Between little bouts of Eden on the PS3, I finally got around to a project I've been putting off - fixing the insulation around the attic skylight. Our attic (which serves as our TV room, among other uses) is super-insulated but does not exactly have a ceiling. I covered about 25% of the ceiling with attractive old barn wood the last time I was laid off for a significant period, but the rest of it is just plastic sheeting over sheets of insulation. This works better than you might think. It's ugly, but even without any heat except what rises from the house below, the attic stays warm all winter. However, due to a combination of air movement in the cold air space above the insulation and cavorting squirrels, the insulation has been shifting around and some of the plastic sheeting has torn or come loose. We keep stapling it back, but in the area around the skylight the plastic was so torn and brittle that there was no way to reattach it. Insulation was occasionally falling out into the attic, but mostly blowing away inside the roof, leaving actual holes into the unheated storage space at the back of the attic. It was ugly and unsanitary, and was starting to get significantly cold up there.

I kept hinting that "someone" should use the extra insulation and plastic in the back room to fix the problem, but somehow it didn't magically happen. So I spent several hours last weekend just cleaning out the storage room sufficiently to find the roll of plastic (there's no problem finding the insulation - it's all over the place back there). And yesterday I finally unfolded the small stepladder up there and spent about 3 hours repacking insulation into the holes and stapling new plastic over it. Whew. What an awkward and dirty job that is! It could use a few more sheets of plastic, but I got it to the point where at least that part of the roof is no longer leaking warm air out and bits of insulation in.

Then in the evening Richard and I embarked on a little adventure to participate in the City of Lakes Luminary Loppet. I signed up for the 7:30pm Luminary wave, hoping it would be slightly less crowded than the earlier waves, but I don't know - most of the City of Minneapolis seemed to be there. Richard dropped me off at the starting point (there was no chance of parking within a mile), and then made his way around the lake to meet me at the climactic IceCropolis/ Icehenge at the north end of the lake. Crowds being what they were, it took him longer to drive to the other end of the lake than it took me to ski there (about 2 miles of skiing). We found each other via cell phone and lighted staff, fortunately managing to make the crucial final connection just as the phone Richard had borrowed from Thorin ran out of juice.

Despite my uncomfortableness with crowds, I did enjoy this. Even when we were all shuffling along The Mall in a huge pack that sort of looked like an exodus of refugees from Norway, everybody was in such a jolly mood that it was fun. Everybody around me seemed to be doing this for the first time and were pretty excited. There were little surprises all along the way for us newbies, from the snow sculptures along the mall to firedancers and candle-lit ice pyramid. Coming out from under the bridge onto Lake of the Isles and seeing the panorama of lights spread out all over the lake was magical. Click through the link to see the pictures.

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Memorial Day: had a lovely time with minnehahaK pedaling around Lakewood Cemetery. I do this pretty much every Memorial Day, but have never managed to make it to the chapel when it was open. This year, minnehaha remembered that it was the chapel's 100-year anniversary and made sure we got there in time to take a quick tour before it closed. OMG, it is stunning! It's a lovely building on the outside and it is on the Historic Register, but I had no idea what was inside! (Hint: think 10 MILLION ceramic tiles). We also had other adventures: visiting the Lake Harriet Elfenheim, Sonny's ice cream, and (most amazing of all) spontaneously deciding to clean the scary playhouse in DreamPark's backyard. This developed from the garage cleaning obsession - I needed someplace to stow umpteen cans of half-dried up paint while they completed the drying up process so they could be legally tossed in the garbage and minnehaha brilliantly suggested the playhouse, since it's up in the air and nobody ever goes there. I was relieved to find that nobody was living in the playhouse, not even raccoons. Not surprised to find all that old furniture or the dust-covered Ouija board. But I was a little nonplussed by the full set of bocce balls. Lots of old candles and matches, and a few more disreputable items I'd rather not think about. (Oh, ambertatge, what were you and your friends doing up here?)

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Garage cleaning continues - almost every weekend I haul out a full trash can of debris and several offerings for Metal Man. Missed last weekend, but there is a full can of trash out there that I intend to get to as soon as I post this. Not only that - I have finally worked my way back to the rusted old wood stove at the very back of the garage. I kind of hate to throw it away, but some of the moving parts have rusted to immovability so it is probably of no interest to anybody except scrap metal scavengers at this point. *sigh*

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Continuing to work on exercise program for SI joint and related musculature. It's slow and frustrating. I need to build up strength in back and core, but every time I do anything challenging enough to actually do that (e.g., an exercise class or ice skating) my back is sore for days. I had been planning to skate twice a week and do one or two Pilates classes, but that's way too much. It looks like the most I can handle at this point is two classes or skating sessions per week. On off days I try to walk or do a little light biking, but can't always fit it in. My skating classes started up again last Monday. I skated for an hour and actually did fairly well. Not exactly PROGRESS, but I was almost back to where I had been when classes stopped in March: front crossovers easy, left back crossover easy, right back crossover challenging but doable, RFO 3-turns passable but sloppy. Felt pretty good. But my back was sore for the next 3 days, so I didn't even try to repeat the Wednesday Pilates class that did me in the week before. By Thursday I felt pretty good, and tried a different core strengthening class called BOSU. I liked it a lot. Felt GREAT afterwards. Next day my back hurt again, and even more on Saturday. Today back has unclenched enough that I could do another class, but if I did that my back would be too sore for skating tomorrow. So I'm planning to compromise with an easy workout and swimming at the Blaisdell Y.

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Started deep cleaning of bedroom yesterday. Goal is to clean off the dresser so I can unearth and discard the enormous old tube-based tuner under all the clutter. It's been years since it worked well enough to be worth turning on. I managed to get down to the bare dresser top by yesterday evening, but I now have 3 boxes of little bottles, handkerchiefs, feather masks, travel toothbrushes, etc. etc. that need to be sorted. One of the last things I unearthed was a long-dried up bottle of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap (Peppermint Castille), which segued nicely to the next item.

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Last night Richard and I watched an obscure documentary on Dr. Bronner himself ("Dr. Bronner's Magic Soapbox"). As anyone who has ever seen a bottle of the Magic Soap has long ago realized, the good doctor was pretty nuts. He was, however, a master soap maker from a family that had been manufacturing soap in Germany for 7 generations until the family business was destroyed by the Nazis (along with both of Dr. Bronner's parents). Young Emil had already emigrated to America and had been trying to get his parents to join him as the Nazis were coming to power but they wouldn't leave Germany and their family business. It's not clear if the slaughter of his family is what pushed him over the edge or if it was other family tragedies, but he descended into a kind of gentle madness based on an intense desire to found a world religion based on peace and organic aromatic soap products. Although he was hardly the model father, somehow his sons and grandsons stuck with the family business and they are still at it. It's a strange tale, balanced somewhere between inspirational and disturbing. It also made me remember what a remarkable substance that soap really is. I think it's time to buy another bottle.