As some frequent readers may have guessed from the timestamp on my rambling Columbia eulogy earlier, I had just returned from taking Lisa to the airport. She has one last session of dental surgery with her Boston dentist, and had a 6:45 flight this morning. So I’ve been up since about 4:30. When I got home this morning I collapsed on the couch and started writing—I had to, to get my thoughts out, and the grammar shows it.
After writing, I read the paper and then decided to get busy. Making waffles has to be the most rewarding form of manual labor I know: a relatively small number of ingredients, no assembly or processing save stirring, and a quick hover over the waffle iron later, they’re all done. In the meantime between waffles I cleaned up the kitchen. Then I got a foil pot roast in the oven (it should be ready about 3) and headed to the garage.
The first order of business with Lisa out of town is to finish the loud projects in the garage that I’ve been postponing, namely starting with the drawers under the workbench. I had to rethink my initial plan a little bit: I don’t have any lumber that is both thick enough to support the weight of the drawers and tall enough to allow the drawer slides to be mounted near the bottom and still attach to the crossbraces at the top. So I cut six cleats, six inches tall, from a 1×4 board, mounted one each to the front and back of the drawer slides, and mounted both drawers’ slides on either sides of two cleats in the center. The next step is to bolt the cleats to supporting cross-boards at the top and bottom, then mount the top cross-boards to the workbench studs. By then the pot roast should be ready, and I can move onto the next step: gumbo.
What? Hey, I’m cooking for a week here. And besides, no matter how much of an escape it may be, there’s no therapy like building things with your hands.