The manly man?

Drill? Check.
Carharrt's? Check.
Plaid shirt? Check.

I've never been known to possess too many "manly" traits -- I mean, I shave my legs for crying out loud -- and yet, I had a very manly weekend. It all started with my day off on Friday. It snowed Thursday night, so I woke up to a thick blanket of snow covering everything from sidewalks to cars to roads. That meant that I got to do one of my favorite thing in the world: shovel snow!

Shoveling snow is something that I've always enjoyed doing. It's a great excuse to pull on a heavy wool shirt, put on some boots and work gloves, and go throw snow around outside in the chilly air. After a few minutes of shoveling, the sidewalk is clear, you've worked up a little perspiration, and you've accomplished an important task. Few things make me feel more accomplished.

Saturday brought more manliness. A female professor of Becky's was moving out of her house in Greenwich, NY, and needed some help. She recruited Becky and me and two other students to help her move by offering us a rate that a professional mover would have laughed at, but that nearly doubled the hourly rate I earn churning out words at The Saratogian. My spindly arms are not really too useful for moving heavy furniture, but I was willing to do what I could for a buck.

It turned out that I was the only man recruited to help with this task, and I soon feel into my assigned gender role. Who could figure out how to remove the legs of the dining room table? Me. Who was needed to move the heaviest furniture? Me. Who knew how to tie the furniture securely into the truck? Me. All the while, the four women said things like: "You tie those notes so well," and "can you lift this heavy heavy, thing." I felt very, very manly. Also, I was again wearing my heavy wool shirt and work gloves, which are the epitome of manly.

The manliness didn't end there. When Becky and I got home from Greenwich, and after my hands had thawed from the single-digit temperatures, I came home and did something even more manly. Becky and I had purchased a coat rack shortly after we moved into our apartment, and it had sat aside since then. Then my parents bought me a drill for my birthday. Although I'm not really sure if I needed a drill for the job, now that I had one I was certainly going to use it. All week I had waited to drill something, and now it was time.

Still wearing my wool shirt and Carhartts from the move, I took the cordless drill out of its case, and using a hook on its handle, I hung it on my pants' thigh pocket. For good measure, and to balance things out, I hung a hammer from the hammer loop on the other side of my pants, and stuck a small level in my back pocket. Then I walked about the apartment for about an hour asking Becky if I looked manly.

At first she said things to placate me like "Sure, babe," and "You look sexy no matter what you're wearing." This was flattering, but not what I wanted. So I stuck a pen behind my ear and continued to pester her until she relented and admitted what I had known all along: that with my drill and hammer and level and pen and wool shirt, I looked damn manly.

Then it was time to do some work. I rolled open the 175-piece drill bit set that my parents had given me with the drill. I took about 45 minutes to figure out which drill bit was the right size. Then I held the coat rack against the wall, used my level to square it up, and drilled two holes, one on either end of the rack. At this point I had to go back into the drill bit case to find a Phillip's head driver. There were seven, so I had to compare each one to the screws that came with the rack. When I made my selection, it took me about two seconds to zip the two screws into place. Manly job done. The only problem was that I immediately wanted more things to drill.