Life As I Know It
It is the morning of January 6, 2022, so I am both keeping an eye on the news for any important developments, but at the same time I do not want to engross myself in the ongoing and continuous rehashing of the January 6th Insurrection that took place a year ago today. It is less that I don’t want to hear it or want to somehow ignore it, but rather that I feel like I have heard everything, or almost everything, there is to be said about it at this point. Don’t get me wrong, I am passionately engaged in the issue and want nothing more than for these hearings to go forward and for the perpetrators (likely to include Donald Trump from what I have seen so far) to be brought to justice as an important example of why threatening our democracy is such a punishable act that needs to be resolved and adjudicated. I am simply fatigued and depressed by hearing it all over and over again. It’s time for action and I am anxiously awaiting that next stage as everyone else, including President Biden and Attorney General Garland, position themselves ever so carefully on the balancing act of bipartisanship and justice. I am a person that thinks they should be applauded at showing such care because Trump and Barr were anything but thoughtful and delicate in their handling of such issues. I prefer to see my politicians and judicial experts show restraint and fairness rather than just having them win through bullying. We’ve had enough of that to last a lifetime.
I am preparing to leave for our trip to Florida tomorrow and have asked myself over and over again why we are going. The answer comes up the same, we are going because it’s important to Kim and therefore its important to me that I support her in her wishes. The distant secondary reason is that I will get to see some other pals while she is overdoing the Disney thing. In total I will be seeing ten friends, all but eight of which are members of my American Flyers Motorcycle Club. That club has been an important part of my life for 26 years now, but it is logically winding down at this stage. Only half of the club members I will see are still actively riding anyway, but they are no less long-term friends. A few of us will even take the bikes out for a spin to remind me of one of the big reasons why I would have no interest of living in Florida…flat, flat, flat, and busy, busy, busy. The other thing I expect to be reminded of is that Florida is VERY red, VERY humid (Tropically so) and VERY contagious, in a bad way, with regard to COVID and, to a certain extent, Disney. My one day in Disney will over-satisfy whatever interest I have in the Magic Kingdom.
Meanwhile, I am spending today waiting for deliveries of materials for my newest hillside project of the Moonstruck Hobbit House. The lumberyard is delivering creosote ties, 2×6 framing lumber, the 4×12 beans, the 1×8 roof barrel planking, 3/8” plywood sheathing and Tyvek house wrap. They will fork lift all of that onto my driveway and I will take whatever of it needs to be sheltered into the garage. I expect to be good and muscle-sore again this evening. I already have the rebar spikes (I bought a full-size sledge hammer for that purpose) and the framing screws. I am also expecting delivery of a new Bosch heavy-duty jigsaw that is capable of cutting wood up to 6” in width. That is how I will create the Hobbit curve of the barrel roof. I have a 25-page PowerPoint I have developed to guide me through the whole project (really!) and I have calculated the weight of every framed wall section (since I will build it on the driveway and then carry it down the hill for placement). So far the heaviest wall will weigh 111 pounds so I think I’ll be OK, perhaps with the help of my power cart that can carry up to 750 pounds. Just a roof beam alone is going to weigh about 130 pounds apiece before trimming, but I will carry those down on the cart or one by one. Lots of muscle soreness on the horizon.
I do not plan to start any actual work other than placing materials in the garage until I return from Florida. This whole project has galvanized my thinking about the Florida trip. I am anxious to begin work on the construction, but I am more anxious to support Kim and her wish for us to go to Florida. Kim is my life, so the stupid project can just wait and that’s all there is to it. Priorities have a way of always making themselves very obvious in our lives, which is probably a good thing for us.
In addition to all of that, I also have several artistic objects coming today from Desert Steel. I have just about bought their whole catalogue now between my Joshua Tree, the four or five metal statues in the play area, the metal cacti on the deck and now these decorative metal yard art pieces. I may actually go to the trouble of placing them today because that will be relatively easy to do. However, there is other metalwork underway which I will not tackle today.
Yesterday I found and visited Hans Liebscher, a.k.a. “CopperMan”. He is an old world copper craftsman from Germany and I had reached out to him about making a roof tray (sort of an upward gutter) to keep the green roof on the Moonstruck Hobbit House’s barrel roof. After we sidled up to a workable price and shook hands on it, Hans, who was quite talkative and proud of his craft, started to show me examples of his work, especially an ornate Hindu temple roof he recreated a few years ago in San Francisco. The “onion domes” cluster on the temple roof were made of hand-hammered copper and were beautifully shaped. They stood about seven feet high and as much as three feet across. Some were squat and round and others were tall and narrow, but they all had a mystical feel about them the way the castles on the Reine, the cathedrals in Russia (like St. Basil’s on Red Square) and the Buddhist temples like Angkor Wat represent. I have always been a fan of hammered copper and the way it gets a natural patina. So, when Hans said he had four extra onion domes from that project, made in case they were needed for replacements on the project, it became clear to me that Hans was telling me they were for sale. He insisted I follow him to his house to see them and then pushed hard to have me buy all four. I decided I had room in my budget for backyard metal art (undeclared, but somewhat intuitive) for only one onion dome, so I picked one out and we agreed on a price. When I told Kim about it she thought it looked very cool (Phew!). We decided that I had made the right call about only one (though a cluster like on the top of the temple is pretty cool as well) and that we would wait and decide where it might have the biggest impact.
I’ve got most of the building materials I need at this point. I have all the lumber in the garage out of the weather while the creosote railroad ties are stacked out on the driveway since they are treated to last over 60 years even if in contact with damp soil. The tools and fasteners have arrived (the staple hammer came with the wrong staples, but that is a one trip fix to Home Depot). They will sit and wait for my return, but I am raring to go as soon as I get back. I have a work plan all figured out, so I should lose no time in going vertical on the project as they say.
Life as I know it has changed in the last two years. I like my new life. I get a kick out of my portfolio of activities. They suit me. In fact they suit me more than traveling and sightseeing. I have become a different man in the last two years. I will stop short of saying I am a better or worse man and rather just leave it that I have evolved as one must in life.