A Good Friday for Dry-Walling

It seems a bit odd to get Good Friday off, as this was not the case in most of the jobs I've worked. But things are different out there in Michigan where the CRC (Christian Reformed Church) has a large influence, and celebrating religious holidays is more generally acceptable than in most other places. It had been my impression that these holidays were going to be a thing of the past once GE took over the company, but apparently there has been some kind of 'deal' made whereby the holiday remains. There will be no complaints on that score from this end of the paycheck; I enjoy having the time to spend with family, and to work on projects around the house.

Today's project was hanging drywall in preparation for the upcoming visit from the Green side of the family. I'm not sure if the purpose is to allow the children to sleep downstairs while the grandparents use one of their bedrooms, or if it is to allow the grandparents to sleep downstairs, far from the noisy environs of four sleeping (?) teenagers. Either way, it will be nice to have some walls up. And James is seriously thinking of moving down to the basement afterward to achieve a greater level of privacy. If that is even possible.

We began this adventure with a trip to the local Home Depot to spend money we don't have on things we really need. There were already two sheets of drywall down near the basement, ready for use. According to my calculations, we needed at least ten more. Plus some 1x8 boards for the ledge. And some black plastic to (temporarily) cover up the ceiling so that we wouldn't be staring up at the pipes and/or insulation all night long.

James drove to the store; as a recent graduate of Driver Ed Session #1, he needs the hours. And he needed the practice of backing the car into the garage so we could unload the seats, and later unload the drywall.

We saw one of the Scout leaders at the store and stopped to chat with him a little bit, but not so long as to keep him from his duties (he works there). And although there was a strong temptation to wander through the lumber aisles smelling the freshly-cut wood, we didn't linger unduly as there was was so much work to do back at the house.

It was very nice to have someone with a strong young back and strong young muscles to help load the ten sheets of drywall into the van. My, those sheets have gotten heavier over the years!

Back at the house, we left the drywall in the garage on some wooden platforms and started putting up the two sheets which were already down in the basement, laying them out horizontally below the ledge. I let the boys do most of the work. After a quick demo on measuring and cutting them to size, and on using the scraper tool to level the edges, the boys took the drills and mounted the boards to the wall. Then we set the ledge boards on top to see how they fit.

Okay, they'll need a slight bit of trimming.

But onward. We brought down all the drywall from the garage - huff! puff! - and proceeded to mount two boards onto the east wall. The first merely needed a cutout for the ledge; the second needed a more complicated cutout for the outlet box. That was another opportunity to teach the boys how to measure the cutout and drill the starter hole, then use the hole saw to cut out the box. And it fit perfectly! I was much pleased.

As part of the outlet-hole prep, I took the opportunity to teach the boys how to use the circuit tracer to figure out which circuit the outlet was on so we could locate the breaker for that circuit and turn it off before touching it. Didn't want anyone accidentally frying a finger-bone by putting it inside a live box!

We kept going until nearly five o'clock, then it was time to quit so that we could have dinner and head out to the Good Friday service at church. And I really needed that shower! I was dusty from head to foot. And we were all tired, ready for a rest.

Card Games

The boys learned this bizarre game called 'euchre' when they were in Scouts. Apparently it is a midwestern game, originally from Pennsylvania but really taken hold in Michigan/Indiana/Ohio. I'd heard of it, of course, but never seen so many people so totally obsessed with it.

I tried it. Didn't really like it.

But we are attempting to play more team-based games, so it seemed like the right thing to do. Teaching the game to the kids, I mean. Well, the boys already know it, but the girls haven't played it before. They know "Go Fish". And "Old Maid".

Instead of going right out and playing euchre from the get-go, I decided to go back to the basics. So in preparation for our euchre-fest, I decided to have a little training session. Tonight was designated as That Session.


We started by playing a simple game (not euchre) of full-deck, player bids & tricks: All cards out, aces low, high card takes the trick. Each player makes a bid, lead sets the suit. First round was easy. Second round, same rules ... except with partners. Now partners are supposed to support each others' bids. That made for a bit of fun and frustration!

Third round was a repeat of the second, just to get them used to it (and give their partners a chance to redeem themselves). Fourth round, threw a bit of a curve by switching to the "standard" aces-high play.


Scoring is always fun with these games. To keep things simple, we just multiplied the number of tricks taken by ten, then added the number of 'extra' tricks taken. And for any team which didn't make its 'book' (number of tricks bid), they lost a number of points equal to the number they had bid.

Next session, we review the concept of 'trump'.

April (Snow) Showers

How is it possible to have warmth return to the earth, and then be ravaged again by the snows of winter?

What kind of madness is this?

We woke up this morning to a soft blanket of white snow lying across the ground, and a wintry chill in the air. Every house and bush and tree was painted with it, and every car unfortunate enough to have spent the night outside. Of all the nights to leave the car parked outside, naturally this last was the one we inadvertently chose. Which meant brushing off the snow before we could go off to work this morning. Oh, woe is us!

