McBlog

The Good News Is...

2011-12-07T10:19:00.000-08:00

I had a day off Monday, so I went to the tower house to put a heater in the basement so the pipes won't freeze this winter (I decided running the furnace there all winter is too costly).

The good news is, I found a nifty radiator-like heater at Home Depot for $39.
The bad news is, when I got to the Tower House I saw that the guy who has been (intermittently) cutting up my downed tree still doesn't have the driveway cleared.
The good news is, I can drive through the front yard and around to the side of the house to park - so I did that, parked, and put in the heater.
The bad news is, when I got back in the red truck to leave, I got it stuck in the yard. We had had a deluge of rain the last few days which turned the soil under the grass to jello.
The good news is, I had shingles and carpet scraps to stick under the truck drive tires to gain traction.
The bad news is, the shingles and carpet scraps didn't do a darn bit of good and encouraged me to keep trying, which dug the tires in deeper.
The good news is, I have another truck at the Tower House - my old white truck - and some nylon rope which I could use to pull the red truck out of the mud.
The bad news is, the ropes snapped rather than pulling the red truck free.
The good news is, I found a couple of very stout tow straps to replace the ropes.
The bad news is, pulling with the tow straps didn't do a darn bit of good and encouraged me to keep trying, which dug the tires of the white truck into the mud.
The good news is...well, there isn't any good news at this point.
The bad news is, I have two stuck trucks, I am soaking wet and splattered with mud, I have TWO STUCK TRUCKS, Lee Ann is at work, and it's getting dark.
The good news is, I am a AAA member, and have a cell phone, so I called for road service.
The bad news is, when the wrecker arrived, the driver took one look and said he couldn't get his truck close enough (without getting stuck himself) for his cable to reach either truck - and AAA disallowed the call since being stuck in the middle of your own yard is not a road service situation.
The good news is, the driver called his friends, who (four of them total) got both trucks unstuck and they only wanted $20 a head for their help.

Reflections...

2011-10-10T06:19:00.000-07:00

Here is our glamorous pier mirror, the latest in our string of recent antique purchases, hanging in the ballroom. That about does in our furniture budget for this year, and the house still looks half empty.

Beautiful Weather!

2011-10-09T15:25:00.000-07:00

We are in the middle of Indian Summer here, and it has been wonderful. We are approaching our color peak, and are enjoying the confluence of warm, dry weather and dazzling leaves while it lasts.

New Antique

2011-10-08T18:02:00.001-07:00

We went kind of crazy in the past week and bought some nice antique furniture for our still-half-empty house. This first piece is a jelly cupboard that we picked up at the Tri-State Antique Show in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. [The jelly cupboard is in the "keeping room" off the kitchen, which is in transition with the leather couch gone to OSU and the TV relocated to the garret.] The next is a cherry dresser from a dealer at the annual Lebanon antique show [now in the pink bedroom with the canopy bed] and the last is a mahogany table from another dealer at that same Lebanon show [placed strategically in the entry hall]. It sure looks different around here.

New Microwave

2011-09-07T12:27:00.001-07:00

My big job this weekend was to install the above-the-range microwave. This has been pending for some time, but it forced my hand that Annie is taking our countertop microwave to college.

We had a recirculating vent hood (top picture) in place, left over from some previous kitchen incarnation and not a match for any of the current appliances. First step was to remove this, then put in a receptacle for the microwave plug. Then I had to build a little filler box for the space between the microwave and soffit, and when that was done I was able to hang the microwave itself.

I thought our old microwave was an okay size, but holy cow - compared to that the new one is the size of an aircraft hangar inside.

Pool Pics

2011-09-01T13:59:00.000-07:00

A big project for us this summer has been getting the old Gunite pool in the backyard going. When we bought the house the pool was full of leaves and looked pretty bad. We have been busy draining and shoveling it out, then scrubbing and painting the surface, and finally calling the pool service guys to fix the pump and get things running again. Now that's all done, and I just finished my first swim. Sure, it's a little dirty (we still have to buy one of those pool vac gizmos to pick stuff off the bottom), but....it was still great. My own pool! Maybe I'll even share it with Lee Ann and Annie.

Weekend Getaway

2011-06-21T03:54:00.000-07:00

On Saturday morning Lee Ann and I drove north to West Liberty, Ohio and visited the two house museums there called the Piatt Castles after the brothers who built them. That night we stayed at a bed & breakfast in historic Urbana. This was our kind of vacation, and we had a wonderful time despite a bit of rain.

Both of us have been busy lately with work and house projects so have not had much time for fun. We still are busy, but found time for this weekend away to celebrate our upcoming 20th anniversary (June 29). Time flies!

View of Minn/St. Paul Airport

2011-04-24T16:54:00.000-07:00

Good gosh, observed the airborne Bengalista as he picked a couple of Canadian geese out of his teeth at Mach 3, they look just like kid's toys down there on the runway. Briefly he thought of buzzing the terminal to jolt some groggy traveler awaiting his Denver connection. Then, recalling his ill-advised close approach at St. Louis terminal a few days earlier, he instead changed course and arced up, up, up into the burning blue, higher and higher, where never lark, nor even eagle flew, a stripey orange bullet on a collision course with destiny.

Flying Tiger Spotted Over Louisville

2011-04-18T18:56:00.000-07:00

Another day, another crazy adventure, mused the flying feline as he threaded his way at supersonic speed betwixt the skyscrapers of downtown L'ville. Somewhere far below, an insignificant speck of a sidekick talked safety in a nasal monotone to sleepy men; but up here, punching through the cumulus into brilliant sunshine, the big cat with the million-dollar smile was burning adrenaline and lighting up the sky like a supervillain's worst stripey nightmare.

Loaded For Bear

2011-04-17T07:12:00.000-07:00

Here is Lee Ann modeling our new "Honeysuckle Popper." This is a big, heavy crowbar-like device with a hinged wooden block that acts as a fulcrum. You push the head into the soil underneath the unsuspecting honeysuckle and then lever it up out of the ground. Working for about an hour this morning, Lee Ann "popped" about a dozen good-sized bushes and any number of smaller ones.

This approach sure beats my previous method, which was to drag on the bush from all angles until I had broken enough roots to physically wrench it from the ground (at the same time wrenching my back, as it turned out). Now that we have the right tool, it's a matter of keeping at it until the invasive miseries are all gone. We have probably a thousand to go.

You Should See The Other Guy!!

2011-04-07T11:32:00.000-07:00

This is the honeysuckle I have cut out of our back fencerow, which is mostly what I had been doing around the house for the last few weekends. The honeysuckle has taken some serious losses, but it hasn't been a one-sided affair. On Sunday, my third day of pulling up bushes by the roots and cutting them up for the pile, I overworked my back and sprained or tore a muscle back there. Score one for the honeysuckle! Since then I have been mostly chairbound, waiting for my back to feel better. Today, finally, it does. But I still am limping around with a cane, and planning a terrible fate for the surviving honeysuckle. They can run, but they can't hide. Actually, they can't run either - even better!

Kitchen Update

2011-04-07T11:15:00.001-07:00

This isn't huge progress, but since the last picture I mounted the base and wall cabinets to the left of our stove, where the wall oven used to be. The cabinets will be painted but we are still thinking about colors. They will have new pulls, too. The next step is to put a marble top where the microwave is now so Lee Ann can roll out dough there.

