Front deck refurbished

Posted on October 8, 2011 by Steve

New decking. New steps. New handrail, which the front door deck never had before.

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Another wonderful, but hectic, week

Posted on August 30, 2011 by steve

The title would be more accurate to say “ten days” rather than “week”, but the word “week” works better :-) .

Things start (8/19) with me trying to finish up a video I had promised the church for our 50th anniversary celebration weekend. I did finish the video in time and it was much appreciated by the people who were at the weekend celebration. It is about 25 minutes long and includes photos from the church directories over the past 50 years.

Then there was the Habitat House Blessing on Saturday morning, which was wonderful as usual. Another deserving and appreciative family has a new house that is theirs and a new support group to help them take care of the house, and themselves. What a great uplifting experience!

Then we had lunch at the church with all of our church friends. We had Elliot with us because Amelia and Ben were getting ready for the next big event on our calendar …

Amelia’s big birthday party! We went over to the other church where Amelia’s party was scheduled and helped finish setup. The we stayed around for the party. I was in charge (mostly) of keeping Elliot amused so Ben and Grandma could concentrate on the guest of honor and her guests. The party theme was “Princess-Cowgirl-Walk Like An Egyptian.”

There were: a variety of treats for each part of the theme, a pinata, party favors, and a “walk like an Egyptian” dance:

Party guests doing "walk like and Egyptian"

After the party and party cleanup, we (meaning Jo and I) went back to the church for dinner.

[Warning: sad note] We learned while we were eating that the church director of music ministry, and chancel choir director, had suffered an accident during the afternoon while playing on one of the items the church had set up for people to enjoy. One of those ‘big bounce’ things. She hurt both ankles badly enough to require surgery and will be wheel chair bound for a couple of months! We will really miss her as choir director and continue to pray for her comfort and recovery.

Jo and I decided not to stay for the entertainment after dinner. We were already feeling exhausted, for some reason.

The next morning (Sunday) there was a special worship service (just one, instead of the normal two), which included several pastors from the church history and several pastors who were raised at Grace Church. The choir had prepared a special number which included the children’s choir and with a substitute director the song went very well.

Jo and I also opted to skip the lunch on Sunday. We had other things we had to get done.

On Monday, after work, I went to Veedersburg to meet with my sisters and a realtor about the sale of the house there. No details here :-) .

Tuesday, the 23rd, was Amelia’s actual birthday so we had a party for her at home and her Uncle Byron and Aunt Jenelle came over to celebrate. I think she had a good time at this party, too. Grandma made Amelia’s requests for dinner and cupcakes for desert. There were presents here, too, of course.

While we were celebrating Amelia’s birthday, a much anticipated phone call came. Josh (our son-in-law) called to say that Rachel had given birth to our newest grandchild. Selah Abigail was born on the same day as Amelia’s birthday. Not only that, we were going to go to Bloomington to help take care of their older two children (as previously arranged) and the friend who was staying with them already would really like for us to get there ASAP! :-)

We got there at 1:00 on Wednesday morning and relieved the friend. We spent two days there helping out and enjoying time with Elijah and Caleb as well as Rachel and Selah. Josh was really busy with preparations for going to preach two sermons in Indy. We went back home Thursday evening, caught up on chores at home and turned around and went back to Bloomington on Saturday evening.

We stopped in Crawfordsville to visit with my Mom, and at McCormick’s Creek State Park for dinner on the way to Bloomington on Saturday.

On Sunday, Josh, of course, was in Indy for most of the day and then had to prepare for his Sunday evening service. These commitments had been made long ago and the birth of his daughter just happened to fall in the midst of it all. She wasn’t due for another couple of weeks, actually.We did get a chance to go to the Sunday evening service and hear Josh preach (awesome job) and we did get to visit with Josh Sunday night and Monday morning.

We stayed there until Monday mid-day and then came back home and I immediately tried to catch up on lawn mowing.

Things are back to normal this morning. It was nice to watch the sun come up, but then I had to scramble a little to get both Elliot and Amelia to their respective schools in time (:-) I’m happy to be able to do it.

Finally, I got back and spent some very nice time in my workshop. I will probably spend the rest of the day there sanding the top to an entertainment center I’m working on.

Whew!

