Tuesday, September
21, 2004
At The Knees
I’m taking a few days
off from heavy work. I spent last week digging holes, wrestling 30’ power
poles and fighting 4” galvanized steel pipes. My body hurts.
After digging a hundred feet of 20” deep trench by hand , my neighbor talked
me into borrowing his half-ton gas powered trenching machine. I only had 25’
left to go but I gave into the temptation. After 23 years of fighting heavy
equipment, I should have known better.
Trenchers do well in the spots that are easy to dig but in the hard spots,
they break. They cut easily through water mains and electric conduit but bog
down in rocky soil. By the time you’ve repaired all the damage, you could
have dug the trench by hand. My experience with my neighbor’s trencher
pretty much followed that formula. In two minutes I had trenched though my 1
& 1/2” water main that was supposed to be somewhere else. I managed the rest
of the 25’ without breaking his high priced tool but it struggled in the
hard spots. I’m still going to have to re-dig most of the trench by hand.
It was
uncharacteristically cool this morning so I headed out early to get a few
things done. I was trying to lift a 5’ length of burned creosote post into
the dumpster when my shoulders told me to take a break. Time to do some
reading.
Been reading quite a bit lately though I’m keeping it light. Most of my
reading is done on my Palm Pilot and I download books from
E-reader.com. You
don’t get the satisfaction of holding a book in your hand but that pleasure
is outweighed by the convenience of downloading the book immediately. If
you’re not highlighting sentences and going back to study passages, the Palm
Pilot works fine. The script is easy to read and you can read at night with
the lights out.
Like I said, I’ve been keeping it light and chalking up lots of Tom Clancy
and Steven King stuff. My favorite author is Larry McMurtry. Oh, and my
favorite color is … ah never mind.
View From New Home Site
Ever have a friend cry
on your shoulder about a bad relationship they’re having? They vilify their
“significant other” so successfully that you come down on their side and you
begin hating that other person too. You applaud them for there insight and
congratulate them for cutting off the other person at the knees. Two weeks
later you see that same couple walking hand-in-hand down the street laughing
like nothing has happened. I hate it when that happens. It means I got
sucked in and started to care. After that it’s hard to respect either one of
them. I hate that!
Recently I discovered something called “Caller ID” and you can sign up with
your local phone company. Guess I’m no Doctor Phil but it works for me.
