It’s not too early to think of Christmas concerts. One of the choirs has been rehearsing already. See my events listing.
I rented a disposal bin and Saturday and Sunday I filled it with about 6 or 7 cu. yards of dirt and also piled up twenty-seven (27) 24 in. by 29 in. by 2 in. concrete slabs in the bin. I figure each of them must weigh about 50 kg—so there’s over a ton of them that I lifted and carted around with my appliance dolly. Yes my arms and my back are sore. Yesterday I got quite dirty hacking and pulling out roots which, of course, flung dirt all over my sweaty torso. Those last few square feet were a killer: every few inches there were roots sometimes up to 2 in. thick.
Last night we had to drive out to Tilbury near Windsor because our younger son had a flat and the battery wall almost out in his cell phone. He was quite upset, too. So at about 7:30 pm we set out. I changed the flat tire with the emergency spare but then had to drive the van home at 90 km/h all the way. It took me a while to find a station with music that I could keep time with body percussion. Beating myself awake as it were. Remember, I had spent all day being an earth mover and root puller. I finally hit the bed around 4 a.m. Monday morning!
I was going to take today off anyway and start spreading limestone screenings; however I slept in to almost noon. I did some of this work this afternoon.
My plans have changed a bit in that I have decided to raise the front walkway level to match the raised elevation of the new driveway. I didn’t have to remove as much dirt but there were still a lot of roots. I went to the local lumber store to buy some cheap spruce 1 by 4’s to edge the screenings on one side. I’ll just leave them in place and eventually they’ll rot away under the topsoil I’ll put beside the new walkway.
Now I’d better get to work excavating and putting down the gravel base…
The client wanted the login to switch “web sites.” I’m using mod_auth to handle the login and, today, I used mod_rewrite, one of the more arcane modules, to rewrite the directory URL. I still need to set up a rewrite log to find out what it does. Sometimes the correct page comes out but image links are corrupted or the URL root index page comes out instead of subdirectory. It’s a work in progress. I didn’t check in the web site to my CVS directory on the drive I can access from home via VPN: so, no example .htaccess file yet.
In other news: I reserved a 6 yard3 waste disposal bin for the weekend. I expect I shall fill it to the top; unless the neighbour wants some of the topsoil.
I finally got around to scanning and posting the images for the guys. The captions are somewhat anonymous but, to those in the know, the pictures should be identifiable.
A message on our blackboard had the notice “van has a flat tire.” So, in order that my younger son could get to school, I changed the “totally” mangled front passenger tire for the “emergency” spare between 7 and 8 am this morning. The latter tire was almost rusted in underneath the van. I have heard of some of the under van mounted tires falling off when their holding cable had rusted through. Then it was a quick rollerblade to catch the last rush hour GO train.
So, I was an hour later at work than usual. At lunch I had to go to the post office and send a package to Thailand. For about $20 it could go by air and get there in 10 days or, for $10, it could go by “surface” mail, i.e., ship and get there in 6 weeks! I chose the expensive option.
I worked an a hour later and got home around 6:30 p.m. My wife had gone out to Canadian Tire to meet my son—the tire needed replacing and his line of credit doesn’t go that high. Meanwhile I had supper, cleaned up the kitchen, gathered up the household and put it out on the street. Finally at 9 p.m. I poured myself a glass of the new batch of Pinot Noir I bottled in the beginning of July. Mmmm!
Today means it has been four months since the original driveway paving contractor removed the asphalt. They have yet to call us. Of course we have had the driveway paved by someone else in the meantime.
- Amnesia?
- What did you just ask me?
- Apathy?
- I don’t care.
- Bigotry?
- I’m not going to tell someone like you.
- Egotistical?
- I’m the best person to answer that question.
- Evasive?
- Go do your homework.
- Flatulent?
- That question really stinks!
- Ignorance?
- I don’t know.
- Indifference?
- It doesn’t matter.
- Influenza?
- You’ve got to be sick to ask me that question.
- Insomnia?
- I stayed awake all last night thinking of the answer.
- Irreverent?
- I swear to God, you ask too many questions!
- Narcissism?
- Before I answer, tell me, don’t I look great?
- Over-Protective?
- I don’t know if you’re ready for the answer.
- Paranoid?
- You probably think I don’t know the answer, do you?
- Procrastination?
- I’ll tell you tomorrow.
- Repetitive?
- I already told you the answer once before.
- Self-Centered?
- Well, I know the answer, that’s all that matters.
- Suspicious?
- Why are you asking me all these questions?
From T H E . M O U T H P I E C E Wednesday, August 11, 2004
Prior to visiting Costco I went to a couple of landscaping places to get estimates on how much it would cost to “paver” my walk. Including pavers, wall blocks, limestone screenings, edging, galvanized spikes, etc. I’ll be spending over a grand. Then I have to add on top of this the rent for the tamper machine and disposal bin for the clay subsoil and 2' x 2' concrete slabs. However, six cubic yards of screenings is less than $200 so I figure I could get started next weekend.
