Mudville

Some of you might recall that I blew out my knee playing softball, back in late June. Well, it turned out to have been merely sprained and after a 6 week hiatus I was back in business. I never quite regained my sweet swing from the beginning of the year (I went 3 for 4 with a home run), but hit some nice line drives and by the final game was starting to feel comfortable in the field again. Our team, Ether Binge^, had made the playoffs, although that is less impressive when you know the top four teams make the playoffs and there were only four teams total. I am standing far right, holding a mitt that was holding a hidden can of Tecate beer. Worry not, it was a post-game beverage. I play clean.

Still, we were two games away from a championship and playing the dreaded Steamers, the very team I had injured my leg against two months earlier. It was a great game, back and forth each inning. We must have exchanged leads several times before finally getting into the final set of at bats, down 2 runs. We strike quickly and score a run and have men at 1st and 2nd, but then we make two outs. Our manager, batting right in front of me, takes a walk, loading the bases. So there I am, season on the line, bases juiced, any decent hit probably wins the game.

I take a ball. Then I take a strike. Then I make the second-worst swing of my shortened season, fouling the ball roughly three feet. I swing the bat once, trying to get a feel for it. There is some good-natured taunting as I am wearing a Superman logo shirt. I am warned not to break the windows in the buildings over 1000 feet away. I bear down. Another pitch, another ball, but only barely. It is now a 2-2 count. One long exhalation of breath. Then a pitch that looks hittable.

Oh, somewhere in this favored land
the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere,
and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing,
and little children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville--
Great Casey has struck out.

Alas, this was the worst swing of my season. I fouled the ball maybe 1 foot. I actually threw the bat down in front of the ball to knock it back fair. Not because I had any expectation that it would work, but because there was nothing else I could do. In slow pitch softball, you can foul out. I could make an excuse that I had picked up a heavier and unfamiliar bat, but the truth is I choked under the additional pressure and did not make good swings. And like mighty Casey, I will have to move on and hope for revenge some other day...

Now, in proper DaColbert Code style: Revenge is a dish best served cold. Cold hands mean a warm heart. Hart-to-Hart starred the incomparable Robert Wagner. Wagner co-starred in the made for television fiasco, "There Must Be a Pony" with Elizabeth Taylor. Of the two, Taylor's career has clearly plunged farther from the heights of such classics as "National Velvet" and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." A tin roof is cheaper than a shake roof, but both are better than no roof, which is what my house presently has!



Eerie, no? Yes, after much hand-wringing, fretting, and general groaning we finally pulled the trigger and ripped the old shake roof off of the house. This was not the original plan. Our architect loved the old roof and wanted to keep it. I felt it had become a bit of an eyesore, that it just looked dilapidated and unsound (You can decide for yourself, although it should be noted this picture was taken after they tore up the roof to attach the new addition). Still, we were already so far in over our heads on this project that we were willing to listen to the honeyed words of our advisors and were going to live with the old roof a while longer.

Well, you know what they say about "The best-laid plans of mice and men". They go awry. Let me let you in on the big secret about home renovation. Every part of your house is in some way connected to every other part of your house. Pipes, ducts, and wires go everywhere. Walls touch ceilings, rafters meet walls. The most well intentioned contractor will run into obstacle after obstacle where the old house intrudes on the new. Not to mention the city, which continually terrorizes from a distance through its permitting and inspection process, doesn't like old houses much and loves to take every opportunity to dissolve them bit by bit. So time and time again compromises have to be made to move the project forward. Take out that plaster, remove that insulation, replace that wiring, shore up that wall, tear out that duct. This is the reason all remodel budgets balloon.


Or half of it anyway. The other half is that you never want to half-ass something at this stage. You could replace only the effected areas, but it seems absurd to spend 1/2 the money it would to replace everything to replace only 1/3 the stuff. I mean, if the walls are already ripped open and we got to replace some insulation anyway, why not do it all? A thousand here, a thousand there... pretty soon we are talking real money.

What was I talking about? Oh yes, my roof. As we were installing entirely new plumbing (original plan) and an entirely new HVAC system (one of our first "savings"), we were riddling the roof with new holes. To make the shake roof water tight again was just out of the question. Getting to the roof boards was like digging through crumbling foam-board. It wasn't going to go back like we had it and so much of it had to come up we had to replace it. Now we had the option of just replacing the back roof (no new holes in the front), but that just seemed silly. Why not just do it all? You see? That's how they get ya.



So here are pictures of the first two phases of my re-roofing. Phase one is the tearing off of my roof, right down to the frame. From a distance you can almost imagine there is nothing wrong, but the closer up shot from above makes it clear that my home's weather proofing is sadly lacking. My favorite is the shot from inside the house, looking up into the pale, blue sky. You can see my chimney there on the right, both inside and outside my roof.

Next comes the plywood roof. Still not exactly water-tight, at least it keeps out bird droppings and the morning dew. You can see my contractor up there talking with the roofer about exactly where they are going to dislodge money from me next. The close-up shows us the platform the new AC unit will be resting on. You can also see the makings of a little rooflet that they refer to as a "cricket". It serves the very important purpose of allowing water to run off your roof to either side instead of piling up against the new addition (where I took the photo from). It also served an additional valuable purpose as a place the HVAC guy could run air ducts to the new part of the house. Previously we had been talking about dropping down ceilings to accommodate those pesky pipes.

Speaking of pesky pipes... Those two girls of mine can really wail. Why just this morning Kayla had some unexplained discomfort (I am going with tummy-ache) and her screaming would have put a banshee to shame. Fortunately most days things are bit more mellow, with a much higher giggle-to-scream ratio.

Here are a couple of really nice shots that I have yet to squeeze into the blog. The quality is high, so you know I didn't take them. The lovely bride has not only a superior camera (a Canon D10), but a superior photographic eye. Unfortunately it is not always convenient to haul around a single-lens reflex camera and all its accompanying attachments and lenses. Nor is it always convenient to carry around my wife either... although she is as light as a feather. (Phew! Good save.) Still, when you can get both, I recommend it.



The first photo is the girls in their full Dodger outfits, probably getting ready to go to a game. Note the adorable baseball on their butts. The recent Dodger unpleasantness started after we last went to a game, so I think there is a clear correlation between our NOT going to games and Dodger losing streaks. Clearly they can not do without my babies for more than a week.

Finally, we have another album cover shot. Some may have seen a similar picture sent out around the 4th of July, but from a different angle. In this one our favorite duo, The 2nd Dimension, are acting like they didn't know we were there.

But they knew.



^I begged off explaining this team name in an earlier post. I am still not sure exactly how it specifically came to be the team name, but the Ether Binge name came from Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson: "There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge."