So, I’m thinking of moving. Again. It may pass, but it may not. Either way, it won’t happen for a while.

Oh, I mean moving away from Richmond. I may move within Richmond; I don’t like where I live. It is way too suburban. You can walk exactly nowhere. The one thing I do like about it is that it has a great layout for entertaining. It is also a bit of a trek for most of my friends.

Now, I love Richmond as a City. There is a lot to do; they have great festivals, a good variety of restaurants, and there is a lot of history here. (Note: a lot of Richmond natives do not know this.) You can go up to DC for the day if you are craving a bigger city; you can go to the beach for the day; you can go hike in the mountains if you wake up on a Saturday morning and that’s what you want to do.

But, several things have happened recently. My job? I’ve literally got nothing going on. My friends? Suddenly all paired up. Which, I can’t seem to manage. (I’m also feeling a bit ego-y, thinking that they are not, in fact, better than me, which leads to me thinking that it’s because I’m bigger than all of them. This? Can be helped a little, but even at my lowest weight I will be huge compared to them. HUGE! I have pocket-sized friends.) (Also lonely, which will pass. Probably the minute I start dating someone and remember that the big problem I have with dating someone in the same town is lack of alone time.) Family? Either I never see them, or I’m babysitting*, or there are huge, family-based weekends at which I’m supposed to be present at all times. Which? Way more than I can handle. I mean, when I lived in NC I once went a year without seeing family except for Peg, Bobby, and Stephanie.**

I realize that moving is likely not to change any of this, but I like having the hope, the possibility that re-inventing my life will work.

*I adore my nephew, and I don’t mind babysitting, but I don’t see him otherwise. Partially my fault, but partially not.
**Who I see a lot less now that it’s not a four-hour trip.

I went out to Habitat for Humanity this weekend. Although the original plan had been for us to do some roofing, the shingles had been stolen the day before. We ended up putting up siding instead.

Now, I’ve put up siding before. Once. About 2 years ago. However, this filled the site supervisors with such confidence that not only did they not give us any instruction, they counted on me to teach the guy I was working with.

One thing I do know about putting up siding: you have to leave room at the end of the wall or along any doors, windows, what have you. (About ¼ inch, to allow for expansion.) When I was measuring, I was taking that into account.

Except that they guy cutting the siding? Was taking a half of an inch off of our measurement. His explanation? "That’s how I do it, to make sure you have space!" Except that since he was doing this based on my measurements, he didn’t need to. Nor did he ask me. He asked someone else on site if I was measuring tight or not.
He cut four lengths of siding. All were too short. He

1. threw a fit about wasted siding
   
2. told us if we screwed up again he was taking us off of the scaffolding
   
3. yelled across the entire site about how we didn’t know how to measure
   

1. you can probably find a place on the house to use 116” lengths of siding
   
2. right, because the whole reason we were hanging the siding that high was to play on the scaffolding
   
3. dude, you’d already messed up 3 measurements that you took.
   

1. Hey! I don’t have to be here. I’m volunteering, so, not really interested and getting yelled at and berated. I left.
   

I’m told that the carpenter was yelled at later himself for not measuring things correctly.

Our annual whitewater rafting trip was this weekend. (I've been twice, so yes, now it's our annual trip.) It's a good time- we head up to West Virgina, spend two nights camping, and raft down the New River.

Around Noon on Friday I met Apple, Flanders, and PB at PB's house. Sasha and The Russian met us there; we loaded up the cars and got on our way. PB had downloaded a bunch of pod quizzes here. I highly recommend them as an excellent way to pass the time on a road trip. If you and your traveling companions are huge geeks, of course.

Sasha and The Russian beat us there by fifteen minutes and scoped out the campground. Most of the good spots? Gone. We found one that was suitable and began putting up our tents. PB and I both had to put up tents on our own; the others had teams of two. I'll have you know we finished first. Dinner, drinking around the campfire, cake for MechanicBoy's birthday, (He and Reen arrived later.), bed.

We got up that morning and prepared for the trip. We headed out on the buses to the put-in. When we got there, the trip leader announced that he needed our group of 11 to split into one group of 9 and one group of 2. No one volunteered to be the 2, so PB and I were told, “You two, go.”

That? Ended up being a good thing. Our raft had better paddlers and thus we were able to go for the more difficult/better ride runs. Also, they lost most of the people out of their boat at random times. We were also the sweep boat and had to go pick up Flanders after he swam a rapid but didn't head back to his raft. (The next rapid? Not swimmable.) We didn't know who it was at first, but as we neared him, PB asked me, “Is that Flanders?” Yep, Flanders. The rest of our boat (strangers, remember) nicknamed him “Fucking Flanders!”

The river was 4-5 feet higher than it was last year, so it was a completely different experience. Towards the end, we paddled into a surfing hole, surfed it successfully, and then headed out. The raft was pointed backwards so that we could see the rest of the rafts in our group try it.

But? Our guide wasn't paying attention to the river behind him. We got slammed by a wave and the entire right side of the boat went swimming. I ended up under the boat. When I got out from under it and went to take a breath I caught a wave to the face. At that point, one of the other guys who had ended up swimming (OK, it was the deliciously cute Tony) grabbed my vest and pulled me toward the boat. We all got in and all was fine. I'm not going to lie and say it wasn't scary though, because it was, a bit.

We all met in the lodge after the trip to watch the video. PB and I sat with our raft, who greeted Flanders with a rousing, “Fucking Flanders!” We did have to paddle hard to get to him, and then we had to paddle upstream to return him to his boat. Because we weren't keeping him.