Crazy Stable

Ready for a geek story, with genuine off-brand geeks? Last week, this was my hard drive.

My PC (a Dell Dimension C521) had done Blue Screen of Death, first to Daughter ("Mommm...the computer is doing something weird!") and then to me. After rebooting, I ran my ever-so-updated Norton Security Scan, which found the same lone "low-risk tracking cookie" that it always finds, and declared things otherwise peachy.

Norton Virus Protection

But the B.S. of D. kept returning, first every few days, then daily. First, I forked over $50 to Dell tech support to verify that it wasn't a hardware problem (they did the mysterious, remote-control "we-take-over-your-computer" diagnostic), but probably a virus. Norton tech support offered to "manually" remove it for hundreds of dollars, even though I am a paid-up subscriber. Having exhausted all the good will I possibly could from techie friends, I was reduced to hunting around for A Guy to Come to the House. I think I meant to call "Geek Squad," but I had a postcard lying around from "Nerd Patrol," so I called them.

Nerd Patrol claims to be an international franchise, but here in Flatbush that means a nerdy guy arrives from Coney Island Avenue, dispatched by a nice lady on Staten Island. I vaccuumed the cat hair from under the desk as I awaited his arrival. With a faint Eastern European accent, he declared that it was indeed a virus, (thanks, Norton!) although he couldn't offer the satisfaction of naming it. As the B.S. of D. feverishly appeared over and over, he delivered the awful recommendation: Reformat your hard drive. Wipe everything, reinistall Windows, start afresh, for about $300.

"I hope," he said, "that you're backed up."

Oh, God. Like the parent in a turbulence-tossed airplane who realizes she's never made a will, I frantically ran through my digital affairs. They were not in order. I had something called "Norton Save and Restore," but it turned out to have last "saved" about two years ago. Since then, it had presumably been sitting around the cracker barrel, chair tipped back, spinning yarns and blowing smoke rings at the ceiling. ("We think Norton is really worthless," said the Nerd.) I had also backed up the back-up with a black-box external hard drive called "My Book," but it had somehow been detached and forgotten months ago.

My fast-sinking stomach hit a speed bump, however, when I remembered: In a moment of sloppy brilliance, I had thrown some money at Backblaze, a service that saves your hard drive on Mars or someplace. If I was willing to digest it in 4-gig chunks, I could get it back for free, or, for bigger bucks, retrieve it by mail in one chunk. Let's just hope she works, Cap'n, we've never actually tried her, I thought, as the Nerd carried my poor naked Dell out into the cold spring air, to be stripped of all traces of my photography, writing, and personal data.

We whipped out Daughter's laptop--the joys of being a two-puter family!--and discovered that, yes, most of my stuff was sitting there on Mars. (First, however, the Nerd mistyped "Backblaze" by one character, guess which one, and up popped a studly black porno dude. Uncomfortable moment for both of us.) The drive came back and Nerd got it up and running, but it's not quite the same. Not everything came back from Mars; my precious stored e-mails, for instance, and the bookmarks of my eclectic web wanderings. After a harrowing week of restore downloads, I am mostly back up to speed. (And I ditched Norton for a nerd-recommended security called ESET, which growls menacingly at imaginary intruders.)

In fact, today the machine felt well enough to screw with me again: It refused to pop open its CD-ROM tray (even with the straightened-paper-clip-in-the-hole trick) until I ordered a whole new part ($40) from Dell. Clearly, this 2007 machine is headed for Kevorkian territory, like a used car you know you should junk but you already paid for a new transmission blah blah blah. But at least I have my photos...and yes, you should back up your stuff right now and if you're lazy, use Backblaze or something like it.

The whole trauma inspires me to share a favorite moment in the cinematic literature of memory-erasure:

For us nerds, that's a beautiful ending.

After the First Snowstorm, the Second Snowstorm, the Sunday Morning Hail and Thunder, the Cold Soaking Deluge, and the Tree-Slaying Gales came...today. These guys in the backyard must have naturalized, because I've never planted this many crocus bulbs in my life. They were covered with crazy bees. Where were the bees over the weekend, I wonder?

