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Benign oversight…

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I’m sure that watching people build a fence isn’t nearly as tiring as actually building the fence, but after 9 hours of making sure (most of the) posts ended up where I wanted them, I’m just plain worn out. The 300% air-to-pollen ratio and two dogs barking non-stop probably didn’t help with that. I feel guilt even bringing it up, really. After all, I wasn’t the one knocking 30 post holes through tree roots as big around as my forearm. At best, my role today consisted of providing benign oversight, occasionally pointing, and offering access to the bathroom. It wasn’t exactly a backbreaking exercise.

With that said, the project advanced nicely so far. Tomorrow calls for digging about five more holes, hanging the rails, and running wire mesh inside it all. Supposedly it’ll all be wrapped up by closed of business tomorrow. Maybe it is doable, but it feels like something that falls into the category of “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Until then, I’ll just go on about the day trying to remind myself that 4:30 PM isn’t an acceptable adult bed time… Which right about now feels like a real shame.

Fence me in…

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Note: Yes I’m still keeping an eye on Baltimore. Yes I have plenty more to say. No I’m not going to throw it all out at once. No it won’t be an epic rant. Unlike a common street criminal, when I make my opinion known I want it to be well reasoned, articulate, and not hidden behind a mask. In that light, I now restore you to your regularly scheduled Tuesday post.

Roy Rogers sang an old cowboy song that twangingly implores listeners “don’t fence me in.” Not being a range rider, I have no such compunction about the value of good fences. After a call this morning from the contractor, in fact I’m eagerly awaiting the arrival of the supplies and manpower to get my fence off the drawing board and into the ground.

Given the terrain changes, visible rock outcroppings, standing trees, and undergrowth they’re going to have to deal with to get the job done, I’m paying through the nose for the privilege of sectioning off a little slice of my portion of the American Dream. I don’t begrudge them a penny of the price, though. They’re going to have some real work to do and fortunately or unfortunately (depending on your perspective) “low bidder” materials aren’t exactly my style.

The fence is the only real construction project I’m planning to take on this year. The master bath renovation, patio pavers, and kitchen tweaking are all on the board, but (mostly) not on any kind of rushed timeline – or really on a timeline at all. They happen when I get around to and funds are available to dedicate to them. The fence, by contrast, is a quality of life issue. Being able to turn the dogs loose at 10PM when it’s pouring rain and staying high and dry on the porch is about as good as it gets. I’ve obviously reached the point in my life where I have mostly small, reasonable dreams.

Based on this morning’s conversation work is on schedule to start next week. Now I just need to live through the load of construction equipment, wire mesh, posts, and rails that will be occupying the driveway over the weekend and things should be all set. All in it’s a small price to pay for what I’ll get in return.

Doesn’t play well with others…

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After spending more hours than I want to admit trying to get a little electronic gizmo that will remain nameless hooked up wirelessly, I’m finally calling it quits. Wired direct to the router, all is well and it works like a champ. Unplugged it just sits there blinking out a steady reminder of its failure to play nicely with my home network.

Maybe it’s because I’ve spent so much of the last ten years entrenching myself in Apple’s near-seamlessly integrated garden, but my tolerance for tech that has to be tinkered with is probably at an all-time low. It’s trite, but I want my gear to come out of the box and just work. Some might call that an unreasonable expectation, but those people are, for lack of a better word, simply wrong. There are any number of companies out there proving that tech doesn’t need to be complicated for the end user. Unfortunately there are even more in business that don’t seem to have much of any regard for providing an elegant solution to whatever problem their device is supposed to solve.

I was looking for a piece that would integrate into what I’ve got already with a minimum of fuss or trouble. What I found is a bit of kit that probably works ok if you’re willing to change or make compromises on the set up you have already. I’m not. That means instead of integration, I’ll be stuck with a standalone solution. In the end I’d rather have to manage two sets of controls and two apps than compromise on functionality.

Take that for what it’s worth.

