Long Time No Blog

Been many years since I updated this blog. Something occurred the other day to make me think about it so I decided to post this. To finish the tale of the extension: Everything finally got done and we have a new extra space and heat and stuff. Here is a picture of a Lemon (not yet ripe) which is in a pot on the windowsill looking out the bay window. The End. :)

Moving right along...

More about renovations: Last week I took my daughter to PA for college auditions. While we were away the builders came and took down the internal walls. Wife was home with son so they were able to witness the event. They put in a temporary entrance door. Builders also poured the slab foundation. It snowed a bit so it was lucky that things were sealed up. Now the house has no power in the kids rooms and the living room but it is much wider. Son stayed with aunt for a couple of days. Wife stayed at home with the dogs and cats.

Today the builders came back to figure out the arrangement of the internal walls and to try to fix the electric. Turns out the closet we wanted in the foyer was not on the blueprints although we stressed that that was a very important thing. They figured out how to do it though so things are moving along. This is another lesson to learn: Get it all on the blueprint and go over the prints with the architect! Don’t let them tell you “we’ll do the outside first and worry about the inside when we get to it…” Nerve wracking, but soon it will get better…

p.s. Daughter did very well at her auditions. The college people were impressed with her voice which was news to her since she didn’t think she had a great voice. They also were very impressed with her drumming. I got some reading done and am almost through with Anansi Boys which continues to be a great book! I also brought along my Uke and practiced some songs in the hotel. We tried to do a cache one day but the snow has a layer of ice making things treacherously slippery so we gave up…

More Construction Stories

So here is what has transpired since last I wrote. Wife and I discussed the windows and the sliding doors and decided to leave them as-is because the cons of replacing them outweigh the pros. The roofers came and put on the roof. The electricians came and put in the wires, and the insulation guy came and insulated the walls. All this was done during the freezing cold past week or so, in which we also had an ice storm (reminiscent of the one in ’78). The dogs refused to go outside for a couple of days because the backyard was coated in ice. It began to thaw this weekend which was quiet and my son and I arranged his room so nothing was touching the walls. Yesterday the siding guy came and took off the outer layer of the house and put this slippery paper-like stuff up in preparation of installing the siding. Today the inspector from the town is supposed to come. We’ll see. More to follow!

Reading a really good book: Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman. It’s about time I found a work of fiction that I like. Been too long. Also, watched a good video last night: Robot Stories. Not your typical science-fiction.

Much Progress, Some Frustration, and COLD!

A lot has transpired since last I wrote. The inspector finally showed up last Wednesday and approved the footing. On Friday the workers came and filled in the hole and began doing the “framing” which consists of putting up the skeleton of the extension to the house. Work continued on the framing thru the weekend (including SuperBowl Sunday!) We watched the Superbowl in the cramped quarters of the living room. The Colts won in what some thought of as an upset…

Because of the bitter cold weather, the builders decided to go slightly out of sequence and so on Monday they put up the walls and part of the roof of the extension. Somehow in the process they knocked out the electricity to my daughter’s room, but she still has heat. Yesterday (Tuesday), was when the roofers were originally supposed to come. I took the day off to move stuff to the storage unit but when the workers showed up they told us they were going to put in the windows and doors! Wife and I had to scramble to move stuff out of the way to allow this to happen. It was really cold outside (like 10 degrees!) and the house quickly lost heat. We moved the stuff that needed to be moved (like perishable plants and pets) and also talked to the foreman who said we needed to pick out a front door! We took a ride to the door place and picked one out and then we went out to lunch. Later that day, we went back to the house and it was still freezing. We had the dogs and cats in the one room in the house that no windows were being installed, along with all the perishable plants. Finally all the doors and windows were in. Still no power in daughter’s room, though..

Today was the killer. We found out that some of the windows and the sliding glass doors were the wrong type. They had the kind of glass that filters out the light essential to our indoor plants. We had gone over what we wanted with the builder but with all the confusion and the fact that it was not the standard, something was lost in the translation. Moral: Get EVERYTHING in writing! Wife was not happy but we worked it out that they will install the right stuff in the coming days, hopefully! We’ll see what happens. Also today, the roofers came to begin to put the new roof on because the weather has warmed up slightly (high of 23 degrees today so far!). Shrubbery is suffering since the dumpster was full so the roofers were just flinging things off the roof onto the ground below. They replaced the full dumpster with a new empty one but the damage is done. Wow, what a couple of weeks. Will continue to report the progress of the coming days for posterity!

Still in LimboLand

Last time I posted anything we were waiting for the inspector to come and inspect the foundation footing so the builders could start building the extension onto the house. Well, after once postponing his visit, the inspector finally came (on a particularly cold day, coldest in 2 years they say!) and decided that the builders needed to add some sort of new-fangled insulation that the town had never required before, so now we wait some more...

In the meantime, I found (3) caches this weekend in a park close to here. The lake was semi-frozen and ducks and geese walked along on it as I trekked around it looking for hidden treasure. It was really cold but I was wearing my thermals so I didn't feel it. Later, I drove to where my son was participating in a fencing tournament, only to find that the tournament had ended and the bus had left. I turned around a drove home, stopping for a cache in a little park near the school. When I got home, my son was already there! I felt rotten but he didn't mind. Told me the place was really small and there wasn't much room for spectators. He won both his bouts which made me feel good...

Perfected 2 songs on my Uke so far: Button Up Your Overcoat and I Wanna go Back to my Little Grass Shack...

Got my new high-power eyepiece for the telescope in the mail about a week ago but it's been darn cold and I haven't felt the need to freeze just to see Saturn close up. It's been kind of overcast most nights anyway. Maybe in the upcoming week I'll get to try it out...

That's all for now. Talk to ya later!

Fixing a Hole

Yesterday I finally got to look at the progress on our remodeling job. There's this long trench and these thick concrete walls forming 3 sides of a rectangle, with metal spikes sticking out at equal intervals along the length. Very neat. My front yard is a bit torn up because of the big machine that dug the hole, but whatever. Now we need to wait until Wednesday for the inspector to come before the builders can proceed. That's kind of a bummer.

I went and did my first cache since getting my GPSr back. I was excited and the thing worked fine so I found it right away. I exchanged CDs and am listening to the CD I picked up "Love" by The Beatles, while I type this. It's rainy today and everyone is still in bed! (It's 9:30 already!) except the poodles, which bark every now and then for me to let them out so they can chase squirrels. Ah, life....

so long for now...

Work Work Work...

Got home last night to find giant mounds of dirt around my house and a BIG trench running the lenghth of the house, with a REALLY BIG earth-moving machine parked at an angle on one of the mounds of dirt. Looked like a scene from a science-fiction movie. Very Cool!!

Tested out my newly refurbished GPSr yesterday. Actually I only turned it on and let it find the satellites (cold start). Found em in like 2 minutes so that is a good sign. I'll need to put it thru it's paces by inputting a bunch of coordinates soon and see if it holds them.

Later...