My summer project

I didn't accomplish a lot from my to-do list this summer.

Admittedly, I did teach four weeks of material science summer camps around the country (U of Indy, BYU, U of Alabama, and U of Houston Downtown). I - and The Girl - also went camping for a few days in Pennsylvania. We also got a new dog and had a rough week where we lost an old dog and our cat.

But...through all of that, I did accomplish one thing on the to-do list: make Lego minifigure display cases.

Take a look...and, I offer a big thanks to Toki, whose instructions were invaluable.

The first display case has my collectible minifigure sets, series 1-9.

They're in order from series 1 up top to series 9 at the bottom. As you can see, the latter series (5-9) are entirely complete. Series 4 is missing one figure (Hazmat Guy) who is being shipped to me from Spain right now in trade. Series 3 is missing two figures (Baseball Player and Elf with bow). Series 2 has a few more gaps: skier, pharaoh, vampire, and spartan. Series 1 is largely incomplete, still needing cowboy, Robin Hood, astronaut, ninja, nurse, wrestler, robot, skateboarder, zombie, clown, cheerleader, and Indian with bow.

Here's a closer look at the woefully incomplete upper levels.

The next case has series 10 and - since I got the full series last week - will have series 11 once I get around to sticking the new guys down.

The final case may be a bit of a struggle to follow my organization.

Top row - soccer players
Second row - NBA players and Viking chess figures
Third row - Chima and police figures (I need to replace one that I had to cannibalize for trade parts)
Fourth row - city folk
Fifth row - ninjas, self-cast minifigures, more city folk
Sixth row - more ninja/Asian figures, pirates, birthday boy, bride and groom
Seventh row - superheros and villains
Eight row - space figures
Ninth row - more space, Harry Potter, LotR, and ghosts
Tenth row - islanders and forestmen
Eleventh row - court figures and knights
Twelfth row - expansion space

I'm particularly proud of that fifth row because that contains figures that very few other people in the world would have.

The first five (blue, green, white, yellow, and red) are made from IASCO's EuroCast and were cast around the country this summerin the workshops. The sixth is made from tin and was cast in Calen's classroom last spring.

I do need to figure out how to get those guys to sit more upright, but I'm still really frickin' proud of them.

Update: Harlan's new sister

The new girl, Clementine, has been a bit of a handful at times.

She's cost us a couple hundred dollars in new baby gates...

We can, at this point, heartily endorse Safety 1st's lift & lock safety gates.

She's also destroyed a couch pillow, three (I think) dog beds, two tennis balls, a wicker storage cube/basket thing (the tan one on the bottom shelf, second from the right has nibble marks and is without its matching neighbor that was next door)...

...a library DVD case (thankfully not the DVD itself), a dog electric blanket (shut up, we had an old dog who liked to be warm), pair of The Girl's slippers, and two kitchen towels. She's still well behind LeRoy's early time with us when he ate three pairs of glasses, numerous pants and sheets, and a heck of a lot more.

She is, however, wonderfully affectionate and fairly obedient (can sit, heel, stay, can kinda 'get down' - not so much with the lie down or the sit while out on a walk). She's mostly housebroken - though there have been a few accidents inside the house during the day - one non-solid but definitively poopy incident that inadvertently lead to the shattering of my cell phone.

All in all, she's been a good addition to the household.

Harlen's new sister

Looks like we'll be getting a new dog next week...

Say hiya to Clementine...

Thanks, Adore-a-Bulls.

Plants...redemptive

Two years ago, this plant looked like this...

...one main plant with three 'trunks', each ending in a leafy whatever. If I'd've known then that I was going to be discussing the plant now, I would've taken a full-plant picture. C'est la vie...

Today, however, the same plant looks like this...

It'll be back inside within a month, I'm sure, but the big change is that two of the three stalks have broken off and been replanted. One of them is in this pot and is not an independent plant on its own right. The other stalk - topped at one time with four green, leafy whatevers were planted into a new pot with two of them surviving as full plants.

In each case where a stalk broke off, a new one began growing after a few weeks, leaving us now with a main plant that will soon end in almost a dozen different green growth areas.

The fauna around The Homestead may be struggling this fall, but the flora is doing just fine.

Nature redemptive

It's been a rough week as Casa de ChemGuy.

