Oh, Canada!

May 10 was the third anniversary of this blog, which has persisted much longer than I ever expected.
Another blogger, a young Canadian woman named Lovisa, launched her blog a few days later and I had the distinction of being the first to leave a comment.
As I told her three years ago, she's a natural born writer. She's clever and insightful with a rich vocabulary and the skill to use it well. Hers is the only blog I check daily.

Lovisa recently decided to retire from blogging. She did me the honor of a detailed explanation. Her reasons are sound and valid and I respect her decision, even though it leaves a large hole in my online life.
If I were 30 years younger and we both were unattached, I would be plotting a motorcycle trip to Winnipeg. But I'm not, so I'll be happy to admire this wonderful kindred spirit across the gulf of time, space and karma and wish her and the Man all of the happiness and fulfillment they can stand.
And hope she keeps reading my blog and offering the occasional comment.

Last week

It's Monday and I hope this week is a little slower than last week was.
We were decompressing from Morgan's commencement activities. I took her back to Bloomington Monday afternoon and worked with Maria at the newspaper Monday night.
Then, at 4:10 a.m. Tuesday, we were awakened by a call from Maria's publisher saying there was a major fire in the downtown business district. Maria got busy on the phone and deployed her staff and we went back to bed. That lasted about five minutes until we both came to the conclusion that there was no way in hell we could go back to sleep and miss what was likely the news event of the year.
We could see the red glow in the sky from 5 miles away as we drove to the scene.
Thanks to Maria's rapport with the police and fire fighters, we got closer to the fire than any other newsies and I came away with the best shots of the day - no mean feat, considering that we had something like seven people shooting that morning.
The result was a special eight-page fire section for Wednesday morning's paper.
Oh, and did I mention the primary for the municipal election was also on Tuesday? We had local election coverage to handle, which included the incumbent mayor losing the Democrat nomination to a challenger - a major news story all by itself.
We printed several thousand extra copies of Wednesday's paper, anticipating there would be brisk single-copy sales because of the fire. We guessed right, but aimed low. All of the single-copy sales sites - supermarkets, convenience stores, coin boxes, etc., were sold out by 9 a.m. and had to be resupplied until all but a few archival copies were sold about noon.
The decision was made to crank out a second fire souvenir section for Friday, drawing upon some of the hundreds of unused fire images and incorporating several stories about the fire, the investigation and the 24-year-old guy who died in the blaze. Like most Indiana downtown business districts, the upper floors were used for apartments and more than a dozen people were made homeless by Tuesday morning's fire. And there is a strong possibility it was arson.
So, by Friday afternoon we were ready to kick back and cruise into the weekend with an early close on Saturday's paper.
Until we heard reports on the police scanner of shots fired at a police officer.
Doug, the senior reporter, and I headed to the scene - a duplex on the near westside where police believed they had the shooter cornered.
That was about 6:30 p.m.
We stood vigil through the evening while the SWAT team fired teargas and concussion grenades into the house after the department's hostage negotiator tried unsuccessfully to talk the guy out with the aid of a bullhorn.
Once the sun went down and the area illumination was reduced to street lights, I gave up on my 80-200mm lens and went to the f/1.4 50mm. I also dialed up the ISO on mhy D200 to the highest possible setting - something like 6,400, I think - and turned on the high-ISO noise reduction.
I also turned off the little focus-assist light, since it would be definitely uncool to have my camera throwing a beam of light every time I pressed the shutter button. It goes without saying that this was not a place to use flash, hence the fast lens and high ISO setting for available-light shooting.
Counting myself, we had four staff members at the scene, plus Maria showed up for an hour or so because she just couldn't stay away. The lame opposition paper had one guy with a point-and-shoot digital camera. And one of the Indianapolis TV stations sent a reporter-photographer team who showed up about 10 p.m. The SWAT guys finally entered the house about 11:20 p.m., found the perp hiding under a stairway and hauled him outside.
We had been told to stay about a half-block away, but when I saw the perp being walked to a waiting police car, I bolted ahead of the rest of the press and got what I thought was a terrific series of shots of the perp being held face-down across the trunk of the patrol car. I used the pop-up on-board flash on the D200 and after the first flash, he turned his head toward me, shouting, "Don't take my picture! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!" Unfortunately, the focus was soft because I hadn't had time to turn the autofocus assist light back on, so what could have been spectacular shots were compromised. Even so, when reproduced in a small size and with plenty of sharpening, they are pretty good.

So with all of the excitement and late-breaking news, we finally got home about 4 a.m. Saturday.
On the garage project front, we find ourselves a little off-balance. George, our construction guy, was supposed to be here at 11 a.m. Friday with the new set of plans that we are to present to the building commission at 6 p.m. today. He didn't show up, didn't call and hasn't returned any of my calls. Maria's son is working for him and reported George was at the roofing job they did on Saturday, so we know he's still alive. At this point, we assume he will show up here a little early this eveing to go over the plans with us before the meeting. At least, that's what he hope.
It appears that the alley behind our property was vacated in 1966 - at least that's waht the town council minutes from Dec. 30, 1966, indicate, but it was conditional upon the ownwers of our property and the one to the north granting a utility easement to the town. A search of the town utility's records and the county recorder's office failed to turn up any indication that that occurred in the wake of the 12/30/66 town council meeting, but there is a record of the owner of the property on the other side of the alley granting such an easement in 1959, so that may satisfy the requirement. We'll run it past the building committee. If they buy it, we can move the garage footprint 8 feet farther from the house. If not, we have the option of waiting and taking it to the present town council, which will probably deny it or drag it out. So my preference is to forget the alley abandonment issue and forge ahead with construction immediately. Maria seems to favor the latter, warming up to the idea of making an L-shaped extension of the deck to meet the west wall of the garage. We shall see.

