Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Infrastructure Nonsense

Two days ago I saw a truck in our subdivision marked "U.S. Infrastructure" and I thought that was pretty cool. 

Yesterday I noticed that an area on our street was marked off by cones. 

Today I noticed a large pile of gravel blocking our driveway. 

Could have put it where they parked their trucks, but no.

I walked out to the driveway and employed some pretty loud body language to say, “When is this nonsense going to be over?” It was over when promised, in less than fifteen minutes, during which of course Gary’s phone rang. Luckily, no one was summoning him.

It amazes me that if a roof is to be torn off or a door or fireplace repaired Gary feels it in his bones, but if the street is torn to bits he loves it for the entertainment value.

It amuses me that as he day has gone on it is evident this nonsense is so that AT&T can upgrade their cables. ATt&T trucks everywhere. It would be especially amusing if they were putting in individual landlines for us old folks. I canceled my landline service, since my biggest landline user died. What if I was the user that tipped the scales, though, early last month? Poetic justice.

Weekly Paint Progress; 11/24 Happy Thanksgiving

I put so little effort making this:

... out of this:

Thursday Paint Progress: 11/17

Old paintings: the two dog paintings are in Colorado with Dave's two dogs, and the zebra and the third dog came back with me.

New painting:

Thursday Paint Non-Progress: 11/10

No way. I can't paint if there's a box of unfinished business in my room, and the basement is still in chaos. 

Weekly Paint Progress: 10/20

This was going to be my brother's fourth and final dog painting:

It's a dreadful photo of his very first dog  - he took a slanted digital photo of a tilted collage of 1970s photos. 

It is very possible I won't be painting it for my brother. He's been in the hospital two weeks with blood clots, heart stress, pulmonary embolism, and obstructed bile ducts, and they've deduced this is all probably a byproduct of liver cancer. They were going to do a liver biopsy earlier this week, but the anti-clot medicine made it unsafe to poke holes in his organs.

So, no way to make plans, so, I don't want to start this painting. Too much up in the air. Too much significance to this one little puppy painting.

UPDATE; Report from the Field, the Field Being Two People

In the last week, I have heard two Covid veterans say they had been sick recently with something that was "way worse than Covid."

From what they reported the symptoms were:

1. Desire for Cheerios
2. Aversion to Cheerios
3. Awful barking cough
4. Noticeable Brain Fog

How mild were their previous Covid infections that this was worse? I mentioned this to the neurologist and he said he hadn't heard of any new variants. But watch out, just in case.

It seems like sickness is everywhere this season. The flu was supposed to be bad this year, because masked people didn't get last year's flu, so no one has antibodies, so there might be two flus this year. Gary has a migraine that hasn't let up for a week, my brother's been in the hospital, these co-workers were afflicted with Cheerio Syndrome. Be vigilant.

======== UPDATE

Evidently the new variant is BQ. The most noticeable symptom is "a throat on fire."

 

Seen on the Road Yesterday

So many questions.

So, given the placement of the exclamation point, they began with the correct phrase, "Tennessee or Bust!"

But what is Energy FC? International readers will be dismayed but not surprised to hear I had to look it up to see it stands for Football Club.

So why was the T erased? Perhaps because they have suspended play until next year? It's a mystery.

Remaining Vacation Projects: Deadly Dull, Talking to Myself, Really

The next week-long vacation is coming up and here is what is left on the list:

• 'Home/roof repairs"- No progress on this, except the roof estimate was 30% more than I expected and over twice what I paid in 2001. However, the materials are up significantly. All materials are, which is why the only thing that progressed is the electrical work. A bit of that got done. There is glorious power on all walls of the basement. One new light outlet isn't working, though.
• The Weaning - The landline still isn't fixed. The only calls that go through are my phone and Gary's phone. All other phones get a message of "This number is no longer in service." Spectrum TV is gone, though. I find I watch a lot less television if I have to click more than once.
• Finish Margaret Atwood's Masterclass and start the Oil Painting Masterclass. Masterclass is being ignored. There is no Wig Masterclass; that's what I'm learning about lately. 

I think I can table all the bullets above so that I can work on the book over vacation. Well, even better, I will put in minimal effort per bullet. I'll adopt Gary's habit of doing one thing per day. One phone call a day, one Masterclass lesson, twenty pages revised per day. That's a manageable list.

Weekly Paint Progress: 10/9

This week dog three went from this:

to this ...

When it was originally this. 