The Girl is buried in school work as am I.
The job has been a challenge in more ways than I feel like discussing.
The rec team got whomped yesterday, closing the season on a down note.

But luckily, nature was there this morning to make me happy.

I looked out the kitchen window and saw this...

Damn, nature, you redemptive...

Our little patch of Earth

Since we've been homeowners - first in Northside, now in West Chester - The Girl has put in a garden pretty much every summer. Typically she gets the plants in the ground in mid- to late May. This year things were running a bit behind, but at least it looks like it could be a good garden.

From the right, we've got...

• black cherry tomato plants
• tomatillo plants
• beefsteak tomato plants
• better boy tomato plants
• salsa peppers (we think they're jalapeno)
• poblano peppers
• bell peppers
• melrose peppers
• watermelon
• pickling cucumbers
• pumpkin
• eggplant
• zucchini

I'm all down with the peppers, tomatoes, tomatillos, and pumpkin. I'll be good and water the other stuff, though, as long as I'm in town.

Occasional progress photos may be shown throughout the summer.

Look what I saw yesterday

The snow has returned to Cincinnati earning us two snow days this week and pushing our first semester exams to finish up after Winter Break.

With the snow, apparently, comes the deer to our backyard.  This time there were two deer in our yard but just outside the fenced area.  Seeing them twice in a year- both times when there was a bunch of snow on the ground - makes me wonder whether I'm seeing them because...

• ...they're that much easier to see against the snow.
• ...they're always around but are just covered up by the scrub growth.
• ...they're a lot braver when the snow is covering up their normal sources of food.

When we first moved into The Homestead, we saw deer in the front yard a few times in that first year but haven't seen them since then.  These two sightings do let me know that they're around but that I haven't been seeing them.

It was a nice little snow day treat.

A Glimpse: The Plants

A few years back, a teacher brought a couple of plants into The Girl's library in Hamilton. 

Those couple of plants have, over the years, increased in number (some by purchase, some by gifting, some by splitting) to a point where The Homestead sees its back decking covered in flora all summer long.

In past years, those plants have wintered in The Girl's library - Hamilton or Lakota depending on the year.  This year, though, The Girl doesn't have a library to which the plants can return so they've come inside.

I dig 'em.  The Girl's a little annoyed with 'em.  I'm kinda afraid that the younger dog is snacking on them.  Yesterday there were a few piles of puke to suggest that something wrong had been injested.

The Homestead...now with slightly less Homestead...

See that line there?

That line to the left of the fence line?

The line defined by that scrub that used to be along the old fence line between our yard and our uphill neighbors' yard?

The line that I enhanced with a little red to show you just where it was?

That's the old edge of the Homestead yard.

See, a few years back, we bought a shed from Buckeye Barns (one of their garden shed designs).  According to West Chester permit rules, we had to put the shed ten feet from our property lines.

We'd applied for a permit but hadn't heard back for a while, so we went ahead and told the builder to begin where we wanted the barn.

Turns out that even though the barn was ten feet inside our fence, it wasn't even entirely on our property.  The fenceline didn't seem to define the property.

We'd bought The Homestead thinking the fence was the property line.  The uphill neighbors bought their homestead thinking the fence was the property line, but neither of us was right.    The fence between our properties was entirely on their property - two feet from the line at the front and twenty-plus feet from the line at the back of the property.

So, we had the barn moved to its current location and waited a couple of years before finally splitting the costs of moving that fence to the property line this past summer.

Check out how much of our yard we lost there.

See those fence rails leaning against the fence back there in the top photo?  They used to be in our yard - or at least inside our fenced yard.  Now they're twenty feet outside of our fence.

There's a little disappointment in losing some of our yard and all, but at least that back end was the swampy, yucky part that is such a huge pain in the backside to mow in the spring because it's a bog all spring long.

There's our storage shed back in the far right.  It's straddling our fence, but it turns out that the back fence isn't on the property line either.  The back fence is like ten feet from the back property line.

Turns out that the fence on the other side (the side that's behind the house in that photo above) isn't on the property line over there either, but at least it's way inside our line and just has woods past it.

Clearly the people who put our fence in were stupid.

Have a good weekend, folks...

There are reasons that - when I pass - I want to come back as a dog in a household like ours...

The week that was...

It's never boring 'round here...

