The Daily Diversion Archive For December, 2001

Thursday December 27, 2001

How was your Christmas? Mine was pretty nice. Since we have no tree and no house to live in to speak of, it was a strangely detached Christmas. While waiting for our hardwood floors to dry, we thought it a better plan to not be any where near them. Urethane, the covering of hardwood floors, stinks like all hell when it's drying. It's not a smell I want to smell, so we've been holed up in a friend's place who's out of town. That time is coming to an end, and we're getting the final bits and stuff done presently. I figure the first night we'll spend in our new house may well be Friday. That's a good thing.

But I was talking about Christmas, wasn't I? Santa was nice to me this year. I got some cash, which is always welcome. I also got a bunch of little gewgaws and antique stuff from my mom. Cool stuff like the Space Plate.

I don't know how it is elsewhere around the country, but up here, we Scandahoovians like our commemorative plates. My folks had a blue colored plate with some kind of image on it from each year they were married. That is, until they got divorced. Mom went on an antique junket this fall and bought what I can only call The Space Plate. It's dated 1969 and has an image on it of the Lunar Lander, the Flag and of footsteps in the Moon's soil. It's a very neat thing and I'm happy to have it.

I also got something I've always wanted since I was a kid. A visible V8 engine. Now, I've seen the innards of real V8 engines, but I've always wanted a model of one. They're less greasy. I now officially have something to do. I gotta go find some model glue. No, not to sniff.

Thanks to Jane for something really neat.

I picked up a couple of books, but mostly my big-ticket items will be purchased in the coming weeks. We're going wireless here at Easthome. I think it will be the garden variety stuff since the faster stuff is still pretty expensive and really not very much in use yet. I'm also going to get a big monitor to replace one of the 15" jobs I've been using for the past 3 years. More monitors are better, but big monitors help you get work done. Beyond all this, I think I'll also be getting a car. Not for me, but for my wife and I. We're leaning towards a Volvo 850 Station Wagon.

This is something of a paradigm shift for me. I remember the following words jumping out of my damn fool mouth about 15 years ago: "Once you buy a station wagon, you're done." Done, as in over the hill, married, or worse. Well, I'm here today, old, married, and wanting a the convenience of a car with a huge ass end.

I'm also looking for a Volvo. Volvo, the brand of car bad drivers drive because they want to be safe when they pile into something. A car for people who are likely to kill motorcyclists like me. This is something else I used to say when I was a young fool and knew it all. I'm still a fool, I still more or less buy into the sentiment of that statement. However, these words were spoken quite a few years ago. Back in the day. Back in the days when the StaWag was Mom's Taxi, the Grocery Getter, the Land Yacht your buddy borrowed from his folks to drive the whole team to the game. Things sure have changed. Now we have something far, far worse. We have minivans. I also have a buddy who used to stand next to me when I said these things and nodded his head in agreement driving some minivan thing. Names won't be named, but you know who you are. StaWags have also gone from the god-awful, can't-get-out-of-its-own-way barges of yore to pretty cool looking cars. The Ford Taurus Wagon was the first of the cool StaWags. Now, most StaWags are far smaller than the LTDs and the Caprice Classics of yesteryear, but the reduced size has also been complemented by better motors. Not bigger, but certainly higher performance for the size type engines. So now we have smaller, cooler looking and better handling StaWags. Okay, I'll bite. I'd like the Volvo 850, please.

Yes, it's a long rationalization, but one that's working for me right now. Check with me after I've gone and bought one and see if I'm spending more time on two wheels or not.

Friday December 21, 2001

We did it. We moved. We're now staying with at a friend's house while our hardwood floors are refinished. They're maple, you know...

All of our stuff is crammed into the basement and garage. My lovely bikes are outdoors for a while, and it's going to take us an awful long time to get unpacked. All the same, I think I'll have the new web server up by the end of the first week in January, provided we can get DSL at our new house. Keep your fingers crossed.

Things went pretty smoothly during the move except for a few things. I didn't get lunch so that about 3 pm, I was about ready to kill. All my clothes got moved into the great mass of stuff in the basement and hasn't been found yet. I had to spend some quality clothesless time last night, waiting for my moving clothes to get clean so that I could wear them again today. To my knowledge, nothing got broken. Everyone got paid. No-one got hurt. Well, hurt badly. I can't turn my head to the right and Sarah's feet hurt. The only thing I'd call a bump in our fairly smooth road is that I had the wrong size ball hitch on my pickup for my boat trailer.

I was fortunate that the movers hadn't packed up my air compressor yet as I really did need it to get the old hitch off. For those of you who haven't yet used an air wrench, it's God's own wrench. When an air wrench is applied, only two things can happen: Something breaks or the job gets done.

I spent many minutes yesterday driving slowly between the two houses with a big and unsecured load of our stuff. The boat trailer's tires looked as if they may indeed be porous due to the cracks in the sidewalls, but they stayed inflated the whole way. I was crafty and packed the snow blowers way in the back of the garage so that now, if it snows, I'm totally screwed. I figure this will be the way of things for quite some time to come. We also had something of a close call with the refrigerated stuff. The cooler into which they were packed, had gotten packed itself. Its whereabouts were unknown until a few minutes before we left the house to go to the place we are staying. It would have sucked mightily if we had lost track of that, as it would have made the place go up in stink. Combine this with the smell of fresh, oil-based urethane on the hardwood floors and the house would have continued to be unlivable for quite a while. Fortunately for everyone within a 3 house radius, we found the cooler and refrigerated its contents.

