Ice Dams & Painting

Last night we got through our fourth sky walk. This was a big one and we worked until eleven. We got home and I wasted no time getting to bed.

We got a late start because of the roof. It's the worst place on the house for ice dams. I bought some heat cable and put on my big snow suit and struggled to get up and over the roof. It must have looked hilarious.

I got up there and began laying out the heat cable. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring up the little clips that attach to the shingles and keep the cable taught. So I just had to lay it out and waited it down with a big chisel I brought up to break up the ice.

It is essentially in place and it seems to be working. At least, it seems to be on. I'm not sure yet whether this will work. One thing is for sure, it looks attractive!

Official Apology to the Weather Man

If four more inches of snow fall before midnight tomorrow, we will have made it through the snowiest November on record. Right now, it is the fifth snowiest November. For those who enjoy breaking a record, I have encouraging news. Four to six inches are forecast to fall by tomorrow.


I have been Poo Pooing the forecasters and all their early reports of the snowy winter they have been forecasting for over a month...probably longer than that. It appears I owe them all an apology. And so...there ya go!


We have been crazy mad busy with Holiday painting. We are only four days into it and we are behind already. The cold weather didn't help.


One thing I accomplished during the deep freeze was to get our Freezer thawed. I thought about it last year when we had a brief cold spell but another never came around, so it never got done.

Needless to say, the freezer really needed a defrosting. It took two and half days. I loaded everything in there into ice chests and then took them out to the garage.

It seems to have worked okay. When I returned things on Saturday night, they still seemed frozen.

Okay, enough! Time to paint...or sleep.

Painting Day One

It snowed most of the night last night as well as all through yesterday. So my focus when I got up this morning was to get my snow blowing done. Consequently, we didn't get downtown to start painting until almost noon.


We completed one and half sky walks. Only eleven an a half to go. We have a long haul in front of us and it is best not to dwell on it like I am right now.

So, no more dwelling.

Chronicle of Thanksgiving Day

6:25AM Susan gets up to give T.J. his morning shot of insulin. Returns to bed.

9:03AM I get up to make coffee and record the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. More on this later. Return to bed.

9:5somethingAM We get up and take the sheets off the bed for the annual Thanksgiving Day Cleaning of the Sheets.

Next Susan prepares her preparations for the Thanksgiving Dinner. It's just the two of us this year so we're not doing anything too fancy. I make some breakfast (Scrambled Cheese Eggs with Cougar Gold) and prepare my preparations for the painting of Holiday Windows.

11:29AM I get the car warmed up and loaded. With the turkey in the oven, we finally make it out the door and go paint. We painted the entrance at the Holy Family Medical Building, and the entrance to the Northtown office Building. We did very well considering it is 19 degrees out and snowing. It took about an hour at the firast stop and then another hour at Northtown. We had to stop and warm up once.

2:00PM We return to the house, victorious in our quest to get some painting done in these freezing conditions, to be greated by the smell of turkey. We have a couple of hours to putter and relax. We discover that "Miracle on 34th Street" is on NBC.

I need to clean some brushes and adjust the viscosity of some paint. I have a thin green, thin yeller, really thick white, and almost gone brown. However, once we finish the office buildings and start on the skywalks. We won't be using much color other than white.

Susan is messing with dinner and we both take turns in the shower.

It is up to 21 degrees and it is still snowing but it is starting to slow down. I am in the dilemma of efficiency against currency. I wold like to be out with the snow blower right now because there is a good three or four inches on the ground. However, it continues to snow and makes no sense to do it twice. Then again, if it gets too deep, even my Sears Craftsman Snow Hog-A-Rama Two Stage SnowMoBlower with 6 gears plus two in reverse and a 26" plowing width runs into trouble. With deep snow, it takes just as much time to do it twice with lighter snow.

In any event, I'm staying in. Did I mention that it's 21 degrees?!

