Stalkers Rejoice!

I recently discovered that my house has been added to Google street view (and even though it's not very web 2.0 of me, I'm NOT posting a link to my address. Figure it out yourselves, sickos - and bear in mind that I rig the Kentucky burglar alarm nightly).

For those of you not familiar, using Google and an address, you can look up a picture of any listed property. In my case, the picture was taken last fall, and all they have on my property is a lovely view of one of the soon-to-be whacked trees in front of my house.

While the internet is supremely useful in building communities and keeping track of friends and family (or total strangers, for that matter), I'm not sure how comfortable I am with the idea that anyone can hop online and look at my house. There's such a thing as being TOO close or too wired in. Unfortunately, the alternative seems to be to cut yourself off from the world entirely, and I don't think I'm quite ready to move to a little cabin in the woods (perhaps after my manifesto is complete).

At the very least, they could have at least let me know so that I could have raked up the leaves. Wow. Talk about embarrassing.

Normalcy Returns (or Long, Rambly Post About Not Much at All)

Things finally returned to a semblance of normalcy over the weekend. After all the planning, prepping and celebrating, we discovered that the inside of the house was one mountain of crap piled upon others, and the outside looked as if the prairie was threatening to reclaim the land.

Now I've long loathed yard work, so much that I've considered buying a goat. However, since I can barely handle taking care of a dog, I'm not sure I could do much better with a goat. Besides they smell funny and they scare me (I once watched one attack my brother; true story - he was posing for a picture, and the goat looked up with hate and malice in his eyes, lowered his head and butted my brother right into the ground. Then the goat kicked sand in his face and laughed at him . . . or something like that. My memory gets a little rusty at times).

In any case, the yard needed some major therapy, so I woke up bright and early Saturday, dug out the lawn mower and got to work. Afterwards, I discovered that using a weed eater that's falling apart can be a painful experience (those little cords hurt! And the rocks and crap it kicks up? Not fun at all).

Finally, I broke out the tree trimmer and started working on the tree in front of the house. For several months, I've watched pedestrians duck as the low-hanging branches threaten to take off their heads, and while I found it funny for awhile, I realized that standing on the front porch while laughing and pointing at them wasn't a good idea. Plus, I recalled that things like that annoyed the hell out of me in my dog walking days, so the branches had to go.

In short, I remembered again why lawn work tries my soul.

However, it wasn't all drudgery over the weekend. I also broke out the new toy - some friends bought us a deep fryer for a wedding present. Now, I realize that this might seem like a Bad Idea. I love fried foods. I also have a marked tendency to burn the bejeesus out of myself while in the kitchen, and I'm not above setting off a grease fire here or there. However, I'm happy to report that the inaugural fried chicken did not cause me or the kitchen to light up like a bonfire - and it was cooked through! Now I just have to remember not to cook everything in it. One of my life goals is NOT to have a heart attack before I turn 40, and a deep fryer in the kitchen probably won't help that too much.

Basically, it was a pleasant, mundane weekend; something that's been missed around here for quite some time. Can't wait to have a few more.

Cooking With Gas No Longer

Things have settled down since the wedding, so I've been able to return to some of my more mundane enjoyments: namely cooking. I celebrated the lovely weather Tuesday night to fire up the grill and fix some bratwurst.

However, this time I decided to mix things up a bit. The latest Cooks Illustrated inspired me to try something new. First, I sliced up an onion, dropped the slices in a bowl and seasoned them with a little salt, pepper and thyme. I microwaved the onions, then placed them into an aluminum tray and placed the brats on top.

The plan from there is to put the wrapped foil tray on the grill for several minutes, letting the fat render from the brats onto the onions, and then remove the brats and finish them on the grill. Unfortunately, my grill simply doesn't generate much heat.

When I moved into the house, the grill was built in, which is a nice feature, except that over the years, I've learned that it simply doesn't get very hot, and when you're grilling, very hot is where you need it to be.

And after this experiment, which after awhile turned out okay, I'm done with the gas grills. I have a very small charcoal grill, and after using it a few times over the last year, I'm ready to move up to a larger charcoal model - I like the flavor better, I like the hotter fires, and frankly, it's more fun cooking with charcoal.

Any suggestions or favorite models? I'd love to hear it.

TEMBLOR!

Some would take earthquakes the morning you were leaving for your bachelor party as an omen. I didn't, mainly because I slept right through the first one. The first indication that something was amiss was when Darcy asked me if I felt the quake in the middle of the night.

I flipped on the TV to see what was up, and I was instantly sorry.

Our local Fox station had completely given in to their worst impulses, so I opened my morning watching the anchors interview a producer who was at the station during the quake. The anchors were trying to get her to talk about the fear, the panic, the sheer terror of standing around as the earth rocked itself apart. Apparently, all they did was stood around looking at each other. The only fear came in when they saw the light fixtures were shaking a lot. So they moved.