Cause of Death

"Where are the wigs?" you say. One last wig is on the way: it's a used fixer-upper, though. I haven't had good luck with wigs of the dead. Shoes of the dead,  sure, but it seems wigs are not like shoes. 

However, and more important, last week they announced the official cause of death for Queen Elizabeth: old age.

I thought that was peculiar. I wasn't surprised she died, given her age, but that it was stated that way on the death certificate. 

I remember when I was young, some celebrity died and when asked why, his publicist said, "Well, he was 98..." as if that was the entire reason. I wondered since then what was on that celebrity death certificate. Surely not old age. At best it would have to be "complications of old age."

This article explains it further, but seems to end with the explanation that yes, sometimes people die of old age. However, this article from Australia states, "There is no such thing as 'dying of old age', and you won't see this term written on a death certificate."

Some sources describe dying of old age as dying from something a younger person would have survived, some call it "frailty," but if course we all suspect the Queen really died from the Covid that drove her to Windsor last year. 

Perhaps the family feels it's private, so while It's odd to me that there's no more definitive answer,that might be because I live in America, where the right to privacy is pointedly not in the Constitution any more.

Wig Week: All The Other Stuff

I foolishly thought that when you wear a wig you just pull it on your head. Done. No more fuss. 

But NO, that is not true at all. Here is the vast list of things you buy to help your wig.

Wig glue. If you have one of the modern wigs that let you sweep your hair off your face, you have a lace-front wig. There's a strip of lacy material that the scalp hairs are tied on, and you glue that strip to your forehead right at your hairline. I don't know what is wrong with my head, but that glue does not adhere.

Wig caps. Take the toe of a nylon knee-high stocking and pull it over your head before you put the wig on. That's a wig cap. You will forget about it until you take off the wig and find a nylon sock sitting on the top of your head.

Silicone spray. I really don't know with this is for, but I bought it. 

Wig wax. This actually works. It makes little chunks of synthetic hair. 

Wig shampoo and wig conditioner. Yes, conditioner. I just keep muttering, "It's nylon. What does conditioner do to nylon?"

(On a related note, they say if you play with your wig too much the curls will fall out, but spritz it with water and they will come back. I know this works with human hair, but how does it affect nylon hair? What happens to the wig if it's humid out?  I am skeptical. )

I know I should educate myself on all these topics. There seems to be a refreshing, helpful expert on YouTube named Denise Sheets who knows all the details and looks good in all wigs even without being a model. (Her favorite wig is the nightmarish Samara, the one that swamped my face, aka Girl Mono.) 

I feel like I'm in that honeymoon phase of the new hobby: all learning, all buying, until I lose interest once everything has been learned or bought. Then again, evidently on Etsy there are people making their own wigs. I mean, forget learning Russian. Making a wig? That would be a challenge.

Weekly Paint Progress: 10/6

This week the third dog went from this:

... to this.

Dang, the expression is out of the eyes now. I'll get it back. The right eye is in the right place now but needs more work. The edge of the left ear is too bright. I like some things about it. Mainly I like how I put zero effort into the chain and yet it looks believable. 

Weekly Paint Progress: 9/29

This week the third dog went from this:

... to this.

Candy Corn Recall

I have been preparing for this all my life. Here I am, with the egg intolerance, but I wisely thought ahead and developed an aversion to Candy Corn.

Candy Corn Recall Over Potentially Deadly Egg Mishap

 

Agile Artemis

Well, I see NASA has delayed the Artemis launch again, this time because a hurricane is coming. Did they not watch the Gregory Peck movie Marooned? Do they not know it is possible to launch a space rocket during a hurricane? You just have to wait for the eye and yell "go" a lot.

Speaking of NASA, I read an interesting article this week on how NASA is changing its business model from "Failure is not an option" to the more failure-friendly Agile model. Here it is if you'd like to see it, and another more terrifying technical one, especially the Harsh, lunar polar conditions bullet on page four.

Pebbledash

I was watching the most recent episode of The Great British Baking Show, in which people are tasked with portraying their childhood homes in cake, and they joked there might be a lot of buildings covered in "pebble-dash."

I looked up the term immediately, as I do so often during the Baking Show, and saw the image below.

In all my life I have seen precisely one pebble-dash building, but the one I saw was my elementary school from second to sixth grade.

For the first time I thought about pebble-dash as an adult, and for God's sake, why the hell would they coat an elementary school in sharp gravel? Because those aren't pebbles, I can tell you. The thing to do was to take a ketchup packet and impale it on one of the many sharp pebbles sticking out of the wall bordering your playground, and then remove if after it wept out a trail of "blood" in a convincing Halloween tableau. 

As best I know there is only one building covered in this nonsense in Saint Louis. To think it's common in Britain is alarming. I think a few people on the British Baking Show fashioned pebble-dash out of raisins and nuts or some safe material. Not realistic.

Speaking of the Baking Show, Netflix has a Junior version of the show, with different hosts but also with children as the contestants and so far, three episodes in, it is delightful. Droll British children rubbing their little hands on their brows and saying things like "But my Mummy says she likes my baking" in very serious tones. (No one actually said that, but they think it, you can tell.) 

Now I'm concerned those children go to schools covered in razor-sharp gravel. Disastrous.

Zen of the Landline Number

It has now been since 18 business days since the twenty-fifth of August in this the Year of Our Lord 2022. I still cannot get incoming calls on the telephone number I have had since the Year of Our Lord 1985. 

I have no boots, and the road disappears into a frozen blankness. I am cold. I do not see a path ahead of me on my quest.

Business Day 10: I call and someone tells me that the phone number has not been released as numerous phone representatives have claimed on Business Days of Our Lord 1 - 10. This resets the clock back to zero. I become so testy that I become short with the representative. This earns me a computerized satisfaction survey. 

Business Day 12: I Google "Is AT&T gaslighting me?" This takes me to an interesting article on how even the most well-meaning AT&T sales reps lie like dogs. Eventually someone tells me that there is a physical problem on my street. It is true that the trucks were there earlier working some vague problem.  However, the same individual told me he would call me at noon the next day and give me an update. This was a lie.

The Spectrum guy I spoke with on day 10 told me to expect to wait a month to get my phone back. So, that means I could make outgoing calls some time at the end of next week. 

Business day 16: I eschew my daily phone call to see if the phone is active. It isn't. It never will be. Stage of grief: acceptance. I dig a hole in the snow and wait for death.

But, seriously, I truly don't see a way out of this. 

Weekly Paint Progress: 9/22

This week my brother's third dog went from this:

... to this.

The dog's face can't match the carpet that exactly: it looks like he has holes.

Elvis! Elvis! Elvis!

Three Elvis-related movie reviews in one.

Movie 1: Elvis (2022, the Baz Luhrmann version)

We started our Elvis evening with the recent biopic. I did love how inventive the direction was. So fanciful. I wished they had warned me that the Young Elvis was not dubbed but old Elvis was. It was distracting, when you are listening to something and your brain knows exactly what the next note will be, especially when you've bought in to the idea that the actor is singing, as he was in the early scenes. I felt the acting was good, with one notable exception: Tom Hanks. More than once he would say a line and his mouth didn't move, I suppose because of the prosthetics. (Picture Roddy McDowell in Planet of the Apes.) Plus, I don't see why they dropped the most salacious parts of the story. Was there some agreement with the Presley people so no one mentioned Elvis shipped Priscilla over when she was a child and waited to marry her until she was legal? And why hush the fact Col. Tom was the lead suspect in a murder? That's why he left the Netherlands and assumed a name. Odd omissions.

Gary review: Gary fell asleep.

Movie 2: Jailhouse Rock

Elvis plays against type. His lead character is a jerk, and stubbornly remains a jerk until the last few minutes of the movie. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it.

Gary review: Gary gave a constant commentary of "This is ugly, this is misogynistic, why are we watching this?"

Movie 3: King Creole

Holy crap, this movie was terrific. Why in earth didn't he do more movies like this? He was good, Walter Matthau was good, Morticia Addams was good. I see why it was Elvis's favorite. 

Gary review: hypnotized through the whole thing.

2022 Fox Visitation

Every few years the raccoon buffet will draw an aged and sickly fox. 2018 was the last year with a sickly fox, and now we have another. 

Like the 2018 sickly fox, this one gets hungry enough to venture out during the day.

 

Weekly Paint Progress: 9/15

This week my brother's third dog went from this:

... to this.

Vacation Result

Well, I had to spend a good part of labor day week on the queen's deathwatch, and family obligations, so I didn't have nine full days. But, here's an update on all my plans for the week off:

I added and finished two tasks, 1) purge garage and 2) make a throw pillow (the sewing machine miraculously healed itself).

