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Journal
At lunch Tuesday April 6, 1999 I’m wondering about the significance of the weather. It’s in the low 60s under high clouds here in R-Town, yet it’s Vince’s birthday. In the 15 years we were together, it snowed on the 6th in 12 or 13 of those years. Tony seems to have brought some sunshine into Vince’s life, so why not on his birthday as well? I’m glad the weather’s been nice for the past few days, and not only for the obvious reasons. On Saturday, while I was opening it, I dropped the bathroom window 30 feet onto the pavement below. The window’s always been hard to open and close, my only guess is that I was leaning into it a bit more than the design specifications. Amazingly there’s only one crack on one side of the thermopane. But the frame is kinda fucked-up, so I can’t put it back in. I’m going to try to fix the darned thing tonight, but I’m not sure how well it’ll go. Anyway, it’s made for very quick showers in the morning as the overnight lows have been in the 30s, because no amount of hot water seems to compensate for the frosty floor and fixtures. Brrr! When someone’s angry with you , is it their obligation to tell you why, or is it your obligation to ask them? Or does one speculate and address the assumed cause of the anger at the risk of being wrong? In all incidents I can recall, the angered party has always made the reasons for their anger known. Then again, I come from a perpetually angry family, so maybe our "anger protocols" are different than those of the rest of the world.The reason I ask is that two weeks ago this past Saturday I angered Jim tremendously. Since then, we’ve had three conversations. The following morning, "I’m here to pick up my stuff." Last Monday on the phone, "I’m sending someone over to get the rest of my stuff," click. And last Thursday night, "I’m here for the rest of my stuff. I’m not coming in. You bring it down to me." In each case there was no response to anything I said. (Of course on the phone call, I was addressing a dead line.) There’s not much room for give and take in such short one-sided exchanges. I waited for what I felt was a reasonable cool-down period of a week and was trying to decide whether telephone or e-mail would be the better method of re-establishing contact, when he called last Monday. I’m not sure if my waiting for a cool-down period was misinterpreted as (further) callous disregard and that further infuriated him, or if there’s just nothing to be done. When I put my system back together, I checked the site logs (to see how much traffic had fallen off since March 18th) and found that Jim is still a regular visitor to the site, (he checked in just before 10:00AM today.) So he still has some interest on some level. The question is, how much interest, and on what level? Since our meeting was public through this site, and since Jim is still a regular visitor, perhaps the best way for me to try to re-establish contact is also through the site.
Late evening Tuesday April 6, 1999 I’m quite pleased with myself. J After winding down a bit from work, I tackled the bathroom window. I wasn’t quite sure I’d be able to do anything with it, but anything I’d be able to do would be free, so it was worth a shot. It’s an aluminum double-hung replacement window, and although I’ve rebuilt a couple of dozen of the old wooden ones with the sash weights, ropes and pulleys, I’d never had occasion to disassemble one of the newer types. Then again, its not every day one drops a sash thirty feet onto the pavement! Turns out, they’re fairly simple, and not at all unlike an aluminum storm window. Four aluminum extrusions screw together around the glass, you pop it into the track and slide a plastic and aluminum thingy up into the channel created by the slotted track and the slot on the side of the extrusion. Fortunately, I’d only dropped one of the sash, the upper one, so I still had the lower one available for investigation. It had to come out anyway because you have to put the upper one in first. Cool! The first thunderstorm of the season! I guess I got the window fixed just in time! Of course Jeffrey’s out with the car, sans driver’s window, again. But that’s another story. Anyway, once I figured out how to properly remove the window sash, it was easy to figure out how everything was supposed to work, and which parts were already broken enabling the upper sash to jump out of the track in the first place. I unscrewed the bent extrusion from the upper sash and gently straightened it. Aluminum is easy to bend, which is good, but you can also tear it, and that’s not so good. In any event, it took about ten or fifteen minutes of working it back into shape, and it’s nearly good as new. And even later ... Well, between the weather, doing a bit of masculine home repair, followed by soundly trouncing both Debbie and Jeffrey (the reigning "champeeeen", or is that legend in his own mind?) TWICE playing Zap! well, suddenly my hormones are rising! J
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