Well, we broke ground today on the new garage/office we’re building in the back yard. Of course the only variable was whether there was good dirt (clay) under the hill and of course our worse fears were realized. Waiting to hear from the contractor how much this is going to cost me. In the mean time, here’s a photo of one day’s progress.
Day 1 Results
Well, my brother and sister came up for the weekend to help with building the fort. We spent the whole day Saturday cutting and screwing in all of the parts and ended up with a play fort that Anna nicely said ‘this turned out much better than I thought it would – it looks like it was built by a professional, like something you’d see in a magazine.
Here’s the building crew:
Three Builders
And here we are climbing on the fort:
Three Builders Climbing
Last fall we got a family friend to help me build a play house in the back yard for the kids. We couldn’t really afford it at the time, but we had an opportunity and, since we knew we were moving south, it would give me a chance to do a learner house before building the longer lasting one in Charlotte.
So, fast forward to 2010 and our new house. Where the house in Akron had a good size yard and lots of room to play and build play sets and play houses, the new one has LOTS of yard, but no real place to put anything (too many trees). So, for this house, we decided to build a fort back in the forest out back. Anna wanted to buy a kit and build something with a built in swing and stuff, but I wanted to build something from scratch.
So, I spoke with my builder and got some design hints then Sunday Anna and I dug some holes, purchased some wood and we’re going to begin building this weekend. On Sunday, we set the cornerstone – a 12 foot long post that will be the anchor of the fort. Tonight we’ll put up the frame and the other posts and this weekend we’ll floor it and put up some railings. Stay tuned, but I thought you’d enjoy a photo or two of this lonely post sitting in the middle of the woods.
The remaining wood for the fort should arrive within the hour.
My sister in law was driving home from a Family Reunion this afternoon and swung by to visit us. A little impromptu family play date, very nice. We decided to have dinner then she’d hit the road and put the kids to bed. Anna ordered pizza from Donatos and I went to pick it up.
Now, we’ve kinda ended up being the center of the neighborhood – not because we’re so popular but because our house is right between many houses with children. Anna and I were talking this weekend about how we needed to get a whole bunch of cups to have here. The kids use them like crazy and the adults need them too.
So, as I picked up the pizza, the girl behind the counter handed me a little plastic cup full of coupons. I thought for a quick second and asked her ‘can I have some more of those?’ Well, she asked me how many I wanted and I told her I’d like 10 (thinking we’d try to get 10 every time we picked up pizza and ultimately have enough some day). She grabbed a big stack and started counting out cups when I, of course, said ‘Can I just have all of them?’ Well, when I got home I counted them – 20 cups. Free advertising for Donatos (too bad we already love their pizza) and free cups for us. Win-win on both sides.
Now all I need to do is find someone who’s giving away adult size cups so I can get like 50 of them. Stay tuned, I know I’ll find them somewhere.
OK, so we’ve been in this house for a whole 16 days. It’s a great house in a great neighborhood. It’s not fancy, but it’s…grand. Unfortunately, the builder didn’t do a great job on the finishing. It was a spec house and therefore doesn’t have ANY upgrades. That’s OK though, we love the house and have a whole big list of things we’d like to upgrade over the next 10 years (just in time to sell it when the kids graduate from High School).
We started having all sorts of little problems though. Light bulbs are going out (no big deal) but when I went to replace the bulbs in my closet, new bulbs didn’t fix the problem. Interesting… When my brother in law was here, I asked him to take a pass at inserting the bulbs and he couldn’t make them work either. He said ‘well, it’s either the ballast or a problem with the switch.’ Well, I knew the ballast could be a problem, and that was where I was going to go next, but the switch? Really? Well, trusting my brother in law, I immediately grabbed a screwdriver and started unscrewing the switch from the wall. As I pried the switch away from the wall (it was stuck with paint) all of a sudden something fell on the floor and the lights started working. Huh? That was interesting. Here the builder (a little lazy I’d say) just stuck the wires into the little holes on the switch and the plastic holding them tight broke. I immediately wrapped the wire around the screw and tightened it down and it’s working now. Cool.