Fortunately, they were able to cut away to the scene of a house fire in North St. Louis. The reporter opened by saying the fire started, ironically right around the time of the earthquake. Now, I'm no expert, but I don't think there was anything ironic about that - coincidental, perhaps, but ironic, not so much.

The reporter moved on to talk about how seated behind her was the woman who risked her own life to save her seven children trapped in the house. Now that's heroic, and I'm pretty sure it's also news; however, we never got to hear from her, because the reporter was talking to a firefighter. Here's the gist of the exchange:

Reporter: "Was the fire caused by a gas line that ruptured in the earthquake?"

Firefighter: "No. We think it was faulty wiring in the basement."

Reporter: "Could the quake have caused the wires to break open and start the fire."

Firefighter: "No. That's very unlikely. It would be impossible to prove."

Reporter: "Are you sure the earthquake didn't cause the fire?"

Firefighter: "Yes."

At this point, rather than recover what was left of her dignity and professional pride and either leave or talk to the woman who saved her family, the reporter went on to a charming story of how they heard meowing as they arrived and after looking around, they found THIS - as the camera swung up to show a cat lounging in a window.

Having seen enough, I changed the channel. I could see that the local CBS affiliate meant business - Larry Conners was in studio sans tie - and with his top two buttons undone. He must have breathlessly raced into the studio to make it for the broadcast, and he was waxing poetic about earthquakes in history. Why bother with a geologist when you can find a professional news anchor?

I moved on to breakfast.

After running a few errands, I was goofing off in the sunroom addition to my house. That's when the aftershock hit. At first, I thought it was wind. Then I realized that it was another quake. Then I realized that the sunroom on the back of my house has the structural integrity of a box of kleenex, and perhaps I should get out.

So yes, I survived Quake 2008 and moved on to more important things, like a bachelor party weekend in Chicago.

It's a Weekend Post . . .

. . . meaning it's a little rambling and too short (except for both of you who read this and wonder if there's something better to occupy your time - like changing the furnace filter or cleaning the gutters).

Well, the A/C is back up and running. My farewell to the old system was nearly as tearful as I figured it would be: I started kicking it and screaming uncontrollably until I tore open my hand on the unit's rusty exterior and bled all over the place, bringing a few tears to my eyes. Fortunately, the contractor is a very capable medic, and he stopped the bleeding in short order. I probably should have gone to the hospital, but so far fighting lockjaw has proven to be a good workout.

Okay, maybe I embellished the last paragraph a bit. I did trip over the unit and scraped my hand on the concrete, but I did tear up a bit. The contractor just shook his head sadly and went about his work.

However, as I sat at my desk at work and pretended to actually do something, I realized that this has not been a relaxing summer - far from it. Fortunately, my awesome fiance agreed to my logical, well-reasoned request to do nothing this weekend (replace "logical, well-reasoned request" with "pathetic cries and whining" and you get a clearer picture of the dynamic in my household). So we're going to hit Borders on Saturday morning for my Harry Potter fix (I'd go tonight but that damn restraining order is still in place) and head up to the pool for a day of swimming and doing little. And yes, I already told Darcy she's going to be a Harry Potter widow until I finish the book sometime on Sunday or Monday.

The only drawback to this plan is the pool frowns on alcohol consumption. I'll have to hold off until Sunday, when the housework begins.

Perverse and Twisted, It Is

My house has a twisted sense of humor. Take this weekend as an example:

The plumbers and carpenters cleared out Friday, leaving behind a patched up ceiling, a mostly-new plumbing stack and thin layer of dust over the house.

We spent much of Saturday cleaning up and setting the kitchen up again. The house was getting dangerously close to livable again, a state of affairs that the house was simply NOT going to tolerate.

After completing our labors for the day, we headed out to catch the new Harry Potter movie (review coming soon; short version: meh) and returned home. As I walked into the back yard, I thought the air conditioner sounded kind of funny.

After going inside and feeling warm air blowing from the vents that it WAS making a funny noise, only not funny HA HA, just . . . funny.

The second sign of trouble was when I walked out and felt the heat radiating off the air conditioning unit. The third sign? The unit was running but the fan wasn't turning. That's bad.

A contractor who came out Sunday confirmed my worst fears: it was fixable, but would dropping $800 into a 17-year-old A/C unit make a lot of sense, especially when the compressor was probably damaged due to the fan not turning for a couple of hours?

So suffice to say, we're getting a new air conditioner and furnace tomorrow. Whoever buys this house in the next year or two is going to sing my praises. I probably won't be alive, since the house, sensing that I've replaced most everything that can fail, will either spontaneously combust or drag itself outside the time/space continuum, a la the end of Poltergeist.

Hopefully, I'll be out when it finally happens, but I don't think the house is going to let me get away that easily.

