In 10+ years of marriage and familyhood, Sukie, the boy, and myself have gone on a few short sojourns; a weekend in California, a weekend in Moab (two times!) – but this trip we embark upon in 32 hours or so will put them all down. Perhaps.

You see, I have this approach to things. They test me, and so I test them, and often, I best them, and so I must jest them. Often in reverse, for I am a man who loves his wit like he loves his life; a little on the dirty side, but mostly clean.

So, when the great kingdoms of Walt and Disney test me, I shall savour their delicious fruits as they churn through my inner workings; am I improved, or are they improved, in this exchange? Who can say? It most certainly will rain, and I loves the splendours of the rains. I delight in its life-giving powers, it’s tiny, life-giving, vestibules of the purest varieties. The impudence! The impropriety!

Ah, I slipped in to a strange verbal trance there. You see? Even I have capabilities!

That this is a good time of year to go to Florida and the rain stays mainly in the plains. Well, that it rains like somebody just dropped a water balloon on the state, but that it stops raining just that fast.

Here’s to the longest 3 day work week in recorded history! (Though I worked on both weekend days so really this is day 8 of my work week!)

So if you’ve had to be around me at all this week you’ll probably have seen a different Wudan – depressive, cranky, moody …

Oh wait, I’m like that a lot. But I guess I don’t think I do, or something. It rarely bubbles up to the surface, I think. I push all those upset feelings down deep in to a vault that has a label on the door that says “Open In Case of _____” so I’m never sure when the denizens of the vault of upsettness will claw their way through my innards and show themselves to the my waking worlds.

Thank goodness I’m going on vacation next week. The 10-day forecast was looking like rain, EVERY DAY. So in my mind I was thinking, I’m going to the happiest place on Earth and it will rain EVERY DAY.

I like rain, but not EVERY DAY. Well, I checked yesterday and the first Saturday is SUNSHINE.

And so I have at least one thing to be happy about.

In fact, I’m goddamned ecstatic.

ECSTATIC. EXHILARATED.

So I’m glad it’s Friday. HUZZAH!

So on Saturday, around noonish, an army of good friends descended upon what used to be a dated basement room, which until about a month ago or so was just storage for Sukie’s excess fish junk. She has been working up to this remodel, first by reorganizing the garage, then by moving all her fish junk to the garage (which she then sold at huge losses), and then we ripped the room down to the studs, which was laborious, involved a trip to the dump to dispose of the waste, and finally we did some wiring and drywall hanging (last weekend)

So this weekend was *more* drywall hanging madness, window replacing, vent-box-cover-building, furring strip hanging, in a 12+ hour blitz that wouldn’t have happened at all without the help of really great friends. Oh yeah, we also replaced a basement window, which is just about the craziest thing I have EVER replaced in a house (well, the guts of the water heater was a pretty insane job, too.) Oh, and at like 1am I also got wireless working on Striker’s laptop.

I have been dreading a lot of the stuff that we got done yesterday, as I dread many things that seem beyond my capability or understanding. I’m not a handy guy, damnit. Take furring strips – I’d just write some code to handle it:

for xpos < ceiling_width:
tack_strip(xpos)
xpos += 16

But actually fastening a board to the ceiling is an insane task, hammering through a 2x2 and then in to a joist, potentially through a knot in the wood (note: breed trees without knots), is just asking for issues. Did I mention we got the kind of nails that have a friction-activated glue on them, so when you are driving one in you can't stop half-ways? We did get it and now everything from here on in gets attached with screws - well, except for the closet overhang thing.

We're still at <$1000 for the project, however, having just bought wood, drywall, screws, nails, a window, and the flooring (and Sukie bought mud and tape and stuff yesterday), so the room coming together like it has is starting to have it's benefits, chiefly being the sense of accomplishment, and knowing that it's shaping up to be a great room that the family can utilize for it's PC and study needs. I even ran power to the 'closet' because that's where I'll stick the router and wireless gateway. CRAZY, right? It won't just be in a pile next to my PC?

It really wouldn't be happening so quickly without great friends, and my beautiful wife of over 10 years.