Still here

Don't get excited.  I'm still here and I'm dealing with a heat pump that went kaput yesterday.  We're getting a new one on Wednesday but until then it's going to be a bit cool inside Monkey Central.

Hard labor

We had the big pecan and ginko trees next to our house cut down recently, well within the past few years anyway, and then I had to take up part of the brick walkway on the same side to deal with a drainage issue.  Both trees shaded the walkways, which were lined with untreated lumber, and when they were being cut some of the limbs dropped and broke bricks and parts of the steps that led down to our backyard.  So after the trees were gone and I got to feeling better after my bout last year with bowel cancer, we decided to get bids on replacing the steps and walkway.  The bids came in way over our budget so we decided to do the work ourselves.

The first thing we did was to pull up the rotting railroad ties they used to bridge the walkway to the steps.  Once we got those up and hauled off, thanks to my neighborhood buddy for helping in the hauling off part, we began working on the walkway.

I pulled up the rotting wood that bordered the brick and then we laid some pebbles and then paving sand, then Sparky got to work re-laying the bricks, pictures below.  Once we did that I was pretty convinced we could slowly but surely do the rest of the work.  So over the past month we've been doing just that, mainly on the weekends, because of various things like rain, a death in the extended family, and Sparky not wanting me to do that hard labor unless she's here to semi monitor me.  We started the biggest part of the job on Memorial Day weekend and as we began it I foolishly thought we'd have it all done by that Monday.  Boy was I wrong.

Here's what the steps looked like before I started:

They were built we think in the late 1970's, so they held up pretty well but all that wood you see was rotted and many of the bricks were broken.  

As I worked on them I rebuilt them one step at a time.  On average I built two steps per weekend.  It went so slowly because I had to tear out the old step, and go buy and haul back the materials needed to build the new step.  Working out under the blazing sun and high humidity meant I could only work outside for about 45 minutes to an hour at a time before I had to take a break and get re-hydrated.  I learned my lesson years ago when I got a kidney stone because I let myself get too dehydrated.

Anyway, I built the steps from the top down and secured each step into the previous step, unlike the old ones.  Here's what they look like framed in and nearly done:

 We still need to dump more gravel, some paving sand, and then some kind of paving stone in each one.  I'm nearly done with the hardest part, I've got one final step to finish bolting in, and then we can finish putting the gravel in them.

While I was doing steps, Sparky was re-doing the walkway.  She laid all this brick:

 That area used to be covered with rotting railroad ties that got as slick as glass when it rained, we've slipped many a time on them.  Now, it's cleaner, safer, and much more beautiful.

Here's the rest of the walkway she did:

It's crooked on the right side because of a giant tree root that's too big to dig up.

It's been quite the job, three weekends to rebuild the steps, but we're in the home stretch and since we did the work ourselves, it's much more rewarding.  On the plus side as well. is the knowledge that when the treated timbers I used begin to rot and need replacement, we'll either be dead or in an assisted living facility.

Victims of the cold-pocalypse

We made it through the polar vortex pretty much unscathed, but some of our plumbing didn't.  That piece of ruptured copper pipe went to a sink and toilet in our basement, it had been exposed to the cold for years and this past bitter cold snap finally did it in.  I was able to shut the water off coming into our house and one of our regular plumbers came the next day to replace all the copper piping with modern plastic pipe so we won't have to worry about it much any more.  It didn't cost us an arm and a leg and our water never froze, which was a good thing.  Many had it much worse than we did.

No worries

The half rotten huge maple in our neighbor's lot finally snapped yesterday.  It took out one power line and his electric meter.  Our power was out for about 16 hours, no big deal.  I'm glad the wind was blowing from the east and not the west because if it had been blowing from the west, it would have landed on our house.

Strange days at Monkey Central

We spent most of yesterday awaiting the rains from the tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico/New Orleans to hit us. Sadly, as I type this, we haven't seen much out of it yet. However the humidity hung in the air like the scent of stale sweat and patchouli that follows in the wake of a dirty hippie or some schmuck who follows Phish obsessively.

