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9:35AM: Good morning!
It is the day the spooks come out but they are being hindered by the fall of wetness in the form of precipitation known as rain.
I already had to drain my 50 gallon rain barrels as they were overflowing from the deluge of the past week. Deluge isn't the right word. It's just been raining a lot for the last several days.
We are very limited in what we can do right now. We are hoping the rain will fall this morning and end before the Trick or Treating begins. Ideally, it would end in time for us to get some stuff out in the yard.
Some stuff can go out regardless of rain. However, we want to wait until the rain is done. If the rain doesn't finish, then we will wait until 5ish to get stuff into the yard.
Here are my morning photographs to share.
Here is cheesy, quick and dirty panorama of the front of the house.
2:42PM: We just had our first trick or treater. It's a record early time. I had to search around for some candy because we weren't ready. The mom apologized and said she had to work tonight.
Well, it's on now. Probably won't hear from me again today.
It does not look promising for the Spooky Holiday as far as the weather is concerned. It has been raining all night and continues this morning.
We finished our hay bales last night and we think they might actually work. That remains to be seen. At least the bales will be tested in battled hardened conditions.
I also finished the kid eating pumpkin last night.
We got these extra large pumpkins from our friends Randy and Karen. They have a friend who grows them. Anyway, I think he came out looking fine and very tasty.
It's two days before Halloween and things are not looking good for this year's event. The forecast is calling for rain. That is bad news for a lot of our outdoor decorations. As long as it is not too rainy, we should be okay.
We've been spending the last couple of days on fake hay bales.
I think they look pretty good but the big unknown at this point is if they are going to be very durable.
We have glued straw onto Styrofoam boxes. It seems to be sticking but the permanence is what is at question right now. The plan is to put them in the yard and see how they endure. Hopefully, no fat ass will come along and decide it's a nice place to take a load off.
I spent last weekend getting the flying ghost working. So far, all is going very well but I don't know what a rainy night will do. I suspect I will not run it if it's raining Saturday night.
We had an interesting event take place last night here in the neighborhood. The great thing is that I was unaware of what happened until I talked to neighbor Ted today.
The two houses across the alley from us are rentals. The one on the corner has three rentals, I think and the house next to it has two units.
The young woman that rents the ground floor apartment in that house has four kids. We met her last Spring shortly after she moved in. She seems very nice and she clearly has her hands full.
She has an ex husband with a restraining order against him but for some reason, she invited him over to see the kids. At some point in the evening, a disagreement took place and Dad began to destroy the house.
Our other neighbors Shelby and James said they heard something around 11:00 and it went on until 2ish.
Ted came by and took me over to the house. Every window on the main floor had been broken out, from inside the house. Furniture was turned over. The place was a mess.
All the windows are boarded up now. Somebody made quick work of that.
Best of all, Susan and I slept right through it. We never heard a thing.
That makes me feel great about the prospect of ever waking up when something is happening at our house.
Tonight we transferred the wine into the primary fermenter, removing the must from the grape skins...the pulp. I was surprised the see that we had more than enough juice to fill the six gallon carboy.
We have been dealing with fruit flies for the last week. Hopefully, they will start to die off in the next couple of days.
We ended up with about a half gallon extra juice which I'm chilling in the fridge and drinking. It's definitely got some kick to it although it is a little sweet for Susan's liking.
It wasn't long after the transfer that the bottle started foaming and frothing, indicating that it is still got some fermenting to do.
We said goodbye to the old bathtub and sink yesterday.
The good news is that they are going to a good home and we got $550.00 for them.
The couple that bought them are rebuilding an old farm house near Davenport, WA. It burned this summer and has quite a bit of damage. They were very pleased to find our tub and I'm happy they are going to a place with people who appreciate history.
Phil has been working the last two days on the bathroom and it is nearly all dry walled. It's amazing the difference the drywall makes on the room. It seems a little brighter and a little warmer.
I have to get the Plumber back in to crimp on the connections for the bathtub and toilet water lines. I called them today and have it scheduled a week out for next Thursday.
Once that is done, we can start with the tile on the floor. That's our last big expense. It's probably going to run about $400.00.
Once the tile is down, then I can make the bathroom usable, even though it will not be finished. I can get the tub in, install the sink and the toilet and make it a functioning, working bathroom.
