Blood line

In this recent project/obsession, I have a few lines at which I call it a day: The Loud announces that dinner is ready, or the current box from which I'm working is finally and completely emptied, or I draw blood. Today I crossed the blood line. So now, in the spirit and hopes of rapid healing, I'm replacing the red bodily fluid lost with another red fluid and settling in for a good blog session instead.

 I seem to have stumbled into a strange retirement career: disappearer. When my former place of employment has a piece of equipment they can't get rid of (by selling, or giving back to the vendor, or whatever the usual methods might be), I get a call: "Would you like ('can you remove') this analyzer?" They know that I sell metals of all sorts to a local recycling center and give the proceeds to my chorus, and they also know that I'm fast, efficient, and (most importantly) free. As long as the largest piece of the analyzer's chassis will fit in my car, I respond YES!

Stock advertisement photo--I have no idea who this woman is.

Four of these analyzers were offered at the end of September, and I've been digging myself out from under them ever since.

My modus operandi is to break things down to large manageable chunks that I can chuck into the car and deal with at home where I can drink coffee (or wine), listen to what I'd like, and wear whatever I want (NO LAB COATS!) This means, however, that the living room ends up looking like this:

(Worse x 4 in fact, because my camera batteries died and I couldn't get as many photos as I would've liked.)

So, for the past 5 weeks or so I've been spending roughly 7 hours a day dismantling large pieces of lab equipment down to their nuts and bolts, literally. I'm determined to get the living room cleared of boxes by the end of November, and the closer I get to that goal the more determined (obsessed) I become, knife slices to the thumb notwithstanding.