Wet spot(s)…

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I’ve been waiting on a good hard rain to get a look at how water flows around certain parts of the yard. That rain was delivered early this morning, so I missed the live show, but it left plenty of evidence for me to ponder when I got home after work. The bit of diversion I did in front seems to have done the trick. It’s not a permanent solution, but it bought time. My little back yard diversion worked as planned, but also revealed that water wasn’t just sloshing against the foundation and door sill from an ill-placed downspout. The sidewalk slab in that spot has subsided enough to channel some amount of water flowing off the hill and through my back yard. Even with how hard it rained last night it didn’t appear to be what anyone might call a flood, but there was enough residual water on the garage floor nine hours later to make it obvious that it was something more than a drip… and explains why that door and sill were rotted to the point of needing to be replaced before closing. Correcting the drainage situation in that part of the yard has definitely jumped up a few spots on my list of major projects to undertake.

I knew coming in that this was a “wet” lot and a damp area in general. From walking around I’d be willing to bet there’s more than one underground spring within a quarter mile of the house – probably far closer. The basement block is nicely coated with Drylok, which seems to have done a respectable job so far. The corners I was most worried about appeared to be dry this evening, although there was one unexpected spot on the basement slab where hydraulic pressure looked like it was doing its thing.

None of it is cause to make me want to dig out the back yard tomorrow, but nobody likes being in the wet spot so it’s something I’ll have to make right at some point sooner rather than later.

Thirty years…

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This was the first weekend that felt almost settled in quite some time. There were a few household chores – running improvised drainage away from several downspouts, cutting the grass for the first time, tinkering around with a few other small-ish fixes, cleaning, laundry. The rhythm of the routine is starting to imprint itself on the new place. That would bother some people. I find it remarkably comforting. The weekend felt like a big step towards the place feeling more like mine and a little less like someone else’s. There’s still more distance to go on that score, but it’s progress.

I’m learning where the dog’s favored spots are and which parts of the floor creak no matter how softly you cross them. Like people, I’ve learned that no two houses sound exactly alike. Maggie and Winston have done a better job figuring out the house’s sounds than I have. Their random barks at things going bump is down to only once or twice a day. Me, on the other hand, my head is still on a swivel at anything that doesn’t sound familiar.

I’m trying to remember that I’ll be paying for this place for the next 30 years so there isn’t really any rush to knock all the things off my list at once. Maybe that means I’m growing as a human being. More likely it means I’m painfully aware of the all too obnoxious combination of limited time and limited finances. I’ll just let you be the judge of which scenario sounds most likely.

Lit…

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If there’s anything I can say about this house, it’s that when the previous owner built the place they were bound and determined to never want for lighting. At least in the kitchen. With 12 recessed light pots, two pendant lights, a hanging 4-bulb light 8 feet away in the “breakfast nook”, and a few recently discovered battery powered lights under the upper cabinets, kitchen lighting feels like it might have been something of an obsession.

The obsession isn’t quite as bad elsewhere in the house, but by my last count I currently need to stock up to 8 different styles and wattages of bulb. Not including anything on the outside. I managed with no more the four different types of bulb (including the outside) in Memphis and knocked that down to three types in the rental. Currently one pantry shelf is pulling permanent duty as my own personal lighting warehouse. That feels vaguely excessive.

Eventually everything is going to get swapped out with LEDs so I can screw stuff in and then forget about it for about a decade, but in the meantime I’ll spend half my time at home swapping out dead bulbs for live ones – and never having the style or size I need.

It’s just one more item on the list of micro-fixes this place needs to fully carry my personalized stamp of approval. If I’ve learned anything during my various trials of home ownership, that list never actually gets any shorter as there’s always “just one more thing” that needs doing.

Interoperability (or lack thereof)…

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One of the only bit of electronics I haven’t managed to really set up yet is getting all my devices to play nicely with one another yet. The current state of affairs has me forever wondering whether the files I’m looking for are on the desktop, the laptop, the external hard drive, or somewhere in the could. This is obviously an unacceptable situation… and the one that it looks like I’ll spend the balance of the evening trying to wrangle. As much as having the occasional cardboard box sitting around is unpleasant, trying to run the house on tech that isn’t communicating is downright intolerable.

