The Manic Mechanic

I know I haven't been the best at being a good blogger around these heah parts, so you'll have to excuse me for being busy, confused, angry, happy, uptight and introspective lately, even if that might all be in the span of ten minutes. Things seem to change abruptly with little notice. So far, most of the news regarding Jeff's parents and the fire have been okay. The house was nothing but a hole in the ground by Sunday. Paperwork regarding the insurance and other technicalities have been pushed through, and funds are available to begin reconstruction. We are all still wracking our brains regarding the contents of the house, more obscure items are still brought up. The more of these bits make it to the list, the more funds will be available to replace said items. It's not easy doing this from a distance, yet it gets done somehow.

With everything going on both up in Pennsylvania as well as around here, our nerves have been run roughshod. Jeff and I have been frustrated and sniping at one another, but as the week progressed that has softened. I tend to lose my cool a bit too easily still, as my now-damaged smartphone can attest. After 20 minutes in a parking lot trying to get the GPS to work without success, and an inability to even google the address of my next destination to enter the details into the car's nav system and five reboots (four of them not my doing) I beat the thing senseless on the steering wheel and threw it onto the floor. As immersed into technology I've been for 40 years, it still can rub me the wrong way. After the day of running around I had come home for a much needed trip to the bathroom, the same phone with the now increasing black hole of pixels consuming the display was used to locate a replacement display, the parts ordered for less than 20 dollars and one problem resolved before leaving the bathroom ten minutes later. So, yeah, I love technology as much as I hate it, I guess.

The weather here at Mayhem Acres has been becoming more spring-like, and as such, I've been doing more things outside. The pile of mulch that was suddenly abandoned will be distributed this weekend. The grass will need its first cutting this weekend as well. However, not all has been work and worry either. We had tickets to see the Pink Floyd cover band called "Brit Floyd" at the Lyric opera house. This was a fantastic show, good enough to feel like we were seeing the real Pink at their prime. The next day we went to see the Baltimore Orioles play an incredible opening day game against the Minnesota Twins. And this Saturday we have tix for Les Miserables being performed in Baltimore as well. Jeff's dad had insisted we keep to our cultural and recreational outings despite everything that has been happening. Doing so has kept both of us from being completely unbearable.

The two pooches have kept us on our toes, as is to be expected. Snickles is still a bit laggard in becoming housebroken, but is learning. It's interesting to see him take cues from Kodi. One thing about Snickles is his increasing awareness. He will watch Kodi perform some task or trick and follow right behind doing it similarly. The two of them get into extremely noisy play sessions in the evenings, at times ruffling our nerves. Surprisingly, Snickles is just as comfortable sleeping in his (now too-small) crate as he is curled up with either Jeff, me, or the both of us, sleeping through the night. Snickles is a burrower, he prefers to tunnel under the blankets and sleep against us, where Kodi stays on the surface. Snickles puts out heat like a small nuclear reactor, he is nice to have with you on a cool night. His nose, however, is almost always a sub-Arctic cold zone, and will get shoved against bare flesh without warning. The strangest doggy temperature anomaly, however, is Snickles' feet. One moment they are as cold as his nose, a little while later they feel like very warm palms. And, yes, he feels no compunction at pressing all four chilly feet against bare flesh right after slithering his way under the covers in order to warm them up. At least they warm up in a minute or so. That nose takes forever. Last night after spending a good amount of time in the basement lab, I had come upstairs. Snickles, who was sleeping with Jeff let loose a fusillade of protective barking when I had turned on the bathroom light across the hall. It scared the crap out of me, since I had never heard him use that deep, authoritative bark before. For a split instant I didn't know what was going on. After the both of us came to our senses and I calmed little Snick down, I realized that he is becoming protective of his "pack." I was proud of my pint-sized Doberman.

I have a nice surprise prepared for Jeff's dad in a week. One thing I heard him lament a few times was the loss of family pictures in the fire. A number of photos of his parents and relatives as well as shots of the kids and grandkids. The area where these photos were displayed was completely incinerated. But back in 2007 we had gotten one of those digital photo frames for his Mom, and I had brought those photos here where I scanned them and loaded them into the frame. I found the frame totally covered in smoke damage, and I'm not sure there is any hope for it. However, I dug around in the miles and miles of pretty files in the 25+TB worth of storage and managed to find the original scan files from each and every photo. In fact, when I had been scanning those photos, I would sometimes find another pic inside the frame as I removed the prints for scanning. I scanned everything. While the resolution of the scans isn't the greatest, it's enough to make a reasonable reprint, and I can retouch some of the oldest ones. A couple shots in particular are ones he said he missed the most, and those are ones I am going to print and frame for him and give him for his upcoming birthday. As much as he has talked about those destroyed photos, I believe he misses them more than the house itself. I didn't say anything to him about the possibility of having the scans since I didn't want to get his hopes up. Finding those files made my day. I just have to get some fresh photo paper and some more frames. I plan on bringing him future prints when he is least expecting of them, and I plan on having some ready to surprise him once there are walls to hang them on.

