After five days of cleaning, shopping, fixing doors, and doing laundry, Val’s family (minus Lindsey) is headed home this morning. The usually quiet Red House went from two people and fairly quiet to six people and only one bathroom. It turned out to be a great time, and we weren’t even phased by the lack of separate bathrooms. Last Saturday while they were headed down, Valerie and I were trying to get the last minute things done, and it seemed like they were falling apart faster than we could get them fixed. We had just finished having new windows installed in the house, replacing a leaky dishwasher, and Dad had been up for two days working on the screen porch. Much to mom’s chagrin, I think Dad has spent more time working on The Red House than he has on his own house lately. It seems to be all part of Dad’s master plan to eventually move back into The Red House himself. But getting back to my story, we woke up on Saturday to an air conditioning that didn’t work and a TV that was severely fuzzy. Apparently in the past people lived in homes (and even The Red House) that had no air conditioning, but through natural selection and evolution, man can no longer live in SC during the summer with no air. The TV was a pain, but the air was a tragedy. Valerie’s family was already on the way, and I was getting worried that they would show up, melt, and forever have a bad memory of SC in their mind. Since the only thing I know about HVAC is if it’s working or not, I called in an expert. Turns out the guy that showed up was also the one that put in the unit fifteen years ago. He crawled under the house, did some stuff, and when he came out the air conditioning was blowing cold air again. It was well worth the extra money that he charged because it was a weekend ($33 extra to be exact). Now that the air was working, we were ready for the Wiker clan. They showed up, I made them admire the garden, we ate, we ate some more, Val and the family shopped while I was at work, we ate again, Erik got a tick on him, we saw Porsche’s, I learned how to use a lacrosse stick to hurl a ball into the field where it can’t be found, they saw a movie, we ate, and in between all of that Mom found the time to launder anything that was remotely dirty (I think she may have even washed some clean stuff as well), and Dad made some adjustments to the windows and worked on a door that wouldn’t shut properly. Overall a good week. Now it’s time for a day off and FIREWORKS!!!! If you don’t see any more posts on here it means that I blew my fingers off at Derek’s.
I usually don’t comment on news articles that I read, but recently I’ve noticed a growing trend. More and more articles that I read (mostly CNN.com) are pieces about people complaining that something bad happened to them, and not only is it not their fault, but it is the fault of some larger entity (The Government, The Banks, The Oil Company). Last Month it was a lady who bought a home that came with a mortgage payment that was 50% of her income. Last week it was a couple that bought an SUV and now cannot afford to make the 100 mile round trip commute to their workplace. Today it is families in Illinois whose homes were flooded and they were not required to carry flood insurance (Here is the link). The quote from the article that got me the most fired up was: “Residents Rick and Gina Gerstel, who lost everything, say no one from their bank to the municipal or federal governments ever told them they were at risk and ought to buy flood insurance.” News Alert: Everyone is at risk! Every single home is at some risk of being damaged by a flood. Typically if you are in a high-risk area, you are required to buy flood insurance. Otherwise, it’s up to you to determine if you should buy insurance or not. If you decide that it’s probably not going to flood, and you don’t feel like shelling out the cash for insurance, then it does flood, and your place is underwater, that’s life. It’s not the responsibility of the government, others around you, or society as a whole to bail you out. It’s a crappy situation, but without crappy situations, we wouldn’t appreciate the good ones. Take responsibility for the fact that you tried to save a few dollars, and in doing so took the risk of a flood destroying your belongings on yourself. If you can’t afford to put gas in your car; sell it and buy a Geo Metro. Admit that you bought more car than you needed, and get on with life. If your home is worth half what you owe, buckle down and make payments; just be happy to have a home. Above all, stop demanding that the government step in and fix things; this is not a Socialist country. The government can’t get elections right, much less run an oil company, a banking system, or an insurance company (at least not quickly or cost effectively). And now I’ll step off of my soap box, I feel much better.
