friends in high places

Saturday morning, we awoke to construction like noises. I peeked out the window and saw that my neighbors across the street were deeply engaged in some kind of fun guy project. A closer look revealed a huge dumpster, a forklift, lots of pickup trucks (my neighbor's friends), and a raft of roofing shingles.

When I drove by a little later, there were seemingly scores of men on the roof, bonding away. By mid-day, the old shingles were off, and by day's end, they'd replaced more than half the shingles. On Sunday they were back again and finished up the job fairly quickly.

Closer to home, actually, in home, Robert's been working on some cool projects.

A few years ago, when the addition was put on, the electricians misheard our request for computer wiring. They very proudly showed off the telephone wiring, but not til the walls were closed in. At that point, they whined so much about having to put computer wiring in after the fact that we said Fine, We'll Go Wireless. It was a great idea, and Robert's network, which is closer to the motherlode source, has always worked flawlessly. My network, though, which is further away, has never worked well, despite the addition of large antennas and a brand new computer.

So Robert dropped wires from the attic two floors down to the source, then across the attic and back into my study and his study. We still have wireless access for some purposes but are running our main computers on good old fashioned ethernet wire. And after two and a half years of trying to believe in wireless access, I now have an always-on network.

In addition, we've purchased eight setback thermostats, and Robert has installed half of them. We're still doing fine without heat, but I'm looking forward to more mechanical heat management that doesn't rely so much on my spacey memory. It's also kind of fun to see what temperature it actually is inside -- the old thermostats were off by about ten-twenty degrees.

We've been enjoying the wood stove and I've been turning on the little gas stove. But eventually, it will get cool enough even for us and we'll turn the heat on.

And in the personal triumph department, after months of swimming at the same speed week after week, my swimming speed has picked up ever so slightly. I'm now swimming 1/2 a lap more than before for every five minutes. Today, for the first time ever, I swam a mile in 45 minutes. I'm not sure if I'll stop there for a while or pick up a little more speed; we'll see.