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finishing a difficult menorah
Wednesday, December 3 2025
My eyes were still a little bleary from sleep as I took up a snow shovel and proceeded to dig out the entire driveway such that both cars could leave. There was maybe six or seven inches of snow on the ground and Gretchen had shoveled out maybe 100 square feet last evening. It probably took me forty five minutes to do all that shoveling. The ended up being sunny but not warm enough to melt snow that wasn't next to something dark being illuminated by the sun.
Later, after Gretchen had gone to the bookstore with Neville (for the first time in months), I managed to get Charlotte to join me on a drive into town so I could get better soldering supplies. I first went to Lowes, since Gretchen isn't upset to see Lowes in the credit card transactions. There I bought a pound of solder (more than $50), a tub of flux, and a jar of 25 half-inch 90-degree copper fittings. But I also wanted more half-inch tee-fittings and didn't want to buy just one. So I then drove to Home Depot, where I bought a 30-count jar of those with cash. (One of many advantages of buying fittings in bulk is that they do not have sticky labels with barcodes on them, which then are difficult to remove if one is using the fitting in a sculptural piece.) If I'd had Neville with me, I would've let him and Charlotte out to explore the parking lot. But without Neville there to provide an example of the thing that needs to happen, I couldn't be sure Charlotte would get back in the car. So I didn't let her out.
Back at the house, I soon resumed work on the menorah. Interestingly, I had about the same amount of trouble with the flux as I'd had yesterday. So the problem wasn't the flux. Had the physics and chemistry of the universe fundamentally changed? Had I lost a skill I used to have? Soldering is usually easy: you put flux on the pieces to fit together, fit them together, heat until they change color somewhat, and then tap with solder. At that point it flows into the joint and you're done. But when I would tap the solder to the joint, it would melt into a ball and fall off, not flowing into the joint. Part of the problem seemed to be that the concrete mass of the garage floor was absorbing the heat of the pieces that were in contact with it, robbing the prepared joint of the necessary heat. But I was having trouble even when I lifted the joints to be soldered up off the floor. I'm still not sure what my problem was (and why I found myself having to put solder on a pipe end and then quickly stuffing it into a fitting), but I was eventually able to assemble the menorah. It was a little messy, as I had more solder than usual stuck to parts that should've been solder-free. But I heated the worst of those places up to wipe away the excess. And then I used a file to grind away the rest. This all took longer than expected, but I was just grateful at that point that the menorah didn't end up being a complete disaster.
At around 4:00pm, as it started getting gloomy, I took Charlotte for a rather pathetic walk up the Farm Road and then back homeward east of the wetlands east of the Farm Road. The snow made walking slightly difficult, and the rubber boots I was wearing are well past end-of-life, with the rubber delaminating badly from a fabric lining that had to hold off the snow on its own.
For dinner, I made my usual spaghetti-cum-chonks, though (unusually), this time I chopped up a big tomato that was itself near end-of-life and was threatening to turn into a puddle of ooze. That went into the chonks along with the mushrooms, onions, and tofu.
Gretchen and I have started watching the second season of Man on the Inside, which is clever and fun (though more so for Gretchen than for me). This season has an amusing anti-billionaire angle, showcased best when the two women accompanying a douchebag billionaire are not who you think they are. (The younger one is his new wife, not his daughter, and the older one with a streak of grey hair is his daughter from an earlier marriage.)
It was good to take a bath at the end of the day, partly to wash away all that grime from making that menorah. (The oily flux gets into everything.)
Charlotte on the Farm Road today. Click to enlarge.
Looking east and down off the escarpment where the Farm Road runs a couple hundred feet south of our house. Click to enlarge.
The menorah I made today. Click to enlarge.
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