Temple of Capitalism

This morning we visited the Temple of Capitalism. The one and only true god is Money. The view from the 86th floor wss magnificent.

Then er walked down to Greenwich Village. I bought a book by Saul Bellow (Ravelstein) for $6 in a second-hand bookstore on Mercer Street.

I met an ice-cream seller on Chelsea Market who was a fan of Opeth (Swedish metal band). So am I. He recognized the band name on my T-shirt. In the bookstore I bought a book by Paul Auster (New York Trilogy).

Buy, buy, buy. Oh great Money; we worship you. Do we?

(Picture taken to day from the 86. floor of the Empire State Building)

Lead

A couple of days ago, on the way to work, I stopped by a workshop to buy some lead. I was surprised to find it was very cheap. I bought a strip of sheet lead, 4 meters (12 feet) long, and 12 cm (5 inches) wide, and I paid only $35.

Lead is a heavy metal. The density is 11 kg per cubic meter, which is almost two times the density of iron. This means that a brick of lead is almost twice as heavy as a brick of iron of the same size.

Furthermore, lead is very soft, and easy to shape. The Romans knew this, 2000 years ago, and it literally killed them. They made water pipes, boiling pots and drinking cups of lead. However, they didn't know that lead is poisonous. Lead poisoning has been proposed as a major factor in the collapse of the Roman Empire.

You may wonder for what purpose I need the lead. I'm not using it in the kitchen.

We live in an area with snow and ice in the winter and frequent rainfall in the summer. I use the lead to cover critical points on the house to prevent water from coming into the construction. Because the lead is very soft, it's easy to cover corners and edges and joints of profiled mouldings.

I didn't invent this myself. This is the way they did it when our house was built 98 years ago. I just do it the same way.

There's always something to learn from the great craftsmen of the past >:)

Another handyman weekend is coming to an end. Nice and sunny, but chill. Next week I'm going north ... I'm going back to Alyosha

(That's my roll of sheet lead in the picture, and a tool to cut it. The tool is for cutting various types of metal, including iron and aluminium. I found that lead is so soft that I could cut it with regular paper sissors. That's what I used in the end, because of the better precision.)

Change of seasons

Winter has come to an end, and the snow is gone. Summer is here, at least visiting from time to time.

Last weekend, I cleaned and vaxed the skis and put them away for summer storage, till the snow returns in November.

How many pairs of skis does a family of four need? In our case the answer is 7, for the time being. I want a new pair of carving skis next winter.

By the way, "Change of Seasons" is the name of an album by the prog-metal band Dream Theater >:)

(I took the picture above with my cell phone, after lining up the skis for cleaning. From right to left: Little boy's twin-tip (freestyle) skis, giant slalom (GS) skis, and downhill (DH) skis. Then older boy's off-piste rocker skis and twin-tip skis. Finally my good old GS skis and wife's skis, formerly older boy's GS racing skis.)