Random Friday

1.  New siding is up on the back side of the house.  It just needs to be painted.  No big deal, you say, Brett likes to paint and he's very meticulous.  ... except... Brett is afraid of heights and this is a two story house.  He could paint the lower part, no problem, but the top half is going to require help.

2.  We now have a handrail for the steps at the front porch going to the driveway.  They are strange stairs; narrow, steep with a funny half fall at the bottom.  Brett and I have both fallen and friends have tripped as well.  Now, we have a hand rail so we don't have to hold our breath whenever someone goes down those stairs.

3.  The porch extension is finished as well (Brett just needs to paint it).  Brett watched the guys take out the old back door porch -- he thought it would involve smashing and prying.  They lifted one corner with their hands and the whole thing came off.  It felt flimsy -- and it was.  Now, we can go in and out easily, and reach the wrap-around porch with out plonking down to the ground and then scrambling back up to the porch.

4.  We did have an unanticipated repair.  When the workers looked at the electrical breaker box to install siding around it, they noticed that there was a pipe leaving the box, with wire (heading to the barn).  The bottom of the box had been cut so the wire could go through, into the pipe.  But the metal, where it had been cut, was jagged and it had frayed the electric wire.  The wall around the wire was black from sparks.  When they jiggled the pipe, there were more sparks -- and then the wire severed and power was lost to the barn.  Thank goodness they found the frayed wire -- how long had it been sparking in there?  Our bedroom is right above the breaker box.  If it had caught the house on fire, we would have been in a world of hurt.  An electrician came out, shook his head in disbelief, and fixed it.  This repair falls under the category -- "fix one thing, find ten more."

5.  We had a little bit of rain (half an inch) a week ago.  I thought Jackson would be okay without his trail boots so I didn't mess with putting them on in the dark after work.  Sure enough, he started limping as soon as the rain stopped.  I put the boots on at that point and in a couple of days he was walking fine.  I took them off the day before yesterday -- we've been dry for a week now -- and he is marching around, doing Lucy's bidding.

Kerseyf, on the front porch, guarding the kayaks