Weekend in Florida

2011-03-29T14:05:00.001-07:00

What would you do in Central Florida if you had just ONE DAY to do it in - and you didn't want to end up with a mouse ears tanline? I was stuck in Ocala over the weekend of March 19-20 in between sessions of a safety conference, so Lee Ann flew down to meet me. We picked a place called Bok Tower Gardens, near Lake Wales, as our Saturday destination. What a wonderful place - 250 landscaped acres, and in the middle is the cool tower pictured. All this was built in the 1920's by the guy who made his fortune as editor of the Ladies' Home Journal. They don't let you in the tower but it has a carillon and it's pretty fun to sit on a bench under moss-draped live oaks and just listen. We also roamed the grounds in perfect March-in-Florida weather. There is a Mediterranean-style mansion too, and we got to go through that. We even bought souvenirs at the visitor's center. It was a completely touristy day.

Big Week In A Small Room

2011-02-28T01:36:00.001-08:00

Last weekend, after I removed the wall oven from our kitchen, we just couldn't resist tearing out its boxy support framing that had stuck into our tiny pantry. Then I left for a five day business trip. I got home expecting to pick up where I had left off.

But in the meantime Lee Ann had really gotten going. She had removed the rest of the makeshift pantry shelving, dug down to the original floorboards, pulled a million staples and nails, filled and sanded and painted the floor, and repaired the holes in the walls with new tongue and groove material. (Did I mention how much I love that girl?!)

I spent all weekend building new shelving, doing trimwork and painting. We aren't quite done but as luck would have it I am traveling again this week. By the time I get home Lee Ann should have this project knocked out.

Kitchen Project

2011-02-20T12:40:00.000-08:00

The first big change in our new kitchen will be removing the black wall oven and almond ventless hood, leftover elements from some previous versions of the kitchen that don't match the other appliances. Once these are gone we can install the drawer base (shown sitting in front of the wall oven) and a cabinet above, and a new white combo microwave and ventless hood over the range. That will be much better use of this space.

The wall oven is recessed into the adjoining pantry and messes up the space there too, so removing it will allow us to fix two problem areas.

Since I took these photos I did get the wall oven out. It is sitting in the carriage house with a growing pile of old appliances waiting to go to the scrapyard. Maybe next week I can begin the other work. Cha-cha-changes.

Fast Forward To Now

2011-02-19T17:56:00.000-08:00

So we closed on the house, spent an excruciating three weeks moving in the pit of winter, and now we are practically settled in.

We have been making the most of our unusually warm February weather. Today Lee Ann and I took turns hewing away at the undergrowth behind the carriage house. By evening all the stringy honeysuckle you see in the photo was gone.

Closing Is Set

2011-01-18T14:12:00.000-08:00

Today we got word that our house purchase is ready to close, and we settled on Friday afternoon to sign the papers and collect the keys. There were a few snags and delays en route which have kept us waiting for two months, and now we are anxious to get moved in to our big pink house!

Coincidentally, I heard from the people who are buying my five acres in Georgetown (with tumbledown farmhouse) today too. They scheduled that closing for February 5. I am selling at a loss, but given the real estate market am happy to have lined up a buyer so easily. These are the farmers who own the land on two sides of my plot on Gardner Road. I am selling to them directly, without a realtor to pay, so that makes the deal a little better. And I look forward to paying down some of the new mortgage debt with the Gardner Road proceeds.

"The Gothic" - Update

2011-01-05T09:50:00.000-08:00

That house we have been trying to buy, locally known as "The Gothic," still is eluding us. We have cleared some hurdles, though, and are getting closer.

The original catch was that the bank accepted our purchase offer before receiving title from the previous owners. We waited through the title fix, then found that the property could not convey to us without a legal description update, requiring a survey. This further delay blew our purchase contract, which expired on 12/31, along with a great Fannie Mae buyer's incentive also set to expire at the end of the year. Finally, our mortgage rate was locked only until January 4 and we feared that recently rising interest rates would leave us with a higher payment.

Update: Our contract was extended until 1/14; The seller agreed to honor the incentives past their expiration deadline; we relocked our mortgage for another 30 days at a better interest rate (4.25%) than we had before; and the survey is done and in the hands of the county, pending review.

Warren County is known to be slow in handling stuff like this, but with average luck we could close in a week.

New Year's Jigsaw Puzzle

2011-01-04T23:04:00.001-08:00

For most of New Year's Day and a few hours into the day after, I was locked in battle with the bits and pieces of the lighthouse image you see here. This puzzle was a loan from my friend and co-worker Michele. At 500 pieces it was one of the smaller puzzles we have worked, but it proved difficult enough.

Traditionally the New Year's jigsaw puzzle is a family activity, but this year Lee Ann showed less interest and Annie none, so we may have to come up with some other fun/exasperating thing to do on New Year's Day like - I don't know - watching football.

Bringing the New Year In Wright

2011-01-01T00:00:00.001-08:00

This is the Westcott House in Springfield, notable for having been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Lee Ann and I enjoyed our warm and sunny New Year's Eve by touring the house and learning about its history and painstaking $5.6 million restoration.

The look and feel of this house is very different from most any house we have seen before, and we really enjoyed the chance to visit.

Dining Room Christmas Decorations

2010-12-26T04:39:00.001-08:00

Thanks for all the cards, photos and newsletters. Our dining room mantel is festooned with them and, from his nearby vantage point atop the china cabinet, our woodland Santa figure gazes over at them approvingly.

What WE Want For Christmas

2010-12-23T10:42:00.000-08:00

It would be a tight fit under the Christmas tree, but we still are hopeful! This is the house we have been trying to buy for the last six weeks. It is a brick Italian Villa with big rooms, tall ceilings and a great curvy stairway, and it sits on a hill on the other side of Lebanon.

The house had been on the market at a high price for four years but the owners had to give it up to their bank in September. The bank cut the price a lot (though still a big stretch for us) so we put in a bid and, lo and behold, got a purchase contract. There are problems to work through (title, legal description, expiring Fannie Mae incentives, etc) so it isn't a done deal but we are really, really, trying!

Our Thanksgiving

2010-11-29T09:59:00.000-08:00

Here is our little group about to devour Thanksgiving dinner - except for Annie, who stood up from the table to take the picture. We had a very thankful day!

Our Pecans

2010-11-08T16:01:00.001-08:00

We have a curiosity at the Tower House - a pecan tree. Last year it produced no nuts but this year it is loaded. I was turning the vegetable garden today and saw the pecans were popping out of their skins like the ones in this picture. In two hours I picked and dehusked 525 nuts, a total of seven pounds (still in the shells). Now my fingertips are black - I wonder how long it will take for that to wear off. But it was worth it, because now Lee Ann is going to make a pecan pie for Thanksgiving.

Wikipedia indicates that pecan trees are native to a large part of the south and as far northeast as Louisville Kentucky - and then there is a tiny dot of range up in Ohio, right where we are. Lucky us!

Air Force Museum

2010-10-24T09:39:00.000-07:00

Annie is on her way back to Roanoke today after spending a week home on fall break. Unfortunately I was traveling for most of that week, but we did get to spend time on Monday visiting the Air Force Museum in Dayton. They sure have a lot of planes there!

Roanoke Weekend

2010-10-03T06:46:00.001-07:00

On Friday morning, Lee Ann and Danny and I piled into the car and drove to Roanoke for the Family Weekend at the college. We had beautiful weather to drive in, and enjoyed the first tinge of fall colors on the forested hills of Kentucky and West Virginia. And then we were there with Annie.

Family Weekend is a series of organized events and activities designed (I think) to reassure parents that real, college-like things are happening on campus and that their children are in good hands. We went to a few of the programmed activities, including a historical walking tour of the town of Salem and a fun Honors College slide show of the wilderness retreat Annie and the others participated in a few weeks ago. We also just spent time with Annie, whose fondest wish after a month of dorm food was to get off campus and eat in restaurants. We were happy to oblige, since after a month of empty nestedness our fondest wish was to sit and talk to our kid, and restuarants are pretty good for that.

