With a View

That header image at the top of the screen?  It is not a stock image.  That's a view of the top of the hill behind my back yard.  It's a large stretch of what we understand to be protected grassland, special to the area for a particular combination of flora that is unique to this area of the country and rare in these modern times.  It's one of the main reasons we bought the house that we did.  We don't feel like we live in the sardine suburbia that we do because of the view that we have.  In the summer we have sat on the deck and enjoyed the sounds of an owl calling in the fading dusk.  In the winter, we have watched an ocean of snow howl and thrash its way across the barren stretch of field as it was whipped by the wind.  And that all might change if the local power company is allowed to complete their proposed project of building a power park on the land.

We got the notice for an open house meeting on the subject scheduled for next week.  I'm really torn up about this.  I feel as though another weight has been added to my shoulders, another yoke to my burden.  It's not that I won't fight.  I will if I can, if I'm given the opportunity.  It's that I'm tired.  I'm already fighting on other fronts.  I feel as though my creativity is stalling.  I'm wondering what the point of it all might be.  I can pour my heart and soul into what I do yet it still falls on so many disinterested ears.  In addition, my career is stalled and I don't know how to proceed or where to turn next.  I have yet to figure that out.  When it all came crashing down around my ears last summer, I could look out my back window and know that I was not leaving this wonderful view.  It was one of the few things that made me happy that I was not leaving.  But now that view, that one thing that made me happy, might change anyway.

As I'm writing this, I'm trying to figure out why this potential situation with losing a beautiful view to towering power lines is affecting me the way it is.  I believe it's because I see this as a metaphor for my current state of mind.  I'm wondering exactly how far down is down?  How many times can life kick me when I'm already on the ground?  Why can't I have and keep something that I love, something as sublime and simple as a view from my window?  I haven't been able to keep friends, haven't been able to keep jobs or a career, haven't been able to turn the corner on finding a way to use my skills and talents in any useful way.  I feel trapped in a prison of my own design and that view has at least been available through the bars of my venetian blinds for the past year and a half, the one ray of hope I've held on to since things turned bad.

I don't know what will happen with that view.  I don't know what will happen with a lot of things.  But I do know that I'm tired things happening right now.  The past three years has seen a lot of change in my life and I'm ready for some stability.  I just want to feel like I'm home.  Is that too much to ask?

Reinvigorated

I got back on the horse Wednesday with the bike racks. Monday was pretty frustrating, but I couldn't let such a simple project alone. It turns out, the instructions were not clear enough (for me) as to exactly which holes in the pulley brackets the screws were supposed to go. There were circular holes in each corner and that's what made sense to me. But that made the bracket too wide to be mounted properly. What needed to happen was that the screws needed to go in a straight line down the middle placed into the square holes. That, to me, is counterintuitive. Round things go in round holes, etc. Needless to say, both of our bikes are now hanging from the ceiling in the garage.

In other DIY news, my new found inspiration to do all these small projects was that I bought a new drill. I'm certainly not going to drop a couple hundred bucks on a new tool and let it sit in the garage. No way. Since I can already drill holes in things like a champ, I chose to construct rather than destruct. In that spirit here's a short list of other projects I've undertaken these past two weeks:

1. new and improved shower head in the master bathroom
   
2. magnetic child locks on the kitchen and bathroom cabinets
   
3. ran a new electrical box and outlet in the basement
   
4. reinstalled the baby gate more securely
   
5. those bike lifts
   
6. a wall-mounted TV bracket
   

Well, I kinda fudged that last one. I'm still in the middle of installing the TV wall mount because I've hit a few snags, but I suspect it will be finished by the end of the weekend. I thought our basement walls were constructed with normal studs 16" apart but it turns out they're merely furred away from the foundation with what looks like 2x4s on their wide side spaced 24" apart. That doesn't leave enough space for the lag bolts that hold the bracket to the wall nor does it make it easy to find a good spot for the bracket where it can be mounted into wood and still look relatively even on the wall. It also means that the hard foam insulation back there is going to make running cables a real bear when it comes time to work on the AV cable routes.

