Progress in the Art of Electric Metering

Bewildering week it was, with a change-up weekend. At least I feel exhausted now, as opposed to a few days ago where I could barely do anything intelligible outside of work, and yet wasn't feeling particularly sleepy. In bed by 8-something after a try-and-fail lodge expedition Friday night helped charge the batts a bit and made getting a crack on things early the next morning all the more easy. On the upside, I didn't burn another vacation day...sitting through 8 hours of Friday boredom, and I was able to get the necessary bricks and mortar ordered over lunch.

Saturday, then, progress central. Finished the last upstairs wallpaper. Gave the upper fascias a good coat of paint so they'll be ready for installation next Friday when I get the picker. Masked and stained the interior clerestory window trim. Started work on the west soffit light and bullet lights. Mixed up mud and gave the east wall another skim coat before the "Sisaling" slated for this week. Plus finished the formica on the last kitchen countertop (on the island). Lights and upper cabs in there and we're done. Came home around 6, washed up and hung out with Cara and took in a fantastic LW show from 1960; Tribute to the Big Bands. We meandered up the hill for some pipe tobacco and cider. Pretty quiet out.

Met Cam and Ben at the PL and we ventured up to Janesville Days for excellent weather and semi-cold beer…in the street. Highlights also included taking in a fight inside the Panther. Pepperoni pizza under the stars at Suds, idling outside the Raceway watching people pay 25 bucks a head for the Night of Fire and a brief stop at the Hydrant to let us know what we weren't missing.

The fantastic weather continued Sunday but a lack of usable wall texture meant I'd have to sacrifice part of the afternoon for a Menards run. After hauling the old gates from the road to the lodge with the trailer, giving our trees some attention, masking the bathroom and cleaning up test efforts (outside) to use mixed popcorn texture, I set forth to the parents to get laundry started. Menards could also hold legitimate claim to "busiest place on earth" for a Sunday afternoon. Got what I needed, more laundry at the 'rents until I get a proper hookup at the lodge, and then load-up time. Some furniture, a mattress, a '48 television. I set out like a bad episode of the Beverly Hillbillies and managed not to get the mattress (tied on to the roof) airborne.

Mixed the texture, drug the heavy compressor upstairs and sprayed the bathroom walls; turned out alright for a first effort. The parents showed to give a hand with the mattress and the Steelcase furniture I packed in their Outlook. Highlight of the weekend was really dinner on the deck with Cara. A legitimate spooling down without obligation knocking at the back door. Sun setting, deer venturing into the fields, Sub City and a cold libation. And not 1 but 2 rabbits working busily on the clover. Big deal you say. Well, when you build a place in a cornfield all the trimmings and expectations of suburbia do not necessarily follow. Orioles and gold finch we have plenty of. Now if we could attract a few squirrels.

Thomas Jefferson was a Jerk

Brief weekend, to put it bluntly. I took Friday off to get a jump on finishing the front-upper fascias, and you'd think that'd be nice to get a day away from work. But when you burn vacation on projects that just won't end, instead of lounging in the sun someplace, the time off is bittersweet. Of course it means I can work late Thursday nights with wreckless abandon. Which I ended up doing (let's not get too crazy here!). And meeting late in the eve with the mason that will take on the brick job as his schedule permits.

Friday was off with a bang, spent the AM fixing and finishing the rear PH siding, then moved onto interior staining, followed by the front fascias per the plan, and burning an hour or so directing gravel to be spread along different portions of the farm lane. It's a good thing I don't measure cash flow in terms of Mac Mini's. Or Airport Expresses, for that matter. Packed up shop a bit after six, and met up with the crew at the PL around 8. A more rambunctious night than usual, and Cam and I closed the place down in high style!

Saturday. Slow, methodical, 8 hour bathroom tile session. But the day was saved with a late dinner with Cara at Bourbon Street. Note to Beck: turn the treble down a touch on your background music. Then to the parents to help with the iMac which has been a touch flaky the past 6 months. It should not take 2 hours to boot up, and do so without errors. Even after a fresh install on a formatted drive.

The cool weather made Sunday perfect for working outside but the sun let you know who was boss by the end of the afternoon. We started with an early morning run to Menards, then hauled up a trailer-full of treated lumber from the lodge to the road to work. I cut back A LOT of fence weeds while Cara ran in for some 2 stroke oil for the inaugural run of the post-hole digger. I wished we had snapped a "before photo" of the entry off the road. End of the day we had a complete north fence from road to gate installed and painted, half the work completed on the south side. One of two new gates installed and painted, and prep work for the other complete. A real Kodachrome transformation with vivid blue and white oil-based paint and green grass and flowers. Plus a lot of gawking from passers-by, probably wondering why we were dressing up the entrance to "just a field".