The light in the master bathroom went out, so I grabbed a step ladder and a replacement bulb and went to work. As soon as I touched the light fixture – light came on. Magic!
Anne (not Anna) cooked a great dinner last night and I was getting ready to help with the dishes. Looking at the dishwasher – we noticed that it’s wasn’t mounted into the hole under the counter. It was just stuck in there and was wobbly as…well as something. Looks like I’m going to have to fix that.
As Anne started doing the dishes (remember, I was going to help) she turned to me and said “there’s no hot water.” Huh? Really? OK – I headed out to the garage and found that the pilot light on the water heater (a massive 75 gallon one mind you) was off. I spent about 30 minutes trying to light it and just couldn’t. Good thing my brother in law was there – he played with it for about 15 minutes and couldn’t get it working either (good thing to know it wasn’t me). He said it was probably the thermocouple and off I went to Home Depot (at 8:00 PM on a Saturday night after drinking beer with my brothers all day). He told me to get one of every kind they had, good thing they only had one kind.
Anyway, he installed it (after much poking around and concern about getting the old one out) and within minutes it was working again. The house is only 10 years old; I hope every week isn’t going to be like this. Of course, it’s at the end of the first 10, so I’m sure there are going to be a lot of little things I’m going to have to fix.
Phew, wild weekend.
OK, so I got sick again- yuck. I was in Columbia, MD and tried to come home Thursday when I got really sick, but my boss (rightfully so) suggested I see how I felt Friday. Well, I felt HORRIBLE Friday and made beeline for home. It was a mess, I was sick all the way home but was able to get on the earliest flight home. Rushed to the house, climbed into bed and spent most of the next 18 hours there. It was the worst I’d felt in years. I went to see my Doctor and turns out I had a 99.6 temperature.
Abby came to visit this weekend. She’s 15.5 and has her temporary license. Wow, she’s driving now, amazing. I made a point of letting her drive my car and Anna’s, she did really well.
We went to see the new Disney movie, ‘Up’ I think it’s called. Good, but once again, Disney made an adult movie for kids. Very good, but VERY ADULT and VERY SAD. August and Elizabeth really didn’t understand much of what was going on. Too bad for Disney/Pixar – they should get back to making movies for kids.
We had a house showing today, so Anna and I took the kids and dogs out to Sand Run Park for a long hike through the hills. Everyone loved it. We went out for ice cream afterwards and of course the kids loved that.
Need to wrap up the book. I thought I had about 3 weeks of work to finish the last chapters, but the major reviewer delivered their comments this morning and it’s a mess. They’re trying to completely rewrite the book. It’s going to take me 10 hours or more just to dig through all of their comments (more than 100 in some chapters) and use the good stuff and ignore the rest. Problem is I have 4 more to give them this week and 9 more chapters to wrap up and get into the editing/review process. I have about 4 and a half chapters to finish and get into the process. I’m not going to make my deadline, but I won’t miss it by much. I do need to get this book done, I miss my family and I know they miss me.
We have this interesting problem with our dryer vent. The window well where it comes out is in a window well that tends to get a lot of water in a heavy rain. Sometimes, not very often, rain water fills up the window well and runs down the vent pipe into the dryer. We’ve taken the step sometimes when heavy rain is expected to pull the dryer away from the wall and disconnect the vent.
Last week when we had all of the rain, I actually found rain water (mud actually) in the dryer drum. It was full of clothes at the time, so I ended up with a bunch of muddy, wet clothes. We hired someone to take a look at the dryer; water had never gotten that high before. When he took it apart, there was no water in the dryer base, it was all in the drum. What happened was the mud came down the vent pipe, through the blower and out into the drum. The seals were tight enough that there was a very clear path for the water to go and we had no damage to the dryer. Weird.
