All you really don’t need to know is that the new shoes worn on the rike yesterslack, which have less than 5 miles on them, contributed to right knee distress.  Or something did.

So today, I donned the 3 Pairs Back.  Rike, conservative, short, 15 minutes, only 7 crows vilified.  Result: no knee distress.

Even though 3 Pairs Back sneakers are $20 BIG 5 Seconds, I wonder if not my knees are worth $50 shoes….

Arrives Scotty the Spare to prep Sam’s West Deck and he’s at it all day, his sander grinding on the building like an incessant sand storm.

I grind down to The Shop on my Para-Segway to confront the FAIL of double 45 box #2.

Two gaps.  Cause unknown.

Nothing for it but to pitch in again, maybe try another clamp up scheme.

To get there, must have something to clamp; and so it’s out to the kiln to see what’s dry enough saw into about 2.5 cm square cross section.

There’s dreck and I waste half an hour forming it into splivs too knot-riven to use.

The parts before forming the double 45’s.

Back out of the kiln and scarve even more dreck, but with less knots, all of which is planed to an almost 2.5 cm square cs.  Close enough.

Then, mark out the 16 pieces for where which gets kerfed and to what depth and width.  Also, hang Congressional ideologues next the test Plague culture.

And that was the EASY part.  The not so easy part, as I’m still new at this double 45 cutting, is marking all the part for which corner needs ‘protecting’ being the outer point, which I dick up and ensues 30 minutes of re-work forming another piece.

And that was Really the Easy Part.  The painstaking process is finessing all the parts so that they each not only have coherent 45’s at two sides and some on both ends, but that the short and long pieces all agree on length.

Now, for the New Glue Approach.  Why do I not glue up the box floor first?  Which I do.  Now, why do I not glue up the lid?  There’s no reason to glue up the lid now, but I do so anyway.  And just as I’m in the glue-up Kabuki, into The Shop sports The Prof bearing 10 feet of cherry plank.  Strange.

It’s 4/4’s 14 inches in width, 10 feet long, gotta be $100 worth of beautiful cherry.  He won’t take cash, gives it to me.  What a dick.

Clearly, after this exhaustive non-haggling, we are both parched and so the beverages are uncapped.

You get lucky sometimes.

LUCKDAY –

No untoward effects from yesterslack’s micro-rike, and this on what I thought were worn-out sneaks.  They are back in the stable until I can afford not-$20 factory rejects.

Reject sloth.  Free-dive the sea grotto to The Shop.  Unclamp the Cuboid Box bottom and lid.  Joint meets are within sanding tolerances.

Now, for the real magic – assemble the entire box.  Standard Tite-bond wood glue for the verts to bottom and top; Gorilla Glue for the glass-to-kerf securement, but This Time sparing apply the monkey glue to the very edges of the glass rather than googe WAY too much into the box kerfs.  Results: still some exudate, but less so than in past and encouraging.

Rough sanded the box lid, and then routed a bevel to the outer, upper profile.

This Note: natural light in a workshop, particularly when there are 57 year old eyes doing the seeing, is preferable to artificial.  The lid looks sanded enough inside, but when exposed to the incandescence from our favorite star, multifarious gouges, pits, deformities, and scars are manifestly revealed.  More sanding.

Then, just as I’m changing spark plug #8, up drives The Prof, he’s got 2 16’ redwood 2 x 6’s he wants beveled to serve as fence top railing.

We only trip the breaker once, and not fingers, toes, tongues or ear lobes lost in the process.

FAILDAY –

A total fail, in every category; unless you consider waking up without having been vilified by my dead parents, yet again, an incomplete fail.

The rike was a no-show due to conservatism over the still-swollen left foot.

Both computers were possessed by poltergeists.

I Mind The Gap

The unclamp of the Cuboid Box revealed two of the twelve joint meets showing unacceptable gaps.

The two glass short sides were 0.5mm too short – and this after checking the dry fit at least three times before glue up.

The mortisii for the hinges between the box and lid were errant and required significant fenobling just to get up to a D minus grade from Mr. Christman.

The first coat of Wildman’s Special Elixir revealed even more gouges, pits, demerits and scars than heretofore seen on a single set of cheap pine.  Even from washed up flotsam from The Armada.

What shape IS That?

The experiment to find a way to spline double mitre joints resulted in a triple failure.  No matter which way I cut across the double 45, I came up with a reveal slice on a show surface or the spline would have to be a solid shape which exists only in the 19^th Dimension.

DIMENSIONDAY –

Feel I have lost my wood mojo.  Must recover it, somehow.  In some way.  Perhaps it is best that I do not visit The Shop for a time, put off that which is clearly not on, sometimes distance draws one closer.

