"If playground rules are not in effect, this is anarchy." - Kelso, That 70's Show

The Boy, swinging on the new swing set. The drill press, being drilly and pressy, sits to his right.

This was the second weekend of the swing set. I know I could have bought a kit, but that didn’t seem Alaska-y at all. It seemed a bit more fair, somehow, to at least buy the boards and screws and figure it out myself.

Yesterday, The Mrs. and I went to Home Despot. There, the main goal of The Mrs. was to find some flowers to plant out front of our house. We bought bulbs and planted them last fall, but in the end I think they gave up just rotted in the soil. The Mrs. got some actual live plants to kill this time.

An aside, it seems as if The Mrs. can kill any plant. If Bird Flu® (Run, Hide, Scream!™)were a plant, well, the salvation of mankind might be for The Mrs. to be put on the case. I kid. She’s been successful at growing tomatoes, which the dogs promptly ate before they ripened.

Home Despot was our spot. The Mrs. brought The New Boy in her car, and The Boy and I rode in my 1936 (seems that old) Ford truck. The Boy loves the Ford truck, since he can sit up front without fear that some safety device would explode and injure him. I believe it was the economist, Thomas Sowell, who said that if economists were inventing car safety devices, the best one would consist of a six-inch long razor-sharp knife stuck smack dab in the middle of the steering wheel. I think that would curb aggressive driving, too. As it is, I view air bags in a similar light, and am actually a bit irritated that I can’t buy a car without them because some lobby or other decided that all cars should have them. On behalf of all three of us that think this whole car-safety thing has gone a bit far, thanks a lot, pal.

Anyhow, car safety device irritation aside, The Mrs. brought a selection of hard to kill plants that she placed in our front yard. I bought lumber.

Two weeks ago when I had some time to dedicate to the swing set, I had miscalculated the number of 2x4’s that I’d need. I think I bought about 20, but ended up needing 30. Bad math. So yesterday I bought some more. I got home and began assembly first of the table for the drill press. That construction went well, but still took about an hour. I explained in my “please trust me voice” that all of the time I’d spent assembling the drill press would pay off once we could use it for drilling out a huge number of holes for steps on the swing set. The Mrs., to her credit, didn’t complain a bit.

When we finally got to use the drill press, The Mrs. remarked that it was “very drilly and very pressy.” She remembered a time about four years ago when I wrestled with a similar project that required a bunch of holes to be drilled, and was suitably impressed by what an improvement the drill press was over my past efforts. She figured out that we should use a ladder and some shims to hold the main beam (the part the swings dangle from) until it could fall on my head be attached to the main tower segment.

As we started back to the main assembly I looked and became dismayed to find I only had about seven screws left in the five pound box. Even given that, we worked on the swing set until about 9:30PM. I was completely disoriented on time, and thought it was about 6:30PM. That’s the downside of doing projects in Alaska – time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping, into the future. Why does that make me think of eagles? I digress.

Construction delayed until today, when I could once again venture into the big-box comfort of Home Despot. I got the screws, and another box of them besides, and started working as soon as I got home.

Now the swing is operable, and with only a ladder for the overhead bars and a slide to attach, we’re nearing the end of this project. That the end of this is near is very good, since I ran out of beer yesterday. No home improvement scheme should outrun its beer allotment.