Once again, I’m working from home while a repairman fixes something. In this case, a garage door opener that was no longer living up to its name. We sure have had a lot of unexpected house-related expenses lately. I swear, they should’ve given us a punch card when we bought the place. Buy four repairs and the fifth one is free.
Just like every other repairman to set foot in MarTar Manor, this guy is not only familiar with the property – “we’ve been doing work here since the house was built back in ’79!” he told me, which tracks – but of course, he knows the previous owner.
“Dick was my teacher,” he said.
I swear, if I had a dime for every time I heard that, I could’ve paid for the new garage door opener out of pocket with change to spare. Dick was everybody’s teacher: the plumber, the electrician, the HVAC guy, Justin the Realtor. Probably the butcher and baker and candlestick maker, too. It feels weird that Dick wasn’t my teacher.
The garage door opener was replaced 15 years ago, which is about as good as anyone can hope for, according to the repairman-slash-former student of Dick’s. We could have had new springs and a pulley installed for a little less than half the cost of an opener, but given the age of the thing and the lack of any warranty on the repair parts, we decided to bite the bullet and have him install a brand new one instead. It’s only money, right?
“The only thing not covered by our warranty is a lightning strike,” he said. How an errant bolt of lightning would find its way inside our garage is beyond me, but with our recent bad luck, I suppose anything is possible. Henceforth, I’ll be paying very close attention to the radar on my weather app.
We’ll also need a new garage door eventually. Well, very soon really. Turns out our current door is original to the house, which makes it 46 years old! It’s a heavy wooden beast that’s sagging and warped, and we often end up with a small pond in the garage after it rains. The repair guy said they’ve replaced the springs on the door five times over the years and he was always encouraging Carol (Dick’s wife) to spring for a new door but she didn’t want to part with the money. Can’t say I blame her, because holy cow, those things are not cheap.
One hour later, we’re significantly poorer, but we can now open and close our garage door again. Can you really put a price tag on that?
Looks at invoice…
Yeah. Apparently you can.
Sundial or Sorcery?
Check out this sundial from the Rotary Botanical Gardens in Janesville:
Tara and I were mesmerized. It was 9:50 when I snapped this pic. Have you ever tried to tell the time using a standard sundial? This requires a lot of neck craning and squinting and, quite honestly, I’m lucky if I can figure out the correct time within two hours or so in either direction. But with this one, no guesswork is needed; it’s as simple as glancing at your watch. When we left one hour and two minutes later, the time read 10:52.
“What fresh sorcery is this?” I asked Tara.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “But I want kinda one for the backyard.”
Seriously. This sundial is about as amazing to me as my smartphone. I guess you need to align its gnomon (pointy thing that casts the shadow) with the Earth’s axis of rotation, pointing toward True North while ensuring the angle matches your latitude.
Good hell, we’d need to hire some scientific expert with an advanced degree in mathematics just to install the thing. And when said expert showed up to do the job, you know what he’d say, right?
“Dick was my teacher.”
Once upon a time, I lived in the Wild West
All the procrastinators will appreciate this one:
It does feel like the holiday snuck up on us this year. Hell, it feels like the year snuck up on us this year, ya know?
The 4th of July is supposed to be very hot and humid, so we aren’t planning anything big tomorrow. We probably won’t even leave the house. This is a far cry from Independence Days circa the late ’90s, when I would spend hundreds of dollars on fireworks and stay up half the night shooting them off. Yes, I was that guy, but to be fair, everybody was that guy. Vancouver, WA was kinda like the lawless Wild West back in those days; fireworks of all kinds, even professional-style mortars, were legal – not just on the 4th, but the three days leading up to it and the day after, as well. The whole city was a noisy, smoky hellscape for a full week, which many people hated.
But the kids and I loved it. The neighborhood displays were so amazing, my ex’s entire family made the trek north from California every year just to experience it. This morning, my son Rusty – whose 30th birthday is today (DO NOT ASK ME HOW I AM OLD ENOUGH TO BE THE PARENT OF A 30 Y/O!) – and I were reminiscing about those elaborate fireworks displays of yesteryear via text.
Vancouver eventually cracked down and outlawed the fireworks. I really can’t blame them; things had gotten out of hand. It was fun at the time, but today, I would be complaining about the noise myself. Being that I’m old and all now.
I haven’t bought so much as a sparkler in many years, and haven’t even been to a fireworks display since our first summer in Rapid City. But I’m okay with that. Burgers on the grill, cribbage, and cocktails sounds like the perfect 4th of July evening to me.
Have you had any big home repairs lately? What are your Independence Day plans? Was Dick your teacher?
Mark My Words 
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