Andrew's View of the Week

Monday Working – Shed

Posted on 05/16/2022 by Andrew Reynolds

We’ve got a major project with a tight timeline going here in the garden. We’ve decided to replace the garden shed with a new one. The shed is likely twenty years old and is starting to have serious problems – the roof is rotting at the edges, the siding has water damage and is pulling away from the frame, the concrete slab slopes wrong and water floods inside when it rains … The list goes on and on. I had thought about repairing it, but that would take a lot of time and money. The other option is to replace it. Turns out we can buy a prefabbed garden shed that is better and cheeper that one I could build myself.

So Heather and I did the on-line design thing for the shed company and after a lot of thought we came up with a configuration we liked. I was thinking it would take the company a few months to build and deliver it, but no – it arrives a week from Thursday. That’s part good and part bad. Good because it will give me all summer to add shelves, potting benches and cool stuff. Bad because I have to demolish the old shed and clear the site before it arrives. I’ve decided to take the old shed apart carefully so I can save and reuse as much of the wood and other materials as I can. That takes time – a lot of time.

In fact, so much time that I’ll be skipping writing my Sunday posts for a couple of weeks. I’ll post a few pictures of project progress starting with these:

The old shed with some of the trim removed

Most of the stuff around the shed used to be in the shed – we had a lot of stuff in there.

Took a couple of days to get the inside cleaned out and the electrical wiring removed.

I’ve focused on clearing out the inside and removing shelving, hooks, the bench and wiring for the lighting.

Just a picture so I know how to reconnect this thing later.

One of the drip irrigation controllers is in this shed so that had to be temporarily relocated. I took this picture to document how it was wired up – could be a bad day if I reconnect it wrong.

That’s it for this week and until I finish this fun project.

If you need me, I’ll be in the shed.

Posted in garden | Tagged garden shed, garden shed demolition, wood recycling | 28 Comments

Friday Wisdom – College

Posted on 05/13/2022 by Andrew Reynolds

Today was our granddaughter’s university commencement ceremony. She received her Bachelor of Science degree. We’re one proud family today so here’s everything I’ve learned about college:

I told my father I was going to be an English Major. He said, “Good, better than a Canadian Captain.”

Math problem: “If I had two beer bottles in one hand and three in the other, what would I have?” Student answer: “A drinking problem.”

I was going to make a joke about sodium, but then I thought, Na …

I don’t tell jokes about school dances – the punch line is always too long.

The last thing the buffalo said to his son before he left for college was, “Bi-son.”

The hiking club at the local university is called, “the walking debt.”

There’s a move to pay college athletes for playing spots – Except in Tennessee – they’re Volunteers.

I told my mother I was going to clown college – she laughed.

I remember being so broke in college that I couldn’t pay the electric bill. Those were the darkest days of my life.

Did you hear about the spider who’s in college? He’s studying web design.

I studied history in college – but those days are gone.

A friend of mine is studying meteorology and just had a class on the effects of wind. She said the final was a breeze.

Posted in wisdom | Tagged humor, wisdom | 21 Comments

Random Writing

Posted on 05/08/2022 by Andrew Reynolds

I’ve thought about what I’ll write today, but then it started snowing and my brain sort of froze.

Yes, it’s currently snowing in the desert. Here we say that the month of May is so named because it may snow, it may rain, it may be hot, it may be windy … So far we’ve had everything on that list except the heat. Don’t worry, next Sunday it’s predicted to be sunny and 85 degrees.

Personally I’m blaming Heather for the change in weather – just this week I caught her pulling out her summer clothes. I try to keep the weather calm by never washing my car, so far that’s not been working.

Whenever there is wind here in the “Greater Reno-Carson City-Miden Area” the locals often remind each other what Mark Twain once wrote on the subject:

“It was two o’clock, now, and according to custom the daily “Washoe Zephyr” set in… a Washoe wind is by no means a trifling matter. It blows flimsy houses down, lifts shingle roofs occasionally, rolls up tin ones like sheet music, now and then blows a stage-coach over and spills the passengers; and tradition says the reason there are so many bald people there is, that the wind blows the hair off their heads while they are looking skyward after their hats.”

