Expansion: Part 1

Since 2001 Carol and I have been living in an approximately 700 square foot apartment attached to her parent's house. Our kitchen is the size of a closet and my office, well readers of this blog already know about my "office".

Starting point, this old house.

Not to complain, our place is, dare I say, cozy, and it certainly keeps the snow off us. But the time has come to expand, adding a real office, an actual kitchen, and enough room to have more than four people for dinner.

Prying out the old walkway bricks? That's low skill labor that even a mouse clicking desk jockey like me can handle!

It all starts with some minor grunt work. Taking up the old walkway so we can reuse the bricks in the new entrance. An old Yankee never wastes a brick. Nor crushed stone, as I'm tasked with raking up the crushed stone outside our door.

Cannon emplacement for fighting off bear attacks.

Al hires a fellow to cut two holes in the foundation, one in the existing basement and one on the side of the house facing the new basement. In between is the slab that our apartment sits on. In a special appearance, Jabba Joe is present when we finally finish digging out the sand between the two holes. So far everything has gone smoothly.

Oooooo...conduit, how arty. Be really nice if it was in focus genius.


Digging up the gravel entryway and sifting out the dirt with and old seedling basket? That's low skill too. Call the programmer. Yes it's night. Beats watching TV after a day of hacking. The black flies aren't out yet either, so it was quite pleasant.

We are extremely fortunate that Carol's dad Albert is a licensed electrician and more importantly for this job, a former finish carpenter and house builder. No better choice for the de facto general contractor than a man building a house for "his little girl". Even if she's 36.

Leslie starts the real skilled work. Honestly, he can turn the pages of a book with that backhoe. I'm not allowed anywhere near any machinery.

There's not much else we can do without the pros and their heavy equipment. Al starts calling in his various cronies. Leslie Fox is first up with his backhoe.

Keep digging, what could go wrong???

Apparently plenty...the old crack in the foundation decides to expand its horizons.

Now the slab on which our apartment sits has always had a crack in it. We knew there was some risk in digging out the hill next to the house that there could be "problems". But we were more concerned with torrential rains hitting before the new foundation could be poured.

Fortunately the rain held off. Unfortunately the crack didn't. Strange noises started echoing throughout the house. A new and alarming crack started to grow near the baseboards of my living room and soon I had a nice view of the outdoors through my floor. The slab wall starts spewing sand and bulging ominously as our living room is slowly pulled apart. The sound of nails slowly being pulled out of wood is not pleasant.

After some discussion Al and George Willard, who is overseeing the foundation work, decide to tear down the wall and develop plan B.

With the wall sagging dangerously, there's nothing in it but to tear it down.


Going...

Going...

Gone!

George and Al consult while forms man Dana looks on and thinks, "I'm not too keen on working under *that*!"

Well this is certainly off to an exciting start. I choose to say "exciting" rather than "disastrous" because I'm an optimistic guy. Anyway, that's enough for this installment. Tune in (uh 'blog in' ?) next time for the continuing saga of this old house. In our next episode we answer such pressing questions as:

* Will Moby attempt to squeeze out of the crack in the floor in search of sweet succulent freedom?

* Will Scorpion2 fall into the 8' deep hole when she comes to visit and attempts to knock at our door?

* Can you code while there is a non-zero chance your house might collapse?

* And most importantly, just *what* is Plan B?

ptb

D200

The king is Dead. Long live the King!

The old (lower-case 'k') king in this case was my wife's Nikon CoolPix 950. The new (capital 'K') King is her Nikon D200 digital SLR. The Coolpix was actually a decent digital camera -- for shooting anything that was well-lit, didn't move, and if the camera was mounted on a tripod. It's startup time was slow. The shutter release delay was slow. The only thing fast about it was the rate at which it chewed through batteries. It was even too big to really be useful as a convenience camera, you could stuff it in a back pocket, but, well, your ass would be huge as a result. And likely the batteries would be dead when you went to use it.

A crappy picture of a great camera. Taken with the now deposed Coolpix 950.

The Coolpix's reign has always been in jeopardy, but it's demise became certain two weeks ago when Scorpion1 stormed up from the studio after trying to shoot some shots of her recent paintings and declared, "That's it, I want a good digital camera! I DON'T CARE WHAT IT COSTS!!! And I want a new tripod too!"

Good Lord woman, don't ever tell a technology loving nerd that new hardware is needed and price isn't a consideration. It's a recipe for Pentagon levels of spending.

A decent picture of a great cat (Moby) taken with the D200. If you ask me he's named after Melville's whale, but my wife insists his namesake is Mr. Hall. Given the Hall-Melville connection I think we're both right :-)

In the end I exhibited some restraint, I resisted the siren call of Nikon's D2Xs, but finding a good deal on a D200 kit with a Nikkor 18-70mm 3.5-4.5 lens we did max out the prosumer level.

