"the
car's on fire and
there's
no driver at the wheel..."
what's
been floating my boat lately:
"How fortunate for governments
that the people they administer don't think."
-Hitler-
"Only two things are
infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the
former."
-Albert Einstein-
3-9-10 (17:32)
dug out the foundation
for the garage today. meryl was here for about an hour to help then her
stepbrother came by for a few hours and we also hired rafael (who did our
art room stucco patch) to help. it went well. took about 4 hours which
was about 2 hours less than i thought it was going to take. about 3 yards
of dirt we took out from under the garage. at this point the garage is
completely lifted off the ground, it's pretty cool. took today and tomorrow
off. hopefully we'll run the electrical conduit tomorrow which will go
through the foundation and up and into the interior of the garage. that
would be even better than the original plan which was to run an LB in through
the exterior of the wall. this is cleaner and has less of a chance of leaking.
if we get the forms up and the conduit in tomorrow i'll be happy. that
would mean the concrete would go in on thursday which would be great.
the updated pictures page
should be online by the end of the night.
3-7-10 (17:06)
haven't had much time lately.
did my aa picks real quick.
garage is lifted, but they
still have some work to do before it'll be time to dig out the foundation.
hope to do that on tuesday if i can get the time off.
mostly worked in the back
this weekend. finishing up the drainage and whatnot.
3-3-10 (07:47)
first garage guy is here
today, others will arrive shortly. seems nice, hope they get a lot done
today in spite of the rain issues.
the drainage that we installed
on the side of the house seems to be keeping that area relatively mud free
so that's a good thing.
3-1-10 (18:04)
would have liked to see
more of the health care reform meeting on cspan, but only watched the stuff
covered by the daily show. at one point mccain talks about a b.s. amendment
that would have excluded floridians from some provisions of the bill because
it was politically expedient and would have gained some votes. he mentioned
this fully expecting excuses and push back from obama. instead obama replied
"i think you make a valid point." mccain's first response was reflexive
in that he started to argue with obama about the point, but after a few
seconds he realized that obama had conceded the point and he stopped and
just shut up. he was so geared up for a confrontation that he didn't even
hear obama's reply. this is a microcosm for the entire approach by the
republicans on this issue. got a good amount done around the house over
the weekend. saturday i cleaned up the rest of the garage. took all the
shelves off the wall as well as the work benches that lined the north wall.
now the walls are completely empty.
after the garage i tackled
some of the flooding problems we've had. i bought a pump the other day
and rigged it up to pump out all the water from the trench we dug the other
day. i also pumped out the water which had gathered underneath the house
on the west side crawl space. it was an annoying job because i was muddy
the entire time. i also took out meryl's afci breaker and replaced it with
a normal breaker because her afci trips with her computer and the iron
and other things. it can be very annoying. customer service is something
i appreciate more and more as i get older. as i try to fix, rather than
replace, things i'm finding that customer service is a valuable component
of a company's product. i've been having trouble with cutler-hammer afci
breakers tripping when i plug in certain devices so i called them up today
and the tech is sending me a device that should cut down the noise on the
line and hopefully solve the problem. this was free of charge and he also
asked that i call him back because he was interested in finding out how
it worked for me. this shows that he's interested in improving the quality
of the product and his customer service. i can appreciate both of those
things.
