I'm a lumberjack and I'm o.k.

I chop down trees....

While Dad was visiting we had a go at getting rid of some of the dead branches off the huge tree that's in the corner of the property. We got rid fo some by climbing up the ladder and cutting them, but the best way was to throw a rope over tham and just pull. They were so dead they snapped like twigs (but they were really logs!). For the biggest one we tied it to the back of Tricia's truck and used a bit of leverage to bring it down.

Bathouse Relocation

Since the house is being painted I put up a 25 ft tall batpole with the bathouse mounted on the top, it came out pretty good. We didn't shine a light into the bathouse to see if it was occupied but there was signs under the old location that there had been something living in there.

You should give money to the California Bat Conservancy.

Windows and Doors installed!

They managed to replace all the windows and doors in the house in 4 days! 4 days! amazing. This includes adding TWO bay windows complete with overhead lights and dimmers, one is 12 feet wide!

We're very very happy with how it came out. Now we just need to get the outside of the house painted as soon as possible.

Solar Panels Installed!

The Solar panels have been installed and the pool is slowly getting warmer!
They're just to heat the water for the pool and don't provide electricity.

Landscaping by the Pool

The battle against the weeds by the pool has been ongoing. Last year(2003) Alex, my mom, and I spent a significant amount of time pulling weeds all over the property, but particularly in the pool area. I don't know what I was thinking, but they came back again this year much to my dismay. So once the sun came out at the end of February, I got back to weeding by the pool. I spent three consecutive Saturdays pulling weeds and didn't have much of a plan other than I was not going to be weeding this same patch of ground next year. Saturday, March 27, 2004 is the day we landscaped the pool area. Alex and I had gone to Home Depot Friday night and bought 15 bags of 3 cubic feet of redwood chips and landscape cloth. Mom showed up Saturday morning with donuts and then we generated a stratagem for the day. The goal was to have something "completed" by the end of the day. Initially I had hoped to dig up all the dirt by the bedroom and dump it by the pool, but that was too much to try and do in addition to all the landscaping, so we solely focused on that task. Mom and I did some touch up weeding on the upper level of the wall and then did complete weeding of the lower level of the wall while Alex dug up a stump that has been annoying us for years. Once the weeding was complete, we laid the landscape cloth and chips. We had to make an additional run to Home Depot for another roll of landscaping cloth and 15 more bags of chips! The borders of the cloth and chips are held down with our recycled bricks from our stoop that was torn out last year. I've moved most of my geraniums to the pool area and I'm hoping they will be much happier there. The overall look to the area is rustic. I am so happy and relieved to have finally completed something with our wild yard. It's definitely a major milestone.

Net acces installed!

The dish has been installed for the high speed net access, now we just need to wait for them to light up the tower and we'll have 4Mb/s net access! whee heee, here's hoping it works out!

It works! and boy is it fast! super fast! I am so stoked it works and there is almost no latency. We have a crazy amount of hardware to get the signal up to the house (lots of Wireless Routers and Access Points and Repeaters), but it's worth it, boy is it worth it.

Rain gauge Broken :(

The Rain gauge broke on the weather station. I managed to track it down to the reed switch in there, but since it's still under warranty, I just mailed it back today and will let them fix it. We've missed tallying some rain because of it (apparently when the rain gauge breaks it still rains).