Scraping By

Paint Scraping Results

My wife decided to honor America’s patriots who gave their all to ensure our freedom on this Memorial Day weekend by painting the front porch.  The first step in that process is scraping the old paint off.  Semi-memorable, because this is the first house we’ve ever lived in long enough to scrape paint that we ourselves applied.  That didn’t take any of the pain out of the experience though.

I did try to dodge the initial phase by claiming I had long planned on a massive rehab project for our mailbox which was a rusted mess leaning out into the street.  I hastily installed it when we moved in nine years ago and never got around to fix the obviously poor installation.  I approached the leaning tower of postal reception to discover the post and surrounding ground was liberally festooned with poison ivy.

The Rehabbed Box

Since the neighbors saw me venture forth with shovels and painting materials there was no way I could retreat in the face of the is chemical threat.  I think this was the most gingerly I’ve ever dug a deep hole.  That project was over all too soon and I was sentenced to hard labor on the porch under the withering supervisory eye of my favorite Panamanian.  I certainly couldn’t use the Red Sox game as an excuse since they’re starting to invent new ways to lose.  The scraping will continue today since actual painting will have to wait until tomorrow when we’re promised a rain free day finally.

I did finish off my latest foray into the world of Brad Thor and his inestimable hero – Scot Horvath in Full Black.  This was the first of Thor’s books that left me a little frustrated.  Thor spends altogether too much space delivering what are obviously his political views on Muslims and the problems of progressive Western governments.  While I agree with a lot of what he’s saying I don’t need to be beat about the head and shoulders with it.  I pick up a Horvath book expecting an almost constant sequence of death and destruction administered to the enemies of America by the redoubtable Horvath.

Full Black has plenty of that but it’s interspersed with Thor’s diatribes delivered through his Bond-style uber-villain and Horvath’s internal thoughts.  This made reading the book a series of dramatic stop and goes with the attendant whiplash effect.  Horvath is called upon to thwart a pervasive terrorist campaign and speeds from Sweden to California, Delaware (??), Paris, and New York City.  It’s a great ride as long as the focus stays with Horvath but for the first time I was left a little frustrated with a Thor book.