Month: July 2024

Sometimes you tell the day by the bottle that you drink, the Philosopher has said. And sometimes you can tell how I spent the day by the smell on my hands.

Not that I am asking you to smell my finger; however, many times you might see me smelling my hands to see if I have yet washed them enough to get a scent off of them. Most days, I only have one scent to worry about, but some days, most often Saturdays, I stack up tasks that end up trading one smell for another (or not, if the first smell was dominant).

So, this weekend, what did my hands smell like? Not that you asked, but since you haven’t ewwwwed on to another page or post yet, let me tell you.

1. Skimmersam and chlorine.
   I cleaned the pool early in the morning, which means that my hands got a combination of chlorine and organic decay from the things caught in the skimmer baskets. Although the skimmer baskets do have handles, so I don’t have to touch the grass, bugs, frogs, and occasional other critter in the basket itself, I do pick up a bit of its scent that handling chlorine tabs does not completely cover.
    
2. My boxing gloves.
   Or, worse, the inside of my boxing gloves which smell of years-old and fresh sweat. I’ve tried to clean them, putting absorbing powder in them, but it might just be part of the material now, to forever scentedly scar me after a martial arts class. Because, let’s face it, I am unlikely to wear them out and buy new ones.
    
3. Salsa.
   After a shower after martial arts class, I mostly neutralized the smell of the gloves and made myself a bit of lunch which was cheese “burritos”–basically shredded cheese and Pace Picante sauce or salsa microwaved until the cheese is melted. Whilst eating them, I tend to get a little salsa leakage onto my hands. This is the least difficult scent to wash off.
    
4. Gunpowder.
   I have tried to get the whole family to the range for a pistol safety class for a while–how long? Well, I had us signed up in January 2021, but I had a sniffle and wanted to postpone because we still weren’t sure that sniffles didn’t kill other people around whom you sniffled and besides you didn’t want to be judged as evil for sniffling around strangers. But at that time, the instructor was going to be out for some number of months, and it took me over three years to make it happen.

   But I did, and the boys had a great time, and my beautiful wife got over her initial trepidation.

   How did I do?

   

   Not bad, but it was just a .22 at 10 feet. Essentially tied with my oldest who had marksman training with JROTC a couple years back. And I’d like to point out I shot faster. Because it’s important that I still sort of win at something sometimes. Sheesh. Those guys have been hitting the gym almost every night, and soon will be able to lift more than I can (who only hits the gym once or twice a week these days,

   Oh, and you might be asking, Is this really the first time you’ve been to the range since 2012? Yes, gentle reader: for a longtime member of the NRA, I have popped off a relatively small number of rounds in my life. Perhaps this will change in the near term. When I can find time to head to the range again.

With those four scents, I am pretty sure that I only missed gasoline from some attempt at small engine repair to hit for the hand odor cycle (GoJo hand cleaner would have been included after the gasoline smell).

I am pleased to say that my hands smell of hand soap this Monday morning, which means I will not keep smelling them, and you will not have to wonder why.

Not that you ever did. But you might now.

Ah, gentle reader. As you might know about me, I tend to put things off, especially home maintenance or repair projects. They will sit for weeks months years, and then I will do them in a short period of time. Instead of a sense of accomplishment, a look what I did triumph, I’ll then recriminate myself for not having done it sooner. And this very week, I have the topper of all stories in that ilk.

In late summer 2009, we had house-shopped in Springfield for a couple of months on intermittent weekends, and we settled on Nogglestead (like our home in Old Trees, we magickally found a house on the very last day we were house-shopping). I made the round trip after the paperwork was in motion for the home inspection and followed Dennis, the home inspector, around the house with my own tools to poke and prod what he was and what he was not (after all, home inspectors adhere to a checklist closely, and they’re paid by the home sellers, so they don’t go off book at risk of their continued employment).

One thing he pointed out was that the insulation around the copper line from the external air conditioner condenser unit to the house, the pipe that brings the cooled, erm, coolant back into the house was breaking down. It was an easy fix: just take it off and replace it with standard pipe insulation. It wasn’t on his checklist, and I didn’t make it part of the nickel-and-dime remediation conditions for purchase. But shortly after we bought Nogglestead, I went to the hardware store and bought two lengths of pipe insulation. And then I put them in the garage, a little out of the way, and….

Almost fifteen years pass.

Gentle reader, I have alluded to the fact that I am in a slow motion process of cleaning up my garage (which includes the slow grind of painting my fence so that I can get the three five gallon buckets of Mission Brown and three smaller buckets of Russet out of the garage). On Monday, I used a cardboard poster tube that originally contained a poster that we framed and gave to my mother-in-law for Christmas probably twenty years ago (when we lived in Casinoport, undoubtedly). It was on the top shelf of a, erm, shelving unit with round things: Rolled up replacement screen material, rolls of kraft paper for landscaping and/or painting, a couple of poster tubes in case I ever got back into the Ebay thing selling movie posters (which I have not for almost a quarter century), and the pipe insulation.

I noticed when running the line trimmer around the house that the line was almost bare copper these days, and it was sweating as much as I was. So it was time.

I got the insulation down, took a scissors and a roll of duct tape, and spent five minutes replacing the insulation. I peeled the remainder of the old insulation off, cut the new insulation down to size, wrapped it around, pulled the tape to the adhesive on the edges, pressed the edges together, and added a couple loops of duct tape, and….

It took almost as long to walk around the house and back as it did to fix the thing.

I probably put it off so long (as with other repairs like it) because I have little experience with HVAC and I was afraid I would somehow damage the unit. The next morning, the fear was almost realized, as the condenser had a weird rattle that it had not had before. However, I discovered that I left the duct tape on the condenser unit, and it was rattling. So, apparently, I have not damaged the unit.

I hate to think how much the delay cost me in energy costs.

But it’s done now, and I don’t think I can even top this procrastination record. And it’s a small step in cleaning my garage as well. So, ultimately, it is a funny (in a sad way) story and a small win anyway.

In video games, “grinding” is doing repetitive tasks over and over to increase your in-game scores or for some in-game benefit, such as mining a bunch to get the materials you need to craft a weapon or better tool.

Real life is like a grind. No, scratch that: Real life is a selection of different grinds from which you can choose. And, as a bonus, some grinds do not lead to better outcomes: some grinds are maintenance grinds which are repetitive tasks that you do just to keep even.

Continue reading “Choose Your Own Grind Adventure” →