In the end, it's going to be a lot more work than I had anticipated to get this home theater up and running the way I want, but I'm really looking forward to the day when I can come home, sit down on the couch, fire up Return of the King in Blu-Ray, and listen to Oliphaunts stomping people into the ground while Nazgul fly around my head.

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Now playing: Herbie Hancock - Watermelon Man
via FoxyTunes

I Rolled a 1

So that skill point I allocated, or felt like I had allocated as of last post did me no good. We bought a bike hanger for the garage and I tried to install it today. Nope. Too stupid to put four screws into wood apparently. The ceiling is finished which made it a little harder than it would otherwise have been, but I thought I was doing OK. Then, one of the screws wouldn't go all the way into the joist. Then another. I stripped it. Then the other two screws missed the joist entirely and just went into drywall. Dammit. I spent two hours trying to get one bracket up and still couldn't do it.

I'm a complete idiot with this stuff. I have no abilities with even simple DIY projects like this. I should have known that having a little confidence is a dangerous thing. I had plans for a cool home theater but I'm scrapping them today. If I can't put four screws into wood, I shouldn't be allowed to pick my nose let alone install a home theater.

Skill Point Allocated

I'm particularly proud of myself this weekend. I've never been much of a handyman and the DIY gene that others seem to possess has been largely dormant in me. But, I've made a vow to myself that I should begin working on these kinds of skills. So this weekend, I found myself installing our washer and dryer while switching out the three prong plug for the four prong one with the ground connection built into it. I also fixed a piece of furniture that got broken in the move from Chicago. I realize that these tasks are certainly not the Mount Everest of home improvement skills but, hey, you gotta start somewhere, right?

The move itself went really smoothly. Normally when we move during the summer months, the temperature is usually in the 90s with a heat index in the hundreds. Not that weekend. It was low to mid 70s all day Friday and Saturday and only crept into the 80s on Sunday. Monday, our actual move day, it rained, but the rain held off while the movers loaded the truck so it was really just cool and breezy. Also, because of the weather, we were able to move all of the boxes and little odds and ends ourselves and only needed the movers for the furniture which cut our cost in half.

Writer's Slack

It is sometimes difficult to get the wheels turning or the gears grinding in my cognitive machinery to write on a regular basis once again. There can be so many reasons for the apparent writer's block, none of which have anything to do with lack of subject material. First, after being gone so long, where would I start? So much has changed that filling in the monumental gap would take time that I quite frankly do not have. Second, if time is of the essence, should I record the major milestones from the minutiae of our existence, simply denoting events that occurred, or should I dig into some mental gewgaw, some philosophical plaything to purge some of that intellectual energy? In time I should get to both if I once again make a habit of sitting down to weave together these pointless threads of introspection that will someday be the only extant map of my existence. Onward.

The minutiae did indeed include some remarkable events during the last two months. We moved out of bucktooth central, our apartment building of six months, and into a house in a suburban Omaha neighborhood. Not so mysteriously, our physical and mental health improved drastically. Also, we celebrated Nicholas' first birthday on the 14th of February. He had a great time visiting with his Grandma and Grandpa B. and Nana (his great-grandma Moore). We did take some pictures, but I will have to find some other time to share them. Finally, Amy and I also celebrated ten years of marriage. It is a significant milestone, a testament to our devotion to one another. Also, we rolled over another number into a higher decimal place on the ball-and-chain odometer, like watching your car hit 50k miles, which is always a good time. On a side note, I find it wholly self-satisfying to not only have our wedding anniversary in such close proximity to a Hallmark (R) holiday but also the birth or our son which allows us the freedom to celebrate more personally meaningful events and avoid the trappings of an otherwise overblown day.

As for the other thoughts I have that I'd like to share, I will save that for later in the week. I am currently on Spring Break and will hopefully have the time to sit and wonder as I wander, metaphorically of course.

