Bezabor: Detroit-area trip. (posted from the Southfield, MI Public Library)

Tuesday, 13 December- After spending the morning channel-surfing the local channels on Mom and Dad’s TV (and watching a really good travel video that Mom and Dad had on Yosemite National Park) I needed to get out and explore a little on my own while Labashi continues to chat with her Mom. In preparing for the trip I had found a Starbucks just a few blocks from their house so that was a good first stop--- I read today’s Detroit Free Press while enjoying a good ol’ Caffe Mocha. It’s a bit colder here--- the high was only 19 yesterday and when I left the house at noon today I don’t think it had quite reached that—but it doesn’t seem all that cold. It has been snowing lightly all morning but not enough to cause a driving problem—it’s just pretty.
At home (in PA) I had checked Wififreespot.com to see where I’d be able to connect to the web out here and was happy to find free wi-fi at the local library so that’s where I’m filing today’s log entry from. The library is only a mile or so from the house and it’s laptop-friendly—all you do is walk in, set up your laptop and connect. They even have electric outlets in the library tables! And they have an on-site café--- very nice!

Monday, 12 December-
We spent this entire day on the road. We left shortly after 8 am and arrived at Labashi’s parents’ home in a Detroit suburb by 1615 or so. That’s a 500 mile trip in just over 8 hours, including a coffee stop, lunch, and a gas stop. This was our first long trip in Labashi’s Honda van and it was very comfortable. The driver’s seating position is a little different in this van and I’ve had some very minor discomfort in my legs on hour-long trips so I thought I might have to make some adjustments or take some extra breaks but that was not the case.
We spent the evening around the kitchen table, listening to stories Mom and Dad told about the early years of their marriage. They were born in Belgium and after Dad graduated from college they married and took the ocean liner ‘Queen of France’ to Montreal, with no job and a grand total of $500 to their name. It was fantastic to pore over the pictures taken in the early Fifties. There, across the top of a lifeboat in the foreground, is Quebec City, the Hotel Frontenac clearly visible—their first sign of a city after crossing the Atlantic. Labashi and I had celebrated there at the Hotel Frontenac a few summers ago, having our first (and only!) meal of chateaubriand and champagne so we doubly enjoyed seeing the 55-year-old picture. There were other pictures of their stay in Montreal and their audacious cross-country trip to Sasketchewan, where Labashi was born a few months later.

Sunday, 11 December-
Today we relaxed for the morning and watched a movie, ‘Shaolin Soccer’ in the afternoon. Actually, I did the relaxing and Labashi continued working on family history in preparation for our upcoming trip to visit her parents.
‘Shaolin Soccer’ was a silly movie but very entertaining and rich with insider jokes and sight gags. It’s the story of a Chinese young man and his brothers, all experts in forms of kung fu, who decide they can use their kung fu skills to win a professional-level soccer tournament. The protagonist, “Steel Leg”, is played by Stephen Chow and Stephen is also the director. So part of the enjoyment is watching what this extremely talented guy does, both in his exaggerated, made-up movie role and in his real-life role as director. Highly recommended!
That evening we packed for our trip and then watched the Survivor Guatemala finale. For the first time in the Survivor finales, we felt that we would be fine with any of the final three – but we were rooting for Danni, the eventual winner. She played a low-key, very smart game. Good for her!

Bezabor:

Saturday, December 10

I worked a few hours in our basement this morning, continuing to store away the paints and gardening liquids. I went into town for a few hours looking for a better portable toolbox and a good way to organize the sockets and wrenches in my stationary tool cabinets. I came home without a toolbox but think I’m close to a decision on a combination toolbox from Craftsman that will allow me to store the tools in a rustproof, wheeled box that can also be used as a seat or step. That should work much better for my in-the-driveway maintenance program for our vehicles. I found good socket and wrench storage systems which allow me to not only organize them and see which are missing from their places but also just pick up the set I need and take them to the work.

