Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Milk and Honey
All together now, “ooooohhhhh, aaaahhhhhhh”
Friday, October 21, 2005
bougainvillea
There are those who complain it’s too “vivid,” but it makes me smile.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Preview - An Ode to Recycling
UPDATED - now with pictures.
Little visible progress was made on the workshop last weekend. But the project took a huge step forward.
Searching Craigslist for redwood siding, I found a local ad for a person scrapping his house in preparation for demolition. He’d listed “large, rolling redwood garage doors” and “miscellaneous siding” among the items available. Free. You disassamble.
I showed up and the doors were still there. Also there was old, painted redwood siding covering the whole garage. Under the vinyl siding on the house was more redwood. So I spent the afternoon tearing down the siding and disassembling the doors piece by piece.
Now, you may say, ‘Mouse, what are you thinking? Your time is worth far more than you’ll ever save recovering wood siding, even if it’s free.
The pictures will show you why I do this.
Here’s some carefully selected, high grade “con heart” redwood available at Home Depot. In my opinion, it’s junk wood.
Here’s the 70-year-old, old growth redwood—the kind that people used to slap up on any old garage—which is a true wonder of nature.
Before
After
So. For a couple days hard labor disassembling and de-nailing I get a stack of old wood that most would sneer at. For another couple days work re-milling the back sides through my planer, I get wood that you can’t buy retail at any price.
I don’t know how much the good karma is worth in the greater scope of things, but I’m sure you score a few points for keeping the product of these incredible 300-year-old trees from being ground up by bulldozers. And the joy I get from making new life for this gorgeous wood really is priceless to me.
Let me close with a call to action—if you’re tearing down a house or a shed with old siding or old painted trim or oak floors or ... whatever, please consider putting a free ad up on Craigslist or a cheap ad in your classifieds to let someone who’s interested recover the old wood. They don’t make it like they used to and it’s sad to see it sent unnecessarily to landfills.
Monday, October 03, 2005
Working with my hands
Someone asked how my weekend was. Let’s just say that 2 pictures (one fuzzy and out of focus, which went unnoticed because lack of morning coffee had left me fuzzy and unfocussed) will have to substitute for 2000 words. The third picture isn’t mine—is shows approximately how this is going to come out when it’s done.
Before (two weekends ago)
During (now)
The Approximate Goal (sometime in the next month or two?)
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
I think I can…
... use my fancy new DSL connection to play a song for y’all.
Here’s a pretty one which gets heavy rotation on my playlist:
Emmylou Harris, Red_Dirt_Girl [link removed]
The usual caveats and provisos apply: This is for your listening pleasure only, temporary, etc. Play nice in the sandbox. If you like it, buy the music. Go to concerts. Be a Good Person.
Friday, September 23, 2005
My Woes
I know you don’t want to hear my daily woes. Before blogging I foreswore the diary model. But it has been awhile since I posted and I’ve got to put blame where it belongs.
It’s all SBC’s fault.
Let me provide one of many illustrative examples:
‘Mouse: I’m calling about my DSL order which I placed ten days ago.
SBC: What DSL order?
‘Mouse: The one I placed under confirmation number XXX on… September 9. Actually it was 11 days.
SBC: Oh, I see it right here. It wasn’t entered into the system.
‘Mouse: Um, do you think you can do anything about it?
SBC: I’ll put it right in. If you don’t have it in ten or 12 days, call us.
‘Mouse: Aaaaaaarrrrrrrrggggghhhhh!
Update. They then promptly shipped my DSL modem and it’s now plugged in. Of course I’m informed that the computer cannot flip the switch to turn on my service for ten days.
‘Mouse: Why will it take ten days to turn on service?
SBC: It’s done by computer.
‘Mouse: Aren’t computers pretty quick at flipping switches? Can’t you expedite this somehow?
SBC: Oh, we only expedite when we’ve made mistakes.
‘Mouse: Wasn’t failing to type in the order for eleven days a mistake?
SBC: No.
‘Mouse: (whimper)