For the past couple of weeks, LeRoy - our elder dog, somewhere around a dozen years old now - has been desperate to head down to our lower level rather than to stay upstairs where we've been locking him for the past few years.  It's not like we trap him in a cage; he gets the run of three rooms - with a couch, water, toys, two big windows that he can see out without even jumping.  But that's not been good enough for him for the past couple of weeks - no idea why.

He's been knocking down the baby gate that we use to trap him and heading downstairs to lie on the couch and the carpet - rather than the laminate floors upstairs.  No idea why.  Maybe it's the warmer temperatures - it is cooler downstairs, after all, and he is getting older by the day.

On Monday we'd headed to Home Depot to order a new water heater - hoping to qualify for the Ohio Energy Efficient Appliance Rebate program.  That meant we'd have to switch from our 80-gallon electric hot water heater (which has been slowly leaking for the past year or so while we hoped to avoid catastrophic failure through sheer blind faith) to a smaller 50-gallon gas model, something more in line with our two-person household.


We got to Home Depot, answered the needed questions, scheduled the delivery and installation for Tuesday morning while The Girl was home, and dropped a few bucks for an extended warranty meaning we'd not have to buy another water heater for a long time.


As I headed back to school on Tuesday after Spring Break, The Girl began her break by stinking up the house with paint and primer - the kitchen walls and trim on Tuesday before tackling the bedroom trim and doors for the next few days.  She'd used up the sage green for the kitchen walls and headed to Sherwin Williams for a quick resupply.

She left the dogs upstairs.

I called to check in on the way home and found out that the conversion of our electric to the new gas hot water heater would take an extra six or seven hundred dollars - new piping, new venting, an expansion tank, a pressure release valve, a flux capacitor - and that we'd actually be better off to just buy a new, same-sized electric tank - both in the short run and the long run.  Lucky us.  So we needed to head back to Home Depot and change our order.

As I drove home through the neighborhood - our suburban, uneventful, white-bred niehgborhood - three police cars - one undercover - rolled to a stop, and the police ran out, chasing someone down the street.  I've no idea who, no idea why.  Just a little excitement to start the week.

When I got home, I found that LeRoy had broken into the barricaded kitchen, gotten into the wrapped up paint tray and tracked paint across the laminate floor after apparently trying to eat the plastic paint tray while The Girl was restocking and I was hearing the sirens.  The Girl took the floor cleanup.  I took the dog cleanup and hopped into the shower to scrub his feet and mouth.

Once everything was under control and as cleaned up as we could imagine, we headed to Home Depot to switch our gas for an electric hot water heater, our 50-gallon, energy efficient tank for an 80-gallon energy monster.  No worries, they said, since we'd never actually gotten the gas model in the first place.  All we had to do was call the installers back and tell them to change what they were bringing our way.

So homeward we headed.

To a dog that had been trapped upstairs.  And who had ruined our upstairs couch.

He'd apparently gotten freaked out and peed all over the thing, urine dripping into places that we would never be able to clean.  Admittedly, the couch had been through the wars, having been with us for a week longer than LeRoy had been.  The cushions were ripped in various spots, and we'd extended its life by covering it in a rotating pair of king-sized sheets so the dogs and The Girl could still enjoy it.

So, out to the garage the couch went, replaced with what The Girl spent the next three days referring to as our doggy opium den, three separate palates of dog beds, piled so that the two dogs and the aged cat could enjoy them.  Heck of a start to the week.

Thursday, more painting by The Girl.  LeRoy again broke free to downstairs but without incident.

Friday, more painting and the installation of the $600, 80-gallon hot water heater - which, of course, cost $1200 after still-needed expansion tank and pressure release valve.

Friday evening then was a trip to Ikea to see the couch that The Girl wanted to replace the destroyed couch with.  She'd sat down in every couch in the store and chosen the one that felt best and was also washable and relatively inexpensive - for a couch, anyway.  I wasn't immediately sold on the couch but didn't see any better options at Ikea, so we headed onward to Ashley Furniture, Costco, and Value City Furnitue to see if there were any better options.

There weren't of course, so we headed back to Ikea to pick up the last Klippan four-seat sofa in the building along with two washable covers and head home with the flatpacked couch hanging a foot out of the back of the station wagon.  An hour later, we were sitting on our new couch, long enough for both of us to lounge at the same time.

If LeRoy pees on this one, we might have a dog to offer around.

