An Utterly Uninteresting Hour And What I Learned From It

I just spent about an hour learning that it's really difficult to saw through chains. Now, it would be awesome if I were going to be able to take that statement and move on to some boring cliché—albeit one clad in highly descriptive and evocative clothing—but alas, I mean it quite literally.

Some time ago, my dad (the Professional Engineer) designed a pull-up bar for use in our basement. Shut up, I realize NOW that had I used this device with greater frequency and dedication, my recovery from my clutzy-stupid fall on the ice last month would be hastened, not to mention EASIER. Suffice it to say that I'm a lazy lump with good intentions, and I did not invest the same energy into using the pull-up bar as I did in requesting it.

Anyway, this pull-up bar is neatly designed for stability, portability, and style fiscal responsibility. It's a metal bar secured with screw-on thingies at either end, suspended from heavy-duty brackets by two lengths of chain. If you can, please get over my mechanical ineptitude and let's move on to the LENGTHS of chain, because that's the key here ... they were something like four feet longer than they needed to be.

The thing is, I had kind of blown the wad on getting the thing installed in the first place, as Little Girl's daddy wasn't into the project, and we work about as well together as car parts (what? I don't know the technical terms for those, either!) lubricated by tapioca pudding instead of motor oil. So once it was installed and I'd realized that I'd have to work my way up to ONE pull-up, the whole plan flat-out stalled.

Inasmuch as dangling chains ARE a nuisance in a house inhabited by tall people, the task of shortening them was so daunting that I spent months procrastinating. Besides, the chains could be wrapped around the bar repeatedly and then they were sort of out of the way! So the problem persisted, jingling occasionally, like when Little Girl's daddy would bash into them, but generally tolerable ... for me.

And then, I smashed my shoulder into ice-coated pavement and started a too-long healing road, and so TODAY, I decided, those chains were getting shortened. RIGHT. NOW. And so I adjusted the bar to a height under which Little Girl's daddy could (hopefully) walk without ducking, and proceeded to peruse the entirely disarranged tool collection for a saw that would cut metal.

While my vocabulary in the arena of things mechanical and/or engineering-related is sadly lacking, I am not without SOME modicum of common sense, and so I found a saw, and upon determining that a chain was damn hard to hold securely while wielding a finger-endangering implement, I found first a standard plier-thingie and later an extra-heavy-duty adjustable wrench-like-item and so I hung onto the chain more safely with one hand while I sawed like fury with the other.

And after ten minutes or so of that shit, I learned that chains are damn difficult to saw through. The End.

(Just kidding. Although, yeah, that's basically it.)

I sawed and sawed and sawed and realized, CRAP, now I have to saw through the OTHER side. Because, d'oh! You can't just bend chain that thick so that you can maneuver the rest of it through the half-sawed link. NO, you HAVE to saw through BOTH sides. So I did. And after I took a half-hour break to WRITE about this FREAKING BORING EPISODE ON MY BLOG, I sawed through the OTHER side. The End.

(Really. That's what happened. And that's what I learned.)