We stayed over in a pet-friendly Howard Johnson's and left Roanoke at noon on Saturday, arriving home at about dark. Now it is Sunday morning and Lee Ann is packing for five days in Lexington to work the Tack Trunk booth at the World Equestrian Games. It's all or nothing with this family - a nice weekend together, and then we scatter to the four winds.

Houston Jinx

2010-09-07T16:02:00.000-07:00

It seems I can't just fly to Houston and back on business without some travel adventure finding its way, unbidden, into the works.

My last visit was in June. I flew in Monday, spent all week giving "Eye on Safety" training sessions (something we cooked up internally to teach behavioral concepts) to our hourly Texas employees, and had a Friday morning flight home. Everything went fine until Friday, when the first two Cincinnati flights of the day were cancelled and the rest filled up before I could rebook. I had been boarded and returned to the terminal twice due to mechanical problems with our plane, with a total of about three hours sitting on the tarmac before the flight finally was cancelled, while others gobbled up available seats on later flights. The best I could get at that point was a Saturday morning flight home, and I spent the night Friday in the airport hotel.

This week I am traveling to Houston again for the supervisor part of the training. My morning flight from Cincinnati proceeded on time until we got close to Houston, at which point our pilot was instructed to circle while controllers tried to get a stack of planes on the ground through the thunderstorms spawned by tropical storm Hermine. Eventually we had to divert to Alexandria, LA for a quick fuel stop, we were told. But as soon as we were on the ground, the pilot announced that Houston was holding aircraft due to the weather and so we deplaned. We proceeded to spend 2 1/2 hours at the tiny terminal there, where our planeload of Delta passengers overwhelmed the little snack bar like hyenas on a wildebeest. A fish sandwich and fries were a 45 minute wait - but hey, at that point we were just killing time.

I had honestly never heard of Alexandria, and I was traveling with my boss Terry, who is a Louisiana native but had never been there. The military trained bomber crews there during WWII but it was turned over for civilian use years ago and now handles just a few commuter flights a day - plus the occasional plane diverted from New Orleans or Houston, like us. The terminal is brick and the control tower is built right on top of it, not separate like at most airports (see picture). It's a perfectly nice terminal unless you are being held there against your will.

Eventually we were called for reboarding and packed back onto our Canadair jet. Once we were onboard, the captain announced that we would be underway as soon as we got fuel. What? They hadn't had time to do that yet? So a fuel truck came out and, while we waited for that, we received another hold from Houston and spent 45 minutes more sitting on the runway before taking off. And instead of the 30-minute Alexandria-Houston leg the attendants promised, we flew a roundabout course well to the south (to avoid the storms, I'm sure) that took an hour.

So my nifty two hour direct flight ended up taking eight hours. I'm not complaining - I'm always glad when the airlines and air traffic control folks keep our plane from flying to our doom. But what is it with me and Houston?

Vacation Day 5

2010-08-31T11:24:00.000-07:00

Back to the vacation narrative...so there we were staying over in St. Ste. Marie. The next morning we drove south over the bridge (Annie mercifully sleeping this time) and took the ferry to Mackinac Island. Here we are on the first deck of the ferry. The top deck was filled completely with a group of high school cross-country guys, all wearing the same t-shirts. We saw them later around the island.

While there we did the usual touristy things - looked at the Grand Hotel (from a distance - going inside costs $10 a head), circumnavigated the island on rented bikes, and bought things in the myriad shops. We stayed in a bed & breakfast on the island, which turned out to be a charming place. The big drawback was that both beds were small, so Annie ended up sleeping on the floor.

We had planned to take two days for the drive back from Mackinac but were antsy to be home, so we got up the next day, rode the ferry to the mainland and drove home with only a brief stop in Jackson to pick up college dorm stuff from Brian and Lorrie. All in all it was a great trip.

Empty Nest

2010-08-30T17:39:00.000-07:00

I have to interrupt my slow retelling of our Michigan vacation with pictures from last weekend, when we dropped Annie off at Roanoke College to begin her course of study there.

It was a nice weekend trip. We left from downtown Cincinnati Friday as I was getting off work and drove to Charleston, WV for the night. Next morning we continued on to the college (total driving time: 7 hours) and Annie was moved into her dorm room by noon. She then attended a blizzard of onboarding meetings and ceremonies. We got to see her for lunch and dinner Saturday and lunch on Sunday before heading home.

The college was beautiful, and the people we met were really nice, including Annie's roommate Katrina. Lee Ann and I had a good time poking around campus and staying Saturday night in a nearby b & b. Except for the fact that we were forced to leave our only daughter behind, in the clutches of total strangers, it was a pretty nifty weekend.

Vacation - Day 4

2010-08-30T04:58:00.001-07:00

From Petoskey we drove north across the Mackinac Bridge (which Annie managed with a minimum of terror) and on to St. Ste. Marie to see freighters go through the locks there. We stayed at a nearby Indian casino resort called Kewadin and played the starter tokens they gave us in slot machines on the gaming floor, but lost interest in gambling as soon as the free tokens were gone.

St. Ste. Marie is a fun town. We visited the county historical museum, which is down a side street that was all torn up for repaving, and according to their visitor log we were the only visitors in a week. There was an art fair going on and we bought a watercolor of a lighthouse we had seen at Betsy Point the day previous. Then we shopped on Main Street and ran into a lady whose husband was the mayor of Hillsdale at the time I worked for the city utilities department in 1992-93 and she regaled me with public employee gossip, 18 years after the fact. It sure is a small world - sometimes too small.

Vacation - Day 3

2010-08-30T04:50:00.001-07:00

Day 3 was Dune Day at Sleeping Bear Dunes. We all climbed this starter dune, but then Annie climbed the dune beyond this one. We stopped a few places along the Lake Michigan shore to wade in the water. The weather was gorgeous.

We went from here to Traverse City for lunch and poked around there a bit before checking in to our historic hotel in Petoskey.

More Vacation

2010-08-14T06:41:00.000-07:00

Later on Day 2 we visited the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park near Grand Rapids. We were lucky to visit during an exhibition of glass art by Chihuly, who positioned his really cool pieces throughout the gardens.

The permanently displayed pieces are pretty impressive too. In the second picture, Annie and Lee Ann get ready to put a twitch on Leonardo Da Vinci's horse. This sculpture is the largest cast bronze in the world. Leonardo designed it but the techniques for the casting did not exist until modern times.

We wrapped up day 2 by driving north to a little low-rent fishing resort motel just west of Cadillac and spending the night there.

Vacation Day 2

2010-08-06T16:31:00.000-07:00

Having reached Jackson the night before and imposed on the hospitality of Brian and Lorri for a night, we rose early Sunday morning and hit the road. First stop was MSU campus. I had not been there for years, and since Annie is off to college in a few weeks thought it would be fun to show her my old stomping grounds. We spent some time in Beal Botanical Gardens, which is a really cool place, had a snack in the Student Union building, visited Sparty (the NEW Sparty - I didn't know he had been remade) and then motored up the road.

Family Vacation 2010 - Day 1

2010-08-06T15:37:00.000-07:00

Part of the reason I am hopelessly behind in blogging about our lives is that we were on vacation for a week, arriving back home yesterday.

Last Saturday we loaded up the car and headed north, in pursuit of some cooler weather and good times in Michigan. Along the way we visited the site of Fort Jefferson, south of Greenville. This was one of a line of forts established in the late 1700s to protect the frontier from Indians, which is a little ironic since General St. Clair lost something like 600 men while on a sortie out from this very fort, a record for casualties inflicted by Native Americans in a battle. Nothing remains of the fort, but there are signs describing what archaeological digs on the site have found. And they have a cool stone monument there, so of course we posed in front of it.

We had a few other first-day adventures, including a visit to the Kitchen Aid Blender museum, but the real highlight was the McAlpine Corvair/GTO Museum in Jackson, whose curator is none other than my brother Brian. He is always gracious and let us tour the place yet again.

