While I'm Here

09:59 Tuesday, 21 April 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 37.78°F Pressure: 1027hPa Humidity: 42% Wind: 9.17mph
Words: 338

I didn't post anything yesterday since we were out of the house early to meet with the 84 Lumber guy, and didn't get back home until well into the afternoon. Today, we're kind of on pause, while we wait for the kitchen guy to come back with his design, to see if this floor plan can yield a usable kitchen.

This house project has become something of my central preoccupation. I alternate between waking up in the middle of the night, gripped by paralyzing anxiety, and feeling excited and eager to get on with it! Heavy seas.

I remind myself that these things usually work out. I'm confident in the people we're working with, and they want a good result every bit as much as we do.

In the immortal words of Perfect Tommy, "Just be cool. She'll hold."

IYKYK

I've taken a few pictures, but I've been kind of reluctant to post them, because I now have some more infrastructure to assemble in the marmot. I need to automate adding new photo file names to the JSON file the gallery javascript relies on. I think I just have to create a note with the JSON contents as the $text, and then create a template to export it as JSON (not HTML), which may be as simple as just using the right export code.

But that requires a certain amount of focus and concentration, and I'm distracted by wondering when this kitchen design is going to appear in Mitzi's inbox.

In the interim, I've created a new Tinderbox file to document as many aspects of the project as I can think of. Whenever we have a meeting, I'm going to bring the MBP along and use that file to document the things we discuss. I took notes yesterday at 84 Lumber. Looking at them today, I have no idea what they mean.

It's not that bad, but it's pretty close. Maybe I should work on using complete sentences.

Yeah, that would probably help.

Meanwhile, the beat goes on...

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A Broken Record

09:35 Tuesday, 21 April 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 37.76°F Pressure: 1027hPa Humidity: 42% Wind: 9.17mph
Words: 127

I've been skimming Jonathon's archives as AKMA did. It brings back so many memories! Dishmatique!

Anyway, it took quite some time before I discovered a mention of my blog. Looking at my email archives, I think Jonathon and I became acquainted in 2003, though Time's Shadow appears in his blogroll. I don't really recall just now when Time's Shadow retired. Might have been 2002, maybe 2003. Groundhog Day emerged in 2003.

Anyway, I found a post where I got a mention!

In 2005.

And I'm still blogging about the same shit.

But, ya know, the point of this whole endeavor, to my mind anyway, is just to push this stuff out into the ether, and hope it takes root somewhere.

Like not straightening your horizons, I guess.

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Jonathon Delacour

08:39 Tuesday, 21 April 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 34.36°F Pressure: 1029hPa Humidity: 50% Wind: 8.43mph
Words: 288

AKMA wrote a post, In Honour of Delacour the other day. Jonathon was one of my first, and I feel closest, online friends from back in the Golden Age of blogging. I checked my emails, and the last time I heard from Jonathon was the day before my birthday in 2011. I was surprised to read that he'd be 78 now, ten years older than I. It seems hard to fathom.

I think of Jonathon often. Photography was one of his passions, and every time I straighten a horizon in one of my images, I feel as though I'm disappointing him. He offered me much good advice, but one piece was "never straighten your photos." (I should search the emails to see if I can find the exact quote.)

For a while, I tried to follow that advice, because I almost never shot a landscape with a level horizon. It usually tilted to the right. Jonathon felt that it was part of my photographic "vision." I just felt it was my lack of care. And I kept seeing advice to do the opposite, and everyone else's horizons seemed so level. Perhaps I'm insecure as a photographer. (Let's not kid ourselves, I'm incredibly insecure about my photography.)

I don't know what's right, but I do know that that bit of advice has stuck with me ever since, probably more than two decades now.

I don't know if Jonathon is still among us, and I'm uncomfortable writing about him as if he is not, but AKMA's post kind of compelled me to write about my friend. I recall having made efforts to find him again, though none recently I think.

He was a wise friend, and I miss his voice.

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Details

07:14 Tuesday, 21 April 2026
Current Wx: Temp: 24.69°F Pressure: 1030hPa Humidity: 77% Wind: 5.53mph
Words: 209

They say football is a game of inches. Well, designing a house is also a game of inches. And details. They also say "the devil is in the details," and all those inches are details. Tricky, tricky stuff.

We think we may have things "nailed down," but we won't know until we meet with the designer and she puts it all in the drawing. This process gives a visceral appreciation for the Pareto rule or one of its corollaries, "the last 20% of the design takes 80% of the time."

We met with the guy who runs one of the local 84 Lumber stores, and our builder works with him a great deal so they have a great relationship. We were trying to get our arms around the windows, and I think we've got most of that now. But as we were leaving I told him that I now knew why people hired architects for thousands and thousands of dollars, and told me architects are good at putting things in plans that are difficult for builders to build. He said he thought we were going about things in the right way.

Made me feel a little better.

And this morning I remembered we forgot to mention the basement windows.

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