April 2004

April 12, 2004: After three weeks of "Rock, Paper, Scissors" or, "Best 67 out of 68" (but who's counting?) I'm back in the saddle for this journal entry. Somehow, I don't think the Kilted One actually cared whether he wrote this particular entry or not. Personally, I think he was just pissed because last time I called him a meerkat.

So wow... it's been weeks since we've updated the Journal! Thanks much for your patience hanging in with us. We've been slogging away out here, mixing Real Life with weekly forays into the dark, swirling abyss of delusion and poorly-prescribed pharmaceuticals that comprised BadJoey's psyche when he convinced himself he could renovate a house thirty years ago.

And really, even with the invaluable assistance of BadJoey, it isn't easy ensuring a fresh, never-before-seen outburst of insanity every week.

But never fear, we're still here, with Ohhh-so-much to share.

At the outset, we just have to tell you that the Gods of Electronics picked this month to desert us.

Freakin' Gods... they're so predictable.

Just as a quick update for those of you who've been encased in lead and buried in a salt cave five miles below the earth's surface, the last installment of The Matrix series arrived on DVD this week. Consequently, we're entirely certain the Gods have been shacked up with some 14-year old geek with access to his parents' credit card who can order enough components off the Web to put together a home theatre system hooked into his PC (networked to those of his friends) to not only recreate the entire cinematic experience of "The Matrix: Revolutions" over and over and over again at whim, but also to contact life in outer space, automatically program the VCR timer, and, quite possibly, teleport Trinity herself into the room, scantily clad in latex.

We, on the other hand... are The Parents. Our credit cards are maaxxed to the hilt trying to keep a roof over our heads, and both the sole working VCR in the house and the radio in my truck picked the same week to down a hit of cherry KoolAid. Jim Jones, or planned obsolesence? Eh . . . You decide. They're equally wicked in my book.

Seeing as how I absolutely cannot live without the morning traffic reports during my daily commute, and am equally despondent at the idea of being unable to tape my weekly fix of American Idol (Yes... I need professional help), this qualified as an Acute Emergency in my book.

But hey, as the old saying goes, we learn the most about ourselves in times of adversity. So, this month:

-- I learned about the PowerofCrutchfield's. The Gods of Electronics can now move in with their 14-year old geek boys (in their parents' basements), because I have found their successors. The prices may not be total rock-bottom, but they give you everything you could possibly need for installation, and their tech service is top notch.

-- I learned that even though it entails twelve separate wires, in dubiously distinctive colors, I can wire and install a car stereo (after two different, but equally desperate calls to Crutchfield tech service... Did I mention they were Top Notch?)

-- I learned that despite my sole success in installing a car stereo, I'm going back to wiring houses. 12 colors... vs... two (black and white). No contest here.

-- I learned that I can order, receive, and mostly install a VCR.

-- I learned that actually getting said VCR to work entails the assistance of the Kilted One, who actually has the talent to discover that I dislodged the antenna connection while I was deluding myself into believing that I could hook up a VCR.

Meanwhile... back at the Ranch...

We were learning much about ourselves, our relationship, and our House.

-- We learned that what goes Up, must come Down. We figured out that, in order to replace the structural members in the wall between the kitchen and family room that we took down last month, we'd need 7" square Parallam columns and beams to replace them. Said Parallam columns and beams are extremely heavy, especially when they come down square on one's knee. But it's ok-- the knee is miraculously sound. We're not entirely sure why, but we're laying bets on the influence of the flaming nuns.

-- We learned that what goes Down... must come UP. Jacking up the cross beam and getting the columns into place took an incredible effort, especially when it came to ratcheting up, centimeter by centimeter, two stories of the house, all the way up to the roof. The Kilted One's sweat and effort, and resulting pumped biceps and pecs were a really small price to pay. No... really. Really, really. I swear.

-- And we learned that what Goes Up, must STAY UP... thanks to the good folks at Strong Tie, who devised steel plates in all manner of configurations to fasten 140-year old floor joists to state-of-the-art engineered lumber. *Sniff* We luv you guys!

And after all that angst, we learned that Life. Is. Good (if you know how to work modern construction materials), if you can get this...

(Roll your mouse over for before and after views):

Here it is from the opposite direction:

And finally... we learned these past few weeks, that when things must stay up, and must come down, and things crash around you when you're least expecting it, the Thing To Do is to apply your sledgehammer to things not expecting it:

(Roll your mouse over the photo above for before and after views).

Because after all, there's always next week, and there's always plumbing for the master bathroom that awaits...

April 18, 2004: We didn't have a clue what we were going to do this weekend. We knew the weather would be good, but even as late as Friday night, we were debating the merits of starting the plumbing work for the master bathroom versus continuing to replace the clapboards on the exterior of the house to continue to prep for painting later this summer.

Our ultimate direction for the day was dictated by the Kilted One, who woke up bright and early to mow the lawn for the first time this season, and got hit by an extremely sudden, very serious case of the "While We're At It"s. Any old house owner is intimately familiar with the syndrome. You start a project, and then decide, well, while we're doing this, we might as well do this. While we're replacing the disintigrated washer in the leaky faucet, we might as well tear out and remodel the bathroom... If we're going to mulch the flower beds, we might as well just tear them all out and install a historically accurate reproduction of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon... you know the drill.

