This Weekend

Well the book club was a success, or as one of our readers put it, the “wine club”. We had a couple new faces that were really faces from long ago. We had a great time catching up before we repaired to dinner and then discussion of the books.

The discussion wasn’t quite as good as last time, mostly I think because people didn’t enjoy the books quite as much this time around. The Glass Castle is the memoir of some neglectful/delusional/drunk parents and their suffering children. The kids were extremely intelligent and were able to break free of the family one by one when they became juniors in high school. They grew to depend on each other early and late in life, as their parents were essentially worthless.

Many of the readers found the story irritating and frustrating, but it was a good read. In the beginning of the story, I almost found myself envious of pieces of their vagabond life. A common complaint was “why didn’t they do something”, i.e. get out of this abusive situation. I find myself thinking about what I would do, but in reality this is me thinking as a 40 year old, not as a 10 year old. Would I have the strength then to get out? The book actually deals with this pretty well when one of the daughters takes over while the mother is out of town.

The Traveler was the thriller with some “big brother” themes to it. Not the best thriller out there, but I found it pretty interesting. The technology of the book is pretty much here already. Not everyone finished the book, so the discussion was pretty limited. The book is supposed to be the first in a trilogy, and it was good enough for me to pick up the next one.

Sunday started pretty lazily (probably the wine). And it was raining. I had some things to do outside, so I checked weather.com to see how long the rain would last. The radar was green (rain) everywhere with no end in sight. So I put on my work clothes and headed out.

The first task was to clean out the bed of the truck. There were some things I had picked up from my father-in-law’s storage that I hadn’t unloaded yet. The next step was to take the canopy off of the truck for the next trip down. I have had the canopy on for over 7 years and it has never come off. I originally didn’t like getting one, but I needed it for carrying around tools for work. The wife was inside listening to a presentation on fabulous vacuum cleaner. Some neighbor kid (20 something) wanted to try out his sales technique, and the wife took pity.

So anyway, I was on my own to get the canopy off. It is a bit heavy, and of course awkward. It took some prying just to get it unstuck from the bed of the truck. Seven years of heat and weather is pretty good glue for the weather-stripping. It actually took up some paint. I crawled up under it and did my best Atlas impersonation and lifted and spun the canopy so now it was sideways on the bed. Now I had to get it down. Some towels and patience and I had it slid off and walked across the side yard. I have found I am a pretty good MacGyver when figuring out how to get something done. For a while building decks I was on my own, and you have to get kinda creative when doing things that should be a two-man job.

As I was wet already, I started trimming back one of our trees so that our yard waste can would be full for Monday’s pick up. I don’t really know what I’m doing, but the wife said it looked better than when I started. By the time I headed back in, the sales presentation was over. It had gone way over on time, something the “kid” needs to work on. True to his word though, he hadn’t tried to sell it to her - she had to ask what the vacuum cost. The wife was in no way tempted to buy the system as the price tag with all the attachments was $2,000. He will have a tough time out there