Like Sand(ing) Through The Hourglass

Sanding is boring. I can't watch TV or listen to music while I'm doing it, because it's loud and obnoxious. I usually spend the first few minutes making a sort of proto-outline for what I'll write about, but I tend to drift away from that pretty quickly. This leaves me with a lot of time to kill. So I often find myself making use of it to mentally kill off my friends and family.

That's right, sometimes when I'm bored doing mundane or repetitive tasks, I compose eulogies for my friends. I don't think of this as a particularly morbid activity, its generally life affirming as I wax poetical about my friends triumphs, both real and imagined. Occasionally I go so far as to write them down when they make me laugh or I need catharsis. No, I won't show you yours, yes I might show you that of a mutual frenemy. I say this, because they often sail the passive-aggressive seas, in which retribution is sought for imagined slights ("He is survived by 15 children under the age of five, none of which can manage to get enough food through their beards to avoid malnutrition."). Though the people I like are just as prone to confabulated accomplishment ("She was not only the first, but the best unicorn tamer this side of the world has ever seen, or is likely to see for a long time to come.")

That said, most of the sanding is now done, and most of you have so far survived your imaginary trials, tribulations, and manticore maulings.


Anyway, once I got the goo on and dried, it was time to remove it. Sanding it down takes off most of the top layer, and leaves the cracks, gaps, and scratches that aren't filled with DAP/Bondo filled in. As you can see, a number of these scratches are due to my grain-agnostic sanding style. Sometimes I get lazy and go against the grain. Most of these don't show through the paint anyway, so I don't stress over them.

 

As the goo sands off, it goes from a hooters-girl-skin orangey colour to something more in the goth range. Any spots that stay the gross orange colour are too deep and need to be filled again. I usually circle them so that I can find them easily when I've got the filler. Usually two or three passes of filling/sanding gets most of the dips.

The Supervisor has absented himself for the majority of the sanding owing to racial tensions with Stanley the vacuum cleaner. Ain't nobody got time for an HR incident around here. He did, however, come by to inspect the work and sign off on it.

 

The Sup also has made his presence known through some conspicuous trails through the dust on the walls. The sides of his belly have conveniently cleaned a stripe about six inches up on all of the walls. I'd worry about him ingesting so much dust but 1) he eats paint, cardboard, and everything else and 2) cat food is mostly ash anyway, right? That's practically dust.