Stealth Geeks Obsess

BROKEN BONES, WORK, VACATION & HOME REMODEL MAYHEM. And you?

Soooo. I have been gone for a while. Life has a funny way of re directing your priorities every so often. E. had a fracture in her ankle from a gymnastics injury, it started in August of last year and we identified a problem in November, she got a boot and crutches for 4 months and it has been a long recovery process. Her teamates have been supportive but they will be moving up with out her this year and that is crushing, especially after winning the state championship last year.
We were so excited this season when G made the select traveling BBall team, during a particularly rough home game she got a bad check and it snapped her collarbone. It was painful, hard for her to get any sleep and keep up with her school work, but she slowly healed. There was a lot of physical therapy for both the girls and 4 months to a kid is a lifetime. G was cleared to play spring league with the High School gals (we were so excited) and she breaks her toe this past week. SHE NEVER GOT TO PLAY A GAME! brutal.
We joked about how L would be next, we shouldn't have been so cavalier. L broke his wrist skateboarding and ended up with a cast a few weeks before we went to Maui. We were able to get a water splint for our trip but it was a long dark broken winter. He missed the first month or so of baseball. He came back stronger than ever and has even been pitching a few games.

My work with The Foundation has been taking up more and more of my time. It is exciting to be involved with such a changing, growing exciting group. I am learning alot about business, communication marketing and when to say nope, I am too busy to take on any more.

We went to Hawaii for Spring break. It was wonderful to get away with the family. It was a much needed break.

The house remodel has been dragging on and on. I will have a separate post about that later, Hopefully when it is done.

Enough Already

I love the snow, I really do. It gives me an excuse to stay in my pajamas all  day playing fallout 3. (quite possibly the best video game ever. really) On December 16th, when snow was predicted, I thought it would be great and that it would put me in the holiday spirit. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that school could be canceled and the kids would not go back to school this year, but I could not let myself think about that. Nineteen day's home, alone, with the kids????? NOAA was predicting blizzard conditions by the weekend, and I had just barely started my Christmas shopping.

So we hunkered down and decorated the house, made gingerbread houses and got in each others way.

The kids did a lot of sledding in the neighborhood and that was hours of fun. Nick, being a Coloradan at heart, had no trouble getting out of North Bend the first day, but by Thursday most highway's were closed and we lost power.

Thank goodness we were able to get the generator hooked up hours before the storm, we had no heat overnight, but warmed up later in the day.

We had a wonderful Christmas, missing family that we couldn't get to, but we enjoyed the snow, food and each others company.

Here we are, a week and a half left with no school slushy snow and rain everywhere and the charm is wearing thin!

Happy Hollidays everyone!

Another 100 year flood?

In 2006 we suffered a major flood here in North Bend, Snoqualmie and Fall City. School was canceled, the power went out, and many homes and businesses had to be evacuated.
So far this Fall we have had beautiful weather and have been lucky with many sunny day's and little rainfall. Our local weather forecasters love to dramatize any "storm" they see headed our way, so I didn't pay much attention when they threatened yet another horrible rainstorm. We call that November here in these parts. But it was indeed a bad one, after taking Veterans day off from school I was shocked to wake up the next morning with an e-mail message saying school was canceled due to flooding. It had rained all night, was still raining and was supposed to continue well into the night. Fall City was suffering the worst that morning, by that afternoon Snoqualmie was flooding and there was a call out to fill sand bags. By Wednesday evening North bend was seeing all three forks of the Snoqualmie River reaching their banks.

 

Luckily, although we are between two forks of the river, we are up high enough that we were safe. Thursday morning schools were still closed but the water was receeding. Here are some photo's from yesterday.

The kids are back in school today. It's a half day but I will take it. I am glad the rivers are back to normal but with the weather slowely changing, the 100 year floods are happening more and more.

Momma, Make me Wicked

FO's, or Finished objects, are hard to come by these day's. With the kids back in school I had visions of painting the entire downstairs, start the painting project at my mom's house and of course the remodel of our house was to be well underway. A little Sh*t in the back yard threw that plan out the window.
I see it coming every year but somehow I am always unprepared for it. Fall that is.

