Sunday – Knee is bad, ankle swollen(?) – Good news: Here’s Wildman honking his horn at me.  He’s not dead!

I get his overview of his recent trip with his kids to Portland.  He found the downtown overrun with creeps, queers, dopers and beggars.  I give him some prime mahogany.

Voyage to Hometek for a talk with Tom, if he’s there.

He was.

The News:  The reason I have been shifted around outside the shop to different jobs over the past four months was to get an introduction into building techniques.  I thought that I was either being punished, or that there simply wasn’t any work for me in The Shop.

I made my case for being in The Shop to learn the CNC.  Tom tells me that while I am still on probation and everyone is being patient with me as I learn, his intention is that I will return to The Shop in about a Month’s time, probably after we finish the Rossi Job.

Good News That.

This is what I should have been doing instead of bailing and going to the doctor.

BADNEWSDAY –

I’m at work 0730 – the 7^th Street Job – and knee is seven ways wrong.  Horsing ¾” ply up over the garage is right out, lading a 50 pound box of gun nails makes me start to feel like I’m going into shock.

Something has to be done, now, whether it costs me my job or not.

I bail and head to Dr. Dauphine’s office – he’s the ace mechanic who did the 2005 surgery.

More bad news.  Dauphine doesn’t do workman’s comp.

Drive to The Shop and ask Tom, who fortunately is there, what must I do.  “Doctor’s On Duty.”

The process there is the same as any doctor’s office: forms to fill out, basics to be metered.  Dr. Pryci reads the X-ray.

The Good news: nothing seriously amiss…that he divines.

The Other News, which was tacitly already known: no heavy lifting, at least until after a consultation with an orthopaedic surgeon; the appointment awaits the submittal and approval of the Workman’s Comp claim and its approval.

Back to The Shop where Tom hasn’t the relevant form to start the claim process – “Take the rest of the day off.”

I feel better just knowing something, anything but stewing in my own juices, is being done.

QUARANTINEDAY 1 –

With this abundance of sudden, free time, why not tie up that loose failed smog test end?  The folks at Bay Auto were kind enough to slip me into their program, even had their new (since last I was there 8 months ago) utility man Jesse give me a lift back to PG.

I had hoped that the diagnosis – the truck failed only on idle and by a mere 16 points – would be that a replacement spark plug and maybe a new oxygen sensor would solve the problem.  Yes, yes they did, in addition to the new catalytic converter.

Tab: $864.  One problem solved, another created.

Wildman makes a surprise visit to give me one of his hand-formed, cypress knee clocks.

It is so …. it has been rendered in a manner ….. let us merely say that this gift from the heart embodies a set of qualities I never suspected could exist, let alone come together in a singular, physical form.  You get lucky sometimes.

QDAY 3 –

Up at 6 as if I was a working man.

Knee felt up to a Marina trip – provisions from Grocery Cheaplet, although there’s nothing about the price of butter that’s affordable.  Knee commenced to feel like warm cream cheese between a rusty hinge – best toddle on homeslide.

After sufficient repose, challenged the afflicted joint – down the gurney slide to the Shop and laundry, itself challenging because my bed linen doesn’t not seem to dry in the clothes dryer.  Mayhaps the (at least) 10 year old electric model herein is past its working lifespan.

Not past its working lifespan but certain due for a Lexol treatment are all my leather coats and as winter – unlike last week where the daytime temps were in the 80’s – has now almost arrived where the vortex fan need no longer be deployed all night.

The working lads across the street are stripping the St. Angela’s Parish Office.  By hand, scrapper and orbital sander.

A year ago I would have looked upon them very differently than I do this day.

And looking different is The Prof who arrives just on the jot at Happy Hour and we devote an happy hour on the Penthouse Deck editing his expostulation on why this nation out issue Letters of Marque on ISIS.

QDAY 5 –

A quick run to Colton Hall and O’boom provisioning was the only excursion risking knee damage.  And there was none, moreso than simply troding on the thing, which ought be minimized.

And was for the balance of the day.  Minimized also was my paycheck for last week, which was entirely not delivered, this address as I was expecting/hoping.

Just at the proper time, The Prof arrives with the early evening’s prescription medication, taken orally, ad libitum whilst grilling animal flesh.

A good start for the weekend.

QDAY 6 –

Frank Wright – the living connection to The Lab and Ed Ricketts.

Pacific Biological Lab Tours – but my role was City Minder for the Cannery Row Foundation who were doing the shows. I got there just before my shift started to assume the mantle of oversight from The Prof, who had the 9 – 10 mindership.

Enjoyed 15 minutes of Frank Wright – a man who knew Ed Ricketts and was a founding member of the PBL Club.  Heard more of his lore and learned that Harlan Watkins, the Founder of the PBL Club, moved to the island of Mikonos in 1958.  Harlan later died – too early but Frank isn’t good with dates – of cancer.  No word on Harlan’s wife Louise did ex post Watkins.

The Sophia Salon

Supersmith (in his guise as David Barker) arrives and sets up a compelling presentation on the Sofia Salon complete with art history (possible) antecedents and the obit of the fellow who did the work, a scion of the Morse tribe who developed Pebble Beach – John Boit Morse.

