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Friday night I helped Mike clear out an area on his pond for ice skating. It has been cold enough here for long enough that the pond was now a nice sheet of ice. Mike wanted to host an ice skating party on Sunday, and the fact that it is going to be "Super Bowl Sunday" was not seen as any impediment. There was still an inch or more of snow on top of the ice though, and he wasn't sure how smooth the ice would be, so our job was to push aside all the snow, and see how smooth the ice underneath it was. There was also some talk of adding some water if need be to make things smoother.
We started around 6, and it was already dark out. Two of Mike's sons, Jacob (5) and Isaac (2) came along to help. We used brooms and snow shovels and - since this was a Mike project, there had to be a gadget thrown at the task - a gasoline-powered leaf blower. I wasn't very enthusiastic about the undertaking, as I was pretty certain I would be falling and busting my ass on the ice. Mike had managed to convince me that the ice was thick enough all over the pond that there was no danger of actually falling through it, but I am pretty graceless and couldn't imagine that I would be able to keep my feet out on top of a big piece of ice.
Incredibly enough I did not fall, although I slipped several times. I attribute my success at staying on my feet to trudging along like an old man. Isaac fell quite a few times and was eventually moved off the ice. Poor kid. He wanted to help out and be in the middle of whatever was going on, but I think at his age there is not much concept of balancing - if you start to slide, you're going down. It was a funny operation... cold, of course, dark, and one area of the pond was mysteriously stinky. I liked using the snow shovel. The leaf blower thing made me smell like gasoline, and didn't seem too useful. It was sort of weird process, since you were often clearing (and to some extent smoothing) patches that you then had to walk on. Still, somehow, I did not slip and fall down.
Eventually we decided that we had cleared out a large enough patch of ice, and Mike put on some skates and tested it out. He was able to skate with no problem. I felt surprisingly good at the end of the whole thing. Maybe it was something about the (admittedly light) exertion while breathing in the cold air, maybe it was watching Jacob enthralled with the sight of his dad skating and seeing once again how much he likes his dad, maybe it was some sense of accomplishment, maybe it was just relief at not falling down, going boom. Probably it was some combination of all those. In any case I was in a good mood when I left, and found myself feeling better about this life, and hoping we can make the money required to sustain it.
After the man-zamboni adventure, I went looking for a local comic book store whose existence I had recently discovered. I had found them online, but couldn't quite envision the strip mall where they were supposed to be located, despite that I knew I had been in that area a few times since moving out here. I drove to and then around the strip mall and spotted the store on my second pass through the lot. In my defense, the place is freaking camouflaged. No garish promotional posters or life-size cutouts in the windows, not even the store's name in the windows. There was a giant sign hanging on the door announcing "we've moved", with an arrow pointing to the right - but no identification of who or what had moved. When I tried the door it opened, and behind it was the comic shop - a very quiet, very dark shop. There was something so muted about the whole scene, I would've sworn the place was closed before I tried the door.
It seemed like an OK store... above average, really. No Chicago Comics maybe, but they had quite a broad assortment of titles - so many in fact that they were really crowded together on the shelves, and you often couldn't see the whole cover of a given issue. No big deal I guess, I just had to paw through things a little. I wound up picking up a copy of "Fantastic Four: Unstable Molecules #1" which I liked quite a bit. I didn't think I would like it, either, as I am usually skeptical of piling anything heavy on colorful cartoon characters, but after thumbing through the issue I was pretty taken with it.
This weekend I am supposed to be working on getting my vanity domain names moved to a friend's server, and transitioning to a different email address. Alas, the personal email address that I have organized everything around is going away in just about a week. It's going to be a pain in the ass, but I can't bitch about it too much, as I had known this day would come. Of course, I have put off dealing with it til the last minute precisely because it's a huge pain in the ass, and I am a lazy, lazy man. Sigh. Ah there is no way this will be painless. I had told myself I would buckle down and straighten all this stuff out this weekend. Naturally I managed to make it through Saturday, a full half of the weekend, without even thinking about the whole mess, til now.
We started around 6, and it was already dark out. Two of Mike's sons, Jacob (5) and Isaac (2) came along to help. We used brooms and snow shovels and - since this was a Mike project, there had to be a gadget thrown at the task - a gasoline-powered leaf blower. I wasn't very enthusiastic about the undertaking, as I was pretty certain I would be falling and busting my ass on the ice. Mike had managed to convince me that the ice was thick enough all over the pond that there was no danger of actually falling through it, but I am pretty graceless and couldn't imagine that I would be able to keep my feet out on top of a big piece of ice.
Incredibly enough I did not fall, although I slipped several times. I attribute my success at staying on my feet to trudging along like an old man. Isaac fell quite a few times and was eventually moved off the ice. Poor kid. He wanted to help out and be in the middle of whatever was going on, but I think at his age there is not much concept of balancing - if you start to slide, you're going down. It was a funny operation... cold, of course, dark, and one area of the pond was mysteriously stinky. I liked using the snow shovel. The leaf blower thing made me smell like gasoline, and didn't seem too useful. It was sort of weird process, since you were often clearing (and to some extent smoothing) patches that you then had to walk on. Still, somehow, I did not slip and fall down.
Eventually we decided that we had cleared out a large enough patch of ice, and Mike put on some skates and tested it out. He was able to skate with no problem. I felt surprisingly good at the end of the whole thing. Maybe it was something about the (admittedly light) exertion while breathing in the cold air, maybe it was watching Jacob enthralled with the sight of his dad skating and seeing once again how much he likes his dad, maybe it was some sense of accomplishment, maybe it was just relief at not falling down, going boom. Probably it was some combination of all those. In any case I was in a good mood when I left, and found myself feeling better about this life, and hoping we can make the money required to sustain it.
After the man-zamboni adventure, I went looking for a local comic book store whose existence I had recently discovered. I had found them online, but couldn't quite envision the strip mall where they were supposed to be located, despite that I knew I had been in that area a few times since moving out here. I drove to and then around the strip mall and spotted the store on my second pass through the lot. In my defense, the place is freaking camouflaged. No garish promotional posters or life-size cutouts in the windows, not even the store's name in the windows. There was a giant sign hanging on the door announcing "we've moved", with an arrow pointing to the right - but no identification of who or what had moved. When I tried the door it opened, and behind it was the comic shop - a very quiet, very dark shop. There was something so muted about the whole scene, I would've sworn the place was closed before I tried the door.
It seemed like an OK store... above average, really. No Chicago Comics maybe, but they had quite a broad assortment of titles - so many in fact that they were really crowded together on the shelves, and you often couldn't see the whole cover of a given issue. No big deal I guess, I just had to paw through things a little. I wound up picking up a copy of "Fantastic Four: Unstable Molecules #1" which I liked quite a bit. I didn't think I would like it, either, as I am usually skeptical of piling anything heavy on colorful cartoon characters, but after thumbing through the issue I was pretty taken with it.
This weekend I am supposed to be working on getting my vanity domain names moved to a friend's server, and transitioning to a different email address. Alas, the personal email address that I have organized everything around is going away in just about a week. It's going to be a pain in the ass, but I can't bitch about it too much, as I had known this day would come. Of course, I have put off dealing with it til the last minute precisely because it's a huge pain in the ass, and I am a lazy, lazy man. Sigh. Ah there is no way this will be painless. I had told myself I would buckle down and straighten all this stuff out this weekend. Naturally I managed to make it through Saturday, a full half of the weekend, without even thinking about the whole mess, til now.