From there we can work on all the finishing touches.
Pretty much everything I first learned about Christopher Columbus 50 years ago is wrong. He did not discover America. The closest he ever got was Cuba.
He exploited the indigenous people wherever he landed. It seems he was a bit of a bastard. I'm beginning to think there should not be a day to remember him, let alone honor him.
However, this is a political discussion that does not really have a place in this blog. Let's talk about dry walling progress.
There is nothing to talk about as far as dry walling progress. Phil didn't make it over on Sunday, which allowed me the chance to do a bunch of other little chores.
I'm hoping Phil will get to the house sometime this week and get things started. Once the dry wall is done, I can get Rick the Plumber to finish putting the fittings on all the water lines. I might even be able to get a toilet installed in a temporary fashion.
The whole house smells faintly of fruit. The grapes are percolating away and if you were to smell the juice directly, you would notice a slight vinegar smell that translates into the production of alcohol.
We transferred the pulp into a mesh bag tonight. It had been creating a cap on top of the bucket that was pushing the lid loose. That attracted a herd of fruit flies that are all over the kitchen.
We decided we had better try and seal the vessel better and throwing the pulp into the mesh bag helped.
We have had the bath tub and sink from the main floor bathroom for sale since June. I put it on Craig's List and started at $800.
We finally sold it this week for $550. The people are coming to pick it up tomorrow. I have left the ad up but posted that the tub is sold.
8:18AM: I have a busy day planned with the main goal being dry walling the bathroom. I learned last night from my telephone answering device machine that Phil, Master Dry Walling Guy, will be late getting to me today. We had planned to meet at 10, but he has another job to finish this morning.
I will not allow that minor setback to affect me as I have plenty of small tasks to keep me busy until the arrival of Master Dry Waller Phil.
Let's start with some nature observations.
I took this picture last week. Almost exactly a week ago. As you can see, Autumn is here. It has been a nice week since I took this picture. It has not been terribly cool and it rained pretty good on Wednesday.
This is the same tree this morning, just moments ago, in fact. It has dropped its whole load.
All over our yard! Well, there's one of the projects I may get to today.
But first, I have to get the deck cleaned up.
10:20AM: Not much time for chatting. I'll let my pitchers do the talkin'!
They say we can expect a visit from Mariah this afternoon so I have to get back out there and bag them thar leaves afore she blows them all to my neighbors yard. If you don't know about Mariah, I suggest you watch the classic Clint Eastwood film, "Paint Your Wagon" and get an education concerning what we call the rain, the wind and the fire out here.
11:58AM: Do you want to know what kind of genius I am?
Of course you do! Because you'll want to employ this idea for yourself.
Once you have your leaves all piled up, make use of your other power equipment and mow up that pile of leaves. It not only bags them for you, but it shreds them so you can maximize your space.
I don't think it is going too far to say I'm an effing genius. AND the laziest man on the face of the planet!
In any event, I am pleased to have beaten the wind and the rain and gotten the yard presentable. It will look like hell again in the morning.
1:56PM: I am waiting for Phil to show. I could easily take a nap while I wait but I might not get up again.
6:53PM: Phil finally made it over about three and we got the ceiling dry walled. It only took us about two hours. I didn't bother renting a lift because it's such a small room but we sure did struggle with those first two full size sheets. I couldn't hit a 2x4 to save my life.
Tomorrow we start on the walls.
In the meantime, our latest wine is churning and bubbling. I punched the cap earlier and the juice that was in there was foaming. It ended up pushing the cap up and expanding it, lifting the lid just barely off the rim. Now the kitchen is loaded with tiny little fruit flies.
I am writing to you now from the front porch, having just unloaded 10 sheets of drywall and five sheets of cement board.
This could have very possibly killed me were it not for my best neighbor Lou. He saw me struggling and came over to help.
I was struggling because I'm stupid. I was taking two sheets at a time. Generally, two sheets of drywall are bound together with a strip of paper at each end. A person working alone would be wise to remove the paper and haul one sheet at a time.
I had no luck removing the strips in one smooth move the way real drywallers do it. So, I hauled double sheets, which was killing me. I managed two trips with doubles but it involved a substantial breather in between.