In the evening we watched “War of the Worlds”. When I rented it I wondered why it didn’t have a thumbs-up rating from Ebert and Roper. And now we know—it’s a stupid movie! I can’t believe Spielberg could direct such a poor movie. Consider, for example, that everything electrical is made useless by the aliens’ electromagnetic energy pulses. Cars, phones, cell phones, even watches are shown to be useless. Then in the middle of this we see someone using a video camera. No other electronics work but the video camera does. And Tom Cruise manages to get the only car in the region that works. His mechanic buddy is working on a car and says the starter is fried (which would not happen in an electromagnetic pulse) but it turns out to be the solenoid. So apparently he replaces the solenoid (which somehow must have been protected from the damages-every-solenoid-in-the-region energy pulses in its parts-bin box) so now Tom has the only working car anywhere around. And he’s able to drive it down the freeway crowded with disabled vehicles because when the pulse happened, all the vehicles drifted off the road just enough to let him pass. Ridiculous in the extreme! Shame on you, Mr. Spielberg. I want my money back.

Friday, December 9

I’m under the weather again today though I’m ever-so-slowly improving overall. I spent most of the morning on the internet, working on an odd networking problem. Every once in a while my laptop’s browser suddenly can’t find web pages. The only way out of it is a reboot. Labashi’s desktop uses the same connectivity so I suspect my laptop rather than something wrong with the wireless router, cable modem, or ISP. I installed Firefox to eliminate Internet Explorer but Firefox also hits the problem. It’s a puzzler.

In the afternoon I started the organizing process in the basement. We’ve started moving stuff back from our rented storage unit. We needed to get the paints and other liquids which are not supposed to be allowed to freeze out of the unheated storage unit and into our basement. The utility cabinets are working out well for this.

Thursday, December 8

I finished up the north wall and put the two layers of insulation back in place. While I’ve been working the north wall, Labashi has been doing a fantastic job of putting in new insulation. We now have 8 and ½ inches of insulation under our foyer floor and stairs and we have 3 and ½ inches of new insulation in the stairway walls. That entrance stairway has always been cold in winter and I’m sure this will make a big difference. Labashi also replaced some missing insulation in the east wall.

We also bought and assembled two utility cabinets and two three-drawer-storage cabinets. The utility cabinets are Black and Decker units from Lowe’s. They are plastic four-shelf units with doors and will look a lot better than the open shelving we had been using. The three-drawer storage units are Sterilite units about waist high from Target and match the utility cabinets. The utility cabinets are $75 each and the three-drawer units are $30 each. They’re not cheap but we think will pay off by allowing us to organize all the stuff that can make a basement or garage look like a disaster zone.

Wednesday, December 7

I finished up the west wall and used Great Stuff foam insulation to seal up all the gaps along the inside of the starter strip and also to fill in the gaps between the pieces of 2x4.

I also started repairing the north wall which has a section of sill damage about seven feet long. In this case, though, both sills are damaged. The outer is most heavily damaged but the inner also has enough damage to need replacement. Worse, one of the studs was damaged about 18 inches up and extending behind the upper section of drywall which we did not remove. But I was able to push the two layers of insulation up and use the Sawzall to cut off the stud above the damage. Then I bolted a 26-inch piece of 2x4 to the remaining stud to extend it back down to the sill.

I’m still miserable from my sinus infection—coughing and sneezing a lot and alternating between being too hot and too cold. I called the doctor’s office to ask when the antibiotic should give me some results and was asked to call back Friday morning if I’ve still not had any relief.

Tuesday, December 6

I continued working on the termite damage to the sill on the west wall of the basement. It’s slow going. Ironically, the sections where the damage is worst are easiest to fix. I can simply break up the old sill with a screwdriver and clean the pieces out, vacuum up the remainder, saw off the nails, insert an 8-inch piece of 2 x4 and move on. But in the less-damaged wood, the nails coming in from outside—the ones holding on the celotex and aluminum siding starter strip— make it difficult to remove the old wood. In some cases I can pry them out, in others I have to cut up the wood with the Sawzall and a chisel to get to the point where I can cut off the nails.

