Year of the Rock

There seems to be a confluence of curriculum in 1st, 4th, and 8th grades in the Bloomington Public School system. All three kids are doing earth science this year. Elizabeth's science class began with an overview of the geo-spheres and now they're discussing geologic time. Robert was waxing poetic this morning about metamorphic rocks and just a few weeks ago they were studying erosion. His classroom worked with models of the Elwha Dam so they could predict what will happen when it is removed. Colleen's classroom is keeping it simple and fun by gathering a rock collection.

Speaking of our good earth, what's with the trees this year? Our leaves all turned and fell but our neighbors' trees are mostly still green. Should we be concerned?

It's quiet

One of the worst things about working from home is summer, when the kids are off school and generally around the house a lot. The kids have done a good job respecting my office space and not coming in when I have the door closed. I don't usually have too many conference calls right now but who knows what they might interrupt by walking in, in addition to my concentration.

But this year we start the summer vacation off with Cate and the kids off for two weeks to visit her mom in Philadelphia. So it's definitely been quiet.

After a pretty depressing Monday I decided I wasn't going to work in my office downstairs for the rest of the time they're gone. It's functional but there are no windows, it's always a little cooler down there and I just couldn't stand the thought of being in a box for two weeks. So I'm sitting at the kitchen table, with easy access to the radio, a ceiling fan, windows and doors to open as the weather permits, that sort of thing. It's one thing to work in the box when Cate and the kids are around because I can always pop my head out, go upstairs and be social. But on Monday, of course, there was nobody to socialize with.

While they're gone, I've had thoughts about cleaning up the house (don't know how far I'll get, but I did start), doing the laundry, trying to get some yard work done, stuff like that. The winter coats can be cleaned and stowed for a couple months. I have easy access to the kitchen as well, which is a mixed blessing, but I'm cooking up jambalaya to eat tonight and freeze for future consideration. I've gotten to hang out with some friends and I still have Minnesota Chorale rehearsals. I'm also doing a singing workshop on Saturday, which I'm looking forward to, trying to extend the comfort zone.

It'll be strange not having the kids here for Fathers Day, but we knew that going in. It's more important for them to have time with their grandmother than with me right now and if we're flying four people halfway across the country, we need to get them their money's worth in terms of time.

So, yeah, look me up. I've got some free time!

Earth Day

Colleen has been asking if she could plant a tree for Earth Day. She settled for planting some Nasturtium seeds for the trellis in the backyard. Both she and Robert had a good time. We let Robert dig because he is so good at it. He got a little carried away for our tiny seeds. Colleen shouted to me, "Mom! Robert's going to China!"

Now we sit back and hope that we've seen the last frost.

It's a very, very, very fine house

The basement has a TV, an electric piano and some toys.

The kitchen has a table and two chairs.

The living room has a rug, a chair and a table.

The refrigerator contains the remnants of a 12-pack of Diet Coke, two jars of pickles and a container of mustard.

But it's our house. Finally. Thank goodness. Back to the unpacking tomorrow.

One night stand

I’m working in my old Northern Virginia Verizon office for a day, en route to southwestern Virginia to cover the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl for D3football.com, and instead of making Verizon or D3sports.com pick up a hotel room for the night, I decided to spend the night at 406.

And it feels pretty weird.

I have been fairly worried lately about the house. We took it off the market in mid-October because nobody was buying houses anywhere. Thanks, economy. Well, since then, there hasn’t been nearly as much traffic around it, from either our realtor or our friends who might check in on it on occasion. So I was trying to prepare myself for the worst.

And it turns out the worst was unnecessary. The house is actually in fine shape. Looks like we left it. Or like I picture we left it. I’m amazed, after walking through it now, how much we actually got done, and a lot of it in the final weeks.

Plus, for some reason, there's this extra detail work done on the stairs we didn't know about.