Rising Exec

2010-07-01T05:39:00.000-07:00

Lee Ann has taken on more and more responsibility at The Tack Trunk. This year she was named to head up Breyer Day. Breyer is a maker of collectible plastic horse statuettes, and a hot item for the Tack Trunk crowd. The big day was last Saturday, and the turnout was pretty good. Here is Lee Ann serving up drinks at the Alex's Lemonade stand (proceeds to charity) and posing at the foam cutout she made for little riders.

Summer Projects

2010-06-20T11:38:00.001-07:00

The Tower House garden is looking pretty good. Last weekend I harvested the radishes (not sure what you do with three pounds of radishes - suggestions?) Today I got the first of the banana peppers and a couple of okra pods. There are bell peppers on the vine (little), green tomatoes, and flowers on the zucchini and bush beans. The only disappointment so far has been the corn. I bought new seed, planted three 10-foot rows, and had about a dozen plants come up. That accounts for the blank area to the right side. I filled in part of the space with some last-chance watermelons that Lee Ann picked up at half off, and planted some more of the corn seed I had left over (what's that definition of insanity?) so hopefully that area will fill up soon.

My rainy day project is taking out the old kitchen. I disassembled the island and now am chipping up the ugly floor tile. Below that is cement board, and below that chipboard underlayment, and below that (hopefully) the original floorboards, waiting to be restored. I am using a spud bar to break up the tile but it's slow going and there are more nails and screws per inch than should be allowed by law. I'd like to strangle the people responsible for this mess! Lucky for them that they are probably dead already.

Annie - Graduating

2010-06-03T02:45:00.001-07:00

That's Annie in the white.

We Survived...

2010-05-31T07:48:00.000-07:00

...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.

Latest Old House Crush

2010-05-18T14:19:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-18T14:03:00.001-07:00

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

2010-05-18T13:56:00.000-07:00

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.

Christine's Big Day Out

2010-05-17T16:38:00.000-07:00

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.

Lindsay's Graduation Party

2010-05-10T14:28:00.000-07:00

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.

Roof Repair

2010-05-08T11:04:00.000-07:00

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.

Luck of the Scottish

2010-05-02T14:08:00.000-07:00

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.

Prom Night

2010-05-01T14:54:00.001-07:00

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.

In Kansas City

2010-04-28T17:23:00.000-07:00

So here I am in exotic Kansas City - well, really Independence, MO. I flew in Monday night and have spent the last two days in safety training sessions with groups of our scrapyard folks. We have an affiliate headquartered here with 17 facilities in Kansas and Missouri, so I visit pretty often. Others in my party stayed at nice hotels but I am in a Motel 6 down the road, setting the standard for thrift as usual.

The highlight of this trip is that I got to see a Kansas City Royals game last night. The Royals lost to the visiting Mariners 3-2, but I wasn't particular about who won anyway. What was really great was our seat location - lower deck, ten rows back between home plate and third base (but closer to home). The former owner of our operations here has season tickets but never goes to the games so we got $45 seats for free. We were so close you could talk to the players in the on-deck circle, if you wanted to - and we had a good angle to call balls and strikes too. The weather was nice, and there was enough action on the field to keep your attention. It made for a late night, and I was groggy during my training today, but it was worth it.

General Updates

2010-04-26T08:13:00.000-07:00

Here is the latest on our handful of slow-moving McAlpine news stories:

IT'S ROANOKE: Annie has committed to Roanoke College in Virginia and will enroll as a Freshman this fall. She had a very difficult time choosing between this and Ohio State. In the end it was the great scholarship Roanoke offered which tipped the balance. Next step - Annie and her bud Meghan are driving over on June 14 for "Spring Into Maroon" day, a pre-orientation for new students.

BUSINESS TRAVEL REDUX - SCOTT: I still work my slacker three-day schedule, but am traveling again with some frequency. In early April I visited two of our Florida locations with a videographer to shoot for a training video we are putting together. Last week I was in Kansas City helping with a behavioral training course we are trying out, and I fly out again today for more sessions this week. I have a pretty full slate of onsite safety reviews to do in the summer and fall, mostly in Kansas and Missouri, plus some other trips are bound to pop up. Two years ago I was pretty burned out from the road warrior thing, but now that I have had a break my upcoming travel schedule seems manageable.

LEE ANN DOES ROLEX: The Tack Trunk runs a vendor booth at the big Rolex horse event at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington every year, and this year Lee Ann got to work it. She spent three days there, returning home late last night. It was a pretty good time - the store put her up at a hotel, bought all her meals, and she found time to visit other vendors and even see some of the events. It's a good bet she will work again at the World Equestrian Games this fall, which lasts two weeks and is held at the same place.

LACROSSE FAN ALERT: Annie got her doctor's permission to play again as her mono has wound down. Her team has three games scheduled for this week, so hopefully she will see some playing time. Go Lady Warriors!

Upstairs Bathroom - New Paint

2010-04-26T08:07:00.000-07:00

We have a bright new color scheme in the bathroom. Previously Lee Ann had painted this room in vertical blue and white stripes, which looked great, but we were ready for something different. I picked out this tangerine orange paint and we unboxed the shower curtain, rugs and other items Jana bought Annie for her bathroom at our last house. Here you see the result. I love it - Lee Ann and Annie are waiting for an excuse to repaint.

Little Veggie Garden - Planted

2010-04-26T08:01:00.000-07:00

This weekend I weeded out the raised bed behind our Lebanon house and set in some plants. I have the traditional four peppers but cut back to two tomato plants. I have to keep telling myself how big they will get in this small space.

I still have some space at the near end for more plants. What will I put in next? Hmmmm.....

Annie Turns 18

2010-04-06T18:54:00.000-07:00

Annie's senior year at Lebanon High School is winding down, and so is her childhood - she turned 18 on Monday. We had her birthday dinner on Sunday and her big surprise was Uncle Brian and Aunt Lorrie, who appeared as if by magic to help her celebrate. Here is our girl posing with Brian and showing off the dress she will wear to the prom next month. There is so much going on with her these days, and nearly all of it good. Happy Birthday Annie!!!!!!

The Diagnosis...

2010-04-04T08:30:00.001-07:00

Now we know that Annie has been suffering from mono. The doctor called on Friday and told her not to play any contact sports for four weeks. Apparently mono inflames the spleen, which then is prone to bursting with life-threatening potential. What bad timing - this will keep Annie on the sidelines for almost the entire lacrosse season, which begins with a game on Tuesday.

Annie's coach has given her responsibility for coaching Sierra, the sophomore who will be playing in goal for the Warriors while Annie is out. On the bright side, being the goalie coach is something new for Annie to learn, and will keep her involved as a member of the team right through her layoff. But watching from the bench for the first 13 games still is a bitter pill for her to swallow.

Well - THAT Was Unpleasant

2010-04-01T15:55:00.000-07:00

Apparently Google has taken over Blogspot, the original host for this blog. Nobody asked my permission. Instead, when I tried to log in one day in mid-March I was hit with a cheerful greeting from GoogleBlog, or whatever they are calling it now, and curt instructions that I now would need a Google account for access.

That rubbed me the wrong way, so I stopped even trying to post for a while. Then, when I resigned myself to compliance with the new requirements, I found that the re-registration process was not working - the system did not recognize my old password. More time went by.

Finally Annie asked why I was not posting and I told her my problem. She had it fixed in about eleven seconds, so now I am blogging again. But I'm not so happy about it. Stupid Google.

So here are the highlights from the past three weeks:

ANNIE IS SICK. She has the mother of all flu bugs and is suffering through day eleven of a shifting multiplicity of symptoms which have included severe body aches, a sinus infection and a week's worth of fever/chills. Her sole remaining complaint is an upset stomach and the accompanying vomiting. Two doctor's visits and three prescriptions have failed to give much relief - to her or the rest of us.