Yet our dismay was not long-lived; just as Cheryl had predicted, the crystalline layer had dissipated by mid-afternoon, and then the boys and I were able to continue our backyard haying festival which had begun over the weekend. The ground was still saturated with moisture, though, which revealed a serious limitation in the ability of James's shoes to repel water; i.e. he had some big holes in the bottoms of his shoes. This resulted in a desire to immediately replace said shoes. Taking advantage of the opportunity, the boys and I went to the shoe store and purchased some "cool" shoes for James, then they spent some time practicing their parking skills in the mall lot: single-point, three-point, and parallel. The boys are definitely improving.

Now to work on their stick-shift skills.

Spaced Out

Today is the anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's orbital flight in 1961. Many of my friends in the aerospace industry remember it; like me, they grew up in the Sixties and Seventies, watching the Russians and the Americans dueling each other in space, sending rocket after rocket up into the void. We all expected to join the ranks of the astronauts some day. Our brains were filled with the television images of Apollo, and the words and stories from the great Science Fiction writers of the day. Asimov, Bradbury, Anderson. We looked forward to building our own rockets in our garages much as our fathers built their own hot-rods in theirs.

Such was not to be.

The first disappointment was the failure of the shuttle to be completed in time to rescue Skylab in 1979. Development was taking too long. The sun got cranky and overheated the atmosphere, causing it to blossom out into space and pull the space station back to earth too soon, too soon. My dreams of visiting it came to a dramatic end when it burned up.

The first space shuttle finally orbited in 1981, the year I graduated High School. My space-fanatic friends and I spent our junior and senior years reading up on the amazing technology (in the magazines scattered around the Science Department) while waiting impatiently for the beginning of the Next Big Space Race. We knew the Russians were working on their own Space Shuttle, and imagined that soon the earth would be orbited by multiple space stations serviced by numerous space shuttles of all shapes and nationalities.

Throughout college, my intention was to learn enough engineering to get into a space-related program, to work on the rockets and computers I'd learned about in my earlier years. After graduation, I got a job at Boeing and hoped to work my way into one of those cool aerospace jobs. In the first year, I made a number of friends among those who had worked on the earlier space programs; once they learned of my dreams, they tried to help me get on those programs. And things were starting to look very good for those dreams in January of 1986.

Then things got bad again.

In the aftermath of Challenger, the space programs went into another lull, and lots of people moved on to other things. The space program eventually recovered, but things were different now. The dream of getting into space had hit the wall of reality that said you can't get there unless you are one of the lucky few, the chosen ones, and even then, the odds are stacked. There would never be the great number of flights per year they had promised; the total number of astronauts would be severely limited; the probability of being chosen out of the hundreds of thousands of willing candidates was slim. At some point, the dream sort of fizzled out due to the need to just get on with life.

There was almost the revival of the dream in the early part of this century, when it seemed that there was a possibility of work on a space-related computer system. But then there was Columbia, and that dream, too, disappeared like mist in the ensuing rounds of industry layoffs.

I received a note from a good friend of mine, an amateur radio astronomer, bemoaning the fact that we don't seem to be fulfilling all the promises of those many years ago, those promises of moonbases and Mars colonies and multi-generational, interstellar travels. We have settled for the mundane, the ordinary, the profitable, the safe. We are tied down with all the wars and tragedies and disasters of this world, so overwhelming that we often forget about our hopes for our future Up There. Suddenly all the stories, those classic stories of spacemen and rockets and heroism which filled our minds in those days of yesteryear, they all become moldy and musty like old-fashioned books in the forgotten shelves of the library. We are more interested in American Idol and Dancing with the Stars and iPods and Facebook and all the other trivialities of life which distract us from great accomplishments.

I had hoped to live in a time of great accomplishment in space, to be able to look back on my life and point to some great achievement like establishing bases on the moon or colonies on Mars and say, I helped with that. Now I can only look back and wonder: What does it feel like to be the last person to turn out the lights in the Vehicle Assembly Building, when the last space shuttle has gone off to the museum and there's nothing left to do?

Eighty-two Degrees of Freedom

This is one of those days that hints of summer, even before springtime has sprung. The air is warm, the wind is light, the sky is blue ... and the car is acting up. Like it wants some attention.

This is what happens when I take too long to hang around after church, chatting with folks, and give my keys to the kids so that they can go sit out in the car and wait for me. They put the keys into the ignition and turn on ACC so that the radio works, and then they listen to the radio, kinda like we used to do when we were kids at Hermitage Road, sitting out in the parking lot listening to Kasey Kasem and the Top 40 Countdown.

Only this time, the key didn't come out of the ignition.

I didn't notice anything was amiss until we got home in the garage and attempted to pull the key out. It wouldn't budge. Normally, you have to nudge it in to the steering post just a bit, then turn it backwards to release it -- but this time, it wouldn't push in. Not a smidgen. I tried for nearly ten minutes to wiggle and waffle it into place, but no dice.

