Surplus

Lux mobiles queued up at the drive-thru food bank in San Francisco

This problem I am having with my back and legs is giving me a new perspective on things. A couple of weeks ago (a month?) I borrowed a torch from Jack so we could solder some copper water pipes. Naturally enough things didn't go as expected and we didn't get the soldering done before Jack needed his torch back. So yesterday I went to Lowe's and spent $300 on a portable oxy-acetylene rig. It's overkill for what we need, but a professional air-acetylene rig runs about $500. So $300 was less painful than having to call Jack, arrange to pick up the torch, drive over there and then return it. Shoot the $500 torch would have been less painful than a bunch of screwing around. 

Basically anything that requires me to get out of my chair is getting re-evaluated in terms of how much pain it is going to give me. Admittedly, the level of pain is not that high, over-the-counter pain meds suffice to keep it under control, but I still don't like it, so I find myself avoiding things.

We salvaged a bunch of lumber from when we demolished the kitchen in the new house. It might come in handy when we get to building the new walls and ceiling, but right now it's kind of in the way. I have a big fat dumpster sitting out in front of the house that's mostly empty and I am tempted to toss all this lumber in there just to get rid of it. Yes, I could put it on Craigslist, but that's another hassle, and I don't really care. I could probably replace all this surplus lumber for a couple hundred bucks, and in terms of the overall cost of this project, that's a nit. On the other hand, my inner depression-era miser says 'look at all that valuable lumber! Save it! It's valuable!' Sometimes I hate myself.

Meanwhile, California Bob is scarfing up on premium goodies at the drive-thru food bank in San Francisco.