He did, of course, greet us when we got home with the couch with a thoroughly destroyed book that I'd borrowed from my principal.  $38 plus $10 shipping to replace that one.

It's never boring to be a home owner.

Never...

In an only vaguely related note, we got our taxes finished this week and owe like $2500.

Yay!

Back in a bit

Sorry, folks...swamped by making the new PHS website all ready and stuff (rollout on Friday, check this link on Friday), rocking Pasta for Pennies preparation, getting a new garage door opener, clearing out the fridge that died in the middle of the night, and fearing how bad the repair bill will be for the circular water stain on the basement ceiling under our shower, and grading a whole bunch of tests tonight.

I love being a homeowner, really I do.

In the meantime, let me just say Jenna Kufeldt.

And to hold you over, here's a comic that I found by hitting the magic Stumble! button.

Current rankings

In the eyes of ChemGuy...

1. The Girl
2. LeRoy
3. Harlan
4. Aylah

In the eyes of The Girl (rankings guessed at by ChemGuy)

1. ChemGuy
2. Harlan
3. LeRoy
4. Aylah

In the eyes of Aylah (senior pet based on longevity)...

1. The Girl
2. LeRoy
3. ChemGuy
4. Harlan

In the eyes of LeRoy (next most senior pet)...

1. ChemGuy
2. The Girl
3. Harlan
4. Aylah

In the eyes of Harlan (rookie pet)...

1. The Girl
2. ChemGuy
3. LeRoy
4. Aylah

just in case you were curious...

A glimpse: the bookshelves

The whole shelving unit
Moving downstairs, we have the bookshelves. These are Metro shelves that we bought when we first moved into our first house - speaking of first houses, big congrats to my neighbor at school who just bought his first house - and needed somewhere to put all our books and cd's and television and kitchen implements. We've now got a dozen of the units (from more generic manufacturers than Metro) in our shed, our garage, our laundry room, and the downstairs family room. They're awesome, utilitarian shelves, but I'm starting to think that I'm at a point in life where I want some shelves that are more stylish, more solid, more wooden than these.

But that's for another day. For today, let's take a look in more detail at each part of the shelves.

Up top - only visible in the top photo - we have a dozen Kevin Smith Inaction Figures from Chasing Amy, Dogma, and Clerks. I gave up on the collection before Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back came out. I even have Walt, Steve Dave, and Dixie Cup Brodie 'cause I'm a completist like that. I did, however, pass on all the Kevin Smith figures.

...for which I'm a little sad from time to time...

And the cats are from World Market and were a gift to The Girl on her worst birthday with me yet. Good times that one - big fight, but that's for another day, too.

Now, moving downward to the top shelf, left to right...

Top left
The bobblehead is Frank Robinson, picked up a couple of years ago at Great American. A few books over is Clive Barker's The Great and Secret Show which is a hell of a book and took a long route back to these shelves as I loaned it out to a student of mine at Mount Healthy. This past school year - about eight years later - Jason found himself as an observing teacher ed student at PHS and brought the book back to me. I never thought I'd get that book back, and I was okay with that. Book lent out should never be demanded back. Let them go, set them free. And when/if they come back, they're gifts.

Further across is another book that has had more of an effect on me - The Autobiography of Malcolm X. I read that one as a sophomore at Wabash as part of a course that every sophomore took (and still takes) and as a text that every Wabash student had read and discussed. I learned more about how a man can change - and Malcolm X made amazing changes in his lives - in his life and absolutely refute what he had so readily believed beforehand. I remember wondering - ignorantly - how Wabash could have a multi-cultural center named after Malcolm X who was - as I said at the time - against our country and in favor of violent revolution. A junior in the room asked me what I really knew about Malcolm X, politely but pointedly questioning my dogmatism, and I had little to back up my statement. A year later, after I had read The Autobiography, I knew much more and have tried not to make such stupid, assumptive statements since. People are much more complex than simple soundbites and historical snapshots could and do ever show.

Most of the rest of those books aren't mine. I'm not in the paperback fiction world for the most part. The silver cup - generic metal with a clear plastic base - holds sea glass collected on the beaches of Scotland and foreign coins brought back from my year overseas. I haven't looked in the cup for a long time, but it reassures me to know that it's there.

