miscellaneous everything

Sunday, May 21, 2017

cat snot & other tribulations

This afternoon, I decided to open the window for a while. It was wicked hot earlier this week, but now it’s just cold.

Slink was here, in the living room:

Slink snoozing. (click to see it big!)

Which is at the front of the house and includes getting by the dog to get to the window at the back of the house.

But he managed to do it, probably by teleportation since it was instantaneous.

He then proceeded to rub against my face as I was opening the window. Then sneezed in my face. A full, snot-laden, allergy-induced cat sneeze.

Which caused me to step back fast—stepping right into the dog’s water bowl.

Normally it’s just an “oh shit” moment. But I’ve been sick for a week (allergies or a cold, who knows?) and am exhausted because last night I 1) binge-watched every episode of Marcella on Netflix and 2) got very little sleep once I did get to bed since every time I settled down, I started coughing. And trying not to cough so I wouldn’t wake Stanley. Which made the coughing worse, of course.

(Marcella was very good. But a lot of holes, kind of built-in to the series—she suffers from fugue states, it seems—maybe to explain things where you don’t really know what happened but seem to be resolved so the story continues. Hmm. Maybe these get resolved in season two?)

Anyway, after stepping into the dog’s water bowl, I just started laughing (while sopping up the water), which made me start coughing again. Which made me think about the benefits of Depends.

It’s just too cold for May.

posted by lee on 05/21/17 at 07:00 PM
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Friday, April 07, 2017

if the videos aren’t enough, here are more photos

Besides the videos, Scott also took a bunch of photographs of the disaster (you can click the arrows to see it full screen):

Meant to ask Scott about the ceiling over the living room—did that survive? And how did the bedroom next to the stairs do?

posted by lee on 04/07/17 at 08:58 PM
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Sunday, April 02, 2017

horror movies

Scott went up to Oscoda to assess the damage. This is what he found: (if you can’t watch these because they won’t load, please let me know and I’ll figure out another way to embed them—this is just a q&d fix).

From what he saw, it looks like this is a much older problem than we originally thought. It appears that the broken pipe kept gushing until the power to the pump was turned off (the house has its own well water supply). Someone, fortunately, turned off the breakers when the problems was originally discovered (by whom, initially, I do not know ... there are some information gaps that need to be filled in) so the water was turned off.

Scott says it’s like the inside is just dripping with moisture. The crawlspace is a swamp. The carpet needs to be ripped out ASAP. Most of the drywall is kaput. The paneling in the family room looks like it’s liquid still. The furnace and probably the hot water heater are gone, and probably the dishwasher, though the fridge is still okay (good thing—brand new, barely used). The stove was there when my parents moved in back in 1993, so that should probably be replaced anyway (or just removed).

As he said, he doesn’t know why the ceilings on the second floor fell—there are no pipes in those ceilings. So it must’ve been mighty wet in there for quite a while. With the weather warming up, cleanup needs to happen fast.

One thing I do know: when the repairs are done, they will be done right. No cut-through joists to accommodate the plumbing—a lazy con-artist did that when the house was built in 1979. Unbelievable.

posted by lee on 04/02/17 at 08:23 PM
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Sunday, March 26, 2017

wind, weather, water, & an empty house, oh calamity!

This weekend wasn’t a good one for tech stuff—DoS attack on one server, weird glitch on another, and we had to move our webserver to a new box because the disk is failing. So I was starting to think about what else to do for a living to get away from high tech. (I always do when aggravated by server crap that always seems to happen at once.)

However, I got a lesson that even “low tech” has problems. We put Dad’s house on the market last September and I saw that the market is picking up so that boded well for actually selling it this spring (Iosco County is not exactly a hot market—not for years now). But Mother Nature kicked us in the teeth. There have been windstorms and power outages where the house is—it’s the norm for a northern Michigan winter. While we don’t know for sure, it looks like the wind knocked the power out to the house (happens an awful lot there) and it didn’t come back on in time to prevent the pipes from freezing. Frozen pipes in the back wall, which apparently burst and destroyed the ceiling above the dining room and family room. My nephew Scott and his girlfriend Kayla just happened to go up that way for a weekend jaunt, checked on the house, and discovered the nightmare.

This was my biggest fear, that weather would cause something like this. A storm or a lightening strike or even a tornado. What frustrates me most about it is I’m not there to help with dealing with it.

Here is what these rooms looked like:

The kitchen, when we put it on the market. (click to see it big!)

