Deck The Halls and Haul The Deck Did I mention that I am playing contractor on my deck renovation? Even if I did, I need to howl at the moon over this and so this story is what comes out. Long ago I thought I wanted to be an architect. That morphed into wanting to be a structural engineer, which evolved into an engineer more broadly, and that drifted based on a nasty run-in with…
Nothing But Blue Skies This crazy sun keeps me guessing. I’ve lived here now full-time for ten months and I am still amazed when I go to different parts of my property how the sun is in places where I don’t expect it. Part of that is about me and my orienteering capabilities while on my property and part of it is about the full range of motion that the sun (I guess I should…
The Heat Is On So far this year I have written about 325 blog stories. I used to write more than one per day (especially on weekends) but I have mostly stopped that practice because I don’t want to wear myself out. Obviously, writing is not physically demanding, but there really is only so much in the tank to say and I neither want to churn out really shitty prose nor overdo it to the…
Electrical Connections From the youngest age we are trained to be wary of electricity, and yet it is truly ubiquitous, surrounding us in our homes and cars. You cannot go very far without encountering electricity. As naturally beautiful as my hilltop out here may be, if I stop to think about it, I am dependent on electricity in every corner of my new world. Out in the Cecil Garden I have an electric fountain that…
Taking It To The Limit I don’t think I have that gene that causes me to test the limits on everything I do. I know people who have that going on and some are still with us and some managed to exceed their limits and pay the ultimate price. Obviously, not every activity has a terminal penalty associated with pushing too far. Sometimes the reward is simply a proverbial speeding ticket, a slap on the…
Making Hay This is feeling like an unusual moment for me and while I’m not in the limbo that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris inhabit, it is a bit of a suspended animation moment for me as well. I can’t tell if it is all the build-up to the election and now waiting to find out what the mad man-child will try to do next, or something else. It probably doesn’t help that I am…
Time Management I must admit I am more and more in a quandary about my personal time management. Am I a working guy or am I a retired guy or am I something in between? Do I really have to define myself so specifically and does anyone really care how I do that for whatever purpose? I am bothering to write about this because I suspect that while many people had cause to worry about…
The Path To Enlightenment We spent the day doing errands and driving around with MSNBC on full blast. When we were home we were glued by eye or at lest ear to the TV and cable news. The path to political enlightenment just happens to wander through the land of the pundits and pollsters and even if we didn’t care for MSNBC, which we do, we would have to be tuned into Steve Kornacki and…
A Mitzvah For Mary Growing up in Latin America and then Wisconsin did not give me much opportunity to meet Jewish people. Strangely enough, my first Jewish friend was Michael Feldman, who I met when we moved to Poland Spring, Maine. South-Central Maine is more like Appalachia than the typical postcard of Bar Harbor. Michael was there because his grandfather Saul owned the Poland Spring Resort, one of the oldest resorts in America, dating back…
Brad Moon Rising I have now given Handy Brad eight months of more or less continuous employment. Assuming an average 35 hour per week, that means I practically have had a full-time staff member most of the year to help me with my projects around the house. Those have included re-stuccoing the back side of the house and deck, re-flashing the deck, power-washing the entire house’s stucco, replacing the utility room outer doors, building concrete…