September 2005

It nev­er ends.

Today: we rent­ed scaf­fold­ing. We’ve got the front done, the south side done, the back done, and the north side about ½ done. (And when I say done, I mean cov­ered in white foam insu­la­tion to a depth of two inch­es.) (Well, one inch on the south side.)

The sid­ing? Promised today. Did­n’t show up. It’s some­where in town, though. Tomor­row AM I’m going to call and yell at my sales­guy some more. Nev­er doing busi­ness there again.

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Yes­ter­day was our eighth anniver­sary. K’s parents—my par­ents are already here, help­ing with the siding—came out and we all sat down to a roast beast sup­per. Mmmm… mashed pota­toes and gravy…

Then we had a rous­ing game of yatzhe, which I got my butt kicked at, and some Blew It, which I got kicked at too.

And that was that.

We’re re-sid­ing the house, so I’ll prob­a­bly be a lit­tle bit sparse on here.

Here’s the progress for day one:

Things I’ve learned:

- Just because the guy says he ordered the damn sid­ing does­n’t mean he actu­al­ly ordered the damn siding.
— The Large Orange Home Store has a fine sense of irony. As I wan­der about, try­ing to find the guy who half an hour ago went to check some­thing on the com­put­er for me, van­ish­ing like mist on a hot morn­ing, the PA announced that “if you need help, just ask any­one with an orange smock. They’re there to help.” Sure. If you can find them, anyways.

Yeah.

Well, we had a good BBQ week­end. I got hooked on Mon­day when Space ran all the episodes of Fire­fly all in a row. I watched about four of them, all told, through­out the day.

There was much drink­ing on Sun­day, and some unhap­py fall­out on Mon­day morn­ing, but the less said about that the better.

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School start­ed today. My wife was a lit­tle har­ried at work last night, work­ing as she does in the shoe sec­tion at the local iter­a­tion of the largest retail con­glom­er­ate on the plan­et. Shoes and sta­tionery were not depart­ments I’d’ve want­ed to work yes­ter­day. But she sur­vived, and even escaped from the store rel­a­tive­ly close to on time.

And at the uni­ver­si­ty where I work, well, they were every­where. Every year, the first day of class­es is a lit­tle over­whelm­ing. In the spring, when class­es end, they kind of trick­le away, by ones and twos and dozens, depend­ing on when they have their last exams, etc. But in the fall, boom, one day they’re all there. The uni­ver­si­ty goes from a pop­u­la­tion of about 400ish to 3500 in the space of a day.

I need to lie down.

But I won’t, because judo starts tonight. Won­der how many’ll show up?

[Lat­er] Answer: sev­en. Me, two black­belts, three brand-new guys, and a gent who got his black belt in Japan, from the Kodokan, but who did­n’t have all his doc­u­men­ta­tion, so that’s got to be sort­ed out…

Lisa (read­ing)	“Come to Home­r’s BBBQ, the extra ‘B’ is for BYOBB”.
Bart	What’s that extra B for?
Homer	That’s a typo.

So this Sun­day we’re hav­ing some folks over for a bar­be­cue (BYOBB, you bet), and then on Mon­day evening my wife’s cow-ork­ers are hav­ing a get-togeth­er fea­tur­ing a bar­be­cue too. To make the tri­fec­ta, I’ll be bar­be­cu­ing tonight. It’s get­ting down to the end of the sum­mer, after all, and soon there won’t be enough heat in the day to make me want to cook out on the deck.

I’ve pulled out a bag of ham­burg­er (my in-laws have cat­tle, and so I have lit­tle plas­tic bags of ground beef in my freez­er) and I’m try­ing to decide if the burg­ers I make for tonight will be spiced with the Cajun spice mix I got for Christ­mas from my sis­ter, or if I’ll go the sal­sa route instead. Deci­sions, decisions…

…or maybe Karen, his wife.

Last night I caught the last half of The Nature of Things on CBC. It was, specif­i­cal­ly, this episode, and so nat­u­ral­ly I thought of you two. It was a fas­ci­nat­ing show, and even in the half hour that I saw I learned a cou­ple of things. (I did­n’t real­ize, for instance, that the taran­tu­la has exist­ed for 350,000,000 years.)

I don’t see any­where on the site where you can order copies of the episode, or tran­scripts, but if you’re inter­est­ed, you might try email­ing them from their “Con­tact” link. (Be aware, though, that CBC is cur­rent­ly expe­ri­enc­ing a “labour dis­rup­tion*” and you might wait a while before get­ting a response.)

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*Or maybe the term is “employ­ee lock­out.” Guess it depends on what side of the pick­et line you fall. All I know for sure is that all my news now comes from BBC World Ser­vice, and Sep­tem­ber’s pro­gram line­up includes a whole lot­ta doc­u­men­tary films.