Then about 3:00 PM we, and by we I mean Sparky, noticed something hanging in tree that shadows part of our back deck:
Click on the picture so you can get a good look at the raccoon laying there on the tree branch. At first we thought he was dead, and yes we assume it's a male, but then after banging on pots and making other noises he stirred and even turned to look at us:
It's kind of creepy to have a raccoon that close to our back door and it's especially creepy to have one who just lays there and stares at us like we're objects of his amusement. On one hand I was glad he wasn't dead because when I called the animal control in my city they told me that they didn't mess with wild animals and that I had to call the TN Wildlife Resource Agency, which is closed for the long holiday weekend. On the other hand I don't want this wild animal coming at us if it's got rabies, distemper, or some other disease, although we think he may have eaten the blue block of rat poison I had tossed out next to our garbage can, we had a mouse problem back earlier in the spring and when we, and by we I mean Sparky, moved the stove the other day to clean behind it, she found one of the old blocks of poison and I tossed it outside thinking that it might attract rats or mice which it would eventually kill.

Then faster than President Obama could cave to the right wing yet again, night fell and we looked out back to see it Rocky Raccoon was still there. And lo, and behold, he was. He'd moved up closer to the main trunk of the tree but he was still laying up there judging us and thinking his raccoon thoughts. So if he's still out there tomorrow I'll probably call the cops to see if they'll shoot him since he may be carrying a disease. And if he's dead then I'll screw my courage to the sticking point and I'll move him to the road and then I'll call the city to remove his carcass. Although on second thought I do recall that TN has a 'road kill' law that says you can keep and eat, if you so choose, road kill. Yeah, I know it's fucked up but they passed that law so people who hit deer could get it butchered, personally, I never cared for the taste of venison at all.

We're still expecting torrential rains from the tropical storm over the next few days, so maybe it will drive our addled raccoon out and back to whence he came. But one way or another, he's got to go.

Much work to be done

Gaze at this stump while I finish my graphic novel Hip Deep, Mountain High and I fix one of our down spout drainage problems. Trenchant political analysis and snarky pop culture posts will be back soon, I promise. In the mean time, I've got work to do.

Busy, busy, busy

I'm busy working on getting the basement floor prepped for painting and sealing. So while I'm gone, enjoy Nova.

Adventures in home ownership

First it was the replacing the stove. Then, after we escaped the tornadoes that hit our region, the next week a storm blew part of the huge maple tree on our neighbors lot on to part of our deck. After making arrangements to get that cleaned up, and I must add here that after having had a run in with the neighbor in question in the past, he could not have been nicer over all the tree clean up business, after mowing the lawn last Friday, I came in to find that one of the two water heaters that were here when we bought our current house had sprung a leak.

I called our plumber, and if you live near me and need a plumber I highly recommend the guy we use, and he came right out and fixed things. He could not however fix the water damaged carpeting that was in the basement.

We'd been threatening to rip that ugly ass carpet up from day one but we never could get motivated to do it. But having huge parts of it soaked with water did the trick. No amount of blotting would have saved that carpet and had we left it, it would have become a breeding ground for toxic mold. So Sunday morning we ripped it up.

We pulled it up and cut it into sections we could easily carry up the stairs and which would fit into the Sparky mobile. We pulled up the padding and we took out the strips of tack filled wood that they used to keep the edges down. This is the mound of carpet that is destined for our county dump:
And here's the basement floor without the carpet on it:
Giddy with joy after having gotten the carpet in the basement up and out, we decided to take the carpet on the steps up, it was the same awful pink/dusty rose color. We decided that if we didn't it would haunt us for the rest of our days. So up and out it went. Removing all the staples, carpet tacks, and tacking strips off the steps and the landing was a huge pain in the ass, actually it was a pain in my arm, knees, and back. It took us three days to get all of them out.

Next step is to scrape the basement floor, use a high powered concrete cleaner on it, paint it, and seal it. Hopefully, the fumes from the cleaner, the paint, and the sealer won't get us and neither will the labor involved.

During the dealing with all that the tree guys came Monday, after I had to call them and remind them that they agreed to come out that day, to cut the storm damaged tree off of our and our neighbor's property. They got to our place around 2PM and got to work. By 5:30 they had broken part of the wooden fence and snapped our cable, which put us out of watching any cable TV, using the phone, and kept us offline. Thankfully the tree is gone and Charter cable sent out a huffy little dude who got my cable hooked back up and all is well on that front, for the time being.

