I broke both my iThings awhile back. I sat on my pad and it cracked. I dropped my phone and it broke. And after reading the news on cracked screens for a month, I finally broke down and got new ones. I was looking forward to the Wow of nine new generations of iPhone improvements in my pocket, but it’s been underwhelming. The AI is Meh, the apps work the same, and the phone itself was so slippery I dropped it twice on day one.
I bought a case.
Baby blue.
The view from my office is Brrrrutal
It’s the middle of winter, and my thoughts turned to the open road. The wind in my hair, bugs in my teeth, with 50 straining horses guzzling gas and fouling the air, purring ‘Putt Putt Putt.’
Let me try again…
It’s the middle of winter, and I’m between projects. Last fall, I put the Kawasaki downstairs so I could fix it “if I found the time.” So I took a crack at it.
The Kawasaki is kind of an embarrassment. I’ve never quite gotten it right. It’s the liveliest bike I’ve got when it runs, but it usually doesn’t. I usually can’t even get it started. I’ve re-built the carbs twice, and a new symptom replaced the old one each time. There’s something wrong with the pilot circuit; I just don’t know what.
Actually, I do.
At least I thought I did, and I homed right in on that part of the carb when I started taking it apart, but it was clearly fine. Wrong again! Damn. I was bummed. I was stumped. I kind of banged the damned carb on the bench in frustration, and …
Four jets fell out.
I gave them a startled look, because … jets aren’t supposed to fall out.
Huh. It all became clear. My whole body relaxed.
“If I forgot to seat the jets when I rebuilt the carbs,” I thought, “then that explains everything.”
Except for how it’s possible to forget to seat the jets, because on the Richter scale of dumb mistakes, it’s about a nine and a half. I should be the butt of a joke.
So I put it back together, and put it back on the bike, and I’m predicting that, come spring, it’s going to start right up, and ride like the wind.
About once a month, I go to the dump.
And the dump is about a block from the fish store.
So about once a month, I go the dump and on the way back, I splurge on some fish for dinner.
When we went to Boston awhile back, we ate at a fish place, and I had arctic char. Best fish dish I ever ate. And ever since, whenever I go to the dump, that’s the fish I’ve got in mind.
On the first dump run after Boston, the fish place didn’t have any arctic char.
By my next dump run, Boston was a blur, and I thought what I wanted was monkfish. They were happy to sell it to me, and Mary cooked it, and it was evil.
“Char,” Mary told me. “Arctic. Char.”
Another month, another dump run. Boston was a blur again, and, god help me, I told the fish guy I wanted snapper. Mary cooked it for dinner. It was ok, but it will make better tacos.
“Char,” she reminded me. “Arctic char next time.”
Alzheimer’s. This is how it starts.
After a long break, I’m thinking about picking up where I left off on the shower in the basement. It’s about ready to be tiled, and I’ve spent a considerable amount of time with graph paper and a ruler, looking for the perfect tiling pattern. So when we went to the tile store, I had some definite ideas about what I was looking for. But everything in the store was beige, brown, or blah. You can barely buy colorful tile anymore, and we left with samples that neither one of us really liked.
My enthusiasm fizzled.
Plan B
I have a slab of black granite that’s too good to throw away. I got to thinking that, if I cut it right, it would be a good threshold for the basement shower.
The problem is it’s in the garage at the Stowe house, which is thickly snowed in, and the driveway isn’t plowed.
“Gravity,” I thought. The driveway is super steep, and if I park at the bottom, and I trudge up to the house through the snow, then I should be able to practically ride the stone slab down to the bottom.
Now, I didn’t really think it was going to be quite that easy.
But I didn’t think it was going to be that hard, either. I had to stop for air twice on the way up, and more than that on the way down. The slab might as well have been velcro’d to the snow. It was hard work, and I needed a nap when I got home.
It was anti-gravity, all the way down.
I gave the spiral prototype I milled to Josh to finish. We’re working on drawer jigs.
I took the spiral mill apart and put it back together again.
It’s new and improved, with:
– Vibration reduction!
– An extra inch of clearance!
– Rack and pinion cross feed!
– Cable carriers!
It’s shaping up nicely.