Right to Dry

I fell short of my rather ambitious list of things to get done at the lodge this weekend, despite putting in almost 30 hours of solid time in 3 days, plus a visit to Menards. But Cara put things in perspective for me last night. At the end of the weekend we had a fully padded and carpetted upstairs. The top-of-stairs door was modified and hung. The kitchen sink was installed and we had leak free plumbing…huzzah, running water! The countertop backsplashes were 90% done. Kitchen island totally banded and needing only 1 sheet of formica to go. Plus all our yard work punctuating Sunday. Cara ran the riding mower for 7 hours straight and I gave a hand up at the road with the push mower and weed whip. Finally, measurements for the fencing.

Friday evening both the carpet installer and myself were totally beaten but the temptation of cold beer at the PL was too good to pass up. After seeing the installer out I finished the few things I was working on and Cara and I joined Cam, then Mia, then Katherine later in the eve to share stories of "the storm", but the 10 hour day, compounded by only a couple hours sleep had Cara and I packing before midnight. Slept like a log.

Saturday night made up for lost time that morning running to Menards for supplies. I had Dick Bartley on the AM, and working on countertops in the kitchen meant an inaugural meal of Pizza Rolls in the '60 Frigidaire oven was not out of the question. Fired it up around 10:30PM and broke out the ice cold High Life. Not bad. Hitched up the trailer in the dark around 11 and headed in, keeping my eye on the low, orange moon.

Sunday then meant prying our lifeless bodies out of bed, getting on the road, forcing the riding mower into the trailer and annoying just about every speed demon that came along on North Union. Long day. But sunny, and not nearly as humid as Saturday night. Cleaned up around 9 and we hit up the OP for cold Schlitz and fantastic pizza.

Which brings me back to Thursday night. I got home late from the lodge and ended up not getting to bed until at least midnight. Only a few hours in and we were both awoken by that unmistakable sound of trees being shaken by high winds and torrential rain. We raced around the apt in the dark, closing windows and surveying how much water had come onto the porch when the lights up and down the street went out. Through the sheets of rain Cara pointed out through the bedroom window that the top of our backyard tree was gone. I could only make it out aided by the flashes of lightning and thought it merely double over on itself. Clearly, this was more than a thunderstorm. As the wind escalated and the noise level outside grew to deafening proportions I wondered, "Why weren't the sirens going off?" Seconds later it got very violent. We hit the floor as hail pounded the building and the cracks and groans of the old trees let us know they were giving way. The rain pounded the glass and siding and we expected the windows to blow in at any moment. No joke. In fact, the windows in the apt downstairs did.

Then….the winds calmed, but the rain would not let up. 3" worth when all was said and done. With a flashlight we started drying things on the porch. It was approaching 4AM. Then it hit me. If the parents (who were in MN) lost power the way seemingly half the town had, the sump pumps wouldn't be pumping. The amount of damage this would cause is unthinkable. We grabbed whatever clothes we could find and raced down the steps in the rain, did our best to avoid the ankle deep lake in the backyard and made our way to the Blazer. The tree I thought had doubled over had actually split at the crotch and dropped 40' worth of trunk mere inches from our cars. It had come to rest both on the ground and supported by the trunk phone and cable lines over our vehicles. Getting across town was a lot more difficult than we had imagined. First with the alley blocked by a tree that had also fallen on a Mercury. We 4x4'd our way to pavement with the wipers running on high. Second, almost every turn yielded a blocked road. At one point on 18th I was driving through water that was up over the truck's frame and doing my best to figure out how we were going to proceed with 2 blocks of snapped power poles in front of us. House lights west of Hudson Rd. gave us some relief and we found the pumps running at the parents. But the carnage through town was pretty amazing. Rather than a tornado's wandering path of destruction, it seemed as if the whole town had been hit with equal force from above. Thankfully, the only damage to homes was wind torn fascias, broken windows and lost trim; cars didn't fare so well with all the falling detrius, however.

Next, to the lodge where we had some water intrusion, but the place was still there (and the road a freakin' river). Then to my grandma's around 4:30AM where trees had toppled ripping down her feed from the transformer. She slept through the storm, but without power, her basement was flooded.

We returned home, and eventually got an hour or two of sleep as the idiots in the frat house behind us tried to noisily clear a path out of the alley. I ended up using a tow rope to drag the blocked limbs clear and with some help from Cara and others we drug it out of the way. That's how you start a Friday.

More Bang for Your Buck

Even though the 4th has passed, it still feels like summer is just getting started. Maybe it's the current, hurried pace that keeps me from glancing at the clock too long, or the oddly cool weather we've been having the past week or two. Whatever it is, I'm not going to complain.