4:26PM We decide to make ourselves social and go over to where my sister Sherry and her family is having Thanksgiving. They are at the home of Mom's Roommate, John. He has a great house overlooking the Spokane River just downstream from the Bowl and Pitcher. (look it up) Mom, of course is in Palm Springs. Since John' daughter is in Seattle, Sherry has adopted him and his home for a large gathering.

We visited for about an hour and then got ourselves out of thee beofre we got kidnapped and forced to stay and eat.

6:00PM We settles ourselves back into the house and prepare our feast. My digital thermometer is not cooperating so use the old standard reliable thermometer to check the bird. It is ready. We mah potatoes, make gravy, warm up some corn and susan fries up some sweet potatoes.

We set the table in the dining room and use all the good china and silverware. We crack open a bottle of champagne and have a Thaksgiving Dinner that couldn't be beat.

Then retire to the living room and listen to music off the ipod in front of a roaring fire. We throw ourselves into bed around 11:00 and Thanksgiving is over.

Now we go into intense window painting mode.

November Deep Freeze

Minus Eight Degrees!

It has been an interesting beginning to the season of Winter...which by the calendar, is still a month away.

We have a good solid six inches of snow on the ground BEFORE Thanksgiving and we are now in the midst of sub-zero temperatures that seem to be here to stay.

The good news is that both our cars started this morning. The bad news is that we are painting Holiday Windows starting tomorrow morning. With these temperatures, the paint freezes right on the window.

I'm not looking forward to this.

Snow 1 City 0

I have two successful snow blowings under my belt for the 2010-2011 Snow season. If it continues, I'll have many many many MANY more. I'll probably have to buy a new belt.

I rose at 5:30 this morning and got out there in the weather and cleared the neighborhood. Well, at least my block. I have a designated area that I have made myself responsible for. There was another four inches on the ground this morning. It is still snowing as I write this at 7:54AM. It was a white out ride to work this morning. Still slow going but I made it.

Pictured below is a shot of the Accu-Stan 5000 Weather Centre. You know it's classy and accurate because I spelled "Centre" the European way.

It clearly shows the temperature at ten degrees. That is supposed to be the high for today. We are going to take advantage of this frosty situation by unloading the contents of our freezer into ice chests this evening and defrosting the poor thing. It hasn't been done in six years and so is long overdue.

I just realized from the picture of the Accu-Stan 5000 Weather Centre that I haven't reset the clock to standard time. Wow! I just gained another hour in my life. Sweet!

Significant Snow

I always love the first real snowfall of the year. That's when you get to break out the snow shovel and throw heavy snow all around and break your back. Then you get to fire up the snow blower and get cold frozen ice crystals blown back in your face and down your collar. Best of all...on the first day of a big snowfall...when most of the people who live here forget how to drive...you get to travel to work amongst all of them. It's great!

It didn't have a chance to break out the snow shovel or fire up the snow blower. All that will have to wait for after work. We got about 3 or 4 inches over the night and it is still coming down.

Surprisingly, my drive to work was uneventful and went quite smoothly, even though I traveled the freeway at 50 mph all the out. That's okay. I gave myself lots of time to get to work in anticipation of just such an event.

Here are a couple of pictures I took this morning.

Speaking of pictures, we were taking some pictures last night of the cats to get everything we need for our Christmas card. It was a horrible struggle as my effing camera has just about purchased the family acreage when crops are grown. I don't think I can take it anymore. There may very well be a lunch time visit to the Buy More.

Later that Day: Well, I did it. I went to the Buy More and I got a new Canon SD1400IS. It is the camera that my camera would become if it evolved. This one has a lot of the same features but is about half the thickness of my old and aging Canon Power Shot A560. Isn't that a great picture I took of the camera? Very Artsy! Look at the detail of it. It's quite amazing!

Upon arriving home, I commenced to snow blowing. There was about 3 or 4 inches of snow on the ground this morning and a couple more added to that during the day. I did my regular routine of the driveway, half way down the alley and three quarters of the sidewalk around the block. Specifically, I do the sidewalk on our side of Wall, I continue down Cleveland to the end of the block, then I clean off another swathe of the sidewalk as I return and go down the block on Waverly Place.

