Bodett.com BioBodett.com BlogBodett.com BookshelfBodett.com

Thursday, June 05, 2008

Once More Into the Breech

Sometimes it seems the only idle time in my life occurs at airports. I would hazard that ninety percent of my postings on this blog have been written in airport waiting areas. A few were even about airport waiting areas. This is the lowest form of introspection and humor. I’m not alone in this indulgence by any stretch. Comics and writers great and small spend so much of their lives traveling they are forced to write on the road and inevitably you end up with a lot of train, plane, and automobile jokes with some motel humor thrown in. Motel humor is my day job so I try to avoid it otherwise.

But I’m not going to write about sitting in the Washington/Dulles airport waiting for my delayed flight to Norfolk to do a WWDTM taping tomorrow night. I will tell you instead why I have posted so seldom as of late. Or perhaps it would be better to show you.



This is what’s left of our kitchen. We paid a crew of very talented young tradesmen to tear it to pieces and put it back together again in a different order. I’m playing the part of general contractor on the job, which means not only that I have to pay for everything, but I also have to figure out what everything is that I’m supposed to pay for and make sure it or he or she shows up when it or he or she is supposed to. Long ago and far away I did this sort of work everyday. For ten years. Let me tell you, it’s not like riding a bike. It’s more like solving quadratic equations. In other words, use it or lose it. Most days I feel like I’m solving some sinister Rubik’s Cube that changes colors as I go and bites me at every wrong move. Then while I sleep it arranges itself back the way it was.

The good news is that construction technology has come a long way since I tried to make a living at it. Cordless tools, high-tech plywood and weather seals, laser levels. If they’d had this stuff twenty years ago I might still be doing it. But, based on the frustrations and confusions of building that have not been improved upon, I probably wouldn’t be celebrating 16 years of sobriety if I was.

© Current Tom Bodett
All Rights Reserved


Reproduction or distribution of any article or portion of this website - such as copying and
pasting into an email to send to all your crummy friends, or harrassing pregnant women,
or for implementation as a flotation device -- is strictly prohibited without written
permission from Bodett.com. We mean it. Don't do it.
Steps will be taken. Oh yes. Steps will be taken.
(Unless you really want to, then go ahead. We don't care.)