Being Handy

Today, my big accomplishment was fixing two leaky faucets.

For a month (two? three? how long can you ignore such a thing?), two of my faucets have been leaking. They're in the two places in my house most likely to annoy me - I can hear the dripping when I sleep and when I work. Lack of time, lack of knowledge, and laziness have prevented me from fixing them so far. I close the bathroom door when I sleep and turn on the TV when I'm working.

I decided today was the day. It was either do work or fix the faucets. Faucets seemed like more fun.

It required a little research in the Time-Life book for Home Improvement, a little more research online, and only one trip to Home Depot (including a tool I was afraid I'd never use again but was worth the entire $13 I paid for it!). Plus one call to my dad and one call to Moen (where they collected information for a call-back instead of putting me on hold).

The biggest challenges were actually solved by the Home Depot tool and by a little elbow-grease.

Now my faucets turn on when I turn them on and turn fully off when I turn them off. Almost as good, they turn hot when you expect it and cold when you don't. I'm living in a brand new world, where delights await me every time I wash my hands!

Life is good.

Laughing in my Sleep

This morning I had the delightful experience of waking up laughing! I had a bizarre dream that started off with a life-threatening experience and ended up with a bowl full of tiny multicolored water balloons with a life of their own. They started slipping out of their bowl and through the cracks in the table. I cupped my hands under the table to try to keep them from bursting on the floor, but they just filled my hands and squeezed between my fingers, as if their mission was to throw themselves on the floor. I woke with the memory of a handful of brilliant water balloons and what felt like an audible laugh.

Not a bad start to the day!

My Life Past Midnight

It's been a long and stressful week as I get closer to my big July deadlines. I swore after February that I was not going to be up until all hours writing documentation for the next release. Things looked promising until our tech writer got sick (he's dropped 30 pounds in the last three weeks, so clearly something is very wrong).

So I'm writing again, and it's become my second full-time job.

The line between night and day has blurred. I'm sending email at 3AM and taking naps at 5PM. I go to the gym at 11PM and eat a second dinner at 2AM. Business calls at 8AM and 2AM. After a while, it stops feeling so strange, and I just stumble around in a fog.

The silver lining in it all is that I've developed a surprisingly rich post-midnight social life. One friend on the other side of the world regularly checks in around 2 or 3AM to catch up and then encourage me to go to sleep. I've forged another surprisingly important friendship with someone who stays up with me for hours each night, talking about everything and nothing. (Is editing docs and IM'ing at the same time multitasking or being distracted?)

Strangely, I'm a little sad that there's only another week or two of these crazy hours. After it's all over, what happens to these friendships? Are they going to survive the light of day and competition from real, live people and the daily run-around that keeps me from spending hours on the computer every night? Time will tell.