It seems to take about an hour and a half to cover all that.

As I write this, it is 10:47 PM and the snow is still falling. The TV says that we are under a Blizzard Warning right now until mid morning. I plan to wake up at 5 and do it all again. That all depends on how much of the forecast comes true.

I am guessing, but I don't think more than a couple of inches has fallen since I finished my Blow Job at about 6:45. That was four hours ago. If the snow continues at the same pace, I'll have a good solid four inches to deal with in my next Blow Job.

I'm suddenly feeling very Gay!

Here Come Da Snow

It is Sunday evening and the snow is falling. It is possible this will be a significant snowfall but I'm not counting on it. I don't think I'll be getting up early to break out the snow blower machine.

We woke up to a little bit of now this morning. Not a lot, just enough to make the grass white. It severely interfered with my plans to do a final leaf raking around the yard. I started up my leaf blower and managed to wrangle a good portion of leaves into several little piles and then transfer the little piles into one large pile. Now my one big pile is being covered by snow and by next Spring it will have composted down to a rich loamy soil like substance, thereby saving me a trip to the dump.

Susan stayed inside and finished up her cleaning frenzy. So, it was a productive day.

Starting this coming Friday, we will commence our annual skywalk festival of paint. As of now we have nine to do and possibly four more. We also have five office buildings to paint up in various styles of Holiday and Winter themes. All this hard work will roll into our bank account to allow another few months of home remodeling fuel to be added to the home remodeling fire.

Staining and Stuff

We are making slow progress toward staining all the trim that will go into the entryway. We have spent the last two evenings in the newly cleared out Carriage House staining wood. We managed to gt down one coat last night and another tonight. One more coat of a slightly redder stain will finish the job...hopefully tomorrow.

The next task will be to install the trim and then to varnish it in place, being very careful not to get any varnish on the new wall paper.

Winter has not arrived on the calendar but it is here nonetheless. The chill in the air is all the calendar I need. The forecasts are threatening all kinds of snow possibilities this weekend and lots of sub freezing temperatures.

I am ready for snow season. I have revved up the snow blower and we are ready to take on the neighborhood.

First Snow of the Year

We woke up to snow on the ground today. Not a lot. Not enough to even stick to the streets. The lawns where white. Everything else was just wet.

When I got to work, it was snowing for a bit but it was the big heavy wet snow that never hangs around for long.

Still, I am declaring the official first snowfall of the 2010-2011 snow season.

So there!

My Day with Doug

I have a task to perform today that I am not looking forward to.

I have a friend named Doug. Doug is someone I have known since ninth grade. He is fond of referring to me as his Freshman Class President.

Today, Doug is going in for cataract surgery. He is essentially blind. He is being a real PUSSY about the whole thing and I have told him as much. I have to go and pick him up this morning and take him to wherever his appointment is. He doesn't know. I'll find out when I pick him up.
The only thing I'm not looking forward to is...well...Doug. He's acting very needy but then doesn't want any help. It took me three days to get him to call me back and accept the ride. He was going to take a taxi.

Last night, I told him I would be by at about 10:30 and we would walk his dog Critter, and then go to the doctor. He complained he was blind and he can't seem to bathe himself or dress himself. I told him I was not going to bathe him and he should be ready to go at 10:30. He continues to be a PUSSY about the whole thing rather than man up and do what needs to be done.

I can understand being scared and the potential of losing your sight is very frightening. But at some point, you have to accept your circumstances and rise to the challenge. Doug doesn't seem to be interested in rising.

Okay, I've vented! Now we'll see how this goes!

How it Went: Nothing is as it seems in this case. When I got to Doug's and managed to find the info about the Doctor he was going to see, it turned out that he wasn't going in for surgery...just an evaluation. I called the number to verify the appointment. He thought that his appointment was at 10:30. It was really for 2:15.

