Things I can do in my basement

Posted on by Patrick
  • Sprin­kle rice seeds and devel­op a paddy
  • Set up a mos­qui­to farm
  • Set up a drag­on­fly farm
  • Get some wee, twee water­skis, one of those tin-toy boats that run on bak­ing soda and vine­gar, and lay out a lit­tle water­s­ki course for small insects (I could even put lit­tle Herb/Fishy/Gaspode, the bet­ta fish, into the water as a shark haz­ard, and re-cre­ate the Jump the Shark moment from Hap­py Days)
  • Sigh, put on the rub­ber boots, and swish some more water into my sump pump hole

Yep, ladies and germs, I’ve got water in the base­ment. Ground’s freakin’ sat­u­rat­ed around here, and so it’s got nowhere to go. And then yes­ter­day it rained. All day, all night, some­where about 50 mm (2 inch­es to you Yanks). Bet­ter than the 150 mm they were threat­en­ing, but still.

So we’ve been in the base­ment a lot these past few days. Not thrilled. But then I turn on the TV, and see the folks in Alber­ta and Saskatchewan with sand­bags around their hous­es, and water so deep in the base­ment that hip­waders won’t help, and I think, It could be worse.

But it could be bet­ter, too.

Oh well. These things hap­pen. Some­day I’ll look back and laugh.

Not today, though, and prob­a­bly not tomorrow.

So. How’s every­one’s day been?

3 thoughts on “Things I can do in my basement”

  1. Is T’other Half your SO’s blog? I keep try­ing to get my wife to do a polit­i­cal blog. She’s a news junkie, which I think is the pre­req for a good polit­i­cal blogger.

    Sor­ry ’bout the base­ment. Maybe if you plugged in a few dozen blow dry­ers and threw them under water, you could turn it into a great big jacuzzi. Hm. Some­thing wrong with that ;o)

    Hey Pat. Have you read Cory Doc­torow’s sto­ry “0wnz0red”? It’s so full of coder inside jokes it went right over my head, but it occurred to me, “Hey, I bet Pat could under­stand this.” It’s in his col­lec­tion, A Place So For­eign, which I got this wk from Amazon.

    Best of luck with the basement.

  2. Is T’other Half your SO’s blog?

    Yes indeed.

    Maybe if you plugged in a few dozen blow dry­ers and threw them under water, you could turn it into a great big jacuzzi. Hm. Some­thing wrong with that ;o)

    I already con­tem­plat­ed burn­ing down the house. Not in the cards. Nice idea, though.

    Have you read Cory Doc­torow’s sto­ry “0wnz0red”? It’s so full of coder inside jokes it went right over my head, but it occurred to me, “Hey, I bet Pat could under­stand this.” 

    I may just have to hunt that one down. I think I’m gonna have to read Char­lie Stross’s Acceleran­do; some­where I’ve got my down­loaded copy. Heard of that one yet? Online, for free.

  3. Yeah, I read a bit of it when Scalzi hyped it. Not bad, but it did­n’t exact­ly grab me. So much of what’s out there seems like ‘geek-cool’ one-ups­man­ship. Can’t remem­ber if Acceleran­do fit that cat­e­go­ry or not — but that’s why I’m NOT read­ing cer­tain things these days.

Comments are closed.