Oooops

A little miscommunication left Gretchen in the kitchen unsupervised for a little too long.

- b

Happy Hiking

I have dogs and a wife that enjoy hiking in the cold December rain.

I am happy.

- b

Graduated

- b

The Saga Continues

The Heat Streak persists after the recessed light project, but it does show signs of impact. It's more of just a heat spot now. It doesn't appear to have enough to streak itself all the way to the roof ridge. During the next round of attic insulation work, I'll just pile it on in that area. The heat streak days are numbered.

Hmmmmm. New job. Guess what? It's a job. It's like the old one in the fact I have to be there most everyday for a certain period of time, while I'd like to be somewhere else doing other things. It's different in the fact it's more responsibility, higher expectations, a new team of people (literally, everyone is new), and a new product. Sure it's more money, but if it all goes to drinking more beer, what's the point?

Don't get me wrong. I don't hate it. It's an exciting opportunity that could be something really great. I just don't like the transition period a new job inflicts.

The puppy day care is working out well. That's a relief.

Today I have two different company's coming into my house to "fix" stuff. Makes me nervous. It always makes me nervous when I agree to pay someone a lot of money to mess with my stuff.

- b

Puppy Teeth

Looks like we're finally getting some adult teeth.

It's about damn time.

- b

Water Woe

We got a bunch of rain yesterday. There was enough to soak through the concrete block in our garage.

Enough to soak a paper towel to the wall.

- b

Stairmaster

When we bought our house, it never occurred to me how much I'd use the stairs. Sure it's a bi-level, but I never figured I'd make so many trips up and down the stairs.

Each new project means countless trips moving tools and supplies up and down. Hell. Each beer is another trip up and down. To think I was worried I wouldn't be in shape for the Winter School. As long as I've got things to do around the house, I'll be fine.

- b

Jobless Drunk

This might read like a grocery list. Feel free to skip through to the pictures, though I can't promise they'll be all that entertaining or even relevant.

So I quit my job last Thursday. Ideally that would mean a few days of R&R before the new grind gets way. Not quite. By Friday night I was already back to boss's house cracking under the pressure.

Friday morning I had a basement waterproofing guy (Blaise) come out and look at my mess. He wanted to sell me a Humidex that wouldn't help me and charge me a bunch of money to jackhammer my basement floor. The jackhammer part I was cool with, the Humidex is just too Canadian for our problem.

Unfortunately the appointment with him ran late and I missed riding Friday morning. That sucked. I'm missing a lot of riding and it's annoying.

Mid afternoon we headed to the vet for Gretchens last shots. Now she's covered for rabies, rat pee and lyme. After the vet Poo Flingers came over for a meet and greet with Gretchen. Because of the new job, I won't be able to come home at lunch or early to let Gretchen out. The little bit of extra money I'll be making, we have to blow on some dude watching our dog pee twice a day. At least he's cool. He has a little daughter he takes around with him, so Gretchen will be getting lots of little person exposure.

And finally we went to my old boss's house for gaming. He's into european board games and has a bunch of people over (twice a month I think) to play. Jen really likes it. I usually get bored (i.e. no beer) and beat pretty bad.

Saturday morning we were off to puppy kindergarten. Roxy (the lab puppy) has been coming to class, so Gretchen's been working on her social skills. We made the mistake this time of not walking Gretchen before class. We thought a couple rounds of fetch would be good to slow her down enough to pay attention. We were wrong. She was a mess. Wouldn't listen to us or Albert. I don't think she learned anything in this class. At least she got to play with Roxy and get a slobber bath.

Saturday afternoon saw lots of chores. We'd been wanting a three way switch for our kitchen lights for a while. Seven or eight hours later we had one. An hour after that I had a serious AB buzz. Not a bad day.

Sunday was more of the same - puppy morning, chore afternoon. We took the dogs to Marsh Creek for their weekly hike (missing another ride, though hiking with the wife and dogs is way cool). Gretchen's endurance is definitely improving. We went the long way. She was still running at the end without dragging her head in the dirt. Christmas day we'll do something similar before we haul her up to NJ for Christmas dinner with Jen's family.

Sunday afternoon was an assault on the heat streak. I had mentioned the recessed lights in a post last week. It was finally time to do something about them. They're gone now. Hopefully the streak is too, though that might require a little attic insulation work as the link points out. Again, within an hour had a nice buzz going. This time it was Celebration.

Today I think I'll scale back the work. I should recover from the weekend before I head up the turnpike. A nap would be nice. Maybe a movie too. Beer definitely.

