Knocking the Rust Off

Knocking the Rust Off

Literally.

Real life (and Facebook) have been getting in the way of posting here lately, that and today’s rain.

My daughter has decided that I should keep the rack on my 1999 Tacoma pickup that I’ve been planning on getting rid of until recently because it offers the proper support for her two-person kayak. However, the rack has been dripping rust for several years, and I’d finally decided that I would fork over $500 bucks and get a shiny, new rack.

Now that I’ve decided that I should probably keep it, I spent most of the day prying off rusty bolts and washers, grinding and wire-brushing rusty spots, and spraying the inside of pipes where I can’t reach the rust with Rustoleum. Oh, and a couple of hours at Grovers where a great employee helped me match the oddball bolts required to put it back together. I’m only half done after five hours of work, but what I’ve finished looks remarkably good. Not a bad way to save $500.

If it had been sunny today, and it hasn’t rained here for 49 days in a row, I would have been off to Theler wetlands for a much-needed visit. But the rain gave me another good reason to stay home and work on the truck. There suddenly seems to be a rash of small jobs demanding attention. I’ve only got 30 pages left to finish Tess of the D’Urbervilles, but I’ve marked so many passages to review that I’m not sure how long it will take to make sense out of it. I’m a little shocked that I wasn’t more impressed with the novel when I read it as a teenager, but the novel brought back all those double standards that were prevalent when I was growing up. Those “good-old-days” certainly weren’t good for everyone, especially for women.

However, I did just order three new poetry books rather than immediately trying to read Hardy’s Jude the Obscure. I can always find time between chores to read 60 pages of poetry, whereas I feel I need to set aside much longer blocks of time in order to read a 500 page novel and write anything sensible about it.

4 thoughts on “Knocking the Rust Off”

  1. Facebook has been taking a lot of my time, too, and I am having a hard time getting around to all the blogs I read! It’s those darn word games!

  2. Sorry about the rain Loren – but if it had been sunny you would probably have spent that five hundred dollars – so it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good, as they say here. Oh golly – Jude the Obscure is rather hard going I found – enjoy the poetry instead.

  3. Mr. Webster – You have to read Jude, soon! I read it in ’99 because you ‘recommended’ it to me. I have waited a decade to read what you think.

    Also, we need to be facebook friends. I’ma find you.

  4. Not hard to find me on facebook, jeb, or anyone else. The address is:
    http://www.facebook.com/loren.webster

    I’ll finish Jude this year if it’s your ten-year anniversary, Jeb, though I’m not sure I want to be depressed all summer by reading it while there’s sunshine out.

Comments are closed.