Planetary Verbosity

Over the past couple of weeks since getting the dumpster, Dave has been pretty busy doing demolition work on the inside of our homestead house (with my dad’s help on some days as well). Before starting to tear out the upstairs walls, they finished what was formerly the living room. This included removing the “lovely” wood grain paneling that enclosed the stairs. They discovered yet another covered-over window back there! After finding several covered windows and/or doors, it’s clear this house has been through lots of changes in its lifetime.

Here are before and after pictures of the stairwell area:

There are stairs behind that paneling…

They eventually moved to the upstairs and gutted everything up there. By the time I was able to visit again, it looked quite different up there! What was once two bedrooms and a small closet-type area was now one big room with exposed planks.

As you can see, there is a full-sized door upstairs that opens, basically, onto the porch roof. The only reason we can figure this was here is because the interior stairwell is so narrow. They most likely had to use this door if they wanted to move anything into the upstairs rooms.

While tearing down the walls, they encountered all sorts of signs of creatures that once lived in the walls…

…and one that was still living there.

That little guy was hanging on to the interior of the wall behind a lath strip. Dave tried to grab him to put him out the window, but he managed to get free and disappeared farther into the wall - and presumably outside through one of the holes that are letting these critters enter in the first place!

Of course, they needed an easy way to get all of the plaster and other trash down to the dumpster, so they put some of the old tin from the barn roof to good use:

Over the weekend, Dave also managed to tear down part of the ceiling upstairs, revealing what was on the other side of the crawlspace door. There are lots of mud dauber wasp nests up there, some of them pretty large in size. Between those and the huge paper wasp nests in the walls, I can’t imagine what the bee situation must have been like some years. I have no doubt that the bees could get out of the walls and into the living areas. Mud dauber wasps are not supposed to be particularly aggressive, but I imagine they probably had problems with the paper wasps. That said, the empty nests are amazing!

Here are a couple of pictures of the mostly-gutted upstairs. First, toward the front of the house, facing the road. As you can see, there’s still a little bit of the ceiling left.

Now, facing the back of the house. Both of those windows will give us a great view of the woods and creek from our upstairs bedroom.

Oh, and we did get to pick up my eBay Gravely on the 28th. It has some rust and the electric start doesn’t work, but the pull start works and it runs. We’ll be able to fix the other stuff later and will probably give it a paint job, as it has oxidized to a nearly pink color.

I’m looking forward to taking a week’s worth of vacation days later this month! We’re nearing the end of the fiscal year at work, so I had to take my vacation days or I’d lose them. More about that later.

Yeah, as boring as it probably was the first time around, it’s now time for Shoes: Part “Damn, I hate trying to find clothes that fit.” <.<

You may remember from last time - June - that after many purchases and returns, I ended up going back to my old standbys, despite the fact that they were bothering my feet a bit. They were still the only ones that seemed to fit...or so I thought.

Around two months back, I started really noticing that my shoes were once again wearing out. The lining on the inside was in really bad shape, and there was a crack on the right shoe that was threatening to let my toe break through. Close to the same time, I also realized that the problems I'd been having with getting holes in the toes of my socks (which had never happened before) started around the same time I started wearing the "old standbys" - not just this latest pair, but that style in general. That got me to wondering if maybe they were too small.

When the crack finally broke the whole way through, it was truly time to find new shoes again. I bought a couple of pairs (in a larger size than the standbys) last weekend when we went to get the newest mower and tested them out at work during the course of the week. Neither pair ended up working very well. On Thursday, after stuffing our faces with the traditional New Year meal of pork and sauerkraut, we made a shoe run to several stores and still didn't find anything that really fit. I even ordered a pair from Zappos (love their service!), and not only did those not quite fit, but the metallic blue color on them was really gaudy - something that wasn't apparent from the photos.

Fed up with the whole shoe saga, Dave practically insisted that I go to a store that did professional fitting in spite of the inflated prices we'd likely have to pay. So today, we made the trek up to Camp Hill to go to Irving’s Shoe Fly. After taking a quick look around and not being thrown into a coronary by the prices, we were approached by John, a member of the “professionally trained staff” they mentioned on their website.

