Treason of Words

This is the piece I mentioned last time; there was only a little bit more to write, and I couldn’t bring myself to trash it, so here you are:

The drive to improve one’s habitat is somehow ingrained in members of animalia. Birds do it, bees do it, even frequently alluded-to fieldmice whose modest burrow slept ten and had a gourmet grain-hoard before it was plowed through by some jerk poet did it. Like the tim’rous beastie, my own plans for home improvement proved more challenging than I had anticipated, but not due to interference by a giant Scotsman.

The chief form of entertainment in the Taylor household, aside from the sometimes laughable efforts of my wife’s students, is the gradual bending of our domicile to our will. A little over a year ago, we committed to purchase the modest 3-2. One might be forgiven for missing much of our exterior efforts, as they have been few and largely subtractive. On the inside, however, it is a very different place. The third bedroom is only such in the most academic of ways; it has been returned to its former function as a garage in most respects. There are colors and wood where there was blandness and paint. There is also one less door in the house.

Instead of traipsing off to some luxurious locale for Spring Break, we decided to take that time and money and put it back into the house. There are a host of goals and projects on the wish list, but we settled on one for the week: eliminate the door connecting the master bath to the hall. Our master suite was, in its former life, a guest bedroom, with an accompanying bathroom sporting a door into the bedroom as well as one leading to the hall. In order to fully master-ify it, that second door had to go. While we were at it, it was decided that it wouldn’t be too much trouble to spiff up the rest of the hall, replacing ugly doors on the other side, repainting the whole affair, and replacing the trim.

At the start of the weekend, we selected a hue for the corridor. In keeping with our series of bold color choices, we selected a shade which KILZ calls something-or-other plum. In practice, on a real live wall, it is pink. Not the neon pink of the primer we used in the dining room, but rather a shiny, deep, vivd pink that one might expect to find used on injection-molded toys. For girls. While Christina was out determining the fate of wannabe teachers, I lived with a patch of this color for most of the weekend. Uncharacteristically, I decided unilaterally that this would not be what I saw when entering and exiting my bedroom. On our return trip to the paint counter, after lingering over stormy blues and greys, we decided to get a warm neutral to put between the green of the living room and the red of the dining room and (someday) kitchen. Gaucho it was, then.

Monday came, and with it the rain. In order to finish in time, we had to get our supplies, which weren’t about to fit in our efficient but compact commuter. Lowe’s hourly rental trucks wouldn’t keep the drywall dry, so we turned to U-haul. Thirty bucks got us a day’s use of their smallest moving van, more than able to swallow four studs, a door, seven pieces of trim, a brace of gypsum panels, eight doorknobs, stain, joint compound and tools, tape and fasteners. The lighter, nominally waterproof items came in from the truck easily enough; it was the unwieldy water-averse sheetrock that posed the greatest challenge. We stapled plastic sheeting to it, and slid it down on to the dolly. I carted it around the corner to the front walk, the edge of the panels just clearing the limestone edgers. Once at the door, we upended it to slide it through the door on its long edge, got inside, and promptly collapsed.

Several hours later, somewhat recovered, we saw our living room full of stuff. After a bit of organization, I set out to accomplish something before bedtime. With some careful measurement - and the aide of my new toy, a 10″ compound miter saw - I cut the studs and soon we had a frame. End day one.

Tuesday, we learned all about drywalling, including how to cut the sheetrock, which side faces outward, and how to tape and float. Joint compound has a strange, almost sweet scent, despite the fact that it’s actually a rather nasty goop. It was on this morning that I took up the rest of the baseboard and discovered that it went down into the tilework, instead of sitting atop it. We made the first of what would become daily supply runs, short trips to nearby hardware and discount stores, armed with a list of stuff we needed, but hadn’t foreseen. Tuesday’s list included grout, although I had never actually used it before. We had a small bit of dried grout from the edge of the tile, which, of course, was not a hue available in a handy squeeze-tube. We brought home a bucket of pre-mixed grout, which I used to fill in the gap between the edge of the tile and the wall, so that all our new baseboard would have something to sit on. Grout smells less pleasant than joint compound, and feels even worse. I know this because the tool that worked best for getting it into the required space turned out to be my fingers.

