White Lightning Axiom: Redux

Well, I'm going to be quite busy over the next few weeks, so please don't shoot me if I miss commenting on my regular blog reads or skip a few posts ... like I did yesterday. I was a bit laid up you see. I thought it would be a FANTASTIC idea on Sunday afternoon to chop up all that wood that I, as a mendicant lumberjack, pulled out of Gus's yard the previous weekend. So, chop-chop-chop I go and rip-tear-shred go the muscles in my back. The next morning, I could barely get out of bed to shut off the alarm clock. I had to slither out like some sort of spineless slink and whimpered the entire time. I let the Sympathetic Mrs know that I would not be moving that morning and slept from 0730 till 1730 straight! I really needed that, since I have been going into a 'spoon deficit' situation for weeks now. But enough of my surly simpering, what did happen this weekend?

Friday night was a hoot. Alexis decided to rat out her brother to a Mom in the pool changing room. She let this stranger know that Jacob was a player and had a lot of girl friends. Interesting in so much that she is not the type of girl to talk to strangers. I think it was the opportunity to take a swipe at her sibling that compelled her. I need to pay more attention to that since it seems she is developing the 'mean little girl' attribute a bit earlier than expected. Not as noticable as Jake's 'spastic little boy' act, and certainly not as cute. Rapprochement is forthcoming.

Saturday was mostly a wash. The weather was nice, which was a a nice turn of events since we were going to spend two hours driving up to Parsippany and another two on the way back. My artifice in finding a route that was only 65 miles instead of 115 was not as fortuitous as initially thought. The 'short' route took just as long and consumed as much gasoline as the longer, less direct route. In fact, we were treated to a Trademark Jersey traffic construct called the 'CIRCLE' as well as various jug-handles and convoluted left vs right exit ramps. On the upside, there were no traffic accidents (although, the police were as omnipresent as the traffic devices) and the return trip to the Manor was uneventful as it could have been. I was concerned in the first steps of the trip back when we headed down an access road that went from rough to unpaved and then finally to weed-grown. I was having visions of a chain-saw wielding mad-man, but then realized I was in North Jersey and I was the closest being to that description. Soon enough, the Observant Mrs spotted the signs for the on-ramp and we were under-way. On the downside, the children were rather impossible from the moment we arrived till the moment we strapped them into their restraining seats. Not enough exercise, most likely.

Sunday: well, I've already told you the results of that expedition in faulty perspicacity (heh, even I had to look that word up). To start the day, we had Sunday School of course. A new girl, Sam, came in to assist with what ended up being a VERY BUSY morning. As a matter of course, Jake made sure to assault her with hugs at every available opportunity. Shortly after class, I zipped off to the Local Low Price Gas Station (and car wash; they always ask but I'm afraid the POS Super Saturn would melt) to transfer Alexis to the Family Tank V2.0. This is so the Mrs and Alexis can go to the Nutcracker ballet at the Bryn Athen Playhouse. Jake, who found out about this was reasonably upset. Next time, according to him, Alexis would go see a movie with me and he would go to the Ballet with the Mrs. He was the only one comfortable with that arrangement. He can barely sit still through the movie and would only do so after I acquiesced to giving him a full sized package of twizzlers and a promise of McDonalds afterwards. We saw 'Bee Movie'. Horrible. Honestly, just bad. He seemed to enjoy it, but I think it was the twizzlers.

Technorati Tags:Back Pain | Banalities | Sunday School | Fatigue | Injury | Lumberjack | Mundane | Sunday School | Slacker | Sleep | Traffic | Turnpike | Weekend Wood

Labels: Back Pain, Banalities, Fatigue, Injury, Lumberjack, Mundane, Slacker, Sleep, Sunday School, Traffic, Turnpike, Weekend, Wood

I had started this Sunday Night ... but alas, the anti-soporific allure of the Television captured my attention and I ended up watching 'Tin Man' on the SciFi channel till the wee hours of the morning. These vicissitudes in my sleep patterns are doing me no good, I know. Sometimes I just want to watch a show without a squeaky clean animation character. Speaking of characters, the dodgeball/swim night went well on Friday ... followed closely the next morning of me hauling my sorry sagging rear out of bed at the absurd hour of 0745. The tyrants were rampaging though the house and this always invoked the 'WHINE' factor in the hounds. They understand if they simper long and loud, I'll eventually let them out to do their stuff on the back-50. Then, it's off to administer the death penalty to another innocent evergreen. I went to a small farm that I spotted on my commute to work that was selling live trees for $30 a pop. Free-range, yup. So I met a man by the name of Emmo who apparently had a son that went to Cornell! Funny. Even funnier was the damned ATM at the Wawa that I usually stop off at was out of order so I had to find a different working one. Cost me about 15 minutes. After I gingerly transported the 50 foot pine strapped to the top of the SuperSaturn POS with spit, duct tape and gumption, I cored it out and hauled it to the Grand Cathedral in the Manor with a bit of help from the Mrs. As you know, I have some slight balance issues and have learned to NOT TRUST my internal ear. Just because things feel like they are tipping to the left or right, that means nothing to gravity. I have to judge my 'uprightness' by checking my surroundings. Makes swimming a real bear. In any event, the Mrs gave her 'Seal of Approval' and the strings of lights were added. Ornamentation would come later at the deft hands (and myopic minds) of the Tyrants.

That afternoon, the whole clan spent time outdoors raking up leaves in the front expanse. The Mrs would rake to the curb, I would run the mower over the area to suck up the remaining leaves and detritus. Rake, mow, blow, suck ... ummm, yeah. We cleared out the front fairly well leaving mountains of leaves which were promptly blown back into the grass and garden beds. Damn. We had to do it though since we were expecting nasty weather the next day. With continuing unpleasantness through the rest of the winter. Indeed, it snowed that night and made a terrible mess. While we were at it, I had the Tyrants take the truck load of aging pumpkins from the front porch to the Agricultural Sector and SMASH THEM! HULK SMASH PUMPKINS!!! Heh ... time and place for everything, you know. They were starting to get a bit soft so it was time to dispose of them. I'm certain I'll get a lot of 'volunteers' next spring after I till them under. After the Mrs and I finished up with the leaves (the Tyrants abandoned us for the comfort of the wood-burning stove), I ran across the street to help our neighbor, Gus, with a couple of 25 foot tall trees that he needed to take down. Yep, just could not get enough lumberjacking in so I started in on the arboreal work in the local area. It took little time but the chain on the semi-commercial saw started to dull before we got to the hard part ... cutting the stump flush with the soil. Leaning over with a roaring chain-saw ... yep, I'm destined to be sore the next day. To cap off the day, I made some Bohemian Goulash and load of Beef Stroganoff for the week's meals. The Mrs made chicken wings (ACK!). The cavalcade of leftovers is never long lived. I'm not sure what I would do without the double-blessing of ground beef and pasta.

Sunny Sunday ... not so much. Snow, sleet and just general nastiness. This impacted the attendance at Sunday School too. Only 4 little smiling faces showed up ... all talking about how they were going to build snowmen and make snow angels in the slop that laid about the ground like a sodden quilt. Of course, we had to stop at Dunkin Donuts afterwards, and share the plunder with the Mrs back at the manor. The Tyrants decorated the tree and put nearly all their ornaments within the first 3 feet from the floor. Looks good to them I suppose. We rearranged some of them and filled in all the empty spots. I spent the rest of the day bumbling about with laundry, feeding the wood burning stove and puttering about in the garage. I did manage to get the automatic garage door openers rewired so I did not have to use the remote to open the durned thangs. Good to get something accomplished. Oh, and I finally put up the wall Spackle over the patches in the closet wall. Now for the paint and the new shelves ... I can finally put my clothing in the same room I sleep in!

