Busy afternoon

Errands, errands, errands.

First, it was off to Home Despot to get some outdoor stuff & some other stuff to shore up the bug defenses. I think I wound up getting a bag of grass seed for free. Not sure how that happened.

After that, I had to zip by the auto parts place for some oil (I already have a filter or two) and a new battery charger for the bike. I also got gear oil for the final drive, but I don’t think I’ll have to change it yet. Mrs. Fetched is going to start driving my Civic around, since it gets twice the gas mileage as Barge Vader, on days when I take the bike to work (which will be as often as possible). Did I mention that gas is up to $2.75 here?

Speaking of gas, the last stop was to get some for the lawn mower; I topped off the Civic while I was at it. It took a while, since the gas station was crowded with motorcyclists and other tourist-types stopping by. I just parked & listened to the iPod until a pump opened up; it only took a couple of minutes.

I got the oil changed in the bike, in between doing a few other things (like fixing a dog pen a bit too late to keep one of the stupidogs from getting through to visit another stupidog in heat). I noticed a leaky fork seal, so I need to get that fixed before too long, and I figure the tires might last until June. So beyond a need for a good cleaning (the bike, that is), I should be ready to rumble tomorrow morning.

My back is a bit stiff from the bending over. And I need to get in bed anyway.

Signs of spring

The last two weekends have involved yard work. It’s amazing how a simple thing like mowing down some border plants (they grow better when they’ve been zapped) leads to all sorts of other stuff. First you see all the fronds in the yard, so you rake ’em up. There’s a big bunch of grass raked up with the fronds. Next thing you know, you’ve got the generator out of mothballs, a blower plugged in, and then there’s an enormous pile of leaves and clippings burning. And what passes for a front lawn at FAR Manor is a little longer than the house and no more than 15 feet deep. Mrs. Fetched saw what I was doing and started in on the other side of the driveway (which parallels the front of the house). Thus does a 15 minute job run all afternoon.

The back yard is a bit bigger, and has been neglected for quite a while. I finally got tired of looking out the bathroom window at a bunch of sticks and twigs on the ground, got out the rakes & blower again, pulled up a zillion little pine trees (Dad helped with that quite a bit) and made a border with some logs that I will probably never get around to splitting. This side will be the yard, that side is the woods. The leaves I threw in the dog run area, also known as the moonscape.

There’s not a lot of lawn out back, which has a lot to do with the trees that nearly took over. Since some of them were leaning toward the house, we had some people come out to cut them down. Others we had a lumber company pay us to take away (they wanted the pines, which had pine beetles in them anyway). But I digress.

Warm days have brought the potted herbs outside until tomorrow afternoon (it’s supposed to get chilly again tomorrow night). I’m hearing the frogs (a spring kigo for haiku writers) peeping in nearby ponds or creeks. I can’t seem to get grass to grow right (hey, less mowing that way), but lots of other stuff just comes up on its own.

Wild onions in the yard. I added some (domestic) chives to my potted herbs, so I haven’t need to harvest them. Besides, with the dogs running around loose... yuck.


Daffodils on the roadside. They’re hardy little boogers; they grow alongside most of the roads around here and you can see them down in the woods. A cheerful reminder that winter is almost over.


The pansies are also hardy; Mrs. Fetched keeps some out through the winter and they’re still hanging around. I’ll remember to get pictures. Maybe.

What FAR Manor and a Dozebox have in common

Answer: neither one are very secure.

I’m working at home today. Before I was even able to grab some breakfast, Mrs. Fetched was telling me we had to go down to the old place because the renters couldn’t get the furnace started. Turns out they were trying to light the control box instead of the pilot (for which you have to open the hatch), and they had the gas turned off (instead of the pilot setting). I didn’t say much, but I sure thought a lot.

