Raincharm’s Weblog

We took a walk today.
Unplanned, and we were sort of unprepared.

We had our feet, and a compass (smart phone), and were within range of  home.

The folks we had spent much of the last 24 hours with were getting ready to head south to Eugene, and our home was north, so we decided to let them leave and opt for the bus or walk. It was not raining, as had been predicted, so we set off on foot.

5.75 miles and 937 feet of vertical gain later we arrived home.

5.75 miles – vertical route

There was also 881 feet of vertical descent, although I would have guessed we were higher than home at the start of the walk.
Much of the vertical gain happened very quickly, near the beginning.
The program we were using also had us at 37 feet below sea level at the lowest point.
This would be the Fremont Bridge crossing, but we did manage to stay dry.

The reason for the Eugene contingent’s visit was the Sounder’s game on Saturday.
They got to see a great game. Both of the kids are great soccer players. One is driven – practicing on his own.

Carl and the kids had a great time goofing off.

This morning we finally got to do some serious Seattle touristing, going to the base of the Space Needle, and generally hanging around at the Seattle Center for a bit.

James’ jacket isn’t really light blue. It is green. Apparently green clothes make for poor choices when using green screen technology. Some of the other backgrounds offered with the Space Needle Tourist shots have buildings in the background. On those he has buildings in his mid-section.

On the walk home we started seeing faces in all sorts of inanimate objects.
Our favorite.

Salvador Dali?

We also ran into 3 Little Free Libraries. (Libraries set up in front yards. Neighborhood lending)

And a squirrel enjoying some delicacy.

The troll was inviting small children in for a snack too.

Now our goal is to get energy going again to get a bit more packing done.
This morning I was working on tents, sleeping bags and winter accessories.

Today should have been a very productive day.

It actually started out somewhat productively.
While waiting for my carpooler to call I was able to condense some of Ashlan’s school history into a smaller box.
I did not have time to get to Rey’s – that had to wait for the evening.

Finally left to pick up my carpooler, who had biked to the coffee stand.
His bike safely in the back of the car, we started for work.

This is bike to work day, so he was sort of doing his part.
Bike to coffee, and bike HOME from work.
We are about 25 miles away, with some significant hills, so I will cut him some slack.

Crossing the 520 bridge I saw something I had never seen before.

A bicycle in the middle of the bridge.
Actually on the approximately 1-foot wide “shoulder” outside of the travelled lane.

520 is not made for bicycles to use.
I-90 does have a pedestrian/bike path on one side.
And  most of the buses crossing the bridge include bike racks.
And the new 520 bridge, currently under construction, will have bike paths.

But apparently this person decided to make some sort of a point.
I think the point he made was that the expansion joints on 520 were not made safe for bicycles.
Since he was just after one of these joints, I think he blew a tire. Or a wheel.

We had just seen the “Incident Response” truck heading the other direction.
I think he was heading for a quick turnaround to rescue this bicyclist.

Back to work – which we did reach at about the right time.

There is an issue going on at work, and I am trying to sort of stay out of the main fray.
With limited success.

There was a particular issue that I just knew was going to rear its ugly head today, and despite my boss’s assurances that I would not have to deal with it this morning – I did. My boss was at offsite meetings all morning, so it landed in my lap.

We got through it fine, but it disrupted my time, and my brain.

Couple that with some a couple asking us to move a water main.
They claim that the location of our main is adding $200,000 to the cost of their house.
I think the 24 foot tall wall with a temporary pile wall is not required because of our little water main. I think it is because they are digging 24 feet into a hillside.

Oh well. I spent the last half hour of the day leafing through a clothing catalogue.
Even the fun things have deadlines. (This is for logo attire.)

On the house front the forms were removed from the base of our 3-4 foot foundation wall.
I don’t know exactly home much this foundation is going to cost, but certainly less than $200,000.

I don’t have much to share, but thought I would try for two days posting in a row.

More work went forward on the house.
Contractor work – pouring the base of the new foundation.

foundation pour #1

Carl work – focused on our upstairs kitchen cleaned out.

