bluh

I’m back from France. More details to come later, but suffice it to say, I really enjoyed it. The cats are really happy to see us back (Miebutte curled up on my lap right now) and the dogs are very tired from over a week of playing with other dogs. Otherwise the trip was entirely unremarkable in that our house is intact, all pets accounted for and despite being encased in a solid 2cm sheet of ice, the Golf fired right up and got us home safely.

I reckon it also bears mentioning that on the flight back, I finished Gravity’s Rainbow somewhere about 200 km north of Quebec City. This book has a message and that message is STAY AWAY.

I have been slacking on Gravity’s Rainbow, utterly slacking, and I’m not fucking sorry. It had been at least a week and a half since I picked it up yesterday.

According to Firebase Igloo, we’re on about 25 pages per day rate, so I’m about halfway from where I should be.

But you know what? I don’t fuckin’ care. I read about 100+ pages at the Skylark last night, sucking down pints of PBR and munching on tater tots in the hulking shadow of the Dan Ryan, and all of what I read sucked. Miz Icyhot was right, this book goes hot and cold.

But, in lieu of reading that pile, I’ve been getting shit done.

I singlehandedly caused and cleaned up from a minor flood. Last Sunday night, we moved the refrigerator into the kitchen and hooked up the water line for the icemaker. I ran the 1/4″ OD PEX tubing up from the saddle valve in the basement and everything seemed hunky-dory. I awoke Monday morning, a mere 8.5 hours later and stumbled downstairs to find a pair of clean pants, noticing a strange THWOCK THWOCK THWOCK THWOCK sound. The box fan we left on to circulate air was making this sound, as it was in ankle-deep water. The tubing blew off the compression fitting and it puked water out all night long. Needless to say, we now own a wet-dry vac and I believe I emptied its 12 gallon tank at least 10 times that day. Always double check the ferrule on compression fittings. Always.

The kitchen works now, PRABOB, despite still having some unresolved countertop issues. The sink is hooked up, the dishwasher is unbelievably quiet and cleans MUCH better than the old busted one, the cabinets and countertops and floors and everything look fantastic. Nice.

I got a lot of wrenching done on the NB.

I apparently got two guys fired.

We lost Rusty yesterday and found him about 0130 this morning.

We saw Mexican Cheerleader at some craaaazy latino bar.

We saw 28 Weeks Later. F+ as a sequel, C as a zombie movie.

We have been enjoying this weather immensely.

I have not been reading Gravity’s Rainbow, and I don’t care. I may catch up and finish on time and I may not. Fuck it.

Is this incipient Stockholm Syndrome?

I curled up with two cats and started reading and found myself some 40 pages ahead of where I started before I tucked in my spot in the front cover fold for the night and I completely enjoyed what I read. It was fairly easy to follow, interesting, engaging and all around good writing.

The detail and focus on materials was interesting from an engineer’s perspective, yet totally unnecessary. Still made for – dare I say it – fun reading yesterday.

So just like everybody else with more balls than brains, I’m in on the Gravity’s Rainbow Death Pact, a sort of fuck-you-Thomas-Pynchon murder suicide mutually assured destruction meets the Boy Scouts of America.

And just like every other right-thinking member of this group, I started early.

This book sucks.