20 yards of stuff

Spent the weekend throwing nearly 20 yards of junk out of my house -- doors, windows, desks, major spider habitat -- things that should have been thrown out, in many cases, before we ever moved in. A "work bench" in the basement nailed together from old doors and barn wood, which never served any purpose other than to cut me off from using about 15% of my basement. A giant metal desk that seemed like a good idea at the time. Scrap wood. Screens for windows that no longer exist. Two, count 'em, two old water heaters (bastids are heavy, and our town doesn't have a bulky pickup). (With one of them, I was able to solve the shuttle disaster puzzle -- the foam was WET. The insulating foam on this thing had become saturated by the leak in the tank, and weighed about six times what it normally would weigh. Had to completely dismantle the heater to even move it.) As a result, I should have about 20 yards more room in my small house, and in fact, I probably do. The garage is practically empty (though I immediately filled it with wood for the next project), and there's finally room in the basement for me to set up my fabulously expensive and virtually unused table saw where I can actually use it!

Even embarked on the completely ridiculous and overwhelming task of replacing the basement windows, something that has truly needed to be done since the day we moved in, and the condition of which hit critical when one of the water heaters, on the way out the window, took a chunk of window with it. No surprise. The surprise was that THIS time, when I went to the Home Depot, I was able to find a space on the shelf where a nearly correct-sized window was supposed to be. Scouted another HD not far away, and found precisely the windows I needed. Patched some masonry issues in one of them during a break in the rain on Sunday (a very short break, followed by a continuous downpour), framed the window and popped it in last night with a minimum of issues, and voila! -- it looks amazing. The stunning newness of the white vinyl window is so overwhelming that you hardly even notice the crumbling masonry! And, the masonry is next on the list. Going to ring the house with belgian pavers to cut down the water infiltration to the basement, and apply some sand mix to reface the block, and things should be like new, or at least like less than 74 years old.

No athletic activity of any kind all weekend, owing to the rain. Hannah had wanted to scout the Freihofer's course, but we didn't get to to do that. She'll be fine. Maybe we can do that at the packet pickup on Friday. I trained for my bike ride in no way whatsoever, unless lifting things beyond my physical capacity can be considered training.

-- Mr. Johnson is bone-tired