The liberals can understand everything but people who don't understand them." - Lenny Bruce

Something lost in translation

It keeps raining, and the creek that runs under the road just this side of Veneta is flowing high, fast, and muddy.

I got the demo on Fred's loft finished today. It's still a mess up there, so there's several hours of work before I can begin work on wiring and insulation. I've got to get the rest of the demo material to the trash pile and and remove all the nails in the rafters. We're talking hundreds of small nails that head the paneling in place.

Here's a pic of a couple of the 6 or so pieces of bee hive I pulled out of the wall. They're about 8" across. Tomorrow I'll spray some expanding foam into the very small gap that allowed the bees to get in.

The loft had a hinged lid over the opening that was permanently propped open. I want it to open and close so all the heat I'll have in the lower part - my office - doesn't escape into the loft. So I've got to come up with some way to make that work. It needs to open from below, have some kind of latch mechanism to hold it open while you ascend the ladder and climb into the loft, and then be easily closed. Then that process has to be reversed for descent.
Or, I may just make a lid out of a foam insulation panel that would be so light no hinge is necessary. Just push/lift it out of the way and replace it when you're up/down.
I'll figure it out when the time comes.

I sure wish there was a way the Republicans could boot Trump out of the party. Maybe there is and they're working on it behind the scenes. But it looks like that pledge they all signed to support the eventual nominee has come back to bite them on the backside.

In addition to a teaching trip to Puerto Rico in February and Tanzania in March it looks like I'll be going to Brazil later in the year. But first we're going to Seattle to celebrate my mom's 93rd birthday on Christmas Eve, and then to Phoenix the second weekend in January to see the kids & grandkids. We're really looking forward to both!

Some mornings it's just a paragraph or two, sometimes as many as four or five. But each morning I'm making progress and enjoying the work.

I heard an extended interview with Yo Yo Ma on NPR while I was working in the loft. Coincidentally, he's performing in Eugene tonight and I wish we were there.
His latest album, Songs from the Arc of Life, contains selections for each stage of life. The interviewer asked him what stage of life he thought was most traumatic, most difficult. He started his answer by identifying adolescence as particularly difficult, but went on to say that each stage has its own challenges and stresses. And individuals have their own arc that may make their most difficult stage different from another's.
Yeah, so far my most difficult was he adolescent years. I might change my answer 10 years from now, but I had no fun from about 10 to 18.
Then I met Pam.