Startlingly fine air from the west rife with the potentiality of Autumn, a sort of wet without being wet sense not of plants shutting down at all but rather a coming together of the scents of cypress, sea, salt, sand and sun.  Strange.

RECOVERYDAY –

Sort of.  Micro-rike: all systems within nominal parameters.  Four point buck wandering the streets with me, coudda took it with a spear, but I left it in the den.

Back into the Den of Slacnikquity – Double 45 Test Box #4.

Roughed out some fragrant pine, did all the usual kerfing for glass and floor, cut then all to the proper 45’s, fined tuned the angle, then assembled – and the definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing but expecting different results – the base and the top of the box.

XOXXDAY –

The Brain: my worst enemy.

Can’t find the field-stripped .50 cal machine gun in the freezer, check the back closet, but forgot Curtis lives in that room now, even so, no machine gun.  Then, Curtis offers me a $2 bill and off we speed in his BMW to get out of the city-sized parking garage.  Then, he’s out of the car standing in a line to pay the parking, makes a misstep (no railing), plummets 15 feet to the 1 ½ floors below.  Lands Hard, Lands Badly.  Writhing in pain amid the traffic lane, must be a crushed ankle.  Can’t get to him save jumping myself, maybe there’s another way around.  First foray takes me deep into a labyrinth.  No Good.  Best to find the traffic out-flow from the garage and backtrack.  I’m running, but like my pants are stovepipes and my legs shackled.  Reach Curtis tended to by two Good Samaritans, still no medics.  Elevate and duct tape his shattered leg to a fence.  I say to myself, ‘It’s just a dream, but cannot wake.’

Woke.  Woe.  Won’t even relate the next, worse dream.

Life.  It’s better, no matter how long you’ve survived gas attacks on the Ypres.

Off in the morning gloom, blessed gloom, for petrol, a Sunoco auto-wash (best $10 job I know of here), thence to the adjacent Homeless Depot to scout out parts for the maybe impeding Monterey City Colton Hall Donation Pedestal job.

Joe of the Orange Apron helps me find the drawer slides (but not the ones I think I need) and helps himself to telling me about how this is his first day back in two months.  Seems he’d lapsed into a diabetic coma for a time, but he’s okay now.  Trying to be a better Catholic.  And I thought I had problems….

I don’t.  Thanks to Joe Gernand – ace cabinet and furniture builder and former boss at Rockwell – he saves me plenty.  Had emailed him on whether he’d used Space Balls to float panels, and in my case, glass panes.  Answer: No, but I use screen spline, cheaper and more readily available.  Straight up.  $5 for enough until 2130.

Now, let the fun begin.

The Dump.  Lotsa junk lumber on the lot; cans of useful gork on the Toxic Table.  But that was all this trip.  Good enough.

A happy collection of cast-aways, the Mac’s and wax dating from the pre-1965 zip code era.

Grocery Cheaplet where not only does the dairy case abrogate the impending cheese shortfall (5 pounds of Hoffman Sharp Cheddar for $10) but it’s the once-a-month Geezer’s Get 15% Off Wednesday!

Evaded the CHP radar nest all the way to Slob Hill Market for the best grapes I’ve ever been almost able to afford, Palermo Rolls and gracknoids of opportunity.

To The Slackhome and down the skimmer handle to The Shop to unclamp Test Box #4 – top and bottom.

This is how half of the double 45 joint ought to meet.

Bottom = Good.

Top = Scourge of Satan.  All four joints were $##$”((!!!%%#((#$$##@ing off.  How can this be?  One set of joints glues up fine, and the other is an abomination?

This is how half of the double 45 joint ought NOT to meet.

Commence to hating myself even more than usual, clearly the Shop Mojo has not returned.  Nothing for it but to finish out Test Box #3, even though it causes me more self-loathing than I though possible.

Instead of drop-kicking it across the parish, put it aside.  Maybe can sell it for twenty cents.

Next – planning for the next major project.  Maybe it’ll be a homage to an 18^th Century portable desk.  Some ideas are put to paper, much take from the example at Casa Serrano.  Finding (making!) the brass hardware a challenge.

Upslack.  Deck.  Grilling.

And then the atmosphere improved.  Below, outside the moat arrives The Professor and some Guinness.  You get lucky sometimes.

LUCKDAY –

Some weeks ago, I applied for a job on Craigs List: Furniture Assembler.  The terms seemed amenable: part time, flexible hours, set your own schedule.  The Spar Group (SGRP), as it turns out, provides marketing and distribution services.  One of those services is in-store, and in-home furniture assembly.  And now the other news: I will be an independent contractor, which sounds nice, but the words ‘independent contractor’ mean low pay and no bennies.  So be it.

