In too deep? Cut it out.

Well, I suppose the big news around here right now is that we topped out at 80 F today, March 25, missing the all-time record by a mere 8 degrees. It was a great day all around.

And in other news, I took a circular saw to the outmoded whirlpool bathtub on the main floor, and converted it to a walk-in type. These are very popular and very expensive amongst the assisted-living crowd, but I’m sure the net effect was to lower our property values by a few thousand Washingtons.

The whirlpool sides were too high for J to vault comfortably, and the tub never belonged there in the first place. A standard tub was removed, and some space in an adjoining closet had been annexed to provide for the bigger receptacle. Before we bought the place, the contractor who had been fixing it for the owner had to change a lot of plumbing and stop a serious leak in the drain system. Even that wasn’t enough to make the tub all that attractive to bathers. The whirlpool initially coughed up green water and plaster dust, and despite repeated cleanings, it seemed unlikely ever to resemble something that would be found in Better Homes and Gardens. We used it only twice in two years.

A shower stall, on the other hand, would prove prohibitively expensive. So I cut to the chase, so to speak, and over two days fashioned the new look. The problem of supporting the shower curtain over the 20 inch open space was solved with a plexiglass panel that hooks over the side of the tub. The electrical connections have been rendered inoperative, which will solve the problem of guests thinking they’re turning on the vent fan and getting an obscene burp from the jacuzzi. The old nozzles have been covered by glued-on rubber drain stoppers.

There’s still work to do. The water in the Great Miami Aquifer is notoriously hard, and it takes only a few weeks for rust stains to attach to walls and curtains. The easy part is finished. Now I gotta clean the grout.

SMART for life.

Rebuilding a computer that's gone bad is not easy. It takes a lot of time and better-than-average familiarity with the inner workings of a computer.

I've been trying to do that now for two days for a colleague. But this computer presents its own set of issues. The hard drive (as most do) has a "health monitor" called SMART, which warns you when you boot it that the disk drive is pretty well on its last legs, and you best get your act together and save anything worth saving to another medium before the drive goes to the big recycle center in the sky.

Rather than get into the boring details, let me just say that we're on the way to recovery. It won't be perfect, but neither will it be a total loss.

Wouldn't it be nice if we had a SMART system built into our lives that would start flashing warnings like "Death is Nature's way of telling you to slow down" when you're veering towards self-destruction? I'm not talking, necessarily, about the physical part. There's tons of physicians willing to take your case if you are interested.

No, what I mean is, I guess, a kind of seventh sense that says "you know, given your future potential, you need to start wearing a helmet when you're on your Harley." And then, just in case you missed the message, it would accompany the text crawler with an in-skull video of a morgue drawer being pulled out, with you in a torn leather jacket sleeping the eternal sleep of the un-helmeted. And you'd see that vision periodically, like every time you turned the ignition key.

I don't think it's that we're by design inclined to ignore wisdom when it confronts us. It may be more that we obey the Law of Inertia more than we know: things like to keep on doing what they're already doing. Same holds true of those asteroids that are supposed to collide with earth over the next few decades. Ditto for beliefs, biases and bodies.

Trouble is, if you obey the Law of Inertia, the Law of Averages will gitcha.

To our daylight, the times change.

Another fine day, with another cold night. And the end of a weekend that costs us an hour of sleep.

J had an enormous cold, probably the worst one she's ever had, brought to her by the friendly infant elfin granddaughter who chose to share her infection by coughing in her grandmother's face. Or perhaps her grandmother aimed her at her face accidentally by playing a grandmother game, known as "I'll Get You to Smile Even If I Have to Let You Cough in My Face."

On the animal front, Gary the Groundhog put in two or three appearances. We had not seen him since last fall. It appears that he may have wintered under the tool shed at the back of our neighbor's garage.

Sitting out on the deck this early evening, basking in a warmth that was tempered by the occasional gust of lingering chill wind from Canada, we saw Ardie again. This time, s/he was flying just about 60 feet above the rooftops, probably wanting a closer look at the critters on the deck. A house finch landed on our handrail and cocked a worried eye at us. He took off again and landed a little farther away. Finally deciding, most likely, that we posed no serious threat, he flew down to the sunflower seed feeder to join the other boys and girls who are always there if there is anything left.

Little Red, the tiny red squirrel who valiantly dragged a snowman's scarf halfway across the yard but abandoned the effort when he saw how improbably difficult it would be to haul it up the tree, appeared late in the afternoon. After skittering about amongst connecting branches, he sat on a limb about twenty feet away to partake of something nutlike. We could hear his tiny teeth clicking against each other as he devoured whatever it was.

I finally got to meet and chat with a neighbor lady for the first time in two years. As we mused about this and that, I learned about some of the original gossip and the changes that had been made during the many years she had lived on the street. I had not realized, for example, that the demolition crews were already at work on one of our city's two hospitals.

And so, it was another fine day. Almost enough to take the mind off the global warring crises.