Handyman

I don't want to brag about this, but I can be quite a handyman, if I want to, and get the time. Not in the winter, then we're out skiing all the time. Summer is my handyman season. Then I swing my hammer and saw.

We live in an old wooden house, about 100 years old, close to town centre. There is always plenty of things to do. Last summer I built a new staircase in front of the main entrance. Now I'm doing the last finish, making the slate tile cover in front of the door.

The main challenge with slate tiles is to cut them to fit. I had to ask my old lady to borrow her angle grinder. I bought it for her birthday some years ago. It's one of the most useful birthday presents I ever gave her.

The staircase is completed, finally. Now I'm planning my next handyman project, not sure what to take first. I'll probably start on the loft, re-doing the floor, and completing the isolation of the roof that I started four years ago.

It takes some time ... but a real handyman is sexy, right >:D

(That's my old lady's angle grinder in the picture. The main challenge is to cut the slate with power and precision, making a nice clean cut, without chopping off my fingers and feet. I stay away from the diamond blades. They are too dangerous, and I don't have proper safety equipment and experience to use them)

Stairway to Cold As Heaven

There has been some complaints about the stairs recently, the stairs in front of our main entrance. They are icy and slippery and difficult to walk, due to snow fall and somewhat sloppy shoveling earlier this winter.

I have argued that this is good. Reaching the top has never been easy, and shouldn't be easy. It should be a real challenge and take some effort.

Maybe this doesn't apply to stairs?

(The photo was taken by me. I even built and painted the stairs last summer. All right reserved) >:D

Haircut

I cut my hair yesterday. I did it myself, as usual, with one of these electric hair cutters. I always cut it down to 4 millimeters (about 1/8 inch), and my old lady always gets annoyed because it’s too short.

Yesterday, she was mad.

OK, I’ll admit it; I did a small mistake. I was going to cut off a few hairs left behind, and forgot that I had taken off this little plastic thing that regulates the length. So I cut it down to basically zero. But only on a small spot near my forehead.

It was the worst haircut she had ever seen, and she refuses to be seen in public with me for the next four weeks, and she gets embarrassed just by thinking about me giving a presentation on the geophysics conference tomorrow. I laughed, and she said it was all due to my Tourette’s syndrome (she’s convinced I have Tourette, I wrote about it here ).

I tried to get her in a better mood by talking about the new stairs with the nice hand-rail that I’ve built, in front of our main entrance. She said this was the definitive proof of my Tourette, when I brought stairs and hand-rails into a discussion about hair-cuts.

I took a picture so you can judge yourself. It's not that bad, is it? Anyway, I don't care, and hair grows back >:)