So dealing with all that shit has put me behind in my blogging, my Facebooking, and in finishing my current graphic novel. Once we get the floor done downstairs, maybe I can get back to some semblance of normal and I can finish Hip Deep, Mountain High by the middle of June.

On a happier note, I did manage to find time to make a batch of strawberry jam from locally grown strawberries.

If a tree falls on your house and you're there to hear it, does anyone else hear you cry?

Part of a dying tree fell on our property missing our house by just a few feet last night. We were without power, phone, cable, and internet since last night when the tree fell. They got our power back on around 1:30 PM and our other stuff came back on around 3:30 PM. We've been doing some clean up and we're waiting on tree service people to come by and give us some estimates on getting the rest of the tree cut and hauled off our property.

Oy, the joys of home ownership.

Shitty day

We had another blast of winter weather, and yes, we get winter weather in the mountains of Tennessee. We got a couple inches of snow on top of the snow we got the other day which hadn't melted yet because it's been colder than Christian charity here lately. Here's a shot I took while driving earlier today:
And here's another I took of the fog and snow on the mountains:
I love how the fog masks the top of the mountains so that it looks like they go onward and upward forever.

Sparky had the day off due to the weather so we planned a nice quiet day at home, she decided to bake various breads and I was going go scan some stuff, read some of the graphic novels I got at my local library yesterday, and just chill. However things didn't turn out like I had planned.

As I was dressing after my shower Sparky said that the toilet down on the main floor of our house was flooding. I ran down to see that it was indeed flooding. It was spewing brown water that was mixed with shit, toilet paper, and gawd knows what else. I tried plunging it to dislodge any blockage but the plumbing gods laughed at me and it spewed on and off for another hour before I finally called our plumber. He got to our place, while the snow was falling faster than Paris Hilton can spread an STD to a room full of drunken frat boys, a half hour later and he pulled the toilet, snaked the drain out to the street, and fixed the problem. It was the best $195 we ever spent.

Then we were left with the clean up. Not only had nasty shitty germy water poured onto the bathroom floor, it also got into our kitchen floor, the basement bathroom, and we then tracked all over our house while we ran around like chickens with our heads cut off. So once the plumber was finished, paid, and gone, I went and bought some Pine Sol and sanitary wipes. We cleaned the floors, the walls, the doorknobs, and anything else we could think of that the bad nasty no good water may have touched. The toilet crisis began at about 1 PM and by the time we got done cleaning up after the plumber was finished it was nearly 6 PM.

Some relaxing snowy day huh. At least our toilet drain is snaked clean and this shit didn't go down on New Years Day when we had a house full of people.

Now if we can just keep our pipes from freezing when the real cold hits on Wed. and Thursday. The highs on those days are supposed to hit the mid 20's and the lows may dip below zero, so wish us luck.

Adventures in home ownership

We think we may have our air conditioning unit fixed. As some of you may remember we got a warranty on our house when we bought it back in October. We tried using the warranty on the same unit last fall when it would not shut off, but since we did not use a warranty company approved HVAC service company we had to pay for that repair ourselves.

Then when we had a pipe burst this past winter they said it was not covered.

So when I found standing water under out unit a little over a week ago I was hesitant but I called it in anyway. The warranty company contracted the job out and the guy came out last week. He figured out what was wrong with it and shock of shocks they approved the repair. Well the AC guy had to order the part and it finally came in today and he came out and worked on it for a couple of hours this afternoon, then he said it was all good to go. I started writing him a check for the amount of the deductible and he tried to tell me I had to pay him $40 more on top of that. I politely but firmly told him that our deductible was only $100 and that's all we'd be paying him. He objected saying that the warranty company was supposed to call us to tell us that the was a $40 fee on top of the deductible for some reason he tried to tell me. I told him once again that we'd be paying the deductible and nothing more. I also said that if they wanted $40 more from us they could make their request in writing and that we'd take it under advisement. He stammered a bit, then he made a call on his cell phone. I handed him the check for $100 and thanked him for his labors and I asked for a receipt. He told me he'd have to go outside so he could talk in private to whoever he was calling and he went to his van without giving me the receipt I requested.

Next thing I know he's starting his van and he drives off from our house. No receipt, no explanation, no nothing, he just left. I think he was trying to make a little pocket money off us. If he really wants $40 extra bucks he can mark up something when he submits his bill to the warranty company, he wasn't about to chisel one more red cent out of us.