Fall is overwhelming. It is my mom, sister, mother in law, nephew, my and all my childrens birthday's. Add back to school stuff, Football, Basketball Gymnastics and now Volleyball into the mix along with what is becoming a full-time volunteer job as VP of our Schools Foundation and I havent a minute to start, let alone complete a project.
Because of all of the above mentioned sports, I find myself sitting or driving in the car about 3 hours a day. Prime Knitting Time! Yes. So a few weeks ago while Emma and I were in Issaquah at my favorite LYS (or local yarn store) Emma saw some yarn she fell in love with, and I let her pick out a pattern to go along with it.
OOOH Momma, Make me Wicked! and Wicked she shall be!
That was the pattern she had chosen, Wicked. She chose some excellent yarn to go along with it. Aurora 8 from Karabella yarns. It was a pretty quick knit. For me that is, and after blocking it turned out great.
She really was happier than this picture shows.
  At first I wasn't going to add the pocket, but I am glad I did.
We have had such an unusually warm Fall, so she hasn't worn the sweater yet, but she loves it and I am sure it will be a staple in her wardrobe, unlike so many other sweaters I have made the kids.
It's not so bad, this new schedule of mine. I just need to get used to it. Whenever I feel overwhelmed I think of my BFF and goddess of all things home and knit. She has 4 kids, thats right, FOUR, and still manages to start and complete a project - whether it be home remodel, or a craft project, in record time.

I am now working on a super secret project for my sisters birthday. I don't work well under pressure, but so far it is coming along great. With my Ipod, needles, and all that car time, I should be able to finish by Oct 20th!

Is that a dead animal? (or) I changed my mind. Leave the keg

Well frat party boy's are gone. No eviction necessary. I think they were tired of living with each other anyway. There was one stellar fella who celebrated way too much, he had "Cinco de Marty" party's, and celebrated  "Marty Graw" .
The house itself was in good shape, two of the bedrooms just needed cleaning and touch up paint, MartyPartyPant's room needed to have a lot of patching done, where he had installed some car speakers into the walls, and we had to repaint because he turned the room into a dark cave. (that's right ladies) Some scratched floors, a cracked mirror and oddly, the garbage disposal had been removed.

Oddly, all of the closet doors had been removed and put in the attic, my imagination hasn't been able to come up with a reason for that.
Here are some afters.



I know, ignore the dates on the camera.

The biggest problem was the yard. The front needed weeding and mowing, the gravel driveway was being overtaken by weeds, but the backyard (which is not visible from the road) was completely overgrown, and there was garbage everywhere. The attached garage had a lot of stuff as well.

We decided to have 1-800-got junk haul everything away. When they came we added some garbage from the house and were working on the yard as they loaded up, the junk fellas were excited about an engine hoist in the garage and we told them they could have it.

After loading a pile of junk from behind the house - where incidentally we found the garbage disposal - we came across a dead animal of some sort, we didn't look to close, we let junk fellas take care of it since they were still in a good mood about the engine hoist. I am wishing the loosers would have left the keg, FULL of course.

We have some new renters coming in the first of October, a couple, we are hoping that they aren't wackadoo's, but only time will tell.

NO! What do you mean No?

Just No, that was the response from the Health Department. No to installing a short system to tide us over until sewer comes through, No to building a new full system, and No to repairing the one we have.
Take a breath, here's a kitten.

My septic guy was just as confounded as we were. I guess the rationale is that although the short system would be ideal, the Health Dept. has no guarantee that we will hook up to Sewer as soon as it comes through, even if we promise, or sign papers, they cannot make us. So that option is off the table. No to a new full system, I am not sure of the rationale behind this one, I think it is because we don't have a proper  reserve, or because it is too close to our patio?
No to repairing the old system, because it cannot be repaired while people are using the system, that is what I gleened anyway.
So when confronted by septic guy she said she would think about it and get back to us.
Here is what she came up with,
A timer on the system.
Yup, just a timer on the pump that turns on over a 24 hour system to slow the leaching into the damaged field.
Now this will cost around $1,000. versus the 25-30 thousand for a new system so I should be happy. But I am not, and here's why. If we have trouble with the timer system and the leach field, it backs up into the house, as it is, if there is trouble it overwhelms the system and comes up in the yard.
Which would you rather have, effluent in the yard? or coming up in the house?
It's okay..... More kittens

My septic guy was not happy, so he will be working with the Health Dept over the next few weeks to come up with a better solution.
On a happier note, we have cut back our water use by half what it was last year, and the equivalent of a two person household!! (we have 5)
Yea us.
Now! More Kittens!!
 