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Kitchen sink repairs

Posted on August 19, 2011 by Steve

After looking more closely at the plumbing, we decided to try just replacing the riser for the drinking water along with the shutoff valve for that faucet. Jo was concerned that we wouldn’t be able to get the valve off since it was so corroded. We also had to have the water shut off to the whole house because there is no master control valve for the kitchen (nor for any other room, for that matter). But we got everything off. It was at this point, I believe, that she had the brilliant idea that since we already had the water off, and since it wasn’t really all that hard to get the one valve off, and since she had purchased 3 new shutoff valves in 2008 which we still had, that we should just go ahead and replace the other two.
Which we did. So far there is only one small leak, and it is at the connection to the drinking water faucet.

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If it’s not one thing …

Posted on August 16, 2011 by steve

While I was frantically trying to make some progress on a project I’m doing for church (due this Saturday) my wife mumbled from the kitchen “I think we have a serious problem in here…”

She was under the kitchen sink trying to turn off the water to the ice maker in the freezer.

To back up a bit – several days ago the ice maker stopped working. Then it started to work again and a day or two ago it stopped again. We didn’t think too much about it except that we missed the automatic availability of ice since the weather has been so hot.

Then, yesterday at about dinner time, Ben opened the freezer and said, “Have you looked at the ice cube tray?”

The pan that collects the ice cubes when they are being made properly was not empty, as we had come to expect, but it was full of ice. One solid block of ice. The ice maker was leaking rather than filling the cube maker. Not good.

So, back to my wife being under the sink. There was a leak from the tap where the ice maker feed tube was connected to the riser to the sink faucet. She thought it was a shutoff valve, but really it is the handle you use to screw the tap into the riser (a ‘vampire’ tap, in case that means anything to you). So, we figured out, rather quickly, that the real shutoff valve for that faucet needed to be closed. She closed it with some effort (note, she does most of the light plumbing around the house simply because I HATE plumbing :-) ) and decided that there was so much rust and corrosion around all of the shutoff valves and that the galvanized pipe which comes out of the wall behind the sink to receive the valves was rusty enough that we are going to have to get a plumber in to replace the whole thing. We don’t know what it is going to be like inside the wall or how much galvanized pipe there is before it connects to the copper (which we know is the main plumbing in the house, we built it), but one thing I’m pretty sure of … this is going to cost a bundle!

Sigh.

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Closet remodel

Posted on August 4, 2011 by Steve

So, last weekend we took everything out of the game closet and converted it to a clothes closet. I used 4 of the 5 plywood shelves to make a 15.5 in wide shelf “tower”, which went in the center; added 2 closet poles on each side. Jo painted the closet and applied finish to the shelves and on Sunday we had it all together. By Monday we had most of the clothes moved in (which we pretty much finished up on Wednesday).
Now all we need to do is find someplace for the stuff we took out of the closet in the first place.

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OSX Lion

Posted on July 28, 2011 by steve

I just installed MacOSX Lion on my iMac at work. I’m very impressed, so far. Some things seemed to be broken at first but quitting and restarting Chrome and RockMelt (in particular) fixed those problems. Cool new stuff: windows can now be resized from any of the four edges (something I’ve wanted for a long time); mission control (which shows you all of your virtual desktops and app windows, including full screen apps, at once); ‘gestures’ which work on the magic mouse (in lue of a track pad or touch screen); and probably a bunch of other cool stuff. Minor niceties: the login page is prettier; the virtual movement of the desktop screens when you switch between them is more ‘natural’; full-screen mode for all windows, and when you switch to full screen it makes it like another virtual desktop, i.e. you can get back to the windows that were previously on the same desktop as the now full screen window by just scrolling to that desktop or by using mission control.

I’m going to work with it at work for a couple of weeks before deciding if I want to upgrade at home. My wife doesn’t like change :-) .

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Busy, hot, sweaty, satisfying weekend

Posted on July 20, 2011 by steve

This past weekend was unusually hot, and, for me, unusually busy and strenuous. That is if you don’t count Friday morning. On Friday I met my wife for breakfast at Cracker Barrel. It was a great, relaxing time.

Friday afternoon I drove to Veedersburg to help my sisters get the rest of the stuff out of Mom’s attic in preparation for the auction. It was really hot (the air conditioning has been off in the house to save money) and some of the items were big and heavy, although more big than heavy and other than trying to get them down the stairs would not have been too hard to move otherwise. The living room is now full of stuff that has to be sorted by Saturday morning.

It was a good feeling to get the attic empty and the physical exertion was a good thing for me, too.