Ridin'

I went for a 20-mile motorcycle ride last Thursday.
Ordinarily, that would not be worth mentioning. But this has not been an ordinary year. Ordinarily, I would have put at least 1,000 miles in my mirrors by this point in the year. For the first four months of 2007, my mileage stands at a pathetic 70 miles.
The ongoing garage project is the biggest reason. As the demolition of our old garages neared, I shifted our two bikes to my neighbor Larry's barn, where they have been keeping his BMW R1150RT company. That makes it a bit of a hassle to gear up and walk about a quarter-mile down the road to go for a ride. (Yeah, I know. That wouldn't be a problem it I were really motivated to go for a ride.)
But with Maria and me working five, sometimes six, nights a week and our weekends getting filled up with photo shoots and her family stuff and the marginal Indiana spring weather, I haven't found the time to throw a leg over a bike and blow out the cobwebs.
But on Thursday, I resolved that come Hell or high water, I was going for an afternoon ride. Besides, my neighbor Larry had a t-shirt for me from BMW Motorcycles of Western Oregon. BMWMWO is owned by Larry's daughter and son-in-law. They have a BMW motorcycle dealership in Eugene and just opened a new dealership in Tigard, a suburb of Portland. Larry and his wife flew out for the grand opening a couple of weeks ago and I put in a request for a shop t-shirt, since I expect to visit the dealership the next time I ride out to visit my son Sean and his wife in Portland.
I also had the 2007 registration certificates and license plate stickers to put onto the bikes.
Since Maria's '94 K75S was the easier of our two bikes to extricate from the barn, I chose it for my ride. It was sunny and the temperature was in the 70s when I tapped the gearshift lever down into first, eased the clutch out and rode down Larry's driveway with no particular destination in mind.
It felt great to be moving on two wheels again and I found myself smiling as I accelerated out of town, heading east on Ind. 47. I rode down to the county seat, and had a cup of coffee at McDonald's while I gazed out the window and admired the acid green bike glowing in the afternoon sun.
I thought of a dozen places I wished I could ride to, but realized my time was limited because I had to be at the newspaper by 5:30 or 6 p.m. to help Maria edit copy and read proof. So I took the back roads home, eluding dogs at two farmhouses where I'd not been chased before. In both instances, the dogs were in pursuit as I approached the apex of a 90-degree turn, which made it a little tricky to accelerate before they were on me.
I hated to switch the engine off, but I promised myself I'm going to keep next weekend open for some serious riding, weather permitting of course.

Territorial acquistion

Our modest estate. The deck has been replaced with a larger version and the two garage structures shown here have been demolished. (Click on the illustration to see a larger version)


As I have mentioned before, our property is bounded on the south and the east by alleys that were platted in 1903 but were never built.
The alley to the south is graveled and we use it as a driveway. The platted alley to the east is grass-covered and has nothing to distinguish it from the lawns on either side so, without measuring from a known reference point, there is no way to see where it lies.
I've determined our eastern property line by measuring from the back of the house and also from the front property line and can pinpoint it within a couple of inches, plus or minus.
So we decided to position the new garage on an east-west axis 10 feet inside our eastern property line and six feet south of the north property line, satisfying the town's setback regulations. Since the garage will be about 38 feet wide, that puts the west end of it a bit closer to the house and the new deck than we'd like, but it was something we were prepared to live with.
Until yesterday.
That's when Maria spoke with Donna, our neighbor to the south, who recalled that a previous owner of our house who was a member of the town council at the time, had the alley to the east vacated.
Aha!
If that is true - and we intend to confirm it before the May 14 building commission meeting where we seek a building permit - it adds 8 feet 3 inches to the east end of our property and makes it possible to move the garage that much farther east and open up more space between garage and house.
It also means our neighbor to the north, who also owns the tract east of this presumably vacated alley, gains some land and has an intact L-shaped property wrapping around the north and east sides of ours. I assume he doesn't know the alley was vacated because he didn't mention it when we described our project and the boundaries that dictate where the garage can be.
It's not a huge gain, but it does amount to about 458 more square feet, or about a 5 percent increase in our total property area. The real gain, of course, is in the aesthetic value of having the house and garage a more reasonable distance apart.

Right on, Sean!

Hey, my son Sean Flora is quoted in the current issue of Mix, a publication for professional audio and music production, in connection with his work on the landmark Shins album, Wincing the Night Away, that shot to the top of four Billboard magazine charts upon its Jan. 23 release.
You can read the whole thing here.
The pertinent poop is that he gets mentioned in the second paragraph as engineer with producer Joe Chiccarelli on the album and quoted later on, thus:
Chiccarelli and Flora tried to be creative when it came to recording the drums, too. In addition to the standard complement of mics across the kit, the duo set up Neumann TLM 170s across the room and a mono Lawson L251 in front of the kick drum. “It's a nice, big, wood room with a high ceiling,” Flora reports. “The 170s were across the room set on omni, so it was possible to get a lot of the room sound in there. Once it was compressed, it wasn't so washy as it was the midrange ‘oomph’ that you get from room mics.” As for the 251, Chiccarelli says, “It provided the best leakage and that tone became most of the drum sound.”

The album is still #12 on Billboard's Top Independent Albums and #91 in the ITunes top 100 albums, and Amazon.com customers gave it 4½ out of 5 stars.

The Graduate

Me, Morgan and Maria. We clean up pretty well.

We spent Friday night and this morning in Bloomington, Ind. helping Maria's daughter Morgan celebrate her graduation Summa Cum Laude from Indiana University with a degree in economics and gender studies.
Friday night's event was the commencement celebration for students in the Liberal Arts and Management Program (LAMP), which is a very selective two-year program offered through I.U.'s Kelley School of Business for Liberal Arts majors.
Afterward, it was beer and pizza at Mother Bear's Pizza, which set me up for a fitful night's sleep sharing Morgan's twin-size bed with Maria, while Morgan took the couch in her somewhat stuffy apartment.
This morning, we were off to a reception for graduating students in the Economics Department where Morgan was surprised to discover she was one of only two econ grads who had been inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. I think she's starting to grasp what a big deal that is.

She decided to forgo the formal commencement exercises, which seem to be designed to generate income for Herff Jones through cap and gown rental.
Morgan still has one math class to complete during summer school before she actually gets her diploma, but this weekend's activities constituted her formal graduation from I.U.
Needless to say, Maria is enormously proud of her, as am I.

Morgan and Maria and a Mother Bear's deep dish pizza.

Work for the kid

Austin carrying concrete.

The slab we had poured a couple of weeks ago is almost gone.
George, our construction guy, agreed on Thursday to give Maria's son Austin a shot as a laborer, which enabled Austin to quit his low-paying department store job that was killing him with a 50-mile commute in these days of $3+/gallon gas.
He worked for George on Friday and got $100 for his efforts, along with an invitation to stay with the crew when they finish up the slab work on Monday.
They even let him run a jackhammer.
This is Austin's kind of work and he revels in it. He has a great work ethic - if he can remember to get up in the morning and show up for work. If he can stay focused, he can probably do well in George's operation.


George and his crew demolishing the faulty, misplaced slab.

Pounding it to rubble

So much for our new slab.

George and his crew rolled in about 8:30 a.m. today.
I peered out of the kitchen window to see George digging under the slab with a shovel, then pounding the shit out of it with a sledge hammer. In 20 minutes' time he broke up about a quarter as much concrete as the entire crew had managed all day yesterday.
It was just a matter of technique, he explained to me. If you undercut the slab and remove the earth supporting it, it's much easier to fracture the concrete. Conversely, if it's resting on solid earth, it's a real bitch to break up. His brother Aaron apparently forgot this important detail when he supervised yesterday's work.
As they jackhammered and dug their way along, it became increasingly clear that the slab had major problems that would have seriously compromised the project. The footer was non-existent in some places, there was too much sand under the slab in many places, there were air pockets and other problems. George said the garage would have had terminal structural problems in 15 years or less because of the crappy slab.
Our friend, the local building inspector, dropped by to get up to speed on the latest developments. We explained the new plan, showed him where the new slab will go - well within the required setbacks - and he assured us we'll get our permit at the May 14 plan commission meeting.
So we directed George to hold off on digging the new footers until we have a permit. In the meantime, he can finish removing the slab, push some dirt around for site preparation and get the hot tub up on the deck.
The siding guy and his kid showed up about 10 a.m., established that the electrical circuit involving the stairway landing outlet is working and did away with the ratty door on the north side of the house.
George and his guys called it a day at 3:30 p.m., promising to be back about 7 or 7:30 a.m. tomorrow to finish the slab removal.
In the meantime, I called Waste Management and put off the collection of their dumpster from tomorrow until Monday.
To celebrate this bit of progress, I walked down to my BMW-riding neighbor's house to visit our two motorcycles that have been stored in his barn since our old garage was razed. I applied the 2008 license plate stickers, stuck the new certificates of registration into the under-seat tool compartments and took Maria's K75S for a 20-mile ride.
I find it horrifying that I have ridden a grand total of 71 miles this year. That's the worst start I've had in the 30-some years I've been riding.
This weekend will be occupied with Morgan's graduation from Indiana University, but Maria has decreed that I must ride somewhere - maybe to a rally - the following weekend. Weather permitting, I'll take her up on that offer.

Gibberish

I'm editing copy at the newspaper tonight.
The senior reporter, who has myriad health problems and often writes stuff that makes no sense, just topped himself with this lede:

"Information about various teen issues will help parents become aware or reinforce what parents already know will be discuss during a parent meeting."

WTF?

Progress. Kinda.

George's brother Aaron arrived about 11:30 a.m. with a three-man crew, a couple of jackhammers and a tracked Bobcat mini-backhoe. It quickly became apparent that they were under-tooled for the job. Even if the slab they're supposed to demolish lacks the 3' footers required by code, the fucker is still a 12"-thick monolith of reinforced concrete.
If they had the big Bobcat with jackhammer front end that the crew used to demolish the old garage foundation, they'd still have their hands full with this new slab. As it is, they've just been chipping away at it all afternoon. Here's what they had accomplished by about 4:30 p.m.
Aaron ran into town and rented a 30" wet saw and carved at the slab a bit, but I can't see much in the way of results from that effort.
Unless they get their hands on heavier equipment, I don't expect them to finish this slab by the weekend.
George called about 2 p.m. to say the guy who's going to close off a dead space on the north side of the house (you can see it on the extreme right in an earlier photo with the crappy door propped up against the opening) arrived about 3 p.m. with his fat son and a Dairy Queen chocolate cone in hand. I showed him the job, explaining that the wiring that ran through the space serves an electrical outlet on the stairway landing and that the outlet quit working during the winter - about the time we discovered the door had fallen off and the space was exposed to the elements.
So the wiring must be addressed before the space is walled off and sided over. But he didn't have his circuit tester with him, so he'll be back tomorrow to do the work.
It's a good thing that I've been able to cultivate a certain sense of detachment about this whole business since we had our meeting with George yesterday. As long as we're moving in the right direction and not running seriously over budget, I can tolerate some delays.
The decision to rip out the new concrete and reposition the garage involved rotating the building by 90 degrees. Whereas the original plan was for the garage, with its two-car-wide overhead door - to face the back of the house, the building will now face the south and the driveway. We had planned to have a rather pricey 16' wide picture window on the front of the second story, but when it became apparent that the huge window would face the south and get pretty much continuous direct sunlight, we scrapped it in favor of smaller windows and three skylights on the north side of the roof.
Wanting to have a structure that looked like it fit with our 104-year-old Queen Anne Victorian house, Maria took a cue from our neighbor Larry's barn and suggested a cupola. At present, the plan calls for a windowed cupola with a light-reflecting system that would channel daylight downward into the second floor. It should be a very cool detail up in the vaulted ceiling.
Rotating the building onto an east-west axis also puts the access door much closer to the house, something we'll appreciate this winter.
Assuming the building is finished by then...

Choking the chicken

Maria, choking a rubber chicken at a party supply store.

Derailed, then back on track (we hope)

George, our project manager/construction guy called yesterday morning to say he was quitting the construction company where he works. It's called Bob's and we have never seen or talked to Bob in all the dealings we've had with the company. Bob, it turns out, is a little short on character and was ripping our guy off.
So George came up this morning to discuss our options.
In the meantime, I did some measuring and was stunned to discover our back property line is way closer than we had thought. The back of our property is bounded by an imaginary alley. It was platted back in 1903 when the three-lot subdivision was created, but it was never built. To look at it, you would think it's just two neighbors' lawns meeting.
The planning regs require a 10-foot setback from an alley or a street. The concrete pad that was poured a couple of weeks ago, it turns out, is 11 inches from the property line - 9 feet 1 inch too close. I completely misjudged where the property line was when we laid out the footprint of the building. This revelation completely freaked us out and plunged us into a very deep funk, worrying that we were hopelessly and irretrievably screwed and that we had just committed a blunder that would wipe out the proceeds from the sale of my parents' house.
At the same time, we dug a couple of three-foot-deep holes next to the concrete pad so as to be able to show the building inspector that the pad had the required three-foot footer. In both cases, the footers were only about two feet down. So the concrete guys fucked up too.
After kicking arond the various scenarios with George this morning, we opted to have him rip out the brand new concrete pad, which gets us back to square one with the local planning authority.
Then, with no unauthorized construction in place, we can go before the planning authority in a couple of weeks and be reasonably sure of getting our building permit, since the new garage footprint will be well within the setback requirements.
The neighbors are going to think we've gone stark staring mad when they see a perfectly good $10k hunk of reinforced concrete jackhammered into bits tomorrow.
Fortunately, since George is no longer partnered with Greedy Bob, the new contract does not include the "Bob tax," i.e., the outrageous markup that Bob required. Therefore, George can build the rest of the project for significantly less and we'll end up spending about what we had originally planned, even with the added expense of doing the concrete twice.
George estimates we're about a month from completion, which is pretty close to my original expectation before we ran into this forest of snags.
More demolition photos to follow.