I'm not going to lie to you. An animal was definitely hurt in the making of this blog. Well not exactly. The deer was shot a year or so ago, but Jen did make ground venison out of the venison steaks during the conception of this post. The pictures being a sort of a morbid tribute to Pioneer Woman.


- b

Sorry OMR

But I ain't goin' anywhere tonight

- b

Doing Good = Bad

Spent a few hours working in the attic on Sunday. Now I'm sick. I should have worn my respirator, but I thought my shots would keep me safe. I was wrong and now I'm miserable.

I'd call in sick if it wasn't my last two days at this job.

- b

Carols

Is it just me or is there something weird about Annie Lennox singing christmas songs?

- b

House of Humidity

Last year I posted about our humidity issue. At first we decided on a whole house dehumidifier to solve the problem. When we got estimates for $2000, we backed off and planned to save. Notice I said planned to save and not started to save? It turns out our single room dehumidifier hadn't died and we made it through the winter.

In the spring when we decided on a pellet stove for heat, we assumed it would take care of our humidity issues and stopped discussions/savings for a whole house dehumidifier.

About the time we got Gretchen Jen got a head cold she just couldn't shake. She went to the Dr. and they said allergies. Jen didn't believe them. She didn't want to be allergic to the new dog. When the sickness got worse, she went back and got some anti-biotics. The anti-biotics worked, sort of, for a little while, but it was still there.

Finally she went to an allergist for the back scratch fun. Turns out Jen is allergic to Dust Mites and Cockroaches. Since we don't have cockroaches, but do have humidity, it must be Dust Mites - they can't live or live very well at humidity levels below 50%.

So back to the whole house dehumidifier idea. I called Wesley Woods and they sent a "Comfort Specialist" out that afternoon. I sort of explained the situation and dollar signs lit up in his head when I mentioned allergies. Comfort Specialist my ass! He was a sales rep. His first question was "Have you heard about our one year same as cash financing?" Second question was "Would you mind filling out this credit application?" After that it was a list of things I should buy to stop the allergies. I mean why not? I don't have to pay for it for a year.

Dust mites! This is about humidity and dust mites I reminded him a couple of times. Don't get me wrong. It wasn't that bad and I don't fault him for doing his job. He was very thorough in measuring/analysing my HVAC equipment to be sure he sold me the biggest most expensive equipment he could. Again, I kid.

He did clue me into something I should have considered already. Our humidity issues aren't because the house is so tight (heat streak proves that). Our house is practically sitting in water. When it rains hard for a couple of days, water seeps up through the cracks in the basement and garage floor. When we walked in our work/storage room (basement) and saw this (the dark discoloration)

he said "You've got water."

The seepage, so far, has never gotten to the point that it collects or floods. It does occasionally get wet, but I've yet to wish I had a sump pump or even a french drain along the walls.

The walls look like this all the time. I don't know if it's staining or some hydrostatic pressure effect. It's moisture none-the-less. The 65% humidity reading from the gauge above is in this part of the house and this part of the house is directly below our bedroom.

So a whole house dehumidifier, though possibly necessary, wouldn't solve my problem. It would only alleviate the effects.

My problem is moisture entering the basement. I wonder if I stop that, how much of a humidity problem will I have?

- b

Resurrection

Though this is the time of birth, I'm working on a little resurrection.

Somehow the chain on my commuter completely rusted itself solid while I wasn't using it. Sure I could throw a new chain on, but I'd likely have to replace the ring up front and the cogs out back. When the point of the commuter is near zero cost, that kind of repair just isn't happening.

I realized after pouring the used motor oil all over it, I should have used kerosene. The oil, I think, will just make it black and oily without cutting the rust. I'll give it a few hours and hope the osmosis powers of oil do the trick.

- b

Make the Boys Want It!

Last night was our last SAP holiday party. I took our Indian guests (Harsh & Vikrant) as Jen was late from work and had to meet us there.

Overall it was a good time. Lots of food, people and beverages. Near the end of the evening, we headed to the third floor where the "club dancing" room was setup. They had a DJ and small dance floor. After a few rounds of Cha-Cha I headed off to the side to enjoy a G&T while Jen kept dancing on her own.

At some point I made the comment to some friends "Let's see who tries to dance with Jen?" when a girl grabbed Jen by the arm, led her to the center of the floor and spent the next 10 minutes working on their "butt moves."

Unfortunately I couldn't get a picture. It was really quite funny. At first Jen appeared to be having fun, but the girl didn't think Jen was accentuating the goods enough and repeatedly demonstrated the proper way to "Make the boys want it" - something Jen didn't think was really appropriate for a corporate event.