THE COLLEGE APPLICATION/ACCEPTANCE PROCESS IS DONE. Of seven schools, only one did not offer Annie admission. That was UCLA, which accepts few out-of-staters. But her real stretch was applying to Washington & Lee in Virginia, an elite school well beyond our means, and she got an acceptance from them last week.

YESTERDAY - NEWS OF THE BIG SCHOLARSHIP! Roanoke College (also in Virginia) hosted a competition on campus three weeks ago to select the winners of their large academic scholarship awards. Annie got the news by phone yesterday that Roanoke was awarding her a four year full-tuition scholarship. WooHoooooo! But she is waiting to get final offer letters from all six schools (the others are Ohio State, Miami (Ohio), Kent State, Earlham and Washington & Lee) before she decides which to attend, and should have those in hand by the end of next week.

DEVELOPING - Lacrosse season starts with three games next week. Lovely spring weather is here, allowing Lee Ann to start garden and landscape work. I untarped the tractor today at the Tower House and started 'er right up - mowing season looms. I painted the upstairs bath walls here at East Main a couple of weeks ago - a tangeriney color, not nearly as bad looking as you probably think - but now can switch to outside projects. Lee Ann has her project horse Nick in pretty rideable condition, and his training is progressing.

And that's the news.

We Know An Author!

2010-03-10T15:44:00.000-08:00

My co-worker Eric's wife Rachael has written a book about her experiences as a breast cancer survivor. I preordered the book and was one of the first to receive a copy after the initial print run.

That was yesterday, and last night I stayed up late reading it. The verdict - really good! The subject is a serious one and there are plenty of low points described, but it is also surprisingly funny and warm. And there is a lot of practical advice on how to get through the maze of chemo, surgeries and doctor's visits from someone who has been there. $20. Order online at http://www.wheresmyboob.com/.

Nick - Getting Fatter!

2010-02-20T14:52:00.001-08:00

Here's Nick, two months into his rehab program under Lee Ann's iron fist. As you can see, he looks a lot better. He is growing (currently 16.3 hands) and filling out (note that neck muscle!) but still has a ways to go.

Real Winter!

2010-02-15T12:03:00.000-08:00

It continues to snow in Ohio. We are getting 4 to 6 inches today, then another one to three inches overnight. And there is another storm tracking toward us that may bring more snow at week's end. All this is on top of the snow from the last couple of weeks which, because of below-normal temperatures, still is on the ground.

This reminds me of winters in Michigan when I was growing up. And I'd really rather have snow in February than just dead grass to look at, that's for sure. But it has been too cold to work at the Tower House so I am feeling restless and unproductive - and ready for the weather to break.

At least I got a little breather a few weeks ago. I spent Feb 2 thru 5 in Houston for a work-related training event at my company's facility there. It was rainy and overcast a lot of the time, but temperatures got to the mid-sixties. And I may go to Florida in a few weeks. And then, it will be almost spring!

Annie now has been accepted for admission at five colleges, with two still pending. She has gotten merit aid offers from some of the schools, so we are getting some idea of cost, but probably won't have the whole picture until mid-April. The deadline for picking a school is May 1, so she has about two months left to pull all the facts together and decide.

And Now...The Greener Version

2010-01-23T05:24:00.000-08:00

I finished painting the island cabinet. It is now the same green as our built-in kitchen cabinets around our sink. This project is done now, except for replacing the pulls. Lee Ann really likes it!

Kitchen Island - With Top

2010-01-18T06:39:00.000-08:00

We still have some work to do, but this is the general arrangement...

Kitchen Island Top

2010-01-15T15:43:00.000-08:00

Our little kitchen at East Main has never had a lot of counter space, and cabinet storage is minimal too. When I started disassembling the 1980s kitchen at the Tower House, I saw that the cabinets were nice solid wood and figured I could use them someplace else. Eventually I hit on the idea of building an island from a couple of the base cabinets.

But I needed a top for the island. Lee Ann and I kicked around several ideas for it. Then I saw a Craigslist ad for a guy that works in butcherblock. I called him and he agreed to build the top I needed - and here is an "in progress" photo he sent me yesterday. Looks pretty good! He uses alternating red oak and poplar, 1.5 inches thick. The base cabinets are already in place in our kitchen, and I hope to have the completed top set in place sometime this weekend. More pictures soon.

Michigan Relatives Blanch In Horror!

2010-01-10T15:19:00.000-08:00

It's true - daughter Annie just might become a Buckeye. She received an acceptance letter from Ohio State University yesterday. OSU has good programs in Annie's areas of interest, campus is a moderate distance from home, and a number of her high school friends are planning to enroll there. Also, it has that desirable state-supported college attribute - affordability.

So that makes two acceptance letters (OSU and Roanoke) and five schools she has yet to get a decision from (UCLA, Washington & Lee, Miami U, Earlham College and Kent State).

Snow Falling...

2010-01-07T14:41:00.001-08:00

Our corner of Ohio is getting its share of fluffy whiteness this week. Tuesday was the first snowfall of the winter that needed shoveling, and today I have been out twice to clear the sidewalk. We have about four inches on the ground, with another inch or so due to fall tonight. Annie is off sledding with friend Megan - still a kid at seventeen.

We have hit a lull in the college applications process. Annie has been getting letters confirming that various schools have received her application materials, but acceptances won't come until close to February 1. Wish her luck!

Sweet Dreams

2010-01-03T08:20:00.000-08:00

Aww, aren't they cute? This is Annie and Danny in the backseat on our way back from Michigan. One is dreaming sushi and plum tea dreams. The other is just thinking about chasing squirrels. Which is which, I wonder?

How's That For Excitement?!

2010-01-03T07:51:00.000-08:00

Sure, some folks go jetting off to NYC to guzzle champagne and watch the ball drop in Times Square - but not the McAlpines. We have a more nuanced appreciation of how to celebrate the major calendar milestone. We say, what better way to acknowledge the passage of time than an activity that makes the passage of time completely and painfully apparent?

This might be about the tenth New Year that we brought in with a jigsaw. Originally this was a family activity, but Annie lost interest a while ago and even Lee Ann barely participates anymore. That left me ushering in 2010 by facing a thousand die-cut slices of seething downeast bay - alone. I'll spare you a blow-by-blow, but suffice it to say that after twelve hours and one seriously stiff neck, I had mastered 600 pieces and then caused them and their more inscrutable buddies to slink back into the box from whence they came. A total victory, let's call that. And my neck and vision are pretty much back to normal now, thanks for asking.

At The Roxy

2010-01-01T00:03:00.000-08:00

Here we are at the legendary Roxy Cafe in Jackson Thursday morning with Brian, Lorri and the girls. You can see the Roxy's trademark ceiling ads for local businesses in the photo. The tables all were full so our group took up the entire counter for a linear breakfast get-together and, as always, the omelets were super. Thanks for the photo, Lorri - a good shot.

Ordinarily we visit family in Michigan before Christmas. This year Annie and Lee Ann's social schedule made this impossible - but it turns out we have just as much fun if we go a week later.

Isle Royale Moose Wolf Project Volunteer - Annie!

2009-12-29T06:11:00.000-08:00

Remember that lecture we attended in October in Ann Arbor, Michigan? An old friend of mine from high school, Jeff Holden, explained his role in the long-running predator-prey study on Isle Royale, in Lake Superior, and his role as a team leader in taking groups to the island. The study explores the relationship betwen the two populations to shed light on how ecological systems work. The function of the volunteer teams is to collect evidence on the ground from which information is drawn to support the study - the number of wolves and moose killed, how they died, evidence of disease or genetic abnormalities in the carcasses, and so on.