So dude decides to mow the lawn, but then somehow apparently decides that, while he's at it, he might as well remove the 1,000 linear feet of rotting pasture fence shown below:

I Don't. Know. Why.

Like most sane people, I'm still sleeping. Blissfully unaware of the day's events as they're unfolding, I wake up, grab some coffee, and pad on down towards the noise I'm hearing on the west side of the property.

I discover exactly two strips of perfectly mowed grass, and this:

Yup, the entire pasture fence neatly stacked in the middle of... the pasture.

And The Dude?

Well... kilted, of course, and inexplicably firing up the chainsaw to plunge headfirst into the northwest corner of the property.

Now, you should know that the Northwest Corner of our property... is the border of Mordor. Sunlight hasn't touched it in years. It is a dark, dank place, rife with rotting, fallen trees, vines and brambles with razor sharp, foot-long claws, all the better to lure in and eat cute little wide-eyed woodland animals and unsuspecting small children, and it spawns Bugs-- huge, terrifying and elusive, that have never been catalogued by entymologists. Sauron himself has a quaint little summer place here.

It is so forboding that, when we embarked upon last Spring's installment of our ongoing Exterior Property Reclamation project, we didn't even come near this corner. Either by unspoken agreement, or shared mortal terror... Who knows?

So when I saw the Kilted One revving up his, umm... gas-powered tool, I hustled down, gesturing wildly with my coffee mug to get him to turn off the chainsaw, and asked him, in the nicest possible way (no really, despite the four-letter words, it really was the nicest way possible at the time, considering I'd thus far ingested minimal caffeine), just What. He Thought. He Was Doing.

Well, he says, of course, since the pasture fence is down, we have a clear shot at getting some of This Mess (gesturing towards Mordor) cleaned up.

Cleaned up? Cleaned up? With only a 16-inch chainsaw, a kilt, some hiking boots, and no plan for calling in the National Guard for backup? Ssssss... Naaaasssssty. Naaasssty delusional hobbitses with chainsawsssss...

But hey, good old faithful SamWise that I am, I managed to trudge back up the hill, mainlining Starbucks as I went. Got dressed, and came back down to nobly fight the good fight behind my chainsaw-wielding Leader.

And we didn't do too badly, surprisingly enough. We managed to cut down, chop up, and drag to the middle of the pasture a truly impressive amount of brush, trees, and assorted detritus.

Sauron lives to fight another day, unfortunately (we haven't even begun to breach the boundaries of his Summer Palace), and we now have two 'yoouuuuuge honkin' piles of brush in the middle of the pasture that we don't know what to do with. We're exhausted, and things are definitely at the Worse Before It Gets Better stage.

But it's okay. Just consider this the end of the second part of the Trilogy, right? The Forces of Good have been fighting hard. It looks like an endless war, but a few small victories in battle have energized them. The challenges ahead are seemingly insurmountable, but we leave our Heroes brainstorming for creative ways to defeat the Forces of Evil (or at least the Forces of Downed Trees and Wicked Briars) once and for all...

April 25, 2004: So we hit upon a plan to beat Sauron, Lord and Master of Fire and Brimstone (no, not to be confused with Mel Gibson) at his own game.

We decided to fight fire with... Fire.

It may have taken us two years, and two 40-cubic yard dumpsters and industrial chipper rentals, but we finally cleared enough of the property to be able to gather even more brush, dead fall, and tree trimmings in the middle of a clear pasture, and...

Burn It.

The Kilted One (who is on intimate terms with his Inner Pyromaniac) spent 20 minutes dousing the brush piles with diesel fuel, tossing cedar shingle scraps and other eminently flammable material on the piles, carefully placing burning strips of newspaper, and... et voila:

Big huge brush piles, reduced to small piles of smoking ash. It was truly amazing. Once we got the piles burning, they would consume anything. We dumped brush we'd piled from all over the property on top. Phoosh! Gone. Pallet wood from last summer's deliveries of Tennessee Blue Stone for the pool deck? Gone. Studs removed from the wall between the kitchen and family room last month? Gone. Stack of rotting firewood on the patio? Gone. We literally could not gather, trim, or cut down enough material to feed these piles.

But even though we have now discovered the perfect method to dispose of what remains of 30 years worth of overgrown brush and trash trees, we still have to figure out how to scrape this:

Into actual piles to be burned. Clearly, Sauron the Evil One is strong, and also inordinately emotionally attached to his vacation home.

Cue Gandalf. Or at least, as close we could find to a White Wizard. Remember Bobcat Guy? Well, we called him, and bless his White heart, he came out Saturday evening to take a look at what we've got. And proclaimed that half a day with a manure fork attachment to his Bobcat, and the bucket attachment to do a rough regrade, and we'd be good to go. We still have scheduling issues to work out (and as always, we're dependent on our mercurial MidAtlantic Spring weather), but if Bobcat Guy does half the job he did for us last season, we should have a nicely cleared boundary line within a few weeks.

Yes, folks, the tide just may be turning. Stay tuned to see if Sauron is indeed vanquished, and the Forces of Good dominate to spread light into even the darkest corners of the Brickman House property...

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