armlessbear.com

Neverending Battle of Home Improvements

Often times people display a startling lack of intellectual curiosity. I am as guilty of this as anyone else.
The facts before us:
1)Our hot water heater has serious trouble generating hot water in the winter.
2)The vent in the living room between the sofas blows cold air in the winter.
3)A few, er, mice found their way into our house this spring.

These things are all related, but it took #3 for us to actually tie them together.

A detailed search in the back recesses of our basement where we seldom venture led to a curious discovery. The window back there was missing half the pane of glass. Lest you think we’re incredibly stupid, there was something else in it’s place – the previous owner had set up some venting tube for doing wood working ventilation.

Missing Books :(

It came to my attention late last night that we’re missing 2 books from our little library. We have the distinct feeling that we may have loaned them out to someone at sometime, but don’t know who or when.
So here are the books:
London
Russka
both paperback, in the 1000 page range, and by Edward Rutherford.
If you happen to have then, we don’t need them back immediately, but would like to know where they actually are. If no one has them, well then we’ll have to buy new copies.

Five, Six... Pick Up Sticks

On Sunday I raked up and hauled to the front yard a ridiculous number of branches from the back garden. Then I dug part of my front flower beds and planted in 9 new plants to add some variety to the hostas that have taken over the space. In the middle of all this I made a couple trips to garden centers to pick up the best dirt and potting soil available in Madison. And I’m not telling you where it is. :)

Why I Love My Kitties

Sometimes we’re annoyed by our kitties. Clio demands constant attention, wants to be wrapped around your neck, and has razor sharp claws. Also, she’s kinda dumb. Spike is a big sweet fluff-ball who sheds too much and has lethal cat farts. But they’re part of the family and occasionally very useful.
Last summer they killed 7 or 8 rodent-like critters living in our backyard. Once I got over the ick factor of dead things on my patio, I realized how useful that was. They also appeared to have scared away the bunnies that threatened the garden last year.

Spring? Sprung? Springing?

Last fall we were inattentive lawn people. No grass was mowed, no leaves were raked in the back. The warm weather of the last few days melted snow exposing our laziness to the naked eye. Soggy, icy leaves covered a significant portion of our backyard. I googled around a bit and discovered that with each passing day we were murdering our lawn. Smothering it, inviting burrowing pests, encouraging moss. Oh, the horror, the shame of it all!

Today I spent 2.5 hours in the back yard cleaning up our mess.
I filled 2 old garbage cans and our compost bin with leaves and there are still more leaves that need to find a home. The 2 densely packed garbage cans are for composting later in the season when good carbon sources are scarce.

Bird's Eye View

A while ago I discovered http://maps.live.com and the “Bird’s Eye View” feature available.
After peering closely at the pictures I could tell the approximate date the photos were taken, i.e. late April. Here’s a nice neutral photo of Memorial Union.
It’s nice how they got the early spring shots before the trees completely leafed out obscuring everything. Microsoft is a little vague on who actually supplied the photos for each shot, but whomever it is, they’re waaay more detailed than the folks at Google Maps (which is still my favorite mapping site).
But I digress…

It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood***

• Won’t you be my neighbor?

This afternoon I discovered that my very nice neighbors will be moving this summer. While I’m happy that neighbor guy found a job in a very small, competitive field, I’m sad to see them go. They are great neighbors and nice people.

So, this opens up a spot in our small neighborhood. For those of you who know our address and are interested in the house, they’re one house north of us and we share a driveway.

I don’t know the details of exactly when they’re going, but going they are and it would be awesome if someone we knew moved in next door. So, if you find yourself in the market for a 3br 1ba house with a roomy 1 car garage and a fenced yard in an awesome neighborhood with many, many cool neighbors, I suggest you make plans to move this summer!

Oh my god, someone stole our tree!

Our tree, here this morning, is now but a shadow of it’s former self. By tomorrow afternoon, all that will be left will be firewood.

Speaking of, those of you to whom we promised firewood, come & get it!

Quasi Spring Cleaning

Something in the wind must be changing, or maybe the extended daylight is having an effect on me. I feel the compelling need to clean. It’s weird, but it MUST BE DONE.
I bought a small vacuum cleaner on sale at Target on Sunday. Why would I need a cheap one when I have a very nice expensive one? Because my nice expensive one weighs a ton and is NOT friendly for stair cleaning. Up until several hours ago my upper stairs were coated in fluffy gray cat hair. No more! I left work a teeny bit early so I could go home and vacuum. 17 months after we moved in I finally cleaned the stairs and it felt awesome. I didn’t just stop there, though. I vacuumed air vents, ceiling corners, and areas of the floor where mounds of fluffy gray hair had long been accumulating.

Disaster Looming...

Mere weeks before we moved into our house in 2006 a storm ripped through Madison causing a major branch of the silver maple to split and nose dive into the neighbors’ yard. This was somewhat worrisome. Was the tree sick? Would it die? Would it collapse on the house? Most importantly: how much was it going to cost us?

It seemed to be OK, but it was starting to touch the roof. I had heard that branches touching the roof creates an easy highway for animals and insects to invade your house. This was not a desirable scenario. We called in a tree specialist to look at the tree and give us an estimate of how much it would cost to prune it.