Of the 31 initital tasks:

19 are entirely done, especially all the creative pursuits. I have two brains for the bathroom: one hand-carved and one cast from an impression I made from a silicone mold that I also made. (I got it right on the second try.)

4 Weaning items are in wait mode, because the weaning has been delayed, because the phone still isn't fixed. It ended up being my fault, because I told the Spectrum man to transfer my phone and then turn off my service. What I neglected to say was "turn off my service after the transfer is complete, not immediately after you hang up the phone, because they can't transfer an inactive phone number." 

3 home repair tasks have not begun, because I have no heart to take on that many improvement tasks at once, really. No better reason.

1 item was dead in the water before it began, and that was shop for a car for Gary. As expected, he's waiting for technology to advance before making a decision. 

4 things were entertainment and media rewards for completing all my tasks, so I denied myself 3 of things, but I did watch 1, the Emmys, which was a painful waste of time.

Pretty good for an ambitious list. 

The Queen

The Queen is dead; long live the King.

I wish we had a Queen Elizabeth II in America. Some nice stable figurehead. A nice wealthy lady who does good deeds and represents her country well.

I certainly wouldn't want someone who has had an affair, lusted after young girls, wanted to be a tampon, dressed up as a Nazi. I'd want someone who bored the tabloids. 

Would I want Kng Charles III? Queen Consort Camilla? Would I want that if I were to pay for it with my taxes? 

Sad to see her go, though. 

I can say that here in the states the response to "Long live the King" has been, "Yeah, but not to 96." 

Weekly Paint Progress: 9/8

This week the latest dog went from this:

... to this:

Deer On Tape

The sprinkler repairman said, "You have deer," and pointed to the tracks.

I answered, "I know. We used to catch them on the video camera, but they've been avoiding it the last few years."

They must have been listening.

This deer says, "Looking for me?"

It's almost time for them to switch to their woody diet. I'd think these  peanuts in the shell are an ideal choice.

 

Weekly Paint Progress: 9/1

So, I have decided to hand-draw the next dog, then check it against a traced dog.

Original dog needs to have his eyeballs redirected. 

Eyeballs still need tweaks.

Oh, and I amputated a foot. Need to fix that too. 

 

Artemis

I love that they scrubbed the Artemis launch moon launch Monday. I was excited for it, especially given that there would be three weeks of moon news, but I had two misgivings, both regarding the paint.

• They didn't paint USA in huge letters in the side. That was a thrill with the Apollo project, watching the U rise past the camera, then the S, then the A. I suppose national pride isn't needed when there's no one-on-one space race anymore.
• They should just call that shade "O-ring orange." That's the same color as the booster that exploded on the Challenger. Why make that choice?

NASA, take this opportunity to touch up the paint job.

The Weaning: Step Three

If you switch a landline, they tell you that it may take a week to get inbound phone calls again, but they don't tell you when that week starts. I thought the week started when I signed up with AT&T, but no, it starts the day you sever ties with Charter. I should have read this information from the FCC first. So, I launched a new hobby: getting that process expedited.

First, there was half an hour wait time before I spoke with Tia, who gave me lots of valuable advice on fake hair and eyelashes for forty-five minutes while her computer processed.

That was followed by a talk with Mike, for, I swear to you, an hour and a half, but Mike was not chatty. He was pleasant, but there were long periods of silence while I made dinner, ate dinner, cleaned up after dinner.

When he came off mute I asked, "Who is this?" and he had the good nature to laugh.

I don't think any of this helped, but it made me think it was helping. I'd really be curious to know what was going on. Is there an old-timey switchboard operator physically pulling lines out and lacking them into some other companies switchboard? Are they digging up buried trunk lines and putting in new ones? I don't know.

As of this date I don't have inbound service, but the three people and agencies who might need to contact us have our cell phones as a backup. it's been a lovely few days without spam calls, actually, so there's that.

The Weaning: Step Two

The first thing that needed to be fixed after the old wireless router switched to the new wireless router were the Alexas. I'd ask my bedroom Alexa to turn off the light and every Alexa in the house answered with "I'm sorry, I'm having a little trouble understanding right now." They weren't in unison, though, staggered just enough that the sounded like a crowd asking "What's going on? Is this happening to you too?"

I was only permitted to fix one Alexa, as Gary claimed he knew a special shortcut. He lied, and took all the fun of fixing it all when I was asleep. 

Then I discovered the variety of devices that had attached themselves to our old internet and were stubbornly looking for it. The light in my room. The printer, of course, but also the sous vide, and the TiVo.

