Fencing

Way back when we had a retaining wall installed on the back side of our house, the people who did the work needed to take down the fence in order to get their equipment into the backyard. For whatever reason, the fence never got up back up and was left in place in pieces. Years passed (not kidding).

Recently, my wife decided that she wanted some barrier in place to keep Oliver from running out to the alley. And so began the saga of the New Fence. The first episode consisted of getting several preconstructed fence panels and posts from Home Depot and hauling them home. In case you are curious, they are in fact quite heavy. My wife and I lugged them home strapped to the roof rack of my mother-in-law's minivan. Does anyone else feel like an idiot whenever they are a hauling around something strapped to their roof?

The second episode was the attempted removal of the existing fence. The removal took a long time in part because a weed had grown through the fence links and become so big that it actually had bark. We've managed to remove most of the above ground part and with wire snips were able to cut off the fence links that are now part of the plant. I'm calling this the attempted removal of the existing fence because we had so much trouble removing one of the fence posts that we decided to use it for the new fence. After all, it is clearly not going anywhere.

But why is it not going anywhere you ask? That is the part of the trilogy of unfortunate events that brings our story to a screeching halt. Our original plan was to put the fence at the edge of the alley. But when we started digging, we found a metal plate about three inches down. Fearing that it was covering some sort of utility lines, we suspended digging until DigRite got back to us. A couple of days later and an all-clear signal from the utilities, we started going again and managed to unearth one mother of a 1/4 inch thick, 8 feet tall, 2 feet wide steel plate. After hauling it out of the way I started digging a hole in the middle of the stretch where we wanted to put the fence. Eight inches down I ran into another sizable stretch of concrete. I tried digging in another spot and came across another sizable chunk of concrete. When I tried to unearth the fence post, I found it was squeezed between two sizable chunks of concrete. At that I decided that I'd had enough of sizable chunks of concrete and called it a day.

So at this point, we still need to remove the tree/weed and will likely have to dig through a sizable chunk of concrete in order to place the other fence post. ARGH!

Downright pleasant again

It was hot. And then it got downright pleasant again. But this time I can't really take advantage of it since my leg hurts. I'm not sure, but I think I have a stress fracture on my right leg near my ankle. So in the mean time I'm icing it, trying to stay off it, and loving the weather from afar instead of going for a run in it.

Grumble. Grumble.

Downright pleasant

I don't know what has gotten into Mother Nature all of a sudden, but the weather has been downright pleasant. It's not too warm during the day. It cools off at night. The humidity is somewhat restrained. I've come home from work and wanted to be outside rather than fleeing the unrelenting heat to the safety of my air-conditioned home. I'm confused - this is still St. Louis, right?

Well, until I wake up from this dream I'll be hitting the streets to go running when I get home.

When good plans go awry

I was playing a session of D&D last night with my group. They were just about out of resources for the day and had holed up to sleep. It seemed like a good time to taunt them by having the BBEG (big bad evil guy) show up at their doorstep and then leave. But they had decided that they'd had enough. They popped out of their rope trick and blasted him. One critical hit with a disintegrate ray, a cruddy initiative roll on his part, and a few clobberings later, the BBEG was dead and the players were celebrating. Curse them and their infernal competence.

Weekend travelling

I spent the weekend travelling up to Chicago for a race. While we were in town, we got to see some family and friends which was great. I hadn't gotten a chance to see my family in several months and it had been over a year since I got to see my friends. Oliver had a great time playing with his cousin including one stretch where the two of them were running around the table playing Cowboys and Indians for Toddlers.

The race went well and bodes well for the marathon to follow. I attempted to follow my own racing advice and managed to keep my ego in check and only wrote inexpensive checks that my body couldn't cash. I know that I need to be a little more dedicated to my training though - my heart rate was higher than I would have wanted in some sections of the race.

Travelling with Oliver was good too. He slept most of the way up to Chicago and a good section of the trip down. When he was awake, my wife kept asking things for him to name. Usually he isn't too much into that, but yesterday he was more than game to try. I guess this means he's in the middle of a verbal growth spurt. So now I have to watch my mouth.