These Are The People

The trip back to Chicago went well. I even had an entire row on the plane to myself on the way out. It was good to get a chance to go out to dinner with some of my friends, too. There was a lot to do at the house to prepare. Between Curtis and myself, we shoveled the driveway which was full of snow, especially the end where to snowplows shove all the extra snow from the street. I think there was at least three feet piled up there. I also had to shovel out the garbage cans which were buried very deep next to the alley.

Once everything was loaded, I had about half an hour to wait until my ride to the airport arrived. It was really weird standing around waiting in the empty house. A little sad, a little exciting, there were lots of things to think about while I waited in silence. Every time I heard a creak, I would look around and expect to see Sid creeping around the corner or sitting on the stairs in between the banisters.

My reverie was enjoyable but then I remembered one of the reasons we wanted to leave that neighborhood in the first place when I heard a snow shovel outside. I lightly pulled open one of the slats in the blinds covering the side door window. One of the nearby alley neighbors was shoveling snow back into our driveway from the alley. I don't know why. Nothing was preventing him from getting in and out of his garage. It really was not a whole lot of snow. He glared at me and I closed the blinds. People there were nice enough but it really wasn't a neighborhood, just a collection of houses with people living inside of them. We lived there four years and only at the very end when a young couple moved in next to us to the east did we really meet anybody. They were very nice and we will miss them, but otherwise, there really isn't a whole lot I will miss about that neighborhood.

Loose Ends

Nicholas has improved over the last three nights. I have now had two out of three nights of (mostly) uninterrupted sleep. What I really want to know is this: what switch is in his little brain that flips after a couple of days of using a timed response method? It's like night and day, on and off, 0 and 1, rather than a smooth downward curve as I would expect. One night he screams and screams. Then, next to nothing. No matter the explanation, though. I'll take the result.

The house sale and rental has hit a couple of small bumps but nothing too bad. Our buyers need a two week extension to let their mortgage lenders take their sweet time because, you know, now that they actually care about their lending practices, it's time to batten down the hatches. On the rental side of the coin, we're still waiting on the lease to be drafted, but we've been promised sometime today. We're hoping that Amy can sign first with me to follow if necessary because I will be out of town all weekend.

I leave for Chicago tomorrow morning. I'll be flying in to monitor the movers on Sunday as they clear all of our possessions from the old property. It will be my first time there since August and the last visit I will ever make to that house. Amy says she's glad I'm going. I can't say that I would disagree if the shoe were on the other foot.

Asi-asi

We heard from our potential lessors yesterday. They sounded eager to get the ball rolling on the rental process, too. They want a 6 month lease with the option to buy at the end. We're totally willing to go along with that. We just need to hear from their agent now. Fingers crossed.

Nicholas decided to be a real stinker again last night. He cried for four hours, not in a row, but FOUR HOURS. He feels fine. He just got used to us holding and rocking him to sleep while he was sick. Of course, he still wants us to stay up all night with him now that both of us have what he had. So tired...

Again, I can't imagine how any of you with more than one get anything done at all.

The Darkness

There have been a few moments these past months when things have been really dark: losing lots of money on our potential house sale, not being able to find a place to buy in time for our move, neighbors that don't seem to care that our building is on fire, Nicholas being sick twice in a row just when we have more work to do than ever to get things done for both work and house, Nicholas refusing to give us a full night's sleep, my school announcing massive budget cuts, no raises in the near future, and the potential to cut low-enrollment programs (i.e. mine) in the coming months. It just seemed to be getting worse by the day.

But there have been good things happening too. For instance, during the first week at least, I'm not finding my job an unending well of stress like I did last semester. Don't get me wrong, it's still stressful. But I can see how things fit together now. I can see the big picture for most of my classes because I've been through them once, so I know what I want to change and how to change it to communicate the concepts more clearly. I no longer feel the need to work 70+ hours a week to keep up. If something goes wrong, I'm trying to let myself write it off as experience instead of berating my lackluster abilities, which is something I've done for a very long time and a hard habit to break.