The TiVo isn't aware that its days are numbered. That will be a hard plug to pull.

The Weaning: Step One

So we are in the process of switching from Cable to Fiber, from Spectrum to AT&T. 

If you remember, Gary feels we need two fireboxes and two Rokus and it looks like we'll have two internet providers as well, because we are not "cutting the cord" as people describe leaving cable, instead we are weaning ourselves off the cable teat.

Step One of the Weaning: Get the landline number switched. I know everyone else has dropped the landline in favor of their cell phones, but I like the fact that I will have a working phone if there's a month-long electrical outage, as there was during the Great Florissant Hail Storm of 2001. I'd need to find the backup non-electric phone in the basement, in the dark, but then after a few days when all the other phone batteries died I'd be the neighborhood savior. Me and the big battery phone charger in my electric car.

To get the landline switched I had to cancel the landline part of the cable bundle, and you know the cable company doesn't let go easily. Took me half an hour. Here was my strategy:

1. Tell the man I wanted to transfer only the phone.
2. The man sees what's coming and offers me deals on tv and internet.
3. I counter that with my belief that A Service should cost a Price, as it did back in the day.
4. Man offers me more deals. Eventually he got down to 65% off. (Man also uses the word "utilize" incorrectly every other sentence.)
5. I made the argument that established customers shouldn't be penalized for their loyalty with the monthly frog-boil of escalating pricing, especially when combined with unreliable internet. (I also make a feeble effort to open his eyes to the nuances of "utilize" vs a vis "use" but Man talked over me.)
6. Man thinks money will win against my principles and arguments, so I did something I have always wanted to do. I said, "Can I bribe you? My bill is due day after tomorrow, so if I promise to keep the tv and internet with you into the next billing cycle, will you switch my landline over to AT&T?" 

And then he spoke to his manager and they switched the landline, dropped those charges, and we kept the cable and internet. For this week. Gary wants to be sure we'll have something to fall back on if there's a problem. 

So, watch this space.

Weekly Paint Hiatus: 8/25

I'm slowly putting the basement back in place, even though technically it hasn't rained hard enough for the inevitable disappointment. 

However, I must be able to access the paints because my brother wants paintings of the other two dogs he's had in his life. So, two MORE dogs in shades of brown. Look for these coming soon.

Space Logo

I was watching something about the  "Gateway Project" to build a space station orbiting the moon.

I did a little double-take when I saw the logo.

At first it looked like every logo you see here in Saint Louis, there's the arch, gotta have the arch, and then I remembered NASA isn't like a Saint Louis used car dealer. What are they doing with our Arch?

"Well, 'Gateway,'" I thought, "It's the Gateway Arch," and then I wondered, "Does the rest of the world immediately associate the words 'Gateway' and 'Arch'? Our arch isn't the only one arch out there."

So I looked it up, and the first article I found said:

"The new logo represents the Gateway's near rectilinear halo orbit above the grey horizon of the moon with a white arch similar in appearance to the iconic Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri."

Perhaps it's a nod to the Gemini modules being built in Saint Louis, too, but I suppose it's possible the world has adopted the Gateway Arch as the universal symbol for all gateways, harbors, thresholds, and oppression of natives. Soon the world will all look like local air conditioner repair shops. 

I feel quite the center of the universe.

Not Finishing Any Basements

Weeks ago, when I fully believed the drainage company would easily resolve our basement issue, I let myself imagine what a finished basement might look like.

I had cunning bookcases concealing our support and sewage pipes. The air conditioning duct became an architectural feature. I decided on painted black beams, not a drop ceiling. And a barn door sliding over the bumped-out storage area.

Luckily, I only spent an evening on Pinterest puzzling this all out, because the next day I looked up 'finished' basement codes in my city.

Yeah, no, I will never have a finished basement. Not unless I want to tear holes in the basement walls for larger egress windows and exhaust vents. And God forbid a toilet or any plumbing goes down there; that's another nightmare. And don't tell yourself you can put a bed in a basement. That's another set of laws. 

So, after a few hours of fantasy I'm back to a basement for storage and painting. At most maybe some paint, maybe some fabric to divide up the space.  That's okay by me. 

Weekly Paint Hiatus and Home Improvement Stasis: 8/18

Well, I am still steamed that the basement drain is only half done, but still holding out hope that the half that's done is sufficient.