Interest faded and the girl was off to teach someone something else. Jen made her escape and we headed home shortly afterwards.

- b

Heat Streak Reality

I haven't been totally honest with you. From the beginning, I've had a pretty good idea what the heat streak is all about.

As you know we have a soffit above our kitchen cabinets. In the soffit there are recessed lights. When we moved in, I bought air-tight, insulation-contact recessed lights to replace them. From up in the attic I got one of them replaced.The other two I haven't been able to get to. The roof slants too close to the top of the soffit to get into it. My plan was to replace them when we had the new windows put in. I figured they'd have to cut out some of the soffit for the new window, and I could throw the new lights in then. No luck. They did the window without coming anywhere near the soffit.

I was stuck. Without cutting into the soffit (big and ugly job), I couldn't figure out what I'd do, so I left them. While finishing the home network in the kitchen, I figured it out. As I was cutting out an old receptacle box with my Dremel, I realized I could basically cut out the recessed lights (from the inside) the same way. I'd take out the bulb, kill the juice, stick the Dremel up inside and start cutting. Little by little I'll cut away the can/fixture to gain access to the wiring and mounting brackets. It will be messy, but not nearly as messy as hacking up the soffit.

So that or this is it. The gaps around the bulbs go right up into the soffit and into the attic. Though I can't feel any kind of draft around them, I'm pretty sure this is my heat streak source. Now it's just a matter of getting enough time and daylight to cut the two of them out and put in the new. The fact I want to wire them all to a three-way switch isn't helping me to get motivated.

If and when I do get them done and that damn heat streak is still there, I'm moving. Done. Outta here!


- b

Some Lucky Angel

Is getting a sweet-ass bike!

Jen's company has a Salvation Army Angel Tree this year. Our contribution, with the help of Bean's Bikes, was this cool little ride. I only wish I could be around to nurture the little rigid single speeder.

- b

Puppy Vs. People

She's learned to keep a treat on her paw till we say it's ok to eat, but we've yet to learn when to take her out when she has to go.

- b

Food?

Sure is, and tasty too!

Though all that grease might have something to do with my shortness of breath lately.

- b

Big Dog - Maybe

So we're shortly passed the 16 week mark. This weekends weigh-in put Gretchen at 21lbs. That's 3 lbs. over the previous week.

Now some assumptions:

She'll be mostly full grown by 8 months.
She'll gain an average of 3 lbs per week till then.

That puts her at roughly 70 lbs around the beginning of April.

We shall see.

- b

Grass Isn't Greener

But there's more of it.

Got a new job.

Start Dec. 26th.

- b

Title of Post

Occasionally I think back to parts of the year when I was riding my bike like I had nothing else to live for. I was riding to work, train stations, races, you name it I was riding my bike.

Now I'm on another kind of endurance kick, though I don't know what to call it exactly. From chores, travel, weddings, puppies and more chores, I'm running non-stop.

I wanna new drug.

I wish it were that easy.

In the meantime, here's more of the same old same old.

Went to the Stove Shop yesterday to finally get our replacement thermostat replaced. Granted they were REALLY busy (who's stupid enough to buy a stove now? apparently a lot of people), but I still think the owner 's kind of a jerk. He asked for a third time if I'd wired it correctly. "Duh I think so. I mean it's only three wires and uh the connections AND the wires are color coded." Then he lets us in on a little secret. Apparently the control board for our stove has been sort of recalled and they're handing out replacements. Now he asks if I'm "handy". Just a second ago he's implying I can't wire a thermostat, but it's probably ok for me to replace the control unit inside my stove? This is the control unit --> Mechanically speaking it's just a bunch of wires and plugs (uh, you mean like a thermostat?). Luckily all the plugs were unique so in reality it's a square peg in round hole sort of game. He also left us with the old thermostat saying we should try it again, but with the new control unit. Guess what genius? No dice. The thermostat still doesn't work and I can't say I saw much difference with the new control unit. The thing still puts out heat. It just seems to be the extra amenities like an icon telling me the door is open or the hopper is erroneously empty that's not working. Luckily I have eyes, so I can deal with those things for now.

Onto happier more festive things. This is the third holiday season that we've been in our house. The first year we were busy tearing things apart, so we didn't get into the spirit of things at all. Last year I think we put up some garland outside. This year it was time to step it up some. I had this great, cheap, and easy idea to stand up some boards in the yard with string and wrap them with lights to look like trees. Jen was really skeptical, especially when she saw this in the yard.
I admit it looks pretty crappy in the daylight, but our yard is pretty far back from the road. Unless you know what you're looking for, you'll never see this driving by. Another positive is that it was cheap, didn't take much time, and won't take much space to store from holiday to holiday. But the best positive in all this is how it looks at night. Yes Jeff, they're all LEDs. Pretty cool huh?