I was actually really impressed with John. I’d gone into this expecting to get some snooty salesman who thought he knew exactly what I needed and wouldn’t give a crap about what I had to say. I ended up getting someone who actually listened and who seemed to know what he was doing. He measured my feet and basically ended up saying what I’d already figured out - that my “old standbys” were a half-size too small. He then had me stand on an iStep machine to analyze my feet. It told me that I was putting a lot of pressure on my heels and the balls of my feet and recommended an orthotic. A bit gimmicky, maybe, but I decided to see what happened.

He then brought out three types of New Balance shoes and had me try them on one at a time. The first felt weird on the left foot, and the second was a bit better. The third fit the best, though I ended up getting them in a wide width. I also ended up getting the orthotic, which seems to be working so far.

So what did I get? As far as shoes, I got the New Balance 926.

Yeah, they’re kinda clunky-looking, but they’re the first pair of shoes I’ve had in years that actually fit and feel good on my feet! I think I’m a little late for the platform shoe fad, so I’ll have to settle for looking a bit like I’m wearing orthopedic shoes.

As for the orthotics, I got what the electronic gizmo recommended, Lynco L405.

Nifty, huh? See those big bumps in the middle. Yeah…they feel as weird as they look. Those are metatarsal pads, and they’re supposed to help relieve pressure on the balls of the feet and the heels by making me stand properly…or something. In any case, they take a lot of getting used to, but they actually seemed to start helping right away.

Dave was so impressed with the service that he’s decided he’ll go there to get fitted when it’s time for him to get new shoes. I have to admit, it was a better experience than I thought it would be. It really was more expensive than buying the same items online, but the websites don’t include the personal fitting service either. At least now I know my proper size, know more about my arches and the pressure points of my feet, and have a starting point when it’s time to buy new shoes again.

Anyone still awake? I figured I’d save the homestead entry for tomorrow (or Monday, depending on how tired I am) since we’ll be back up there anyway.

I hate to end the year on a sad note, but our cat, Sassay, passed away yesterday at the vet.

As you may recall, we brought her back here around the beginning of November after she was fostered by my aunt for about a year-and-a-half. She had gotten sick with what was seemingly a respiratory infection, and we were able to nurse her back to health. About a week or two ago, she had a relapse and started getting worse again. She was still eating and drinking just fine and seemed to have plenty of energy, but when it got to the point where she was having a hard time breathing, we made a vet appointment.

We took her to the vet yesterday afternoon, and she seemed to enjoy getting to go out in the fresh air. In the waiting room, she pressed her head against the door of the crate and reveled in getting her ears and head scratched. When we finally got in, the vet tech took her temperature, said it was about 96, and rushed her off to “weigh her.” The vet showed up a few minutes later to say she had a really low temperature and was barely breathing, and that she was near death. She left to check on her and came back shortly after to tell us she had passed away.

It all seemed kind of surreal. For me, the oddest part was getting past the fact that she was the first pet we got as a couple (we weren’t allowed to have a dog in the house we rented back then), and now she’s gone. She was about 12 or 13 years old - she was turned in to the shelter as a stray, so they didn’t have a birthdate. In any case, she definitely lived a long life where she was very well loved.

You know I love pictures, and that’s how I’ve chosen to remember Sassay here.

Here’s our very first picture of her on the day she came home. It’s actually a still capture from a video we took of her that day. I can’t remember if we took any pictures or not, as all I have of the day are several stills from the video. We don’t know how old she was, but the SPCA suspected she was about a year to a year-and-a-half old.

This was one of her favorite sleeping places in our first house. We didn’t put it there as a bed for her, but she definitely made it her own! I love the expression on her face here, btw. I have several other photos of her with a similar expression. She loved hamming it up for the camera.

A close-up of her lounging:

And a wide shot from the same set of photos, with Snoopy and Dave:

Posing for her close-up, looking inquisitive:

Sassay admittedly didn’t get along with many people, absolutely hated other cats, and pretended that she barely tolerated our dog, Snoopy. I think she secretly had a soft spot for him, but she never missed a chance to one-up him. In this photo, she has taken his favorite spot on the back of the loveseat (he loves looking out the window), and he was relegated to the side with almost no view. She almost looks a bit pissed, but that’s only because as he got older, Snoopy grew a bit bolder, and she didn’t like the fact that he dared to invade her personal space.