This week I was apparently inducted into the Spar Club as I received in the mail, and this only, a name badge on a lanyard.  No paper work, no phone call, no email, no telegram.  But this also means that the criminal background check did not reveal any outstanding warrants, unserved indictments, convictions or jail time.

This day, my District Manager, Dave Lando calls.  Tells me about his hangover, and can I work all day tomorrow?

Sure.  Where?

Hollister, Gilroy, Morgan Hill.

This is far outside my orbit.  I neglected to mention that in addition to no benefits and grossing $10/hour, or paid by the piecework, there is no mileage compensation.  This means the ‘independent contractor’ is behooved to work jobs 40 feet or less from his center of gravity.

I balk at the near 140 mile round trip, explain that the trek will run me about 12 gallons of precious petrol.  Dave vows to talk to his boss, see if he can’t wrangle some cash for gas.  Fine.  I expect nothing.

From The Shop, I expect Much.

Today’s plan: reform the Test Box #4 lid into the box top.  This is easily done by cutting a second set of 45’s on the existing pine, but implies that I need to form a new set for the lid, which I do.

Now, the magic.  Will inserting pins (brads with cut off heads) longitudinally into the two faces of the joints of the vertical pieces improve joint meet?

Angry looking nasties, are they not? As it turned out, they looked better even angry than they functioned….

Mark and pre-drill each end for the brads, insert the brads, then address the verts to the base.

Result: Joint #2 is perfect, Joint #3 iffy, Joint #4 questionable, Joint #1 Hideously FUBAR, either with or without the guide brads.  As I’ve tremendous experience, not only on this latest quest for satisfactory double 45 joints, but across the experience set on disappointment, I am unfazed.  Well, maybe just micro-fazed, but I’ll keep at it.

Call from my District Manager: He can rustle up thirty bucks, I negotiate him up to forty.  Fine.  We meet tomorrow morning at the Staples in Hollister.  The Adventure Begins.

WORKDAY –

Yes, you read that right: an earnest day’s toil to earn an honest crust.  An eleven hour day door-to-door, no lunch, but that was my choosing.

All else was in the hand of my Spar Trainer and District Supervisor Dave Lando.

A good egg.  I liked him the moment he stepped out of his 1988 Toyoda pickup (333,000 miles and going strong) in front of the Staples Store in Hollister.

There are a number of flavors of service provided by Spar, in this, and the subsequent 2 other Staples it was two-fold – furniture assembly and Display service.

In the assembly portion of our program, it was all office chairs, the service end of the ticket it was dusting, making sure that all the furniture in the display area was functional – no stuck drawers, casters on the chairs rolled and this vital quality, that the pneumatic up-down was working.  We set up shop in the furniture display area and use the desks on display as our work surfaces.  Thus, the assembly part was not only interesting and fun, but easy on the frame – no kneeling and getting up.

This is the Telford, or maybe it’s the Brindon, or possibly the Burlston.

It seems that there are only three types of office chairs, differing in their form and assembly technique – and all with names like Telford, Westerly, Burlston and Bruckner, commanding, prestigious titles showing that while you cannot afford a butler, you CAN park your ass in the next best thing to sitting on your dogsbody – all of which I quickly mastered.

The thoughtful engineering behind these chairs are such that each can be put together in about six minutes – the whole shebang goes together with hex head bolts, of which there are only three sizes –  which is an important quality since the ‘independent contractor’ makes only a couple of bucks per chair on a piecework basis.  Thus, if the assembler observes time and energy management, he/she can put together maybe 10 in an hour which grosses about $30/hour.

I didn’t care for the dusting and primping.

And then the paperwork.

You cannot believe how backward is Spar’s system of accountability.  It is both paper forms to fill out and fax away AND an online set of forms for exactly the Same Set Of Information.  I couldn’t fucking believe that one.  Will not even bore you with all the 1980 factory shop floor elements of the online forms.  Buy SGRP?  No.

Backstage at the Big K

Next, it’s around the corner to the BigK Mart where we were to assemble a dining table and four chairs.  We enjoyed ergonomically approved work space on tables in the back, and again, the engineering inside the design of the tables and chairs was such that the whole thing almost fell into place.

Next, it’s northwest out CA 25 through lux farm country atop the San Andreas Fault and on this sterling autumn afternoon looks like the gods of harvest gleen us goodwill and to the 101 to the Gilroy Staples for another set of office chair builds.  And, alas, more dusting, and double alas, another proctology exam with the paper forms and Reagan Era software suite.

Next and final next, further north on the 101 to the Morgan Hill Staples for seven chair builds.  And we were both tired, no lunch, to which I am accustomed but poor Dave was not, and our power drivers were just as flagged.

Dusk when we finished.

Dave’s a good man, from out of nowhere, no schooling much, but much native intelligence, came up through the ‘independent contractor’ ranks.  It was a pleasure learning from and working with him.

The cruise home was mostly smooth and elegant, just like my life.

And it felt satisfying to work like a real guy: for peanuts.  Good connection to the Greater Reality from which my so-called career has, until now, insulated me.  I’m not saying it’s a particularly desirable reality, but one worth experiencing.

I won’t be doing the in-store jobs ever again (he said), but Spar also sports an in-home service for furniture assembly – desks and the like – and this will be my focus, now that I know I never want to spend again 2 hours sweating in an under-air conditioned Staples.

Some asides.

The staff at the three Staples and the Kmart were earnest, straightforward and competent, a credit to their companies and themselves.  Put away notions that America no longer cares about the value of honest employ.

California 25 what a drive.

Citrus blossom scent in Gilroy.

Staples Muzak – a keening, yearning rhythmic drone by bands that wanted to and should have killed themselves with Cobain.

The cloak of sea mist, and land mist as it turns out shrouds the inlands to Hollister until mid-day, this time of year.

There never will be a freeway of ourland free from slow drivers who hug the left most lanes.

LABDAY –

I wake 30 feet up and 20 feet out a branch on the oak tree across the street.  Sleep climbing?  I seem to be storing acorns in a disused squirrel nest …. No, no, no, no, no, that was the other night.  This night/morning I wake not just sheened in sweat, but soaked.  The pillow is drenched.  The top sheet is not only sodden, but torn in four rents.  Wha!

It is not because I’m nervous about my duties at The Lab today, I am merely the City apparatchik ‘observing’ the tours given by Michael Hemp and his Cannery Row Foundation.

Tour is not the right word.

Hemp’s Random Unconnected Anecdotes One Or More But Not Many Of Which May Allude To Ed Ricketts And Gee It’s Great To Be Here Expostulation.

For which he charges $15.  And quite naturally he never mentions that The City holds tours once a month.  Tours which are free.

There is nothing Frank Wright says that isn’t worth hearing …. except about his alimentary canal.

The good news is that Frank Wright was there when I arrived, and was there hours later when I left.  Frank looked good for his 94 years, clear eyed and his hearing aid functioning …. although I could have done without his detailed descriptions of that morning’s issues with his colon.

But you have to take the good with the bad.

The Good: mano-a-mano I pump him for Lab Trivia – he met Ed Ricketts at The Presidio in 1942 where they were both serving, and like many people, was drawn into the Orbit of Ed.  I scored scoop on Ed’s woman Tony, her very sick daughter, the layout of the sleeping arrangements, Ed’s non-interest in Jazz, and that there never was a put-in from the bay out back.

I try to balance my Ed queries with inquiries about him – I try to image myself in his place.  Let us say in my youth I was on intimate terms (and I mean that in completely straight way) with the Famous Aeneas Throckmorton, and that now in my dotage there’s a continual stream of people pulsing me on AT.  Never asking about me.

Frank is an interesting fellow in his own Wright, and was/is one of the founding members (and one of only three surviving) of the current PBL Club.  A men’s club founding in the 1950’s at The Lab when it was owned by Harlan Watkins, The Founding Patriarch.  Harlan Be Praised!  Frank says that Harlan build the bar in the back room, which I didn’t know, and that 15 years Before Harlan, say 1940, when that room was partitioned into two rooms, he slept in the smaller of the two, when Ed’s son Ed Junior wasn’t home.  So did Steinbeck.

That’s Pat in the back of The Lab dinking around with his iPad still refusing to put his collection into the public realm.

I hold some slight interchange with the crabby, resentful, bitter Pat Hathaway, otherwise known as The Man With The Iron Fist surrounding the largest collection of historically significant photographs of the Monterey Peninsula.  His landlord is evicting from his shop on Pacific Avenue, he’s behind on rent.  It’s a sorry tale.

I also hold some small change with Dr. Greg Cailliet, professor emeritus at the Moss Landing Marine Lab, who is one of Hemp’s captive ‘tour’ guides.  He’s a likeable sailor man who would (and so says, multiple times) rather be out on his boat than treading land with us lubbers.  Nice guy, though.

Most of this conversation takes place during the non-tours, the first of which hosted half a dozen, the second, from 1 – 2 saw only one guest: Kish.  I asked him later did he get his $15’s worth.  He said yes.

I hike home enjoying the human sample set from as far afield as Arkansas, if their motorcycle club tee shirts are any guide, and certainly from normal slices of Amerikana as the Central Valley.  Cold, all of them because all of them are under-dressed for the wind and the temps in the 50’s.

I motor up the hill for semi-urgent O’boom rations, then tuck myself into my own private Amerika.

You?