Another minor disaster I had was deciding to try and drive home on the freeway with the drywall loaded on my rack. I had two pieces break on me within the first quarter mile. I got off the freeway and drove surface streets home. I think I can save the two broken pieces. If not, they will work as fillers.
From the front porch, with a cold beer, I'm out.
Today was Wine Day. It is time to get our Lemberger into the fermenter.
I met my friend John at his little Winery about 5:30. I had my grapes in the car and got them unloaded pretty quickly. I was a little dismayed to discover a mouse living in the ice chest among the grapes.
He must have come on board from the very start when we picked up the grapes in Prosser. He had clearly been eating them which meant he was also peeing and crapping on them. That's what we in the wine biz call...extra flavor.
I managed to prod the varmint out of the ice chest before anyone else knew he was there. Therefore, let's keep this information between us, okay?!
The crushing went quickly as always. It's the clean up that takes forever.
We got the grapes home and transferred them from the ice chest into our primary fermenter, a white 7 gallon bucket. I didn't have any yeast yet so we're just letting them sit and juice.
We did not place the grapes in the mesh bag as we have in the past.
I'm not really sure how we will proceed from here. It kind of depends on how much juice starts showing up.
In the meantime, here are the pictures of this years batch o'wine!
It's October now which means the pressure is really on to finish the bathroom. At the very least, I need to get it working by Halloween.
To aid in the pursuit to complete the bathroom, we spent the weekend in Sunnyside, Washington on our annual Grape Quest.
We were accompanied by Randy and Karen, who we know from church. It was a great weekend and we purchased a crap load of wine.
We also got 100 pounds of Lemberger grapes.
We met Karen and Randy at Dolly's Cafe on Saturday morning and after a rib sticking breakfast, drove the 2 1/2 hours down to Washington Grape Country.
I think we hit five wineries by the time 5:00 rolled around and they took their toll on us. We were splitting tastings in order to pace ourselves, but we were still feeling the effects when we checked into the Sunnyside B&B.
It took all our effort and gumption to walk over to the local upscale Pizza/Brew Pub and have some dinner.
After a nice pitcher of beer and a pizza, we returned to the B&B, where we planned to gather in Karen and Randy's room to watch "Lincoln", but decided we had used up all our gumption on dinner.
Susan and I were in bed by 10 and out by 11.
Here's some pictures of Spider-Man enjoying the various stops we made along the way.
Today was my first morning wearing a jacket as I left the house. The Stanometer 2000 said it was 33 degrees at about 7AM. It was up to 40 when I got on the freeway and saw my first Time/Temp sign.
In any event, Autumn is here, both in spirit and actuality.
We had a very busy day starting with church, then a visit to Mom, then church business, then a memorial service for Dad's girlfriend, and finally the day was ours about 3:00.
I got to work in the bathroom trying to finish my electrical work. I had to hook up power to the switch to the mirror lights and to the fan.
Everything went pretty well but I did have one problem.
What is wrong with this picture?
Once I figured out what was wrong with the picture, I had to re-organize everything. The wires for the timer come off the right side which made everything very confining. That box is packed full and not the neatest packing job.
Once I got everything in and re-packed, I had a problem with the main switch. There was no power.
So again, I unscrewed everything, checked all the connections and re-packed the box and tightened everything up. To my amazement, it all worked!
Phew!
There was a Lunar Eclipse tonight. It was supposed to be all very historic and exciting. Unfortunately, my crummy little camera was not able to capture all the histrionics or excitamentation.
Frankly, I'm surprised it did as well as it did.
Here's one final shot with a bit of the yard.
It took me a great deal of all day to install the fan. The tough part was cutting through the outside of the house for the exhaust port.
I started from the inside wall above the ceiling line by drilling a hole to the outside. That gave me a start to place the template for the exhaust door.
The problem was the space from the outside wall to the inside wall was about 8 inches. It was tough to cut through because I didn't have a saw blade that was long enough to cut through the span.
I had to chip away at it little by little.
Installing the fan itself was easy. Attaching the hose to the exhaust port was easy.
The hole was a bitch!
This action picture shows the exhaust port actually working, showing the door slightly open as the air blows out.
