Monday, May 31, 2010

We Survived...


...Annie's high school graduation!!! It's been a busy last few days, including the ceremony at Wright State's Nutter Center on Saturday and the party we threw on Sunday.


One fun thing was the graduate cutout Lee Ann made and stood up in our back yard during the party. She made this out of foam board, and painted it with chalkboard paint. Guests at the party had fun chalking in the names of their alma maters, and by the end we had gotten quite a few. Here is Lee Ann posing with her creation.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Latest Old House Crush


We are always on the lookout for some old house to buy that would screw up our lives even worse than they are now - call it a hobby. In the past year we have looked at maybe a dozen and made offers on two. We still have hopes for one of those, a magnificent house in Franklin, but the bank did not approve our short sale offer so we will probably have to wait until it goes through foreclosure to have another chance at it. In the meantime, we still are casually looking.

A few days ago this poor, bedraggled former farmhouse built in 1897 went up for sale. It sits on three acres just two blocks away from our Lebanon house. The land is zoned commercial and whoever buys the property probably will tear down the house, but it is the sort of place that appeals to us so we scheduled a showing. We went through it yesterday with Peggy, our intrepid realtor. (Think - what would it be like to be OUR realtor?)

We found out that the house is sound, despite pretty bad cosmetic damage from bad renters and a lot of deferred maintenance like we expected. But this house has two really cool features. There is a brick barrel-vaulted tunnel that runs out through the back basement wall and is filled with rubble about 25 feet out. And there is a shaft, as if for a small elevator, that runs from the basement to the attic, with doors opening from it into the adjacent main and second floor rooms.

I don't know that we would buy and renovate this house but I hope someone does - it is way too interesting to tear down for another quick lube place.

The Gardens


Things are sprouting in the "big garden." In the foreground are radishes and carrots, plus some onions in the back, covered by my "bunny buster" chicken wire cage which hopefully will keep non-human nibbling to a minimum. Behind that are pepper, tomato and okra plants with more traditional fencing to keep the critters at bay. I also have corn, bush beans, cucumbers and zucchini planted in the open garden area beyond that.
And wow, does the Lee Ann's pond landscaping look gorgeous. It seems everything decided to bloom at the same time. It could only look better if we had blue skies in the background, but the cool and misty weather has been good for the plants.

Roof After Pictures




Here is the flat part of the Tower House roof, newly resurfaced and ready for twenty years of leak-free service. These shots are from the tower room, a handy vantage point.




Monday, May 17, 2010

Christine's Big Day Out

Here's the story of a little black cat named Christine, and possibly the last big adventure of her life.

Christine's family moved in to the house next to us a year ago. We knew them very slightly - the mom Laura, and her four children. Laura had lived with her husband in England, and lately in a house on Hart Road, she told us, but was going through a divorce and was lease-purchasing the house to get a new start. She rode horses, which gave her common ground with Lee Ann, and even shopped at the Tack Trunk, where Lee Ann works. This all came out in our across-the-back fence chats with Laura in the first week of her residence, a year ago, and we have hardly seen her since. Later, when we really could have used this information, we had forgotten almost all of it. And we never knew she had a cat.

On Saturday I had been doing work on our back porch, fixing trim and installing a gutter. It was a nice day and I left the back doors open so our cats and dog Danny could pass freely to the back yard. I was inside for a while, upstairs, when I heard cat spitting and yowling in the kitchen and found our cats, fat-tailed and snarly, facing off with an unseen feline holed up under our stepback cabinet. This is not so unusual for us - the neighborhood tomcat comes in sometimes and plays variations on this scene.

Later Lee Ann came home and lured the cat out of hiding with smoked turkey. Lo and behold, it was not the tomcat but an emaciated and lethargic little black girl kitty that we had never seen before. But this is not unusual either. Our town is overrun with strays, and we have taken in a string of them. So we decide to feed and shelter this cat for the rest of the weekend and then take her to the vet on Monday to see what could be done. She looks like she hasn't eaten for weeks and might have one of those fatal cat diseases but want to give her every chance. What a poor kitty - dumped by her owners, homeless, hopeless, facing starvation and danger, grimly hanging on until finally she found her way to us.

