The good ship Xanadu, as I'm currently calling it, complete with stately pleasure dome and caves of ice but no sign of Olivia Newton John, possesses no dearth of dings demanding attention. Yesterday repairs to the vessel consumed most of the day. I don't quite remember where it began, but I recall correcting a faucet nozzle early in the process. The main task was a minor matter by most standards: a sheet rock and insulation issue where water had damaged it under previous ownership.
I had the foresight to pick up a roll of insulation during the week. I didn't have the prescience to pick up a utility knife. I knew that I had such a tool, so never thought about getting one. The removal of the bad gypsum was mostly accomplished by gravity before I touched it. A good jerk and the rest of it came down. I removed the remaining nails, measured the hole, and transferred the measurements to the replacement sheet rock that was already on hand. During the course of these events, I did trash the ruined drywall and swept the area multiple times. Gravity was the culprit. The hole was horizontal rather than vertical and up rather than down relative to the floor. The insulation that had been blown in would sometimes catch a gravity wave and make the less than 2 foot fall to the floor upon which I had to lay to accomplish many parts of the task.
With the replacement marked, I looked for my utility knife in vain. I still don't know where it is. I know where it used to be. I kept it on the bench in the garage - of course, that place is over 300 miles away, and I know it's not there now, what with it getting packed when we moved. One would expect the purchase of a utility knife to be a quick and simple affair. Mostly it was. There were many to choose from, but I selected one that already had my name on it. With a slightly arched handle, it felt good in my hand, like some deadly ninja device, and promised not to cause more pain to me than to the target material.
It was the assembly that gave me troubles. No blade had been loaded. There were blades inside; I heard them rattle when I shook the tool. They were cleverly hidden within the device that was as easily cracked as a Herring Hall & Marvin. I managed. It would seem like an easy matter to install the new blade into the knife. It wasn't. I tried about 30 times to get the blade to seat properly in the knife so that it could be properly extended and retracted with the thumb-operated control. The two pieces of hardware refused to cooperate. I don't know what I did differently, but on the 30th, or perhaps I exaggerate and it was only the 28th try, the planets aligned and must've I held my mouth just right.
The knife cut very well, and I didn't make a mess of the drywall or the insulation that I cut with it. The planets really had aligned, and I kept holding my mouth just so. In only slightly less time than they took to build the pyramids of Egypt, I had the gypsum sheet cut and screwed in place. I followed that job with replacing the 8 foot long florescent light tubes--having discovered the replacement tubes being concealed beneath the fallen sheet rock--and again demonstrated my ninja-like proficiency with the utility on the remaining gypsum board to cut a cover for the attic crawl space.
The storage room shelves required a supporting actor for their monotonous performance, so I auditioned a 2x2 for that role. The actor required some attention in the form of measuring, marking, and cutting with the circular saw before final casting. Upon completion of those actions, it seemed like a decent match. A few pointers from the screw gun made it fit the role perfectly.
I experimented with refrigerator and freezer options as well as parking options, finding success with the former but not the latter.
Meanwhile, the co-captain of the ship pursued her own agenda. She got a lot of boxes unloaded, and drafted me for a preliminary rearrangement of the furniture, during which we discovered that pianos are not very flexible. If only it were an accordion.
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Here's the latest AI copy from the persons or scammers contacting me about Accidental Pirates:
What makes this novel compelling is the immediacy of its premise, two brothers, a simple summer outing, a crack in the rock, and suddenly the Caribbean of the 1770s. Pirates, dragonlings, flintlocks, and a fire-breathing Green Lady create the kind of high-stakes wonder that hooks young readers quickly. But beneath the swashbuckling energy is something equally important: brotherhood, courage under pressure, and the quiet transformation that happens when ordinary boys are forced to become heroes.
It's not bad.
