A Whole Lot Less Trouble

I try to convince students that they can become better writers through practice. As is the case with most skills, repeated actions cause improvement. This is true for playing a video game, driving a car, and certainly works when improving sentence structure. I constantly suggest all of my students buy a blank journal or create a blog. The harder part is, of course, scheduling a part of one's day to always keep at it. I can speak from experience though, as at the end of this month I'll have been blogging every day for ten whole years!

I cannot say with any certainty that every entry will be valuable, but I expect that after enough time, particular gems are bound to occur. It's the infinite monkey theorem, you know. Today, surely may not be one. I just wanted to record the date of an event. The image of the hole here is a closeup looking out six inches of 3/4" pipe. It was drilled and installed in the eastern corner of my tenth floor balcony. Workers did this today when doing outside chores.


We have lived in this building for fifteen years. From the very first winter we became aware that rain water which made it onto the floor of the balcony would collect on one side. In this part of British Columbia, we manage to get quite strong rainstorms every winter. So, unless I scooped out the 5 gallons of accumulated precipitation, the water would stay for months.

I will not have to bail anymore.