Monday, October 18, 2010

They Should at Least Find You Handy

  
    Mark Twain once said, "Do something every day that you don't want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain."  As much as I admire the wit and wisdom of Mr. Twain, I have failed to follow this sage advice for the greater span of my years on this earth.  Instead, I follow the tenet of "Life is too short to do anything you can pay someone else to do."  When I cannot afford to pay someone to do the painful act, I procrastinate expertly until a date arrives in which I can pay for it.
    Today, however, I actually broke this rule by performing a very unpleasurable action.  I worked on my car.  I didn't overhaul the engine or replace the transmission or anything like that.  What I did was really rather simple, but it was still something that I would normally put off until tomorrow.
    Ah, tomorrow, the perfect time to start any project.  That's the procrastinator's creed.  But I digress.
    The problem on my car had to do with a protective covering that is on the underside of the front of the car.  I am not really sure what it protects.  Perhaps it keeps rocks and other debris from flying up into the radiator or some other engine parts.  It also keeps you from scraping up the cross member on the car when you pull up too far when parking and scrape the underside of the car on the curb.  Which is how my problem came to be.  The pins or screws (whatever they are) that hold on the cover can get sheared off by the curb scraping, causing the covering to hang down and possibly drag on the road.  This is what happened to me.
    This really bugged me, so I decided to do something about it.  I had no idea what kind of pins were needed to reattach the cover or how much they might cost.  I decided to find a temporary solution.  Of course, being a Red Green fan, my first thought was to use the handyman's secret weapon, duct tape, to tape the cover back up.  However, the more I thought about it, the less effective it seemed to be.
    Then I had a revelation.  Tie wraps!  I could tie wrap it back into place.  This would be simple, cheap, more aesthetic than the duct tape, and the tie wraps would be strong enough to hold it; probably, dare I say it, stronger that the duct tape.
    So today, I grabbed my tie wraps and went out to examine the situation.  It turned out that I had to link together 3 tie wraps to get it to reach around the cross member that the cover attached to.  But I did it.  And it worked like a charm.  Funny how a little thing like this can really fill one with a sense of accomplishment.  I guess it is just one of the many blessings that God gives us in life.
    Speaking of Red Green, if you don't know this legendary Canadian comedian, Google him.  What?  Do I have to do everything for you?  Anyway, the title of this post comes from one of his sayings.  He says, "If the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy."
    After today, I'd like to think that they would find me both.

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