As for the school's budget cuts, I've been assured by my dean that my program will not be cut. The justification was something that I'd thought about, too, but needed to hear from someone more in the know to believe or trust. Basically, my program is new. They've just dumped thousands of dollars into it and it has the potential to grow rapidly if we can figure out how to best capitalize on the demand. Therefore, music tech stays despite only having about 12 majors to speak of right now.

Finding a place to live has been a giant bummer so far. We've basically resigned ourselves to renting. With the astounding amount of money lost on our house in Illinois, we cannot afford the healthy down payment we need to get the loan we want. We'd pretty much tap our liquid resources to muster 8-10%, which in the current climate, is still not enough for some banks to grant you the loan. So, the rentals we've seen so far have been pretty terrible until yesterday. We found a very nice house that a couple would like to sell but is willing to rent for $1100/month, about the same amount we'd pay in mortgage for anything we could currently afford to buy. It has three bedrooms, a family room with fireplace, a relatively new kitchen, a two car attached garage, and a mostly finished basement. It's very clean and well-kept, something we can't say of most of the other places we've seen. The only catch is that the owners would rather sell. So, we're hoping to get a lease drafted and signed before any potential buyers swoop in and snatch it away from us, not to mention our stuff is moving out here next week and we'd like to put it where we are going to live rather than a storage facility.

Again, I won't lie, things have been looking rather bleak around here. I look at our situation and in some ways it's the same as when we first started out, me working 60 hours a week for the $17K yearly salary that would just barely pay for meager shelter, food, and clothing, while Amy finished her graduate degree. It's certainly just as difficult, we just have higher bills to match the higher salaries. But if we can get out from under the house in Illinois and rent the house that we found yesterday, things will start to look up, some pressure will be relieved. If one thing should fall in our favor right now, we need this to be it. I hope it works out.

Fell On Black Days

Some of my readers, OK my family, have been upset by the general trend in tone of my recent posts. Unfortunately, the new year hasn't really brought much better to report so far.

We finished the waiting game with the buyers in Illinois. Unless something falls through, they're getting the house for $20K less than we paid for it. In total, we're losing about $50K dollars on the deal. On one hand, it will be a relief to be out from under it, but on the other I get sick every time I look at the numbers so I try not to do that too often.

We were bidding on a property out here to close at the same time our Illinois property sold. That fell south yesterday. Can you believe the sellers actually gave us a final offer after only two bids in this market? One of the sticking points was our request for three days early occupancy. We needed that time because we have to move our stuff out of the other house the weekend prior to closing and it would have shown up here a few days later so in order for us not to need storage and an extra mover for a total of just a few days we figured it wouldn't be a problem. It was. We even offered to take it from 72 to 24 hours but no go. In my eyes the paperwork was all in their favor if anything happened. We would have been responsible. I'm not sure even their own agent understood their reticence on the issue.

Anyway, fortunately for them, they have others interested in the property so good luck to them, but our bids and requests were fair and reasonable. I think they expect to make money on a house sale right now and they might, but unless they start bending just a little to the buyer's needs, their house will remain on the market for some time. So, we're still in in the apartment for the long haul, swiping plastic silverware from fast food joints, sitting on camping furniture, and sleeping on the floor.

In other news, Nicholas has been sick a couple of times back to back. The first round was whatever stomach thing has been active recently, which he promptly gave to me. I had to miss my first day back to work because of it. Then, this weekend, right as he was getting better, he caught something nasty from day care. He now has a decreased appetite and a fever of 103 degrees. We've put a call into the doctor. Between Amy and I, we've stayed up all night with him two nights in a row because he won't sleep unless we're holding him and walking. We're both exhausted from taking care of him and an extra bit of tired from all the additional work getting the real estate, banking, and moving situations in order.

Sometimes I feel like we are a virus and Iowa is trying to kill us to make itself feel better.

