Summer doldrums--an update
Well, the late July heatwave is now leaving our area. Sorry for you guys on the Right coast--it's not much fun. Pray you've got enough freon and juice from Con Ed to make it through. And enough tonic water for your gin.
On a positive note, LOML finished RAGBRAI on Saturday--rode her bike across Iowa, 440 miles, in 90+ heat and lived to tell about it! She did well, even rode alongside Lance Armstrong for 6 miles and kept up with him! (So she says...) I played Mr. Mom and had a good week with the kids--watched movies every night, grilled or ate takeout, generally loused about.
On the minus side, once she got home LOML persuaded me to start removing some wallpaper from an area we're having painted. Not fun, not at all. Almost led to some major exchange of diplomatic niceties, including the old, "It'll be a cold day in 'Phoenix' before I agree to do this again."
It's not the paper, it's the paste. (Sort of like, "It's not the heat, it's the humidity.") What a mess.
Fortunately, I did finally convince my wife that life was too short to spend it removing wallpaper paste from walls and that this was worth paying someone else to do. I convinced her after she realized this would consume all HER waking hours as well as MINE for the next 2 weeks. (Underscored, no doubt, by my favorite negotiating ploy, "You know, you're welcome to pitch in anytime you feel like it.")
Also on the plus side, despite the heat and the crisis in the Middle Stairway, I managed to get in a little shop time and work on an Adirondack chair I've been building. Just a little more sanding, and it's done!
It's raining today, 80 degrees high temperature, life is good.
On a positive note, LOML finished RAGBRAI on Saturday--rode her bike across Iowa, 440 miles, in 90+ heat and lived to tell about it! She did well, even rode alongside Lance Armstrong for 6 miles and kept up with him! (So she says...) I played Mr. Mom and had a good week with the kids--watched movies every night, grilled or ate takeout, generally loused about.
On the minus side, once she got home LOML persuaded me to start removing some wallpaper from an area we're having painted. Not fun, not at all. Almost led to some major exchange of diplomatic niceties, including the old, "It'll be a cold day in 'Phoenix' before I agree to do this again."
It's not the paper, it's the paste. (Sort of like, "It's not the heat, it's the humidity.") What a mess.
Fortunately, I did finally convince my wife that life was too short to spend it removing wallpaper paste from walls and that this was worth paying someone else to do. I convinced her after she realized this would consume all HER waking hours as well as MINE for the next 2 weeks. (Underscored, no doubt, by my favorite negotiating ploy, "You know, you're welcome to pitch in anytime you feel like it.")
Also on the plus side, despite the heat and the crisis in the Middle Stairway, I managed to get in a little shop time and work on an Adirondack chair I've been building. Just a little more sanding, and it's done!
It's raining today, 80 degrees high temperature, life is good.
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