The other two books up there that matter to me are Brave New World and Slaughterhouse Five. The Vonnegut is probably my favorite book of all time though the Huxley is in the running as well. I read Slaughterhouse every couple of years and enjoy it more every time.

On the second shelf down is the lone book that I've ever stolen from a library - not accidentally kept, not lost, absolutely and intentionally stolen, kept, and paid for: Electric Brae. During my summers between college years, I was reading a whole lot, browsing the public library sort of at random, and I picked up Electric Brae a month or so before I headed to my junior year in Scotland. I began the book and found myself deep into a fantastic love triangle in and around Aberdeen where I was flying in a few short weeks. I didn't know the setting before I started reading the book. The coincidence caught me and meant something to me at the time.

A year later, I checked the book out again and found a bookmark inside it, left there by a previous reader. On the front of that bookmark was a phone number and name of a friend of mine, and on the back was another of each. I mentioned this in passing to The Girl, and she mentioned that she'd checked the book out on my recommendation and must've left her bookmark in it. I believed - or assumed or hoped - that somehow only she and I had checked the book out in the year. I kept the book and sent a letter and a check to the library explaining my choice.

The Harry Potters are ones I've read maybe half of. The rest I've listened to, enjoying Jim Dale's voices.

The "Really Really Dangerous" toy is The Box which tested The Tick on the first episode of his cartoon series. The toys weren't popular, and I've got every one. Actually, The Girl has every one as I bought them as gifts to her - collecting them on her behalf.

The figures are The Bride from Kill Bill, the Golgothan from Dogma, and a Crazy 88 killer also form Kill Bill.

Top right
The ceramic stein celebrates my high school's lone basketball state title from 1973, two years before I was born, and it sat on my parents' shelves for a couple of decades before I took it to college with me. I have no idea whether my parents know where that stein ever went. Mom, if you're reading, I've got it. Thanks.

Next shelf down, behind the Crazy 88 killer, you can see "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead", a play by Tom Stoppard based on "Hamlet". It's a hilarious, brilliant play but one that shouldn't be read until after you've digested and understood "Hamlet". I'll also recommend the movie version with Gary Oldman, Tim Roth, and Richard Dreyfus.

The Iowa Baseball Confederacy by WP Kinsella - author of Shoeless Joe which became Field of Dreams. This one's a little more fantastical but no less marvelous. It tells the tale of a baseball fan and researcher who finds himself slipped back in time, playing in a game of a league that only he remembers existing, falling in love with a woman whose spirit echos that of his oft-absent wife. Around this tale weaves in and out the tale of a native American spirit who is using his every bit of magic to support the local team against the Chicago Cubs traveling team in a game that lasts forty days and nights while the clouds drop steady rain and the river rises, threatening to wipe away the ballfield. It's a magical ride and one I need to take again.

The far right - hanging up - is my Lambda Chi Alpha associate paddle (it's a pledge paddle but without the hazing). It was given to me by John Prince, the second Prince brother to go through my fraternity house. John and his brothers graduated from the same high school that I did, and John was a great mentor at Wabash and in the house. His elder brother, Steve, was the one who got me to first take a look at Wabash, and I owe him immensely for that.

Center left
the marbles came from my paternal grandparents' home, and I stupidly broke the first glass containers that I put them in. The big blue ball is LeRoy's favorite toy. He can't quite get his mouth all the way around it, so he can't pick it up and chew on it, but he loves to bat it around and scratch at it. It's annoying and hilarious.

Again, a bunch of books I don't care about and/or haven't read.

The wooden fish came from The Girl's grandmother's house. It's never held books in our house.

Flatland - behind the fish - is a dual book with Sphereland taking the story to another dimension. I first read Flatland as a seventh-grader in my English class with Sandra VanOsdol (sp?), a wonderful teacher whom I loved dearly.

Next shelf down...lots of my books here. City and Pyramid by David McCauley are brilliant books, telling historical tales of ancient societies through graphical means. They're not for tiny kids, but they're certainly for certain kids in the mid- and upper-elementary grades, and I first found them then. They're in our artsy section of the shelves and are next to three Eschers and a Matisse. The Escher's are mine; the Mattise The Girl's.

She also owns the next few music books - Rolling Stone's encyclopedia, the Beatles book in black and pink. They're from college classes that she took at Indiana University. There are very few instances when I am or have been envious of people attending any school other than Wabash, but The Girl's three classes on the History of Rock (parts I and II plus the Beatles) were certainly those.

