Satan’s Garden

It’s been about a month since I last wrote anything here, but there are times when the creative veins are all dried due to the press of prosaic garbage in your life. This is one of those times.

Aside from the usual work hassles and dealing with the daily Utard parade on the commute, my wife and I decided to spend a rather large chunk of money getting new windows put in the house, before we spend the other half of our vast fortune on fixing up the long neglected stucco on the outside walls. What should have been a two day job, has turned into a pissant circus of the irritating - as the contractors brought in squandered away my good will with their laziness.

The story is a boring one, let’s just resolve to saying that beyond all the screw ups on the job itself, when a contractor promises on Friday to call back the next Monday, but never picks up the phone - there are going to be problems. Worse yet the guy actually tried to claim that he did attempt to call to no answer, but my cellphone has never failed to notify me of a missed call before, so I have my doubts.

The result is that a week went by from the start of the job, with the windows unsealed and the threat of wet weather looming. Thankfully it remained dry and by the time my complaints got through to the right ears at the place where we bought the windows (who arranged the contractors for us) some ears were chewed on. Finally, the contractors returned and cheerfully finished most of the job.

That’s right, most of the job. There is still the issue of one window which was measured incorrectly (by the same contractors on the initial specs, of course,) where they displaced the X and Y measurements, leaving us with a window with the weep holes on the side. He kindly offered to cut new weep holes into the existing frame, but when I’m paying this kind of money, I expect to get the right thing, not a hack. Funny too, that a “professional” contractor would install a window with improper weep holes and not even notice it.

Overall, I’m underwhelmed. If there is but the slightest problem with weather or what have you, I think I’ll be spending the stucco money on a lawyer instead.

Which leads me to my general topic of angst for the week; what ever happened to taking pride in your work?

It’s not that I’m mechanically or construction inclined, but I’ve reached a point where I’m ready to give up on “professionals” and to do it myself instead. It will take longer, I’ll hate every minute of it - but it will be done correctly.

Sorry woodworkers and construction craftsmen, but I don’t share your love of house renovations. Just tearing the old carpeting out of the master bedroom the other week was enough to make me want to crawl into a cave and give up on houses altogether. I don’t enjoy it. I’d rather pay someone who does enjoy it to do the job - but I’m finding that either I have the worst luck in the world with contractors, or there are no good contractors left in the world - or at least in Utah.

So, I’m faced with the do-it-yourself route and a house full of projects to do: Tearing out all the carpeting and laying down hardwood floors in the living spaces and tile in the bathrooms, re-building the entire upstairs kitchen, replacing at least one bathroom shower, replacing the same bathroom’s basin, etc, etc. Just the floors are going to be a job and half, tearing out the old and simply disgusting sub-flooring, putting new sub-floor in place and then hoping I can put down the wood flooring without building the kind of structure straight from Little Bill Daggett in “Unforgiven”.

I’m probably going to need anesthesia to make it through sane. Can you successfully do this kind of job drunk?

June 30th was the 100th anniversary of the Tunguska blast in Siberia. (Google for “Tunguska Event” as there is far too much material to link here…) General estimates of the blast put it at 10 to 15 megatons (though some now argue 3 to 5 megatons), or about 1,000 times the Hiroshima detonation. 830 square miles of trees were flattened. Windows shattered 250 miles from the blast center. The fluctuations in air pressure were measured in England, thousands of miles away.

In short, it was one hell of a bang.

No crater was left behind, making it likely that it was a meteor or asteroid, maybe even a small comet burst in mid air.

The problem is, aside from tree damage, we have no physical evidence of the “object”, if there really was one. Basically, we don’t have a clue at this point, but it’s fun to speculate. You can certainly spend hours reading every take on it.

My take is simple: nature still has the last laugh.