I don’t think I told you yet how a cat adopted us. His name is Oscar and it turns out that he is a she. We heard a cat crying one evening when it wasn’t a hundred degrees and we had a window open. Val looked out on the front porch, and there was a cat looking for a family. We didn’t have any cat food, so Val fed him a half of a hot dog. The next afternoon the cat was back, and we gave him a whole hot dog. After that he decided that this place was pretty good, and that he would stick around for a while. We named him Oscar Mayer Painter and scheduled him for a vet appointment. It was there that we found out he was a she, and gave her some shots so she won’t get rabies or fleas. The vet also said a bunch of other stuff that we just passed off as non-sense; Make her an indoor cat so that she won’t get Cat AIDS or Cat Leukemia, and feed her only this special food that you get from two places in all of Spartanburg County. I’ll ask Angela what her opinion is on those things, but the cat seems to like the Meow Mix that was on sale at Pets Mart. She seems like she must have belonged to someone before she found us because she’s pretty affectionate, and likes to be around people. She helps me in the garden by chasing grasshoppers away, and watches over the porch while we are at work. We thought she might be a boy because it took her forever to figure out how to use the cat door that is on the screen door, but now she can get on the porch and off the porch at her leisure. But enough about the cat, let’s fast forward to this afternoon. I went out to pick some squash for the squash casserole that I was making for dinner, and also to pick some of the zucchini that had grown beyond a normal size and were approaching the size of a small watermelon. When I passed by the well house, there was a small dog there barking at me, and I could hear another dog barking, but I couldn’t see it. I thought that it might be in the old dog house that is beside the well house. The dog I could see seemed to want to chase me away, so I left them alone, and went about my business. This evening I went back outside to see if the dogs were still around, and see if the dog in the dog house was injured or something. I looked in the dog house, but couldn’t see anything. While Val went to get a flashlight, the dog started barking. Turns out the dog wasn’t in the dog house, but had jumped into the well house and was now stuck. You have to see our well house to really understand how this could happen. The well hasn’t been used in at least the last thirty years, and half of the roof has fallen off of it. The pumps are gone, and all that’s left are some leaves, part of a swing, an old Dr. Pepper bottle, and I think a broken shovel. I looked into the house from where the roof is missing, and sure enough there inside was a Jack Russell terrier looking back up at me. I figured that I could lift the dog out, but I didn’t know if it was scared and apt to bite if I reached in for it. So instead I pulled off the plywood that was covering the door to the pump house. After removing some nails that had been in there for at least as long as the well house had been there, and a little bit of coaxing to the dog that it could make it out, it jumped out. Its friend that had been there earlier in the day was long gone, and I wondered for a minute if the dog could find its way home on its own. After a little bit of sniffing around, it started off towards what I can only assume was home for it. Tragedy averted for today, there will not be a dead dog in the well house stinking up things. I guess this was a sign to me that I need to replace the roof on the well house so that no more random animals get stuck in there. Just another day up here at the Red House; where strange things are always happening. By the way the squash casserole was excellent.
After pulling many weeds, watering religiously and fertilizing like crazy, the vegetables in our garden are starting to produce stuff that we can eat. Right now it’s zucchini and squash (which have a very strange texture; hopefully it’s the variety and not some strange mutation from radiation in the ground. ). We also have some banana peppers coming up, and some other type of peppers that look like they will set my mouth on fire if I bite into them. Since the temperature has already been in the upper 90’s, I don’t think I’ll try any of the hot peppers right now. The tomato’s are appearing, but still too green to eat. The one vegetable that I’m most excited about is the Giant Pumpkins that Val picked up from Lowe’s. They claim that you can have a 400 to 500 pound pumpkin. I planted them a little later, and they are just sprouting. We’ll see how big they actually get. Val’s parents are coming to visit in three weeks, by then we should be overrun with squash; I hope they are hungry.
Had a packed Memorial Day weekend. Managed to do the following:
• Water Ski – courtesy of Derek and Stacy’s boat
• Kayak – again with Derek and Stacy’s stuff, and with a whistle so I didn’t get arrested by the water police.
• Go out in Charlotte and work on my dance moves…. or lack of.
• See the new Indiana Jones Movie. – It was good and bad at the same time. Nothing will ever be able to match the original ones.
• Do my part to eat and drink 1/100th of the food and beer that Derek bought for the weekend.
• Get a nasty burn mark on my arm from a Roman Candle. If that’s the kind of fireworks they have for Memorial Day, then I really want to be there on the Fourth of July.
• Throw water balloons
• Practice Bocce Ball and Badminton (who knew that’s how it was spelled)
• Assemble a Cracker Barrel rocking chair despite the company’s best efforts to make it un-assembleable
• Work with Dad in the garden and get a majority of the weeds out
• Stake up the tomatoes and peppers in the garden
• Admire the zucchini, squash, pepper, and tomatoes that have started growing on the plants.
• Enjoy and take advantage of an extra day off of work.