And now Annie has signed on. She will be a member of Jeff's team and will spend the first nine days of June trekking across the island's rugged wilderness, documenting kill sites and packing bones and antlers back for further study. Sounds like every 18-year-old girl's dream vacation! This should make for any number of fun blog posts this summer - stay tuned.

Merry Christmas!!!!

2009-12-25T07:37:00.000-08:00

We are all home and enjoying being together on Christmas. Here's Annie enthusiastically modeling the super-comfy lounging pajamas her mom got her. And here's our rejuvenated Victrola, a (McAlpine) family heirloom that had seen better days and now is seeing them again. Lee Ann sneaked it off to a little furniture repair place and they refinished it and replaced some of the disintegrating oak veneer. It looks amazing. It cost her a small fortune in wrapping paper, but what a good gift!

Unidentified Frying Object

2009-12-21T12:42:00.000-08:00

Looking up from my computer desk the other day, I spotted something in the lineup of shoes under my dresser that didn't register at first. It turned out to be our cat Stitches, looking for all the world like some weird animal slipper. The room's heat grate is under the dresser, and Stitches was happy to lay there in the hot air blast with my New Balances poaching herself.

(Formerly) Perfectly Good Kitchen

2009-12-21T12:28:00.001-08:00

I had been content to loaf through most of December, but now have gotten restless and started on the next Tower House project. This involves tearing out the kitchen that a previous owner installed in what originally was the house's dining room. The photo shows the last of the creepy tile countertop as I broke it up for removal. Boy does that generate a lot of debris.

This morning I brought a couple of the base cabinets home to East Main where I am planning to build them into a kitchen island here - updates to follow.

Mayhem

2009-12-21T12:19:00.001-08:00

Annie has inherited the baking gene from her mother. Here she is in full Christmas cookie mode, making about 15 different kinds of cookies all at once in our tiny kitchen. Last week it was Lee Ann baking fruitcakes - not the dry store-bought kind, but her delicious secret-recipe variety with big juicy cherries. Both these girls are bound to end up with fat husbands.

Meet Nick

2009-12-12T17:14:00.001-08:00

Once again the horsey stork has visited a little equine bundle of joy upon us, and his name is Nick.

Lee Ann had been without a horse of her own for most of this year, and not too happy about it. Starting a month or so ago she began shopping seriously and, on November 30, found an irresistible deal. Nick is a three year old thoroughbred who was bred to race but never saw the track. He was relatively cheap, seems sound (that is, he is not obviously lame) and has an easygoing personality that Lee Ann appreciates after long association with various obstinate or downright hostile members of the horse world. He is now boarded at Win Row stables here in Lebanon, where Lee Ann is trying to get some weight on him and has begun training him. Wish her luck!

Christmas Prep

2009-12-12T17:00:00.000-08:00

Thanks for sending us Christmas cards! Here is what they look like, festooning the mantel in our dining room. Very cheery. We have sent out a lot of our cards this week but still are working to finish up the season's mailings.
I have been shopping a few times this week in downtown Lebanon, a five minute walk from our house. This is a great town to walk in, and even better this time of year. Tonight I took a walk just before dusk and then saw the Glendower mansion (that's a beautiful big brick Greek Revival owned by the Warren County Historical Society) all lit up. Volunteers had decorated the rooms with old-timey Christmas decorations and the place was open for tours, so I spent an hour there soaking up the 1850s ambience. By the time I left it was plenty dark out, but not too cold, and I enjoyed looking at the big old houses in Lebanon's Floraville neighborhood all lit up for Christmas on my way home.

Rather Large Meal

2009-11-26T14:32:00.000-08:00

It was a meal of epic proportions. Lee Ann cooked for two days and set out enough food for fifty, but we few did our best against it and in the end had made a not inconsiderable dent. Now we are of fairly epic proportions ourselves. Maybe a walk will help. After a nap.

And WOW, the spinach stuffed salmon with mustard glaze was amazing. Annie enjoyed it to the tune of about half her body weight. She won't be walking or napping that off any time soon.

Snow!

2009-11-17T03:50:00.000-08:00

My cute little rental car was minding its own business here in the Kansas City Motel 6 parking lot. Then, sometime last night, from out of nowhere came snow where a little light rain was supposed to be.

I can't really complain - it is mid-November, after all. Besides, I like snow, especially the good-packing variety you get when it is 36 degrees out. Maybe I will have a snowball fight at the scrapyard today, rather than just another safety review. They wouldn't see that coming.

Third Time's The Charm

2009-11-11T20:28:00.000-08:00

Here is Annie at Roanoke College last weekend. From the thumbs-up expression of glee, it seems she can sense a pretty darn stratospheric ACT retest score is on its way. Today she got the score,(a 30) which places her in the top 3 percent of college-bound high school seniors. Woo Hoo!!!

800 Mile Father-Daughter Road Trip

2009-11-08T16:01:00.000-08:00

Last week I conducted a three-day safety school for my company here in Cincinnati. We finished at 4 p.m. on Friday, and I drove straight home and picked up Annie for a crazy 30 hours of driving and college visiting. It was tedious and, by turns, really fun.

Friday Night - We left home at 5:30, pointed toward Virginia. Annie has been accepted at a school in Salem VA (Roanoke College) and was registered to attend an open house on campus for most of Saturday. We also planned to drop in at Washington and Lee University, in nearby Lexington VA, where Annie has applied and is awaiting a decision. We drove 200 miles in four hours, angling across Ohio to Portsmouth and then to Charleston WV where we snagged a room at Motel 6 for the night.

What we learned Friday Night: 1) Annie has not lost her childhood habit of z-ing out for the duration as soon as a car in which she is a passenger shifts out of park. 2) West Virginia is not that scenic if it's dark out. 3) Motel 6 really does leave the light on for you.

Saturday First Half - Up early, and fueled up on potato chips (me) and meatless Egg McMuffins (Annie), we continued south and then east another 180 miles, passing into Virginia and reaching Salem a little after 8 a.m. On this day Annie shared the driving. The weather was perfect - blue skies and rising from the 40s to afternoon highs near 70 degrees. Checking out the charming Salem main street area adjacent to campus, we stopped in a coffee shop for second breakfast (Annie recommends the gingerbread chai, and I give the blueberry scones two thumbs up). We then walked the Roanoke campus before settling in for a financial aid presentation at 9:45, given for us and about 75 other early birds, followed by brunch in the student center cafeteria - way too much food by now. The main program began at 11 a.m. for a crowd that had swelled to about 300. We listened as two admissions staffers talked about the Roanoke experience. By now Annie had chatted up both the Director of Financial Aid and the VP of Admissions, the only kid to introduce herself to either of these speakers, and our basic questions were anwered. The program continued with student and faculty question/answer panels and campus tours until 3:30 p.m., but we instead took ourselves on another walk around campus and agreed to head out at about 1:00.

What we learned Saturday First Half: 1) Sometimes pictures do not lie - Roanoke's campus and setting are just as beautiful as the glossy brochures they sent us. 2) Something as mildly audacious as sitting in the front row of a college presentation can pay off in personal contact with the speakers. Whether this will result in extra consideration for scholarship dollars seems unlikely, but who knows? 3) Even when I am full, I will eat food if it is free. (Okay, I knew this one already.)

Saturday Second Half: From Salem, we drove 40 miles north to Lexington and the campus of Washington and Lee University. We arrived just as the admissions office was closing, but a nice lady there gave us self-guided tour materials. We spent a happy half hour walking the campus and reading about the history and traditions of the school. Then we drove home, retracing our steps and arriving well past 10 p.m. having logged 600 miles for the day.

What we learned Saturday Second Half: 1) Annie is definitely interested in Washington and Lee. (And not just because of the beautiful campus - it has terrific language programs too.) 2) The popular story that the ghost of Traveller, Robert E. Lee's horse, still roams the grounds is false. We were there for a good while and saw zero horse ghosts. 3) West Virginia is not that scenic if it's dark out.

