The Ink-Pot and the Palette

1. Posting from my phone. This works slightly better with the latest version of Chrome for Android than it did before.

2. Reading the Felix Castor books by Mike Carey. Urban magician, kind of, except he's more of an exorcist, and there are ghosts and zombies. In London. Good stuff. A long arc underlies the individual story in each book. I'm on book two and it's getting more intriguing as it goes along.

3. I made oatcakes for dinner and ate them all.

4. The weather here in Stumptown is PERFECT. I can't get over it. Bright and warm in the day, cool in the leafy shade, cool at night. Breezes are keeping air quality high. It's wonderful.

5. Eleanor O is in the shop overnight, having her brakes adjusted and getting a new bungee for her rear rack. This means a couple of bus rides for me, but I don't mind because it's just so nice here right now, nothing seems bothersome.

Hey! It's 3:20 in the afternoon and it only got up to 91 today. Woo hoo! That's about nine degrees less infernal than predicted.

Accordingly, I've spent the day on Project Mudroom. It's difficult to convey in a photograph, but the space is partly situated over the basement stairs, so one wall has no floor under it, and painting it, or the ceiling above it, requires putting a ladder basically kind of halfway down the stairs, then climbing it.

So I did that. And the vault-y part of the mudroom is now primed. Go me.

Then...concrete! I love concrete! I got to make a little form out of boards and duct tape, and repair a section of floor with Rockite. I am now sort of nuts about Rockite and will be looking for other places to use it because it's really cool stuff. Rrrrrockite, baby!

Now it's 5:00 and the temp says 94, but it seems genuinely cooler than yesterday and therefore my goal is to have this fucker mudroom painted by bedtime.

And also post Chapter 35 of Restraint. Which is done.

Not being the world's biggest fan of summer, I put off doing much on the mudroom today, even knowing that tomorrow is supposed to get even hotter OMG. I know that most of my fellow North Americans have had the heat longer than we have here in the rainy zone, so I'll restrict my weather bitching, since today was our first really hot day. But OMG I do dislike hot days.

An entire bucket of paint stripper did not avail to loosen the coating on the concrete foundation wall. I thought of going back to the hardware store for something even more toxic and horrible, but it was too hot. Toxic shit seems more toxic in the heat.

I did get some painting done before the afternoon got into the high 90s, but nothing picture-worthy.

Then I came in and spent WAY TOO MUCH TIME hard-resetting my damn phone. Grr. Windows Mobile operating system: I am done with you! It takes hours to get all the ringtones and text message alert tones and pictures attached to my contacts again, and hours to get all my apps re-loaded and set up, and I don't even remember which cooked ROM I flashed a year ago, but whatever. I'm getting an Evo as soon as I can.

And now there are mosquitos in the house going mmmmmmmmmmmm near my ears. Summer nights. Ptui.

God it's hot in here. I've got two window fans running. Night has fallen and it's not helping that much. This high-powered laptop sure will be nice in the winter, is all I'm saying.

I'm watching Dexter, which is both really good and really disturbing. It's weird to identify with the sociopathic serial-killer title character, but judging by the show's four-season duration, his inability to connect with normal human life must resonate with a lot of people. "Score one for the little wooden boy" is the line that closed the episode I just watched, and I'm all, "Wow. Yeah. I get that."

Stood in the sun for a little while today near where Leverage was shooting, hoping for a Sighting. Alas, work called before the Hair of Kane, or any other recognizable feature or face appeared, but it was fun listening to the (real, actual Portland) police officer promoting the show while he directed foot traffic away from the Television Zone. "Yeah, it's got Timothy Hutton and Christian Kane in it. It's on TNT. Portland's supposed to be Boston--that's why those police vehicles over there say 'Boston Police'--but it's pretty good."

Any minute now, this excess of sweating is going to drive me into the waste of many, many gallons of cool and otherwise potable water.

( Good day. Go-o-o-o-d day. )

And so to bed.