew again this morning when Lynn left […]

Cold Enough

As I type this, wherever the weather station is out here at Riverwalk, the temperature is 14. Below zero. That’s Fahrenheit; if I really want to depress us, that’s -25.6 Celsius. Either way, it’s cold enough for there to be frost on the inside of every window in our house. While it doesn’t happen as […]

Family Friendly

I don’t know if you heard about this story, but shortly before Thanksgiving at an elementary school somewhere in Utah, a substitute teacher asked the class, fourth or fifth grade, to take turns expressing their gratitude for something. While several were thankful for turkey or pie or no school, one 10-year-old boy told his classmates […]

Not What, But How, to Watch

I was not particularly paying attention to the conversation at work the other day until Gilly spoke up: “All we had to choose from was three channels,” she said. She was speaking, of course, of television, and she made this remark in response to Kara and James, who were probably discussing sharing passcodes for different […]

Snow Job

In the half-hour I have been vertical and looking out windows, this is what I’ve seen: the sun was shining; it started snaining; the wind blew; it started snowing; a short but fierce blizzard-y squall; snain; and now we have this fine little mist of snow as the sun tries forcing its way past the […]

Den of Iniquity

After a long build-up I finally went to my homeowners association meeting last night, which was much less contentious than expected. But I did learn Lynn and I have been hopelessly naive about this “idyllic” place in which we live. The meeting was hosted by our resident attorney, who said afterward that this would be […]