I too will be chilling for a while longer.

Tuesday December 19, 2001

The big day is finally here.

In 6 short hours from when I'm writing this, we will sell our house. We will then buy another one tomorrow. We will then move the following day. It's not going to be a very pleasant week. It's not been a very pleasant last 5 months or so. I'd like for life to slow down a bit and I would dearly love to not see another box for a good long while. I'll get none of these requests and like it, but it's good to know that I can still want irrational things. I think.

I must say that I will miss our local hardware stores. For all the crap these folks take from the public at large, it's nice to know they can still take the time to help a freak out at 2 minutes to closing time. Sorry for getting in the way of your beer, guys.

I'm looking forward to writing the epilogue to our stay in North. I have nothing but gratefulness to offer our house for making our dreams real. I have nothing but pleasant memories of our backyard, deck and porch. I have somewhat less pleasant memories of most everything else, but that's for the future and the past, now isn't it?

Cheers and I'll be back after Christmas.

Ho, Ho, Ho!

Friday December 14, 2001

It's been a long week. I haven't been getting much sleep, and the sleep I do get isn't enough. I've packed a bunch of stuff, and now, truly, there seems to be about one day's worth of packing left to do. As we get closer to the moving date, the sudden pitfalls seem to be getting deeper and more troubling. They've all been dispatched efficiently thought. Mostly due to sheer luck, but some due to good planning, good will and good instincts. We have proven to ourselves time and again that we've done the right thing going with a first-rate realtor, going with a major bank for a mortgage, and buying services that we'll need. We have movers, floor refinishers, plumbers and various other professionals at our seeming beck and call. And there's been much becking.

Qwest has seen fit to cancel my DSL line without my approval. I don't know why, but all of a sudden, my DSL box didn't work. We were scheduled to have everything turned off next Wednesday, but what probably happened is that the person who's buying our house signed up for DSL, and they patched it through in advance. They were live about 2 weeks before they started billing me for my service, perhaps this is a way for them to get ahead. Who knows. All I know is that I have a perfectly functioning DSL box with a signal coming in that it can't read. Thanks Qwest.

That's about all for now. I expect that the next update could happen after Christmas. In the meantime, check out some of the blogs I read regularly. For a seemingly endless amount of time-wasting links, look no further than Metafilter. Another, less frequently updated, but no less cool site for links and othersuch is memepool. Then, there's the web journal of Strib columnist, James Lileks. He usually writes a few hundred words here a day and they're all good ones. Go to the area called "The Bleat.". I also try to hit mecawilson to check out what he has to say. Consistently funny.

Well, typos aside, I gotta go.

Tuesday December 11, 2001

The garage is finally packed. There's only a few loose things laying around, but other than a saw, a tire iron and some waste drain oil, I'm done. I'm down to 3 bikes. The Gold Wing, the Water Buffalo, and my Can-Am dirtbike. The boat is in the garage, too and it's full of things such as my snow blowers, my outboard motors and my lawn mower. Yes, there was a lot of junk in my garage, but it also stored a bunch of really useful things. I also have 3 (count 'em!) shop tables that I'm not sure where they'll end up. Man, I already need a bigger garage.

It's been a tiring week. I burned a bunch of old cabinetry we took out of our kitchen about 5 years ago. I've got the rest out back waiting for the garbage guys to take them away. If you want them, they're out there for free. Have at.

My wife pointed out yet another abuse of the English language to me the other night. I guess this one was subtle, but she pointed out the semantic disconnect that makes this an abuse, not a creative use. Did you know that we're no longer customers in most stores? We're not patrons, shoppers or consumers. No, we're guests. I don't have a problem being anyone's guest. It think it's keen. I like going over to my friends' houses, getting waysted, puking on their floors and making an ass of myself. And I can do this because I'm their guest, right? No, just kidding. I don't do any of that stuff--at least not anymore. No, when I'm a guest, there are certain things I expect of my hosts and there are certain things I do for my hosts while I'm a guest. One of the things that is a given, is that when we go over to someone's house for dinner, unless it's really hugely expensive, we pretty much assume we're not going to be paying for it. Now that I'm a guest at various stores, does this mean I have to pay for the things I want? If I'm a guest, then I guess I don't.

The next issue of the Daily will be coming to you from the Hennepin County Lockup.

No, I think that guest is the wrong term to use to refer to a customer. We're customers and patrons. We're certainly not guests.

Monday December 10, 2001

Not much to say, really. I just thought I'd check in and tell the whole world that I'm still alive. The move is less than 2 weeks away and it couldn't come any sooner. I'm tired of waiting. Let's go already. It's actually Friday night and I'm just sittin' and chillin'. I'll try to write more this weekend.

Monday December 3, 2001

I've found, much to my chagrin, that individual pages linked to my site aren't getting forwarded. That sucks. Anyone who isn't linking to either this page via coin-o.com or to the front page via tholt.com isn't getting through. What a drag. I guess I'll just have to work on getting something else worked out. Sheesh.

So if you're getting 404 errors or page not found errors, that's why. I'm still here, my DNS entries are not.

I had a busy weekend here. I donated a car, got rid of 3 bikes and pretty much worked my ass off. As a reward to me, I let myself mess around with my servers for most of the afternoon on Sunday. I'm such a geek.