Gary did what he considers due diligence, which for him is learning how to do the job himself before speaking with a vendor. He learned the other approaches if the leak persists, and then called the company and convinced them to keep charging us. Really. "Work up a bill; I'll pay it, " and then convinced them if the half-drain failed that THEY could implement the other ideas he has.

The sad thing is that we now have to wait for rain on already-saturated ground before we put anything back. And before we start any new projects. 

I may have to carry my painting supplies upstairs. The kitchen table's all cleaned off.

Visible Man Is Feeling Friendly

Celebrity Hat Rides Again

One of my oldest friends called on my birthday and said, "I need to borrow a hat for a tea party."

She brought over some dresses: a blue floral and a pink floral. She tried on two blue hats at first, then she gathered the nerve to go Big.

(Rare photo of Celebrity Hat from behind.)

Of course, Celebrity Hat won her over. No other hat can compare. 

Russian Update

I haven't even finished Checkpoint One of DuoLingo Russian, and let me tell you, it is getting way harder.

My plan to learn Russian as a natural Russian child would is crawling along. Well, I suppose I speak a little better than a nine month old orphan who only hears Russian 15 minutes a day.

In addition, I took the Places lesson again and the have scaled down the excitement with which they say "Ukraine." Before, it was a Judy Garland "Let's put on a show!" level of excitement, now it's considerably less animated.

New Toy 3 in Action

I used the Bug-a-Salt gun yesterday to kill a fly on the counter. It was just lounging there, so I snuck off to get the gun, struggled to pump it, stood a yard back, aimed, and shot.

Hit the fly dead on. At first I thought he had been vaporized, because he vanished the instant after the bang, After some searching I found him standing on the kitchen table. He still had all his parts and wings. He saw me and walked slowly away. I didn't want to salt-blast my wood table, so I got the fly-swatter and tapped him. He wandered off in a different direction, shell shocked. I put him out of his misery. 

He didn't seem to have any open wounds, so I guess maybe the gun gave him a salt overdose? Teeny-tiny heart attack? Regardless, it was very, very satisfying. 

Weekly Paint and Home Improvement Progress: 8/11

Oh, am I steamed. I have never heard of such a thing before, but the basement drainage company is "giving up" on my basement. Concrete is too thick. Nothing they can do. I asked who their biggest competitor was.

So, they have put in a French drain that leads halfway toward the sump pump and stops. Just ... stops. And based on the even shorter drain they put in four years ago, it will do nothing more than make a weak spot for water to break through. 

But, then I think: we had a storm go through last weekend with the job only half done and there was no water. One of the holes in the sump was draining happily into the pump. I could still divert water away from the house by installing a pump at the end of the drain they put in the lawn a few years back. The neighbors next door are being pressured to drain their lawn by the neighbors behind them. 

But that optimism faded as I imagined Gary would just reinforce his claim that the more repairs you do on your house the more you break it in other ways. He surprised me, though, he came home and was completely chill. If half a job worked anyway, good, if not, we still had options. I was only half as angry, then but half was still angry enough.

At least I can take this rage and channel it into putting the basement back in place.

Weekly Paint and Home Improvement Progress: 8/4

Lord God in heaven, the cement in the basement is too thick and they have to come out next week with the BIG jackhammer.

The crew did explain what was wrong - the "footer" that the basement wall sits on is increasingly deep, so it works against the downhill slope we have that you think would help with drainage.  

Here is some conceptual art for you:  a drawing I made for Gary to explain the problem.

• The black lines show the wall sitting on the footer. The footer is a wedge instead of the rectangle it should be. The water is already flowing in from the right side and puddles up because it runs into the cement footer.
• The blue is what we will have: a trench through the footer, on the basement side, that will give the water an egress. (Any previous egress we might have had is blocked up.)

(I recognize this could all be an ornate lie. How would I know?)

They only finished half, but luckily there was a downpour this week and the remaining leaks were illuminating. There are two, and they both are clearly a result of spots where I have outside dirt piled up to the top of the basement wall. Ironically, I did that to get some vertical drainage going on the outside, not the inside. Also, the team was able to drill one hole into the sump pump area to alleviate the pressure underground  (only one, all others were impeded by the concrete that reaches to Hell). 

So, home construction takes precedence over art for another week, but next Thursday they should be done. I have art plans:

1. Return to old bad things and fix them. For example, I left a detailed Buffalo hovering over some abstract grass: I could add some trees or something to fix that. 
2. Download the Masterclass oil painting class when it arrives on 8/22. That should be interesting.