Almost empty kitchen

Now – we never used this as a kitchen, but it had been set up like a mother-in-law apartment.
I think it was really a daughter apartment.

The stove and refrigerator were gone when we moved in.
We removed the kitchen sink.
This project will remove the 220 plug for the stove, and the cabinet that held the kitchen sink.
We are retaining the 1950’s (I think) white upper cabinets.

I am now going to go through some things for retaining/repacking or removing from our life.

Rey arrived on Sunday – see the last post.
Ashlan’s flowers arrived on Monday.
Again they were unexpected, showing up in my office when I returned from an afternoon of meetings.

Ashlan’s Flowers

Since I was working, Carl & Rey did a little sightseeing.

We joined Ashlan in watching King Felix pitch for the Mariners on Tuesday night.
Of course she was closer to him, but we probably had a better view.

Some of us are more regal than others

Kevin was there too, but would not sign the waiver so I could post his picture.

Wednesday morning we had one last chance to hang out for a bit.
A final breakfast before he headed back to the eastern time zone.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, work has continued.

The framing/rebar passed inspection today and the concrete pour is tomorrow.

And tonight Dennis has joined us from Portland. In a few more days we will be joined by four from Eugene. The Oregon connection remains strong.

Actually did not sleep in this Mother’s Day.
I got up and called home.
Spent some time chatting with my parents – a nice conversation.

Did a little work, and then it was off to the ball park for the Mother’s day game.

The Mariner’s provided a bracelet.

Carl provided a ball.

And then I got the best present ever. A surprise visit.

All the way from Tennessee, and I really had no idea.
I actually had been mentioning that Ashlan had called but not Rey.
I thought he might be working at a game, so I checked their schedule.
They were in town yesterday, but gone today.

Carl kept this secret. Apparently for many months.
This is no small feat, especially for Carl.

It has indeed been a happy Mother’s day.

Love you too, Ashlan.
Thanks for keeping the secret.

That stands for our dinner tonight.

• Bacon (of course)
• Egg – scrambled (acts like bread)
• Lettuce (green is good)
• Tomato

Yummy. I tried, and somewhat succeeded in eating it like a sandwich.
Carl made little bite size stacks for each bite.

The last few days have seen some real work on the house project.

West end of old side sewer (gutter connection going up)

New side sewer (looking west)

Hole turned inside out

Of course, there are the downsides.
Still no place to live.
Too much packing to do, and we will need to go beyond our current 2 storage units.

On the good news side, Rey came out of surgery pretty well.

Hopefully the last sling

We spotted a sunfish at Green Lake the other day.

Sunfish

The mask has been packed into the mask box.

The Mask

Or hopefully, just Rat.

Work, physical work, by somebody other than Carl or me has started.

More demolition, but by a guy that could be our kid (except he has a german accent), and is happy to be working in the outdoors. The first bit is demolishing the concrete walk on the backside of the house. Next will be digging for the side sewer.

A portion of the side sewer must be relocated. Because the foundation at the end of the kitchen is being relocated, and will be too close to the new end of the house.

Earlier yesterday the contractor was here with a plumber to more definitively locate the side sewer by snaking up the pipe from inside, and using the locator on the outside to sense where the snake was. This should limit useless digging in the wrong place.

I also had him undo the plug from our floor drain. (Don’t ask – I think I was addled by sewer fumes when I allowed a previous plumber to plug the drain to keep sewer fumes from entering the basement. Definitely a treat the symptom, not the problem.)

All this activity apparently disturbed a sewer rat.

When Carl was brushing his teeth last night he called out that there was a “mouse” in the toilet.
It was not a mouse. It was a small or young rat. Not in very good shape.

The floor drain in the basement was still open, so I put its cover back on. (We had a family of rats enter this way before. The cover is now covered with 1/4″ hardware cloth.)
But after a short thought I realized the rat had come up through the toilet.
This is not that unusual.
The sewer pipes are not full of water, and there is only a short bit of underwater work to get from the wet pipe to the dry house.

HINT: This is one reason to keep your toilet lid closed. The light reflecting through the water in the  toilet shows the rats where they will be able to get out.

