Get Busy Living

Project 365: October Hauntings

Still, the motivation is lacking and the camera just doesn’t readily come to hand.  Even taking motorbike rides and not taking many pictures.  For shame on me!  I do enjoy picking up the camera, sometimes it just seems like so much “work”.  Guess I am keeping my head down more often that looking around…

Project 365: September Ramblings

I’m still having issues picking up the camera and capturing the beauty around me.  We seem to have taken many rides during the month, so the few images there are, are dominated by motorbike wanderings. 

Project 365: August Megrims

Broken trucks. Close ups. Riding. Sunrise. Waterfalls. WWJD. Night shots. Deer.

It was a hot, slow, stressful month.

Forgotten Paths

There was a department meeting today.  We have to go downstairs to the employee training room to accomodate all of us.  And while sitting there listening to the “interesting” going on’s I happened to glance out the window and remember there was a short walking trail around the building.  And part of that walking trail went near the “lake” in front of the building.

I call it a “lake” jokingly as there are buildings on 2 of the four sides and a road on one other.  Any rain in the area washes the roads and parking lots of the buildings of debris and toxic substances and moves it right into the lake.  I have actually seen people fishing in this little lake.  I really hope they don’t take it home and eat it.  I just imagine the three-eyed fish in the Simpson’s.

Back to my point…I have become so focused at just getting to work, doing my job and going home that I had forgotten that I used to enjoy a stroll on that path every once-in-a-while.  So I took that stroll today in wonderful 77F coolness.  I took the camera along too.  A couple trees are early changers and Autumn is perceptible to the observant.  Not really so with any of the trees around the building, but I did snap some shots of some leaves on the ground that could have been changing.

I discovered that I was not the only interloper on this trail today.  I only found one small partial, straight tread footprint to prove that someone had been here ahead of me.

I never saw any other careless left about footprints.  Alas, they had vanished.

Then I decided to look up for evidence of Autumn.  I wasn’t rewarded with evidence, but the light illuminating some of the leaves was wonderful.  With just a little hint of sky peaking through.

I hope you each had an enlightning walk of your own today and enjoyed some quiet time.

My First Wreath…

I’ve been reading a domestic goddess’ website recently.  One of those goodie-two-shoes that just has everything perfect, can cook perfectly, has all of the perfect dishes and accessories for any themed party you would like to have on any scale from two people to a house full of people.  Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing what she has done and wish I could be more like that.  I have neither the money nor the patience…

I am aching to do something with this wonderful Autumn that we are finally seeing.  I just don’t know how to channel my energies and get my motivation started.  I keep daydreaming about baking apple pies or pumpkin something-or-other.  I would love to have Meg Ryan’s House in the moving “Hanging Up” just so I could put hay bales and corn stalks along my wonderful sausalito tiled porch or hallway.  But somehow I don’t think hay bales or corn stalks would look all that great on my tiny entrance porch surrounded by vinyl siding and stone.

However…perusing her site and I see she had posted instructions on making a wreath.  Looking back on it now, I realize I have gone way overboard on the cattails.  But hey…it’s my first, be gentle.  And…since they are only wound into the grapevine I can easily pull them out anytime I want!

Just couldn’t correct the colors well in the software.  They are actually quite warm in reds and oranges and peaches.

Flooding Waters

This house, and we, are not strangers to flooding problems.  Or any problems that seem to involve H2O in any of its forms.  I don’t believe we have dealt with steam, but I think the water and flooding is enough.

Getting home late one Saturday night from the movies, we find two dogs sniffing around our gate.  We don’t recognize them from the neighborhood at all.  Trying not to startle them, we park at the end of the drive and make nice to see if they have any collars.  Not having any of that trickery they run off.

What does this have to do with flooding?  While they were running off we saw the moon reflecting from the liriope (ornamental grass).  The moon should not be reflected from grass and soil.  Investigating more closely produces squelching sounds and wet feet.

Hoping that the neighbors had left a hose running, we check uphill.

No. Such. Luck.

We investigate our own uphill yard.  Still, nothing.  Our Japanese Maple is getting lots of water for no reason.  We pull the shovels out and start digging.  We can now only assume that the water line between the meter and house is broken.  We are hoping it will be something super easy and we can put a patch on it until we can have it fixed professionally.