The family room when we put it on the market. (click to see it big!)

That was then. These are now:

damage kitchen view
Looking from the kitchen towards the dining area/family room.

The ceiling in the dining area (click to see it big!)

text (click to see it big!)

The ceiling above the dining area. What gets me is how pristine and untouched the curtains look. (click to see it big!)

Where the ceiling used to be, above the dining area and family room. (click to see it big!)

Where the ceiling is now. (click to see it big!)

I know there was a bad windstorm a couple of weeks ago, but this looks like it’s been more than two weeks. But, I don’t know—I have no idea how quickly damage like this can happen.

The area that is damaged in mainly in the one-story section behind the garage, and below the upstairs bathroom in the two-story part of the house (hence all the pipes).

My nephew saw a silver lining: “Well, once we fix it we can say ‘improvements made’ in the listing.”

posted by lee on 03/26/17 at 01:13 AM
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Monday, November 28, 2016

another one, from flickerembed

Created with flickr embed.

posted by lee on 11/28/16 at 03:50 PM
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Tuesday, November 15, 2016

testing continued -slide awsome

posted by lee on 11/15/16 at 05:42 AM
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Wednesday, November 02, 2016

my friend is moved in to her new apartment

Pepper in the window, November 2, 2016

I am completely exhausted, my legs hurt—but it’s done. We managed to move our friend from her deathtrap apartment to her clean, nice, safe, quiet apartment. It took days, but Stanley, her son-in-law, and I got her moved. It would’ve been a lot easier and faster if her granddaughters had shown up to help at least a bit, but they were nowhere to be seen. Allegedly they will help her unpack, according to their father. I hope so.

One thing this whole process has done is convince me that I am not nuts—I want to cull and declutter this house now, even if moving is a long time in the future if at all. We have too much stuff. It’s oppressing me, overwhelming me. If we had to move fast, for whatever reason, we couldn’t. And that scares me.

posted by lee on 11/02/16 at 02:30 PM
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Wednesday, September 28, 2016

some light got in

After watching the political scene and the overwhelming disappearance of basic civility, I’d just about given up hope that things might get better.

But today, a ray of sunshine: a boy headed home from the middle school next door to us spotted a dollar in our driveway and went out of his way to tell us that he found it. I thanked him for his honesty and told him to keep it.

Made my week much better.

Slink and Pepper getting along for a change. (click to see it big!)

posted by lee on 09/28/16 at 03:14 PM
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Tuesday, September 20, 2016

moved. at last.

It took a while for me to figure it out, but finally, I did, and moved this site to our new webserver. Rah. Just 40+ more to go.

Slink wants me to pay attention to him. With food and a good scratch. (click to see it big!)

posted by lee on 09/20/16 at 04:19 AM
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Thursday, September 15, 2016

missing dad

Dad died a year ago today. It’s taken me this long to blog about it, though I did post on facebook, mainly so I could let everyone know what happened, and the arrangements and all that.

James Fleming at Trident for a trivia contest on November 21, 2014. We won! (click to see it big!)

I miss him. He went too soon—he was just 86 and was supposed to outlive his mother, who died at 91.

I blame type 2 diabetes, the stupidity of the medical establishment throwing away more than a hundred years of knowledge and pushing bullshit guidelines and bullshit drugs for diabetes instead of what they knew worked even before insulin was discovered.

I blame the University of Michigan Hospital for giving him a heavy dose of antibiotics instead of treating him for a gout flare after his leg was amputated. I blame them too for giving him C. difficile—there is no excuse for this. I’m still angry about a world-class teaching hospital killing him. I know he had a lot of problems—but he was doing so well and progressing nicely until he was slammed with c. diff.

But mainly, I miss him. I miss listening to Dad talk about politics—I would love to be able to hear what he has to say about what’s happening in this election. I miss hearing him talk about his great grandkids. I miss hearing him tell me about his cat’s latest antics. I miss his tales of his lunches with his ex-Kiwanis buddies. I miss listening to Dad and Stanley talk about politics and solve the world’s problems. I miss his daily emails letting me know he is okay. I miss trying to figure out what to get him for Fathers Day and his birthday and I missed sending him a Valentine’s Day card and sending him good coffee and t-shirts that I know he’d love. I miss spending time with him, and I miss hugging him. I miss telling him I love him.

posted by lee on 09/15/16 at 04:37 AM
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