That's it, Get out & take your keg with you

 

When my sister and I bought the Arbor Heights house as an investment property, the market was pretty high. We did all the repairs and upgrades ourselves and saved some money, but it took a little longer than we liked so we were getting nervous about renting it quickly. We ended up renting to 3 guy's in their 30's. big mistake. Their references checked out but, it was three guy's in their 30's...
The trouble started almost immediately, they weren't too bad, but the insane neighbor called us whenever they sneezed.

They also left couches on the front porch, which looked awful and it often had a keg on it. The neighbor was the biggest problem, she harassed Megan at all hours of the day and night complaining about noise, we (and again by we I mean Megan) went up to the house and asked them to quiet down. It turned out her husband was partying with them and this made her angry.
This is right about the time we realized the neighbor was insane. This was confirmed when we started receiving unsigned letters in the mail complaining about the tenants. We went door to door and asked the other neighbors. They confirmed that they were loud but when asked to quiet down they did and that yes, indeed, the complainer was insane.

The grass may be dead, but it's a cute house!

The neighbor then started harassing us, we let her know that she could call the police or record the noise and make a formal complaint, but she was no longer allowed to contact us. It did the trick.
Meanwhile the tenants started parking their car on the back lawn, and the "girlfriends" were there so often that we began to suspect they had moved in.
This was confirmed when both toilets in the house were clogged and we (this time Megan and her hubby) went up to check it out. The drunk tenants complained that their girlfriends had no where to pee, and when Eric suggested they pee at THEIR HOUSE! the drunk idiot mouthed off to Eric, who at 6' 3" and in good shape, is NOT the guy to mouth off too. He started yelling "He just laughed and said "Okay, you've got a month, get out and take your keg with you".
We (Meg, and Eric) fixed the toilets, cleaned the bathrooms and left, all within 12 hours of being informed about the problem. I know, we are awesome landlords!
When drunk mouthy boy sobered up, he tried to apologize to Megan, but no go. It is time for the frat party to end.
Now I hope we don't have to do an eviction, and I really hope they don't trash our house! Stay tuned.

When Green Grass is a Bad Thing

Ahhh, to have luscious green grass in Late July. In general I don't care if my grass goes brown in late summer, when my neighborhood association complains I remind them of the whole reduce, reuse, recycle philosophy. Don't get me wrong, it's never so dead that it doesn't come back by September, or creates a fire hazard, but it is not as luscious as the photo above, unless...... "You are the proud owner of a FAILED septic system!" That's right, the "poop on a stick" turned out to be a bit more of a problem than we initially thought.
You see it looks as if our septic system might have failed years and years ago. We did not know this because the drainfield was built so deep that the effluent never surfaced, until we started prodding the ground with a stick that is, we basically built a straight thoroughfare to the surface. It's the classic chicken and egg story. We wouldn't have known that it failed if we didn't go looking for it and therefore created the very problem we had hoped to avoid.
So here we are 18 months out from getting sewer in our neighborhood, one week away from hosting a Wake for my father and 2 day's away from hosting my lovely sister and family, while we are on the old 2 minute showers and "yellow mellow, brown flush it down" diet.
That's life. Needless to say, the expansion is a no go.
The 2 sticks in the ground are the main culprits, I left them in so that I can check the progression of the.. uh.. effluent, so far it has not been bad at all.
At any other time in my life I would be really down about this, angry and lets face it a little self pitying, but I have 2 friends whose children have each been diagnosed with cancer, one is a beautiful energetic strong 9yr old who has had a recurrence of her leukemia, the other a shy adorable 10 yr old boy who has a cancerous mass that has lodged in his lymph node on his neck (hopefully benign).
Some how poop in the yard seems like a blessing.

So here we are trying to figure out if we can do a "short system" to tide us over until sewer comes through. It's all up to the county health department now.
On a happier note, The devil Ann (from the aforementioned post "nah you don't need a permit for that") has been fired. There were so many complaints against her, and her knowledge of septic systems was non existent. Yeah for mortals!
So off I go on another homeowner adventure.
But wait there is more.
We had to get rid of our tenants at the Arbor Heights house, and man was that fun.
I will post about it next on "That's it get out and take your keg with you"
Give me a shout and let me know how your home improvement projects are going.