Technorati Tags:Snow | Weekend | Lawn | Christmas | Children

Labels: Banalities, Children, Church, Home Improvements, Lawn, Lumberjack, Mundane, Rain, Snow, Weather, Winter, Wood

What a busy weekend and I'm only half way through this liquid joy. In the wee hours of the morning, I found myself watching Die Hard III (Damn, it's really starting to get silly but I do love the scene where John McClane rams a police cruiser into a toll booth so it will launch into the air and obliterate a helicopter. Any mortal would not survive throwing themselves from the cruiser, much less walk away. Indeed, the survivor in the aircraft is even more ridiculous. The appearance of Kevin Smith as a computer hacker was classic. And then there was Maggie Q. Rwawrrr! Then, I followed it up with a classic; The Dirty Dozen. Here is something that I found odd when reflecting on that bit of cinematic gold: Hollywood took the worst of the military and glamorized them 'back in the day'. Today, we take the best military men in the world (IMHO) and sully them. Of course, the war theme movies we are subjected to today are being snubbed on a colossally enormous level. Sure, they might get an award or two, but they are making ZERO money. Oh well, you reap what you sew. But enough soap-box pouting for me.

The next morning, I stumbled out into the 23 F morning air and damn near froze my nose hairs off when I took a deep breath. I proceeded to hock up lumps of frozen sputum and go to work splitting the wood from the trees we took down. Gramps and I managed to finish it all up before noon. I would have posted a picture but the absurd scale would be lost in this format. Once the pile grows over 6 foot high, it just gets hard to relate without context. This took till about 1100 it never got above 40 outside. When I tramped inside and shook the cold from my bones, I saw my son sitting at the kitchen table and he was out of his Jammies (Done with his blogging). I decided to ask him about his morning so far, it went something like this:

Me: Sooo, Jake. Did you get a bath?
Jake: No.
Me: So, you stink like a barn?
Jake: No! I took a shower.
Me: Ahhh, a shower, so you're Man's man!
Jake: Sometimes, a man needs to shower.

That's my little man.

Later in the afternoon, we went out to get a Christmas tree for the Tyrants to decorate on Sunday. As we do every year now, we got get the tree at Southview from the old Finn, Hemmo and his Mrs Patty. They are related to a man I used to work for many moons ago when I was still youthful and not quite so jaded. He talks much like many of my fellow rural Minnesotans ... makes me feel like I'm back there. Such a seasonal treat. Loves his work; crafting Christmas. Afterwards, we ran off to the library for the millionth time this week and loaded up with another bazillion DVDs. Most of them look like they were run over with a lavastone sand-paper equipped floor buffer. I cannot imagine how someone could treat public property such, so we ended up paging over the unreadable sectors. Mostly it was a problem with the newer publications ... the educational ones. I almost suspect sabotage. From there, I dropped off the Tyrants and the Mrs at Barnes&Nobles Booksellers while I make an epicurean pilgrimage to the Wine Equivalent of the Great Library of Alexandria called Northside. Did I mention that they have one of the most complete displays of single malt scotch? Hmmm? hint, HINT! I picked up a couple cases of local vintages that I cannot get elsewhere and a few bottles of imported vino ... before the price gets absurd due to exchange rates. It's already out of control so it may be a few years before things are more rational and I can afford a good Bordeaux or a Spanish Rioja. Nevermind Australian Merlot or Shiraz. Sigh.

Technorati Tags:Shower | Lumberjack | Wood | Children | DVD | Weekend | Wine

Labels: Children, DVD, Lumberjack, Shower, Weekend, Wine, Wood

Yep, you guess it, more lumberjacking! WOOT! Gramps and I wander outside to take down a very dead 80 foot ash tree. Felled it within 2 feet of where we wanted it. Not too shabby, if I do say so. The old man has a keen eye and I have the brute gorilla strength to enforce it. After the thunderous wallop of the log slamming onto the sod, we spent the next few hours of Gramps slicing it up and me lugging the rounds out back, stacking them and cracking a few apart. Then, hauling the wood up to the back observation deck of the FOB for future biocarbon heat conversion.

Technorati Tags:Vacation | Lumberjack

Labels: Lumberjack, Vacation