Back to Costco: we were looking to replace the second fridge we gave to my son. We found a nice model and, for a modest extra charge, it would be delivered. I duly filled in the form, we looked around their new Oakville-Mississauga warehouse a bit and then lined up at the cashier.
The cashier said the system wouldn’t accept the code. She called in “the supervisor.” He tried it and then went over to another desk and tried to look up the code. No go. He asked us where we got the code. I said there was a pad of one page brochures with the code stuck to the display model. Finally after maybe twenty minutes of standing around “the supervisor” said, sorry the company doesn’t deliver fridges anymore. We’d have to move it ourselves. Perhaps my son and I may come back with the van and do just that but it seemed a wasted visit.
From the ahhh-ain’t-that-cute department.
- How to change a diaper in the dark, in a parked car, on a standing child and all of the above simultaneously.
- Which lines of The Cat in the Hat and If I Ran the Circus can be skipped over without a child noticing.
- How bright a 3 a.m. full moon is.
- Why anyone would bother retracing their steps for miles just to retrieve a lost blankie.
- That tigers live in the trees in our backyard.
- That solid white socks get lost in the dryer at a much slower rate than do the mates of patterned socks that coordinate to special outfits.
- How little sleep a human body truly needs to function.
- Almost every Raffi/Sharon, Lois and Bram/… lyric ever penned.
- That one can never own too many sippy cup lids or refrigerator magnets.
- That reverse psychology really works.
- The distinctive sounds of Cheerios crunching underfoot.
- Why they call them Happy meals.
- How far you can dilute juice and still retain it’s taste.
- The blessedness of naps, the inviolate importance of routines.
- How much you could love one human being!
I took some pictures of the front and side walks. I intend “real soon now” to replace them and put down pavers.
The mail client at work, Outlook, or as one guy calls it “Look Out!”, archives older messages on startup. Every so often a popup dialog says something like, “Auto archive failed see Deleted items folder for details.” Here’s the details:
Posted At: Wednesday, September 15, 2004 8:12 AM Posted To: Deleted Items Conversation: Archive Log. Subject: Archive Log. The operation failed. The operation failed.
So there. Now I know why. ;-)
- 2004 Nov 5
- It seems some people were having trouble understanding “[28 Sep 04: and now there are none]” so I removed that and put “No” at the beginning of the title. I also turned off allowing comments.
Just send email to:
j s e r v i c e a t g m a i l d o t c o m
and include your first and last names and where you live and I’ll send you a gmail invitation.
“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
Thomas Edison
The family (perhaps 60 or so?) plus one friend of my great aunt Edna’s cousin came to a memorial service in Aurora, Ontario. My cousin’s daughter asked her grandma (another of my aunts), “Where’s the box?” Several weeks ago she had been at her grandpa’s funeral where there was an open casket. My aunt tried to explain about cremation and that Edna’s ashes were in that small box on the altar and her spirit was in Heaven. My cousin’s daughter still couldn’t believe the body wasn’t around somewhere.
My reverend uncle led the memorial service and my aunt played the hymns on the keyboard she brought as the funeral home had no piano or organ. After the service, the Services and other relative went to a lunch reception at a local golf and country club. Quite pleasant. My wife and I agreed that our final services should be like that. The older people had a place to sit and eat their sandwiches and drink coffee and the others could circulate and visit.
What I learned about my great aunt was that she lived in Windsor for many years before moving to Oakville when Ford, where my uncle Ed used to work, moved their head office. This is probably why the “Windsor” and “Chatham” Services got up very early in the morning to attend the memorial service: she was as much “their” aunt as “ours.” Edna taught one of my uncles to dance when he was a teen. It helped him get over his shyness in Grade 11. When Edna moved to a nursing home north of Toronto another of my cousins got to know Edna and learn about the family’s history. BTW, I have 12 cousins on my father’s side of the family who now have 9 kids, then there’s my 3 brother and sister and our 12 children.
Later my wife and I visited her parents, played cards and went out for supper. Then we came home and cleaned the old fridge we are giving to my older son as the fridge in their house they just moved into “is crap.”
You know there are other things in life besides family; however, those other things are less important.
“Teach a child to be polite and courteous in the home and when he grows up, he’ll never be able to [merge] his car onto a [highway].”
source unknown
Today I felt like I worked straight through the day with no break: I finished a draft report and sent it out for review. I prepared some graphs for a manager’s presentation where he needed them within an hour. I sent out an estimate for my time to make up a computer to sit on the Internet and collect some data sent by a serial-to-ethernet box attached to a remote data collection device. And I was part of lunch time focus group session on “points to ponder” for our upcoming union bargaining agenda.
And tonight I found out I’ll be busy singing in the second week of December with three concerts on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and two rehearsals.
Tomorrow I’ll “relax” and go to my Great Aunt Edna’s funeral…
I found a pen on the sidewalk near work at lunchtime. It had a logo , “nt,” followed by “Northern Telecom.” Underneath was inscribed, “Perfect attendance 1 year.”
I wonder how long it has been since Northern Telecom morphed into Nortel Networks and how long it has been since pens were given out as attendance incentives. The pen works so I’ll put it in my fanny pack and use it to sign credit card receipts and cheques … or autographs.
