Current News:
It had been months since the road grader had found its way this far up the creek so I rushed to the window to watch with excitement as it passed by on Thursday. The relatively smooth roads left behind rekindled my wild hair to jump in the Dakota and head towards Albuquerque on an architectural salvage run on Friday.
And then Murphy and his laws intervened. Within 8 hours of the roads being made palatable, the snow started to fall, then hail and finally rain followed. While it started off as my favorite type of rain, the one which falls gently enough to soak in rather than run away, taking the soil with it, this bout persisted throughout the entire dullish gray Friday. Somewhere in the midst of the steady downpour, a curious procession of gas field vehicles passed by, fishtailing in the clay gumbo and bouncing from one side of the road to the other like golf balls in a downspout. The new smooth surface of the road was history that quickly. Fine then, I can take a hint and I will stay home ... hmmmph!
So we tackled hanging a few doors today (Saturday). I will not mince words here - there are few things I now enjoy less than hanging doors but doing it within an unlevel, non-square, off plumb 30 year-old rat trailer and there are going to serious blood pressure moments coming down the pike, real quick. I have worked on Civil War era buildings and not found them quite this annoying. We had previously bought several of your basic luan hollow core doors at Salvation Army and the Humane Society's resale shop for between $5 and $10 each. They were solid affairs, quite unlike most of the ones initially native to the rat which were either missing entirely, bore a few iterations of knob set bores or many impressions of angry knees, feet and fists. We had to make new frames in all cases. I sawed up every bit of scrap material lying around into shims; paneling, 1 by, plywood, paint sticks and ripping debris until I had a sizeable box of shims at the ready. I will cut to the chase here since framing in doors is a tedious pain in the butt that I no longer have the patience for, let alone write about after the fact. We also had the joy of hanging two more bi-fold closet doors today. The factory genius who designed the door packaging lay-out put the overhead rails exactly where the forklifts ram into them. Every last one of the rails had been smashed in on one end, rendering them nearly useless without serious smithing skills applied vigorously. By the end of today, color me a dark shade of surly.
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Aux des VRAI Canadiens:
Okay, for all my Canadian readers, you might want to check out the web link below and add your comments. It concerns one of my favorite New Mexico bloggers (who I am linked to) and an article his QWEE-beck guest wrote. Since the article was published in French, it was translated via computer. The translation results were hilarious and the blogger reaction in Albuquerque was even more amusing. You may wish to add your comments - just make sure to read through to the end of the comments section first. Personally, I found the comments about mayonnaise on fries and ketchup-flavored potato chips just a little inflammatory but you know the current culinary score better than I. If they had mentioned la poutine (or Lucier's "frit ... avec la sauce?"), I might have become vocal myself.
http://www.dukecityfix.com/index.php?itemid=2725
And while we are on a 'hokey' night in Canada roll, here is a little humor (humour) from my old NY state bud Jim (I don't think they averaged in S.Empty's stats though):
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Humor of the Day:
Let's see you beat this MPG!
A 2006 study found that the average Canadian walks about 900 miles a year.
Another study found that Canadians drink an average of 22 gallons of beer a year.
That means, on average, that Canadians get about 41 miles per gallon.
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