Hot, Wet and Tight....

That was my weekend, spent under the house, in a tight, muddy and hot crawl-space. It started as a project to re-arragne the computer room. It ended up as a way to move the computer room entirely, move the TV Room and moving the library. So movign the TV room meant running at least one new cable tv line run. At first we tried doing it through the ceiling. That was a no-go, and I ended up breathing in fiber glass insulation and dust and sitting in a pool of my own sweat for an hour.

I was dripping water after that and because of the way the house was made we decided it would be easier to come up through the floor.

So Saturday I went under the house...



It was muddy apparently a large part of the yard drains under the house. It was hot, no breeze and stifling heat. We had put out rat poison earlier in the week, and I found Sven, dead. A Norwegian wharf rat that succumbed to the poison. He hadn't been dead long though since he was still pretty stiff. Helen poked some bags to me through a vent on the side of the house and I drug Sven back out side where I had Helen hose the dirt off of me.

We got cable tv crimpers and some coaxial cable and som ends and Sunday Morning I went back under. I used a long 3/8" drill to poke holes in the floor. It worked well and I spent about an hour running cable and trying to keep it from knotting up while dragging it around in the mud and dirt. Underneath Maggy's room I pushed up the first cable, it sucked because there were spider webs everywhere and they got all in my hair.

Attaching the cables to a three way splitter was hard as the third cable didn't want to go on, I spent about 20 mins fighting with it. I had no flexibility in moving the cables around much and doing in laying sideways in the mud and spiders just got me frustrated. Finally I drug the last of the cable over to where I had put the hole for the living room... And thanked God that I hadn't drilled an inch lower where I would have put a hole in and electrical wire!

I crawled back out, tools in tow. Helen hosed me off again and I went inside to shower again and crimp on the ends.

The new cable runs work great and the living room looks nice too. One out of three rooms isn't too bad. I figure we'll get the rest done through the week. I was totally drained by Sunday afternoon, I wanted to keep working and moving things around, but I was so tired I couldn't move. I just sat and mindlessly watched tv...

motorcycles, stumps and cat pee....

A cat urinated on my black leather coat. My $350 dollar leather coat that I've had for six years and really liked. The black leather coat I was going to use motorcycle riding. The black leather coat that I use to keep warm in the winter. It was my only winter coat. Now it just smells like cat pee.

I went online and got a new one off of ebay that looks a lot more like a motorcycle gang members coat and cost less than my old one. I will try to clean the old one, but getting a new one seemed like a good idea. I wasn't completely sure that it was thick enough to be really useful in an accident. So the new one looks like it will be rough enough. It looks like the person that orginally purchased it, rode once and then gave it up.

I hunted around on video.google.com for motorcycle accident videos. Morbid curiosity mainly,
but I notice almost all of the accidents were motorcyclists doing stupid things. Popping wheelies and then loosing control once they landed. One was a helmet video from a motorcyclist on the freeway. A car lost control and spun around in front of them and they were tossed over the hood. That one was scary b/c there was no way to avoid the accident. It also made me want to get a helmet camera ($329 on ebay and uses SD cards). That would be cool, to have a record on some trips. I'm thinking a cool one would be up along A1A/Hecksher drive to Fort Clinch. All beach front and marsh land.

I stayed home from work yesterday, I was having a lot of back pain from attempted stump removal this weekend. I say attempted b/c the stump is still there. We ended up cutting off the top of it and leaving it in the ground. I posted a few photos over on my photo site. It sucked and it took up all of my weekend. So taking a Tuesday off wasn't that hard.


Shanks and Adam working the stump




Stump removal actually started as me wanting to fix part of my fence. I did (eventually) get all the pieces for the fence with only two trips to home mega stores. Tuesday was also Maggies' birthday. We had a nice little family party. I got her a Dance Dance Revolution mat. She was going to town on it. I tried it and she kicked me off of it. We went back and forth a couple of times before my legs started to give out. It's a really good workout. I was interested to see it has a workout mode just for that.

Birthday parties and trips to home mega stores have eaten the savings. So I'm back to saving for a motorcycle. Hopefully it shouldn't take too long. I'm still really excited about taking the class. I'm also lurking on the Craigs List Motorcycle forums. It's interesting to say the least.