Argh, argh and ARGH!
Argh #1: Two of my old woodworking clamps gave up the ghost today. They weren’t great clamps. I’ve been slowly trying to replace some of my oldest clamps with good clamps. My oldest clamps are some cheapy bar clamps from Home Depot that I bought back in 2000. They aren’t all that strong, and the workmanship is pretty poor. I didn’t know all of that at the time, though–they looked like fine clamps to me. One of them now has a permanent bend in its bar, which affects how far apart I can set the clamp heads. The other has a stripped clutch so that its movable head won’t lock anymore, which makes it completely useless. So, tomorrow I’ll try to get a few new Besseys. Then I can complete the table I’m working on for Jenny, and get back to work on a small clock for some friends.
Argh #2: I cleaned our oven earlier, then cleaned it some more today, then tried to use the broiler. First the broiler tray came off of its tracks, so I had to fix that. Then the smoke detector went off because I apparently didn’t find ALL of the mess from the off-kilter pan during the party a few weeks ago. So I got all of that fixed, got my hoagies made, and put them under the broiler to get toasty. I went to pull them out, and the broiler tray came out of its tracks AGAIN, sliding part of one sandwich onto the floor, and part of the other sandwich onto the pan. Argh.
Argh #3: The boat we were trying to get fell through. The boat needed several hundred dollars worth of material (plus another several hundred dollars worth of labor, which even though we were going to do the labor ourselves, it still carries a cost with it), so we offered material+labor less than his asking price. He decided to be extremely inflexible, and still was asking for more than he paid for it (I know because I talked to the previous owner while researching the boat’s history). Last time I looked, boats were a depreciating asset. If there had been some sort of major restoration, or if this were an extremely rare boat, I could understand. It’s a 30 year old boat that is in good shape but needs some work, and will continue to need some work due to its age. Oh well. So we continue to look.
There are some arghs for today. On the bright side, I got started on a clock for some friends (gotta love back-of-a-napkin designs that actually work), I finished the majority of the work on Jenny’s occasional table (it needs to have its top installed, finish sanding done, and finish applied), I actually did my first fitted flush drawer and it WORKED (hooray for correctly-tuned and sharpened planes), and I had some really good italian-style subs for dinner. Yum. Also on the plus side, Jenny and I had a great time at light-up night last night in Pittsburgh. We were frozen by the time we got back to the car, but we had a great time. The fireworks were really good (which is a change from years past), and I think the cold and snow kept some people away. Whatever happened, we had no trouble at all getting out of the city. There were a LOT of people downtown for the fireworks and everything, though, so I don’t know whether the 30 minutes we waited before heading to the car really helped that much, or if lots of people were staying downtown, or what.
Hooray. Yay. Argh. OK. I’m done now.
jonathan