Paydirt!

2009-10-27T07:11:00.000-07:00

So there I was, digging away in the garden spot. Occasionally I would dig up an artifact - a fused door hinge, a part of a machine linkage, a chunk of a broken ceramic crock. Then, I turned up this 1885 Indian Head cent, in excellent condition except that it has turned green. A nice reward for my day's effort.

The Good Dirt

2009-10-26T00:11:00.000-07:00

I had to share this photo of the garden in progress, which shows two things. 1) I didn't get done turning the soil this week (oh well), and 2) the soil here is amazing! I have had heavy clay soil in the last couple of places I tried to garden. This soil has enough clay for good tilth, but it is rich and crumbly with organic material. It is to the soil I had at my big garden in Georgetown as cake is to fudge. I could have mulched and composted in that garden for another ten years and not gotten dirt as nice as this. Maybe some master gardener of old worked the soil into this gorgeous shape for me and I am just lucky enough to reap the benefits.

Put On A Happy Face

2009-10-25T15:22:00.001-07:00

Remember Jack? We have been tracking him from his birth and lonely upbringing as an only gourd. We saw Jack beat the odds, winning out against vine borers and the vagaries of weather to grow into a fine figure of a pumpkin. Now, after all that, having realized his destiny, Jack can lean back and smile.

Garden Work Begins

2009-10-21T03:10:00.001-07:00

This is the back edge of the new garden spot. I dug a trench and have put in a line of stout old oak boards (scavenged from the barn) as a border to separate the lawn from the garden area. In theory this will keep the grass from spreading back into the garden and discourage moles from burrowing in. I began turning the sod too, but that was after this picture was taken. Turning and chopping up sod with a shovel is hard work for my finicky back so I can only do an hour or two per day of this. I hope to get the soil turned and covered this week - we'll see how I hold up.

New Vegetable Garden

2009-10-21T02:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a nice day out, and I am off work this week, so I began prep work for what will be our vegetable garden at the Tower House. The area is 14 feet by 28 feet and is bounded on two sides by concrete walks. Lee Ann has planted a row of boxwood bushes on the third side as a separation from the parking area beside the house.

This has been a staging area for Lee Ann's pond project, so it is strewn with debris and mounds of dirt but is mostly established grass which will need to be turned over and covered for the winter.

Camera Shy!

2009-10-21T02:37:00.000-07:00

Our dog Danny is a fine pet in many ways but like all of us he has his little quirks.

On Monday morning Lee Ann and I took a walk on the bike trail near Oregonia. This is a very undeveloped and woodsy part of Warren County. We discovered another trail leading off into a big meadow and by reading the signs found out this is a wetlands restoration area. It made for an interesting walk.

So we took turns trying to get a photo of us walking Danny along the trail. Sounds simple, but something about the camera spooked Danny. He would see me or Lee Ann raise the camera and immediately cower away, as you see in the photos, turning his head and ruining the shot. For some reason, in Danny's mind the camera equals BIG TROUBLE. Do any of you dog psychologists out there know what's up with this?

My Flying Tiger

2009-10-13T20:17:00.000-07:00

Years ago, when Annie was little, she worried that I would be lonely when I was traveling on business. She dug into her stuffed animal collection and found me a traveling buddy. Since then the little stripey guy and I have flown 680,000 miles on Delta Airlines to all corners of the U.S., plus selected stops in Mexico and Canada - and I have never been too very lonely. This week (for the third week in a row) we are in Kansas and Missouri, business traveler and faux feline, keeping each other's spirits up.

Incredible-ish Journey

2009-10-11T17:49:00.000-07:00

We just got back from a long weekend's drive. On Saturday morning Lee Ann, Annie and I piled into the car and made our way north to Jackson. We visited Brian to see his Cranbrook Drive house(and after months of work it is ready to rent and looking sharp!), and spent the afternoon at Mom's catching up on news and eating her yummy lemon meringue pie.

From Mom's we drove to Ann Arbor to attend a presentation given by my old high school friend Jeff Holden. Jeff has volunteered for several years to pick up bones and antlers on Isle Royale (in Lake Superior) so scientists can track the wolf and moose populations on the island and unravel some of the mysteries of predator-prey relationships. The subject is fascinating, and we really enjoyed the presentation and first-hand accounts from Jeff and other volunteers about the work that is being done there.

After spending the night in a motel south of Toledo we continued this morning to Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware OH. Annie participated in a lacrosse camp there with about 50 other high schoolers, instructed by the OWU coach and senior team members. Annie had a good workout, and it was fun to watch her play in the big old-fashioned football stadium there.

Now we are home, having traveled 600 miles in 36 hours to get back to where we started but feeling it was well worth the trip.

New Pumpkin Pic

2009-10-02T16:07:00.000-07:00

The vine is about dead and Jack is turning orange, so I guess he is as big as he is going to get. The next time you see him, he will be smiling into the camera!

Lots Faster!

2009-09-29T12:29:00.000-07:00

Today was trial mowing day at the Tower House. My tractor came with an old four foot bushhog, so although someday I would like to get a 5 foot finish mower I just used what I had. Surprisingly, the bushhog did a pretty good job. The finished product is nothing you'd want Tiger Woods putting on, but it wasn't too tufty and I only dug furrows in the ground with the bushhog box where I had to turn on a slope.

I wanted a tractor mostly to speed up the mowing of my four acres and, sure enough, I now can cut the wide-open spaces about three times faster than with my riding mower. Also, having my own tractor is really, really cool.

Grand Opening

2009-09-28T13:11:00.000-07:00

Lee Ann and I were both off today so we took a drive south to Brown County, our old stomping grounds. Our plan was to head straight for the river town of Ripley, but on the way we stopped in Georgetown. By coincidence, we discovered that the folks who rented our commercial building there were having their grand opening. They have fixed up the store area and have a nice selection of Carhartt workwear, RedWing boots and other stuff. It looked great.

While we were in Georgetown we also attended the Brown County fair. There's nothing like fair food for lunch - yum! The weather was super pleasant - sunny and 70 degrees, perfect for fall in the Ohio Valley.

Luck Of The Draw

2009-09-23T10:08:00.001-07:00

This week I am in Tampa, Florida taking the "four scrapyards in five days" tour you hear so much about. Instead of my usual econocompact, I am driving this pretty cool Volkswagen Beetle. Getting a rental car is pot luck, and occasionally I end up with some big SUV or gimmick vehicle. Once I got a Prius, which was fun. The worst ever was a Ford Mustang, which was uncomfortable, got awful gas mileage and had blind spots the size of Nebraska. The Beetle is a pretty good ride, and if someone offered me one I wouldn't turn it down.

Bonus info: My company took away my old phone and forced a Blackberry gizmo on me that is a veritable Swiss Army Knife of electronica. One gadgety feature that I initially pooh-poohed is a built-in camera - but as you can see by the attached car photo, I now am appreciating this capability a bit.

Sad - Lost A Cat Today

2009-09-19T11:24:00.000-07:00

I had been at the Tower House this morning, clearing a spot to park the tractor in the old barn there, Annie was at work and Lee Ann at a horse show. When I returned to Lebanon about 15 past noon I saw our cat Maya (or CC - we never did agree on her name) laying in the street behind our house. I parked and went right over to her, but she had been dead for a while. It appears that she was hit by a car.

Maya was the white-haired poofball cat with the feathery tail that Lee Ann and Annie rescued a year or so ago. We would see her on our walks, living in a truck trailer parking lot and crying piteously when we came by. Lee Ann started dropping off food and water and eventually brought her home, nearly starved to death and so dirty we did not know what color she was. Once installed at our house Maya stabilized and for the past year has lived a pretty pleasant existence here with us.