Not much to nitpick right now, either. The fridge was plugged in, which seems like a waste if nobody’s looking at the house. At least one of us will be back in the D.C. area in January before we put the house back up for sale, so it can be plugged back in then. And the thermostat was set 10 degrees higher than we asked. No wonder the electric bill last month was so high. And the grass needs to be cut and the leaves raked. I will try to take care of the leaves on Sunday, if the weather cooperates … and if we still have a rake here, come to think of it.

There’s a box of canned food that was supposed to go to a food bank. Nothing I can eat tonight or really for lunch tomorrow, though there’s a can of soup I would be interested in -- if I could only open it.

Of course, the telephone was disconnected months ago. There’s no Internet and nobody to steal from. Our next-door neighbors appear to have abandoned their house. Not sure if they’re in foreclosure or what, but a month or so before we left, they bought a massive Yukon Denali. (I prefer the anagram Denial.) Remember what gas cost this summer? Then the week we left I was talking to one of the people who lived in the house and they said they were going to have to move because they couldn’t afford the mortgage.

But hey, they had a nice new vehicle.

We have little to nothing here in the way of furniture. I brought a towel so I could shower in the morning. The washer and dryer are still here, of course.

And, thankfully, so is the couch. Night, everyone.

In limbo

I keep having dreams about boxes.

In these dreams, I'm still packing. We have a house full of stuff that needs to go into boxes so we can move.

In real life, all that is done. It's the unpacking that hasn't started, because we don't have anywhere to put it.

I thought we were packed appropriately -- that things we needed were in the right spots in storage so that we could access them. But we shuffled things to make them fit, and we're nowhere near getting into a house with winter fast approaching.

I had to go out and buy clothes today because I don't have nearly enough winter clothes to get me through the winter. We were able to get to the winter coats, not that I could find any other coat of mine, and the kids will all be wearing new clothes instead of hand-me-downs for a while.

We would love to be home buyers in this market. The problem is we can't seem to sell anything. We are probably going to take 406 off the market for a while, because, let's face it, why have the listing out there getting dusty in such bad economic times?

I do know full well that we could be in a much worse position. For that I am indeed thankful. But that doesn't mean limbo is any fun.

House hunting

Quoth Cate: Only in Edina would there be a million dollar rambler near a highway. One block off 62.

Wish us luck. Someone go buy our house, too.

A farewell to 406

As requested, took some pictures of our house in Sterling, literally on our way out the door.


In the master bath, I did most of the tearing up of the old (old!) linoleum tile and I managed to lay the easy tiles. Cate finished it off, though, doing all the hard parts.


The kitchen got new hardwood floors. Cate had done a deep clean on the cabinets a couple weeks earlier and we had replaced every appliance in here in the course of our five years in the house.


The living room has new hardwood floors as well. Note the incredibly disposable rug.


Another angle on the living room.


Cate stands in the entryway.


I don't have time to do a good photoshop job on this and the phone doesn't have a delay timer ... or a stand ... to get us both in the same picture.

The list

I worked some long hours last weekend on the U.S. Open and took today as comp time, hoping we could jump-start our effort to get out the door the first week of August.

It got started yesterday; while I was at work, when Cate worked up a handful of boxes in attacking the kids' rooms. And we got even further today.

Started in the kitchen, which is a room we have barely touched, aside from replacing the refrigerator. Two bags and several boxes of trash, four or so boxes packed. Knick-knacks boxed, wine glasses washed and packed, cookbooks boxed, some appliances taken out.

I took the curious fingers out with me on errands so Cate could get some painting done. We (and by we I mean she) finally painted over the tropical scene in the basement family room -- with just primer on it at the moment the room is already much brighter. Also primed over some of the kids' ... ahem ... artwork upstairs.

Cate also categorized the kids' books in their bedrooms, whittling them down to what will get them through the next month.

I was also sent out for an emergency birthday present for Elizabeth's classmate down the street, who had a party at 4. (Elizabeth was invited at 1.)

