Mixed Grille

Like many San Francisco houses, ours has a security grille in front of the (recessed) front door. It's dull silver metal, a diagonal grid with silver metal curlicues on the front (which are both decorative and meant to keep people from prising the grid up to get to the lock). This is not a high crime neighborhood; the nice little old lady who used to own the house felt vulnerable all by herself and had the grille put up about ten years ago.

It's ugly.

So today I decided to paint the grille. One would think this would be a simple job, and in fact, it's not complex, it's only mindnumbingly time consuming. I got through painting the grille on the left side of the gate proper, in an hour and a half. By that time the light was going and it was cold; the paint was getting stodgy and hard to work with. I hope that tomorrow I will finish painting the grille, but in the meantime it's two thirds silver metal and one third stately black. Not optimum.

And today I spent four more hours on the grille. Not done yet. I figure another few hours tomorrow and the damned thing will be done. It will, in fact, look spiffy when it's done. I do rather wish that I had an "Easy" button for things like this.

Nothing Succeeds Like Success or Something

Because he was such a howling success at FEMA, Michael Brown is starting a consulting company so he can help others plan for disaster. He plans to help his clients avoid "the sort of errors that cost him his job." I was not clear from the tenor of the article whether his goal is to help people, companies and municipalities prepare for disasters natural and otherwise, or to help them avoid the blame for improper management thereafter.

The sound you hear is my mind, boggling.