Of course, my own personal brain-fart had gone off and I hadn’t noticed yet. Mrs. Fetched was going to take Mrs. Renter to eat breakfast out, drop her off at her job, then pick up my BP prescription refill. I noticed when she locked the door going out to the garage when we left, but hadn’t thought about my house keys, sitting on top of the dresser. Of course, I thought about it as soon as they were gone... and sure enough, all the doors were locked. $#¡+!!!

Once in a while, the door from the porch (where the cats live) into the living room doesn’t latch, but no such luck this time. My first thought was to get the extension ladder and go in through one of the upstairs bedroom windows: The Boy often pulled that stunt when he was out tomcatting around or whatever last summer. Unfortunately, I put an end to that nonsense by locking the ladder under the house last week. What to do, what to do... stepping off the porch, I was right at eye level with the window to Mrs. Fetched’s video editing room.

Sure enough, the window slid open. I got the small stepladder out of the garage and raised the window. All the windows at FAR Manor are these once nice metal framed things. Every single one is broken in some way or another; there’s a spring-latch mechanism that’s supposed to hold them up, but they don’t stay up anymore. Fortunately, there was a piece of shelving within convenient reach inside the room, and I used that to prop up the window while I crawled in.

Mrs. Fetched is suddenly more amenable to my suggestion that we replace the windows one at a time, as we can afford it. I guess I need to buy some dowels in the meantime, to help keep closed windows closed. And always carry my keys.

The Carpet Has Landed

The carpet stretcher worked a treat, as my friends across the pond might say. Mrs. Fetched thought it looked great. I finished tacking down the end where it stops a few feet short of the workbench (desired, although not planned) last night. All that’s left to do is put some plant hangers in the window and bring most of the stuff back in.

It occurred to me that I haven’t done a pictorial entry in a while. I’ll rectify that when I have it together, I hope by this weekend.

Woohoo!

A piece of the carpet we pulled out of the living room is going in my outbuilding. This, of course, entails clearing the floor of all furniture and detritus. As I was moving things out little by little, the renter came by to drop off the car ramps I let him borrow a while back — he offered to help me get the rest of the stuff out, and I gratefully accepted his help.

While stacking some loose papers, I came across two short stories I wrote ’way back in the 80s. I was looking for one of them in particular; it was going to be the first story I posted on the blog. Now I just have to type ’em in.

My back’s a little sore from moving furniture and trying to kick the wrinkles out of the carpet, so no happy dance right now. I guess I’ll drop by the chiro-cracker on the way to work tomorrow morning.

Off to type in a couple of stories...

Stormy

Current music: CMradio - Celtic
The wind is pretty strong tonight — the NWS says 15 to 25mph, gusting to 30. Well, that should pull down the rest of the leaves.

Meanwhile, I’m trying not to obsess about my blood pressure; that’s sure to drive it up. I’ve been having something like anxiety attacks, though, which doesn’t help (although the one on the way home felt more like excitement, like I was about to do something I’d been looking forward to doing). I just have to keep remembering, “Fear Not,” and I go in for tests tomorrow. I had one heck of a leg cramp Saturday morning, which has left the calf muscle a bit sore — as I’ll be on the treadmill, I hope it won’t act up on me.

Feh. Good news? The drains aren’t backed up anymore. There was some kind of brickwork in the drain system that was catching toilet paper. The plumbers removed both the clog and the brickwork (since none of them could figure out what it was for).

Life in Brief

Current music: DubLab
A long post of short events....

I had a different dispatch in mind for tonight, but Blogger Photo is being cranky about uploading. They really need to give us some way to manage photos, if for no other reason than to recover from nights like this (so we can delete duplicates).

I ripped up the other half of the living room carpet yesterday, with some help from The Boy. But then he had to go to work, and I was left to pull up the staples and nail beds (or whatever those things are called that get tacked along the edges). I almost got finished; I decided to take a break and go take some pictures, then finished up tonight. I’m going to put the carpet in the outbuilding. Eventually.