Wednesday, we tackled the doors. First, the “easy” one, the door to the HVAC. When we got the major materials on Monday, we discovered that no one really carries doors in that height. Making do, we decided to sand it down and stain it. Unfortunately, when I got through the layers of paint, all I found was pasteboard. Since stained pasteboard would still look like pasteboard, Christina, who has become a regular paintin’ commando, primed and painted it to match the wall. It’ll do until we find a door that looks better. The trim, in particular the bottom piece, presented a challenge as well. Previously , there had been a ledge, like a tiny window sill, below the door. In my enthusiasm, I had kinda-sorta “smashed” it with a “sledgehammer.” In contrition, I chiseled out the rest up to the seal on the door jamb, and set about finding a way to fill in the gaping hole. Our supply run of the day led us to some “lattice strips” that were inexpensive and doubled up nicely to provide the needed thickness. Tacked down into the door frame, they provided a point of attachment for the new trim. Said trim required some customization in the form of a notch for the air register; this necessitated the purchase of a jigsaw, which brought me unreasonable amounts of joy. The door to the garage had its own set of challenges. We decided to keep the metal threshold, which made positioning the door easy enough. However, just after screwing the frame into the header and sides, we realized there was no way to remove the heavy plastic clamp keeping it closed from the other side, thereby forcing us to undo our work and redo it with one of us on each side of the door.

Thursday, we cut and stained a lot of baseboard and trim. I finished up the last round of sanding and floating for the new wall, and primed it for texturizing on Friday. Taking a bit of a detour on the project, Christina spotted a length of shelf railing, with tiny turned posts between the top and bottom rails. When we got it home, she popped off the top piece and had me mount it above the door inside the closet, making a row of pegs on which she can store her 18 favorite purses (here, Christina would want me to note that she doesn’t have 18 purses, to which I’ll add: yet). As soon as the trim was mostly dryish, I nailed it down, which provided an appearance of progress that we enjoyed greatly.

Friday was trying in the extreme. As I texturized the wall, I became more and more disappointed with the texture, which was nothing like that of the surrounding wall. We had purchased a dustmop that looked like it might approximate the pattern found in the rest of the house; in reality, it just made random patches of very sharp spikes in the texture compound. Having little choice in the matter, I kept going, ending up with a patch of wall with which I was very unhappy. Naturally, as we prepared for the next project, we spotted what was fairly obviously the same kind of tool used to texturize our walls sitting in the other major home-improvement big-box store. Eventually, we will improve our improvement, although I fear it will take a good deal of sanding to get there. Grr.

The texture took 48 hours to dry, so on Saturday, there was the cleaning and the relaxing.

Late Sunday afternoon, two days after finishing the texture, I sanded down the worst of the peaks a bit, so that we will not abraid ourselves walking down the hall. Then came the painting, a whirlwind of rollers and foam brushes. We watched the paint dry over dinner, then just before bed, nailed down the last of the trim. Done! Finally, Gloriously, Done! Aching and paining, we retired to the fully enmasterified master suite, knowing it was back to work for us tomorrow.

I find myself in the midst of a busy springtide. On Sunday, I noticed that it had been a full two months since I turned thirty, and I had yet to remark on it in any real way. Let me put it at this: the first three decades of life were more good than they were bad, particularly what I can recall of that first one (which is more than you might imagine). The second was insufferably awkward, but had its charms. The most recent was wildly uneven, comprising both the most exalted highs and profoundest lows. I’m happy to say that the third anniversary of that high streak is arriving this Wednesday; the responsible party has already received her gifts, but there shall of course be the customary dining and floral accoutrement as well.

