Grounded
Blogging slowdown this last week as the Skelton Ranch entertained its first family visitor. Stepfather arrived from California bearing gifts of solid oak table legs that were constructed and designed by famed wood worker Larry Golden. Legs were placed on a Golden table-top that I had acquired over a year ago. Now we have a full functioning dining room table. We no longer eat our meals sitting on the floor like grade school students.

Stepfather arrived at the house with hammer in hand and an appetite for home improvement. We spent the better part of the week wiring up the garage, which strangely enough had only one little outlet from which the automatic garage door was powered. It took a long time just to figure out the entire downstairs/garage wiring plan. It’s a shame people don’t keep updated wiring schematics on hand with a house. Trying to navigate the decades of electrical ‘improvements’ is like inheriting a clients website where nothing is commented/documented and you have to spend hours slogging through someone else’s horrible code to try and figure out which way is up. Electrical work can look pretty intimidating but once you figure out the schematics, making additions and subtractions is actually pretty logical. Just remember to avoid hooking up the 220 volt central air-conditioner to
the 110 lines. Not good.

With the electrical in the garage done, we had six grounded outlets humming and ready for action. With power we were able to juice up the saw and with the saw we were able to cut wood and with cut wood we were able to make improvements and reinforce the deck off the back of the house. The deck railings were janky at best. One good lean on the things and you’d be flying through the railing like a scene out of an old John Wayne western. Now, I think you could have a Jackie Chan style brawl up there and unless you got tossed over you’d be secure. But even if you did get tossed over, the hammock down below would catch your fall. Alright, I think I’ve effectively covered all the worst case scenarios now.

Oh wait…what about the one where Kate Moss is out on the deck, snorting endless lines of coke, and then she gets kinda spacey and teeters too close to the edge and then…

Also, the servers that host afrojet got hacked this week by some little vagrants from Brazil called the Spy Kids. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one.

And, DVD recommendation: The 70’s Dimension – a collection of pre-videotape, 16mm film television commercials, public service announcements, news clips, and other celluloid oddities from 1966-1974. It made me all kinds of nostalgic for a time when cigarette commercials dominated the airwaves and Jack LaLanne was the king of the infomercial.