The Boy is looking for people who want an exciting career as dishwashers. He says they have a bunch of openings in the kitchen. (Remember, this gig comes with Blue Cross!) If they can get two new dishwashers, he says, he’ll get promoted to assistant cook & get a raise amounting to $100 per paycheck. M.A.E. is hoping they’ll give her a second chance; she seems to have considered the reasons for losing her old job and matured a bit since then. Can’t hurt to try, anyway.

Speaking of M.A.E., her mom withdrew the injunction today. Mrs. Fetched isn’t ready to let bygones be bygones, though: “SPOW is going to stop doing this kind of stuff to people,” was what she told me. You don’t tangle with Mrs. Fetched, or anyone under her wing (reluctantly or not).

The Boy is now the proud owner of a Chevy Lumina. There are minor details like getting insurance and license plates, but he’s willing to do what it takes. The car has a big enough trunk to carry all his guitars, amps, and who knows what else. Not that it matters at this time of year, but it’s the only car in our lot with working A/C. He could clean it up and easily flip it for lots more than the $100 he paid for it.

Daughter Dearest didn’t make the cut for All-State Chorus this year. She wasn’t upset about it; none of the other girls in her chorus, she said, made it either. It’s the trip to the national competition in Orlando that she’s really looking forward to. Wife suggested we pretend she made it and go to Savannah anyway.

Lobster’s leg, which he wrenched playing football some months back, was bothering him again this morning... or he was looking for an excuse to lay out of school. I got the hot pad out & had him sit on it. Too bad he isn’t a real lobster; we could just break the leg off and let a new one grow in. Given his attitude of late, wrenching his leg off would have some therapeutic value as well. :-P

And speaking of therapy, we meet our counselor Saturday.

MUCH better

Sharpening that chipper-shredder blade made the difference between useless & useful. It will now happily chew up 2-inch (5cm) limbs where it couldn’t handle bits 1/4 that thick before.

I need to find a deflector or bag for it now... it didn’t come with one. I really don’t want to buy one at the moment, because its ownership is somewhat ambiguous. My brother-in-law doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to get it back, but once he finds it actually does something worthwhile now, he might change his tune. As it is, I had to rake up all the mulch; it was scattered up to six feet away from the machine and several inches deep in places. I filled two 5-gallon buckets with chips & still have a pretty good pile.

Sharpen the saw chipper-shredder

As I’ve mentioned before, I had the ever-so-brilliant idea to use a chipper-shredder to turn all the brush and downed limbs into mulch. My brother-in-law the landscaper loaned me a Troy-Bilt that he was given to pay off a bill.

In two words: it sucks. It’s still here, I think because he really doesn’t want it back.

So today, I had another brilliant idea: sharpen the blade, and maybe it would suck a bit less.

Troy-Bilt, I’ve learned, didn’t design their toy to be easily serviced. I took off a cover (forcing the big plastic knobs to turn all the way off to get the cover off, tried to get the flywheel off but it’s on there to stay, then pulled off the chute assembly. With all that off, I was able to put an Allen wrench on one side and a 1/2-inch socket on the other (oh yeah, this thing is a lovely mishmash of English and metric fasteners) and loosen the three nuts & bolts holding the (single) blade on.

Now I have to take it down to the in-laws’ and introduce it to the grinder.

Floored

We're the third owners of FAR Manor. We had been making noises about putting a hardwood floor in the living room, but given the finances it wasn't going to happen any time soon.

The widow of the original owner was in the area a while back; we knew them when we lived back in the woods about 1/2 mile away. She came by to visit, stepped in the living room, and said, “Why did they put that carpet down? There's a hardwood floor underneath it!” I pulled up a corner, and sure enough it was there.

We moved furniture out of the way; I grabbed a big pair of shears and cut just past the walkway.



The harder half is where the carpet still is — we need to move some other furniture out of the way before we can pull up that side. Then there's the sanding and re-staining phase to come. Fun fun fun.