Languishing in my bin of half-written posts is a piece about how I spent my Spring Break, now that I take Spring Breaks again. This one involved a great deal of learning, dust, adhesive substances and profanity. You may see the tale here in its best form, as it is a story that I think works better in pictures than prose.

I’m still adjusting to having a social calendar; I fear I may never feel quite at ease with it, fundamentally remaining the homebody teen of half a lifetime ago. Hell, I’ve even, of late, seen the potential necessity of buying a second suit. Madness! Nonetheless, the friendly but foreboding rectangles of commitment on my Google Calendar keep appearing. Twice a month with the neighborhood association; every few weeks with the Zetas, or those we know by them; her friends from work, my co-workers, and so on. I still have no idea what to say to anyone; names and faces just don’t gel. As such things go, I’d much rather be an anonymous face in a crowd at an event, or even a presenter or performer than a participant in much-dreaded actual conversation.

But Spring is not yet done with me. The allergic nightmare has passed for the year (I hope), but now I’m making more dust of my own with another project, this time in the office, involving my old friends drywall, joint compound and grout. Joining the team this time are the wacky duo of kitty litter and tile; there will be photos when the whole disaster concludes. And conclude it shall, as my dear in-laws will be needing the office in sleepable condition for their visit in a couple weeks. Great folks that they are, I shouldn’t want them to be subjected to unconcealed cat poo or slivers in the carpet.

Work is an adventure of its own these days; the dust has barely settled from the construction of our new little endeavor, but I find myself on the move up the chain of command. What is it that I do? I scarcely know myself from day to day, but it seems to involve computers and maps and databases and land parcels and the whispered promise of Big Things To Come. We Shall See.

All this, of course, is by way of excusing my meager (read: absent) blogging of late. I resolve to do better as a thirty-and-one-sixth-year-old than I did as a callow trigenarian. No, really! Hey come back here…

It’s a simple process, really, and anyone can do it, given enough time. In my case, it only took 30 years. There are a number of steps, though, and the time spent in any one can vary widely from person to person, I imagine.

First, after beeing weened from human milk, switch to good, honest, all-American, pasteurized, homogenized Whole Milk. Even the very name echoes just how Whole-some it is. Enjoy how it’s thick, rich texture integrates chocolate syrup with ease. Drink up for many years.

One day, likey coinciding with a sudden heightend awareness of health issues due to an elder relative, switch to 2%. Revel in its healthfulness! It’s barely distinguishable from Whole Milk, especially given the circumstances. Enjoy it on the new bran-a-licious cereal you’re trying. Before long, you’ll grow used to the different colored trim on the jug, and it will seem just as good as that thick, evil old stuff.

Eventually, you’ll fall for and live with a non-fan of milk, someone who won’t tolerate anything thicker than 1% on their occasional bowl of cereal or in their few-times-yearly mug of hot cocoa. In loving deference, compromise, and start picking up the 1%. Besides, it’s only 1% different, right? Plus, it’s that much better for you! Again, revel in domestic harmony and heightened health!

At some point, possibly around the time you actually start giving a damn about your own diet, heed the suggestion of your caring spouse and try Skim. It’ll taste thin and weak, and look entirely too translucent at first. It won’t mix well with your prefered dark chocolate syrup either. Put up with it for a while, perhaps a year or so if you’re particularly masochistic.

By now, you’ll be seeking alternatives. Oh, sure, you could go back to richer milk, but you’ve come this far and learned to tolerate so much already; surely there is some other option. Fortunately, there is. Temptingly packaged, and right next to the ol’ moo-juice on the shelf : try the chocolate soymilk. Enjoy its well-mixed flavor and thick, creamy texture! It’s not as full-bodied as Whole Milk, but it’s better then Skim, maybe even the 1%, too. Of course, you can’t drink chocolate with everything. That’s when you test the waters (taste the milks?) of the flagship milky-soy-beverage: vanilla soymilk. It’ll work on cereal, in a glass, or in baking. It’s a touch pricier, to be sure, but by now you’re desperate for a milk that doesn’t suck. At long last, your perseverence has paid off; finally, you understand.

I had written most of this and titled it before today; when I read about his passing, I thought I should wrap it up and post it now.

(with apologies to Gary Soto)

The first political thought I can recall having was in 1988, after a full decade of wholly apolitical existence. Tasked with choosing a presidential candidate to back, I studied the issues as best a fifth grader could. Letting individuals keep their earnings sounded right to me, as did the prospect of getting cool new weapons for the military. As an eldest brother and cousin, I had seen plenty of pregnancies, but despite the annoyance that babies could be, I couldn’t conceive of a justification for abortion. Therefore, George H W Bush seemed the logical choice, especially given his edge of experience over that funny-sounding guy who looked like a total dork in a tank. I gave a speech backing his candidacy at a forum at Buda Elementary; during the same event Jeff Borcherding (among others) also backed GHWB, although his speech ended with a taped rendition of a sappy anti-abortion anthem, and Nicole Stoffel (among others) backed Dukakais. We won, but I later discovered, to the chagrin of myself and many others, that a president doesn’t have nearly as much control over tax policy as the candidates would like us to think.

In sixth grade, I flirted with environmentalism, inasmuch as it was the thing to do at the time; I had a t-shirt and everything, but opportunities for recycling were few and far between in Hays County. The next year, Mrs Geen recruited a handful of the most boisterous in her English class to criticize an article in the Austin American-Statesman about Dr Timothy Leary. Swept up in righteous antidrug fervor, I condemned his advocacy of narcotic and hallucinogen legalization as well as the Statesman’s act of proving him a forum. The next year, my essay in social studies backing Clayton Williams for governor ended with a catchy campaign song to the tune of The Yellow Rose of Texas. This was, of course, before he publicized his thoughts about female leisuretime activities. Politics is, as you can see, another realm in which middle school just didn’t make any damn sense.

In high school, my world broadened. I took up speech and debate, and read about world affairs from perspectives left and right, common and advanced. I was unsettled when Bill Clinton took the White House, and found Rush Limbaugh to be a voice of reason and insight. Ah, the folly of youth. Over the course of the semesters, my understanding became deeper, and I found other voices that better reflected my views. Each led to another. I realized that many roads led to archconservative William F Buckley Jr.

Principled and relevant, witty and erudite, this was the sort of thinker that I wanted to be. Stimulated by his essays and nourished by the Economist weekly, I began to shun the shrill demagoguery of Limbaugh and Leo, and the emerging reactionary infotainment industry of the right. Equality of opportunity, freedom of conscience, and property rights defined my worldview.

College brought me to big, bad, liberal Austin, and put me in its center of leftism, the University of Texas campus. The world grew again. Detail and nuance emerged that had been beyond my previous experience. Small-L libertarianism, joining the best aspects of the conservatism I was comfortable with, those in the economic sphere, while jettisoning the part of it that was beginning to seem archaic to my mind as I met new people and found my ideas about how they should behave sorely challenged. Simultaneously, my education, where it touched on public policy, planted the seeds for the more pragmatic approach to governance that I hold today.

Once beyond the land of labs and homework, in the world where policy affects one more directly, practicality became a consideration. Surely, I had and have my ideals, but they rarely present themselves in recognizable form. No candidate that wants to be taken seriously runs on a platform as radical and austere as libertarian ideals would demand. Besides, a sudden transition to such a paradigm would be disasterous, and despite my misgivings, I’ll admit that there are some areas beyond national defense and contract enforcement in which government can do good. Today, I look for practical libertairian thought in the public sphere: clever uses of markets, thrift with tax dollars, and elimination of limits on personal liberty. And still I learn.

Look to the right for the blogs I read, some of which follow politics.

