The home and other stuff

It's been another busy time of home renewal around the WWYG?! manse lately.

We finally got our radon mitigated (and I'm sure you know what THAT is all about). While that was being done, we also decided to upgrade some of our electrical systems. Unfortunately, that sounds like we are putting in dedicated AV wire or installing some sort of fancy home theater down in the basement. No such luck . . . we're just upgrading some our our outlets around the sink and correcting some "creative" wiring" and extension cording that the previous owners had utilized in the garage. These are things we've been meaning to do since we moved in, but the grind of living and the drain of money made it less likely until now.

So, were living high on the hog with fancy ground fault interruptor sockets. Somebody call MTV "Cribs" quick.

But, more momentous home news is still to follow! Colleague and all around good person Sven Golly lent me a hand (and a truck) yesterday to get our old stove out of the garage and over to the Habitat for Humanity "Build it Again Center." The truckload also included some old spare doors, staircase spindles, and random shutters from some unknown past.

I am glad to have that corner of my garage free now and will soon be ready to cram it full of other stuff--probably kids bikes, or the new lawnmower, or something else. And once our second winter decides to go away, I'll be able to get the many bags of mulch out of my driveway and park the red car back in the garage again.

So, things are looking up in that area of life.

Work is, of course, maddening and stressful and worrsome. I spent a few hours at the office today--which I am VERY loathe to ever do--but I am doing something fun this evening with friends from church and so I knew that if I didn't do it then, I'd never get enough done later tonight. (I didn't get to work much last night as we were babysitting for the neighbors--which is good, since we'll need to cash in on that once Spiderman 3 comes out in a few weeks.)

Spiderman 3! I have YET to begin sending email reminders to my friends about a theatrical viewing event, which is a shameful oversight on my part. This is something I have done for many years at work and my responsibilities as a breadwinner and productive editor have seriously impacted my ability to be frivolous this year. I've got to get some of my childish mojo back and reinvigorate my inner love for Tobey and all things Spidey!

I think I'll head out into the garage now and begin straightening while Lynda is taking Sarah to get her dance photos made. (Don't worry, I'll post them when they are available . . . as long as her dance studio-approved makeup scheme doesn't make her look like a backup singer for that Robert Palmer video . . . "shudder".

Logan's Run

Netflix delivered this sci-fi classic to my doorstep last night and so, I took a few hours break from my work and watched it with Lynda.

My quick, vague, not-helpful review?

Better than Barbarella but not nearly as good as Tron. (Though, to be fair, Tron came a few years later and benefited--somewhat--from better production values.)

Still, Logan's Run is a classic that is referenced by a lot of other things and it is clear that some of the design of Syndrome's island in The Incredibles is influenced by The City in this movie. But, I must point out that the makers of LR need to sue Michael Bay for ripping off their ideas when Bay made The Island a few years ago. Shameless, really, though much more visually appealing.

Like Shooting Fish in a Barrell . . . and then Resurrecting the Fish

It's an Easter-themed post today on WWYG?!

As you may know, when people where I grew up (in Georgia) think of Easter, they think of dogwood trees white with flowers, azalea bushes blooming, the fine film of pollen dust coating everything.

But, not in Ohio and not this week.

There is snow on the ground right now (though not much, I grant) and the forecast calls for more light flurries today and into tomorrow. Almost all of the young flowers have wilted, their blooms shriveled. I just hope the trees hold on and don't skip straight ahead to boring green leaves. It would be a shame to have so little time for the beauty of spring blooms.

But, the season must go on, regardless of the weather. (Do you think Jesus wouldn't have resurrected if the wind chill had been below freezing?) Our church had planned an Easter Egg "hunt" (I'll explain the quotation marks in a minute.) yesterday morning for church children and for the community at large. People worked very hard to prepare what seemed to be thousands (I heard someone say 3,000!!) of eggs for enterprising young hunters to find.

We knew that with the temperatures being in the 30s and intermittent snow blowing, the turnout might not reach the preparations, but there were a good number of families and kids there to take part.

Even so, I'm glad that the girls brought their wide-mouth Easter baskets, since they easily gathered over 100 eggs each.

I saw kids filling garbage bags and dragging them around, since they were too heavy to lift. And it wasn't about greed, each kid NEEDED to gather their own weight in eggs or the lawn would still be dotted with the technicolor eggs even today.

The problem, though nothing could be done about it, was that our church building, being little more than two years old, doesn't have a great deal of landscaping as of yet. The grass was just put in within the past year. So, when we turned the corner to drive into the parking lot, it became clear that this wouldn't be so much an Easter Egg Hunt as an Easter Egg Gathering. (It really was like shooting fish in a barrel.)

But everyone had fun anyway.

When we got home we realized that so much candy had been gathered, it was almost clear that the Easter Bunny should skip our house and give his candy to someone else. This didn't stop the girls from preparing their Easter baskets for his arrival, alongside the plate of lettuce and carrots.

But, Sarah did write a note, asking the E.B. to cut back on the candy . . .

So, in the end, everyone has a good weekend and we even managed to squeeze some religion into the entire proceeding.

Happy Easter!

I'm tired

Work, work, work for now and likely for at least another month steadily. Sometime in June it should lighten up, but it's hard chargin' and full steam ahead, don't think about it, just do it, go as long as you can, get it done, don't bother with small things, just get it finished . . .

Sometimes I feel like I'm a surfer trapped on top of a wave and I'm simply resigned to my fate--for good or for ill. I'm just along for the ride now and I can't do much to change course, make it better, make it worse.

It simply is and that all that there is.

sigh . . .

And . . . we're back!

Everything isn't complete, obviously . . .

. . . as the multi-headed hydra of a header attests to, but I'm ready to soldier on in the new Blogger environment.

I'll sort out the header imagery soon and finish labelling archive posts 1-298, but it's all good enough for you to keep reading here from now on.

Reconfigure your bookmarks to link to this site, and I'll see you back here next time.