American Songs and Ballads is a collection that I should know better and that was passed down from mom's shelves.

We are Still Married is a collection of Garrison Keillor, and I brought it back for The Girl from Scotland, my lone gift for her and something I picked up from a used book store there. We weren't romantically involved at the time, but I apparently thought the title meant something and remembered listening to Prairie Home Companion on Sunday nights in Bloomington together.

Two more dog toys that we have to lift up and keep away from LeRoy for much of the time. He'd drive us bonkers and hurt himself if we didn't.

Center right
Past the fish now...all of my Hunter S Thompson books. The Great Shark Hunt is the best and most inconsistent of those. It has the best writing that Hunter ever put together and is one to read for anyone interested in checking out Hunter for the first time.

In the middle of the Thompson is Night by Elie Weisel, the hardest book that I've ever read. I read that the same year that I read Malcolm X, and I enjoyed Night far less. It moved me every bit as much, however, as it is a phenomenal account of a man's life.

There a bunch of cartoon books then. The Bloom County material has aged poorly, and I haven't read any of them in a long while. The Bus on the bother hand, is ageless, hilarious, and just weird.

Downward again...you get another book that came coincidentally to me. In my freshman year, we read Infinite in All Directions, a memoir by Freeman Dyson. It explored Dyson's thoughts on all sorts of aspects of science, and we looked at what he had to say on the morals of modern technology. I took the book with me to Aberdeen and began to re-read the tome on the airplane to Scotland. I noticed then that the book was built from a series of lectures given at the University of Aberdeen, where I was heading to spend a year. Another coincidence? Well, yeah, but it felt meaningful to me at the time.

Bottom left
Not much to look at here. There's a pile of books too big to fit upright on our shelves. There's In the Shadow of No Towers, a withering honesty, frighteningly personal reaction to the 9/11 attacks from Art Speigelman. It's not comics for children, and it's not even comics for most adults. It's worth a read, however.

There's another Escher at the bottom of that pile and a bunch of magazines between - Rolling Stones, National Geographic, Time, and others - including the two years of yearbooks from my junior high school years.


Bottom right
The two Sandman volumes have a matching first volume that's loaned out to TL right now. and they're the expensive, uber hardcover versions of Gaiman's masterwork series. They're expensive, and they're indulgent, but I love them.

The last books there - the furthest right - are the yearbooks from my first year at Mount Healthy and the my three years of high school yearbooks. At least I think they're mine. They could be The Girl's because we were in high school together.

Hmmm...rather anticlimactic. Sorry, folks...

Next week, my cd's...there are a bunch of them, so I don't know how much commentary I'll be offering.

A glimpse: the fridge

The entire act of blogging is about as narcissistic as anything could ever be.

For some reason, I seem to believe that people would care about what I have to say, what I think, and what media I intake. And you people consistently prove me right - which probably isn't all that healthy for my ego.

And which leads me to do crap like this.

For the next few Wednesdays, I'll be providing a bit of glimpse into The Homestead where The Girl and I reside. I'll be posting a photo or two of some part of The Homestead that might give a little idea of the world where I reside.

Today it's my fridge door, where so much of our modern world ends up posted for ourselves to see.

Lets start in the bottom left and move upward, left to right pointing out some of the stuff...

Those polaroids are of Harlan's teeth. The vet wanted to point out how nasty they were before his last teeth cleaning and then how clean they were afterwards. That's been a couple of years now.

The blue-blanketed baby in the bottom right corner is the first of many birth announcements telling us that our friends have joined the breeder world while The Girl and I remain firmly as travelers (a friend of ours pointed out that some people are breeders...other are travelers). Hiya, Noah.

The magnet holding that photo card up says "I quilt...He cooks", and I'm slowly working on making the second part of the statement more true.

The pig and cow magnets came from Alton Brown's cookbook, one of the coolest science/cooking books I've read and one of the least useful cookbooks.

The red JOY card is another birth announcement - hiya, Henry.

The business card/calendar is for Terry Hartke with her lion's mane of hair. Terry sold us The Homestead and sells a bunch of houses in our neighborhood. We see her a few times a year when we visit all the open houses for the neat houses. Typically, we'll walk or ride our bikes.

