Cool Man!

July 19, 2006 (12:34pm)
76º F, Partly Cloudy, SSE wind 7 mph.

Good afternoon,

it’s cool here! It really feels so nice today. The humidity is climbing, as is the temperature, but it is so different than the past days. Really nice sleeping weather too. Now if it would only stay like this until the snow starts to fall on the 1st of September, I really would be happy. At least about the weather. Officially, we have gotten only .01" of rain this month, about 2" behind "normal" rain fall. The area is really starting to show it too. The weatherman is predicting some possible storms tonight with up to an inch of rain falling. Hope it does. Our grass is still green here, but we are some lower than the surrounding area.

The biggest thing on the agenda for yesterday, after Bible Study, was paying the second half of our property taxes. Setting up the cover letter in this machine, I noticed that we paid the taxes on the same day last year. This time the bill was 48¢ higher though. The little difference in the amount kind of surprised me. A am some happy with that and would like to see that continue, but know it will not. A guy can dream can’t he?

Bible study yesterday went, but on the long side. We are having the church carpeting cleaned, half this week and half last week. The front doors had a sign on them saying we should use the side door, so we went there, only to find a sign saying we should use the fellowship hall door. When we got to that door, it was locked! Fortunately I have a church key (not the kind you open a can of beer with) so went to the car to get it and let us in. I gave the secretary a hard time about the run around and locked door. She said that Pastor had put up the signs and had "unlocked" the door. Hmmmmm! Anywho, we did have a pretty good study, but were limited to one room and could hear the floor cleaning machine too well.

One of my friends, the other half of the bass section in choir, I found out is really having some serious health problems. Dan just went through a divorce (I know not the reason) and then broke his back in an automobile accident. Now he has an infection which the doctors are not able to control. Talking to one of his daughters on Sunday, she said that his is taking chemo to try and eliminate the infection. I had never heard of that before, but he is totally sick from the chemo. Because of all of this, his business I am sure is in serious trouble too. One of the Bible study folks said that he personally is in really "deep financial straits," which doesn’t surprise me at all. He is most defiantly in our knee time, as is his family.

Putting in a post next to the house yesterday to replace the rear deck posts and deck. I found several much wasps in the hole from the old post. On further investigation, I found there was a slow trickle of water running into the hole also. After dispatching the wasps, I found the water was coming from under the house! Not a good thing! There must be a leak in our plumbing system somewhere. I started to pull one of the metal skirt pieces out and had more water leaking, much more rapidly. Apparently the water is under the vapor barrier and running to the low side, where the deck is. It is a problem that I cannot ignore. I dug a test hole about two feet from the structure, where I also want to put the new post. To see how far the water problem extends. The hole was dry, so continued to enlarge it and dropped a 6"x6" post into it. Am in the process of back filling the post, then will tear into the leak problem. I was also pleasantly surprised to find a layer of stones almost four feet down that I could not penetrate with the post hole digger. While the post bottom will be about 2" short of four feet down as I had planned, but will be a really good foundation for the post.

After I finish back filling the post, I will tear into the leak problem. Not really looking forward to crawling under the house either. I will take off one piece of skirting and then provide a trench for the accumulated water to run off some first. I suspect the vapor barrier is floating on the water more or less, or at least a layer of soupy mud. Want to get it away from the building as much as possible so it doesn’t interfere with the other work I need to do. The old posts were 4"x4", put down only about two feet. Above the frost line which caused them to lift each spring. By putting in these at four feet, they shouldn’t move - I hope. In the process, we should have a new deck and the sunporch stabilized some too. Always something.

Time to get a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris <><