Past Diatribes

As promised, here’s a pleasant little story called Carmel And Mick Build An Attic. Because pictures tell a thousand words and the average attention span on the Internet is measured in microseconds, look to the right.

It was freezing up here, when I struggled my way up to take the photo. Nothing but dark and damp, with the water tank constantly running. Yellow fiberglass fluff from that insulation sticking to the old suitcases and other junk we’d chucked up here for storage. Dismal, man. Plain repugnant.

But if life has taught me anything, it’s that where some people see a problem, others see an opportunity. Others yet see a DIY project to goad their husbands into. My Mrs., sadly, is one of this last type of people.

Seriously, our little house was to its bulging point. Somewhere in the Mediterranean sun, we decided to see about getting the attic converted. And so....

Carmel heard about this one fellow around where her school was. She made a call and so this dude Tom stopped by one night with his tape measure. Tom’d been converting attics and roofing houses for the last twenty years. A couple measurements, a nose around for three minutes, and he knew exactly what to do.

With the help of his pair of assistants, two huge beams were carrying the weight of the roof. All the center beams were sawn out and two skylights thrown in to brighten the gaff up. By the weekend, the floorboards were going down and the plasterer was due to skim the walls. Whole shebang took about eight or nine working days. Our attic room now measures about twelve by fourteen feet, with a barrel ceiling that’s five feet tall at the edges and a good seven feet tall in the center. The little doors lead off to capacious storage areas on either side, each one equal in size to all the attic storage we’d been doing before.

In short, my excuse for not updating this site earlier is that I’ve been up to my eyes in sanding the floors, laying coats of varnish, rollering the walls and building in a mammoth desk with cabinets and bookcases to replace the little desk in the photo. Just about done with this last bit… I’ll post a pic of the end result when the project is finished.

In the meantime, I have another hobby to be keeping me busy: BEER!!!

My Beloved came home this evening with a lovely little homebrew kit: Ah!!! A lifelong dream at last nears fulfillment. Inspired by that richest of beers, my mates Richie and Eddie and I have been planning on founding our own brewery up here in my completed attic lair. We’re gonna call it REM brewery (Richie-Eddie-Mick). There’s been some discussion of allowing that band from Athens, GA perform the music for our commercial, in exchange for some free brew. (They shouldn’t count on that bargain yet, though; it’s just a possibility we tabled while tabling our empty glasses over in the local pub.)

Carmel’s union, the ASTI, is currently involved in industrial action. The image above is a link that will give you more details. Suffice to say: for years, the teachers over here have been required to work manditory unpaid overtime. After years of patient protest, they staged a couple of 'work to rule' days in late 2000: on these days, they would do all of the work that was specified by their contract,m but would not assume the extra, unpaid duties. The Minister for Education responded by withholding the teachers' pay for the entire day, the lousy weasel. Hopefully we'll soon have some good news to report.

Work has kept me busy. Learning all sorts of fun stuff about Cisco 7246 Universal Broadband Routers and the particulars of how they run in conjunction with Cisco Network Registrar’s DHCP facilities to provision DOCSIS-compliant cable modems.

Trust me on this one: it is interesting, when you get down into it.

Next week, to keep me off the streets and out of trouble, classes begin in Creative Writing at the local community college. I, alas, hope and endeavors thinks my writings will a lot better, after. Can’t get much worse, runs the conventional wisdom. Stories about a free-swingin’ BBC gardening show inadvertently unearthing an ancient power in suburban Dublin! How absurd! This is the worst thing to emerge since the submission about the supra-intelligent wonder maggot.

But, wait- today’s blockbuster of a movie? Castaway. Tagline: "Tom Hanks talks to a volleyball for 120 minutes." Um....

Hope springs eternal.

Peace

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