Perspective.

A year ago today, I was in the bleeping infantry.

Whatever happens at work today, once the day's over, I can go home to a place of my very own, with no bugles waking me up at oh-dark-thirty, no two-to-four-in-the-morning sentry duty, no sharing quarters with thirty-eight immature jackasses.

Open letter

Dear adversary:

If you submit an answer with completely incoherent grammar, and expect to be taken seriously, pray that your papers don't cross my desk. Either that, or be prepared to pay not only for my time, but the import charges for getting bulk quantities of Motrin from Stateside.

Yours in aggravation,

Bruce

"You know, the door was OPEN, Chief Break-Everything!"

Renovations continue apace. Today's edition: the door.

To be less cryptic, when the apartment was painted, the front door got stuck due to adhering paint. Once the painter got in to do some touch-up work on the apartment (through a side door leading to roof access), he decided to try and solve the problem. His solution involved using a screwdriver as a pry-bar, tearing up the doorjamb, and calling a locksmith whose solution was to break the lock. Then the locksmith my aunt had called showed, and got snippy about why we hadn't called him in the first place, because he could have probably gotten the door open without ripping apart the frame.

Our response: take one bit of renovation that had been scheduled for sometime in the future, adding a security door to the place, and move that up. Scheduled for tomorrow; they came today.

From what I can tell, they ripped out the entire door frame and replaced it with a sturdier frame to match the door. And speaking of the door, I have this sneaking suspicion that if I forget my keys in the apartment and lock myself out (as I did a couple of times at the old place), that door isn't about to be forced by anything short of explosives. The only edge that doesn't have bolts on it is the one against the floor.

(It all works off a single key, which is sadly too large and unwieldy to tuck into my wallet, which means that my traditional defense against locking myself out of my apartment may need some rethinking.)

Cabinet-makers for the kitchen are due tomorrow.