Collapse

I know - I've been away for awhile; here's a few reasons why:

• Work - Because THE MAN gets bitchy when I stop showing up for weeks on end. Oh, and I don't get paid.
  
• More work - I'm balancing two freelance writing jobs on the side. See above bullet regarding bitchiness and being paid.
  
• Movement - Darcy is moving in to my house, along with all of her stuff. And let me tell you, there's a lot of stuff.
• Crap - Literally - I'm having at least half of my plumbing waste stack replaced before it fully gives out. If that were to happen, then no one would be happy in my house. So I've been dealing with contractors galore. Fortunately, it's looking like the work will be done within the next week or two.

So let's talk about stuff. Like I said, Darcy has a lot of it, and one of the things she has is a semi-antique bed frame. It has a headboard AND a footboard. I've never had either of these things, so it's kind of novel.

We set up the bed frame and for a week, slept well and soundly in it. Until Thursday.

I woke up around 4:00 AM, feeling kind of cold. Our bedroom is on the second floor of my house - also known as the oven, due to heat's propensity to rise, and my house's lousy insulation. But at least the central air conditioning is old and sucks, so we have that going for us. In any case, I digress - frequently, I go to bed on top of the covers, but sometimes in the middle of the night, thanks to the fans and window unit AC, it gets pretty cool in there. So at 4:00, I climbed under the covers . . . and the bed collapsed.

One of the side supports holding the slats under the bed gave out completely, dropping one quarter of the bed. After looking it over for a few minutes, we took the frame apart, set up the box springs and mattress back up on the floor and went back to bed.

At this point, I'm not sure what we're going to do. I'd prefer not to buy a new frame, and fixing it probably isn't an option. (I'm, how do you say it -- incompetent with the tools, and it's very possible I'll wind up dumping one or both of us on the floor in a half-assed repair effort. It's why I'm hiring plumbers and carpenters to work on the house. If I did it, things would turn ugly fast).

Living like we just graduated from college, while kind of fun in a nostalgic sense, grows old very quickly. So's waking up on the floor. At least we know the mattress can't fall any further. If it did, we'd wind up in the dining room. Then it's the insurance company's problem.

Much Ado . . .

Turns out I was wrong - it was a leaky water supply after all. Took five minutes to fix. My visions of cracked wax rings and cracked plumbing stacks weren't true after all.

I still don't trust the house. It's looking at me all shifty.

We'd Prefer You Call it a Pee-Pee-Soaked Heck Hole

So I was cleaning the bathroom Saturday afternoon. I know - some people hit parades on St. Patrick's Day; others get stinking drunk; me? I clean my bathroom.

As I'm cleaning around the toilet, I notice water on the floor. Water. On the bathroom floor. I've been there before - many times. You want leaks in the bathroom? I've had them all - the tub has leaked due to cracked caulk and grout, the way the shower head was set up caused water to flow onto the floor of the bathroom, the roof leaked into the bathroom, the faucet leaked, the toilet tank leaked. Generally, it all wound up in the same place - on the kitchen ceiling directly below the bathroom. For a compound that we need to survive, water has brought me an awful lot of grief.

But I digress - there's a little water on the floor. I wipe it up and determine that there's a little water condensing on the water supply for the toilet. No big. I can deal with it, and deal with it I do. I head off to my room to clean in there - because it's how I choose to spend my Saturday. Huzzah.

Later, I return to the restroom to get some other cleaning paraphernalia, where I see a much greater amount of water on the floor - all around the base of the toilet.

Over the last few years, I've become more of a plumbing expert than I ever thought possible. I'm not ready to go pro, but I can usually look at something and say - with pretty good authority - that that's not right. And water pooling around the base of the toilet? Not right.

I wipe it up, flush and see if anymore water pools. Nope. Maybe it was a fluke, but there's one more test. One more test that will prove whether I'm going to fall into my old habit of worrying myself nearly to death about it when nothing is wrong, or whether I have a problem.

Yep. I had a problem. The wet spot in the plaster ceiling confirmed it. A few minutes later, the water to the toilet is off and we're headed off to greener pastures for the night. Darcy only had to spend a few minutes to talk me down from my idea of getting the can of gas for the lawn mower, splashing it around the first floor, lighting a match and walking off into the sunset. Apparently, there's laws against that sort of thing. Who knew?

Frequently, I'm accused of worrying things to death. What can I say? I'm only truly happy if I have some problem to solve - the more Gordian in scope, the better. I complain about my house, and do want to divest myself of it. But I'm trying to be more optimistic about this. A friend once told me that if the water damage to my house was as severe as I feared it, my bathroom would have long ago fallen into the kitchen. So far, that hasn't come to pass.

But the house - and bathroom follies haven't been all bad. I know what to look for in the next house (two bathrooms, ideally) and will be prepared to deal with them.

Of course, it'll be the entirely new set of problems that will tear off and kick me in the junk.