Winter Shart Tarck '24: Race Two Predumble

I'm realizing that these "predumbles" are not so much a list of pre-excuses for a poor performance on Sunday but just plain and simple writing practice and sharing with the class.

That being that...

The Pie is outta town for an extended period of time.  I've committed to a few things during her absence:

* Complete our 2023 taxes.  I hate doing them, but we live simple lives, so they're not that difficult.  I just feel strongly that I should be able check some box online, and they can take whatever is required to keep me out of jail without me being involved.

* Run as much as I can squeeze in.

* Go to bed at a reasonable hour.

The night before she left town, we had a "visitor" to our back porch.

Through a series of coincidences and deductions, it was a guess that we had a small screech owl (dead or alive) on our light fixture.  It was gone in the morning, so assumed "not dead."  It was back the next night when The Pie was gone, and then I was convinced that I now "have" an owl, and it's my problem to build it an owl house.  I didn't wanna invest any money in the project, knowing there's a good chance I might build something, and the owl might snub its nose (beak?) at me.

So, Saturday go out on a ride with Türd and Stephen King tryna stay off the trainer and beat the rain.  I succeeded at the former but not the latter.

Still. home in time to wash all the diarrhea greenway mud off the bike and commence with the building of the owl house.
 

I think I've said it before, but I'm the most satisfied with home projects that can be completed in the manner of an old-timey ship at sea.  Make do with what you have on hand, and that's it.  That's how you end up with a bike wash station hose clamped to a gas lamp in your front yard.  So I commenced with the disassembly of a pear crate from the shed and an apple crate the was holding up one end of my sonic cleanser next to my bench.

Yeth, its absence was going to cause another issue to be dealt with, but with heavy rains coming later that evening, I felt like I was under a time crunch.  So with my rudimentary tools and 3/4 of a plan, I went to town.  I'm guessing I spent close to two hours with a small pry bar, hand saw, hammer, scalpel (yeth, scalpel), hacksaw... like I said, rudimentary.  The whole time, I kept peeping out to see if my visitor was back, as I was hoping to have it mounted before its arrival.  

I stopped whilst getting super annoyed at trying to cut a round hole in the sliding door with totally inappropriate tools to check the porch, and whaddaya know, it's back.  Oddly enough, most of the times we'd check on it the last two nights, it continued sleeping.  This time, half of it flew off, the other half stared at me with a pointy beak.  Dammit.  Not an owl.

Check the Facebook thread I'd created tryna figure out that to do, and find out that six hours ago, someone had postulated that it was actually TWO Carolina wrens.  Checks out.  Dammit.

Stop building the owl box and go watch a movie.

The good news being that I can still prop up my sonic cleanser. 

Two hours into Napoleon, I can hear the rain pounding down.  The good news is that the wrens are nice and cozy on the porch.  The bad news is that the sump pump is turning on, meaning that...

Did all my work moving those 200lb railroad ties two weeks ago to mitigate water issues in my backyard do anything useful?

Yeth.  Also no.

Rain water was pouring in where I needed it to go, but my neighbors leaves are clogging my two 12" drains.  Refusing to let this be my Waterloo, I spent a half hour trouncing around in the ankle deep water with a leaf rake and my Niterider, cleaning shit up and probably entertaining my neighbors in the process.

Back inside, finish my movie, get in bed well before midnight. 

Good jerhb, Dick.  We "race" on the morrow.