Sunday

Today was a wonderful Sunday, and in the later part of the afternoon it was sunny and lukewarm.  I could walk outside with a T-shirt and a light jacket and walk without feeling the slightest discomfort. For Ohio in the middle of February, that's about as good as it gets.  This meant that I spent no time writing fiction or code, but instead enjoyed life.

I walked, did a little bit of yard work, planned out how to do some exterior work on the house, and worked on my vintage (but much work required) Airstream travel trailer. I probably spent two-thirds of daylight hours outside or out-and-about on errands.  Again, for February, it was glorious.

The exterior work is to keep bats out of my belfry, er, attic.  They's getting in via a gap behind/beneath a trim piece on the gable end of the house, hanging out up there, and sending "presents" down a pipe chase to the basement. Yuck. That gets handled as soon as I have another day of decent weather and a chance to borrow or rent a ladder of sufficient length. Darn bats.

Darn those pesky bats!

The work on the trailer wasn't very impressive, either.  A bit of crumpled aluminum near one of the wheel wells was too crumpled to properly reconstruct and reuse.  So I've fabricated a replacement piece of sorts, and drilled the holes for the stainless steel machine screws that will connect the aluminum to the regular steel - that's the least-worst fastener I can find for used when joining steel and aluminum, one of the bothersome aspects of dealing with "ancient" Airstream frames. Without this piece, the frame, the belly skin, and the wheel well have no good connection, so this is rather important.

The gaping hole that is being repaired, and the crumpled, corroded wheel well

Replacement pieces on the dining room table, for better lighting

And as the day start to fade to dusk, I stopped for the evening and carried the power tools back inside. Then I set off for another walk. As the sun began to fall in the sky, so did the temperatures, and the wind began to pick up. As I slipped back into the house, the weather had completed its shift from a premature spring to a late autumn.