Category: hobby
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garble
I’ve passed some time these last two weeks reading the Apollo Flight Journal, an annotated transcript of the transmissions from the astronauts who went to the moon. This is some pretty geeky stuff. The transmissions themselves would be nerdtastic all by themselves, but the annotations are so packed full of detailed moon-shot minutia that I… Read.
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walking on the moon
After our weekly visit to the farmer’s market on Madison’s west side, My Darling B and I crossed the street to the Hilldale Mall where B had to shop for a dress to wear to a wedding. B hates shopping with the blazing white intensity of a thousand exploding suns, but the wedding is just… Read.
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drainage
I just finished doing the almost unthinkable: I poured twenty-four pints of beer down the drain. That’s three gallons of beer, in case you’re trying to do the math in your head. To explain: They were all home brews, and not particularly good ones. The vast majority of it came from a batch of brown… Read.
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is that a dibble in your pocket?
Phrases about working in the garden that sound normal when My Darling B says them but sound dirty when I say them: pruning the sage plowing the potato bed weeding the patch sowing the sweet peas is that a dibble in your pocket? Read.
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hanging offense
Re-hung a door in the basement. This didn’t end well when I tried it once before. It didn’t end entirely well this time, either. I know, in theory, how to hang a door. I don’t have much in the way of practical experience, though. If I’d kept track of the number of doors I’ve hung,… Read.
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praise Baldwin
Gah! The new motor I bought for this Bowser locomotive was supposed to be a plug-and-play installation: Unscrew the old motor, screw in the new motor, solder a few wires to complete the electrical connection, done! But no, that’s not going to happen with this particular locomotive because the holes where the screws go don’t… Read.
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side rods
I spent a couple hours yesterday afternoon picking teensy-tiny little pieces of a model train engine out of the dust and dirt on the floor under the work bench, and when I say “teensy-tiny,” I’m talking about pieces as small or smaller than fingernail clippings. And just to complicate things, the dust and dirt was… Read.
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stockings
I wasn’t sure why at first, but this photo of Christmas stockings hanging over a doorway (next to an upside-down Christmas tree) on the International Space Station warmed my heart: The photo was posted by Samantha Christoferetti in the on-line journal she’s been keeping while serving on Expedition 42 to the ISS. One of the… Read.
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guilt yoga
We came this close to skipping out of yoga class last night. Neither of us got much sleep the night before and shambled through the day like a couple of zombies, so when quitting time came we wanted nothing more than to go home and blob out on the sofa watching YouTube videos of kittens.… Read.
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bottle rocket fuel
In July, right after I started brewing beer using all-grain recipes, I made a batch of what was supposed to be a light blonde ale using a recipe I’d found on the internet. I don’t usually tweak the recipes I find; if they’re good, I keep brewing them, but if I don’t like a recipe,… Read.
This Is Drivel 