Ok back to work inside. Maybe this should have gone with the stove, but we've been trying to manage our heat distribution a little better. There's this little fan above the doorway from downstairs to up that's supposed to help with this. We hadn't used it till now. It appears to be working, but only somewhat, so we decided to get a bigger one (this is America isn't it?). Something more like this





Just to complicate the matter we added a programmable switchand programed it the same as the stove. Now all we should have to do is sit back and be warm - as long as we don't care that the little icon says the hopper is empty when I know it's full.



Wow! It's like a marathon isn't it? I told you so. Go ahead take a break. I'll wait... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...


Better?


Took Gretchen for another hike. We took the shorter route this time, though it still seemed to put her down the whole day.

Maybe it's just the new comfy bed she can't resist?

Yeah. I finally got tired. I could go on about my trips to Target to buy socks and Lowes to buy thermometers, but really, who cares? I'm just white trash who could never appreciate such things.

- b

Hannibal Gretchen

I had seen these funky muzzle like collars people used on their dogs before, but thought they were just a cheaters way of teaching your dog to walk. I had used a harness on CJ and he took to it very well.

Gretchen, not so well.

She pulls, eats stuff and whatever else she can imagine that's wrong. I was desperate, so I decided to try the funky muzzle collar thingy.

First off, it's not a muzzle, though can sort of be used as one. It's more of a harness like you use on a horse. It's rigged so when she pulls, it pulls against itself and pulls her head to the side. By keeping the right amount of tension, it keeps her head in a nice straight-up walking position. If she deviates from that position by pulling or lunging, it pulls her head to the side.

It's great. Basically she's regulating her own behavior. Now we can concentrate on walking and not fighting each other over what she should do and what she wants to do.

And after all that good walking, she's tired enough to enjoy her new bed.

- b

War Wages On

After realizing the caulk near the window did nothing to stop the Heat Streak, we went back to the drawing board. Here's what we know:

• The line in the roof lines up almost perfectly with the soffit in our kitchen.
• The streak travels up the roof from down near the wall, because there's more melt near the wall then there is at the top.
• The streak travels between the rafters
• There's got to be some huge gaping hole somewhere

That's about it. Sure I could crawl up in the attic and lay down a bunch more insulation in that area, but that's not really solving the problem. Somewhere there is some gaping hole or a bunch of holes causing this and we need to find them.

Last night we looked around the wall area in the kitchen and found this.

The corner cabinet has a big gaping hole behind it and some nice cavities between it and the cabinets next to it. I used a flashlight to look up inside them to see some kind of access through the wall, but didn't see anything significant. We covered them anyway temporarily with tape and a rag. Unfortunately the roof isn't currently in a condition where we can tell if it worked.

Tonight we found another possible culprit.

That's the bottom of our tub/shower. The back of the shower is the same wall under that soffit. With the pellet stove kicking downstairs, it's totally possible for heat to travel up through this portal, into the wall and into the soffit.

I'd almost be certain this was the hole we're looking for, BUT it's not exactly near the outside wall of the house where the heat appears to concentrate before making its way up the roof. Maybe somehow in the interior wall the heat makes its way over to the exterior wall.

I guess we'll figure it out eventually.

- b

Twilight Zone

Is it just me or is everything a little out of sorts lately? Upside is down - downside up? Maybe my 7am meetings with India have finally gotten the better of me?

Speaking of India, I've forgotten to mention a couple of the guys I was working with over there have come here for a few weeks. I think they're enjoying their stay?

They've been pretty excited about the weather. They've never really experienced snow or this kind of cold. Lucky for them they don't have to worry about it sucking the heat out of their homes.

Yes it's true. My attempts at killing the heat streak have failed. At least we made some headway on Gretchen devouring the yard.

She now has an assortment of treats to choose over the nasties in the dirt. She never knows what goodie she might get for dropping or ignoring something disgusting.


- b

All Work

I've had a deadline (it's tomorrow) for a few weeks now. When it was first given to me, I was in the midst of puppy induced sleep deprivation torture. I was happy to even get to work, let alone do any. As Gretchen moved from sleeping a solid six hours to a solid eight hours (it ain't all great, she still gets up at 6am, so you better be in bed by 10 for a full nights rest) over the last two weeks I've had more capacity (mentally, though not time) for work. To make up for the lack of time, I've basically been working 7 - 9 most every day. Sure it's not a solid 14 hours, since I have dog duty and meals, but after two weeks of it I'm whooped.

