Yesterday a not-so-little corner in the universe was utterly transformed, and 90 % of it was due to our good buddy from the RTG, Kurt Oian. I’m not sure just when and why and how the wheels of change started a-turnin’ – I just know my wife was ready to join the Peace Corps and move to Botswana if something didn’t happen with our garage and soon. Kurt had done an amazing job building shelves for us in our basement, so we engaged his services again to build us some shelves in the garage and help us regain a bit of sanity in what had become a truly disgusting pit of . . . you fill in the blank with whatever hard-hitting term you like. It had gotten to the point where our 2-car garage had become a 0-car garage, and a couple of weeks ago when a major hailstorm was bearing down on Racine, I spent an hour just trying to clear a space for one of our vehicles to be housed out of the elements. By the way, this state of affairs was – now hold on to your hats because this will shock you – pretty much my fault. Between five boxes of books, two boxes of videotapes, and a large recycling bin filled with stuff from my car (emptied into it back in April when I had my encounter with the hammer throw athletes at Carthage) and all kinds of other stuff strewn about, it looked like enough stuff for five garage sales. And with all this other stuff piled in the middle of it all, there was no decent place to put little items like the lawnmower or the garden hoses. Add in the standard stuff we hadn’t managed to throw away yet or give away yet like our old Christmas lawn ornaments or our old vacuum cleaner and it’s time for a major intervention.
That intervention came in the form of Kurt Oian- who reminded us a lot of my brother-in-law Matt (who helped us with our laundry room a few years back) because of these qualities. . . He’s strong, hard-working. . . and he makes it fun. You’re right beside him working and you don’t feel like you’re wearing striped prison garb with a ball and chain attached to your ankle. True, it wasn’t the most fun day of my life – there was just a little too much sweat and joint ache for that, and not enough opera – but it was a great day and at the end of it we had the relatively unfamiliar sensation of having really accomplished something major in the course of a single day.
And here’s the best part . . . We found the box to our Snowball! ! ! In case you missed that in an earlier blog entry, the Snowball is our wonderful new microphone that plugs directly into our laptop. Unfortunately, I managed to lose the box and the directions the very first day, before we had even used it. Isn’t “Gaslight” the movie where the evil husband keep moving things and hiding things to convince Ingrid Bergman that she’s going insane? This was like that, except that both Kathy and I were perplexed – which meant that it was one of the golden retrievers doing the hiding and moving. (And who could blame them?) But now we have the box and the directions and will be able to make full use of our snowball! (For all we know, the thing also bakes bread.)
So thanks, Kurt, for finding the box for the Snowball – for building us really cool shelves – for the hanging hooks on the side walls – for doing lots of the hauling and sorting – for making it all fun – and for doing all this before my wife had a chance to move to Botswana.
P.S. – Do you also do college professor offices? And the inside of their automobiles?