We took out cabinets from the basement, chairs from around the kitchen table. Not much cleaning of the kitchen and none of the floor, since we'll be replacing it.

After dinner, back to the kitchen. Cleaned off the hutch and took out another bag of trash. More knick-knacks, dishes, dusting ...

And no dust-ups. We survived the day.

How inefficient we are

We've been trying to make ourselves more energy efficient, especially over the past nine months, and we've cut our energy usage quite a bit in that time. We've replaced light bulbs and the refrigerator and the washing machine. Replacing the washing machine has helped the dryer do its job more quickly as well. The Colemans are better at turning off lights than they've ever been and just as bad at turning off the TV.

But while I was checking out the weather for my bike ride to work tomorrow (going for my eighth consecutive weekday without driving to work, even though it's just four and a half miles), a link on the Weather Channel Web site caught my eye.

Is your kitchen wasting energy? Find out with our 33-point checkup

Uhm, guess so. Some of the items we could stand to incorporate into our daily lives:

• If you're using the dishwasher, pre-rinse dishes with cold water. Be sure machine is full, but not overloaded. (Color me guilty on both counts.)
• Turn off automatic air-dry switch, and let dishes dry by air. If your machine doesn't have an air-dry switch, turn off the control knob after the final rinse and prop the door open a bit so the dishes will dry faster.
• It's cheaper to cook by microwave than by electric oven.
• When using the oven, try to reduce the number of times you open the door while cooking. Each time the door is opened, the stove loses about 1/4th of its heat. (This I know, but it's so hard to resist!)
• If you cook on an electric range, you can turn off the burners or the oven before the cooking is finished, because it will take several minutes for the burners to lose their heat. (Never occurred to me.)
  
• If your sink has a disposal unit, use cold water when operating. This saves energy used to heat the water, and is more effective at removing grease. Grease will solidify under cold water and become more easily ground up and washed away. You can give it a quick final rinse with hot water. (I think I usually do this but now I will make sure to always do it.)
• Vacuum the coils on the back of your refrigerator twice a year to maximize efficiency. (New fridge, doesn't need it now, but wish I'd done that before.)
• A new, more efficient refrigerator can typically save you $70-80 per year and will pay for itself in about nine years. Older models commonly use an annual average of over 1,700 kWh, while equivalent models now use fewer than 700 kWh. This can reduce your carbon-dioxide emissions by over 1,000 pounds a year. (Oh, definitely. The old fridge was probably 15-20 years old.)
  

It's too late to really know if these changes will have an effect here. But I found some of the suggestions interesting and thought I should pass them on.

Happy Memorial Day!

In true ... ahem, Southern ... fashion, we spent our Memorial Day dinner eating ribs and cornbread.

As you can see, Colleen loved the ribs. She really attacked this one, and honest to goodness, she cleaned it! Fun way to finish our last Memorial Day in the south.

We also had a very southern couscous salad.

The other two were not as keen on cleaning the bones but they did eat nonetheless.

On the move front, we arranged the living room, brought up a couch from downstairs, and Cate packed our first three boxes. I cut the grass with, unfortunately, the gas-powered mower, but it looks better that way. We cut pretty far out into the common area in order to give the yard a bigger look and even up with our neighbors, who seem to enjoy wasting gasoline cutting out about 50 feet past their property line. We enjoyed kicking the soccer ball around while the ribs were on the grill, however.

What we consider progress

Three hours today and I've already lost track of how many hours yesterday and last week but finally we have exposed all the dirt we want.


This is half the garden -- the half I finished today. The rose bushes are something Cate would really like to get rid of, but I'm afraid they are beyond my ability (and patience) to remove. You can see the "railroad tie" edging in the bottom right.

We don't do "before" pictures -- at least not on this project. It was fairly overgrown and an eyesore. But the last thing I want is for a prospective buyer to stumble upon this blog and see what poor shape we had this in until seemingly moments ago.