So here I sit on the eve of a deadline, pee smelly puppy on my lap, wife out with the girls, and the last bit of work I really don't want to do. Honestly I think I'd rather do the Lumberjack race again then finish this stuff - ah to ride a bike again...

Oh well. I'll suck it up, cut and paste the last bit of BS and go to bed. At least tomorrow we're all going downtown for a team holiday outing. I'll be sure to drink my share and everyone elses for that matter.

- b

Stop the Draft

Sure enough the little hike this morning wiped Gretchen out for the day. With her sleeping, we could get about the house and get some things done. I chose to finish the Bedroom Insulation job I started nearly a year ago, then chase down some more drafts.

I knew of this hole where the air conditioning line came in from outside, but I had forgotten how bad it was. The gray you see on the left of it is duct tape on the outside. That's not really the best insulator. There was also some mouse (and spider) infested fiberglass insulation, but that had to go. I debated getting the official "large gap" spray foam, but decided a trip to Home Depot wasn't that necessary and used the regular spray foam I had.

Still don't know if the heat streak on the roof is fixed. There wasn't any tell-tale frost on the roof this morning. Maybe tomorrow.

- b

First Hike

We took Gretchen for her first hike this morning. before the wintry mix hit. We loaded up the dogs and headed over to Marsh Creek. It was her first hike, so it was short. She seemed to really enjoy it - there's just so much more to eat in the woods. Actually she did pretty well. CJ headed off the front like he usually does and she stayed somewhere in between. Every time he'd stop to smell something, she'd run up to make sure she wasn't missing anything, then run back to walk with us. Needless to say she'll be a pretty tired puppy today.

Hopefully we can make this a weekly occurrence.

On the way there, we saw these guys (and gal).
The lead male was totally strutting his stuff. He kept puffing out his chest and fanning his tail feathers. It was pretty cool even if we did cause a little traffic jam taking pictures.

- b

Teacher's Pet

Albert loves Gretchen. Our puppy kindergarten class, that was at first an excuse for Gretchen to play with dogs her own size and age, has become Albert's (the instructor) time to dote on her. Twice now the other puppy hasn't shown up, so Gretchen gets private lessons. She's weeks ahead of schedule. She's comfortable with "down" (as in lay down) and learned "leave it" quite easily today. He wants a picture of her to post in the middle of his bulletin board. When given the right motivation - his treats are better then ours - she'll learn just about anything you ask.

After class it was yard work time. Jen assembled most of the R2-D2 Army, while I cut back the Wisteria and put out the bird feeders. After that and some afternoon coffee it was off to get a tree.
Each year we try to get more efficient with our tree selection. It just seems ridiculous to walk around and around looking for the perfect tree when you're just going to put it in a corner and cover with sparkley stuff. Though I'm afraid we were too efficient this year. This one is shorter than normal and I may have cut off too much from the bottom. Oh well. We'll just use more sparlkies.

Speaking of sparkle, check this out.

It's the tiniest little house down the street from us. As the story goes, the guy that lived there used to do this every year but has since passed away. His son now comes over every year to set it all up. Each year that we've been here, it's gotten bigger and brighter.

Just before Jen put together a fantastic cheese fondue for dinner, I jumped in the kitchen for this little repair.

On frosty mornings there's a streak of heat that runs up the backside of our roof like this

I thought maybe the gap between the wall and the ceiling over the kitchen sink might be the culprit, so I filled it with caulk. Now that I look at the pictures, the streak is to the side of the windows. Maybe that gap had nothing to do with it. I'll just have to wait till morning and see, though if we get the weather they're calling for I may only see a wintry mix on the roof.

Astrology entertainment? There's actually some truth to this.

I really hope this gets done. I rode the rail road bed from Exton to Paoli a few years back. Very scenic and very convenient for those of us that travel via two wheels and pedals.

- b

Not So Random Scan

In 1962 my Dad and his friend Stan won the National dragster championships in Indianapolis for their class "D" Street Roadster. Stan was the driver and my Dad made it all work.

Today he's 68. The same drive and initiative that got him to those championships still thrives. Each day there's a new challenge and new accomplishment to be had. Whether it's building another car or just fixing the lawn tractor, he's up and doing it and will be for years to come.


Happy Birthday Dad!

- b

What's Next?

January - May = Race Training
June = Racing
July = Recovery
August = India Preparing
September = India
October = Weddings & Funeral
November = Puppy
December = ?

- b