Whatsoever I've feared has come to life
And Whatsoever I've fought off became my life
Just when everyday seemed to greet me with a smile
Sunspots have faded
Now I'm doing time
Now I'm doing time
Cause I fell on black days
I fell on black days

Whomsoever I've cured I've sickened now
Whomsoever I've cradled I've put you down
I'm a search light soul they say
But I can't see it in the night
I'm only faking when I get it right
When I get it right
Cause I fell on black days
I fell on Black days
How would I know
That this could be my fate
How would I know
That this could be my fate

So what you wanted to see good has made you blind
And what you wanted to be yours has made it mine
So don't you lock up something that you wanted to see fly
Hands are for shaking
No, not tying
No, not tying

I sure don't mind a change
I sure don't mind a change
Yeah, I said sure don't mind, I sure dont mind the change
I sure dont mind the change
Cos I fell on black days
I fell on black days
How would I know
That this could be my fate
How would I know
That this could be my fate
How would I know
That this could be my fate
How would I know
That this could be my fate
I sure don't mind a change

The Money Pit - Bidding

About three weeks ago, we got our first and only bid on the house. Yes, it's been three weeks, we're still in the bidding process, and our lease expires at the end of January. Unfortunately, even under the best circumstances, we're probably going to lose about $40-$50K. We've been very reasonable with our bids as well as prompt. The buyers on the other hand see the current market as an excuse to not only come in low with bids but also treat us with some amount of disrespect. At one point, we waited almost six days for them to raise their offer by only two thousand dollars. When our agent asked the other what was taking so long, their agent responded sharply with how it's a buyers market and blah blah blah blah. OK, so the market stinks and everything. Can't your clients still treat us with some respect and dignity? We'll even settle for simple courtesy. How about getting back to us within two to three business days at the most? I understand that buyers are at a huge advantage right now. But, please, if you're going to rape me, at least treat me with some respect and give me a kiss on the cheek first.

Inevitable

It was inevitable. Over the weekend, Nicholas caught the cold that both Amy and I have had a total of three times. He began to get fussy on Sunday and by Monday, his left eye had begun to produce goopy yellow phlegm as was his nose. I woke up late that night to the sound of his struggling to breathe. So Amy took yesterday off of work and set up an appointment for him with a new pediatrician. They prescribed some eye drops for his eye and acetaminophen for his general cold and fever symptoms. He's been pretty cranky for the past two days, wanting to be held or rocked most of the time, and he only sleeps for two to three hours at a time. His schedule is gone, understandably.

For Amy and I, it's been rough. We don't like to see him so miserable. At the same time, we've been given a crash course in the rules and regulations of taking unscheduled time off from work. Today, it was my turn. I am caring for Nick today. Hopefully tomorrow his eyes will be better and his fever will have broken so he will be able to return to day care. I'm afraid we just can't afford to pay for a house in Chicago and an apartment near Omaha and day care services we are not using. I have to sing this song:

Please Just Rip It Off

It's getting difficult now. Knowing that I'm leaving the day after tomorrow is agonizing, like pulling a bandage off slowly. Saying goodbye to coworkers and friends... not my favorite thing in the world. This is truly the first move I've made in my life where I haven't been happy about leaving things behind. The move to Chicago was hard, but I had nowhere to go but up. Not that I don't think this move is a step up, but by pursing greater things for my career, I'm now sacrificing friendships, too.

Also, the irony that one's house is only at its cleanest on the day it's left behind is striking.

Clean Slate

The new dishwasher was installed on Monday. Abt arrived when they said they would and called before arrival. The installer was very competent and polite. He was done in 45 minutes. Everything worked the first time without problems. Thank you, Abt, for the job well done.

Warp Five, Mr. Sulu

I've been pretty busy at home over the past couple of weeks. I repainted the second bedroom. I've also moved my studio into that bedroom as well to make way for a nursery. I was a bit reluctant to do that, but now that I have it in here, it feels pretty good. There's a TV with a DVD player in here so that we can watch movies or TV shows while working out, plus the audio to the TV is routed to a home stereo unit for better audio playback. I then ran the stereo unit to the mixer that's connected to my computer so that if I want to record from the radio or the DVD player into Pro Tools, I can. I feel like Captain Kirk in here. It rules.

