downspoutThis might be the longest I have ever gone without posting. No good reason (except for life, school, kids, and working my way through the final levels of Assassin’s Creed II). And I should add “working on the house” to that list, since it’s always up there.

There are lots of good reasons to hate home ownership, but one of the best is probably this: I work on my house and have absolutely no idea what I’m doing. Being the classic underachiever that I am, this is an odd feeling. I tend to be good at everything I do. That sounds quite a bit arrogant, but it’s actually a harsh insult. I’m good at things only because I avoid the vast majority of things that I’m not skilled at. (That’s virtually a DSM-IV self-definition of underachieverhoodness.)

When you own a house, you don’t have a choice. Well, you actually do, but I can’t drop $500 to hire a handyman each time I need a ceiling fan installed. Plus—and I know I’m being stereotypical here—it seems unmanly to do that. So it’s with an excessive amount of pride that I look at the two gutter downspouts I installed yesterday. To an experienced workman, it’s a simple task, but the combination of cutting holes through the gutters with a jigsaw, choosing the angles, cutting gutter to fit, etc. was all new to me. I am actually anticipating tomorrow’s rain so I can watch my downspouts in action.