Spent this morning gathering information and photos about the service of my Dad and Mom in the U.S. Army for today, Veteran's Day. A 1940s photo of Dad, provided to me by his last family, needed digitization and some clean-up. I added a photo I took of a photo which showed Dad and some army buddies on a tour of a salt mine in Berchtesgaden, ( Read more... )

I've finally filed all my papers. Sat at the couch and organized, then orthogonally stacked each pile on top of each other while watching Stargate SG1, an episode from the first season about "The Nox" starring Armin Shimmerman (Quark on Deep Space 9). Then, brought the stack to my office and played Gloria Wood while bringing each substack to my ( Read more... )

September 1st, Sunday, 2024. A new month ( Read more... )

Woke around 4:30 a.m.: tightened chest, shortness of breath. Last time this happened went to urgent care and then the emergency room and they said it was not a real problem. However, I decided to get up and sit with Marisa for a half-hour until I felt more relaxed. I still feel the tightened chest 3 hours later. It is my understanding now that a ( Read more... )

Our Backroom Project has officially ended! We started this in the fall of 2021 with a contract to do the initial design and do an asbestos test. It languished for the first three quarters of 2022 (the delay was never fully explained but Neil Kelly Company was going through some major changes at the time ( Read more... )

After working maybe five hours today, I have completed restoring the rain barrel #3 pedestal. Unlike the original pedestal, this one has a 4-5 inch base of gravel with some sand on top for leveling. The previous one was built on dirt. It was fine but beginning to lean when I took it apart to prepare for the backroom work. This time it shouldn't ( Read more... )

Today I extended the walkway in the backyard by 4 feet and added three scalloped border pieces. Last night I prepared one rainbarrel to be moved ( Read more... )

Today I made good progress on the soakage trench. While not finished, I would consider that a milestone was reached today when I completed the pipe side fill with concrete shards, mortar and brick fragments...and filled in with gravel. Then I was able to cover the rocks and pipe with landscape fabric and shovel back in clay dirt I had removed at ( Read more... )

Today was great weather so easy to go out and do whatever made the most sense ( Read more... )

Made progress on the drainage outside of work ( Read more... )