Carl trapped it in an old peanut jar (Costco). This morning I disposed of it in the back of the back yard. Life cycle – I am guessing either a crow or raccoon will be happy to find a morsel. (This sounds very cold, but it was not done without some drama.)

I started the morning doing some physical work so he could do his part. Moving a pile of bricks, and other assorted debris from the digging area. And disposing of the dead bodies – which is usually done after you dig the hole.

Last night I cut down the rose bush. It was a lovely rose bush, and we never did anything to keep it going. My kind of plant.  I did not dig up the main plant, but it is in an area of construction. There is some chance that it will be able to regrow next year. Maybe.

And later today the trash haulers are supposed to be here.
I don’t know how much this is going to cost, but it has to be better than many trips to the dump.
Sometimes you just have to let others make their living.

Before the Great Haul

After – I think the ground underneath the house is rebounding

We just about filled their truck

1 year old – Kingdome

2 years old – Kingdome

4 years old – Kingdome

4 years old – not the Kingdome

10 years old – Kingdome

10 years old – Family in the Kingdome

11 years old – Safeco

12 years old – Safeco

2005 Birthday party

2012 We Are Wilhelmsen

2012 Felix’s Perfect Game

Love you and miss you

Asbestos – took the (hopefully) last load to the disposal site on Saturday.

House cleaning – not much this weekend got done. Except the asbestos.

Mariners – yes they are in town, which explains why not much else got done.

But Carl managed to get his air-time back up just a bit.

• Friday – almost got a home run. (Also note the Beard-hat beard in the lower left corner)

Almost caught it. Notice the glove is extended above the hand

• Sunday – got some good air time (it’s the fez) at the beginning of the broadcast.
  “Bringing out the fez hat … that’s a little out of my league.” Dave Simms – broadcaster

The year of the fez

• Monday – getting Saunder’s leadoff home run on his comeback from the DL – link for the video.
  Notice how quickly Carl moves. And it was COLD at the game tonight.

OK – enough of the fun stuff.
Time to work.

I think it has finally hit Carl that we need to move just about everything out of the house.
He has been in motion, moving things to storage.

Today was a bit of a slow start, but I managed to get accomplished two things that were hanging over my head.

1. Finishing the asbestos removal from the back alcove.
2. Deconstructing our Universal Exercise Machine, otherwise known as the Parabody.

Carl had done most of the asbestos removal, and there were some bits hanging on near the ceiling. One step-ladder, a Seattle’s Best Coffee bag, hammer, favorite tool ever, and full asbestos removal attire. Even wore the prescription safety glasses.

Thanks TEd

I suppose the task will not be completely finished until we fill out the final paperwork at the disposal site. And I do need to tape the bag/box/bags together. I am afraid if I do this some more asbestos will peek out from around the corner. But hey, I still have more special yellow bags in waiting.

And I found an ancient key on top of an old electrical box. It did not fit any of the current locks on the doors. Perhaps I should go try it on some neighbor’s houses.

The Universal, otherwise known as the elephant in the room, has been just waiting for a resolution.

Elephant in Plastic

So I found the instructions for putting it together, gathered the tools (they had nicely listed the socket sizes on the front of the instructions), and started in. In the end, it was fairly easy. It did require two people eventually, to hold up pieces when they were ready to come off. If I had known how easy it would be we could have worked without the elephant in the room! And I took pictures throughout the deconstruction, to help with the eventual reconstruction.

Excuse the lack of a shirt. He was working hard today, and got warm.

We even got the elephant over to the second storage locker.
It did take two trips, but a definite feeling of accomplishment.

Starting the filling of Storage Locker #2

You may notice in the picture that there are several buckets on the right. These all hold baseballs that are in good enough shape to be used for practicing. There are approximately 450 baseballs here. We have about 150 more at home (for use right now). And that doesn’t include the 180 that are being thrown out.

Baseballs past their prime

I would like to see the trash hauler’s face when they empty this load tomorrow.

And the sun has finally made an appearance. But instead of a walk I think it is time to make dinner.