It's been a busy week among busy weeks. Everyone has weeks like that, I'm sure. In my case, I ended up spending a great deal of time turning out a special section for the newspaper on the sesquicentennial along with my regular duties, all the while trying to keep some semblance of a personal life.

Even with the crazy schedule, I did have time to squeeze in a trip to the indoor pool with the kids, during which time I learned that swimming the length of the pool and back is tiring business. Doing it twice at my age puts one at definite risk for heart failure. I can't tell you what three times around might do, since I gave up after two. I might use that as a gauge of my health as I continue to get more fit. If I get in more laps without the fear of an imminent death looming large, I'll know that I'm getting healthier.

Not only was I facing a tough deadline at work, I also was facing a deadline at home as well. And with things looming as they were, I had to spend a few hours over the weekend trying to get caught up on newspaper stuff, despite it not being my weekend on call.

At least I had most of the day to myself on Saturday. After the hectic schedule, I rather enjoyed spending the biggest part of it alone. I took the opportunity to replace and upgrade the electrical outlets in the back bedroom on which I recently finished working. The drywall cutouts were a little large on the outlets, so I decided to go ahead and replace the covers with larger ones and also upgrade the outlets.

I also spent several hours cutting the weeds around the house, which had once again reached crisis proportions. I was afraid to let the children get too close to the swings for fear I might not be able to find them without a machete.

All kidding aside, it took nearly three hours to cut all the banks, part of the garden and regular trim stuff around the trees and such and another hour-and-a-half to mow the grass. With the half dozen outlets and the mowing and trimming, I was into the afternoon hours before I realized what had happened.

I then had to get the siding on the back of the house around the new electrical boxes finished by Monday morning. I also had to smooth out the ground behind the house where the trench was dug for the new electric lines.

There was still a sizeable hole right beneath the new meter box, which was left open to show the building inspector something. I'm not sure what he was looking for, but he apparently found it. The job included two ground rods some six feet apart, with the wire between them also needing to be buried.

The electric company left a pile of dirt for me to use for that purpose and it turned out to be just enough after I shoveled it all into the hole and the low spots and then smoothed it over with a rake.

After that, I turned my attention to the siding. The reason for my deadline on that job was the planned delivery of kerosene. The oil tank is behind the house and I had to slide it out to make room to fix the siding. Even though I did pull it out some, I still had a difficult time driving the nails right beside the tank. Whenever I hit the nearly empty tank, the subsequent sound was something like a gong, only with more reverb. As you might imagine, my head was only inches from the tank as I leaned around it to drive the nails, meaning that I could hear the sound with great definition. Luckily, I only hit it about 50 times trying to drive the nails in the siding, so I avoided getting too severe a headache in the process. Knowing that I could move it with 30 gallons in it but not with 150, I had to get the work done and the tank moved back in place before the scheduled fuel delivery.

Also making the job somewhat harder was the fact that the wall is now the home of all of the electrical boxes, the meter and the telephone access box. After digging through my pile of scrap siding, I managed to find just enough to finish the wall and I had just enough daylight to finish the job. I've always been able to do more and better work when facing a deadline; the tighter the better. Maybe that's why I find myself in a deadline-oriented job and also why I find myself against the wall so often.
 

Get the whole story - read this week's edition of The Alleghany News!