A work in progress

The backyard construction zone at sunrise. Still much to be done.

Crap!

I just realized we have a wedding shoot booked for July 14, which, besides being my birthday, is right smack in the middle of the BMW Motorcycle Owners of America International Rally.
Dammit!

Anniversary

My Treo smartphone reminds me of birthdays and anniversaries. The reminder icon was blinking when I turned it on this afternoon.
Today would have been my parents' 68th wedding anniversary. So here they are, circa 1950.

The Deck is Done

The deck crew showed up about 10 a.m. and had the project finished by noon.
Dave, the foreman (back row, far left), decided the support post (sticking out of the top of his head) needed to stay. The original thought was that it served no purpose, but after a couple of days without anything under it, he noticed the porch roof was sagging a bit.
No big deal. We've been walking around it for six years and didn't think of it as a significant problem.
Dave opined we should give the concrete footings about a week to set up properly before moving the hot tub onto the deck, so that gives us a few days to apply Thompson's water seal to the deck and to properly clean and stain the redwood enclosure on the hot tub.
It's great to have full use of our back door again.

Cool logo

One of my favorite t-shirts - from Portland, Ore.

Progress

We drove to Bloomington yesterday, leaving the deck crew hard at work about noon.
The mission was to witness the induction of Maria's daughter, Morgan, into Phi Beta Kappa.
For those who aren't up to speed on academic honoraries, Phi Beta Kappa is the premiere liberal arts honorary with such illustrious members as Tom Brokaw, Michael Crichton, Joe Lieberman, Angela Davis, Bill Clinton, Lynne Cheney, Elizabeth Dole, Sen. Dick Lugar, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Clive Davis, Henry Kissinger, Susan Sontag, Alen Specter, Stephen Sondheim, George H.W. Bush, Betty Friedan, Caspar Weinberger, Robert McNamara, Richard Helms, Dean Rusk, Dr. Jonas Salk, James Michener, William O. Douglas, Alfred Kiinsey, Dean Acheson, Pearl Buck, John Foster Dulles, Felix Frankfurter, Theodore Roosevelt, william Howard Taft, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Samuel Morse, Daniel Webster, John Quincy Adams and John Marshall. So she's in pretty good company.
When we returned about 11 p.m., we found much of the deck completed, including the screening fence on the driveway side. We learned this morning that they stopped because they ran out of lumber. As you can see from the photos, there's still a big opening just outside the back door. That will be covered by a raised level of decking. This morning was a washout because of rain and since it's almost 3:30 p.m. now, I expect we won't see the crew until tomorrow at the earliest.
The hot tub will be placed between the screening fence and the back door.
So far, we're pleased with the way it's coming together.

The Deck

We expected Dave, the deck guy, to show up this morning, sit down at the kitchen table with us, drink a cup of coffee with us and hash out a plan for our new deck.
Instead, a crew of five guys appeared about 9 a.m. with sledge hammers and other implements of destruction to rip what was left of our deck from the rear of the house. We had left the small platform and steps just outside the back door, so as to facilitate the use of the door, which is about four feet above ground level.
They were well along by the time Dave arrived. His design style is to walk around the site and point out what he thinks should go where. At no time did he turn to pen and paper. This seat-of-the-pants style makes me pretty freaking nervous, but I went along with it.
We ended up agreeing upon a plan that places the hot tub on the deck between the back door and the driveway with a 9-foot-high screening fence between the tub and the driveway, shielding the tub from the sight of neighbors to the south. The projection of the kitchen from the rear of the house blocks the view from the neighbors to the north and in both cases we should get relief from the wind.
After staking and stringing out the outlines of the structure, Dave left and the worker bees dug post holes and set the main support posts in concrete. Dave seemed to think the deck could be finished tomorrow, which seems pretty ambitious. We shall see.

Dress shopping

I'm sitting in a chair outside the fitting rooms while Maria shops for a dress at the Lafayette Macy's and a woman goes in with this boy in tow. He whines like a baby and drops to the carpet right in front of the door. Looks like he's 14 or 15. Kinda creepy.
One more reason why I dislike shopping.
Added later:
The kid was with his grandmother, mother and sister as they shopped for a prom dress for the sister. She, by the way, looked like the brother, only with longer hair and she whined constantly about the dresses she was being asked to try on.
Meanwhile, the boy flopped around on the carpet, blocking the aisle to the fitting rooms. After three women had to step over him, he decided to lie under one of the clothing racks. Several shoppers were clearly weirded out by this, but no one said anything. Oh, and he whined that there weren't enough chairs outside the fitting rooms. I was in the only chair available and presumably he thought I should give it to him. It was the most egregious example of people not knowing how to behave in public that I've witnessed in a long time.
Here's a six-frame sequence of the amazing display. That's his mother, stepping around him, in the last frame. It obviously hadn't occurred to her to tell him to get the hell off of the floor and act his age.

Research

Looking for deck ideas at Barnes & Noble.