Sometimes I absolutely love technology.

My best friend had been working along with his siblings (and a bit of help from me) to get his parent's house ready for sale. Today, it went on the market. I got a text message from him tonight saying that the sign is out front and everything. His parents bought the house new in 1960 or so, and it's been very well maintained throughout the years. It never had much of anything in the way of upgrades either, most of the appliances and interior features are original. However, everything looked practically new. His parents treated me like family, I spent countless hours wrenching on cars, playing guitar and in general hanging out with John and his parents even after he had moved out after getting married. They were like a second family to me.

Hearing that the sign went up today made me think back on those 36+ years I have known them, and the house which was always the same, a kind of memory reference point and place of constant comfort. It's soon to be gone, taken over hopefully by a family that will enjoy the house as the first and only other owners had. And hopefully they keep it mostly as is.

I can't help but feel sad. Here is another piece of my youth that is going away. Another constant that is no longer. My childhood homes are completely gone. I've lost lots of friends and loved ones over the years. And, of course, I no longer have Mom. I can't help but feel 'shoved' further and further into the future, an unknown, while my past slowly disintegrates. Such is life, I guess, and not necessarily a bad thing. But, it still hurts, with every piece of the past being essentially chopped away, in varying sizes.

Today, I learned the Farrah Fawcett is gravely ill as well. I had that famous poster as a teen, and loved watching Charlie's Angels. I cried a bit when I read the story. And, I felt one more presence of my past is soon to disappear.

Life is not always fair.

Weather this weekend was a really welcome taste of spring, with temps in the mid 60s. I took advantage of the t-shirt weather and started re-trimming the garage. Pulling siding off of the building I uncovered thousands of the annoying red and black insects that have been making messes wherever they perch. They are some kind of harmless beetle who's name escapes me. The little buggers were wandering about as I blew them out from under the siding with the high pressure air gun. I tried to sweep them out of the garage and off the concrete pad in front, but still it ended up being a smash fest. I have to pick up some more vinyl lath to use as trim and jamb extensions in order to finish both sides. Hopefully next weekend's weather is conducive to my project.

I'm currently watching the Grammys a little closer than I have been in recent years. Is it me, or are they trying a bit harder this time with the performances and interaction with the bands? Things dont seem quite as dismal. One could only hope. There's no point in asking for fewer freakin' ads.

Jeff had to work today after getting a call late last night. This was bad, but he did have the past three full weekends off for a change. He's changing things at work and it's starting to pay off in more time for himself and us.

In the vein of free time, we received our confirmed reservations for P-Town in July. w00t! We have our late May long weekend at Deep Creek Lake confirmed, now all we need to do is somehow luck out and get our weekends at Hillside mapped out. We will try to do some camping at other places like The Woods this year as well. Hopefully gas prices dont go insane like last year.

I have a strange couple of weeks coming up at work. Lots of extra work, with overtime and extra time off as well. Hopefully things will stay stable, but I am going to take the extra work while I can to build up a financial buffer. I have some major expenses on the house this year as I replace the roof and add a pair of skylights in the living room. I am really surprised the roof is not leaking at this point in time. The last big winds here blew off a big pile of broken shingle tabs bad enough that I moved the cars/trucks away to prevent paint damage.

Wish me some luck this week, as Tuesday would have been Mom's 83rd birthday. I hope I dont fall into a funk like I have been.

Have a great week, y'all.

This is a common occurrence here at home. There is no doubt a mechanic lives here. This is a view of a part of my living room and the entryway. See if you can spot the giveaway clue.



I was going to mount and balance these today, but I was too lazy. You could say I was tired. Hopefully tomorrow.

With the nice weather, needing to get my mind into a better place and house projects staring me down, I decided to start tearing into the house once again. I took out the one leaky patio door yesterday and replaced roughly a 6 foot by 16 inch section of rotted flooring. Today, after a trip to the hardware store to buy supplies that I thought I had on hand, I will glue/screw the new section of flooring down and install the new door.

After all is said and done, I can look forward to repeating the process almost exactly, as I replace the door in the bedroom.

This sort of thing is kinda like therapy for me. Hard to explain.

I hope everyone is enjoying their extended weekend.