Life is Good

It was a pretty spectacular day. My employer puts a great premium on charitable activity, and as a result, they encourage us to go out and do good works on company time. This afternoon, I went out as part of something called "Paint the Town," whereby we help low income people that need some help with house painting. The little old lady in question suffered a stroke a couple of years ago, but to be honest, she wouldn't have been up to the task, anyway. She recently retired from Albertson's after working for them for 34 years! She and her (I assume, late) husband bought this house in 1972.

The house was built in 1934, and was in desperate need of a paint job. I volunteered for the power wash part of the project, figuring that with temperatures in the high 70s and low 80s, getting a little wet has to be better than being part of the scrape, caulk , and paint phases.

Indeed, it was quite nice. I've never used a high pressure gadget like this before. The label claimed 2200 psi, and I did not find that hard to believe. Along with removing, dirt, spider webs, and mold, it was also removing layer upon layer of paint. The top layer was gray-green; under that was a mustard yellow, then white, then something so neutral that it might have been the bare stucco. On the wood trim (at least, the wood trim that didn't fall right off the house--there was a bit of that), it was surprisingly easy for the sprayer to take it right down to bare wood.

Anyway, by the time I was done with my half of the house and the garage, I was covered from head to toe with water and vast numbers of little specks of many colors of paint. If my choice was wrestling with laser printer simulators, or power washing houses for this kind of pay, this wouldn't be a hard choice at all! (Of course, if people were regularly paid to power wash houses as well as I was being paid this afternoon, there would be murders committed to get the job.)

In the evening, we had arranged to have a gun safe mover come to the house. If there is a single piece of furniture more unpleasant to move than a gun safe, I haven't moved it. Pianos, at least, have handles on the back. Gun safes? The gun safe mover brought over some suction cup gadgets which apparently work great on highly polished surfaces, but on the crinkle finish of the low-end Browning safes, not so well.

By wild coincidence, the gun safe mover is someone that attends the same church as us, and as soon as my wife saw his wife getting out of the truck, I realized, "Oh yeah, you wrote 'Cliff's' on the paper. That's Cliff's Gun Safes!" So this was a bit more pleasant of a situation than I was expecting. It was still a physically demanding task getting the safe downstairs (hint: don't ever put the gun safe upstairs again), but there are worse ways to spend the early evening.

Just before I left the house, I received an email from the first recipient of ScopeRoller's latest product, the Leg Plug for the Losmandy GM-8 mount. The customer is very happy!

Coming back down the mountain from the new house, Styx's recording of "Come, Sail Away" was playing. With the Michelin Pilot A/S tires, the Corvette is a joy to drive, just as a way to get from point A to point B--without any need to squeal tires or test the outer limits of its cornering. All I could think was, "Life is good."