It is the morning time of year when the morning sun is at just the right morning angle in the morning that it is right in my morning eyes during my morning drive to work in the morning. This shall continue morningly for the next couple of morning weeks until the morning sun rise (the best time for a sun rise) moves to an earlier morning time.
The Autumnal Equinox took place on Wednesday and you can definitely feel it in the air in the morning. We have also noticed the sudden and dramatic change in many of the trees around the park. Additionally, it gets dark by 6:00.
We are now preparing for the weekend. We are going to the Greek Festival tonight and taking Mark along because it's his birthday tomorrow.
I have to get the bathroom dry walled and I have a couple of things to finish up before that happens. My goal for tomorrow is to get the fan installed and complete the wiring for the mirror lights.
I also want a beer!
If you guessed that I would turn into a giant puddle of Wimpy Girlie-Man Ice Pussy on Monday, September 21st at 6.38 PM, then you win this year's Boiler Challenge Game.
I fired everything up because I needed to feel confident that the heat was working and there were no leaks prior to actually needing the heat.
The good news is that it works great.
So now I have shut the thermostat down and am awaiting a truly chilly day that deserves a furnace.
But technically, I've fired up the boiler so the game is over. This is undoubtedly the earliest I've started the boiler since the beginning of the game back in the early 50's.
A fabulous weather weekend has allowed us to be fruitful and accomplished.
Saturday started out with Susan sleeping in while I went to church to help out with a Maintenance Day.
The task I was assigned was to remove a small tree. It was growing too fast and it would eventually cause power line problems as well as encroachment issues in the parking lot. As I was heading out to the tree, Neil Huggins drove in and offered to help me.
We dug at the roots to try and break it free and eventually succeeded.
That took about half an hour altogether.
My next task was to fix a slow filling toilet.
Our church has toilets that I covet. If they ever decide to get rid of these, I want them. All toilets today have these piddly little tanks that fill to 1.6 gallons. It's supposed to save water, but not when you have to flush them three times.
The church toilets were made in the days when nobody cared about how much water went down the drain. I don't know the capacity but I know it only takes one flush.
So this one toilet takes forever to refill. We figured the hose may be plugged with calcium and needed to be cleared.
So I turned the valve to the off position and I flushed the toilet to drain the tank.
I started removing the hose and was surprised that it still held a lot of water. Well, it is a huge tank. Water was leaking out and creating a small puddle on the floor.
Just as I was coming to the conclusion that I might have a problem here, the hose blew off the connection and I was suddenly deluged with a torrent of water. It was hitting me in the face, covering the floor. I felt my knees becoming damp.
I thought, "Shit! I turned the valve the wrong way!" So of course I struggled with getting the valve to even move for me and when I finally turned it to the other position, the tsunami continued.
I am alone in the basement and there is no drain in this bathroom. (That turned out to be untrue because there is a floor length urinal in the opposite corner)
Nonetheless, I cannot just abandon the space. So as I continue to get submerged, I struggle to get this hose screwed back onto the valve that is exploding water at full force.
This how I know that God is with me. I managed to get the hose back in place and screwed down tight.
My next task is to find a mop and bucket. That was easy compared to the ordeal so far.
I can tell you that the bathroom floor is now the cleanest place in the building.
With that task unaccomplished, we called it a day and I went home.
Susan managed to get out of bed at some point and was painting on the front porch when I drove up. Shortly after getting home, Shaun showed up to finish covering the heated floor wires in the bathroom. That went very smoothly and we finished in about an hour.
I did a couple of other little chores while Susan finished up the porch and then we enjoyed a cold frosty beverage on the front porch and watched the paint dry.
I enjoyed a glass of wine because I am not drinking beer at the moment. I'm trying to see if it is the source of my gout. More on that on my Personal Health Blog, www.porkymccorpulent.blogspot.com
Around 4:00, we went to the fair. It was our second trip to the fair this year. We went because a friend gave us a pair of unused tickets to get in.
It took us about 30 minutes to travel the last two miles to the fair. The weather was perfect for the fair and everyone decided to go with us.
I remembered my camera this time so I was able to get pictures of our wine.
We went to a magic show that we really enjoyed and we went to a Hypnotist show that was kind of fun too.
Then we had some delicious fair food for dinner and hit the road.