We will see if anything actually grows. We have some Corn (white and yellow), peppers (bell, Tabasco, hot, banana, some others), tomatoes, okra, green beans, carrots, onions, pumpkins, watermelon, cantaloupe, zucchini, squash, cucumbers, and probably a few other things that I forgot about. A few of the things were planted as seedlings, so they are already on their way, and the rest were planted from seed. So far everything looks just the same as the day we planted it.(initial planting commenced on 4/22 and continued on 4/23 and 4/24) I tried to go out and pull any weeds that were growing in the garden, but it was a little bit too muddy from the recent rain that we had to do much. Hopfully the rain will keep up, and we will have to do minimal watering of the garden. If not I think lots of my afternoons will be taken up watering, weeding and doing whatever else it is that you do in a garden. I’ll try and snap a few photos of the spot, and you can see how the garden grows.
The other day there was evidence that we had a visitor in the house. We didn’t see any small tire tracks around the place, or find a ping pong ball helmet, but we knew that we had a mouse. When we moved in, we were told that we needed to throw some mouse poison into the crawl space under the house about once per month. We did it the first month, and since January I basically forgot about it. So I had to make a trip to Lowes and get something to take care of our visitor, as well as try and deter any other visitors for making an un-announced drop-in. I got a good supply of the stuff to throw under the house, and decided on a glue trap to get rid of our visitor. Someone later mentioned that these types of traps were the most inhumane, but I thought it would be better than the snap types, that break the back. Setting out the glue trap, I almost caught myself in it. I accidentally put my thumb on the sticky part, and it was a bitch to get off. Eventually it did come off, and there was enough sticky stuff left to catch our visitor on the first night. The glue probably was not the most humane because when I picked up the trap to examine our visitor, he turned his head and looked up at me, as if to say “My bad; I shouldn’t have come over un-invited. You win.” I gave him one last chance to escape, assuming that he could pull himself off of the glue and chew his way out of the garbage bag before it got compacted at the dump. I have a feeling that he will not be visiting us again. Let that be a lesson to all other potential visitors; human and rodent alike: If you come over un-invited, you may just find yourself stuck on a glue trap. I may have just come up with a great way to ward off door to door salesman. A giant glue trap outside of the front door. All it takes is one salesperson to be stuck on the trap to act as a warning to all other salespeople. “Stay away, or you’ll get stuck too!!!!” Going to search and see if someone has already got a patent on this idea.
Yesterday was my first experience driving farm equipment down the road. When your sitting on the tractor, it seems like it’s going fast, until you look at the makeshift speedometer, and it says somewhere between 13 and 14 miles per hour. Dad helped me plow up the spot for the garden, and it required going down to borrow some equipment from my Uncle John. Of course it’s only maybe a quarter of a mile down the road, and I wouldn’t really consider it a heavy traffic road, but non the less, I had the country song “International Harvester” playing in my head. The tractor made quick work of the 30′x60′ plot that I had previously tilled up for the garden. We had to resist the temptation to expand the size of the garden to 90′x180′ or 180′x300′ since it was so easy to ride around on the tractor and till up the land. Now we just need to rake out any additional grass that is still in the area, and get to planting the seeds.
Ok, so you will notice the obvious ripoff of Back To the Future II, but it’s true. My Grammy sent me some mail, but didn’t bother putting the number part of the address on the envelope. We had only moved in a couple of days earlier, but somehow with just a name and a street, the mail found its way to the correct mailbox. I guess it wasn’t too long ago that they didn’t even have to put a number or a street, just a route number on the mail, and it would get delivered. Man, that’s small.
It’s been a long break since I posted anything on this site, and it will probably stay that way for a while. Lots of changes since I was on here last, so I’ll go from largest to smallest.
Moved to SC - That’s right, sold our townhome in Atlanta and moved to South Carolina. Not just anywhere, but actually into the home that I was born in. It’s a little out of the way, but what it lacks in convenience it makes up for in space (outdoor space that is) and price.
Started a new Job - Still at the same company, just in a different department. Since November of ‘07 part time, and since April of ‘08 full time I’ve been working in the Information Technology department assisting with the implementation of a new ERP system. It’s a good move for me, and I believe that it will lead to many enjoyable years.
Got rid of the Internet - It’s not that they don’t have the internet out in the boonies, it’s just that without it, I can find lots more stuff to do around the house, and outside the house. That’s probably the biggest reason that the updates to BrianPainter.com will be fewer and further between.
Planted a Garden (in progress) - No one can live on forty or so acres and not have a garden in the summer. I’ve picked out the spot for it, marked it out, and even started to till it up. This week is starting up the old tractor, borrowing a tiller, and really getting the spot broken up. I think planting will come sometime in the next week. I’ll update you on how it goes, and how green my thumb really is.
