Sunday and Monday...

[elfs]

Success! A cargo net for the kids.

One day was enough Folklife for us this year, even if the kids disagreed. My main task for Sunday was to build in the cargo net into the playset. We'd bought it toward the end of summer last year and hadn't put it up, so now it was my turn to buy the wood and install the darn thing.

What the instructions didn't tell me was that I had to dig a trench under the feet of the platform so that I could install a 4x4 anchor bar three inches below the top of the soil, deep enough so the kids wouldn't kick it up during play, and secured to the anchor legs so it wouldn't move. It took quite a bit of effort, and the instructions for this thing absolutely suck. I played with it a bit today and realized that I would still have to install bolt covers over the top, since hands can reach up there and the bolts are exposed. Needless to say, the neighborhood kids are thrilled.

I also started reading volume one of the Warhammer 40,000: Grey Knights, by Ben Counter. My cover doesn't look like that, although it does have the Black Library logo on the side, and to say this has "snappy dialog and crunching action" is to seriously overstate the case: although the action is crunching and exciting, the dialog is thudding and dull. The plot is well-thought out, so far (I'm about halfway through it), but there's a bit of telling rather than showing, and Counter repeats himself in a few places to emphasize the age, skill, and affect of the Knights or the evil that they fight, and he will sometimes use cliched phrases or weak emphasizers as he writes. The book is obviously written once to spec.

We used the grill for the first time Sunday night, making hot dogs and grilled corn on the cob. Omaha made a pasta salad, which was probably for the best as my recipe is a bit more than just what comes out of Betty Crocker.

Practicing the manly arts

Monday, since we had the day off, I spent the morning doing chores and making pancakes, and then I went outside to engage in the manly arts. In this case, finishing the next playset component, the monkey bars. I had to drill 1 1/8th inch holes into the 4x4s for the bars and then pound on them, hard, with the sledgehammer to get the dowels into the holes. As the dowels had been under the eaves all winter long, they were waterlogged and swollen just enough to require an awful lot of pounding with the three-pound sledge to get the whole unit assembled. And after all that, I didn't have enough parts! The instructions call for four six-inch carriage bolts, and I have only a few four-inch bolts left. The hardware store within bicycling distance was closed, and I'm not willing to drive the car at $4 a gallon unless absolutely required. So it'll wait until tomorrow. The neighborhood kids came over to play with my kids and I kept having to tell them to get away every time I pulled out the power saw or drill.

I must be tired. After all that working, I'm having spelling errors up the wazoo as I type. I'm gonna go make myself an Arnold Palmer and start thinking about dinner.

Comments

You're so manly.

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

Wow, look at those arm muscles bulge! ;p

Musta been the home project day today. Had I known we could have picked up stuff for you when we went to Home Depot. I'm afraid I was an evil consumer and wasted lots of gas today. Got stuff done though.

[slfisher.livejournal.com]

I was just going to say the same thing!

hawwt picture, dude.