Day 1276

My feeble attempts at home improvement today were an epic fail. I bought some self-tapping screws and tried to batten down the loose 4x8 sheets of plywood under the carport. I drilled hole after hole, but never found a stud where I could attach the screws. Maybe there weren't any studs and the plywood sheets were just being held by the edges. Who knows? That would certainly explain why the wood was sagging so badly.

I didn't have much better luck up on top of the roof. I also bought a new push broom while I was getting the self-tapping screws, but it didn't seem to work as well as the old broom. The new roof has a gritty, gravel-like texture that made the broom hard to push. This was unfortunate, because after three full days of sunshine, there was still standing water on the roof. I'm beginning to think that the new roof puddles up even worse than the old roof. It doesn't leak anymore though. That's one good thing!

To add insult to injury, I got stung by bees while I was working. These were the same type of honeybees that built a hive in our house a few years ago. I looked around, but couldn't find any evidence of a hive near the house. I have a healthy respect for these bees. Wasps and hornets will often ignore you, but honeybees almost always sting. There's got to be a beehive nearby. Where there are bees, there is honey.

All this futile manual labor probably explains why I am a writer instead of a carpenter. I've never been fond of sweating or lifting heavy objects. I am pretty good at working with my hands, but only out of necessity. In a perfect world, I would live on the seventeenth floor of a luxury high-rose and never do yard work or home maintenance at all. I would spend my time sharing stories with friends over cappuccino at a friendly coffee bar. Maybe someone would make movies like "My Dinner with Andre" about me.

The dogs don't have such delusions of grandeur. I'm beginning to think they do have delusions about the temperature though. Every morning they bound out of the house as if they're eager to run for five miles. It usually doesn't take them five minutes to discover that it's hot outside and they both decide they want to turn around and go home again. I don't like the heat either, but it's getting harder and harder to get my requisite 10,000 daily steps on the Jawbone UP band with such lazy dogs.

This week has gone very quickly. I guess there's something to be said for staying busy. I'm glad tomorrow is Friday though. I'm really looking forward to my regular breakfast outing. I can't say that adding flax seed to my oatmeal has added much excitement to my life.

Marcie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1070

I should have left well enough alone today. It seemed like a good time to tackle the mess of spiderwebs and wasp nests on the East side of the house. This small section of the yard became a no man's land after our neighbor erected a tall security fence that turned the narrow side yard into a dimly lit corridor. Armed with a broom and a can of bug spray, I attempted to rid the walls and windows of the unsightly mess on the side of the house. I managed to remove three large wasp nests and cleaned up four windows before I got stung. Somehow a wasp got into my shoe and stung me on the arch of my foot. Ouch! This pretty effectively put an end to my clean-up activities for the day. I did make good progress though, so I ought to be able to finish the job tomorrow after the rest of the wasps have died.

It looked like there was going to be a nice sunset this evening, so I grabbed a telephoto lens and headed out with the dogs toward a small hill that provided a good view of the horizon. About halfway to my destination, I was intercepted by a neighbor who wanted to talk about a neighborhood issue. I tried to be polite, but I wasn't very interested. I watched the sun slip behind behind a cloud and knew I had missed my shot. Dot barked so much that the neighbor eventually got tired of talking and let me go on my way. All I was able to salvage from this little expedition was a single afterglow shot taken with my iPhone.

I don't know why the neighbors are wasting their time with me anyway. They are trying to stop a boathouse from being built on the lake. Since I like to look at architecture just as much as I like to look at trees, I'm not really opposed to this boathouse. The design is actually quite pretty. The neighbors don't have a chance of stopping this thing anyway. The city is desperate for additional revenue. If the city thinks that this building will be a moneymaker for them, a few disgruntled neighbors aren't going to slow things down a bit.

I've just about finished replacing all the incandescent bulbs in the house with high-tech LED bulbs. I'm doing this a little bit at a time, since the high output LED's are still kind of expensive. The front porch got LED bulbs today. I'm a big fan of these bulbs. They don't get hot. They don't burn much electricity. They practically last forever. And since they are daylight balanced, they give off a very pleasant natural looking light. It's weird to think that the light bulbs in my house are going to last longer than I will, but that's probably what's going to happen. Isn't technology great.

Jasper is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day