I repeat: We have achieved shelving!
I finally had time and sufficient hardware to slap together three sets of bookshelves on Sunday. Between building the shelves and unpacking and sorting books, Operation Shelving took me damned near 12 hours to finish. Yes, 12 hours. Trying to force screws through rock-hard cedar is no picnic. Please, don’t try this at home unless you have a drill. Otherwise, your hands may turn to hamburger. Actually, the hamburger is partially due to the fact that some dog who shall remain nameless chewed the hell out of the handles of a couple of my screwdrivers. About halfway through Operation Shelving, it occurred to me that maybe I should wrap the chewed bits with duct tape, but by then the hamburger was made.
But, it’s done, done, done. Hallelujah! I still have a couple of boxes of art books to unpack, but those will go in the studio, so I’m not worrying about them just now. Besides, the bookcase they go in needs a coat of paint before I can put anything in it. I should have taken care of that a couple of weekends ago, when it was 75F and sunny outside. Now, I’m going to have to paint it indoors, which will probably end in tears when the inevitable paint-on-carpet tragedy occurs.
In any event, this means that I can finally focus on getting the studio unpacked. I’m not sure yet what Ms. Lea’s weekend packing and moving plans are, but I suspect I’ll have at least one day to work on the studio, which makes me happy.
And, speaking of things that make me happy, I have found perhaps the world’s most perfect carpet stain remover. I may have mentioned it before, but it bears repeating: Woolite Oxy Deep. It’s damned good stuff. It even removed dried blood stains from the carpet at the old place [1]. I had tried just about everything I could think of and had just about given up on finding something that would work. This stuff removed it quickly and with a minimum of elbow grease.
And now for the crankypantsing. I was busy all weekend and didn’t get much sleep, so I was looking forward to sleeping in on Monday and spending pretty much the whole damned day sitting on my ass. The only problem was, I didn’t account for Milton and His Spectacularly Loud Television. Holy crap! I woke up at 7am to the morning news, blaring away from upstairs. That went on pretty much all day, then through the night, he plunked on his bass guitar. He must be learning to play, because when I first moved in, he was working on simple scales. Now, he’s graduated to adding halftone decreases to the up progression and halftone increases to the down progression. Only, he fucks up about every third note. This went on all freaking night. The man must not ever sleep!
Then, when I got home yesterday, I noticed that his television was on, but for once, it was at a sane volume. Hmmm. That’s the first time he hasn’t had it on full-blast since I moved in in late September. I wonder if someone complained? The folks who share a wall with him can’t be any more thrilled than I am with the noise.
Alas, the bass playing went on last night as scheduled, from about midnight until I left this morning at 5:45. Which really makes the mind boggle, when you think about it. That’s six solid hours spent doing nothing but playing scales–and badly, at that. It makes no sense from the standpoint of learning to play an instrument, which makes me wonder if it’s an OCD sort of thing, wherein he just cannot put the instrument down until he completes the given scale perfectly.
I dunno. I do wish he’d turn the damned amplifier off, though. What kind of jackass thinks it’s reasonable to play electric bass all night in an apartment complex? It is sure to make the Baby Jeebus weep.
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[1] The body was buried in the front yard. And, no, I’m not kidding.
red paper boat 