Personally I think Mr. Twain understated the case. I’ve often wondered how much unsecured lawn furniture gets blown over the Virginia Mountain Range and ends up in Fallon.

It’s also Mother’s Day. Not the best weather for it. The local National Weather Service office did officially apologize to all mothers on their Facebook page and promised to have better weather next year. It wasn’t too long after that post that the California Highway Patrol announced on their FB page that there are now chain controls over I-80 and the first weather related accident should happen before sunset.

On the Mother’s Day front, I managed to have my card presented to Heather before breakfast and I’ve ranked the kids based on the order in which they called their Mother today (just because they’re all over 40 is no reason to not call them “kids”). Turns out the one on vacation in Florida was the first. I was going to discount this slightly because of the three hour time difference, but because the next child to call was six hours later, our current number one child is the FL vacationer.

I did read a Mother’s Day poetry book today. Just last month Robert Okaji over at robertokaji.com announced his chapbook was on sale, so I bought a copy. The title is My Mother’s Ghost Scrubs the Floor at 2 a.m. I waited till Mother’s Day to read it. It’s good, go buy a copy.

Yesterday when it was just windy and not snowing, Heather and I went to a book launch event for Michael P. Branch and his new book, On the Trail of the Jackalope: How a Legend Captured the World’s Imagination and Helped Us Cure Cancer. We bought a copy and got it signed. It’s nice to be able to attend events like this again. This is a book you’ll want to buy. It’s a great combination of humor and serious and helps support one of our Nevada writers.

Before it started snowing I was thinking of rewriting one of my past posts, “How to Get Me to Read and Like Your Blog” Okay, I wrote that one in 2015, but after seven years, I think it could do with an update. I just reread that post and yup, it could use an update. I think I’d revise it to make one major point: If I can’t figure out what you are saying within 15 seconds, I’m out. I generally rank blogs I’m thinking of following on this scale:

Wow, love it! Follow, like and comment.
Maybe, I’ll follow for awhile.
Good but I don’t follow women’s fashion blogs.
No, I’m not buying whatever you’re selling.
OMG, I hope no one ever finds out that I clicked on that link.

Now that I’m older, it does take a lot more to get my attention. I mean, I’m starting to see the calendar pages fly by faster and faster so you’ve got to do something to really get me to click a link. Except for poetry, woodworking and kitty pictures blogs – I just click on those without thinking.

It has stopped snowing for the moment and my brain isn’t feeling as frozen. Sadly, it’s also time to go make our Sunday pizza so I have to stop writing now. Hopefully next week I’ll still remember what I was going to write about this week.

Posted in General | Tagged Book recommendation, humor, mother's day, Poetry, stream of consciousness | 26 Comments

Friday Wisdom – Committee

Posted on 05/06/2022 by Andrew Reynolds

I don’t think I’ve mentioned this here, but I am the Webmaster for the American Marquetry Society. Last night was our regular quarterly board meeting and I got assigned to the contest committee so naturally, here’s what I know about committes:

All meetings have to natural time limits: your laptop’s battery charge and the size of your bladder.

What do you get when you cross a cat with a wild boar? They pull your grant and you get a call from the ethics committee.

A camel is a horse designed by a committee.

Every person assigned to the committee was named William or as we like to call them, the billboard.

You can learn a lot during a meeting. I learned you can bend a paperclip in to an “S” with just one bend.

Committee: A group who individual can do nothing but as a group can determine that nothing can be done.

How many committee members does it take to change a lightbulb? This is a topic continued from last month, but because there are still outstanding action items will be continued next month.

We can to disband the horse committee – too many naysayers …

We tried have a horse on the committee, but he just kept voting “Neigh.”

There’s a new political action committee to project the rights of wine drinkers. They call themselves The Bacchus Caucus.

The Senate Intelligence Committee – I hate when I put the punch line in the title …