Fence Opened Up, Tree Disappears On Saturday

GROAN.........

We got to the house early, and by 1000 the fence guy was there. I helped him remove the gate, and then he set upon the two posts for the gate. We had expected  (hoped, really...) to have the Bobcat available today, BUT....everybody is either on a high paying end-of-season job, or they're hunting.

I about fell out of my chair laughing when our "general contractor" sent my wife an email about getting all this stuff scheduled, and he ended it by writing "Oh, by the way. Hunting season starts this weekend".

I took me a good half hour trying to explain it to her, but she doesn't really "get it". She's a city gal, and never grew up around this stuff like my friends and I did back in Illinois. So "hunting season" to her is more like "baseball season" or "football season" than it is "Hunting Season".

I'm sure LL knows what I'm talking about.......

SO, right around noon, U-Haul delivered our "U-Boxes", the cheaply made pod-like containers that our stuff was packed into on September 20th. The pain of that whole pull-up-your-roots-and-move operation has mostly passed, to be replaced by a strange mix of happiness, and dread over getting all that S%$$RF unpacked and stowed away.

It felt like seeing old friends again as I opened the pods and saw the labeled boxes in there. And my wife is ecstatic that the stuff is there, and appears to have arrived none the worse for the trip. The pods themselves are about one step above throw-away construction. They have a heavy-duty pallet-like floor, and the rest of it is made from (maybe) 1/2" plywood braced and cornered with what appears to be a 3/4 scale 2x4. The hasps for the locks can be shifted 1/2" or more by the container walls shifting around. The containers have a molded plastic top, and the other 4 sides are wrapped with a heavy, vinylized canvas for weatherproofing. Just very cheaply made, and not very confidence inspiring when I first saw them.

We did 2-1/2 pods today, and that was all the lightweight, easy to reach stuff we could get. The movers are coming tomorrow to unload the rest, take it in the house, and put together the stuff that needs it.

Comcast is coming Monday to fire up their "Xfinity" service and test the cable jacks in the rooms that have them. My wife wants a couple of them moved, and she has no conception of what moving an outlet box requires. She thinks it's included in the install, but that's not usually so. I told her they probably won't do that kind of work on a basic install, and I got a blank look. She also thinks it'll be a snap to run Ethernet cables like I did in the old house. I've got 4 or 5 of the Linksys WiFi routers, all running "Tomato" firmware, that I'm pretty sure I can configure as clients to the Motorola cable modem/WiFi router. The Linksys boxes just connect to the desktop PC with an Ethernet jumper, and should be able to connect to the Motherola modem/router.

And we still have furniture to buy and have delivered. I wanted an Eames lounge chair and Ottoman from Herman Miller, but when she saw the price she about fell over while saying "NOOOOOOOooooooooo......".

Oh, well....you can't know of you don't ask.

I'm really going to miss living here well outside of town. I'm going to miss being out walking the dog in the morning and seeing all the cows grazing across the road. And how quiet it is here, and how dark the sky is when it's clear.

No word yet on when Pebbles will write "My Month In The Country".

So, Saturday morning the tree guy will arrive, and make the sixty-foot tall cottonwood tree disappear, along with trimming a large ash tree that needs it, and cutting back all the dead limbs hanging over on our yard from our neighbors dead/dying cottonwood tree. One of his "auxiliary crews" came by today between jobs to check the fence removal progress, and mentioned that they've removed TEN cottonwood trees this year from our subdivision. They're fast growing trees, give decent shade cover, grow about anywhere, and die after about 50 years, maybe 75 if you're lucky. This one was most likely planted in 1977 when the house was built, and is nearing it's life expectancy. It's loaded with dry, dead branches, has been shedding them in the winds we've had over the last couple of weeks, and is shedding bark everywhere. Fort Collins passed an ordinance a couple of years ago that bans cottonwood trees in new construction areas. Nobody here likes cottonwoods, except maybe the guys that make a good living removing them!

They'll be leaving somewhere between 6' and 10' of trunk so that "Chainsaw Mama" can come in and carve it up for us. Not sure what we'll have her do, as she likes to look at her "canvas", and make recommendations as to how and what she'll carve in to it. Yeah, I know, that's $1500~$2k that could probably be better spent elsewhere, but it's the one indulgence we're allowing ourselves to celebrate our escape from Kaliforniastan. Our property taxes are one-third what they were in SoCal, our house payment is slightly less than half, gasoline is 75 cents per gallon less expensive, my Jeep is getting over two MPG more than it did, and my wife's Elantra is getting THREE MPG more, and we're driving less. Food costs are less, car insurance is less, but homeowner's insurance is higher. State income tax and sales taxes are also much less then Los Angeles County.

All-in-all, it's significantly less expensive (for us) to live here, so we're splurging on the tree trunk.

The roofers will be delivering the materials for the new roof on the 10th, and weather permitting, will start the roof replacement the next day. They say they can do it in a day, but I'm skeptical. I've seen about 10 roofs being replaced in the month I've been here, and I'd say two days. We'll see......

Sorry, but I forgot the camera this morning, so no pix. The camera is now sitting by the door, so I'll be taking lots of pix of how they remove a 60' tree from a backyard, and pix of other progress.