Poop on a stick is never a good thing

So Larry the septic guy and his side kick showed up six hours late, but at this point I was just happy to see them. He was unable to locate the third tank on the septic as well, but using an electronic tracker he gave me a general Idea. Of course this could not be good news. It meant having to remove a large portion of the deck and digging down four feet, in a "general area" to find the top of the 800 gallon tank.
So Megan came over and helped me dig. Here is the photo when we got started.
Because they were so late they were not going to be able to find the drain field and put in the lateral upturns and monitoring points. Using a type of stick he poked holes in the yard where he believed the drain field to be.... when he lifted it out, you guessed it, brown liquid. Not the good kind.
He poked holes all around and 6 out of 8 had the liquid.
"I'm not gonna lie to ya" he said, "poop on the stick is never a good thing."
There was nothing more they could do for me that day, I was to call them when I had found the lid and go from there.
So for day's and day's I dug.
Here is my progression.
Hey look, there is the sprinkler system. What's that doing under the deck? (maybe if I got a permit I would have known it was there?)

See the hole on the right? That is where I asked my husband to dig after spending all day in the trenches with six kids running around. I decided to take them out for a bit so my DH could dig in peace, when I got back, he had dug the hole on the left. WHY you ask, yeah, me too.
Man that's a big hole. On my final day of digging I found the tank, I followed it around to the middle where the access hole should be, and voila, there it was on the right, My back aches, my yard looks like , well you know, and I lost a huge portion of my deck. All this has successfully kept a septic failure out of my mind. I know I am in denial because while digging and entertaining 6 kids, I did 6 loads of laundry, ran the dishwasher and allowed three of the kids to take a shower. I am a bad person!
Now it's back in Larry's hands. He should be here Monday to search and identify the lateral upturns, and then we will know what comes next.
Being about 18 months away from getting onto the City's sewer system, I sure hope we don't have to install a brand new septic system.....
Stay tuned

Permit? Nah you don't need a permit for that...

Several years ago we put a deck onto the back of our house, I asked our contractor at the time whether or not we needed a permit, "Nah, you don't need a permit for this". Stupid homeowner. I knew I should have made one short call to the county to confirm, but I didn't. Now I have to rip up a portion of the deck to find a third access port to my septic that I didn't know existed.

We are planning an addition onto the side of our house, no where near the tank or pump out mind you, and there are several different departments that need to okay and issue our permits before we start. Such as our local water consortium, member run - easy to reach and friendly. The county building department, quite far away and run by a sadistic group of obsessive compulsive disorder hybrids, but once you know the rules, quite friendly, and then there is the HEALTH DEPARTMENT this unassuming,tyrannical  bunch of bottom feeding..... but I digress.

The water department and the county have both approved our plans and passed us through the permitting process "PENDING HEALTH DEPARTMENT APPROVAL" four unassuming words that have come to mean, "when you pay a ridiculous amount of money, answer - in writing - ridiculous questions and perform pointless costly, difficult tasks." in other words it's looking like never.

I should say that our house is served by a septic system (thus the Health Dept's involvement) but will be hooking up to sewer by 2010, two short years away. Our septic has never given us any trouble but several people in our neighborhood have had their systems fail at quite a high cost. So when the City decided to run sewer past our development for a large construction project nearby, we petitioned the city and opted in. The health department is requiring me to bring my 14 year old septic system up to today's code. Which means finding all four corners of the tank, put in lateral upturns (yeah, I don't know what that means either) monitoring ports and provide proof of a yearly monitoring program with a septic company. WHAT! oh yea, and risers on all access panels, blah blah, plus four pages of other "minor" requirements, but this is the big ticket one. Here are what the risers look like, we had them installed on the two ports we knew about, didn't even know there was a third one, and neither did the septic company we have been using for years.

I understand the need to make sure that our rivers and streams remain healthy by making sure homeowners maintain their septic systems properly, but installing viewing ports on all four corners of my tank. Excessive. I am sure that when we hook up to sewer we will have to slurry the tank at great expense and the health department will again be involved. The thing that is such a bother is that I have to totally kiss their ass while they are complete assholes to me. I have never been good at that.

I have met the devil, her name is Ann, and she works for the county health department.