Back in 2004, Sassay snuck out the door when one of the boys was taking Snoopy out for a walk, and we couldn’t find her. She was missing for a whole week before suddenly appearing in a neighbor’s backyard. When she returned, it was the only time I ever saw her really tolerate Snoopy’s curiosity and concern. I couldn’t believe she actually let him get this close! (He was probably checking to see what she had to eat; this is how he greets us when we’ve been away as well…lol!)

Last of all, this is one of my all-time favorite pictures of her. It was taken on February 11, 2006. She was sitting on the arm of the loveseat, watching out the front door as we shoveled snow outside. After I’d finished my part of the shoveling, I came inside to get the camera to take some snow pictures, and I couldn’t resist capturing this moment. This photo is a really good representation of Sassay - her personality, her beauty, her curiosity, and her connection to us.

Rest in peace, Sassay…you will be truly missed.

(If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading. I’ll post a homestead update very soon. Oh, and Adk, I didn’t forget your tag!)

First off, I hope all of you are having a nice holiday/day off! I’m not excited about having to go back to work tomorrow, but once that’s over, I’ll be off for the weekend. Oh, and as you can tell from the title quote, we’ve been watching A Christmas Story off-and-on all day, as is the custom. (For the record, cold Ovaltine was my favorite drink when I was a kid, and I still love the original chocolate malt flavor.)

We only celebrate Christmas as a family get-together holiday, and that part of it officially started with the yearly Christmas Eve party with the in-laws. After feeding our faces and catching up, we made our way in to the living room for the opening of presents and taking of photos.

A group shot with Dave and I on either side and the kids (his kids, my stepkids) in the middle. Mandy and Josh are standing and Justin is seated in front. That’s Josh’s wife, Dawn, on the right side of the photo in the background.

And here’s a pic of Dave with a wonderful dog to whom we’ve recently become godparents! This is Dreyfus, Faye’s seizure alert dog. (Here’s a link to his Dogster page.) He’s a gorgeous standard poodle who seems to think he’s a lapdog in this pic.

We spent today with my parents and had our usual dinner of turkey, ham, and all of the trimmings. The turkey was mainly included for me since I’m a major turkey junkie and live for that part of the holidays, but I have to admit that the ham was great this time as well. I even got to eat some of the pumpkin pie because it was made with pumpkin-flavored pudding instead of actual pumpkin. (I love the taste but can’t stand the texture of pumpkin pie made with real pumpkin…ick.)

After eating, we headed up to the homestead where I got to see the work that Dave and Dad did since getting the new dumpster last Friday. They cleaned up the debris in the downstairs area of the house (from tearing out the wall), and they got rid of the ceiling in the living room. There are a couple of iffy beams up there, but that’s due more to how the wood dried (bowed a bit) and not due to the condition of the beams themselves. So far, everything still looks pretty good.

They also found yet another boarded-up window, this time between the living room and the sunken kitchen. This shows that the kitchen wasn’t an original part of the house.

On Sunday, we’ll be driving to Lancaster county to pick up the newest addition to our collection of homestead Gravelys. This is an 1130-E that we recently won on eBay:

It’s not in pristine condition by a long shot, but as it’s a smaller Gravely, it will be the one I’ll use most often for mowing and such…that is, assuming that it works and keeps working. In any case, it’s an interesting addition to our Gravely collection.

That’s all for now, but here are a couple of pics from last week’s visit. In the first pic, you can see that the creek was very full from rain and run-off. The second photo is of a discarded jar down at the bottom of the hill (amongst the assorted other trash) that was almost completely buried in the dirt when I found it. When I dug it out, I saw that it had started its own terrarium! I’m not sure what kind of plant that is, but the jar was completely filled with dirt, roots, and tiny green leaves. This goes to show that even when polluted with trash, nature still finds a way to survive and make the best of the situation.

I didn’t post a whole entry about our visit to the homestead this past weekend because there wasn’t much to it. I took pictures and Dave burned the old lath strips he tore out of the house. I did get to take a series of pictures of some young cedar waxwings sitting in a tree in the upper yard. Here are two of them:

I don’t know what kind of tree that is or what the berries are, but they were eating them.

In other news…

I am now the proud owner of one of these:

It’s a djembe with a pentacle carved on one side and a gye nyame symbol on the other side. I got it on eBay from a great seller, ethosdrummer. He included a free bag with the djembe purchase, and I bought a strap from him as well. When I emailed my color choice for the strap, I decided to ask if he could send the free bag (normally a random color) in the same color as my strap so they’d match, and he obliged. Shipping was very quick, and this drum is gorgeous!