Email sent to work is bouncing with an ominous message:
Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:
some.one@our.company.com
Technical details of failure:
PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 10): 550 5.7.1 Unable to relay for some.one@our.company.com
According to this tip there’s a misconfiguration somewhere or a faulty permissions setting in the MS Exchange Server. I hope the IT people get this one fixed soon. Practically everything comes by email these days.
Today’s delightful find was that the awful smell wasn’t the garbage in the garage itself but the maggoty dead mouse underneath the bag at the bottom of the garbage can.
p{It has been a year or two since I’ve had to carve holes in our heavy clay
soil but I needed to move a couple of daylilies from where the new walkway will
go.]
Yesterday I removed the grass from an area of the front sideyard to the west of the driveway and hedge. Today I transplated.
For each plant I dig a round hole about 24”in diameter using my handy garbage can lid template. For the top six inches or so of topsoil I sift it through frac{1}{2}”hardware cloth into the wheelbarrow and pick out the roots and stones. That 24”by 6”cylinder of soil (about 1.5 ft3) will usually fill the wheelbarrow (3 to 4 ft3 I guess). Then I pick away another few inches of the reddish clay and rocks which I usually throw out. I mix peat moss and compost into the wheelbarrow of soil using a small spade and then move some of it into a couple of five gallon pails so that I can use the wheelbarrow to transport the transplant. Digging one hole can take an hour or so depending on how stiff the clay is and how many rocks I have to pry out. At least at this location, I didn’t have to contend with any large roots.
Once the hole is dug and the soil prepared I take the wheelbarrow and large spade (the one where the handle goes right through the ferrule to the blade of the spade) over to the daylily. I found a couple of stretch (bungee) cords were handy at keeping the foliage out of the way while I inserted the spade several times all the way around the plant. Years ago I followed the tip to sharpen your spades: they go through clay and roots much easier that way. The clay soil has at least one advantage in that it sticks to the roots when you lift the root ball into the wheelbarrow. However that same clay makes that root ball very heavy. I did remember to bend at the knees and use my legs instead of my back to lift.
Back at the hole, I put in some prepared soil and nestled the root ball in the centre. Usually you want the top of the root ball to be slightly higher than the surrounding surface because it will sink somewhat when you tamp it down and water it. I fill and tamp prepared soil around the root ball until the hole is half full. The “moat” I fill with water and wait until it disappears. After that I top up the hole with soil and tamp down with my hands and then my feet. At this point I removed the stretch cords and then waterered the plant well with the watering can.
I have been using this transplanting method I learned from my Grandpa for probably 35 years. This method is a lot of work—especially in clay soil; however, I can’t recall ever losing a perennial, shrub or tree I have planted this way.
On these hot afternoon runs I have been carrying a water bottle and wash cloth to wipe the sweat off my brow. Today’s experiment was to use Gatorade™ rather than just water. I really can’t say whether I was able to keep up the pace because of it or not. I find it too sweet. I am speculating whether I should be trying de-alcoholized beer as my fluid du jour. Though, by the end of the run, whatever I use has warmed up to air temperature. Real beer wouldn’t be good as alcohol is a diuretic and it makes you sweat even more.
This morning I sketched my concrete paver (interlocking brick) front and
side walkway on 11×17 graph
paper. I still
haven’t found a good (read free or minimal cost) CAD program for Windows
2000/XP. The
Google
calculator was a great help in calculating areas and volumes. My 100'
measuring tape has handy 6 ft 8 in type markings so I used those on my
sketch. Google helped me calculate the paved areas
(e.g. 20
feet 10 inches times 4 feet. The answer came up in square meters but the
paver company quotes square feet per pallet. So Google helps me there too:
10
square meters in square feet. I could also calculate how much dirt I will
have to remove and how much gravel and sand I’ll need.
Uncle Bill called me tonight to say Great Aunt Edna died today (Sept. 3, 2004) at about 3 p.m in the nursing home. She had had a couple of bad strokes just recently. Even when we visited her a couple of years ago she declared to us then, that she was “ready to go.” At last she got her wish and the Lord has taken her into His arms.
I’ll always remember Edna as the kind of warm-hearted, great aunt and classy lady you read about in novels: except that she was a real person! How she ever survived being married to Uncle Ed all those years — I’ll never know.
Her grand nephew.
It’s almost dark when you get up at 6:20 a.m. these days. I had to drag myself out of bed to return to work after a few days' vacation. Lots to do at work: a couple of mid-September deadlines for a large report and a mock-up website. I’m looking forward to the long weekend already!
At home I’ve started “clearing the land” for the new walkway. Yesterday I removed the 4×4 pressure-treated lumber around the front garden and extracted the 10”and 16”spikes. The bottom 4×4’s next to the ground were several kg heavier with moisture. I’ll leave them to dry a few days before I use the chainsaw to cut them up for disposal. Next up will be to divide and transplant some of my choice perenials. The neighbour has expressed an interest in any leftovers.