Recycling Admissions

I confess, I am not very good at recycling. This is an area where I could improve.

It is probably incorrect to say that I'm "not very good at recycling". A more accurate statement would be that "I'm not very good about recycling". It is more about attitute than it is about skill.

I can confidently admit that I am not very good at caulking bathtubs. My skills in this area are improving, however. Since I did such a horrible job several months ago, I had the opportunity tonight to do it over again and get some much needed practice. I think I may need to give it one last attempt soon. We'll see. I'd rather not, because scraping off the old silicone takes a really long time.

For some reason, fixing things around the house always takes longer than you anticipate. That was particularly evident when we replaced the flooring in the kitchen and front hallway last year. I thought it would only take a day or so to put the new floor in, since it appeared about as simple as using Legos. I just finished it off last weekend -- 12 months later.

Digital video editing is much the same as home renovation. We've done a lot of editing projects in the past few years and we've come up with this rule of thumb:

Something always goes wrong with a video project.

It not always the same thing. Actually, it rarely is. But without fail, some little problem crops up in the course of every video project. Early on, the most common event was a simple computer crash. Now we have all sorts of interesting challenges that vex us. Thankfully, we are getting better at dealing with them. Tonight we had to go back and redo a DVD of R's recital because I'd accidentally captured it at a lower setting and caused the whole project to turn out pretty hazy.

Now that I think about it, I don't understand why I don't spend more time on recycling. I doubt anyone has adopted a rule of thumb that "something always goes wrong with a trip to the recycling bin".