We had our childbirth class at the hospital on Saturday and it really has me excited. Well, that and I put the stroller together, installed the car seat bases, and spent more time getting the nursery ready last weekend.

Sandy and Evan, thanks for the cookies. They were really good. Evan will be glad to know that I'm taking some time to install the Doom 3 expansion and Last Man Standing mod update.

Fool Me Once

Our dishwasher isn't functioning properly again. It shows symptoms of another electronics failure of some kind when it either refuses to progress with the current cycle or takes upwards of twenty minutes to move to the next step. We've tried a couple of remedies found on the web to fix the problem(s), which more than a few others have experienced according to Amy's research, but neither of those have proved successful. We continue to open the door to find dirty dishes and a giant pile of partially dissolved detergent caked onto a pot or a plate. There are still a few more things we can try, but if those don't work, we'll have to call for a repair again. Unfortunately, this time, the warranty has long expired and we'll have to pay for the house call and the lousy replacement circuit board that has already failed once and been replaced. Strangely enough, this model as I may have said before received a Consumer Reports Best Buy rating. The only comfort is that we are not the only people who have had the same complaints about the unit over the long haul. For the record, it is a Kenmore Ultra Wash Dishwasher, no longer available at Sears, model number 665.1703. The digits following the period are variable and only distinguish color. This model is very similar and might very well be a redesign of the electronics in our model.

Mo' Money Maybe

We had some good news recently, but got it in a weird way. Amy had asked for a raise at work a few weeks ago and had also asked for a meeting to discuss the possibility. The meeting never came so we reasonably believed that no raise was forthcoming. But when Amy got her pay stub last week, there was more money in it. In fact it was more almost exactly equal to the amount that Amy had requested. She asked about it the next day and discovered that the raise had been approved. Now don't get me wrong. That is great news. I just think that it's weird that nobody discussed anything with her first.

This Labor Day weekend hasn't been as entertaining as our previous couple have been, but we did manage to squeeze in a bunch of chores that have been waiting in the queue. I replaced the insulation that got wet in our basement wall a couple weeks ago and put the wall back together. We also did more mundane things like shopping for groceries and maternity clothing. Saturday was pretty lazy. Amy was having a bad day so we pretty much just sat around, watched a movie (Seven Samurai), and generally just tried to keep her mind occupied on something other than feeling ill.

And I guess I neglected to finish the raccoon story earlier. We did indeed capture the raccoon the morning after we initially heard it in the attic. There was only one, thankfully, which brought the bill in at the lowest amount that it could have been.

So, happy September and I hope you like fall as much as I do. I can't wait until the cool weather starts setting in again.

It Makes Me Want to Puke

I am not incredibly hopeful now that Amy’s nausea will subside at all, let alone disappear as the obstetrician said it would. His prediction of improvement within one week of our appointment at the end of July was laughter inducing for both of us. But despite my lack of medical training and Amy’s optimistic hopefulness, our laughter was well deserved. Three weeks later, she is still suffering with nausea and dry heaves. I took her to the fruit and vegetable market last Saturday and she could barely look at the tomatoes without her gag reflex twitching ever so slightly.

I should mention that the good doctor had prescribed Zolfran (why do drug names all sound like evil alien overlords these days?), which was supposed to control her nausea. When she started taking it, we noticed very little change in the severity of her nausea. But as time went on, it seemed that the sickness was abating. We doubted the drug somewhat. We thought it was just the passing of time and the she would lose the nausea once we reached the second trimester, which for the uninitiated is the “normal” time for it to end. Almost every book with even a whiff of professional medical influence assures the reader that it will end by this time.