Meet the Neighbors

It's not that I'm not social, but I haven't really spent a lot of time talking to my neighbors. It's been better since we had Oliver, but we still don't spend a lot of time interacting. I think part of the problem is that I haven't really adjusted to the idea that I'm a grownup, that all of the parents up and down the block are my peers. So when I talk to them, I feel a little awkward, as if they'll discover that I'm not really a grownup.

Last night I took Oliver to the local playground and ran into one of my neighbors from down the block, M. M is a SAHD with two children, one of whom is a couple of months younger than Oliver. Talk about a potential gold mine of inter-child interaction that we've ignored for a year or more. M and I had a good conversation about running as we watched our children run around the playground. It was good and by the end of the encounter, I felt much more comfortable.

And maybe I found another neighborhood playmate for Oliver.

Too much Angel

I've been watching Angel Seasons 1,2 and Buffy Season 5 (thanks to Amanda). And I've discovered the downside of having shows on DVD. When a show is on TV there is at least a week lag between episodes. Not so on DVD. If you are willing to stay up, there is nothing that prevents you from doing so. And so I've put in a couple of long nights recently speeding through seasons of Buffy and Angel.

I can tell that my wife is also getting a little too much Buffy. The other day I got up early and as I was leaving to go to a race, I heard her talking in her sleep. "Need to get book... vampires..." Sure sign of too much Buffy. I'd say that she was the only one, but that'd be a lie.

I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay...

In the big storm, we lost half of the tree in front of our house. After removing the fallen debris, it became obvious that the rest of the tree needed to come down. So on Saturday, my brother-in-law came over with his chain saw. I cut down a lot of the low branches with a bow saw before he came. When he arrived, we went on to the main event.

The most exciting part of the job was chopping off the top of the tree that was angled towards my neighbor's house. I climbed the ladder resting on the trunk of the tree with my bow saw. We tied a rope around the tree just above the height of the ladder and he took hold of it, pulling from the ground. I started sawing through the trunk below the cut. When it started cracking, I climbed down the ladder as fast as I could and hit the ground in time to see the tree top gracefully crack and fall harmlessly into the neighbor's yard. After that it was more or less just a matter of cleanup - using the chainsaw to cut the big branches into smaller chunks to get piled up by the curb and hauled away by the city.

After he took off, I spent some time drilling holes into the soft wood of the stump. I covered the remains of the stump with some fertilizer and watered the area. The thought is that in several months, the stump should rot away enough that I can get rid of it without having to grind it away.

Update:
We got the tree down just in time. The city came by this morning and finally started clearing our street of debris.

Now I lay us down to sleep

Sometimes when I'm trying to get Oliver down to sleep, I end up putting myself to sleep as well. I'll wake up from my nap and then look at the clock and figure out whether it is worth it to get up and go downstairs or pencil myself in for extra sleep that night. Last night was an extra sleep night. I went down about 9:00 and woke up about 7:00. It was great. I probably should have gotten up and got some stuff done. There wasn't anything of major importance though, so I'll just get it done today.

I do sometimes get frustrated by our bedtime routine. We opted not to use Cry It Out as a bedtime solution. So when Oliver goes to bed, we lay down with him until he drifts off. It used to get be Mommy but eventually she got sick of being the only one who could do it. So it sometimes includes both Mommy and Daddy. It's becoming a huge time sink especially when he takes a half-hour or more to work his way down.

Introducing the human sausage!

When I started upping my training program, I let the diet fall by the way side. Up until recently I hadn't been too bad, but eating out for a week straight due to power failures is not a recipe for weight loss. Add unrelenting heat and a desire to not be out in it on top of that and you have a recipe for weight gain. I'm still not too bad, but I'm trending up towards my pre-diet weight. As in I'm almost there.

Before the power outage, I went to the New Balance store on Clayton and bought a running shirt that was marked half off. One of the many benefits of being a man is that off the rack clothes generally fit the same. Since I had been losing weight and wanted a tighter fit I selected a large. It wasn't until I tried it on at home that I realized that it was a compression shirt.

Now combine the mental pictures and you get a pretty good idea of what a human sausage would look like. Just douse me in beer and toss me in the frying pan. Now, I'm been a rock (training for a marathon) and a soft place. I'm not planning on starting a diet, but I may have to reel in my appetite somewhat.

And for those of you who are groaning about the mental image - eat me.