Yet More Adventures in Home Ownership

I received a call on Sunday from the company doing our roof. They said that they'd be out on Monday and wanted to verify that the materials were already there. I looked out on the driveway to double check but...nope, no shingles. The guy said he'd take care of it, though he may have to reschedule.

Lucky us, though, it all got worked out. When we came back home after work on Monday, our house was swarming with workers, busily banging away and tearing off old shingles. Very exciting, though a little loud. They finished off the work today, and we have ourselves a brand new roof! I've taken some pictures, but I'll have to put up those later.

They did leave one bag in our tree branches, though, and I wanted to get it down. Well I tried throwing a broom up at it to knock it down and I know you've heard this joke before, but it got stuck up there too. Well we had just purchased a ladder, but it wasn't tall enough. Ever the engineers, we taped two hockey sticks together to get the reach necessary to get down both the bag and the broom. Take that, altitude!

On Saturday, we were sitting around and planning a shopping trip (full of new, experimental crockpot recepies) when we heard something banging around downstairs. Well it wasn't either of the cats, and a thorough search of the house revealed it also wasn't in any of the rooms. It was in the wall. In our laundry room. So I saddled up my man-clothes, put on some gloves, and pulled the appliances away from the wall. I took the output hose off the the drier and sure enough was greeted with a burst of lint as whatever had gotten itself stuck in there thrashed around and tried to scrabble back up. On the plus side, it did manage to clean a lot of lint out of the output tube.

Uncertain of what we were dealing with, (Squirrel? Bird? Mouse? Rat?) we first tried to look up with a mirror, and then poked with a coat hanger. Eventually, I just put some peanut butter in a couple of plastic grocery bags and started duct taping it to the vent. Well no sooner had I started, but something fell in. I grabbed the bag off the wall, and we went outside to let it go. We have some video, but both Jess and I got an unexpected surprise when we opened up the bag and a bird flew out. Starling, I think.

Never let it be said that home ownership is boring.

Regardless, I felt very manly and productive, and as a bonus, I don't have anything rotting in the walls, which is usually a downer.

We've also gotten a couple of neat packages in the mail. One, Jess got her plaque for her patent, which is awesome, and we also got a gps unit. We've been playing around with it for a while and I think we've settled on a female, English voice. Very soothing.

Jess's team had a game on Sunday that Jess sat out due to her shoulder being sore. She still attended, though, still walked out during the intro, arm in sling, and I even saw her offering up a couple more signatures to some fans after the game. Not even injury can stop fame.

-N