Not only have the historico-artistic influences been rigorously traced back to the Cavern of Lascaux through the Virgin veneration of the early Medieval iconographic period, but Professor Barker has laid out a time-line showing how Morse, the auteur and transmutationist, has not only derived but augmented classical sources venerating and honoring the drawing of honking big titties.

QDAY 7 –

In struggle, there is nobility, or would be if the effort was to banish nuclear arms or abolish shouting at TV’s in bars on Sunday afternoons.  Not much to be said for hours devoted to diagnosing and in the end NOT repairing a recalcitrant external computer drive.

Cyclic Error Redundancy, I/O Error on the teradrive.  Would not read from the laptop either.  Chkdsk g:/f/r churns away for an hour before seizing to a haul: An Unknown Error Occurred.

Thus I requested from Amazon a new drive, and this morning Voila!  Here’s the assumed dead drive live and accessible.  We live in interesting times.

Jim, his wife Stacy, and her sister Amy are the new, absentee owners of the Red Carriage House, corner of 8th and Lighthouse – my crow-shooting view out the Southern crenelation….  I know this because of the pounding, like whapping a room-sized carpet over and over with a pickup truck toneau, or tossing skids on a pile for an hour.

Investigation revealed a demo in progress: tear out that bathroom.  I was allowed to prowl inside, and quite a jumble the place is, and I mean in terms of room layout.  It had been subdivided into a downstairs and upstairs pair of apartments, which I knew, what isn’t known is the age of the structure, or its history.  The new owners vow to suss out the stories, once they have a breather from retrofitting the place into their new vacation home.

For further amusement, I trundle out to Hometek, give Tom a status on my 60% knee, and maybe find my paycheck for the week prior.  I did both, and didn’t help him diagnosis and repair a fault in the CNC he’s selling.  But it wasn’t for the lack of interest.

Here’s a talented, experienced builder, contractor, experimentalist stumped by a faulty circuit.  The way we all are by the challenges we choose to undertake.  It’s right where I want to be – learning from A Master.

QDAY 8 –

Stunning, unwelcome, glaring clear skies of the dawn.  When will the happy gloom of Autumn appear.  Not today.

Today, it’s a call from The Prof, how about a Costco penetration.

Jake with me – need Parmesan provisions.  $50 for two wedges and a tumbrel of feta.  And hurt the knee.

Toward the knee, that afternoon a call from Virginia, and not the State, but the California State minion guiding my Worker’s Comp application.  She needs to confirm a few details and does, and I am glad it only took a calendar week to move the wheels a few radians.

Of the evening.  The Prof and I watch the tidal currents form channels and connections and rivulets and rivers all to disappear in the way the waterfowl drive south across the view from The Penthouse.

QDAYLATER –

I’d like to tell you that I am gaining untold insight from the online calculus course (via Coursera) I’m taking.

I would like to tell you that.  I’m in 2 plus hours of the 25 hour show and I have stupendously FAILED every quiz.

I take in the lectures – enthused by Dr. Jim Fowler who is a real-life cartoon character – which are cogent, well-paced, and enjoyable.  I take notes, I ‘rewind’ sections of the lectures for review.  I get the theory.

Then we get to the quizzes.

The problems posed in the quizzes are like reading Martian.  There’s nothing in the lectures that addresses how to solve the problems.   I don’t even understand what is being ASKED, let alone how to fill in the math.  There is language in the problems that never figured into any part of any of the course material.

I look around to see if Fowler isn’t standing out on 8^th Street laughing at me.

Und zo, being the resourceful dope that I am, I crack out my 40 year old PSU calculus book.  I figure there’s background behind the online lecture theory what I ought to bone.  So I start with Chapter 2, the relevant section and at the end of the section dive into the homework problems.

Problem: there’s nothing in the chapter that speaks to how to solve the homework, and woise, der’s questions what I don’t even understand, let alone know how to solve.  Yoikes.

Still, it’s not a total loss.  I’ve recalled how to factor polynomials, which ought to figure large on my resume.

QDAY 12  –

The knee is about 70%, but maybe I’ve babying it.  Eschewing the brace, pound around without a net.

Pound down to the much-missed Shop where I had to take a refresher course in Just What the Jehosophat Was I Doing?

Ah Yes!  The Spectacles Case.  I had drilled for the dowel joints that connect the two top side-to-side cross members, but hadn’t dry-fit to test for congruency.  Two of the four were nearly perfect; one was off within sanding tolerances, the fourth needed the hole moved about 1.5 mm, which was done.  Sort of.

Dry fit the case bottom with the sides and predrilled for the base-to-side screws, and then dry fit the top cross members.  Close enough.

Glue up shows the case is square top-to-bottom and side-to-side, but that front cross member is off about 1 mm and so the Sanding Team will have to invoke some herky-jerky to bring the joint to flush.  Say nothing to nobody.

DOMINGO –

Knee retrenchment.

Shop advancement: the Spectacles Case case is finished, except of the finish, and the hinge mortisii.  Next: build a door.  It’s just a thin frame surrounding the glass.  The structural issue here is sag, like a farm gate.  Will this frame break at the 45 degree corner joints?

Not if my liberal application of Gorilla glue into the glass kerfs has anything to say about it.

Knee talks me into slouching off early.  It’s a love-hate thing.