Monday, December 5

Today was another not-so-good day health-wise. I did manage to get some time in downstairs but only an hour or so.

Bezabor: Termite damage repair, Herc-U-Lift...

Saturday, 3 December-

I’m still under the weather and coughing quite a lot but we decided to go shopping at Home Depot and Lowe’s. We’ve long thought the house under-insulated in the basement and with everything out of the way now, it’s a good time to fix that problem too. We bought ten rolls of 3-1/2 inch insulation. That will enable us to double up the insulation on the basement ceiling and to replace a few sections of missing insulation from the exterior walls.

I also bought a ‘Herc-U-Lift’, which is a framework and set of casters for my radial arm saw. I had found these with a google search using the model number of my radial arm saw. It’s a very interesting arrangement--- it has a pedal in the middle that you step on to raise the saw off it’s feet. Then after rolling the saw to its new spot, you just step on a pedal and it’s lowered back to its feet. This will be perfect for our new strategy of keeping the radial arm saw in a shed and rolling it out of the shed to cut longer stock. The unit is made by Ridgid and is sold on their web site but also by Home Depot.

And here starts another tale of good luck. Both the Ridgid web site and the Home Depot web site list the unit for $49. But when we found them at our local Home Depot, the sign above them said $29 but one box in the pile had a $49 sticker on it. I asked a clerk to zap the bar-code on one and it came up $29. Another stroke of good luck!

Friday, 2 December-

I’m still having problems with my cold/flu so decided today to go to the doctor. Apparently I originally had a cold but that turned into a sinus infection and that’s why it has been hanging around so long. The nurse-practitioner prescribed Amoxycillin and advised that Mucinex would help with the drainage.

I didn’t feel like working in the basement today so spent most of it googling on the internet. I’ve been looking at water treatment options, particularly ultraviolet light. I reviewed our most recent water sample analyses and tried to compare with the requirements in the owner’s manual for the ultraviolet treatment unit I’m considering.

Unfortunately, the limits of the unit are described in a slightly different set of terms than the water analysis reports. The principle in this case is that ultraviolet units aren’t effective on water with a lot of suspended matter. So I ended up sending the factory an email with the results of the water analyses and asking for help.

Thursday, 1 December-

I was able to work in the basement today, repairing termite damage to a sill plate on the west wall. By ‘damage’, I mean the 2 x 4 was so far gone that all that was there was a paper-thin shell. I could push through it with my fingers and break it up with ease. Much of it was so crumbled it had to be vacuumed up with the dry-vac. That means the studs in that six foot section of wall are sitting on nothing but the nails originally driven in from the bottom of the sill. Interestingly, the sill itself is absolutely destroyed but the studs are untouched. And in this section of wall the studs and sill are doubled; the outer studding was the original wall and the inner was added when the basement was finished off. Those inner studs and sill are also untouched.

The termite problem originated when the builder didn’t build the block portion of the wall high enough. He apparently underestimated the grading level required outside the wall and the house ended up with dirt covering the lowest row of siding--- a virtual guarantee that the house would have termite damage at some point. If he had only added one more row of block, there would have been no problem. So while the immediate challenge is to restore the structural integrity of the wall, next Spring I’ll have to somehow get the dirt away from the outside of the wall.

I used the Sawzall to cut off the nails in the end of the studs but because the Sawzall was too big for the space available, it left two quarter-inch projections of nail from each stud that I had to manually cut off with a mini-hacksaw. Then I was able to put a four-to-six inch piece of 2 x 4 under the end of each stud. That leaves some open space in the sill between the studs but now each stud is fully supported by good, solid wood rather than a thin shell of wood around a lot of termite tunnels.