Exit, Pursued by a Bear

Done!

Never a dull moment at our house. C. reports that it took four burly men to haul away the remaining concrete early this morning:

Day One

This turned into a multi-day project, not what the demolition crew had expected. The decision to call in the professionals looks pretty sensible in retrospect – I think I would have given up in defeat. They come back tomorrow.

I wouldn't have thought that a baby's nap schedule and hours of jackhammering were really compatible, but the boy slept through at least a hour of it under his window.

Dangerous. Very dangerous.

Making it so close to MEC is a cruel, cruel touch. This could get expensive.

It was either that or explosives

The previous owners of the house, great fans of all things concrete who left us two inches of cement over the maple hardwood floor in the front hallway, also left us an angel-brick planter in the front yard, which I destroyed earlier in the month with the joy of a happy warrior. I’ve loathed the thing since we moved in – before, really. Pix are below.

A pick and sledgehammer were involved.

It was a lot of fun.

The gouge in my hand is healing, thank you.

Anyway, the happy warrior’s happy smashing slowed down when I got down to the foundation, which was apparently designed to survive a nuclear apocalypse. The power chisel I rented from Home Depot (the rental guy looked oddly at me and said: ‘You’ve never rented anything from us? But you’re here all the time!’) made a dent in the problem, literally, but not much more.

Anyway, it’s clearly time for the professionals. (If you’re ever in this situation, look up Demolition in the Yellow Pages.)

pix!

Every man

… in his heart, wants to have been a soldier or to have gone to sea.

So far, and yet so far

Now and then, I look at the GoogleMaps link (on the right-hand nav) that purports to show where hits on this blog are coming from.

Some are expected (Hamilton, Toronto, Ottawa, New York); some are more surprising (Ankara, somewhere in rural Catalonia not all that far from Montserrat, the Isle of Man, today Krakow, as far as I can tell).

I could never figure out who I knew in West Haven, Conn., though – month after month, the little point would pop up in an industrial park just off the I-95, which I guess is where the server is.

Turns out that GeoVisitors thinks that it’s me, which undermines my faith in the concept at the same time that it reassures me about online privacy. Here I am, as far as GeoVisitors is concerned:

our house, where the dust never settles

I had a surge of adrenalin Tuesday and took a pick and sledgehammer to the ugly-beyond-ugly angel-brick planter that used to grace our front yard – it’s now a more or less neatly piled collection of rubble. The goal here is to do the heavy, destructive things before gardening season begins seriously.

I'm starting to suspect we may end up having to replace the entire porch, unfortunately - the existing structure seems to tilt to the south, as well as to the west, which was a problem we already knew about. Anybody want some healthy exercise starting Easter Sunday?