Enjoying the moment…

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At some point I’d like to get back to writing about anything other than what feels like every small detail of the move. Since the blog, by definition, comes from my day to day experiences and opinions the ins and outs of setting up in a new place feel a little like what’s going to be dominating my time for the foreseeable future, though. It may not always be entertaining reading, but it’s cathartic for me and sometimes that’s way more valuable than being entertaining.

If I didn’t have my moving blinders on, I’d probably be writing about Rand Paul (I don’t completely hate him), meetings (and how much they suck), or the fact that boxwood shrubbery looks so good but smells like cat urine. I’m sure that last one will get its own post sooner or later.

At the moment, though, I’m just going to sit here any be happy that I’ve got the coffee set to brew in the morning, tomorrow’s lunch is packed, the dogs are fed, and I’ve got a little more than an hour of “free” time before the call of bed is overpowering. I’m going to take the night off from what’s left of the boxes and enjoy a few minutes of nothing on the “must do” list.

That would be great…

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Christmas vacation is about to get truly under way and as much as I’d like to say I’m going to spend the evening warming my toes by a roaring fire, the reality is something more like packing out an expedition from Everest base camp. Between now and the time my head hits the pillow this evening there are hundreds of pounds of equipment and material to be toted, lifted, and strategically placed in the truck to ensure proper load placement and balancing. All of these preparations must be carried out in such a way as to avoid raising the suspicions of either of my canine traveling partners – as that would lead to passing a very uncomfortable night with a dog firmly attached to each hip from fear of being left behind.

This part of the annual rites of winter is not particularly restful or relaxing. By Friday, though, the initial mayhem and chaos should have worn itself down into something a little more manageable. If not, I’m fairly sure there’s a flask or two in one of these bags that will help smooth the way.

As much as I always look forward to the trips back into the beating heart of the little piece of geography that made me, getting there from here (regardless of where in the world “here” technically is at any given moment) always boarders on exhausting. Fortunately a good night or two’s sleep will shake that off.

For all the others out there preparing to do battle with the interstate highway system, good luck and godspeed to your destination of choice… And if slower traffic could go ahead and merge to the right that would be great. Mmmmmkay? Thaaaaaanks.

Deluge…

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I knew it was going to be a bad drive back to the rental casa this afternoon when it took half an hour just to make it from the parking lot to the turn off for the highway. It seems that while the marshland of the upper Bay is good for waterfowl and blue crabs, it’s decidedly ill equipped to drain off large amounts of water. In fact, five of the roads I use during my daily commute would probably have ranked as “dangerous” under most circumstances.

The worse of them was US 40 between Aberdeen and Havre de Grace. A large portion of that stretch of road was under swift moving water to a depth I’d estimate at 10-14 inches (or not quite up to the bumper of the Dodge Ram I was happy to have acting as a pilot car) with locally deeper spots if one were unfortunate enough to venture too close to the “downstream” shoulder. At it’s deepest, the impromptu river was throwing enough kinetic energy at me to feel the tail end very much want to slide out. It didn’t, fortunately, but that was some of the most white knuckled driving I’ve done in my 20 years behind the wheel.

The other four crossings were less tense and covered much shorter distances, but nonetheless, cranked up the pucker factor of the commute considerably. I’m left thinking that powering my way down 40 relying less on skill than on the V8 power of 4-wheel drive and new tires was probably not my best decision even though it ended well enough. Seeing that the occasional Prius was making it ahead of me, though, assuaged most of my concerns. Still, I’m not sure I’d do it again under the same circumstances.

If I drive out of here tomorrow morning and find high water in the same places, it’s a good bet that I’ll waive off and take a pass on the day. All I’ll say is the risk analysis yields different results depending on whether the destination is home or some other place. You can draw your own conclusions on that one.