Celebration of Life

A teacher that Momoko and Kit Kat had a celebration service for her late father today. This is no ordinary teacher. She is a friend of the family. I told Momoko she is actually more like actual family. She taught Little Kat. Kit Kat and Little Kat play D&D with her. They attend all her parties.

Kit Kat had to go out afterwards with her friends to see a live version of Spirited Away. So she drove her own car. I made Momoko drive us to the funeral home. We got there early. Some valets directed us to park next to the home. They packed us in.

We went in and saw Kit Kat. Momoko and I viewed the picture books, which had photos that the late father had taken. I met another D&D teacher. Also saw an old teacher that retired but lives in our town. The service was a guy speaking about the father.

Afterwards, Little Kat drove us to the Italian restaurant where the reception was held. We stuck around the funeral home for quite some time afterwards. So I was suspicious that we were the first ones at the reception. Luckily Little Kat got to park in the garage next door.

I ate a lot of garlic cheese bread, which was in the form of pizza without the sauce. They were thin slices. Momoko initiated our visit to the buffet. I tried the ziti. It was okay. I loaded up on some meatballs then, plus on my return for seconds. I handed Momoko a couple cannoli.

We had Little Kat walk Kit Kat to her car in a garage quite a ways away from the restaurant. He had to walk back in the rain. Kit Kat could not drive him back because she was late. But she provided an umbrella. I drove us home and was tired, falling asleep in my recliner as we watched K-Drama.

Fence Repair

I noticed the fence in the back yard was rotting away. For a while, I would just nail new pickets. But everything is rotting. Nailing causes more damage to the fence than it fixes. The right way would be to tear everything down and start from scratch. That is a ton of work and money. So I improvised.

When they installed my mega driveway, they save a few spans of fencing which I kept. Therefore I cut out some rotting sections of fence. I left up the posts. Then I nailed this old fencing to the posts. It does not look great, as it is just the middle section of my whole fence. But it gets the job done.

One interesting finding was that two of the posts were falling down. I ribbed them out with the pickets attached. I thought about digging a new post hole. However there was concrete in the ground. I used a spade to remove the dirt in the middle. Then I sledgehammered the original post back in the hole. Bingo.

I should be good for another 6 months to a year easily. Maybe even longer if I can put up with the shoddy look.

Kindling Container

Every week I pick up small sticks in the yard. Normally I send them off to the county for disposal. However I keep the sticks that are right sized for kindling. I used to put this kindling in old trash cans. All the cans are filled up. Next I started piling them up behind the house under a tarp. But the sticks keep falling down the side of the pile.

It was now time to build some kind of enclosure for this kindling. Eventually I was a huge enclosure for them. Right now I just want to prevent the kindling from falling down the side of my pile. I measured everything. Then I decided I would brace two sides of my pile with walls.

The walls were just assorted pieces of wood I had. I joined these pieces together with 2x3 lumber. The overall effect was kind of patchy due to the lack of wood and the weird size of the pieces I had. The nails were too long and stuck out when I nailed through. So I added blocks to the nail points for safety.

Now that this is done, it seems my kindling pile is high. I might be able to add to it for a little while. But it will rise above the sides of my walls I just constructed. Time to buy more plywood and lumber to build a huge kindling enclosure. I have a spot on the steep hill in the back yard where I think I will locate this new storage.