The small trio family is one of my regular readers - Coldnorthgamer - and his wife and daughter. Gamer and I go way back, and he might be the person with the most photos on the fridge who doesn't live in The Homestead.

Jana Lewis is the assistant principal where The Girl worked for the past four years.

Another birth announcement. Hiya, Adelaide.

The lion is a souvenir from the summer's trip to New York.

One you reach a certain age, you aren't sending out birth announcements anymore. You're sending out "we bought a new house" announcements, and that's what a coworker (and good friend) did when he and his wife moved across the river to Northern Kentucky so they could live under the approaching jets.

The Disney postcard was sent to The Girl from some of the other runners after she completed her second marathon for Team in Training.

That's me on the right in the tux. Gamer's on the left and was the man of the day there. I was honored to be able to stand up for him.

The photo with the horrible glare - I'll post a better copy without the glare at the bottom of this post - is of the four national merit finalists in my graduating class. I'm in the green shirt, back left. Gamer's in the white shirt and the cast. It was a rough senior year for him.

That's me in the blue shirt and tie with The Girl in her grandmother's house. Must've been the Christmas that we spent there. Wow, that's been twelve years ago now.

#1 Nerd was a gift from The Girl to me.

In the cute bow sweater and the huge grin is Hannah. Hiya, Hannah.

The two pinwheels next to me and Gamer are from this summer on the Massachusetts part of the vacation. I'm all down with my spirographs.

I can happily endorse Grady Veterinary Hospital. They're awesome vets.

The receipt is from Lowe's and is for a Bancroft 4" CS LA which apparently cost $88.00. I have absolutely no idea what a Bancroft 4" CS LA is or why we still have that receipt.

Hiya, Matthew and Christopher. The only twins on the fridge.

I don't know Ashley or Richard very well at all. We got invited because the guy who bought the new house in Northern Kentucky is Ashley's dad, and I'm a good friend of his.

The Girl didn't look her best at the end of her training run for one of those marathons.

Herrmann Plumbing is a solid plumbing, heating, and air business that we don't use anymore because they have a significant trip charge to get out to where The Homestead is.

The burger is a coupon for a free White Castle hamburger. The coupon - and the other one in the top right corner - has long since expired.

Above that are a Papa Johns magnet (our second choice locally for pizza), a PLCH magnet, and a magnet for Amighetti Bakery in St. Louis. The library is the one that we far and away most frequently use.

The next guy is Gabrielle. Hiya, Gabe.

And then hiya to Taylor and Jillian.

The Christmas card is for the family that briefly lived in our basement a year ago. Hiya, Jake.

The ticket is for Lebowski Fest in Chicago, the one that I sadly got snowed into Cincinnati for.

Thankfully, we end with the Nerds are sweet stuff magnet.

Here's the unglared photo of me, Gamer, Richie, and Brant in from of our high school.


I'm thinking...for the next few Wednesdays...photos of our bookshelves...our keepsake shelves...my cd collection...our kitchen table (which is typically a huge pit)...the fridge's insides...the DVD collection...

A couple of questions...do you give a crap?...and are there any particular areas of The Homestead (short of the front view which The Girl has asked me to keep a bit private) that you'd be curious to see since I'm guessing most of you folks won't be visiting any time soon?

Unless you end up house sitting for us - we are travellers, after all. Joey, Katydid - how are you folks with cats and dogs?

The joys of home ownership

So the power is back on here are Casa de ChemGuy (can somebody tell me if I've got that middle word correct, please?) so I'm blogging all regular like,

Quick update with the world.

Fantasy football team is 2-0 having been the second or third highest scorer each week.

Fantasy baseball is rocking along as my second-seeded dudes are in the finals against the five seed and currently leading (only a day and a half in, admittedly) 7-2.

And The Homestead is safe and sound.

We did have some mess and damage, but both were minor.

You can see from the next couple of pictures that part of the Bradford pear fell on the garage. The wind moved it onward off the garage with a bit of help from The Girl and me, taking part of the gutter and the downspout with it.

The back part of the pear also came tumbling down a while later into the yard.



The power came on about forty hours after it disappeared, soon enough that the freezer was still cold enough to be all salvagable, but the refrigerator had to be gutted and the food trashed.

This photo doesn't show the pain and suffering that The Girl had after chucking out all the food that she bought Sunday morning and that had spoiled over the next day and a half.