Cara and I set off last week for the annual N. Minnesota pilgrimage, and, leaving on the 3rd, planned our route accordingly to avoid the heavy holiday traffic around the twin cities. While we added a couple hours to the drive, never once did we find ourselves at a standstill or for lack of genuinely interesting scenery. Getting out of Iowa, we managed 57W to Sinclair, surveying the recovery of last year's tornado that destroyed their elevator and snapped hundred year old trees like twigs. Then on up 14 through Greene, eventually onto the 4-lanes "to make time" as far north as Owatonna. From there it was a laundry list of small-town Minnesota. New Ulm, Sleepy Eye, Hector, Willmar, etc. Allowing plenty of opportunities to stop and snap pics or do some snooping. Walmart provided a) a new car battery and b) fixin's and an ice chest for lunch. After a few hours more we stopped for lunch at Sibley State park, found a nice grassy spot in the shade near a stone and timber shelter likely built by the CCC, and had ourselves a meal while being scolded by a red squirrel. Then onward another couple hours to our destination, the final leg intentionally taking some very back roads to see the scenery.

An after-thought before we set out that day, I cross checked several of the small MN towns against a list of closed Drive-in theaters to see if we had any hits. Indeed. But finding them without addresses, nor knowing whether there were any remains, was the challenge.

Sidebar: Drive-in cataloging is difficult work, given the great number, and short lifetime of some drive-in theaters, especially in areas that couldn't support such a theater for more than a few years. Having only screen and snackbar, mother nature can work fast recovering what was once there, and developers especially like already graded plats making it ideal to plant a megastore right on top of an old DI location. One gent uses Terraserver satellite images to investigate a locale once he knows a drive-in existed in the area. Sometimes you can make out the "baseball diamond" footprint of an old theater, though cornfield or walmart usually makes that very difficult.

Hector, MN supposedly had a DI but we couldn't find it. A gent in town pointed us to one he knew once existed in Buffalo, MN, so down the road we went. All that was left was the snack bar now storage building, and concrete piers that once anchored the screen. Wadena, MN had a DI and the towering tin of the neon sign/marquee still stands, though if it were to disappear, one would never know given the trees and brush that have taken back the land over the past 20 years.

The Long DI in Long Prairie opened in 1956 and is still operating today. I was able to snap off a few pics along a fenceline in the rain, but being the middle of the day, the gates at the road were locked and it was a long, wet approach into a wooded area to get to it. Must be something to see in the twilight...

So yeah, we found a few DI's.

Never a dull moment- boat rides, fireworks, the annual trip to the transfer station to stand in awe of appliances accumulating in the sun. And to date many of them, easily providing service for 5 or 6 decades continuously. Think about that for a minute. Even worked in a trip to the parents new place to help get a 300lb diving platform into their lake.

We made the mistake of taking 4-lane back to CF and ended up in stand-still traffic north of Minne, likely due to an accident as it was mid-day Tuesday. A sly exit and our 2-lane escape plan put us back on the road. Even with what must have been a 3 hour stop at IKEA, we managed to get home shortly before dark, Blazer loaded down. Now if only we could get a vacation to recover from our vacation.

The Cedarloo HyVee on top of the StarLite Drive-In outfield.

A Week of Sundays

The ring is in sight, but of course the 4th Holiday makes this a short work week, and an oil change, haircut, carwash, etc. is in the cards for tonight (and getting a jump on sleep would be nice), so that's meant packing a week's worth of duties into 3 days. Burning 2 hours vac Tue and Wed meant _almost_ getting in a full day of work at the desk job jockeying meetings and surprisingly fitting in another honest 7 hours each night at the lodge. Not that I'd want to do that regularly, but I've had weekends that've felt more taxing out there. Last night was nice, though. Cara came out shortly before dusk to christen the freshly-installed commode (or at least hit the flush lever a few times for novelty's sake) and we had pizza out on the deck as the sun set, watching the deer roam the fields. Afterwards, she watered the crab apples while I glued down the last black VCT in the washer area.

July will be a month of tying up loose ends, contracting out cement and brick work, and getting down and dirty with the outdoor assignments. Oh yeah, and that whole moving heavy, awkward, irreplaceables out to the lodge that has Cara a bit worried.

Poor Walmart. They know they'll no longer be the only game in town and they're putting on their best poseur threads to fit in with the cool kids. The whole exterior has been painted (light beigy brown from the old blue) and comically, their new outbuilding sign is now light blue with white type. Speaking of type, they've dropped the Sam Walton era typeface and gone with a "cool" softer look that's so very now. They've been studying the playbook pretty closely: setting their aisles on diagonals, building a freestanding pharmacy, adding "dramatic" lighting and track grids over the bakery and produce areas. They even changed out the bulbs in the upright freezers, or at least pulled the diffusers, for a "crisp" effect, which isn't as "crisp" as it is hard-on-my-eyes. They even had a landscape crew busy out front Tuesday but their asphalt wasteland is no match for all the trees and green across the street. The only good to come of this is that when I stopped in after leaving work, I noticed the prices were once-again hitting reasonable levels. Loaf of bread: <$2. Two liter of Vault: $1. Totinos: $0.98

Still, they falter. I hear the merchandise continues to move around the store inexplicably. And in the great beigoning, someone thought it'd be a good idea to paint all the rough-face block while they were at it. Oh, the desperation.