Birds, book, and PING PONG, Day 268
This post would feature a photo of the new ping pong table in situ if elijah_brown weren't on an endless conference call. Conference call! At this time of night! When there are ping pong tables to shift.... We'll be having a serious talk about priorities before this day is done. The ping pong table was successfully collected from the generous freecycler this afternoon and David and I managed to shift it to the garage without incident. I invited him to come try it out once it was set up; he made "yeah, in five years" noises. Which is possibly why I didn't go upstairs after he left but instead commenced to shifting crap from the future home of the ping pong table. That meant a few dozen boxes I've yet to unpack (Do I really need it if it has sat in the basement for year? Well, maybe), a few dozen cans of paint, various tools, the sewing machine, oh, you know, stuff... When I was done the space was clear except for the partial wall that has been there since the furnace burned sawdust. That, I felt, should wait until Eli could add muscle power and, more important, de-construction intelligence so I didn't destroy something critical to the house.
He came home, inspected the wall, and gave it a few bangs with a hammer. He suggested a heavier hammer would be better but, alas, we have no sledge hammer. I do have, however, a somewhat more industrial hammer which I keep in the kitchen for crushing margarita ice. I collected it, put on some gardening gloves, and went to work. Bang, bang, bang, CRASH. BANG bang bang CRASH. BANG.crash.BANG.BANG.CRASH. and so forth until there was just a pile of splinted wood and some 4x4s where the wall had once been. I tidied it all up and then started to post. After a bit Eli was off the phone and agreed to help shift the table. It turns out to be ever so slightly not even in its center region but a couple of judiciously placed spare paddles and it's quite functional. Oh, we could use better lighting but it's not so bad that we didn't play four games between one paragraph and another. (I won three out of four, too.)
Ping Pong Table
Imagine the grey and black is a wall. That's the one I knocked out. Clearly my talents lie in demolition, not computer animation. But I'm very pleased with my boxes.
Birds
American goldfinches
house finches
house sparrows
bushtits
black-capped chickadees
dark-eyed juncos (Oregon)
northern flickers
starlings
gulls
pigeons
Steller's jays
Bewick's wren
Anna's hummingbird
Book
Immortal Quest (page 175)
I confess I'm concerned that the Tetris bit may have been deleted from the published version. That would be a sad loss. Maybe it's later, though. Otherwise, I've found it quite unputdownable except for the moment that Gradka chased an invading cat from the backyard, going over the fence herself in the process. Then I flung the book down to scramble over the fence as well only to find my beloved Gradka had already vanished. A very, very, very anxious quarter of an hour followed until I eventually discovered her in a neighbor's backyard. She seemed relieved to be found but nothing like as relieved as I was to find her. She has been quite complacent since.
He came home, inspected the wall, and gave it a few bangs with a hammer. He suggested a heavier hammer would be better but, alas, we have no sledge hammer. I do have, however, a somewhat more industrial hammer which I keep in the kitchen for crushing margarita ice. I collected it, put on some gardening gloves, and went to work. Bang, bang, bang, CRASH. BANG bang bang CRASH. BANG.crash.BANG.BANG.CRASH. and so forth until there was just a pile of splinted wood and some 4x4s where the wall had once been. I tidied it all up and then started to post. After a bit Eli was off the phone and agreed to help shift the table. It turns out to be ever so slightly not even in its center region but a couple of judiciously placed spare paddles and it's quite functional. Oh, we could use better lighting but it's not so bad that we didn't play four games between one paragraph and another. (I won three out of four, too.)
Ping Pong Table
Imagine the grey and black is a wall. That's the one I knocked out. Clearly my talents lie in demolition, not computer animation. But I'm very pleased with my boxes.
Birds
American goldfinches
house finches
house sparrows
bushtits
black-capped chickadees
dark-eyed juncos (Oregon)
northern flickers
starlings
gulls
pigeons
Steller's jays
Bewick's wren
Anna's hummingbird
Book
Immortal Quest (page 175)
I confess I'm concerned that the Tetris bit may have been deleted from the published version. That would be a sad loss. Maybe it's later, though. Otherwise, I've found it quite unputdownable except for the moment that Gradka chased an invading cat from the backyard, going over the fence herself in the process. Then I flung the book down to scramble over the fence as well only to find my beloved Gradka had already vanished. A very, very, very anxious quarter of an hour followed until I eventually discovered her in a neighbor's backyard. She seemed relieved to be found but nothing like as relieved as I was to find her. She has been quite complacent since.