I’ll post some photos of the place, as well as photos of our garden and hopefully the 400 lb pumpkin that grows when we plant the special seeds that I saw for sale at Lowes.
I’m sure you were expecting something better for 2008, but your out of luck. Derek did ask me to fix the birthday list enough times that I actually did get that done. So go ahead and check it out. Let me know what you want me to add or work on next.
Val and I were driving from Spartanburg back to Atlanta when we passed an elf driving a tractor-trailer. We thought it was weird, but when we saw the back of the trailer, we understood. It was one of Santa’s elves driving a trailer full of letters to Santa to the local Post Office so that they can be shipped to the North Pole in time for Christmas. I guess Santa has to consolidate all of the letters and mail them up to the North Pole in bulk.
This sight got me thinking about the past year, and I thought that I would share some information on what 2007 has been like for BrianPainter.com. I must say that the stats are not near as impressive as years past. These stats do not include this post.
2007 Stats:
Posts: 13
Comments: 8
Word Count: 4,162
That’s all until after the New Year. Hope everyone has a good holiday.
This weekend was the weekend of the Pod Christmas 2007. The weekend was complete with food, fun, and Dominick the Italian Christmas Donkey. You can see a video of Dominick below from YouTube. To be continued…. … A few days of work, and now I have time to finish this post. Like I said we were in Raleigh, NC for the Pod Christmas 2007. Turns out that Raleigh is actually the capital of North Carolina… All this time I thought it was Charlotte. Anyways, Becca was nice enough to host us all in her new townhome, and we had a great time. Val and I got there on Friday and helped (or watched) Meredith make the Yule log cake, while we got a few drinks up on everyone else who was coming in on Saturday. Turns out that Saturday was overcast and drizzley, so we pretty much just took the driving tour or Raleigh, before waiting on everyone else to show up and go to lunch at Ruby Tuesday’s. I think that in the future, we need to have a set time for the event to start, so that people aren’t trickling in all day, and we end up not eating until about three because we have to wait for Landon and Kristen, but then Derek, Stacy and Andrew are coming an hour later, then Angela an hour after that, and on and on while I eat all of the cheeze and crackers that are in the entire place. This was my first post-VT Pod Christmas, so I’m not sure what it’s supposed to be like, but we started by getting loud and making a scene at Ruby Tuesday’s, so I’m pretty sure we were on target. After that we all went back to Becca’s to hang out before dinner. A dinner of Lasagana, salad, vegtables, and maybe some other stuff was served, and we all dug in. It looked just like any other dsyfunctional family gathering. After that it was time to open our stockings and take another one of Becca’s stupid, fun and exciting quizzes. We all complain about them, but once we get started and the competitive gene comes out in us, there is no stopping us. Val ended up winning, and we won a copy of a Christmas movie. We did the Dirty Santa gift exchange, and ended up with a nice travel mug that can be plugged in to stay warm. After that it was time for the Christmas tradition of watching Christmas Vacation before falling asleep. Got up the next morning, and just like that, Pod Christmas 2007 had come to a close. I’m working on getting the pictures to cooperate, so hopefully they will be up before the week is out.
Two days of work down here in Atlanta, then it’s off to Spartanburg for Christmas there, and then driving up to Virginia for Christmas with the Wikers. I think I heard mention of a trip to Atlantic City with the Grandparents, although it will not be anywhere near the fun Bart and Matt’s bachelor parties, I have to take what I can get.
Oh yeah, I forgot to explain about Dominick the Italian Christmas Donkey. What is there really to explain? Stacy introduced the song to everyone, Andrew spent the whole weekend saying hee-haw hee-haw, and now we have something that can rival Schfifty-Five. You never heard of Schfifty-Five?…. Look for the video below Dominick, the second one down.
Yesterday Val had her last day of work at Wells Fargo Financial Branch 346. After a little more than three years at Wells Fargo, Val worked in several different branches, and with more people than I can count on all my fingers and toes. I think three years there made her one of the most senior members of the entire district. Val is going to miss the people that she worked with, and I am going to miss the Christmas Party, the Branch Dinners, the Toasts, and getting Suited and Booted. If you ever need a high-interest loan, look to Wells Fargo first.
Yesterday Val had her last day of work at Wells Fargo Financial Branch 346. After a little more than three years at Wells Fargo, Val worked in several different branches, and with more people than I can count on all my fingers and toes. I think three years there made her one of the most senior members of the entire district. Val is going to miss the people that she worked with, and I am going to miss the Christmas Party, the Branch Dinners, the Toasts, and getting Suited and Booted. If you ever need a high-interest loan, look to Wells Fargo first.