On the bright side, I saw 177.0 on the scale this afternoon before I hopped in the shower to get the dirt off. On the dark side, those calluses never really formed on my hands ... ever ... and I have a blister on my right thumb where the shovel handle makes contact.

On the even brighter side: This was a project I thought we might not get to until tomorrow, with both of us home all day (Cate works a full shift on Sunday). So that's one less thing to do on Monday.

I believe I get to leave the planting of this plot to Cate!

Bye bye, couches

We've made some progress in our attempts to get the house uncluttered and in shape to sell. The list of items is long but yeah, we're plugging away in spurts.

With me working 40 a week and Cate working 28-32 with no overlapping, we don't have a lot of opportunities to work on the house together and it takes a little coordination to get to the big projects. But I've been working from home a couple of days this week, which means I can pitch in on occasion.

I feel a lot more productive taking 20 minutes to weed out the garden or drill holes to hang curtains than taking a walk through the building at work.

But to the couches -- Sean had these in his condo more than a decade ago and in 1992 they were just too cool. (This might have been the only thing Sandy was good at.) Sometime shortly after we moved in here we inherited them and the kids have beaten them down over the past five years. They've been on the docket for departure. And today, Cate disassembled them and got them down to the curb.

After dinner I went back outside to work in the yard and help Elizabeth shoot baskets. Robert and Colleen jumped on the couches one final time and Robert said good-bye to them all. He'd named them Larry, Barry, Mary ... and two names that don't rhyme with Larry, but I can't remember.

Scratch another item off the list.

Apparently, I'm a columnist

I know I'm not much of a reporter, anyway, but I can occasionally write a column. Sometimes they're even good.

Not going to claim this one is, but I have a new Verizon column up. Not even about sports. I think I'm in better shape staying away from sports writing, believe it or not.

I figure my dedicated fan base ... err, fan ... has long since stopped checking for weekly columns from me, so I'm just letting you know.

Turning on the air conditioning

Yesterday I made an executive decision to turn on the air conditioning. The high was only 82 in our neck of the 'burbs, but Cate was cooking dinner on the stove and it just seemed like the right move so that we weren't all sweltering long into the evening.

It turned out to be the right decision. And not a difficult one.

This was not the case last year, however. Turning on the AC for the first time in 2007 involved a fair amount of finger-crossing and some tense decision-making.

As you may remember, we had operated for most of the previous nine months under the premise that we were moving. Cate and I -- mostly Cate, since I was in Connecticut, were preparing the house to put on the market and get out of Northern Virginia.

Neither of us is particularly handy. I don't think this is a surprise to anyone reading. But we had managed to get a few projects done in the interim, taking down the outdated drapes in a couple of our bedrooms and installing blinds among them.

The house also had the original 1973 thermostat, one with all the precision of a Dick Cheney hunting trip. The best we could do was hope for the temperature to be in the range of a few degrees for a short time until it needed adjusting again. So I did a little reading on the subject and determined we could manage this project ourselves.

It was relatively easy to pick out a new unit at Home Depot at the seemingly reasonable price of $80. We had the tools we needed to install it and all was set to go when, on a January afternoon, we removed the old thermostat.

The instructions were fairly comprehensive, thankfully, and referred to two possible configurations for our old, single-zone heat pump setup -- four wires or five wires. Like seemingly everything else in this house, however, it was not standard.

It had six.

Almost all of our wires were properly labeled. Almost all of the labels matched what was described in the manual. We just had an extra wire to deal with.

We spent about a half-hour agonizing over it and just decided to guess, make sure the heat worked, and let it go. Our rationale was that we weren't planning to be in the house when we needed the air conditioning anyway.

Well, of course, the NBC job went south and so did I at the end of April. And while we held off through the first heat wave of the spring, by mid-June it was clear that we needed to bite the bullet. So we threw the switch, and voila, it worked.

And the house didn't burn down or anything.

Just don't ask us to repeat it. Thanks.