So I went back to work and told Doug I would be back at 1:30. That would give us plenty of time to walk the dog again, have a smoke, and get to the Doctor.

When I arrived, I startled him out of bed and I think he was ready to beat me up until he realized it was me.

I then spent the next 45 minutes trying to get him to get ready and looking for his keys, which I finally found in a dresser drawer. We were late for the appointment but they took us in.

I could go on and on about the whole ordeal but that's probably not fair to Doug. What I have come to realize is that I am dealing with an alcoholic here and it's much worse than I originally thought.

I am in for a lot more fun in the weeks to come. I believe that there is an element of God testing me involved in this whole affair.

Finally Clarvoiant

When I get home from work in the evening and time permits, I have been trying to do little bits of projects around the house. Even if I just go and organize an area or put some stuff away for a future project. It's the little steps that lead to the great accomplishment. Tonight, I decided to take a little peak into our back stairwell.

I mentioned in an earlier post that we have a back stairway that we do not use. Our remodel of a back screen porch into a closet rendered the stairway all but useless. There was no headroom in the stairway due to the floor of the closet. There is no headroom.

We surmised that since the stairway was there and the sun porch was there, they must have been at some time...useful. We further surmised that the original staircase had been much steeper to allow for head room in the area of the sun porch.

I decided it was time to find out. Now remember, in past projects, where we have done some surmising, we have found ourselves out surmised by reality. There was nothing to our conjecture and we were in fact, just plain wrong! Secret passage ways, covered up doors, a new route to India, none of them panned out.

So, I was not sure what to expect upon pulling up a tread or two on the back stairway.

The whole process went very easily. I used a carpet knife to cut and rip out a section of carpet on the stairs. I got my Enforcer Pry Bar and the treads came up easily.

And then.....there in the dark of the clearing dust...victory! AND corrective surmisement!

The pictures pretty much tell the story.You can see the lime green shag carpet on the old stairs. They had built an entire superstructure over the old staircase. Originally, when you opened the door upstairs to go down this stairway, your first step was a step down. The new staircase has a short landing at the top and then a less steep angle of steps.

I was able to crawl all the up the old stairs to the very top. It's a whole secret passage way, which is what I had been looking for in the first place.

Squirrel, Birds, Staining & Cosby

I have an on going Love-Hate relationship with nature. I love nature until it inconveniences me. Take for example, the common squirrel. These adorable arboreal rodents are playful and fun to watch. The are smart and with some work, you can get them to take peanuts out of your hand.


They have fabulously sharp and useful teeth with which they are able to chew the shit out of only the most expensive pieces of trim on your house.

And so I often wonder why I go out and buy unsalted peanuts for the little varmints. Additionally, I buy bird seed. This puts a whole flock of sparrows in the vicinity of our cars so they can be the receivers of the processed bird seed.


Below is a picture of the feeding area. Notice the area below the bird feeder. It is clear of any leaves. If I could locate bird feeders at several strategic points around the yard, i wouldn't have any leaves to worry about. My only concern wold be keeping 35 bird feeders filled with seed.

Sunday was a great day for us. We got up and went to church. Afterwards, we returned home to change and then went downtown to the local Chili's for lunch. We took our time eating and reading the Sunday paper.

Then at just before two o'clock, we trundled down to the Opera House and enjoyed an hour and a half chat with Bill Cosby. I had heard parts of his routine before but it was still fun to see him. He won't be around forever and I wanted to see him one last time. Besides, I'll probably die before he will.

We came home and tried to be productive. With most of the day behind us, that was a tough order but we actually accomplished a couple of things.

I have the Carriage House cleaned out and I did a little organizing in there in preparation for some staining we need to do. We are ready to put the trim up in the entryway but the trim is not ready for us.

So, in the next few days, we will be staining. I have a lot of experience with staining. Have you seen my clothes?

