Odd Job Confirmed

And no, I don’t have a Bowler hat I can fling like a Frisbee to kill people.

Now that’s an introduction.

Last week I mentioned I was going to be assisting at the Makerspace on the Langara campus. While that has not yet started, I know HR has approved the “hire” and that they need someone to cover a lot of days between now and April 7th. I don’t know how quickly the paperwork will get resolved, but I might be on campus this coming week.

As you know, I write these typo infested missives on Fridays, and now it’s possible I will be working rather than sitting around eating bon-bons on those days. We’ll determine which days they really need me for as soon as the paperwork is in order. I think Tuesday and Wednesday are a given, but other days aren’t as clear. Apparently Philip (the new boss) and other instructors are covering things now, but having me take over might be useful. We’ll see.

Should it happen that I wind up working on Fridays I’ll move these posts to the weekend. If the next few posts are late, now you know why.

Looking over the past week it seems I am the most boring person on the planet.

The most exciting thing I am doing today (other than having home made pizza for dinner, thanks to my lovely spouse) is getting up on the roof and blowing off all the cedar seeds. Those have to go before the rain arrives again. Can’t have them getting into the downspouts.

As I said, boring. And over the last week it’s been very much the same.

In the previous post I mentioned this skylight:

which now looks like this:

Several rounds of installation, caulk, primer, and paint were involved in getting it to look like that.

As you might recall, that skylight is in the kitchen, and painting in there is the current task. Yesterday I did cut-in all around that room, and tomorrow I will start rolling the rest. The colour isn’t changing much, just getting a bit brighter and covering up the old stains. Probably the biggest change is that the sheen is going from flat to eggshell.

Honestly, the previous owners of this house really didn’t understand paint. Lots of rooms have (or had) two or more shades of white in the same room, often on the same wall. In some places it seems like they only ever primed… no paint. Slowly — very slowly — these defects are being remedied.

If you’re a regular reader, you’ve no doubt noted all kinds of things don’t get mentioned here. Most of the daily grind doesn’t make it. You don’t care that I did laundry or whatever. Also, I generally don’t tell you when I have done something dumb. There are two reasons for that. First, I dislike looking incompetent. Second, if I include all the times I screw up I’ll never stop typing. Posts like that would fill a data center’s worth of hard disks.

I screw up a lot.

As an example, yesterday, while painting, I suddenly discovered that my back hurt. I have no idea why that happened or how I did it. There were two times when — coming down the ladder — I didn’t realize I had one more step to go. Those were “interesting” as I was holding a can of paint and a brush at the time. The results were ungainly, but in neither case did my back hurt.

Still, something I did at some point pulled or twisted something back there — it’s muscle or tendon, not spine — and it was very much not appreciated last night.

How is it that I can hurt myself and not notice doing so?

Bodies! Feh. Definitely more trouble than they are worth.

Anyway, as you read these posts please imagine me messing things up in various ways and not telling you. You won’t be far wrong.

Also, a day off the ladder is probably a good idea before I paint some more.

And that brings this post to an end. Cheers!