I’ve finally gotten around to posting a sampling of my photos from this past Christmas. Yes, I’m a lazy, lazy blogger, and an ever lazier photographer. Have a look-see here.

I read somewhere recently that one’s dreams are among the most boring things possible to discuss with another. I suppose this stems from the same you-had-to-be-there factor that makes stories about what happened that one time at that party seem so funny to the teller, but less so to the audience. Except, in this case, the teller wasn’t really “there,” either. All the same, I’ve had a few doozies lately, like the one where I chivarously defended a female crank-powered television designer against her knife-wielding chauvinist colleague, and later shoved him out the front door of my childhood home, only to turn around in the foyer and be confronted by an extraordinarily tall and thin man in a grey suit and a blank, glossy black mask.

Last night’s was less creepy.

My wife and I had moved to help Nona (that is, my dear maternal grandmother) with the small Old West tourist trap that she ran. There was a dusty main street lined with storefronts, chief among which was the Sherrif’s Office/Park HQ. I was working on fixing the small mine-cart-themed rollercoaster while a patron who had waited since the day before to ride stood patiently by. I got it working, and sent her on her way when ‘ol Black Bart, the guy who played the outlaw in the Main Street Shootout show, and who, I remembered thinking, occasionally forgot it was an act, came in. He had a new circular saw he had brought to show me, but had little experience in using it, so I showed him how to cut angles and variable depths with it. Christina was there as I tried to teach, but she grew annoyed because he wasn’t paying attention. He kept getting distracted by the action outside the window, where the improbably diverse (and improbably buxom–it was my dream, after all) coeds who ran the saloon were having a charity carwash, clad only in their denim cutoffs and easily-saturated half t-shirts. Christina and I were called away to help Nona prune a storm-damaged tree just before I woke up.

Illustrating the depth to which the internet has permeated my psyche, in the fog of semi-conciousness, I thought, “I should write that up for my blog.”

Dearest Friends and Beloved Family,

The year has sped by at an astonishing pace. There hardly seems to have been enough time to fit in all that appears to have happened: the fear, the loss, the joy and the hope.

It was not long after last year’s letter went out that Russell resolved to look into the increasingly troubling spells he was experiencing. It was the last day of a major January ice storm here in Austin when he learned that scans had found a tumor on the top left side of his brain. It causes an occasional electrical disruption, sometimes accompanying a strange, brief, daydream-like experience, which is followed by a headache. The growth is benign, though, and a daily regime of medication has the symptoms under control. An annual scan for changes awaits in future summers.

The beginning of the year also saw the passing of Christina’s grandmother, and our return to Plano for the services. G’ma Streeter will be sorely missed, especially during the holiday season. This will be the first Christmas that Christina can remember without the only grandparent she’s ever really known.

Before that first month was out, Russell started his new job as a Geospatial Technician with the Geographic Information Systems Department at First American Flood Data Services, where he wrangles digital land parcels into an ever-growing national geodatabase. By late summer, the enterprise was spun off into a new company of its own: First American Spatial Solutions (FASS). Ever unflappable, Russell just hopes he gets a better cubicle out of the deal.

Christina’s career in the care and feeding of young minds has taken an interesting turn as she and colleague Colleen Frerichs have become Westwood High’s gurus of Team Teaching, an educational technique that serves to help students with special educational requirements thrive in mainstream courses. They’ve completed the coursework necessary to teach their peers how to do what they have had much success in doing.

With an eye toward moving from classroom to library, this autumn Christina began studying to take the GRE in preparation to pursue a master’s degree in Library Information Science. Russell, who has long held an interest in librarianship, may join her in this pursuit, but is holding off until the prospects for FASS are a bit more clear.

In order to undertake this continued education, Christina has had to let go of some of her duties with her chapter of Zeta Phi Beta. While she continues as secretary, gone are the many weekday nights that we find ourselves on or about local college campuses observing the efforts of undergraduate Zetas. While the change frees up some much-needed time, the fun and minor adventures will certainly be missed.

