I Ain't No Hella Good Girl

Dear Gwen,

Your present will be a few days late this year. But it will be great. I promise.

Holes In My Logic...er...Deck

Home Renovations, Season 1, Episode 2.

By now you're no doubt thinking, "Oh, please dispense with the hyperbole. Could your deck really have been so bad that you needed to do a complete overhaul of it? Safety hazard? Seriously? Death trap? For real? Sting? Conclusively?" If you don't believe it, then here's the hard, photographic evidence:

See? Told you so; you could fit a small child in there! In fact for a while we were even considering putting a small child in there. I figured we could just head to the orphanage, pick out the cretin of our choice, and we'd be on our way to cheap labour! Sadly it turned out that the orphanage in my imagination has very little to do with reality. Curse you Charles Dickens for giving me false hopes!

The next problem we faced with the deck was the removal of the old rotted wood. Or rather, removing entire boards, parts of which were rotted, parts of which were still strongly attached to the understructure. If only every square inch of the deck was rotted, it would have been a cakewalk! Actually, any type of dancing--cakewalk or otherwise--would have provided enough force to remove the boards if they were that rotten. But we needed something that could provide a little more force than mere dancing. And most definitely more force than that which a malnourished little bastard child could provide as well.

"Please sir, could you spare some gruel? I'm ever so weak from hunger, and I shan't be able to fix your deck without sustenance. And your dismal photoshopping skills have made me look even thinner than I am already!"

Without a means of removing the boards, this project would be Fubar before it even began. What to do?

Elementary Carpentry, My Dear Sumner

Home Renovations, Season 1, Episode 1.

Is is just in my imagination, or does Mike Holmes, star of the HGTV's Holmes On Homes renovation show look suspiciously like Gordon Sumner, aka Sting, of this year's unbelievably lame Police reunion tour? Sure Holmes is a far beefier, less shit-talking, more overalls-wearing version of the renowned tantric practitioner, but I definitely see a resemblance. Maybe it's all about the tufty receding blond hair:



Yep, it's definitely the hair. Not so much the eyes. Whereas Holmes' eyes seem to be saying "you really shouldn't have removed that load-bearing post; it's compromised the entire second floor and now we're just going to have to replace it again. You've wasted your time and mine.", Sting's eyes announce, "I like to give the impression that I'm a profound man who empathizes with the suffering of the entire world, but really I'm just an arrogant wank."

All this is a long segue into me reporting that I've decided to play less bass guitar and do way more carpentry work than I'm really comfortable doing. Why? Because of the back deck. That all-important aspect of outdoor summer living and backyard enjoyment had fallen into sad decay these past couple of years, and it was time to do something about it before somebody finally fell through the deck, broke their back and sued me for all I was worth. Fortunately most of the neighbourhood cats can't afford lawyers, so I guess the odds of getting sued would have been negligible, but still. For the safety of all ranch dwellers and our feline friends, something had to be done.

Over the next few days I will post my progress through this harrowing adventure of backyard do-it-myselfedness. In reality, there's only about an hour and a half's worth of work left to do on the deck, so all of these stories will be presented after the fact. But for the sake of suspense, pretend that I'm just starting the job right now. Also, it turns out that I'm not nearly as inept a carpenter as I thought I would be, so there won't be any hilarious tales of collapsing structures, explosions, or runaway power tools. In fact, I might be hard-pressed to make the entire tale even remotely enjoyable, in which case this is a sad sad return to the blogging world for me.

Excuse me, officer...

...but could you tell me where is the best place in town to be spotted acting suspiciously? Thanks!