Relative Something

Today I depart for my week of vacation and I believe I am, for the most part, ready. That is, I finished the majority of necessary tasks at work and got my “away message” programmed in my email. I completed the task of mowing all the grass areas that we regularly mow. Most amazing to me, I took care of two tasks that have been successfully neglected for a loooong time.

It may have something to do with the fact that we have Elysa’s celebration planned for the day after I return from my adventure. I won’t have much time to tend to things in the small number of hours after I get home. What I find curious is how particularly easy it was to address both of these issues. It was like changing a light bulb.

Well, one of them was, anyway. Except, the light bulb(s) were high enough to require a tall ladder to reach, and were a unique size which we couldn’t buy until we climbed up to pull one of the burned ones for reference.

The other task was to adjust the hinge on one of our french doors to the deck. That’s not all that hard. I’ve done it before. But it requires a wrench and instructions that were down in the shop. I just kept neglecting to get around to remembering to bring them up to the house.

The real kicker is that the act of fixing the hinge adjustments put me in the mindset to finally also look at the lever mechanism which has been a curious nuisance from the day we moved in. To set the latch on the three doors to the deck, the levers needed to be lifted upward, which is entirely counter-intuitive. Visitors are always baffled by the anomaly, and often fail to successfully set the latch.

Since we plan to have a lot of visitors soon, I felt added incentive to take a crack at solving the riddle. It was a case of the simplest and most obvious possibility being the answer. There was a plastic plug holding the conventional latch retracted in all of the doors. Popping the plug out released the latch that automatically catches when the door is closed. Now when the handle is moved in the more typical direction of down, the doors will open.

It was a huge fix for us. Now it’s done. How much more ready could I now be?

Bring on the trip, and then bring on Elysa’s celebration.

In the mean time, for those of you who haven’t already seen it, I’ll offer the song I wrote about the week of biking and camping which I have participated in for many years around the middle of June…

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