The Aerie
So... that was spring, 2003. What little I saw of it.
Summer begins tomorrow, and if it's like most of my other recent
summers it will consist of hours working in frigid offices, punctuated
by brief periods of broiling heat in my un-air-conditioned Metro. And
of course THIS summer I'm trying to increase business over last
year...
We DID finally get a pair of air conditioners. We had planned on
installing central air (deleted from our home remodelling project four
years ago in order to save costs), but then we looked at our finances
and discovered that our financial jet was spiraling in over the oceans
of debt. So we started looking for window mounted room air
conditioners. My friend Speedy even forwarded notice of a couple of
free air conditioners that she saw posted on the Web, but free stuff
goes fast and even immediate calls resulted in "sorry, they're gone."
Really, why post a free air conditioner on the web? Why not just set
the thing out at the curb and write "works
TITLE:free
TITLE:take" on the box. It'll be gone before you reach your front
door.
Finally we broke down and purchased a pair at Home Depot for $99
apiece. One we'll put upstairs in the master bedroom, the other
downstairs for the kids, which should cool both their rooms provided
we arrange the doors properly.
Now of course I have to install the air conditioners.
I also have almost no clothes to wear. This is not meant as
titillation or as a plea for donations, it's just an indication of how
out of hand my schedule has been lately. I do all my own laundry, and
I haven't had time to run a load for weeks. Fortunately I've been
running network cable at a client site all week, giving me an excuse
to show up in my paint pants and my rattiest old Dockers. But I'm even
out of those!
So I'm gonna have to do some laundry and get ready for the big shindig
tonight: the family is heading out to the Mall of America for the
Harry Potter debut party. Yes, yes, how commercial, how pedestrian,
how droll. Thank you. Just what I need is self-righteous condemnation
to go with an evening of pre-teens hyped up on sugar. I could point
out that this is a crowd of kids excited about books and reading, but
that's not important. The important thing is that it's heavily
marketed, so it must be bad.
Sorry, man am I cranky. Seven hours of hand-blasting cable-pulling
will do that I guess. I had to delete a whole entry before where I
went off on the whiny conservatives who run this country and blithely
treat anyone who doubts anything as some combination of moron and
Fifth Columnist. I just don't get how these people can be so powerful
and yet so good at playing the victim.
"Ooh! Look! Someone published something that might have a conscience!
I'm so victimized by their opinion! It's a liberal plot against me! Oh
no! Now they're questioning our government! Oh, when will this
conspiracy be ended?!?"
*Phew*, there I go again! Yes, that was less vitriolic than what I'd
written before. I'd best leave the politics to Lileks: he's a born-
again conservative, so he MUST be right. No, I mean, he's a funny guy,
but I don't understand the appeal of being reactionary.
Anyway, getting back to the main point before I pass out from
exhaustion or poison myself with terminal crankiness, yes, we're off
to pick up the nine-hundred-freakin'-page fifth books in the Harry
Potter series (yes, I used "books" deliberately. How the heck are kids
going to read a 900 page novel? Is this some twisted exercise program?
"We'll get those kids to lift weights!" We've got to throw together
some sort of costumes in the next four hours, and I have to take a nap
and get a bath, and then off we go. If I bring the camera, I'll try to
post some pictures.
Finally, I got the last necessary piece in order to begin building the
battle robot -- a spare tire to use as armor. Pictures and news as the
summer progresses!
Now, off to get some rest. Hopefully my next entry will be somewhat
less cranky and somewhat more coherent!
[1]Last
Posted by Albatross at June 20, 2003 12:00 AM