Camera Talk

Okay, it's time to talk about the camera.

I have found that my life requires the possession of a digital camera. I use it all the time. I take all kinds of pictures of all kinds of seemingly inconsequential stuff. I am constantly going through my downloads and deleting shitty pictures. That is probably the greatest feature of digital. My trigger finger is hot and I have found that the secret to a good picture is to take lots of crap to capture the gem.

Consequently, I beat the crap out of my camera in the general every day use I subject it to. I have dropped it, slid it, sat on it, knocked it over, spilled on it and just generally treated it with a great deal of disrespect.

The crap has now hit the wall after going through the fan and it is time to acquire a new camera.

Years ago, I bought my first digital camera for about $500.00. It was 1.2 mega pixel and came with an 8 meg card. That was about 12 years ago.

Now I can buy a 12 mega pixel camera for about 250 bucks. That's ten times the camera for half the money. Amortised over 12 years, that comes less the .12 cents per pixel. The technology sure is changing. As soon as I buy it, it will be obsolete. However, I can't afford not to buy one. According to my convoluted cyphering, I'm losing money by not buying it.

I like Canon and I am doing my research. In the meantime, I have to limp along with what remains of my poor battered Canon SureShot A50.

I'm not going to jump on the first pretty face that comes along. I would like to have this camera for a while but that is not how they are designed anymore. Our throw away society is geared to using it up and tossing it out.

But I'll tell you this! In my day...

Wine Night

We did a little work on our Zinfandel on Tuesday night. I would like to have shown more pictures, but my camera is several infested with Camera Cancer and is on its last legs. I'll talk more about that in a future post. Therefore, if you're reading this backwards, you already know what I haven't even written yet. While you are there in the future, perhaps you could send back some lottery numbers or a promising horse race. How 'bout my obit?

Okay...kind of losing focus! Ha! A camera joke!

Our task on Tuesday was to pull the pulp out of the must (the official wine makers term for fetus wine) and squeeze as much juice as possible out of it. We started with 100 pounds of grapes and because there was so much grapage, we had to start the ferment in two buckets.

I stirred it every other day or so to break up the cap the pulp would form on top. There was juice in there but it was difficult to tell how much because of the huge amount of pulp.

So we scooped out enough to fill a large mesh bag and then squeezed. We probably filled the bag five or six times. I had purchased a big 18 gallon bucket at the Home Depot and that was the receptacle into which we squeezed our juices.

When we finished, I poured what looked like a lot of juice back into my freshly cleaned six gallon fermenter. We filled the bucket to just over the 6 gallon mark, so we were happy. One hundred pounds of grapes yielded six gallons of juice. Yea and Hallelujah!

From the bucket, we syphoned the juice into a six gallon carboy. It is now sitting in the kitchen and slightly bubbling away. It still has a way to go before the fermenting process is complete.

The must tastes very grapey but you can taste the alcohol as well. I'll take a gravity reading in a week and proceed from there. I'll have to taste it too. Fortunately, there's six gallons.

Fall Back

It was a light and stormy day. The pristine lawn that had only a day earlier been void of leaves was again covered with a thick blanket of autumn colors. The rain pelted down unmercifully, knocking the leaves from their tenuous grasp to the ground far below. Still, a lot of leaves still clung to the branches, refusing to release from the perch from which they have lived.

I was able to get out into the front yard for a while today and clean things up. But it will not last long. By tomorrow morning there will be no clue that I had done anything in the yard.

Prior to my front yard duties, I had toiled in the Carriage House, painting the rebuilt wall that I had Phil finish. I did a little bit of reorganizing in there and was able to clean things up just a bit. Not really all that much at all. It doesn't look any different. I don't know why I even brought it up.

Susan started wall papering yesterday and it is looking good. It is a very tense time during the hanging and one must prepare to by harangued by the paper hanger.

Here are some recent pictures of all the fun.

