Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Tumbling Tumble Weed
As promised photographic evidence of our latest doings:
Pile Is All Gone! Neighbor tells me he is trying not to build it back up again but to sell the house soon all the same.
Stuck It In Here. This is the second load. Volume wise it is much smaller than the first, by weight much, much more. The first load was loamy topsoil and compost, a good portion of this one is gravel and frozen chunks of saturated earth.
The investment looks much better with the trim up and painted, if I can track down an old shot I will post a before and after. It was easier than I thought to keep a uniform line along the bottom of the house. I used nails and a chalk line for the most part. The bad stuff was in the back. 44 feet in a straight line. If I didn't get it straight everyone was going to see. At 5 1/2 inches wide there was no one level I could set the trim at and cover everything. I decided to match the vertical trim and cut off whatever sheeting stuck down to far. Looked much better than when it was a snagle tooth. In one place some of the foundation stuck out beyond the sheeting of the house so in order to hang the trim I had to cut and remove the concrete. I used a diamond blade in a sacrificial skill saw and the cut was simple to accomplish. A cold punch to broke the concrete down to my cut line and it was done.
If you squint about 1/4 of the way down you can see where I cut the concrete back. Trim makes this long side look slightly less like a trailer.
Close up, bad photo.
For those of us who worked on the place the trim make such a staggering difference. You might also notice how the fence is gone. This has really opened up the yard. The significant other had been trying to get it removed from the start; she is hard to live with now. As I write this I can watch my crappy dial up connection choke. Blackfoot can just go to hell. The moment Bresnen comes here I cam going to drop everything I have with them. Oh look I just had to reconnect; now it sucks slightly less! What a lucky boy I am! Anyway the GRE test was fine and I scored out at 1100 on the nose, high in the verbal, low in the quantitative just the way I predicted. The score sucks of course but I suppose I did only study for a few days so I have no one to blame but myself. It is much more than I needed for the Masters program so who cares right?
The latest attempt of interest is artificial sea glass. We watched a show where they had flowerbeds of sea glass and someone just had to have that. Obviously you can’t go out and buy that here and online it was $2lb so the quantity needed was prohibited. I do however have a cement mixer and glass can be aquired for free… It is by far one of the greatest redneck things I have ever done. I took some video of it because the noise it makes is indescribable, I just had to share. My poor neighbors. I wonder if my brother could get away with a stunt like this where he lives. Maybe he could tumble crack vials?
Pile Is All Gone! Neighbor tells me he is trying not to build it back up again but to sell the house soon all the same.
Stuck It In Here. This is the second load. Volume wise it is much smaller than the first, by weight much, much more. The first load was loamy topsoil and compost, a good portion of this one is gravel and frozen chunks of saturated earth.
The investment looks much better with the trim up and painted, if I can track down an old shot I will post a before and after. It was easier than I thought to keep a uniform line along the bottom of the house. I used nails and a chalk line for the most part. The bad stuff was in the back. 44 feet in a straight line. If I didn't get it straight everyone was going to see. At 5 1/2 inches wide there was no one level I could set the trim at and cover everything. I decided to match the vertical trim and cut off whatever sheeting stuck down to far. Looked much better than when it was a snagle tooth. In one place some of the foundation stuck out beyond the sheeting of the house so in order to hang the trim I had to cut and remove the concrete. I used a diamond blade in a sacrificial skill saw and the cut was simple to accomplish. A cold punch to broke the concrete down to my cut line and it was done.
If you squint about 1/4 of the way down you can see where I cut the concrete back. Trim makes this long side look slightly less like a trailer.
Close up, bad photo.
For those of us who worked on the place the trim make such a staggering difference. You might also notice how the fence is gone. This has really opened up the yard. The significant other had been trying to get it removed from the start; she is hard to live with now. As I write this I can watch my crappy dial up connection choke. Blackfoot can just go to hell. The moment Bresnen comes here I cam going to drop everything I have with them. Oh look I just had to reconnect; now it sucks slightly less! What a lucky boy I am! Anyway the GRE test was fine and I scored out at 1100 on the nose, high in the verbal, low in the quantitative just the way I predicted. The score sucks of course but I suppose I did only study for a few days so I have no one to blame but myself. It is much more than I needed for the Masters program so who cares right?
The latest attempt of interest is artificial sea glass. We watched a show where they had flowerbeds of sea glass and someone just had to have that. Obviously you can’t go out and buy that here and online it was $2lb so the quantity needed was prohibited. I do however have a cement mixer and glass can be aquired for free… It is by far one of the greatest redneck things I have ever done. I took some video of it because the noise it makes is indescribable, I just had to share. My poor neighbors. I wonder if my brother could get away with a stunt like this where he lives. Maybe he could tumble crack vials?
Labels: Great moments in history this ain't.
Friday, March 23, 2007
Master of None
It has been a very long time since I have written but I have been a busy boy so I hope you will forgive me. At the investment we moved a large pile of compost, trash and gravel the neighbor maintained for some reason. It was quite an eyesore and had been encroaching on our side. I would have paid him for the honor of having it moved but out of the blue he offered me $100 to do it. Sounded like a great deal but appearances were deceiving. When we started loading it was still frozen and had to be broken up with the pick, then we got to a layer of intertwined branches that couldn’t be shoveled up. Filled the big trailer twice, but I only have pictures of the last load. The dump guy was in a good mood and let me dump it for free rather than the 9$ a yard they normally charge. That was nice since he figured between the two loads we had 7 or 8 yards, would have cut into my ‘profit margins’ some. The last week or so I have been working on enrolling for my masters program. I have to take the GRE on Saturday the 24. It is like the SAT’s for masters students. I practice test out at about 1100 and I am disappointed. There is an underground GRE pecking order, with the highest at a score of 1400. I only need a 850 to get into the program with a verbal min of 420, so at this point it is all for bragging rights. We will have to see where I sit after I take the full practice exam tonight. I took Tuesday off as a sick day to study and now karma has decided to kick my ass real well. To say I feel like shit would require an overall improvement in my physical condition. Three times today I have had sneezes that resulted in a fountainous bloody nose. The kids would hassle me but they are all in the same boat. Prom is this Saturday night and I suspect the only fluid transfers going on will involve snot and vomit. RatHole crew your pictures are coming.