I buried her in our backyard, next to the fence she used to like walking on top of. RIP, poofball kitty.

New McAlpine Family Addition!

2009-09-15T19:14:00.001-07:00

A very large stork will be headed north from Louisiana soon to drop off our little bundle of joy!

This is my new (used) Ford 1320 tractor. It is a lot like the Ford 1310 that I owned for seven years and used at my Moon Hollow farm. It is the same size class, has the same 3-cylinder diesel engine, but was built in 1992 as opposed to the older-model 1310, which was built in about 1977. It also has a few added features such as that protective roll bar that you see in the photo.

I have known for a while that I needed something bigger than my dinky riding mower to keep the four acre lawn at the Tower House under control. Three weeks ago Lee Ann and I stopped and looked at a Ford 1520 that a guy had for sale on his front lawn near Caesar's Creek Lake. It was beautiful, the cleanest used tractor that I ever saw, but just a bit too big - and too expensive. He sold the tractor that same day to someone else, preventing me from changing my mind, and I kicked myself for not buying it despite the fact that it wasn't the ideal tractor for me.

Since then I have been looking locally and online for a 1310, 1320 or something similar in a John Deere or Kubota. I didn't intend to get interested in something so far away as this one, but even with freight delivery charges it is a lot less expensive than the 1520, and exactly what I wanted. But I am buying it SIGHT UNSEEN - the quintessential eBay experience. Gee, I hope this works out. I should know in eight days max.

She's a STAR

2009-09-14T17:39:00.000-07:00

Today Annie was accepted to Roanoke College, a Virginia liberal-arts school with a lovely campus nestled in the Alleghenies. Attagirl! It was just like in the movies - I fished the letter out of the mailbox, and it looked like it might be an acceptance, and I carried it upstairs to where Annie was studying in her room, and she opened it expectantly, and the first word on the letter was "Congratulations." I was not surprised, since her qualifications are very good, but it sure was satisfying.

It's not a lock that Annie will attend Roanoke, however. She plans to apply to about eight schools in all, Roanoke having been the first. With any luck, she will be able to choose among several schools that accept her and find at least one that offers both an ideal curriculum and great financial aid. This will all be unfolding slowly between now and May 1, which is the deadline for committing to a school for the fall of 2010. Wish her luck - and a couple more "Congratulations!"

The Big Score

2009-09-14T16:59:00.000-07:00

Here in the hyperkinetic McAlpine household, a weeknight's family amusement might include a little ultimate kickboxing, the ever-popular juggling knives while riding unicycles, or (more commonly), a game of Scrabble. It is usually me versus Lee Ann, since Annie is afraid of damaging our delicate egos and participates sparingly.

Tonight's game stood out because I scored 516, which might be a personal best. I don't remember scoring five hundred plus since my childhood when we played by Grama Miller rules and kept counting the double/triple words and letters even if they had been covered in a previous play, which really jacked up our point totals.

Some words Lee Ann and I accept probably don't appear in a Scrabble dictionary and would never fly in tournament play, but our house rules are fairly relaxed. In any case, the big play of this game was legit - I used all seven of my tiles and covered two triple word spaces by playing "graphite" in the lower left corner of the board for 203 points. Lee Ann gets an assist for playing "bar" immediately beforehand to set me up. Thanks honey!!

Jack - Update

2009-09-13T06:57:00.000-07:00

Our future Jack-O Lantern is now about 8 inches in diameter and is looking like a real pumpkin now. The vine still looks healthy, so I expect him to keep getting bigger.

Floor Project

2009-09-08T23:52:00.000-07:00

Thirty or forty years ago someone put oak strip flooring in most of the rooms at the Tower House, over the original floorboards. The floors were finished, but then some time in the past they were stripped and left unfinished - I have no idea why. Now the wood is discolored and has paint splotches from the last awful interior paint job the house received, as the first photo of the upstairs back hall shows.

I am taking up the oak in the downstairs rooms but we decided to leave it upstairs. A couple of weeks ago I sanded the bedroom floors. Now I have stained and shellacked the front bedroom floor - second photo. This work is tedious but I sure like the result.

Dig This!

2009-09-04T16:13:00.001-07:00

Things were humming at the Tower House on Wednesday. I had two skilled crews doing work that day that was beyond my humble skills (and horsepower). I like to do almost all the house renovating work myself, but sometimes it makes sense to call in experts.

One crew took out a tree that had plugged up the septic tank discharge, and will be back in a few weeks to lay in a new drainfield. The other replaced our well pump, which was fried by a lightning strike a few weeks back. While they worked outside, I was refinishing bedroom floors - but that's for another post.

Since I took these pictures I insulated the pump and buttoned up the well pit, and Lee Ann and I have already cut up a lot of the tree. With any luck, we won't have any "water in" or "water out" issues for many years.

One Egg - No Basket

2009-09-01T16:29:00.001-07:00

All summer we have watched the pumpkin vines that sprang from last year's Halloween pumpkin snake all over the back yard. For weeks we have patiently waited for pumpkin fruit to begin forming. Now - success! We have ONE pumpkin on the vine. I had almost given up, thinking that we had an infertile hybrid or something.

This little guy is about the size of a baseball. Any size bigger than a muskmelon by the end of October will suit my purpose, but I'm not counting my Jack-o-lanterns yet. Typically our vine crops are polished off by boring insects just about the time whatever they are producing nears maturity (the downside of organic gardening!), so Jack may never make it to usable girth. But since optimism is just as cheap as pessimism, and more fun, I am dreaming of a BIG result.

Last First Day Of School Picture

2009-08-29T02:43:00.000-07:00

This was Annie on Wednesday, headed off to school.

Wonder Girl

2009-08-25T16:13:00.000-07:00

After a long, hard summer, Annie starts school tomorrow. It will be the first day of her senior year, and it's just like they say - kids grow up so fast! One moment she's a tiny little baby some nurse hands to me at the hospital, so I can carry her swaddled form down the hall for cleanup and first weigh-in. Then, in the blink of an eye, she is seventeen, fiercely intelligent, principled beyond her years, and working three jobs to sock it away for the college expenses that loom just ahead.

Good luck, Annie. I hope you have a wonderful last year of high school.

Unleash The...Frogs!

2009-08-17T01:36:00.000-07:00

Lee Ann has been very happy with her pond. It has attracted birds and dragonflies and the deer drink out of it, so it has become a feature of the local natural world. Still, there was something missing - frogs. Every pond should have them, right? The pond has been in place well over a year, and we were sorta hoping frogs might just show up on their own. Finally Lee Ann had to force Mother Nature's hand a bit - she frognapped a couple of likely specimens from a puddle at the barn and we had the release yesterday. Live free, little frogs.

2009-07-27T03:07:00.000-07:00

On Saturday night, on our way back from Greenfield Village, we stayed at the Grand Trillium Bed & Breakfast in Kenton OH. The house is a wonderful old Italianate mansion, and the town is charming too.

Greenfield Village

2009-07-26T16:11:00.000-07:00

Lee ann and I just got back from a weekend getaway trip to Greenfield Village in Dearborn MI. We drove to Toledo on Friday and stayed at a Motel 6, then drove the rest of the way Saturday morning and spent the day at the Village. It was rainy and cool to start but the weather improved through the day.

Photo 1 - they didn't worry a lot about machine guarding a hundred years ago. Photo 2 - Lee Ann looks lovely in hats! Photo 3 - Here's the house Noah Webster lived in when he finished his American Dictionary. Photo 4 - This good-looking Greek Revival, home of Robert Frost, was our favorite. Photo 5 - Lee Ann sinks her fingernails into the garden wall at the Cotswold cottage, ca. 1600, saying "Look - it's following us home!" Well, maybe this was her favorite after all.