Woody demolished our neighbor's shed (with his go ahead)

Manapalooza III...and we still have power and water

Remember Manapalooza I and II? Of course you do. Jane's Addiction was there. Sound Garden was there. I was wearing tiny barrettes, a tiny t-shirt and Doc Martens. Curses, I've fallen into a mid-90s reverie again. MANapalooza. Must focus on MANapalooza...

Manapalooza I, if I can pull you back from fondly smiling about stereograms and Snapple, was the first 517 extravaganza involving Brian's arsenal of large power tools. During Manapalooza I, Brian and Woody brought down many of 517's scary looking dead trees with a symphony of chain saws.

Manapalooza II -- hey! I said come back from the mid-90s! Stop shivering at the thought of Blair Witch, it was a kid in a corner and a shaky camera -- brought Brian's skid steer to 517. Woody tooled around our yard, got rids of shed-sized piles of trash, and succeeded in demolishing our electric meter.

Manapalooza II.2 had its finale in an apparent face off between Woody-in-skid-steer and his father and Woody taking out our water main.

But today, after Manapalooza III, we were able to use our lights AND shower! Given, the entire extravaganza felt less "extreme" as a result. But I guess once you get central heating and air and an indoor kitchen, you go soft...in a domestic sense at least. Certainly not in a corporeal sense. Since September, Woody has lost 45 lbs and my first half marathon is just 2 weeks away. So we at 517 are becoming quite the hard bodies...or at least cardiovascularly healthy.

Manapalooza III brought Brian back to the house with skid steer in tow:

After Woody dropped Brian off back in G'ville, he set about leveling our yard. In a good way. First the giant rotting tree that a local yokel had felled in our backyard was moved onto the trailer for transport to the dump. (Note: the local yokel is not Brian. Brian is an expert at felling trees. This guy succeeded in taking out our neighbor's fence, crushing our wheelbarrow and destroying Woody's homemade saw horses...all for $150.)

View of yard before:

As you will remember, we decided to keep Alice mostly with the hope that, in her teething year as a puppy, she would in fact gnaw away the entirety of this tree. That didn't happen. Apparently she has more of a taste for dirty underwear and socks.

View of yard after:

You can also see here the impressive tracks made by the skid steer. By the end of the day, our yard looked like it did in the halcyon early days of our renovation:


Woody also spread out the large pile of mulch/chipped wood that our neighbor was kind enough to give to us. I am sure this was a great disappointment to the local squirrel population as they had carved out a number of cozy peat condos in it.

A look before:

A look after:

The billowy rows of mulch made me want to go out in the yard and roll around. That and the knowledge that the layer of mulch was thick enough that I wouldn't wallow in a) dog poop b) old auto parts or c) generally nasty sand. I told Woody he should do this every week so I never had to do a dog poo sweep of our estate.

Woody also dug out the space for our new outbuilding. We will finally be able to remove the air compressor from our bedroom and have a closet for things like clothes in the middle bedroom!

Woody in action:


The spot for the guest cottage, er, outbuilding:


Kenneth will be coming by on Monday to start construction!

Happy holidays from 517!

We are still chugging along on the house at 517! The work going on now is more detail and finish work. This holiday break Woody and I are working on getting the home office in shape -- soon there will be a big shared face-to-face desk and more polished-looking bookshelves. Pictures to come soon!

In the meantime, un-redeye-corrected greetings from Maddy and Alice. I would have made them look less possessed but I don't have that kind of Photoshop know how. If I did I would have also made Maddy look slimmer and Alice look more obedient. We didn't do the bells-around-the-neck thing, the groomer did. Woody wanted me to mention that.

Best wishes for a great new year from all at 517!

Bust out with your Clue notebooks

Upon returning home after discovering that someone in Arizona had swiped my debit card number and purchased $3000 worth of furniture at Ikea and $52 worth of food at Jack in the Box (the bigger insult I think. How is it even possible to purchase $52 worth of food at Jack in the Box? Did he purchase Jack's costume as a getaway outfit?), I found this:


No, Alice didn't Houdini Hound it and spirit herself out of her crate. We forgot to put her in there. But boy did she remind us of it when we got home. Not pictured here is our bed. Which she peed all over. Some sleuths out there claim that Madison masterminded this flurry of Kleenex destruction. Perhaps she goaded on the impressionable pit to new heights of tissue paper terrorizing. After all, we know the pup has a propensity for maxipads and premium quality tampons...