Needing a morel compass

We went mushrooming yesterday afternoon at the invitation of Lauri and Jim at their place in the country. They live in an area of woods and ravines and creeks where the wily morel mushroom abounds.
It has been many years since I went mushrooming. My fondest recollection is of a day when I was about 10 and my dad took me mushrooming at the farm of his oldest sister and her husband up in Carroll County, east of Ockley, Ind. We tramped around the woods on their farm and, while I was a miserable failure at finding mushrooms, my dad and my uncle more than made up for it. We returned to the house with a huge haul of morels, which my Aunt Mabel soaked in saltwater, rolled in flour and fried in butter. We ate until we couldn't eat any more and it was fabulous.
Yesterday's haul was less impressive, but we had a great time tramping around the woods and watching Lauri and Jim's two sons romping around like two puppies.
We came home with a couple of handfuls of smallish morels that Maria washed and soaked in salt. Sometime around 11 p.m., we got the munchies and began eyeing the mushrooms. Maria had never prepared morels, but you wouldn't have know it from the final result. Morels have a complex flavor that especially excites the tastebuds on the sides of the tongue near the back. I won't try to describe the taste because I can't think of anything to compare it with.
But it left us wanting more!
Lauri opined that our relatively small haul yesterday was probably because it's a little early in the season.
Good. That means there's more to look forward to this spring!

Soooooo tired

Maria and I have been working nights - at least 3-11 p.m. and usually later - since she had to fire a flaky night copy editor in early January.
She also lost her prize-winning page designer in December and the 19-year-old kid she hired as a replacement is learning, but still needs supervision. Some weeks we work five nights, some weeks it's six. I have mixed feelings about it. I enjoy working with Maria and it's fun being back in newspapering on my own terms, but we're both desperately longing to get our evenings back.
I'm a morning person and this late-night stuff means I get to sleep around 2 a.m. or maybe even as late as 3 a.m. Pete the Aussie is also a morning dog and starts yarking in his kennel in the kitchen when the sky begins to get light around 6:30 a.m. That means one of us has to get up and let him and Ruthie out to do their doggy business in the back yard. If we're lucky, we can get back to sleep for another two or three hours. As often as not, I'm sufficiently wide awake by the time the dogs come back in that more sleep is out of the question.
Then there's the tricky midnight-or-later drive home. The 17 miles of twisty two-lane state highway that we drive from home to the office and back again is thick with deer. One night earlier this week, we counted nine deer strung out along the roadside. And for every deer we see, there are probably three or four nearby that escape our notice. I've had to jam on the brakes a couple of times when they dart across the highway, but mostly I just putt along at 45-50 mph with dashboard lights dimmed, scanning the road ahead.
Maria has hired a couple of new staff members, but they won't come aboard until early June, so we will probably have to soldier on for another six weeks or so.
I guess there isn't any point to this rambling post other than to say I'm very tired of giving up our nights and whatever social life we might have had and of having to run the deer gauntlet every night.
Anyone want a job as a page designer or a night copy editor at a medium-sized Indiana daily newspaper?

Crisis averted

Our contractor and the building inspector were here this morning and we took a more accurate measure of the property line based upon a surveyor's report that was prepared at the time we bought the place in late 2001.
According to the survey, the north property line is 11 feet north of the side of the house. Extending this line east to the garage foundation slab, we discovered we are, at the worst, only 5.5 feet from the property line and most probably a full 6 feet, which is the required setback.
The building inspector seemed confident that our problems are over with regard to the setback. Now we have to see if he can fast-track the permit to continue. In the meantime, we're charging ahead with the deck, which does not require a permit.
Our contractor said his deck man will be here about 9 a.m. on Monday to work out a deck design for us.
That means we'll soon have our hot tub back in operation, which will be a huge relief.
Now that the old deck is mostly gone, we have discovered the reason our kitchen plumbing freezes every winter. Some morons removed a concrete block from the foundation to run electrical conduit to the garage and did a sloppy job of trying to plug the opening with foam insulation. (See photo above.) We will, of course, correct this and look forward to our first winter without frozen pipes and dishwasher repairs.

Interim report

We have a meeting set for 9 a.m. tomorrow with our contractor/project manager and the town's building inspector and I'm generally optimistic. I think the building inspector genuinely wants to help us.
In the meantime, Ruthie the Wonder Dog has finally figured out that the invisible fence dog containment system is not functioning. The labor crew came to me on Tuesday afternoon to report that she'd taken off and was down the street by the elementary school. I grabbed a leash, hopped into my del Sol and chased her down at the park. She did it again yesterday and, of course, thinks it's great fun to run away when I call her or pursue her.
So I went to the basement this afternoon and dug out the set of little white boundary flags that we used to train her with the invisible fence. I set them around the perimeter of the yard and, when she came outside, I admonished her, "Bad flags!" She eyed them disapprovingly, but she stayed in the yard.
Pete the Aussie has never paid much attention to the electric shocks from his collar when he crosses the line. We can't figure out whether it's just his super-thick fur or if he just doesn't care. I phoned Innotek, the manufacturer of the system, a couple of weeks ago and they suggested trimming his throat fur and coating the contacts on his shock collar and the area they touch on his throat with petroleum jelly. We tried it, but didn't notice any change. He still ignored the line and enjoyed his now-regular run around the two houses to the south.
Once our construction work is far enough along, we're going to install a new system that will be powerful enough to get his attention. In the meantime, I'm keeping an eye on both dogs whenever they're outside because neither of them has any traffic sense.

The concrete slab is in, but now we're stuck.

A six-man crew of laborers showed up at 8 a.m. today and tore out all of the unwanted trees and shrubs around the property and finished demolishing the deck behind the house.
At the same time, the concrete guys prepped the space for the concrete slab and the pouring started about 1:30 p.m.
That was minutes after we learned from George, our head construction guy, that the town officials do, after all, think they have some jurisdiction over this project and have to issue a permit for us to continue.
George said he checked first with the county planning office and learned that our town had opted out of the county-wide planning and zoning scheme - something we had already known. Then he contacted the town officials and was told they had no authority, but nonetheless they wanted us to gravel and roll the alley that we use for a driveway. It seemed incongruous, but we were happy to comply. After all, it needed gravel anyway and I'd much prefer riding my motorcycle over compacted gravel than struggle in deep loose gravel.
But today, somehow, George learned that we apparently do need a local permit for the project. We dug a little deeper and found that the town needs to issue a building permit for the project which will involve periodic inspections. And the issuing agency only meets on the second Monday of each month, so we missed the April meeting and may be forced to put the project on hold until after the May 14 meeting. This, of course, completely fucks George's construction timetable, as well as our expectations.
What it comes down is reminiscent of the line from Animal House: We fucked up. We trusted him (George) to know what he was doing and get all of the paperwork in order before we started.
So we await clarification, which should come when we contact the building inspector tomorrow. He's a nice, reasonable guy and we hope he'll cut us some slack.
If not, we wait.
The good news is that the concrete slab is poured and is curing. Even now, I can hear the concrete guys knocking the wooden form apart. If nothing else, we'll have a really nice small basketball court with a drain in the floor.