Morning runaround

The lawn mower is finally fixed. No sooner had I put the blade on, Daughter Dearest mowed out back until the replacement bolt I put on the handle came off & got lost. I went by the lawn mower place (among other things) and the guy let me take a couple of the bolts with big plastic wingnuts (lets you fold up the handle for transportation or storage). Other things we did on the trip this morning:

• ate at Waffle House


• got groceries (I put some ice in a cooler, which helped keep the milk & ice cream cold coming back)


• complained to the cellphone peeps about my phone's camera being out of focus (they gave me a number for a warranty exchange, yay)


• swung by the library to pick up a loaner (Haiku: This Other World by Richard Wright)


• gassed up the minivan — more on that in another post

Now that's how you combine your trips!

Slow progress

Current music: di.fm EuroDance
I haven't addressed the pile of logs that need splitting in some time now. I started whacking at them a little bit today, but decided instead to pick up some sticks in the back; it's about at the point now where I can start weed-whacking without getting the string tangled in a fallen branch. I also need to address the front of the place, on the other side of the driveway, where we had the timber people clear the pines. Picking up the sticks, tilling or plowing the ground to smooth it out, and planting grass seed are things that remain to be done; later this month is the best time to do it.

We got a new lawn mower blade today and I put it on. The boys are now out of excuses to mow the lawn. (I'm sure they'll find some new ones though.)

I helped Lobster change the oil in his truck today... meaning I did most of the work while he watched. Rangers mount the oil filter vertically, leaving very little room for a strap wrench (I told Lobster to get a cap wrench next time he went to the parts place). That sucker was tight. But eventually we succeeded, just in time to get him off to KFC. Then I put my Civic up on ramps and changed the oil in it too. But I'm kind of surprised that Lobster's dad never showed him what to do — he works for one of the pipeline companies (yeah, one that got clobbered by Katrina) and has weird hours, so maybe that's the reason. Or maybe he makes enough $$$ that he just has it done.

Chicken house duty for a couple of hours today as well. Hope everyone else's Labor Day weekend is work-free and fun....

When drains rebel

The perfect storm: plenty of rain, running the dishwasher & clothes washer, and a toilet with a stuck-open flapper. The bathroom with the stuck toilet started taking on water last night after my last post; fortunately, there were plenty of dirty clothes and used towels (and an area rug) to soak up most of it before I realized what was happening. Walking in the bathroom & getting my feet wet was how I figured it out.

A night of rest and not so much rain seems to have settled things down for now. But I guess we need to check the drain field and maybe pump the septic tank.

I fought the lawn...

...and the lawn won.

Never had a stump do that to a lawn mower blade before.

Wife is taking it to an old farmer down the road a ways; if he has an anvil, he can heat up the blade & pound it straight. Otherwise, we can always get a new blade.

Just ahead of the storm

The siding on the gables was rotten at the bottom — I think the wood was wicking up rain running down the roof. They put flashing underneath, but didn't seal the bottom of the siding. The original stuff lasted 20 years, anyway.

On one gable, the builders put the flashing behind the plywood, so the plywood rotted too. More fun with the crowbar. Hey, it's not every day you get to take a crowbar to a house you didn't want. So Sunday, I was putting up the siding when I heard thunder. God, please give me some time, I said. Hurry up, He rumbled.

I finished putting the siding up, finding I'd cut the last piece backwards. Screw it. Up it went, I'll cut another piece later. I called the daughter, tossed down some tools and foam insulation then carried the drill down with me. The first gust of wind knocked the insulation out of her hands and we gathered it up. Got everything in the garage, then got inside.

About five minutes later, the bottom fell out. Rain came down in buckets, and the lightning was banging around pretty heavy. One shot hit 'way too close to the house for comfort; the power dropped out for a second and came back on. We got the computers and TV unplugged first, fortunately. As far as I'm concerned, lightning could have fried that TV to a crackly crunch... but then the rest of them would have been whining to buy an HDTV to replace it. Yeah right, like we have any freeking money for that kind of crap.

So a day later, the muscle aches are about gone. Riding the motorcycle to work has its benefits.