We dig down and definitely hit the new water table.  We are slinging lots of mud.  We come to a pipe, thinking it was in a path that would have been in line with the meter.  But it just doesn’t seem deep enough.  This isn’t the location of the problem though.  We can excavate more, but should we?  Turning the water on at the meter reveals a rapid river pushing from an area near the pipe, so we are quite close.

But this just doesn’t seem deep enough to be the water pipe!  There is a very slim possibility that this could be the gas line, so we prudently decide to do nothing.  Light of day and a little more digging by the professionals reveal that we were extremely close, this was the proper pipe and there wasn’t any hope of repair.

35 year old galvanized pipe doesn’t age well.

I was commited to a ride for the the day, it was too late to cancel.  And there wasn’t much I could do at home anyways.  As stated, the pipe was definitely not in any condition to be repaird.  Master of the Mechanical Stuff stayed home to wait for the professionals and I rode the scenic byways of the mountains.

The job was too big, and there wasn’t enough time in the day to finish, so the repair was scheduled for Monday.  This time I stayed home and supervised the work of having a bright and shiny copper line installed from the meter to the house.

This hard pack Georgia clay was giving the trencher a run for its money.

No. Depth isn’t to code.  And pipe has to be cemented to the foundation still.

The job took hours longer then normal or rightfully expected.  The trencher tried to drill through the soil so as not to disturb plants, planters and grass.  It was painfully obvious that wouldn’t work when he drilled 18 feet of pipe and we couldn’t find the end of it.  It had veered off somewhere in the distance and there was no telling where it had gone.

We were aghast to discover that a 12 inch depth is code around here.  I mean, we come from warmer climes that have a deeper code.  We asked for the new line to be placed at 24 inches or deeper if possible.  In some places it was possible, but I think we ultimately averaged around 20 inches depth.  From the image above, it is definitely not to code under any circumstances and we had to have the technician return and correct the situation.

The plumbing on the interior of the house is copper, it was just the outside line that was bad.  But they had to drill and chisel out the old line from the foundation and wall framing.  We also pushed the plumbing system a little closer to the modern age by having a pressure valve installed.

Tearing the house apart!

The image above shows the interior plumbing that we are dealing with.  These pipes follow a poorly insulated outside wall and are in a room that is not actively heated.  The past couple of winters have seen exceptionally cold temps that have resulted in frozen pipes for the washing machine.  Again…water…  Hence the spray foam acting as some sort of insulation.  But it had to be removed to make way for the new stuff.  Don’t work, those are not new scorch marks on the wall.  They have been there a long, long time.

The primary job took a day and the water tasted and smelled of solder for a couple days.  But it is amazing how much better the water tastes through brand new copper tubing.  More pictures available on Flickr.

Project 365: July Swelters

Getting over my cold made riding much more accessible.  We started playing a motorcycle tagging game.  The deer started wandering around the property.  The main water line to the house broke.  Reached 25K miles on my bike.  Simple things in life.  The only problem was that the hot weather came into the region a month early!

Project 365: June Doldrums

I was in a tailspin during most of June, dealing with what occurred at the end of May and having some nasty cold.  Life went on, but I was not in any mood to pick up a camera.  Spirits started lifting towards the end of June and the camera came back out to try and pick up the pieces again.

Project 365: May’s Flowers

I know that I have not been keeping up with this, but when no one comments or gives feedback I kinda feel like I am talking to myself in a dark room.  But I am going to try and update this with the intervening 365 images for the time being.

May was a good month and a very, very bad month.  The highlight was a wonderful visit from my dad where we toured all around Georgia; from Atlanta to Plains to Savannah.  And we even threw some drag races in for fun.  The bad stuff I am not going to talk about.

Project 365: April showers

Time is marching relentlessly on.  People look at the calendar and say “Jeez!  It’s already May!”  And it is…  This year is passing by a little too fast.  But I will probably regret saying that with such forlornness later in the year when I will be wishing that I am once again this busy.

April has treated us with some wonderful times!  Riding nekked, pine pollen coating the world, motorcycle marshalling for the Multiple Sclerosis Atlanta to Athens Bicycle Ride, one day of laziness in the hammock, overnight motorcycle trips for each of us, just not together, new tires and my brother coming to visit just to ride with us.  We’ve had great fun and seem to have even more planned for May.  So wait and see what might spring up with the April showers.