The greatest thrills of the year, though, have been our new adventures in home ownership. Following months of casual browsing, including one close call that almost materialized, Russell saw the front corner of our new home on a local real estate website. Fleeing a noisy dryer and tedious grading, we saw it first in the twilight. Christina thought it looked like a gingerbread house, with its cedar-shingled gable and turned trim. A couple days later, we saw the inside and fell for it, hard. The custom-designed tile floors and counters, the generous closets and the modest lot suited us well. We closed the month our lease was up, giving us several weeks to get it ready for move-in. Russell surprised himself with just how much he knew how to do, learned from a childhood spent helping and “helping” his parents work on their home. Christina acquired at a lightning pace the finer points of prying, masking and painting, while at the same time bringing bathroom fixtures up to her discerning standards of sanitation. The end of June saw the move complete. In rapid succession, we had our first houseguests , our first chat with the neighbors, our first neighborhood association meeting, our first dinner guests, and a housewarming. The Thanksgiving Dinner that started with turkey at Russell’s grandparents’ home ended with pie at ours. Now the Christmas Tree is lit, the stockings are hung, and this odd little gingerbread house has become quite the sweet little home.

We’ll be ringing in the new year watching fireworks from a bridge over Lady Bird Lake, perhaps in the company of Christina’s folks. 2008 looks exciting already, with tests and admissions processes, more changes at the office, home improvement adventures galore, and Zeta-fied trips to such disparate locales as Beaumont and Las Vegas. Wherever you are and whatever you have planned this holiday season, we wish you safety, health, and happiness.

And of course,
a Very Merry Christmas,

and a Happy New Year!

I’ve been a public speaker for a long time now. While I’ve become perhaps a bit more reserved in my casual speech over the past dozen or fifteen years, I’m still apt to ham it up given an audience. I had gone many a year without a regular outlet for speaking until I joined Toastmasters here at First American. I’m an odd duck there, not attending to curry any favor, learn any leadership skills or gain confidence. I just needed an audience, and they all seem quite happy to listen. My only qualms are that there is so much “meeting” nonsense surrounding the “speaking” and that the types of speaking feel limited. I don’t often fancy the spur-of-the-moment Table Topics, and the prepared speeches have so many conditions on them. The first ten follow a manual, and coming up with a speech that meets the requirements of each objective is bothersome. I’d much rather get a topic than a template. Such is my annoyance with this system that I’ve only given seven of the ten in the past three years.

The latest one requires a visual aide. I’m loathe to use Power Point, as I think it rots the brain. I had considered doing something with GPS and Geocaching, but reception in the building is nil. Astronomy might be interesting, but despite the pretty pictures, I think I’d put folks to sleep. Something more unusual, that stretches the concept of a visual aide would be great. Dancing or acrobatics are right out, as I’d like to avoid anyone getting crushed and/or dying from laughter. I’m thinking of doing some giant origami, with follow-along paper at each seat. Of course, that requires I learn some origami.

Has anyone seen November? I could have sworn it was just here. It was an hour longer than it used to be, with all sorts of digging and yardwork, and even a new speech at the start, a big lull in the middle, with guests and baking and eating toward the end. It got a bit of Christmas on it, but that’s not unusual these days. If seen, please return ASAP. Thanks!

As we approach the autumnal equinox, the other story of the year, my cranial health, has reached an equilibrium as well. While I’ll never look at that damn Kindergarten Cop quote in quite the same way again, the outright fear that came with each mislaid word, paper or memory has faded. The drug regime has proven adequate to control the symptoms, and after three stints in the ol’ MRI tube, the little fellow-traveler in my skull has remained largely unchanged. Once a year, I’ll go visit Dr Tallman and Dr Stoval to see how things have changed. It stands to reason that eventually it and I will have to part ways. I do hope that that day is well removed from this.