I have been a drummer since 5th grade, but I haven’t really done much in the way of hand drumming, so I also bought a How to Play Djembe book and CD set from Amazon. Hopefully that, combined with videos on YouTube, will get me on the right track. It’ll definitely help that I’m already a drummer and that I do at least have some basic knowledge of hand drumming techniques.

Hrm…well, I’d planned to write a lot more than this, but exhaustion has set in once again. *sigh* This schedule still sucks.

That’s all I really have to say about the past several days…just brr.

We did go up to the homestead very briefly on Saturday, but it was almost too cold to move, so we didn’t really do much before leaving. I did go down to the creek to see how much more it had iced over, and I wasn’t disappointed. While it’s still not skating-safe by a long shot, this is more ice than I’ve seen on any local creek in years.

I hiked back through our woods to the path that leads up directly behind the house, and when I glanced over my shoulder at the creek, I saw two figures in blaze orange on the other side of the creek. Yikes! I rushed back up the hill as quickly and quietly as possible, not wanting to be mistaken for a deer. Last weekend, I’d been wearing nearly the same clothes, and when I was at the bottom of the same part of the hill, Dave couldn’t even see me from the top because I blended in so well. I wasn’t expecting hunters to be so close to the property, and I wanted to get out of there before they heard me tramping through the leaves and got trigger happy.

Later, Dave got a pic of me coming back up to the house…and apparently doing my best Patterson bigfoot imitation:

I’ll let you decide.

First, thanks to those who posted birthday wishes on my MySpace and Facebook accounts! Hopefully my 34th year will be a good one!

I also want to send early birthday wishes to Jamie, who turns 33 tomorrow! She’s also now proudly owned by two adorable pups, Cujo and Cesar - congrats on the new arrivals, J.

Now on to the meme…I was recently tagged by Gettysburg Mom for a photo meme. Ok, so “recently” was actually shortly before Thanksgiving, but my blogging habits have really sucked since I started having to get up at the asscrack of dawn for work. (I occasionally miss my second shift years.)

First, I’m supposed to go to my Flickr or similar account and post the sixth picture on the sixth page. I don’t have nearly that many photos in my long-stalled Flickr account, so I’ll pull mine from our gallery. Admittedly, I haven’t updated the gallery since March (which is when I started this job, incidentally - see the pattern?), but it’ll still work for this purpose. I pulled the sixth picture from the sixth album:

That was taken at Sunset Beach, Cape May Point, NJ, in late September of 2006. The waves were crashing pretty high on the jetty shortly before sunset, and I wanted to get some shots of the waves suspended and the foam, as well as the sun just above the remains of the concrete ship, Atlantus. We love Sunset Beach and make a point (pun intended) of visiting it a few times every time we’re at the Jersey Cape.

For the second part, I’m supposed to find the sixth picture on the sixth page on my computer. I looked in the sixth subfolder of my Pictures folder and found the sixth picture:

That’s Dad, many years before I came along. I’m not sure when this was taken, but it was probably in the early 60s. (There’s a similar set of photo booth pics of my mom from this same time as well.) Hard to believe he will be 72 years old in January!

As with the last meme, since many of my daily reads have already been tagged for this one, I’ll once again put up an open tag. If you end up participating in this one, let me know!

I had to work on Sunday (don’t ask - stupid management tricks), but we made it up to the homestead on Saturday to do some work. It was a decent day, chilly but sunny. I spent most of it as I have the past few weekends, picking up trash at the bottom of the hill. This seems like a neverending task sometimes, but I’m really looking forward to the end result.

While I was down there, Dave was up at the house tearing that ugly paneling off of the living room walls. This is what the paneling looked like right after we got the place. We got rid of the nasty carpet when we had the dumpster, but the fake woodgrain scariness stayed until now.

Here’s an after picture, showing the wall’s evolution. There were at least two different types of wallpaper over the plaster, and then the blue paint. At one time, I’m sure that blue looked pretty nice, and I can’t fathom why they put that craptastic paneling over it. If the paint got old and stained, they should’ve just repainted it with a similar color of blue.