The revelation of the floors was perhaps the most gratifying part of the Extreme Ratty Attic Makeover. Why? Because the previous owner painted all the floors—virtually all 3,000 square feet of house—with 2 coats of oxblood-red paint. This scary sander, its ultra-fat'n'scary extension cord sucking electricity straight from the box downstairs, was up to the task.

With much screeeeeeek and zzzaaazzz, the layers (including a mud-brown topcoat that may simply have been filth) started coming off. The house was filled with a strange, resinous smell: that of fresh-cut pine lumber.

This was old-growth yellow pine, according to our contractor, easily found in century-old houses but no longer available; the fresh-cut smell was the amazing old wood, still loaded with some "juice" about 100 years after being felled. And yes, the hideous paint had served to protect the floors from their boarding-house battering for all those decades.

The saddle and edges needed hand-scraping, and lots of places needed putty fillings. Hey, this isn't Monticello; I'm delighted with the rehabbed-factory-loft esthetic. Super-thrilling bonus: We did the third-floor landing, too!

Finally, two coats of polyurethane and a good buffing. (Years ago, in a tiny guest bedroom, we hand-rubbed the floor with tung oil and loved its sweet-smelling, mellow burnish, but this time we weren't up for quite so much effort on our knees.) When the sun hits it, it glows like caramelized sugar. It is the color of redemption.

This is, supposedly, a sort-of renovation blog, and yet...since this year of grace 2010 began, we have been renovating our butts off, and I haven't breathed a word of it here. I have been holding out on you! Maybe this Blog Block stems from my intense superstitiousness, my fear of Drawing Attention to even a morsel of good fortune lest the earthquake-dealing gods decide to smite me. Yes, I have issues. They peek out like glimpses of old ivy-twining wallpaper when you kick the plaster too hard.

But I also have a new Blue Room. It will never be blue again (or ivy-covered), and will henceforth be referred to as The Studio.

I have shared the story (and my dreams) for the Blue room before, here.

The dream has totally morphed, from master bedroom to book art and printmaking studio. But for now, there is fresh, clean space awaiting paint rollers...and, except for a length of old baseboard, no more blues! More details to come, but meanwhile, I am still taking all this in. Behold, before and after porn!

The room, vaguely L-shaped, is under the eaves on the third floor, all interesting shapes and angles.

 Goodbye to the hippie mandalas left over from the Stable's incarnation as a boarding house.

Here's another view, facing the front of the house.

Below: No storebought track light fixture has ever been loved as this one is; it radiates legitimacy upon all it illuminates.

Next: the miracle of the floor.

Here it is: Hope for the future, and only $349!

It's a nifty triangular raised bed from White Flower Farm catalog, the premier supplier of garden porn to torment us as we emerge from the Yuletide (the only good excuse for winter's existence) into the hard Arctic glare of January. Each year, I stew in an agony of desire when this catalog arrives. I want everything. Some years I spend scarce dollars on some particularly irresistible goodie, and usually, it dies--usually because I neglect to dig a hole, plant it and water it. But this raised bed (which my dad would have knocked together out of old lumber in an afternoon for free, yes I know)...it represents infinite promise.

And this 25-degree day, when the garden looks like a glacial moraine, is not the time for reality. Not the time to contemplate the likelihood of my sledgehammering up more cement to create a happy substrate for this raised bed...or the fact that I'd still have to fill it with 24 cubic feet of topsoil after "pounding the clever hinge-pins." Now is the time to imagine myself, all radiant and earth motherish, plucking my ripe heirloom veggies and dewy herbs and tucking them into a trug for that night's casually tossed summer salad.

I found this little guy between the leaves of a Greenmarket bok choy a few weeks ago and scanned him. That's the spirit I'm looking for. "Unless the seed falls to the ground and dies..." Imagine if that Scriptural metaphor turns out to be real, and literal, and we really are destined to exist in a state as radically (no pun intended) different from our mortal selves as the sprout is from the seed. I hope that thought, rather than "Oh, crap, I still never decluttered the attic," is my final one on this earth.

Should I buy the cold frame, so I'd finally have one and quit pretending I'll make one out of scrap?