Nikon Coolpix 950

While comparing the D200 to the 950 is unfair and makes about as much sense as contrasting an Aprilia Tuono 1000 R Factory with a Honda Metropolitan, they are both digital cameras, just like the Aprilia and the Honda are two-wheeled conveyances...

Nikon D200

...I won't pretend to give a in-depth review of the D200's technical merits, I'll leave that to the far more qualified, or wait until I at least have some more time with it. But I can say simply that it makes taking pictures easy and the D200 is everything the 950 wasn't. If you can't take a good picture with it it's you, not the camera. In fact that's the only real drawback (other than price): I can't blame the gear anymore :-P

ptb

Flood

As my last post mentioned we got some late season snow here in Southwestern NH. I thought that was the last of it, but we got hit again shortly after that. And then on April 16th it started to rain. Hard. For almost two days.

We live relatively high on a mountain slope. Being so close to the source of the various nameless(?) streams in our area, we never see really high water. Well, almost never.

Hill Road washes away...

The ground was already saturated from melting snow and some warm days had melted and packed the snow hard on the ground. When the rain came, the ground couldn't absorb anything and impromptu brooks formed in new places, existing brooks upgraded to creeks, and existing creeks temporarily swelled to raging rivers.

In many places drainage pipes under the roads became overwhelmed and streams started flowing right over the top of the road. The road we live on is dirt and just washed away.

The cabin eventually had water in it, but it didn't float away and no real harm was done.

Fortunately our house sits high on a hill and was unaffected by the floods, but the dam in the back yard the creates our pond almost didn't make it. A spillway diverts high water around the dam so the water doesn't flow over it and wash away the earthen portions of the dam. But the spillway reached it's limit and the damn was only spared by a slackening in the rain. Being so close to the source, once the rain stops the water drops almost immediately (unlike those down river).

The spillway does its thing and the dam holds.

In the end the damage locally was limited mostly to roads. I don't know anyone personally who suffered severe property damage, though certainly there must be some, and many a basement was badly flooded. Rt 101 in Wilton, a major East West route in these parts remains closed as I write this. Rt 45 was also out for a week, a new bridge put in place last summer was destroyed there. Our own road was bulldozed back into passable shape, and while it still awaits a final grading, is useable again.

ptb

Spring?

Not the Easter Bunny.

Hey! It's April, time for flowers and the start of serious road riding and maybe some early mountain biking once the mud dries out. Hold that thought. Last Wednesday night saw only our second (hmmm, maybe third) significant snow storm of the year. It's half melted away now, but cool New England temps for the next several days mean a lot of it will hang around a while yet. Where was it when I wanted to ski? Bah! Well, we all know what Mark Twain said about the weather so I'll shut up.

Thursday Morning April 5, 2007 - I was icing my knees in there post-runs at this time last year...

We'd planned a trip to Jenness Beach State Park beach Saturday with J&J and the dogs. Despite a mildly sprained ankle from a trail run that morning, temps in the low 40's, and a general bad attitude on my part (yes I was whining) we went anyway and fun was had by all. Though I confess the beach was a real disappointment, littered with beer cans and trash. It did make my realize how much I like Saquish though...

Real Beaches: Duxbury beach, Saquish, Clark's Island, and Plymouth Beach.

Easter Bunny Scholar Jabba (a.k.a. Speed Racer, a.k.a. Lobster Clamp, a.k.a. Captain Question), Scorpion #1 (a.k.a. The Bride), and Scorpion #2 (a.k.a. Insane Québécoise) at Jenness. Danny and Billi show what they think of the photographer.

The unforgettable part of this trip (other than the filth level of a certain Mitsubishi) was the discussion Jabba Joe and I had regarding the Easter Bunny's powers. After a 90 minute round table we determined answers to the following questions:

Q: How far can the Easter Bunny jump?
A: At least 10,000 miles

Q: Do you want to be anywhere near him when he lands?
A: No.

Q: Does the Easter Bunny carry a flashlight to see in the dark?
A: What with his high carrot diet I say no, but Jabba insists that yes, he does. Further he claimed to see him several times near the end of our trip, carrying said flashlight, so I guess it's true.

Q: Is the 73' Dresden Theory (The Easter Bunny can phase through solid matter) true?
A: Probably not.

Q: Does the Easter Bunny posses super-hearing?
A: Yes, most definitely. With it, he can hear your heart and breathing and knows if you are only *pretending* to be asleep.

Q: What does the Eater Bunny wear?
A: A natty* monogrammed ("EB") vest and bow-tie. When not working he also wears a top-hat and carries a cane. The former tends to blow off during the super jumps and the latter is strictly for show so these are not part of his work attire.

Q: What about a monocle?
A: No, that would be Mr. Peanut

Q: Does the Easter Bunny Subcontract?
A: Yes, Santa and the Tooth Fairy, possessing similar breaking and entering skills, have both been known to assist.

Q: If Scorpion #1 had a child that asks as many questions as Jabba would she go insane?
A: Yes, in about 92.5 minutes. It was a close thing.

ptb

* Uh, Bride, I told you it was a real word.