Quote of the Day

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, when asked by a member of Parliament why he believes so much in the United States:
"A simple way to take the measure of a country is to look at how many want in... and how many want out."

Back on track

It's sunny and 60 degrees and the concrete guys showed up today. Our construction guy was here at 9:30 a.m. to stake out the site and then the concrete guys started building the forms. They laid in some rebar and shot in a truckload of gravel(above). Pouring occurs tomorrow, so Pete and Ruthie will spend the day indoors - or at least until the concrete sets up enough to be immune to doggy footprints.

From The Kansas City Star

Imus isn’t the real bad guy
Instead of wasting time on irrelevant shock jock, black leaders need to be fighting a growing gangster culture.

By JASON WHITLOCK - Columnist
Thank you, Don Imus. You’ve given us (black people) an excuse to avoid our real problem.

You’ve given Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson another opportunity to pretend that the old fight, which is now the safe and lucrative fight, is still the most important fight in our push for true economic and social equality.

You’ve given Vivian Stringer and Rutgers the chance to hold a nationally televised recruiting celebration expertly disguised as a news conference to respond to your poor attempt at humor.

Thank you, Don Imus. You extended Black History Month to April, and we can once again wallow in victimhood, protest like it’s 1965 and delude ourselves into believing that fixing your hatred is more necessary than eradicating our self-hatred.

The bigots win again.

While we’re fixated on a bad joke cracked by an irrelevant, bad shock jock, I’m sure at least one of the marvelous young women on the Rutgers basketball team is somewhere snapping her fingers to the beat of 50 Cent’s or Snoop Dogg’s or Young Jeezy’s latest ode glorifying nappy-headed pimps and hos.

I ain’t saying Jesse, Al and Vivian are gold-diggas, but they don’t have the heart to mount a legitimate campaign against the real black-folk killas.

It is us. At this time, we are our own worst enemies. We have allowed our youths to buy into a culture (hip hop) that has been perverted, corrupted and overtaken by prison culture. The music, attitude and behavior expressed in this culture is anti-black, anti-education, demeaning, self-destructive, pro-drug dealing and violent.

Rather than confront this heinous enemy from within, we sit back and wait for someone like Imus to have a slip of the tongue and make the mistake of repeating the things we say about ourselves.

It’s embarrassing. Dave Chappelle was offered $50 million to make racially insensitive jokes about black and white people on TV. He was hailed as a genius. Black comedians routinely crack jokes about white and black people, and we all laugh out loud.

I’m no Don Imus apologist. He and his tiny companion Mike Lupica blasted me after I fell out with ESPN. Imus is a hack.

But, in my view, he didn’t do anything outside the norm for shock jocks and comedians. He also offered an apology. That should’ve been the end of this whole affair. Instead, it’s only the beginning. It’s an opportunity for Stringer, Jackson and Sharpton to step on victim platforms and elevate themselves and their agenda$.

I watched the Rutgers news conference and was ashamed.

Martin Luther King Jr. spoke for eight minutes in 1963 at the March on Washington. At the time, black people could be lynched and denied fundamental rights with little thought. With the comments of a talk-show host most of her players had never heard of before last week serving as her excuse, Vivian Stringer rambled on for 30 minutes about the amazing season her team had.

Somehow, we’re supposed to believe that the comments of a man with virtually no connection to the sports world ruined Rutgers’ wonderful season. Had a broadcaster with credibility and a platform in the sports world uttered the words Imus did, I could understand a level of outrage.

But an hourlong press conference over a man who has already apologized, already been suspended and is already insignificant is just plain intellectually dishonest. This is opportunism. This is a distraction.

In the grand scheme, Don Imus is no threat to us in general and no threat to black women in particular. If his words are so powerful and so destructive and must be rebuked so forcefully, then what should we do about the idiot rappers on BET, MTV and every black-owned radio station in the country who use words much more powerful and much more destructive?

I don’t listen or watch Imus’ show regularly. Has he at any point glorified selling crack cocaine to black women? Has he celebrated black men shooting each other randomly? Has he suggested in any way that it’s cool to be a baby-daddy rather than a husband and a parent? Does he tell his listeners that they’re suckers for pursuing education and that they’re selling out their race if they do?

When Imus does any of that, call me and I’ll get upset. Until then, he is what he is — a washed-up shock jock who is very easy to ignore when you’re not looking to be made a victim.

No. We all know where the real battleground is. We know that the gangsta rappers and their followers in the athletic world have far bigger platforms to negatively define us than some old white man with a bad radio show. There’s no money and lots of danger in that battle, so Jesse and Al are going to sit it out.

To reach Jason Whitlock, call (816) 234-4869 or send e-mail to jwhitlock@kcstar.com. For previous columns, go to KansasCity.com

Bobcat in the rain

The concrete demolition guys showed up in the cold (41 degrees) drizzle about 11:15 a.m. and attacked the old garage foundation with a Bobcat-mounted jackhammer. Very impressive.


It's now about 3:30 p.m. The demolition guys have left, having broken up and hauled off the concrete footprint of the old garage and scraped off a bunch of topsoil where the new garage will be built. And it's 38 degrees and spitting sleet and snow.

Non-progress report

Just for a warmup, I figured my stepdaughter's taxes on Wednesday and started on ours yesterday. So far, it looks like we're going to owe about $2k, (ouch) but I still have a few deductions that may soften the blow.
In the meantime, I have my Honda del Sol back with a quiet exhaust system and all new brakes for $1,444. Ouch.
We haven't seen any work on the garage project since Monday. It's sunny and 47 degrees - the best weather in several days - and nobody showed up today to break up the concrete floor of the old garage. WTF?
I've been playing phone tag with our construction guy for four days, but no luck again today.
************
He called this afternoon to say the concrete demolition and site prep guys will be here tomorrow. Of course it's supposed to be overcast with a rain/snow mix and a high of 39 tomorrow.
Then he'll be here Monday morning to stake out the footprint of the new garage. At last!

Rainout

No work on the garage project today. Cold and rainy with more of the same forecast for tomorrow.

