BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

If you’ve been around Facebook lately, you’ve probably seen my “Note” about being busier than a one-legged cat in a paper kicking contest… wait… that’s… hmmm… Dammit. Someone must have spilled my metaphors and just tossed ’em all back into the box all willy-nilly and they’re mixed up…

(SIGH)

Well, no use spilling my tail over chasing a cry.

So, anyway… I’m full boated. Just way too much going on in one place, at one time. Therefore, today’s blog is more or less one of those CBS Sunday Morning, “We’ll leave you with…” sort of interludes. If you don’t watch CBS Sunday Morning, basically their sign-off for the show is that tag line, followed by some video of something, usually serene.

In my case, however, I’m going to leave you with some pictures of my Friday, a few captions, and an advertisement at the end. (Hey, THEY always go directly into a commercial, why can’t I?)

Jack-hammering out the section of walkway alongside Hell House. The sewer pipe for the West end of the house comes out right around the middle of the window, about 5 feet below ground.

Concrete pad gone. Pictured here is one of the two holes in the ground that were revealed beneath it. Because of the pressure on the pipe and the fact that it washed out, it literally sluiced away earth and clay, creating these two chasms that went all the way down to the broken pipe. We dubbed them The Grand Canyon and The Mariana Trench.

Don’t let appearances deceive you. That clay pipe only looks intact. The sweep (turn) is broken at both ends, the 2 foot section near the bottom of the picture is shattered underneath, and where Scuba Steve is standing there’s another two foot section of pipe. However, it is another 8 to 10 inches down because The Grand Canyon had washed out beneath it, so it had broken off at each end and simply dropped to the floor of said canyon. This, of course, resulted in the poo, etc, pouring out of the cast iron pipe to fill the void. It was, to say the least, a might stinky. Good thing it was cold (38 and windy) that day. If it had been July, August, or even September we probably would have needed respirators.

We had a piece of the high grade PVC on hand from installing the drainage system at Hell House a little over a year ago. A trip to the commercial plumbing supplier garnered us a “boot” to go from Cast Iron to PVC, and then another “boot” designed to connect PVC to Clay pipe. Here we have Scuba Steve inspecting his handiwork in search of leaks while we were doing a pressure test. Once it passed, we back filled with pea gravel and all of the dirt. A replacement concrete pad will have to wait until spring or summer next year.

There you have my Friday. The joys of maintaining inherited rental property. All I can say is, DON’T DO IT! Have rental property, that is. The headaches aren’t worth it, in my opinion.

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That’s it from Merp Central for now. I have a ton of stuff yet to do, not the least of which is finish a writing project that is due soon! :-O

More to come…

Murv

Elizabeth Taylor ain’t got nothin’ on the Evil Redhead…

Seriously.

E K is way hotter than E T ever was, and way more evil.  By several orders of magnitude on both accounts… And, she’s really a Kat. So there…

Yeah, so obviously this is a bit of a play on words and all, but since I’ve also been babbling in my status updates about helping Scuba with a roof job he has, I thought perhaps I’d give y’all a bit more info.

Especially since I’ve only recently discovered the fact that E K didn’t leave her evilness on the ground when she went up that ladder…

Day 1 – Tearoff…

I didn’t arrive at the site of the roofing job until late morning because there was a furnace issue at Hell House I had to address. By the time I made it to the roof, tearoff was in full swing. Here you can see her supreme evilness shoveling old shingles in the direction of the dumpster below (out of frame)… I later found out that she was covering up the bodies of those who had been in her way while doing the tearoff. It seems she would simply lure them to the edge of the roof, then hit them in the back of the head with the shovel and push them off into the dumpster. Then, like a cat in a litter box, used the old shingles to cover up the… Well, you get the idea.

BTW, the reasons you will see no pictures of me on the roof –

1. Due to a severely injured foot (long story) E K forbade me from being up there lest I fall off and kill myself. At first I thought this was kind of heartwarming, but she later told me that she simply didn’t have time to break in a new lackey.
2. I was afraid E K would hit ME in the back of the head with a shovel and push me off into the dumpster. I mean, you never know…

Here we have a shot of the Dewalt Boom Box / Battery Charger that goes everywhere Scuba goes. Much grumbling came from the kids on the crew – those E K hadn’t yet pushed off into the dumpster, anyway – because all of us old farts had the toonage set to classic rock from our era.  And, of course, there you have the redheaded roof mistress on the right…

This is a picture of what we on the ground (working cleanup and cut crew) thought was E K helping Scuba with the shingles. Of course, we later found out she was threatening to hit him with a shovel if he didn’t get on the ball. What a slave driver she is…

Here is the Evil Redhead once again. Turns out that this time she was threatening to kick the ladder over if Scuba didn’t hurry up and move faster…

Okay, okay… So, she didn’t really push anyone into the dumpster and she didn’t threaten to kick over the ladder. However, she still didn’t check her dominant self at the door.

During the job, on several occasions Scuba would say, “I’m done. Let’s call it a day,” whereupon he would find something else to do and start in on it. After the fourth or fifth time he did this, E K put her hands on her hips and announced, “Steve, you’re done! Get down off the roof. NOW!”

Yep, he did what she told him to do. Even Scuba knows it’s best to obey the Evil Redhead… Besides, she still had a shovel up there with her and there was room in the dumpster.

More to come…

Murv