Yard Maintenance Day

Normally I spend Sundays cutting the grass. But I had a long list of other items to take care of today. I started by working on my car. There were some pieces of plastic hanging down under my car. I used some string and duct tape to secure those pieces to the car. Next I went to the front garden and secured Kit Kat's rose bush. It has been falling over during storms. I staked the thing down with three small stakes. If that does not work, we are going to need to seriously trim this bush.

After that, I worked on the latch to the gate separating the front and back yards. The concrete guys took off the gate to pour the new driveway concrete. When they put it back, the latch would not close correctly. I moved the latch to a new location on the gate. Secured the thing with four little screws. It works like a charm now.

My main chore this day was to deal with some of the erosion in the back yard. I set up a water collector in the ground made of crushed rock. I funneled this to a new PVC pipe in the ground that diverts the water to the bottom of the hill. I reinforced the sides of the pipe with lumber to keep it strong.

G-Man Upstaged

Some basketball team has a mascot named G-Man. He is a dude with a full body blue uniform. One night at the basketball game, G-Man uses a trampoline to dunk the basketball. They get what seems to be randomly picked dudes from the audience to try to dunk as well.

These guys try their best. But they fail to do the dunk. Then it comes down to the last guy. His name is Eddie. He seems to be very interested in his cell phone call. He does not stop talking on his cell phone, even when he is running up to do his trampoline dunk. It is hilarious what happens next. You got to see this video.

Creepy Building

I woke up early this morning because a plumber was supposed to come by. I went in the kitchen and was disturbed because there was a puddle on the floor. There was a melting ice cube there. Sounded like a Little Kat issue. The plumber called and said he was busy with emergencies like flooded basements. So he could not make it today. Fail.

I ordered some beef fried rice and hot-n-sour soup for lunch. There was no menu for the Chinese place at home. I picked one up when I got my food. Doh! They had lunch specials. Great. I got overcharged by ordering a la carte. Oh well.

Kit Kat was late coming home from school. She stays a little late on Fridays for some club. But it was 6pm and I had not heard from her. Momoko saw the hmoe phone flashing. It was Kit Kat calling. She tried to eat over her friend's house. Nope. We had business tonight.

Kit Kat drove the family to the local armory. We wanted to check whether it was a place that Little Kat could hang out with other middle schoolers. Kit Kat parked the car next to the building, and said it looked creepy. Little Kat agreed. Inside there were a lot of cheerleaders renting out the gym. The place was pretty much empty otherwise.

Little Kat liked the billiards room. I thought it would be good for Little Kat to hit the gym there. He is too young though. We saw no middle schoolers in the place. I think that means this will be a no go for now. You have to pay to be able to use the facilities.

Teen Club

Momoko thought it might be a good idea to send Little Kat to the local teen club. Kit Kat could join too. So we scheduled to make a visit today. Kit Kat drove us. Momoko directed her. We ended up at the city municipal building.

This was the wrong place. I thought we had previously determined the teen event happened at the Armory in town. Nope. Momoko said the place we wanted to be was the former community center. The municipal building was definitely not the community center.

It was turning into a check out fail. Momoko remembered the name of the street that the community center was on. I happened to know where that street was. But that did not seem like a high probability win. Momoko made Kit Kat drive us there anyway. It turns out we found the place.

There was not much going on. They had a basketball court. There was an exercise room with a lot of expensive looking machines. Finally they had a game room with billiards, ping pong, and fooz ball. On the way home, Kit Kat almost hit another car that was making a turn. Kit Kat had turned her head to look behind us. Momoko and I screamed. We slowed down in time.

Goodbye Frozen Foods

The hurricane knocked out our power for a whopping 5 days. We kept our huge freezer closed the entire time. But the food could just stay frozen the whole time. We decided to let the freezer refreeze the stuff that thawed out. Even so, it still all had to be thrown out.

We waited until tonight because tomorrow is trash day. The kids double bagged the stuff that looked like it may melt in the trash can. Then we put everything (including the stuff already double bagged) into big trash bags that themselves were double bagged. Let's hope this stuff does not leak out into the trash cans tonight.

The family used Mean Green to clean out the freezer shelves. The biggest pain will be when Momoko goes to the store and starts to replace all the frozen foods we lost. This freezer is a huge stand alone one. It is as big or bigger than a standard fridge/freezer combo.

Picking up Sticks

Now that we have out power restored, it was time to clean up the mess from the hurricane. Leaves and tree parts were everywhere. I first decided to use the leaf blower to move the leaves off the concrete. The leaves were all over the new driveway and the patio.

Next I used the grabber tool to pick up sticks around the yard. There were not that many out front. The back yard was filled with sticks. I created a huge pile of them on the patio. Eventually I will chop them up and throw them out.

Finally I used the lawn mower to cut the grass and pick up the leaves. That was some hard work. I finished the front yard. I started the back. But I was coming up on the 4 hour mark of working outside. A buddy was coming over to go out. So I had to leave the rest of the back yard for later.

Big Power Outage

The recent hurricane took out a lot of trees in the area. That resulted in power lines down all over the places. We lost power Saturday night. It did not get restored until a whopping 5 days later. They closed some of the roads down due to the fallen trees.

We managed to stay cool by opening the windows at night. Flashlights and candles illuminated the way at night. Little Kat and Momoko could not stand the heat in the bedrooms. They slept down on the main level. We used iPhones to act as alarm clocks.

Kit Kat and Little Kat went over their friends' houses to charge up their electronics. Momoko and I did the same at work. The contents of the fridge went bad pretty quickly. We kept the essentials on ice in coolers. The hope was that the freezer contents would last. It was not opened. I fear that the frozen foods will need to be thrown out too.