Who is here

As promised, The Music.com put the Indianapolis Who Concert CD/DVD package in our mailbox this morning.
I've already ripped the CDs to iTunes and put them on my iPod. It's worth the price just to have the amazing My Generation/Cry if You Want jam.
I think I said so earlier, but I have to repeat that his is a brilliant piece of marketing, especially since the profits go to Who charities.
Now, back to the DVD...

Who the fuck are you?

TheMusic.com says our CDs/DVD of last month's Who concert in Indianapolis shipped last Friday. If they came via UPS or FedEx, they could be waiting for us at home right now. If they were mailed, we might see them tomorrow.
The excitement is building...

$

Everybody has their hand out to me today.
The construction company doing our garage project sent a guy up today to collect for the demolition - a bill I wasn't expecting just now: $2,170.
And the Honda dealer says I need all new brakes and some exhaust system work that will run me another $1,800 (I save $600 because the muffler has a lifetime warranty). It would be another $1,100 if I wanted to get the body work done that it needs, but that will have to wait. And wait. And wait.
So I ran to the bank and got a cash advance on a credit card (24% APR!!!) to cover it until our home equity line of credit becomes available in a few days.
I still haven't done our taxes, but I fear we'll take a hit for an IRA I cashed in last year.
And the first draw on the actual construction - $10k+ - is due on Friday.
For a guy who prefers to pay as he goes, I'm getting a little twitchy over all of this juggling.

Plugging along

Our work crew was down to one guy this morning after his partner got shunted off to another job.
The remaining worker - a good kid whose aunt was a high school classmate of mine - got the remainder of the garage debris into a dumpster and was poised to start tossing deck debris into the dumpster by the time we had to leave for work at the newspaper.
The appraiser hired by the bank came around after lunch and scoped out the place. I told him it would be very helpful if he could fast-track his appraisal, since the first draw on the garage project is due this Friday and we still haven't been approved for our home equity line of credit.
I had planned to get started on our taxes this morning, but instead got drafted for house cleaning in anticipation of the appraiser's visit. Maybe tomorrow.
We dropped my del Sol off at the Honda dealership in Lafayette Saturday morning after it became obvious that it was developing a serious brake problem. Something is dragging on the brake rotor on the right rear wheel and all of the brakes screech badly whenever I stop. It's probably a case of me waiting too long to replace brake pads. I just hope the rotors aren't hosed, which would mean some serious money. Unfortunately, this comes at a time when winter refuses to go away - we drove through snow flurries on the way to work this afternoon - which makes motorcycling a less-than-attractive alternative form of transportation while my car is laid up. I just checked my home voicemail and found a message from the Honda shop, left about 5 p.m., asking me to give them a call. Since it's now 11:19 p.m., that call will have to wait until tomorrow morning.

Are we done yet?

Waiting for Maria to finish up at the paper on Sunday night.

The scariest woman in America

Dude!
Sorry, but I can't see her as the leader of the Free World. She's the poster girl for PMS.

The horror, the horror

Shopping mall Easter bunny.

Early birthday

In Bloomington to celebrate Morgan's 22nd birthday. Mother and daughter at Cheeseburger in Paradise. The Pina Coladas are dangerously good.

Operator error

A receptionist at the newspaper tells Maria her computer mouse has just gone crazy.
Maria sends Brent, the resident geek to check it out.
Brent comes back shaking his head.
"She had her mouse turned around, so the cord was coming out of the bottom," he said. "It was so pathetic, I didn't even have the heart to laugh at her."

Yes, some of them want us there

From Iraq The Model, a blog by Iraqis in Baghdad.

Midnight Company.

I often find myself in arguments with people about the behavior of American soldiers when they search homes and many of the people I talk to base their argument and negative impression on the footage of some raids we see on TV or on experiences of presumed relatives or friends.

When I try to counter the idea of 'they knock down doors unnecessarily, steal jewelry and treat people bad' by saying that there must be a good reason the troops sometimes act rough and that 'for every reaxction there must have been an action' I often get the response of "what do you know about that? The Americans never searched your home"

Well, last night they did…

It was around midnight and we were gathered around the fire in the backyard when we heard someone talking in English in the street.
Go see what that was, Mohammed told me.
I approached the front door and peeked into the street, a number of Humvees were there.
I returned to the group and told them we might have some company.

Almost every Friday night we gather with some friends for drinks and barbeque and we all take turns hosting the nights. Yesterday it was our turn.

I went to the living room where my father was having a heated political debate with his friend and told them the house would likely be searched. The two men stopped talking, looked at me carelessly for a second and then resumed their loud debate.

I went back to tend the fish we were preparing for our Masgoof dinner and then heard the front door open and a flashlight beamed into the driveway.
I walked to meet the night visitors; 6 or 7 American soldiers and an Iraqi translator wearing a black ski mask walked in.

Good evening gentlemen, how can I help you?

Hi, that's a lot of cars you got here! Are they all yours? The lead soldier said, obviously suspicious about the number of cars we had in the driveway.

That one is ours, the rest belong to our friends. And explained that we had guests and that in order to avoid the curfew they are spending the night here.

As was speaking two of the soldiers were using the lights on their rifles to look through the glass into the cars.

Who are those people back there?

Those are our friends and my brothers, I said as I lead the way into the back yard.

The Iraqis and Americans exchanged words of greetings.

The soldiers now began to feel a bit relaxed seeing the relaxed friendly mood, the barbeque and the drinks in Iraqis' hands.

That's a large fish! Looks good! One soldier noted.

There's enough food and drinks for all of us here, please join us, said one of my friends.

Nah, we can't do that. Thanks anyway.

We know the Americans were on duty and had a job to do so we didn't repeat the offer violating the tribal Iraqi tradition of persistently offering food.

One of the soldiers asked for the keys to the cars and he and his colleague started checking them one after the other.
I lead three others into the house showing them the rooms explaining what each one was.
When we entered the living room they were surprised to see 4 laptops scattered around.

What are these for?

One's mine, the other is my brother's and the rest are our friends', I said and explained that our friends always bring their laptops with them when they come because they can use our wireless.
My brother and I are bloggers, our friends work in the computers business, I added.
Ah, you got wireless! I should bring my laptop too next time I come here, one of the soldiers joked.

We went up to the second floor, then the roof and they looked around around, opened a few drawers, asked if we had any weapons. I told them we didn't have any.

That's fine, no problem.