yesterday we decided, somewhat
on a whim, to solve the drainage issues we've been having on the north
side of the house. the problems are: the neighbor has a cement driveway
and all the water from her side drains to our side, there are three downspouts
on the north side that dump the roof runoff onto the north side strip,
and of course there's the usual amount of rain that it would normally get
as well. all this accumulates on the side of the house and sits there until
it can work its way down and (eventually) that ends up in a low spot under
the west side of the house. so we drew up a plan to run perforated pipe
on the north side of the house and have it drain to the backyard. we went
to home depot, bought the pipe, 9 cubic feet of gravel, and hired a laborer
named george (or jorge; he called himself george, but when i asked he said
jorge or george was fine). he helped a bunch and did a great job of digging
the trench along the side of the house. while he did that meryl and i relocated
the birds of paradise because that's where our dry well was going to be
located. after relocating the birds of paradise we got started on digging
the dry wells. we didn't actually buy a drywell system, instead we bought
two garbage cans and drilled holes in them. it should be strong enough
(they're located in an area that doesn't really get foot traffic), it's
cheaper, and it's better than filling the holes with gravel because it
allows for more space for water. i hope it works. meryl made two more trips
to HD for a total of 1 cubic yard of gravel. it was a lot of work shoveling
the dirt from the side of the house to the back of the house and then shoveling
the gravel from the truck to the back of the house to the side of the house
(using buckets because the wheelbarrow couldn't back there once the trench
had been dug. jorge helped a bunch, it would have been hellish without
him. meryl is finishing up some of the final touches on the trench today
and it should all be done on wednesday.
when digging the trench
we came across a rusted metal pipe about 1.5" in diameter. we determined
that it had to be either water or gas supply, but it was on a side of the
building that didn't make much sense for either. it was right next to the
fireplace so i guess that it was a gas line, but the fireplace doesn't
look like it ever had gas piped in or a valve to control gas. i called
811 to see what they could do, but they require 2 days notice and make
a point to say that you're supposed to call before you dig. i knew you
were supposed to call before you dig, but i really had no idea that there
would be anything there and we were digging by hand so it's not like we
were likely to do damage to anything. the guy on the phone said that the
law requires you to call before you dig anywhere on your property. i asked
"even 6 inches?" he said "anymore than 1cm down and you're required to
call." "even for planting a flower?" "yes." so my first thought was that's
fucking silly and my second thought was why the hell does the law specify
1 cm? are we in freaking france or something? for crying out loud, if you're
going to be a fascist and make me call you to plant a daisy, at least use
the standard system of measurement. earlier today meryl heard a noise while
at home. turns that a couple of idiots were driving after each other shooting
at one another. i swear, this stuff gets better everyday. idiots stopping
in the middle of the highway, people pissing on the side of the street,
people stealing my bike and breaking into my truck for $4 in change, people
getting arrested in front of whole foods market with guns drawn, and now
a shooting right in front of our house. awesome.
while we were doing this
we also watched/listened to the hockey game. we watched the first period
while we ate lunch. then we listened to the second period and first half
of the third period while we worked. then we stopped and watched the second
half of the third period and overtime. exciting game. i'm happy about the
way we performed. i'm not as crushed by our defeat as a canadian would
have been so i guess it's okay that we lost. would have been nice to win,
but they wanted it more so i'm okay with it. we showed them that we deserve
respect by beating them once and then taking them to OT the second time.
overall the canadians had
a very respectable showing in the olympics so they should be happy about
that. we also did very well including some really unexpected medals in
the nordic events. curling was a blast to watch as usual. winter isn't
as good as summer, but the olympics are always great. now it's time for
march madness.
continuing the thoughts
that began here, today there was
a shooting on our block. apparently a couple guys were chasing each other
in their cars and then shooting at one another. cops were on our block
picking up shell casings when meryl came outside. that's always a good
sign. also forgot to mention in that same vein that in the last month two
houses on our street have been broken into and robbed during the day. we'll
see how much better this can get. i guess the next step is for us to get
robbed and/or shot at so hopefully this is just a fluke, but, to recap
the last couple weeks i have witnessed or lived/worked near the following:
two separate instances of psychos getting out of their vehicles in the
middle of a highway, two robberies, one armed stand-off with police, one
minor riot, one construction disaster that could have killed anyone underneath.
Copyright
1998,
1999,
2000,
2001,
2002,
2003,
2004,
2005,
2006,
2007,
2008,
2009
& 2010 by Chris Miller.
everything on here
is my opinion, so don't sue me.