You should go for a commute like mine. It takes me longer to fire up my computer than it does to walk to the study. Today's effort was more about breaking a bathroom, so I had to walk all the way to the other half of the house. That was tedious. A few trips up and down stairs to carry nasty splintered plywood and flooring tiles out of the way added to the ordeal. Saturday is supposed to be cold, otherwise I'd take the chance to drag it all out to the burn barrel and set fire to it. Maybe next week, in the meantime my pile of debris can grow.
I will greatly miss my current 10 min rural commute, having lived in California - long distances, dangerous conditions, daily jams, creepy, crawly toll- booths, plugged bridges, road-rage, aggressive drivers, clueless drivers, etc, etc.
Hard to imagine a commute much less enjoyable than, say, I-97 or I-695 around the Washington and Baltimore area. I had the dubious pleasure of being caught on that road on a Friday afternoon. How it didn't turn into an apocalyptic pileup remains a mystery. I don't think I've ever seen so many drivers with so little consideration of the basic rules of physics (you know, like stopping distances) in my life.
Got a load of nasty plywood gathered up this morning. I've lifted a load of it, which caused much splintering, from the bathroom on the other side of the house. The amount of rust on nails is concerning. I'm going to look closely at the floorboards and the joists underneath them to make sure they are sound before rebuilding over there. Some joists will need attention - whatever genius put the bathroom in decided to just cut one off short of the wall, and cut about 2/3 of another one away to feed a pipe through it. I'm surprised we didn't have major issues with the floor before now. Originally I expected to have to replace entire joists but now I'm thinking I might be able to get away with just bracing them with shorter lengths of wood and construction grade screws to hold it all together. I also gathered up a load of splintered small pieces in a bucket ready to take it out and burn it, and pulled down another load of drywall. The drywall is currently in piles pretty much where it landed, as I already have six bags of scraps ready for the garbage people over the next several weeks. I have a pile of wood scraps ready to take out - these are too nasty to be hauling in cars so my friend didn't want them, which means I'll take them out back and burn them myself. If it's not too cold for that tomorrow they will become smoke.
Yick. Nasty snowfall overnight. Not a huge amount of it, but the kind of wet stuff that's hard to move whatever method is used. With a shovel it gets wet and heavy, with a snow blower it just ends up oozing out of the chute like a big icy sausage. It was warm enough this morning that I considered just letting it melt naturally, but the forecast was for it to go back below freezing and stay there until Wednesday, so the guy next door and I decided to clear it. He did the best he could with a snow blower, I did the best I could with a shovel, and eventually we got everything cleared. For some of the time it was like pushing water around but neither of us really wanted a sheet of ice when it freezes so we cleared as much as we could. Then I got busy smashing up more drywall scraps, and pulling a bit more trim out of another room. That lets me drill more holes to the basement, and run cables to two adjacent rooms upstairs that are next on the list to rebuild. Along the way I bagged up another 120-140lb of drywall, plaster, dust etc. That means three more bags outside waiting for the nice garbage men to take them away, which in turn means I now have enough bags out there to last me into March. The next room on the rebuild list will generate some more trash as I still need to pull down the lath and plaster ceiling. That rebuild will need to wait until it's a bit warmer, as I need to work in the attic and also want the windows replaced. I got my pile of nasty wood scraps burned at the weekend, so there's room for another pile to grow in its place. Depending on whether my friend wants it I can let it accumulate or take it out back and burn it myself. It's good to be getting back into my rebuild.
I was interviewed for a podcast hosted by a fairly well known Christian author. My story, orthodox Christianity, finding myself to be trans, etc. I underestimated how difficult that would be, given that I've never really talked publicly to anyone about it, or at least, not without being pseudonymous. I think it went awfully, but we'll see if it gets posted anyway. I could have done a lot - a lot - better. The beauty of hindsight and reflection though, right?
Hindsight is always remarkably accurate, but often irrelevant. Or, like the clock on Einstein's train, suffering from perceived historical bias!
Speaking of drugs, my wife had a molar extracted this morning and the oral surgeon used propofol. Smooooooooooooooooooothhhhhh.
As much as my cancer sucked, the drugs post-surgery were something else. I still think fondly of them.
Sure, https://open.spotify.com/show/69BDSVBuWR7oP1HYKQds55 (the video will also be on YouTube, maybe). I'd be surprised if he posts the interview unless he for some reason has a much, much, much much much much higher opinion of it than I. Also, he started it incredibly awkwardly (asking about my sexual orientation, attraction, etc.) and I don't think I could state enough how bleh I am about it. Like, I am genuinely annoyed, disappointed with myself, just... it was awful, truly awful. I need to find something else to do than pick at it; what's done is done.
Funeral at church today. Nobody I knew but I look after the sound desk so these things land on my calendar. Then I might run some cables into the next part of the house to be rebuilt because it's too cold to be doing any work on the outside of the house.
I think you can ask to only publish with your permission, that's pretty normal here where I live. Regarding youtube it's your legal right that they cover your face in case they insist to publish, again, in my country. Else ask RK to put his weight into it and don't forget to publish it here for our enjoyment
Fun With Scaffolding. I've never climbed scaffolding before. But we needed to fix some stuff at church that was higher than could sensibly be reached with a ladder, so a friend from church who has scaffolding met me there, we got the tower set up, and got some of the stuff fixed. It turns out we need to buy some other stuff, so I hope to be able to get that done in the next day or two. We've left the tower set up so we can do what we need as soon as we have our hands on the parts.