The Aerie
Productive day today. At least I hope so.
Started by cleaning my office in preparation for finding my tax information for this year. It was way overdue: papers everywhere, junk and boxes in the corners, wires and cables not put away. The detrius of suddenly NOT working in my home office when I started the latest contract.
In the midst of that I re-set-up my writing desk, which is an attempt to use my office for writing without being distracted by the Internet. Hasn't worked yet, but maybe this time?
Put my new laptop in place, got it hooked up, then decided to Ghost backup the hard drive just in case I decide to put Pointsec disk encryption on it. As delivered, 20% of the hard drive is dedicated to some kind of emergency-backup-and-restore service which I don't really appreciate: I've never needed one. Better to use independent media for backups, then if your drive gets blowed up, you just restore to a new drive.
So I've got Ghost backing up my drive, and while I do that I'm vacuuming the office. In the midst of that, I also got my laundry washed, I'll go upstairs and fold it and put it away soon.
While doing that I will also vacuum my office and the adjacent den, since they need it.
But while I was working on all this, my wife called down to remind me to fix the piston on the back storm door, which tore loose from the lintel during a bad storm last fall. It was dreadful to see what a poor job the contractor did putting the door together: the piston was held down with screws less than an inch in length. Long enough to completely destroy the lintel when they tore loose, too short to hold on in a high wind. Dreadful.
Anwyay the lintel had a huge hole torn out of it the size and shape of, say, one's three middle fingers side by side. So I needed a plate to mount over the lintel before I could mount the storm door piston. I cast around for a while, couldn't think of anything, couldn't find anything. Usually there's some scrap of wood somewhere, but I cleaned out the garage and workroom last year (the workroom needs it again, desperately), and I was out of scrapwood.
Finally I cast my mind up to the attic and voila! I remembered that our old roof is still exposed in the unfinished addition. A few minutes later I'd torn a chunk of old roofing lumber free and had slapped it over the hole in the lintel. A few drill-screws later, and the piston is repaired! At least until we have the contractors out in a month or two to completely redo the doorway.
Now it's back to taxes and vacuuming and stuff, then tonight it's off to the Dakota for Debbie's birthday party.
Posted by Albatross at February 4, 2006 3:00 PM | TrackBack