So, go ahead, we know the deed happened in the Drawing, er, Living Room. Who was it? Colonel Mustard? The saucy Miss Scarlett? The less saucy but very old Dame Madison? Or the puckish Miss Alice? Please don't leave any of those little metal reproductions of revolvers and lead pipes around. I don't want to find them in Alice's after dinner droppings.

Quivering with excitement for a new school year

It has been a busy summer at 517. I was away for part of May and all of June (with periodic pilgrimages back to SC to visit with Woody and the puppies). Woody was holding everything on the homefront together and completing some impressive improvements to the "grounds" of 517. So when Aug. 18 hit, were we:

1. shocked
2. dismayed
3. quivering with anticipation like the exquisite Mexican jello mold pictured above
4. befuddled as to why our new GPS routed us through Tennessee to get to campus
5. all of the above

If you said "All of the above," you would be covering your arse but you would be right.

So what did we get done this summer? The better question really is what did Woody get done this summer because I mostly sat on my butt in archives. Woody did some impressive stonework in the yard! We now have a flower patch with a fancy rock border:

The pergola on the back porch is covered with jasmine, roses and hanging plants:

Our garden has not been as robust as it was last year. Horned caterpillars and some other guys who pop out their antennae when annoyed (thanks Wanda and David for the tip!) have set about gorging themselves on our tomatoes and parsley. We also have this guy hanging around:

When Woody ripped out the wall around our backdoor he battled with a spider that was Shelobesque in size. The guy in our garden is more like Shelob's flashier cousin. He knows that an accent accessory or two can really lighten up an outfit and be slimming to boot. We're told he's called a Golden Garden Spider. We hoping he dines on caterpillars.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this pole!

Remember when the Berlin Wall came down? Remember David Hasselhoff's rousing performance of his hit single(s) (in Germany)? Remember his super cool light-bulb-covered jacket?

No? Then you'll probably be taking Latin American history with me next semester.

Yes? Then keep reading.

If the Berlin Wall represented all the things that Communist meanies could do (and all the resourcing the Macys could do with the bricks afterwards...anyone get one for Xmas?), then the Tetanus Spear of B'ton represented the last derelict vestige of our home's previous owners. But we did it! MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! The Tetanus Spear has fallen!!!!

In an afternoon reminiscent of the Shawshank Redemption, I worked on digging the spear out for roughly 2 hours. It involved: a large shovel, the mattock, a tablespoon (for the detail work), another trip to the hardware store, a smaller new shovel, and rocking the thing back and forth. And yet it stood. It was clear that there was cement footing and/or a root and/or the earth's f'ing core involved with keeping it in the ground. Remember the Tetanus Spear could not be defeated even by Brian's skid steer!

Then Woody had a go at it.

Before:

During:


After: Woody asking the pole "How ya like me NOW?"


Alice resolving her desire to chew everything with her desire to avoid tetanus:

(I cannot get that image to go the right way. Grrr...
You can see the giant HOOK that held this thing in the ground though.)

Alice detects the scent of the first puppies on earth:

Alice is still with us, yes! We found her brother Arlo a good home with our friend Paul and decided to keep Alice in the family. Her and Maddy are getting along well, mostly because Alice is an absentminded eater...and Maddy polishes off the leftovers.

We've decided to fill the gaping maw left by the extraction of the Tetanus Spear with a lovely little fig tree (getting move-in ready here):

Two little visitors to 517

Yesterday I found one of these guys just wandering the neighborhood, not suprisingly he took a liking to me (he might have started to think differently when I bathed him). After some asking around, I found his owners and also discovered he had a very little sister. Both of them were being kept in a dingy shed and separated from their food and water. When asked if I wanted them, I most definitely said yes. How far I have fallen from those days when I said I "hated furry things that pooped" (indeed that was before I met Woody....).

When Woody got home and saw them about all he could say between them licking his face and crawling all over him was "Puppies! Pupppies!!!" Maddy has been a very mature dog about it. Probably because she knows we are going to find these guys good homes . Currently they are reveling in the marvelousness that is beach towels. They have never had something that soft to sleep on. They were sleeping on cold concrete among the garden tools. Sometimes I marvel at people's lack of compassion and responsibility...