…because my digital camera died before I got any good pix of it, but the room was a mess. Hideous wood paneling, a drop ceiling, and carpet that was probably put in when I was still in grade school.
That’s all in contractor bags in the garage now.
Remember that time that I spent a bunch of money on something and then committed another 30 years to pay it off and then immediately went about the business of ripping it apart?
That was awesome.
The walk thru went well, I think. I mean, I didn’t find anything new that I need to demo. Any new fixtures that were broken. Any new cracks in the walls, holes in the floor or cieling.
No surprises. So that’s good, right?
Well, no really bad surprises:
Surprise #1: The house has a 2 car garage. Which in itself isn’t awesome. It has some termite damage and needs some TLC. But we knew that.
The garage’s left door has been up every time we looked at this house. Look at the google street view pix of the house, the garage door is up. Look at satellite pix on live.com, the garage door is up.
We pulled that door down today. There was a piece of what looked like cat shit stuck to it. Surrounding it, in the caked dirt(door really has not been down in a long time) were little paw prints. Not cat though. Raccoon.
Good Surprise #2: The basement has this extra room in the back that leads to the back door. I walked out and there was a bunny. He hopped into a bush but stayed there long enough for S to get a look.
Looks like I am going to have some trouble w my carrots this year.
Philip K. Dick. I got a copy of ’5 novels of the 60s & 70s’from the local library a few weeks ago. I just got around to finishing the first of the 4 ‘Martian Time Slip’.
I’d read Man in the High Castle and Valis a while back but I don’t recall Dick’s descriptions of mental illness being quite so vivid…or disturbing. There is a scene written from the perspective of child who is described as autistic and precognitive. He watches two adults grope each other while in parallel watching their bodies decompose. I’m willing to wager that Dick took the brown acid.
More then once.
Began to wade into A Scanner Darkly on the train ride home, but didn’t get very far. I’m pretty wiped.
Why am I more sore on rest days then ride days?
Didn’t ride today but my legs felt leaden at times. Otherwise, today was uneventful.
I’m sure in a few short weeks, days like today will be like unicorns.
Did 51 miles in Upper Bucks this morning. Got as far north as Ringing Rocks before I headed west. Mostly I followed the Nockamixon Century route from miles 12 to about 50 something. Then I took 313 straight back to Doylestown.
Very hilly miles.
Two odd things I saw:
#1)A pack of pheasants making an incredible amount of racket in front of someone’s home on a quiet rural road. I should mention that they were not caged. Just congregating and being loud. I can only assume that they were in the habit of being fed by the home owners and their schedule was not being maintained.
Maybe I was just thinking about the financial sector bailout and projecting.
#2)I came over one hill to see 2 rather large bulls, thank god, completely oblivious to me. They were enclosed in an electrified fence that was barely thigh high. Perhaps they like their Flannery O’Conor in that part of Bucks County?
Came home. Cleaned up. Took the boy with me to Home Depot to buy some supplies for this weekend’s painting and demolition derby in Glenside. About half way there, I noticed that G was saying something. I turned down my iPod.
“What?”
“Fweetwood. Fweetwood…Fweetwood Mac”
My in laws have been playing Rumors by Fleetwood Mac. He’s become a little bit obsessed. Given that he has previously insisted upon listening to the Bacon Brothers, Momma Cas, or Abba, I think we’re finally moving in the right direction.
Brief update, since I’ve done zero writing this year.
We’re closing on a new house in Glenside, PA on Friday. A house which is going to be awesome…once I get all the rooms painted, all the carpets up, remove I don’t know 4? rooms worth of wood panelling(God? If you are listening, please let their be plaster underneath that crap.), redo the kitchen(well remove some wallpaper, redo the flooring, get the cabinets repainted), demo a half bath, add a whole bath, replace all the windows, have the floor boards replaced on the garage…
It could be accurately described as a fixer upper.
And then, in the middle of all that, We have a baby coming next month.
I’ll probably be blogging a bit more about this stuff then bicycle racing for the foreseeable future. (although I’m still planning on doing a bit this year.)
File this under: I am the most observant bicycle rider you have ever met:
Confucius and you are both dreams, and I who say you are dreams am a dream myself. This is a paradox. Tomorrow a wise man may explain it; that tomorrow will not be for ten thousand generations
-Chuang Tse: II
My wife works at a library. The swap rack has all this great sci-fi. The above quote opens up Ursala K. LeGuin’s The Lathe of Heaven. I pulled her Left Hand of Darkness out of there a few months ago.
Score.
In an effort to find information online about quieting down my jet engine foundation of house shaking bicycle trainer. I googled ’siliencing bicycle trainers’ not much there. I tried ‘quieting bicycle trainers’.
I got this article from the times in 1909 about 2 Madison riders who got in a dispute over money and started beating the ever living piss out of one another.
Anyone has any suggestions for making my trainer quiet while I ride on it, let me know.
thanks.
‘The Good War‘ by Studs Terkel.
There is a Pauline Kael chapter. She talks mostly about…wait for it…films of that time vis-a-vis propaganda.
Another was by Thomas Gardiner Corcoran. In spite of his apparently being a big part of making the New Deal happen, his reminiscence of life after the war in this short bit reminded me of Joseph Heller’s Milo Minderbender.
Lots of descriptions of brutality. Lots of POWs doing unbelievable things to stay alive, and considerably more people then one might expect condemning the war, and/or subsequent wars, and/or wars in general.
Good reading.