Within roughly 20 minutes the soldiers had completed searching the house and by now they seemed convinced that this household is 'clean'. So we all went back to the back yard and gathered around the tasty-smelling fish and we all had some short friendly talk about food, booze, the city, the war, the internet, etc.


At the end we stood to take some pictures together.

These are bloggers dude, cover your face if you don't want to be seen nude on the internet tomorrow! One soldier said to his colleague as I snapped this photo, and we all chuckled.



And I know what you're thinking; Mohammed and I do not appear in this one.

The Americans and Iraqis shook hands and exchanged take care's and stay safe's.
They went on to continue their patrol, and we went back to our fish.
Some of us will definitely have a joke or a short story to tell from this night, I thought.

I realize that for some other Iraqis having their homes searched wasn't as smooth or as pleasant an experience as ours but this is my story and I thought I'd share it.

Posted by Omar @ 22:34

Today's shirt

The only place to buy a real cowboy hat.

The pitfalls of being Pete

Remember the cliche Lassie bit where little Timmy falls into the well and Lassie goes for help, barking excitedly until rescuers follow her to pull the hapless kid to safety?
Ruthie the Wonder Dog had just such an opportunity this morning, but she failed miserably. But then, it was Pete the Aussie - her constant companion and frequent tormentor - who needed rescuing. So maybe she chose to ignore his plight so as to be rid of him.
I had finished my workout at the gym when I checked my cell phone and found I had missed a call from Maria. I called her and she got me up to speed on the progress, or rather the lack of it, on our garage project. The two-man crew had filled the dumpster by 11:30 a.m. and, since the trash hauler couldn't get a fresh one to our site before this evening, Maria cut them loose. That's another half-day down the toilet because of inadequate dumpster service. And, she said, Pete had gone Walkabout and was nowhere to be found. We figured he would show up eventually, so I opted to shower, bank my paycheck and grab a bite of lunch before heading home.
When I got back to my locker from the showers, my cell phone was ringing again. It was Maria, saying she had found Pete. He'd fallen into the open cistern that we uncovered a couple of weeks ago when we tore out the rotting wooden deck behind the house. The previous owners had dumped great shards of broken glass and other construction debris into it and we tossed in whatever rocks and bricks fell to hand in an effort to fill it. I covered it with a piece of drywall that I found in the garage. That worked fine until it rained. It soaked up the water and went soft and mushy. Pete had apparently assumed it was still a solid surface and fell through. Maria said she noticed the hole in the drywall and peered down to find Pete gazing balefully up at her.
He hadn't barked or done anything else to attract her attention.
Ruthie, in the meantime, was larking around the back yard and taking no notice whatsoever of her young friend's plight.
Maria called her dad and he came over, held her by the ankles and she reached down and plucked Pete from the pit. She said he was subdued, but apparently uninjured.

Half a day wasted

It's about 6 p.m. and the trash hauler just drove away with a full dumpster, leaving an empty in exchange.
We needed him to be here a full six freaking hours ago!
When I got home from running errands about 3:30 p.m., I found the two-man wrecking crew just doing busy work as they waited for a dumpster to show up. They had the one that was delivered yesterday afternoon stuffed to overflowing by 11:30 a.m. and spent the rest of their time here breaking up debris into small pieces.
I cut them loose, rather than pay them for standing around.
The trash hauler showed up at 5:35 p.m. and spent about 20 minutes tossing stuff out of the dumpster onto the ground because he apparently didn't think he could haul it without debris falling out onto the roadway.
Clearly, we could be moving twice as quickly if we had dumpster exchanges in a timely fashion. I sincerely hope this clusterfuck doesn't repeat itself tomorrow.

Progress report

The crew, still one man short, is back at work today. They took down the second garage/shed and continue to hack away at the roof of the garage they dropped yesterday. They've filled a second dumpster and are now waiting for an empty to be delivered. While they wait, all they can do it keep hacking the remaining debris into smaller pieces.
This was projected to be a three-day process, but they still have to rip out a bunch of trees and shrubs and the trash hauler can't keep them supplied with empty dumpsters as fast as they can fill them, so I expect it to run into four or more days.
It's midday and the temperature has only risen to 33 from an overnight low of 30, but at least the sun is shining.
The top photo was taken about 10 a.m. yesterday. The bottom at 12:20 p.m. today.

Going down!

After a couple of days of futzing around due to delays on other projects, our construction guy finally got two-thirds of a work crew here to start tearing down our two crappy garages.
Of course, the weather has turned bitterly cold. It was 32 degrees and spitting snow when we got up and hasn't warmed up much since then. Nevertheless, when the guys arrived they got right to work and in less than two hours had the main garage on the ground.
And they managed to do it without having to move the hot tub. It will have to be moved later, but for the moment at least, we can relax about that issue.
The plan calls for the trash hauler to bring us a fresh dumpster this afternoon, so with any luck at all, both structures will be gone by tonight and tomorrow's work will likely focus on breaking up and removing the concrete footprint of the larger garage.
Then, we can start moving dirt around and ripping out shrubs to prep the site for the new garage.
It's a huge relief to get this business underway.
I should be doing our taxes, but this is too engrossing. Maybe tomorrow.

Before...

The view from east of our property before the two garages in the foreground came down. That's Ruthie the Aging Wonder Dog on the right.

Before the deluge

Looking west about 10 minutes before the heavy rain hit. A strong cold front and line of powerful thunderstorms swept across Indiana this afternoon. We were walking to a cafe for lunch when I shot this.

Counting down to G (garage) Day

The bikes are in my neighbor's barn, the beer fridge is on the back porch and the surplus fridge and Franklin stove are on the front lawn and we have almost all of the "keeper" stuff out of both garages.
We figure we can clean out the last of it early tomorrow morning before the demolition crew and the dumpster arrive.
I wrestled the refrigerators single-handedly, which is probably why my back and legs are killing me tonight.
Maybe I'll get a chance to work out some of the kinks tomorrow at the fitness center, but probably not, since we have to supervise the demolition, including the relocation of the hot tub to a spot in the front yard. Our place is going to look like some kind of hillbilly haven for the next few weeks, with the front yard and porch loaded with stuff that shouldn't be there. I can only hope it ends well.
The forecast for tomorrow is sunny and 70 degrees, so the Weather Gods are on our side for the moment.

Saturday lunch

Lunch at Qdoba.