Atheist Meditations

Formations of Canadian Geese have been sighted overhead for the last few weeks. The sugar maple in our neighbor's yard is just beginning to glow with the autumnal neon around her edges. A hint of the dry cold lurks in our early mornings and stalks our twilights.

We native Minnesotan's know these signs well.

Soon the full fury of Winter will descend, covering our beautiful land with layers of snow more oppressive than Sharia Law: forbidding expressions of happiness and forcing our women to cover their bodies with the traditional ski jacket.

Into hibernation go'eth the casual erection, envoked with a smile by a jiggling, jogging beauty. . . too soon the only erect I'll be dreaming about will involve my lower back and the agony of shoveling out the garage before I can even go to work.

All this begs the question: have I gotten enough out of this Summer? Have I squeezed every ounce of life's zest from these too brief moments of thawed existence? One thing I certainly havn't been doing with my summer is blogg'n.

So today I seek to justify my lackadasical blogging habits this summer, and cross a line that has yet to occur on this blog. I will post some pictures to express the activity that has consumed my summer.





That's right, I've been painting our 100+ year old country farm house and doing all sorts of repairs and replacements. Unfortunately, the evening light in these photos does not do justice to the attractive luster of our yellow. Known as 'masculine banana' (mis-labled at Sherwin Williams as 'banana cream'), this tint of yellow is without a doubt the finest combination of eye catching intensity without a hint of the feminine. We have many yellow houses here in West Saint Paul, most are faded looking crap; 'masculine banana' is the vanguard for a whole new movement in house colors.

Please pay special attention to the detail in the trim.



That detail was once routed by hand by a craftsman who took some righteous damn pride in his daily work. Then it languished for many decades under layers of cheap-ass Dutch Boy paint. When I first started climbing the ladder and scraping, I realized that detail was there and mentioned it to Cindy (in retrospect, a dumb move.) This is a girl who mutters 'painted lady on Summit' in her sleep - my fate and the summer of 06 was sealed.

Each of those three peaks was an exercise in sanding, caulking and replacing rotten wood. After that they each got two layers of oil primer, two coats of white (inside the groves, where they still existed, in other places I just had to draw them by hand), then two coats of the green carefully cut around the white detail - all on top of a twenty four foot extension ladder.

I'm getting down to the final half-dozen tasks that need completion now, and winter's getting within realistic striking distance any day now. My promethian foresight insured that we used Sherwin William's Superpaint, that can be applied at any temperature above 35 degrees, but I'm so hoping that life does not ask that of me. I'm going to be done by labor day. I'm going to be done by Labor Day. I'm going to be done by Labor Day.

So there's some pics of what I accomplished in the Summer of 06. Since I've broken my taboo on filling a post with pictures, I'll end with a shot of one cornor of the inside of our groovy home:


Hope everyone be stay'n groovy.