The fun part was, since the key wouldn't turn back, the car wouldn't shut off. Until I killed it by releasing the clutch with the car in gear. KLUNK! That stopped it.

Spent the afternoon taking the steering column apart, figuring out how to pull the air bag out without inflating it, how to get the plastic around the steering column off with the key still dangling out, how to uncouple the keylock mechanism from the steering shaft by using my Dremel tool to make channel grooves in the top of the breakaway screw heads which were holding it in place, and then carefully untighten them so in order to free the mechanism.

Took the whole keylock mechanism into the house and tried to figure out how to crack it open, mindlessly fiddling with the key at the same time. Then - click! The key was suddenly able to be pushed in / turned backwards, and it was free.

Huh?

I played with it for another fifteen minutes or so, trying to make it jam up again, but couldn't find the magic combination. Almost called the kids down to have them give it a try, but decided against it. Took the whole thing back out to the car and worked my way backwards until it was all put back the way it had been before (mostly). Hooked up the battery again, checked that it still worked. Then looked at the clock and realized I'd spent four hours fooling around with this nonsense.

I could think of better ways to spend a gorgeous day like today.

End of Spring Break

One of the many items on James's agenda today was obtaining a frame for his favorite poster. So when he and his brother were out driving with Cheryl, they stopped at the store and got the frame. And then we hung it up in his room. Ain't it cool? I'm hoping it always reminds him what it takes to be a success in this world: Brains. Filling them with what is good, and using them to the best of one's abilities. I'm trying to ignore the fact that the poster is actually a zombie.

---

Yesterday during our evening walk, I (somehow) twisted my back, so spent the day at home instead of going into the office. It's typically quieter that way. And I was able to set up all my little worktables around me ("Circle the wagons!") so I could switch between (1) writing The Great American Novel, (2) data mining the databases at work, (3) building and testing electronic circuits, and (4) studying Chinese.

Now if I could just keep up the energy level...

Spring Break

What better way to spend Spring Break than writing an exciting story? That's what Adam decided to do. While his mouth is healing from the sudden removal of wisdom teeth.


Cheryl is making a lot of treats this week: cookies, muffins, brownies. Sugar stimulates the healing process!


The girls took a video of James after he got back home from the dentist, high on laughing gas. Then they put it on the computer downstairs and watched it. It's hilarious!


So they invited all their friends over to watch it as well.

Why Is It

The weather is changing, pushing the thermometer up a few degrees from the sub-freezing numbers that have been keeping us inside the house. This week, it appears that the earth (or at least our little corner of it) might start warming up. Forties? Fifties? Maybe even ... Sixties?

Perhaps not that good. But we can dream, can't we?

My body has been craving sleep lately. It's been very difficult to get out of bed in the morning, and there is absolutely no way to resist the call of the pillow when the cats wake me up at 5:15 with their plaintive cries for food and I stumble back upstairs after dumping their food on their plates and it crosses my mind that this would actually be a perfect opportunity to get a couple hours of quiet reading time or study time or websurfing time before everyone else in the house wakes up ... and normally that would be the result. But lately I've been too tired, both mentally and physically. And I crawl back into bed. And then suddenly it's nearly eight o'clock.

Today was no different. The only problem was that eight fifteen is departure time for Chinese lessons!

The Chinese lessons were actually quite fun today. I managed to wake up enough on the drive over that my brain was nearly functional. So I was able to pay attention and learn some very important things - like how to say "wash dishes", "clean house", and other handy chore-related phrases. (We were studying how to say "You are supposed to do X by Y o'clock, but instead you didn't do it until Z o'clock". This is a very useful sentence structure to have handy in a household with teenagers!)

Later on that afternoon, I discovered that my compressor was having difficulty because one of the pressure gauges has a misaligned cover, so it is binding the needle. Had to fiddle with that for while to get it to work right. Not sure why that was making the output pressure insufficient to pump up the tires on the Subaru, since the gauge isn't directly in line with the output, but the plain fact is that the tire wouldn't pump up til I twisted the top of the gauge a bit. Weird.

After dinner tonight, we went for a walk, everyone except James, who was out at the mall hanging out with friends. Adam and Deb proved that they walk much faster than the rest of us, what with those long legs of theirs. Mary hung back with Cheryl and me, content to take things a bit easier. But the temperature wasn't so warm that it was completely comfortable outside, which was supposed to give us extra incentive to walk faster (aerobically). We were definitely ready for the warmth of the house when we got back.

Then we played Scrabble for awhile, and Adam used a lot of Latin words. It didn't help him win, but it was fun to see him practice it. Deb and Mary got a lot of help from Mom, which is probably why one of them won. Poor Dad could barely keep his head above water on that one.

James finally got home some time after seven-thirty, and then it was Bible-reading time. Finished up Galatians, quizzing the kids on what they knew of the church that was meeting there at the time. I'm hoping a lot of this is sinking in to their heads so they'll remember it.

Now that it's nearly midnight, my brain is back to fried again...