It’s been a while since I posted anything but I really couldn’t think of anything that would be interesting to anyone but me, and I’m not sure if I would find it interesting. So I got back from my run and was largely thinking the same thing when it occurred to me that a quarter of my basement ceiling collapsed on Tuesday. That might be interesting to someone. That fact that it took me four days to realize that it was a postable event might color the idea that nothing noteworthy really happened.

So I took off Tuesday in accordance with my belief of ‘why have a three day weekend when you can have a four day weekend with a cost of just a single day off’.

First I went out and bought a yoyo. I was looking for your run of the mill duncan yoyo. They don’t seem to come that way anymore. They are all of the butterfly configuration and are adjustable to make them easier or harder to do tricks. I managed to find one a toys’r'us that wasn’t too disagreeable and it seems to work as advertised, though I still have no idea about this whole adjustment thing.

Anyway after doing that I went out to the home theater store and picked up a draper manual 106″ screen to replace the sheet that has been in my basement. I wanted to do it before the next party which will be toward the end of March. Since I wasn’t sure if it had to be ordered or you could just pick one up, not that I thought it could fit in my Prius, I figured I should get started on this project. As it turns out the store had one in stock and if some it sticks out the passenger window they do fit in the Prius.

So my basement has a drop ceiling and I was investigating how to mount the screen when there was a series of ‘poing’ like noises as 3 of the wires connecting the T-bars to the floor above came disconnected. I’m not sure how these things are supposed to be done but in my ceiling the wires are connected to (big, manly but essentially) staples connected to the plywood of the floor above. Three of the stables popped. Still calm I found a 2×4 and elevated it to the right height to support the now sagging T-bar and called my dad.

The upshot is everything is still okay, I just need to hammer the staples back in place and everything will be okay. I started working on getting one of the staples back in place. It was fairly impossible to reach between to joists as it was. Anyway in attempting to repair the damage the 2×4 fell down and about a quarter of my ceiling came down.

At this point I kind of freaked and called my dad again and he came over. Took down maybe 10-12 tiles and made a trip to home depot and bought screws with eyes instead of heads and replaced the staples with those, much easier to work with between the joists. Then wired up the T-bars and put in the crossbars. As an ‘Oh-God’ moment it wasn’t that hard to repair with two people. Maybe a couple or three hours.

After getting that fixed up we mounted the screen to the joists using S-hooks and turnbuckles connected to another BIG screw with an eye instead of head.

So after one kind of freaky night I destroyed and repaired by basement ceiling and managed to mount my screen so I don’t have to worry about bungee cords going everywhere keeping tension on the sheet.