But I say, “Nay nay!” Tomorrow is the official first day of the second trimester and Amy was worse than she’s been in a month this morning. Her supply of Zolfran was depleted on Friday, though. Perhaps the medication was indeed helping her. But to add to the confusion, stress and lack of sleep have a distinct and noticeable affect on pregnancy related nausea. The affect is so noticeable in fact that the morning we knew we had the raccoon in our attic, Amy’s nausea increased from an upset stomach feeling the previous day to outright gagging every few minutes.

The reason I mention this phenomenon is because we have had a lot of rain in the past four days and the downspout on the eastern corner of the house had been clogged with debris. So once the ground was saturated with water and the gutter on that side of the house was full to capacity, the water went where it wasn’t supposed to: down the side of the house right onto our basement floor. As of 2am Monday morning, I was on my hands and knees mopping up water and manually running the battery backup pump in our secondary sump tank because its sensor is broken. As one set of rags became saturated, I’d throw them in the dryer while the second set mopped up the encroaching flood. I repeated this behavior for a couple of hours until the rain subsided. The clog in the downspout is now gone, but I’ll have to wait until the next big rain to ensure that the unclogged downspout fixed the problem and to see if we have any further problems that need to be addressed. (I’m not going to worry about the pump until I have to. I have never even seen water in that tank before yesterday. If you feel that it is absolutely necessary, I will happily take donations via PayPal. Just leave a comment in this message with your intentions and I’ll set you up with the email address where you can send the money.)

Anyway, these storms and the water leakage were rather stressful on both of us and I was not surprised that Amy was suffering from the same levels of nausea and dry heaves yesterday and today that she had been experiencing over a month ago. So does the return of the gagging signify that she is stressed or that the medication was working? If she’s just stressed, will it go away soon? If it was the medication, I think we may have to get some more evil overlord pills and ride out the rest of the pregnancy like this.

Practice Makesss... zzzzzzz

I don't think I've slept past 4am during the past week. I'm complaining about it less and less, though. It's probably good prep work for what's to come after all. At least for now I'm merely waking up to Amy's tossing or munching rather than someone screaming for my attention. But, I will admit that her mastication of crispity, crunchity food items has earned a special place in my ear as a sound to avoid. It's surprisingly loud in stiller nacht, as it were.

There have been other reasons we've been awake at these dark hours, though. Last night in particular was perilous to my poor stomach acids. Severe thunderstorms were rolling through our area and the thunder never quite abated. This kept both Amy and I awake until I retreated to the basement couch. However, I'd only begun to reach a state of true rest when she woke me up again for a worthy reason: the raccoon, or perhaps raccoons, that have taunted us for so long had penetrated our borders and were wreaking havoc in the attic.

So, when proper business hours rolled into view, we called a local service. They came yesterday morning, determined the point of entry, and placed a trap. I am almost certain that as I type, the furry squatter is struggling for freedom because I have heard thumping on the roof since around 3:30am. Yes, I am awake this morning, too. From the sounds I've heard over the night as well as raccoons' maturation and behavior patterns (from what I have read and been told), this may be the only one, but I would not be surprised if there were two. We'll have to see what happens after today to find out.

Also, I mentioned before that heavy rains were the initial cause of our sleeplessness. It takes the heaviest of rains to overflow our gutters. The event is rare, but when they do, we get water on the eastern part of the basement. It has only happened once in the past three years so until yesterday I was unclear where exactly the water was coming from. Now I know. When the water overflows the gutters, it splashes out directly above one of our basement window wells which is covered by a solid plastic guard. But the cover is old and needs to be replaced. Once that is done, I'll see if I can look at the gutter without killing myself. It's in a very difficult spot for ladder access.

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Now playing: Red Hot Chili Peppers - If You Want Me To Stay
via FoxyTunes

The New (Old) Deck

It's the same as the last one, but the materials aren't rotting away. We went with the composite wood so there's very little maintainence to be done besides general cleaning. It went up so fast that we just have the pictures of the finished product! The grill is a commercial series CharBroil with a side burner. We had the natural gas conversion kit installed, too, so no propane.