Raisin Bran, Bikes and Visits to the Great Outdoors...

This week I got confused and thought that Friday was Saturday.  I went out to the lot and cut down the rest of the wild rose brambles.  It wasn't terribly easy, because it is the nature of  wild rose to grow outward from the stem.  That means you have to try to crouch down in the six inches of snow and try to work into the stems through the hanging, thorny ends that seem determined to poke you in your bald scalp and face.  Then you cut them as close to the ground as you can without dipping your trusty circular saw (totally what it was made for) in the snow, where it will melt some with the hot electric motor, short and shock the crap out of you.  Then when you have cut the stalk you try to avoid the thorns as it falls directly on top of you.

Awesome job.  Anyway, I finished with them.  By the end I was absurdly cold.  It was in the high teens.

Later that night, I got an amazing hankering for Raisin Bran.  I don't know why.  But I went to Smith's to get some, and made it just before they closed at midnight.  I bought two boxes, and went home.  I got really tired though and fell asleep without opening one.  The next morning, which I eventually realized was Saturday, I opened a box and found this.

Yup.  That's as full as the bag was inside the box.  I looked at the net weight and started laughing.  8oz.  Oh well.  They were only about $1.75 a box.  And each was almost enough for two bowls.  So it goes.

After that I jumped on my bike on the rollers, and watched... I can't remember.  I usually watch foreign films while I ride my bike, because I can read the subs and not have to turn up the volume to irritating levels to understand the dialogue over the noise of the bike and rollers.  This time I watched some action movie that I'd seen a thousand times, so I didn't need dialogue.

But I hit a milestone with the ride.  1000 miles since I put the odometer on the bike.  Not too bad.  Except I think I put the odometer on almost two years ago.  It looks like 10000 in the picture, but there is a decimal point before the last zero.  So.  Maybe not so impressive.  Oh well.

I decided to go out to the lot and tackle putting the wire fabric on the fence.  It has taken me way too long to get to this point.  And I feel bad, because it means Tony's been waiting on it for a really long time.  I don't know why I have been so anxious about it.  It's just one of those things that stresses you out and you start putting it off.  That's happened to me a fair amount lately.  I get this feeling that I have to be prepared before I try some things.  It has to feel right.  I don't know what makes it right.  It is the reason that I'm always ready to go anywhere I have an appointment fifteen minutes before I need to leave, but then end up sitting there until I can move, till the time is right.  Then I end up being ten minutes late.

Anyway, I went out and got to it. It was both easier and harder than I thought it would be.  It was an easier process   I thought it was going to end up being way more complicated to splice the two fifty foot pieces of wire fabric, and too put the tension bars in and secure them to the terminal posts.  But it was harder because the rolls of wire fabric, which were about 75lbs originally, had a bunch of ice in them that made them about 125lbs.  The snow on top of them had melted, then refroze inside.  Also, difficult was the fact that I had really mangled the rolls getting them in and out of the car.  The good folks at Lowe's had tied the rolls together with wire at the store to make it so they didn't all fall apart and fall off the pallet while they were stocking them in the garden center.  I got impatient when I was trying to put them in the car, because some nice guy who was walking into the store stopped to help me, and it was taking an absurdly long time to get them in. I felt bad that I was taking his time.  I was doubly frustrated trying to take them out alone in Magna.   The result was that they were hopelessly tangled by the time I got them out of the car, and some of the wire fabric had been deformed when they were snagged and I was relentlessly manhandling them.  The point was that when I was trying to put them up I kept having to work out snags.

The problem was that the temperature was in the low teens, and my little black cloth gloves kept melting a little snow then freezing to the metal of whatever piece I was working on.  I was getting really cold and frustrated, so when the sun went behind the ridge of the Oquirrhs I decided to call it a day.  The fabric is up, and temporarily tied to the fence, but I still have to stretch it, place the tension bar at the end and secure it to the end post, then remove the additional 34ft of wire fabric, cut the last toprail to fit, then go back and do permanent ties to the posts and rails.  Probably about another hour of work.  Monday I guess.

Prisoner of 2nd Avenue...

This pic is how I've felt today.  It's the fire escape outside my rear window.  I tried desperately to get out of the apartment.  Tried to escape.  I didn't make it though.  I haven't, except once this week.

Last night I went to dinner with Mark and Holly LaRocco and their kid, Chad and Val Rawlinson and Chad's kid sister and her husband.  It was a little weird to see his sister as a married adult.  I taught her swim lessons when she was about three feet tall.  We went to Crown Burger.  M. Russel Ballard was there, eating with his wife.

Dinner was the first time I'd seen Chad in a few years.  We emailed back and forth from time to time about motorcycles mostly, then at about the same time I lost my job and he and his wife lost a pregnancy in the third trimester.  We wrote a series of really emotionally fraught emails.  Then we just stopped, and I worried I'd dug in too deeply with him when he was still too raw.  His experience was worse than mine.  Really hard.

Anyway, it was nice seeing them.  And it was good to get out.  I really tried hard today.  Really hard.

Before dinner I went to the library, and after to Lowe's.  I went to Lowe's to get something to use as spreader bars for the hammock I made with my Mom and Dad over Christmas.

I made Dad do all the math of measuring.  It is pretty complex.  Then Mom helped a lot with the sewing.  It was a bit of a mess.  We ended up not having enough fabric, and other odds and ends.  It was a bit of a hassle.  Both Mom and Dad had minor meltdowns at various points.  I was really grateful for their help.

It is relatively easy to tell the seams Mom did, and the ones I did.  I did the one above.  You can see how two seams became one.  Not so straight.  The one below was Mom's.  Very straight.  But I got a lot better as time went on.

This is the final product.  Not bad if I do say so myself.  It's just good that we changed methods on the second end cap vs the first.  It gave a little more room at the foot, which ended up being necessary.