So today I am at the vet. He checks out the stray, notes serious jaundice and remarks that she is "no spring chicken." Then he absently scans her with a gadget and finds to our surprise that she is microchipped. A few calls and we know the cat's name, owner's name (Laura Hodge) and that the cat was registered in London, England but there is no current contact info - so that's a dead end. I OK lab tests - but I am reeling from the microchip, and the fact that this cat is from England. How did she get here? Numerous improbable scenarios run through my head.

Later the vet calls to advise that the cat is negative for HIV and leukemia. Either of those would put us in obvious pull-the-plug territory, but now we have to decide what to do next. I OK more tests. Lee Ann calls me to see how things are going (she is at work, conveniently) and I tell her what I know. The name Laura Hodge rings a bell. "I think we have a customer by that name," she says, and checking the Tack Trunk records finds an address on Hart Road (a few miles away - not as impressive a trip for a cat as from England, but still a remarkable distance for a feeble stray to travel) and a phone number. No answer on the phone, but finally this evening a woman answers. I am thinking this won't be the right Laura Hodge, but here's the conversation:

LA - "Hi, I'm calling for Laura Hodge."

LH - "This is she."

LA - "Oh, hi, my name is Lee Ann McAlpine, and we have your cat Christine."

LH - "You have! I'm so glad! We've been looking everywhere for her. Where is she?"

LA - "Believe it or not, she got all the way in to town, to 437 East Main Street in Lebanon."

LH - "Really? Well, we live at 435 East Main Street."

So all mysteries were solved, but in a most anticlimactic way. Christine is 18 years old. She has been around the world with her family, our next-door neighbors, registered and chipped in London, and is pretty close to the end of her corporeal tether. Her physical condition is not a result of extended time starving in the wild, or disease, but age. And her time as a 'stray' was probably about one minute's travel time from her house to ours on Saturday, so there was no thrilling stowaway trip across the Atlantic or cross-country epic through the farmland of Warren County.

Gourmet canned cat food - $4. Vet check and blood tests - $187. Two days of entertaining "Incredible Journey" cat scenarios - priceless.

Monday, May 10, 2010

Lindsay's Graduation Party


On Sunday, Lee Ann and I made an up-and-back trip to Jackson to attend step-niece Lindsay's graduation party. We had a nice three hours at The Hunt Club with about 30 friends and relatives of Lindsay, who attended Michigan State and now has a degree in food science.
I managed to take one photo the whole time, and this is it. This is during gift opening, when brother Brian (who kinda emceed the event) has stepped back to watch and made a nice grouping with sister Karyn and her husband Mark.


Saturday, May 8, 2010

Roof Repair


Rain has been leaking through the flat section of the roof at the Tower House. Here is a picture of the roof earlier this week as I was about to begin repairs. You can see the leaky joints were patched with a gray roofing compound, but that kind of fix never lasts long. The rolls you see are "Peel & Seal," an aluminized roofing material that I am using to cover the old surface completely.
After I took this photo on Thursday morning I got half the roof surface (which is 8' by 18' overall) covered, and I also fixed some leaks around the flue stack. When I finish I will post "after" pictures - but that won't be today, because it's way too windy to go back up.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Luck of the Scottish


So there's Annie, attending the prom last night. She was lukewarm on going at all, but as it turns out, just for showing up she wins a mini-fridge. As a door prize. Value $100.

I can't remember if we even had door prizes at our prom, but if we did they would have been things like ball caps, or McDonald's coupons. Definitely nothing in the kitchen appliance league.

So, prom night had a happy ending. Like I always say, there's nothing to take the edge off a night of marginal food and teen social angst like a free mini-fridge.

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Prom Night

Annie and Eli are off to prom tonight. Here they are in our back yard, pretending they wanted to be photographed (and being good sports about it).

Eli asked Annie several weeks ago in a way guaranteed to succeed - he spelled "PROM" in sushi for her. Wow, he's good.