Windy Wednesday

It wasn't blowing at all this morning but by mid-morning you could feel the wind picking up and by noon, it was stiff and right straight out of the north.  And cold?  You betcha--brrrr.  The temps are dropping just like the Weather Man said.  We're down to 12 now and there's no bottom in sight tonight.  I'm guessing we will be flirting with zero one side or another by tomorrow morning.  It's 75 here in the computer room so I reckon 12 don't make no difference to us one way or another--at least as long as the cars start in the morning.

It was an interesting day at the office.  Sharon W. came in and demanded a "style score."  We do that.  Some of us try to make all of our clothes match in color and shade.  Then we get another co-worker to score our style.  We gave her a 10+ this morning.  Her color matching was superb.  Mine wasn't too shabby--brown hat, jacket, shirt, suspenders, belt and shoes!  I got knocked down a point for the watchband which was black.  DANG!

After seeing Sharon in her pink & purple get-up,. I decided to start taking photos of the Division Staff so that the new person would be able to learn our names when they get hired on.  I had to go through the usual song and dance wherein nobody wants their picture taken.  Eventually, they got over it.

Meanwhile, I got a wild hair and decided I wanted to burn some company money and fly over to Boise.  I did some emailin' and explainin' and smilin' and so forth and,. by and by, I got approved for the gig.  I will fly over on January 26 and return on January 27.  The whole shooting match will only cost the company $250.
I need to talk to our State Office Staff.  The State Office Staff are federal employees and we need to have a pow-wow about a lot of stuff that can only be relayed face-to-face.  Stuff relating to my employer--you know, THAT kind o' stuff.

I had a nice long talk with Bryan B. in Salt Lake.  He's a great volunteer.  Someday, we're gonna be working together on some sort of volunteer project.  Jeff F. called and set up a lunch regarding the bluegrass gig.  I think that's next Thursday, the 14th at the Brownstone.  Ain't not a speck of low carb stuff inside the walls of that place!  They brew their own beer there--fat lot of good that will do me but at least I will get to look at the shiny vats and pipes and so forth.

After leaving the office, I went to the leather shop and bought three yards of real wide velcro.  I love velcro and I kinda feel naked whenever I don't have any of it handy.  Kind of like duct tape, baling wire and electrical tape.  A guy needs to have all four of those items immediately at hand all the time.  When the going gets tough, you can just lay your hands on one or all of the four and there's practically NOTHING they can't fix.  Right off the bat, I needed some velcro to keep my snowshoe gaiters from slipping down my calves.

Then it was off to Home Depot to tackle a righteous Honey Doo project.  The previous owners of this place tried to put some lipstick on it by adding a storm door on the front.  The door was too short to fit the opening so they got a "door extender" but it was too short, too.  They tacked it on the door with barely an 1/8th inch to spare.  Naturally, the freaking thing falls off all the time.  Well, I had fully intended to fix the danged thing this summer but I was having too much fun to mess with a storm door in the summer.  Fall came and, pretty soon we were in Arizona.  Now, it's getting righteously cold up here and that 3 inch gap below the storm door is letting in huge amounts of cold air, a lot of which is then getting under the entry door.  Something had to be done and procrastination was not an option.

So I went to Home Depot thinking I could simply get a bigger "door extender."  HA!  If only it had been so easy.  There ain't no such thing.  Finally, I realized the front door didn't have a right & proper thresh hold and that would solve the problem.  So, I bought a cheap $7 thresh hold and some drill bits and some concrete anchors and figured I would be set.

Then I hustled off to WINCO and made my usual hunting and gathering trip through the store.  Upon return just before 5 pm, I set about to fix the door before darkness fell.  It was a real race against the clock.  Obviously, I had to trim down the thresh hold with a hack saw.  So far, so good--until the hack saw blade shattered into a lot of tiny pieces.  I've never seen a hack saw blade shatter--that was a whole new one on me.  So I wound up finishing the job with a miter saw.  Trust me, do not try that trick yourself.  Aluminum and miter saws just don't mix.  But I managed to muddle through and made four different cuts and got the bugger to fit OK.  Then, I whipped out my new Harbor Freight corded drill, powered some pilot holes and screwed that puppy DOWN!  Next, I trimmed the rubber gasket without cutting myself (a miracle) and finally, refit the door extender so that it snugged up tight to the thresh hold gasket.  Whew, it was pitch black dark by that time and brrrr cold, too!  But it's done and there's no air leakage--none--and the wife is a happy camper.

We're eschewing movies for awhile.  After The Lebowski Affair, I've pretty well had it with movies.  We're going back to vintage television.  I bought the first two seasons of Northern Exposure so we're going to start with Season One, Episode One tonight and then watch the whole series one-by-one. That should keep us occupied all winter and each episode is just about the right length for my AADD attention span.

That's about it for tonight--gonna be real interesting to see how cold it gets tonight.  Any bets?