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Thursday, May 15th, 2003
Further along in Killing Time -- it seems like the best way to read it is quickly. The story is really engaging, I just get bogged down if I try to process the absurdly pretentious prose. Seems like nearly every page contains a howler passage of over-constructed, useless language -- I'm just ignoring these as much as I can and reading for the action.
posted morning of May 15th, 2003: Respond
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Tuesday, May 13th, 2003
I've been reading Killing Time by Caleb Carr, which Janice lent me, and having a problem with it which I have had wih other science fiction -- it seems like a really good kernel of a story, but told terribly. The characters are flat, the dialogue and interactions not believable, every incident is preceded and followed by reams of exposition. I am giving the book some more of a chance because I trust Janice's word (and also Gary's, who recommended The Alienist a few years back) -- and also because the story-line is quite gripping.
posted evening of May 13th, 2003: Respond
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Sunday, May 11th, 2003
Mom and Dad have been visiting this weekend, I have been doing a lot of yard work with help and direction from Dad. We discovered a big climbing rose bush against the back fence, behind all the underbrush there, much of which we cleared away. There are also a whole lot of a plant that the man from Rutgers Co-op Extension says is honeysuckle -- we took some clippings from 4 plants in to the county fair to see what they are, and though the Master Gardener was not there, the person on hand was able to speculate some. Also, some weirdo took a flower pot off of our front porch -- everyone thinks it was taken to be used as a Mother's Day present.
posted evening of May 11th, 2003: Respond
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Wednesday, May 7th, 2003
So I was varnishing the shoe rack yesterday evening and Sylvia decided she wanted to help -- I figured it would be hard to do it any worse than I would be myself so I said sure. (Finishing is not one of my strong points. Gave her a little art brush and showed her how to dip it and wipe it off before brushing, and she helped for a good long while. And wonder of wonders, no catastrophes! She's about as good at it as I am, I'd say -- no tipping over the varnish, no dipping her hands or other body parts... Just stood there with me, dip, wipe, brush (though I had to remind her pretty frequently to wipe the brush off after dipping), and it came out pretty well. And again, the little grin and "We're making shoe racks!"
posted morning of May 7th, 2003: Respond
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Monday, May 5th, 2003
Yesterday it seems to me Sylvia told me she took a bath with Clifford and his head kept coming off. Which would make some sense, as the head of her Clifford soap container is its lid, and thus removable. However I cannot swear that this actually happened; it may have been a dream image.
posted morning of May 5th, 2003: Respond
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Saturday, May third, 2003
Well I let the moment slip last weekend and did not finish the shoe rack... So I was all set to do it this morning. Brought the rack out to the driveway, with brushes, thinner, alcohol, everything I needed, except varnish -- the varnish I was confident was in a box in the garage, where I had packed it away when we moved. But when I looked there I was sorely disappointed. I started the search; combed the garage, the basement, nothing -- did some other yard work, then went over the search again -- still nothing. I was getting kind of upset; Ellen offered to look and she had a little better luck, discovering a bottle of Behlen's master-gel; this was not what I had planned to use but it should work. So I started trying to open it and discovered it was welded fast by old dried finish. After a lot of fretting, I hit on drilling it open; over to the drill press and I took a nice ½" circle out of the lid. Great! But alas, I went to use it and found the entire contents of the bottle had dried solid. Not actually too surprising as it's been open for a year and a half or more. But I was back to square one. The day went by, and eventually I found an opening to drive over to the hardware store and get new varnish. I went to Main Street Hardware in West Orange, a place I've had my eye on for a couple of weeks, and was glad I did -- it is all I want a hardware store to be. Home Depot will play less of a role in my life now. Got some Minwax Spar Urethane and after dinner I put it on the rack! Tomorrow morning I will do a second coat and that will be the end of that project. And meantime, this morning I started to draw up plans for my next project, a breakfast nook. More on that later...
posted evening of May third, 2003: Respond
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My hobbies of reading and woodworking have intersected in a nascent new collection, of old (Victorian era) books about carpentry and house-building. So far I have George Ellis' Modern Practical Joinery (1902, by coincidence the year our house was built) and Modern Practical Stairbuilding (1913?), plus Steven Sloan's Victorian Buildings (1850's) and one or two others. Today I found out my friend Janice has passed down from her father two books by Fred Hodgson, one of which, Practical Uses of the Steel Square (1903) I have heard recommended several times on woodworking web sites. She loaned it to me so I will be finding out more about squares in the coming days.
posted evening of May third, 2003: 1 response
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Ellen bought two new soap dispensers, one shaped like Clifford, for the upstairs bathroom, and one with a monkey on it, for the downstairs. Last night Sylvia needed to wash her hands; we were downstairs; I just couldn't figure out how to open up the monkey soap bottle. So after watching me struggle with it for a few minutes, Sylvia let me know, "Clifford soap works".
posted morning of May third, 2003: Respond
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Friday, May second, 2003
It's been Spring for a couple of weeks now in South Orange, the flowering trees massively in bloom; but I've been waiting for leaves on the larger trees to come. This morning it looks like they are finally here! Almost all the trees have foliage coming in. In our yard, the little tree that may or may not be dogwood has buds; and the bush in our front yard sprouted hundreds of crimson flowers all at once a few days ago. I de-ivied that little tree a week and a half ago; and last night I cut the last trunk of ivy off our big maple tree -- there are now about 8 feet of visible trunk before the ivy infestation starts. My dad thinks if I give it a couple of months, all that ivy above the cleared section -- which is no longer getting any nourishment from below -- will dry up and be relatively easy to remove. Update: Ellen informs me the crimson bush is an azalea; also there is one in our back yard, which I noticed this (Saturday) morning is coming out in buds the same way. I'm thinking it may have gotten buds a few days later because there is less sun; but that is pure speculation.
posted morning of May second, 2003: Respond
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Thursday, May first, 2003
Well tonight I was working in the yard and I noticed, the hose hook I installed last weekend was pulling the siding away from the wall. Oh no! I thought I had screwed through the siding into the stud -- come to find out, when I pulled that siding away, I had screwed through the siding into air -- there is a gap of about ½" between the siding and the stud. What to do, what to do? I ended up cutting a rabbet in the end of that piece of siding so it would fit over the end of the piece around the corner from it -- that seemed to work ok but now I need to seal it.
posted evening of May first, 2003: Respond
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