Tree Damage

Spent most of yesterday afternoon cleaning up some tree damage at Jen's mother's house.

I swear White Pines aren't indigenous to this area considering how poorly they do in wind and heavy snow.

Her township has a chipping program. The plan was to make a pile of what could be chipped and make a pile of what couldn't (8" diameter limitation). The chipping pile is supposed to be at the street, but considering the chipping appointment (chipping is free, but you need an appointment) might not be for another month, I kept it back behind the house.

For now the pile that can't be chipped is under the deck. Some point soon, I'll need to go back and haul that off myself.

Should make for nice bonfire wood.

- b

Township Easement

Came home Wednesday night to find the township had plowed around the opening of my driveway.

Well that's nice of them. Typically your driveway just gets plowed in.

A closer inspection revealed things weren't so nice. In plowing around the entrance of our driveway they completely plowed over our street number and a shrub that was planted near the road.

Well that sucks.

I took some pictures and headed over to the township office the next morning.

Turns out the township has an easement that runs sixteen and a half feet from the middle of the road out into everyone's property. This gives them the right to plow back huge piles of snow that might otherwise cause safety issues with "line of sight".

My driveway is such a case. There's a dip and a rise just before you get to it. If a car rolling down the road is in that dip, they can't see me coming out of my driveway when there's four feet of snow piled up around it.

In the end, all I could do was thank the township for making my driveway safer and easier to enter and exit.

The landscaping and street number were put there by the previous owner

I tried salvaging the shrub.

I'll deal with the street number later.

- b

Attic's Done!

Finished the attic today. Pulled up the last bag of insulation (I think that's six or seven total? Roughly $300) and distributed the batts.

So glad that's done.

Won't have to go up there until Jen wants new ceiling fans or a whole house fan.

While I was finishing that, Jen started the leaves.

I think we've got one more weekend of leaves, though I won't be around for a weekend for quite a while.

- b

Night Moves

Spending all weekend trying to best utilize the weather, I ended up having to relegate some things to Monday night after work.

The tractor's got lights right?

Yeah it has lights, but once you try to use them, you realize they weren't really meant to be used. I need to do what my dad did and rig up some old car headlights on the front and maybe mount the current lights out back (reverse is very dark at night). Maybe mount some KC Daylighters on the front?

Jen would kill me, but they'd work nicely. They even come with a nice little toggle I can mount in the dash of the tractor. Hell. I've practically convinced myself.

I only did the front yard (dunno why. wishing now I did the back too). I hadn't cut the grass or mulched the leaves in a few weeks. I figured a quick trip around the yard would give me a little head start if/when I got to it this weekend. Unfortunately the sun doesn't come up for nearly another hour, so I really don't know how well I did.

After the yard it was back to the pool skimmer.

I have to admit. The expansion joint caulk made me nervous. After the super-duper adhesive experience I had with the pool tiles, I was a little nervous using some other caulkable pool thingy. My fears were unfounded. This stuff was great. Almost too great. It came out of the tube like warm butter, which I thought was pretty amazing for a silicone based product. It flowed into all the depth and gaps and leveled itself out nicely.

It didn't take long to realize I was going to run out. Unfortunately it took until this morning to realize I should have simply put a thin layer down inside all the joints to seal in the bottom of the gap, then gotten more to finish off the job later. Instead I tried to do a couple of the joints completely and left some of them completely undone.

And now it's pouring outside. Worse case scenario (I hope) I have to do it again. At least I'll know how to do it and how much I'll need.

- b