Saturday I helped on the Grace Church Habitat house. We were in the door and trim painting phase (coat 1). I painted for a while and then got involved in moving things around to keep the others busy with things to paint and places to put them. In addition to the doors and trim, I moved a number of concrete retaining wall blocks (not the Walmart variety … I’m talking about probably 50 or 60 lb. blocks of almost solid concrete) to use them as supports for doors so they could be painted. I was really hot and tired by the time we finished there.

I very much appreciated all the friends helping to build a house for a family who needs it. We had fun and had a sense of accomplishment to have finished the first coat of paint on the doors and trim. The physical exertion was very good for me, as well.

Sunday was less strenuous, but no less hot. We went to the 42nd (? or 43rd) Annual Myers Family Reunion at Turkey Run State Park. Most of the time it was comfortable in the shade, but if you got out into the sun (say, to walk with the grandkids over to the pool and back) it got really hot. And the car was not very cool, either, until we got the AC going. We had a great time, anyway.

What at great time it was to reconnect and re-acquaint with cousins and others who we see only once a year. It is too infrequent, but isn’t it great that we continue to make the effort every year.

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Summertime, how I am spending my summer.

Posted on July 11, 2011 by steve

I keep seeing lists of recommended summer reading. I don’t know how anyone has any time for reading in the summer. Oh, I get some reading done, but not nearly as much as I do when the sun goes down at 6pm rather than 9:30. I have way too much to do in the summer to get much reading done.

However, I am reading The Meaning of Jesus by Marcus Borg and N.T. Wright in e-book form. I also read (also as an e-book) The Devil Colony by James Rollins.

The Devil Colony is an intriguing story that weaves U.S. colonial history, Native American history, Mormonism, ancient Native American curses, National Parks, spies, a super secret international organization, lots of gold and (believe it) nano-technology, into one action packed thriller. I thoroughly enjoyed the book with the possible only negative being the ending which didn’t surprise me at all. I enjoyed the ride, but the destination was a let down. Nonetheless, I can recommend it for a light, enjoyable read. Rollins likes to use a lot of historical and scientific facts in his writing and (at least in this book) explains in an afterword what is true in the story. The fiction is pretty obviously fiction, but some of the facts may need to be documented as such, as he has done, for some who might question the points of fact as presented in the context of the story.

We took a vacation trip in May to Yosemite National Park. My wife was working on a blog post about that, but since then she has been too busy to finish it. I hope to get a chance to add my two cents worth to what she writes. Eventually.

Since then, family, yard work and woodworking have dominated my free time. We had much rain, and more this spring, so every time it dried out enough to mow the lawn that had to be done just to keep up with it. It takes 3 to 4 hours to mow our lawn once and that is with a 42″ ZTR mower. Yes we probably mow too much. When the weather was good enough to do outdoor work, but not dry enough for mowing, I had to catch up on splitting and stacking firewood (done!) and pruning some shrubs that have got out of hand (not anywhere near finished with that, yet) and cutting down a bunch of ‘weed’ trees that have somehow grown up in the shrubs and in the parts of our property that we don’t mow (also not anywhere near done). I should wash windows sometime, too, but that is a two person job (inside and outside) and my other person has enough to keep her busy well after dark as it is.

As for woodworking – I finally got some time to buy and plane the boards I will use to make the top of the entertainment center I’m working on. I am almost ready to glue them together.

Also, I have spent some time helping my sisters to get ready for the auction of our mother’s household items. Mom is in a nursing home and will never need the stuff again; and she could use the money from the sale to pay bills. I also visit Mom every other week if I can.

We spent a couple of days last weekend visiting our daughter’s family to celebrate Elijah’s birthday. He is one of our two 3-year-old grandsons. We had a great time visiting with all of the kids and grandkids there. We took Amelia and Elliot with us and Ben joined us later. There may be pictures posted here later. One never knows.

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Towers of Midnight

Posted on June 27, 2011 by Steve

I took a break from Wright’s book to read a fantasy novel that I’ve been waiting for for about a year.
The latest book in the Wheel of Time series, Towers of Midnight, finally begins to focus all of the characters on one central point. I can’t say enough about how much I appreciate what Sanderson has done with this series.

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Split some firewood today

Posted on May 6, 2011 by steve

I am very happy that I was able to split some firewood today. It is the first time I’ve done that since having knee surgery a little over a year ago. I really missed the exercise wood splitting gives me. I feel great. Tomorrow I’ll be sore, of course, but that is a good feeling, too. The knee is a little sore now, but I also did a lot of other things today in addition to the wood splitting.

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