Christy, Window, Ottoman

First, the important thing. Ol' buddy Christy came home yesterday after 25 days at the mercy of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. He is weak, not able to make it down to the Growlery yet, but he is upright and has started walking his slow laps around the Oakwood circle to get his strength back. 

Next, while you guys have been out golfing I have been working on the Growlery. I put in a new window, and spiffed up the trim around it. I also re-glued and painted an old chair, which then of course looked too new so I sanded down the new paint a little to get it back into comfortable sitting mode. A lot of comfort is visual, mental, even emotional.  

Then the foot stool - my Ol' Man made it out of some tree branches while he was living alone in Frankie Baer's old shack which he had moved from Bear Lake to Geneva Lake. His growlery I suppose. The stool is very sturdy, but he upholstered it in an off-white plush fabric. ??? About a year ago I bought a piece of leather and I finally got around to covering it. There really wasn't enough leather, so I ended up piecing the sides from scraps. In hindsight I should have just put row of tacks around the top and bottom, but I didn't and then of course I ran out of tacks too, so there are odd patterns around the leather scraps. This is major league foresight, running out of both leather and tacks. It still looks okay; the tacks are probably are too shiny, but ... "ITS JUST A SHED" not a living room, not a den. And for god's sake, it is not a "man cave", a term that just makes my skin crawl.

Be well, stay upright, keep moving forward, G.

Another Handlebar Play

I had a set of wider moustache bars on this bike, which just felt, well, just ... clumsy. These are Nittos, shorter and wider, with Paul finger-pull brake levers flipped to the inside to be actuated with my thumbs. Initially they were mounted conventionally to the front, but my thumbs have proven to be stronger than fingers, which give me a better grab coming down the 15 - 20% streets of Church Hill. 

Man Down!

This is my friend Christy. He comes over and we sit on the bench or in the Growlery and "talk smart". Mostly he helps me sit and smoke cigars. A week and a half ago he had a stroke and is in Rochester being dealt with by the Mayo Health system. He is paralyzed in his left limbs. This is more serious than it could be because his right arm is non-functional.

So here's shout out and a get well to the cranky ol' bastard.

Here's a clip from a 2011 posting explaining Christy's right arm:

Nothing very visible has happened in the Growlery during the past week, just slowly tightening windows and getting it more homey. Today I added another chair so Christy from next door will have something better than an old pail to rest his poor old broken-down ass on. As you may recall, Christy is for all practical purposes a one-armed man. As a lad he blew most of his right hand off screwing around with a revolver, then three years ago he had an accident while climbing a tree to a deer stand. "Hell, I only do it once every 60 years." A one-armed old man climbing up a tree while carrying a loaded .50 caliber muzzleloader - what could possibly go wrong? When the butt hit the ground the gun discharged, the ball struck him in the right armpit, destroying his shoulder. After numerous failed surgeries at the Mayo Clinic, the arm just hangs there limp with a non-functioning hand attached. He does not have it removed because, as he puts it, "I've become attached to it over the years". I only digress to share this little nugget of misery and woe because he is presently in South Dakota on a pheasant hunting trip ... with a shotgun ... a regular unmodified shotgun ... a one-armed hunter armed with a shotgun and a history of gun related mishaps. And still he is invited on numerous hunting and fishing trips. "They only tolerate me because I cook." For the sake of his companions, let us hope he doesn't receive the honorary Richard B. Cheney Award for Marksmanship.       Again.