Anyway, I went back down to pick up more trash and eventually started to hear some demolition-type noises from the bottom of the hill, so I figured something else was going on. By the time I came back up, we no longer had a living room! Seriously - the living room and front room had become one large room…

That pile of rubble in the middle is what’s left of the wall between the two rooms! We’re saving those wall panels that are back in the corner, as they’re still in great shape and will be put back in to the house when we rebuild.

Here’s our demolition crew standing with one foot in each room.

It’s easier to do this kind of work when the weather is cooler, so I have a feeling we’ll be doing a lot more of this over the next several months, and we’ll also be getting another dumpster.

Oh, and Gettysburg Mom, I didn’t forget about your tag - I’ll post the entry within the next day or two. Thanks for the tag!

We spent the first part of this weekend going shopping. This wasn’t just any shopping, but shopping of the worst kind - clothes shopping. I’d decided it was about time to get an “in-between” jacket for when it was too cold for my light summer jackets, but too warm for my long Land’s End squall parka. Since I wanted something that would stand up around the homestead, my first choice was naturally Carhartt.

After a lot of trying on, taking off, trying on again, debating, hemming, and hawing…phew…I finally decided on a Sandstone Sierra in light olive. (Too bad they didn’t have this in a blue color, though with my luck, they may next year.) We also decided to get some flannel-lined jeans after enduring the valley winds. I managed to find some Carhartts that fit well enough to buy a pair, but Dave couldn’t find any in his size and got another brand until our local TSC restocks their Carhartts. My only qualm is that their short/petite length is only 30″ - I usually wear closer to a 28,” so I’ll have to roll these up or hem them.

Here I am, decked out in Carhartt and hiking boots with the mountains in the background.

On Friday afternoon, we made a trek up over Tuscarora Summit to pick up a rotary plow we’d won on eBay for the Gravely tractor. During Sunday’s visit to the homestead, Dave removed the mower deck from the tractor and attached the plow to the front.

He decided to test it out at the side of the yard by digging a quick trench. He didn’t even have it at full power and didn’t have the plow blades down the whole way. Little did we know that this thing would still make quick and easy work of the semi-frozen soil. Yes, those white spots are patches of leftover snow:

Wow…WTF? Another angle:

I can definitely see this thing coming in handy as we start to rework the land! If you want to see a quick video of it in action (digging this trench), I uploaded it to YouTube. Their compression pixelated it a bit, but you can still see how well it did. Oh, and yes, we filled the trench back in afterward.

Heh…I just noticed that you can see the creek through the trees at the end of the video, near the top center of the frame. Speaking of the creek, parts of it were covered by a thin coating of ice. We’re wondering if it’ll actually be cold enough around here this year for the creek to freeze enough to walk on; I doubt it, but it’s not totally impossible.

That’s all for now. I can’t wait until Thursday - I’m a turkey junkie!

Thanks to Steph for tagging me with the Kreativ Blogger Award! I originally started this entry last week, but I had a hard time thinking of the six random things, so I put it off until Dave started reminding me that I still needed to post it. See random thing #1 for an explanation of why it was so hard to come up with my list.

Here are the rules:
1. Link to the person or persons who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Here are my six random things:

1. I over-think and over-analyze almost everything.

2. I am a night person but work a first-shift job. This combination sucks, of course.

3. I hate the feeling of tight/clingy clothes, so I usually end up buying a size larger than I really need (especially in shirts). I have a hard time finding clothes and shoes that fit well anyway.

4. I’m still in touch with my best friend from high school. (Hi, Jamie!)

5. I often visit YouTube several times a day.

6. This is a weird one. I am an amateur juggler, and on a high school trip to D.C., I spent much of the day at a juggling shop co-owned by a handsome and charming young man - he will remain unnamed here - who had a magnetic personality, was well-known in the juggling world, and a “hands-on” method of teaching devil sticks. (J, you may remember this guy.) Over 15 years later, I looked him up on the internet and was floored to find his profile on the America’s Most Wanted website. He is currently listed as a fugitive and is wanted for sex crimes against children. Wow…just wow. Needless to say, I was pretty shocked. For reasons that are probably obvious to most bloggers, I’m not naming him or linking to his AMW page. If someone really wants to know, it’s not hard to figure out.

Since it took me so long to post this, many of my daily reads have already been tagged for this one. I’ll tag Jamie, and if anyone else who wasn’t already tagged wants to do this one, leave me a comment when your entry is up!