My friend Mike has been staying with us for a couple of days. He lives in Bellingham but comes over to visit his mom. Mike is one of those guys I grew with who I am still in contact with. I've known Mike for close to 50 years.

Last night we went to a local Comedy Club to see Mike's brother, Tom. He has been doing Stand Up Comedy since he was 19 and I think he's pretty close to 50 now. If you run a search on YouTube for Tom McTigue, you can see some of his act.

He was very funny and we had a great time. I think that is the first time I've gone to a Comedy Club in years.

Exercise

Susan runs a couple of miles several nights a week. I do not. Sometimes I will go on a walk but not with any regularity. I ride my bike sometimes but not all that regularly. I do however, come home and do stuff around the house...but not all that regularly.

So I worry that I'm not getting enough exercise to keep me somewhat fit. But I have been working around the house pretty regularly over the last few weeks. I've sucked up a lot of leaves. I've been up and down the stairs with Halloween decorations. I have performed miscellaneous chores around the property. I've enjoyed some frosty beers.

Tonight I got home and sucked up some semi dry leaves and did a little work in the garage to make it a more organized place. It occurred to me while doing putting around that this is what I should be doing every night. Not just coming home and plopping in front of NCIS re-runs with a frosty beer. I should be taking that frosty beer out into the yard, the garage, the Carriage House, wherever home owning adventure takes me.

So, that's the goal.

S'Mo Halloween Clean Up

Susan is going to hate this entry because it starts out with spiders. When I was removing the Halloween lights last night, I came across this very cool and fairly large spider. At least, it was a large spider for Spokane standards. It had built a web anchored to the lights, which meant I destroyed the web as I removed the lights.
While I dislike snakes and reptiles, I have long had a fascination with spiders. When I was a kid we had a boat on Coeur d'Alene lake and there were always very elaborate spider webs built in the eves of the marina roofs. I would tear them down and then watch the spider rebuild them. If you've never watched a spider spin a web, you are missing one of nature's great marvels.

I got these shots of the spider before I ruined the web. I got a jar and relocated the arachnid off the front porch. I had a similar sized spider take up residence last year and later realized that a spider in one spot creates a surprising amount of spider poo. I'll be having none of that this year and so far, she has not returned. I did a little on-line research and determined that this is probably an Araneus Diadematus, the common European Garden Spider. It is indiginous to this area as well as California and along the Canadian border. It's not poisonous or anything to get worked up over.

We have the remains of 11 Jack O'Lanterns to dispose of. I finally got them all in one place in the yard and then thought it made a nice picture. I didn't spend a lot of time arranging the stack but I think this looks pretty good.

Our remaining jobs to accomplish this evening were to get everything out to the Carriage House and properly stored. We have pulled that off beautifully. We got everything out there and stowed in an orderly fashion. In contrast to yesterday when it rained a third of an inch, it was a lovely sunny day today and perfect for hauling stuff to the Carriage House.

While we were hauling stuff, Franco stopped by. I basically told him we would be handling the rest of our clean up. He said he really needed the work and I said I really needed the money. These guys see us living in the big house on the park and assume we are rolling it cash. They don't know about my two jobs or the se7en jobs that Susan has.

I was going to throw out all the barren skeletons of candy bar boxes but then realized that they would make a lovely heat source. And for ten minutes, it was a lovely heat source. Then it was ashes. Now I have a fire place to clean.

If we want more heat, we're going to need to buy a lot more full size candy bars next year.

All Saints Day Clean Up

It was raining pretty hard by the time I got home from work and that kind limited what I was able to do with regard to cleaning up after Halloween. I was able to get all the lights cleaned up from the front porch and some periphery decorations removed and put away.

We didn't want to haul everything to the Carriage House for storage because of the rain and all the crap that we would track into the house. So we have everything pretty well packed and boxed up and ready to be stowed in the Carriage House when the weather allows.

I felt remarkably good this morning considering the way I collapsed into bed last night. I was really beat after all the fun. Susan was a little sore when she woke up but seems to have bounced back now.