One point four seven tons, part III

Continued from Part I and Part II...

Pile of junk -- the Coke can had a pull tab and was nestled in the jar inside my wall just like that

Although several days have passed since I began the tale of the termites and the various surprises within my walls, only a couple of hours had actually passed between the finding of the termites and the emptying of the Pit of Despair (which, for some reason, I keep typing as the Pit of Despaire -- perhaps it's actually Ye olde Pitte of Despaire?)

After getting the pile of junk out of Ye Olde Pitte of Despaire (I do like that better), I decided it was time to move on to the pile of wood underneath my deck. The home inspector had said to me last August, "There's some wood and stuff under the deck that you'll probably want to clear out at some point." He was so calm about it and there were so many layers of carpet and wood paneling inside that it just didn't take priority. But knowing that termites love the wood, and that extra wood under the deck is probably what drew them to my house in the first place, I decided it was time to get that shit out of there.

The intrepid Kenna was along for the ride, and we decided the first order of business was to pull up some boards to gain better access.

I don't remember if it struck me right away how ohmygodyou'refuckingkiddingme much wood there was underneath the deck. I do remember being amused by some stray tile, golf balls, tennis balls, and whatnot. We also took the skirting off the deck (which had previously blocked all the excess boards from my view). The next photo shows where most of the wood was extracted.

For the next couple of hours, Kenna and I chatted away and extracted a ton of wood. And when I say a ton of wood, I mean precisely that.

So you look at that and you might think, "Wow, that was all under your deck?" To which I answer, "Yes, along with this:"

Which brings us to the title of this tale. When we went to the dump the next day with the ottoman and the wiffle ball bat, the creepy kangaroo doll and the ton of wood, plus some other assorted things we wanted rid of, they weighed us on the way in and the way out so they'd know how much to charge us. We all guessed at the total weight. Jasun, who was kind enough to help us out with the loading and the unloading, came closest with 900lbs. Ransom and I guessed 700lbs and 400lbs respectively (we were playing Price Is Right rules, so I went low, or at least that's my excuse).

All the crap we left behind weighed 1.47 tons.

The Lukich!

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A list of books

Tagged by Dottie (happy birthday, Dottie!) I agree with her that there isn't enough granularity to this list and the options for marking them. I think there should also be a mark for "assigned reading in school."

Here are the instructions: Look at the list of books below. Bold the ones you’ve read, italicize the ones you want to read, cross out the ones you won’t touch with a 10 foot pole, underline the ones on your book shelf, and asterisk* the ones you’ve never heard of.

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)*
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)*
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire(Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)*
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban(Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth* (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One* (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel) -- I think I actually own this one, but I'm not sure
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible (read parts)
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger) -- I might own this; can't remember
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business* (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller) (started reading it, but then moved and dropped it)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree* (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn* (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners* (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage* (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule* (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness* (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel* (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion* (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance* (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield) I think I still own this one -- I didn't like it, so I may have gotten rid of it
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

If you like the game and you want to play along, tag! You're it!

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Madlib love poem generator

Exerpt from my love poem, which I made at links2love.com.

In the quiet, I listen for the last clang of the day.
My heated nostril leaps to my tennis shoes.
I wait in the moonlight for your secret USB port
so that we may persevere as one,
nostril to nostril,
in search of the magnificient black and mystical supermarket of love.

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One point four seven tons, part II

Continued from Part I...

Immediately after setting up an appointment with No Buggy so that my termite problem would become their termite problem, I decided to get to some things I'd been putting off. The first of these things involved removing the pile of wood that The Lukich (shake fist!) stored in a walled-off crawlspace area in the basement. I wouldn't have known about it, had my stepdad and uncle not seen it while they repaired the rotten floor above the little area. It took some doing, but I finally pried out the piece of wood paneling they'd used as a door to access the area (or the Pit of Despair, as I've taken to calling it). The pit was jam-packed full of stuff.

I expected to find extra wood from woodworking projects and the like. I did not expect to find this:

Or this:

Even this seemed like a bit of a stretch:

Also, I had to wonder if Shaun or Teresa got extra foil stars for behavior, courtesy, or duty if they shoved crap in the walls. My guess is, Teresa got pissed because Shaun had more stars than her and shoved it in there herself.

In addition to the items pictured above, I also found a creepy kangaroo doll with a rotted out face, a TV, bicycle fenders, some kind of weaving apparatus, some clothes, the leaf to a table, the front of a drawer, a wiffle ball bat, one shoe, betting tickets from Portland Meadows (dated in 1993), a bunch of scrap wood of various sizes (some of it showing signs of termite activity), and various other things. It was, in short, a fucking mess in there. Thanks, The Lukich.

Now, however, it's lovely and clean! I think I've uncovered our new guest bedroom!

Having gotten the Pit of Despair cleared out, I moved on to task two, which I will tell you about next time...

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One point four seven tons, part I

It begins as a story about termites, but of course turns into a story about how the previous owners of my house, The Lukich, were completely retarded about little things like, oh... not shoving random crap in crawl spaces and then building walls in front of it. Or not storing rotting wood next to the foundation. You know, little things.

I'll tell this as a multi-part, interactive story and throw in some pictures because it's more fun that way. When you read the words "Terminix" or "Ted," think or say, "Boooo!" (That's "boo" as in "boo hiss," not the "boo" commonly associated with a cure for hiccups.) When you read "The Lukich," look up toward the heavens and shake your fist. When you read "No Buggy," giggle a little and do a happy dance.

It all started off when I saw some signs of termites in the basement. "Uh oh!" I thought. "Termites!" One of the Terminix (boo!) fellows had been in and said we had what looked like a case of dampwood termites that had died off, so I wasn't overly concerned, but since this was in a different area and it looked different, I figured I ought to get it checked out. So I made an appointment with Terminix. In the end, I made three appointments with Terminix on consecutive days before Ted (boo!) finally showed up. He looked briefly down in my basement, found some evidence of a "previous infestation," went outside and ate a doughnut for all I know, and then came back inside to show me brochures.

Ted did not find any live termites or really seem to know very much about termites. He said that the fix for it was to drill holes all around my house and pump chemicals into the soil, even in the spot where my vegetable garden currently is. Ted's entire demeanor seemed to say, "Can I go now?" After ascertaining that he really didn't know what he was talking about, I finally let him go. Since there were no live termites, I figured I had some time to make up my mind.

That Saturday, I decided to tear down the cupboards where the termite activity had been and repair any damaged wood. What I saw was...

Mud tubes! Mud tubes from an active termite colony. Mud tubes from an active colony that Ted failed to find, even though I offered to take the doors off the cupboards while he was there. There were gross little albino termites (they're actually blind worker termites) and some winged ones that looked a bit stunned.

It turns out that termite colonies make me throw up in my mouth a little. So I freaked out, sprayed some Raid, and called No Buggy (yay!). They convinced me that natural chemicals that permanently treat the wood in my house rather than temporarily poisoning the soil around my house was a better solution. Also, John, the inspector from No Buggy not only knows his shit about termites, he actually has a termite colony in an aquarium because he found a queen and got really excited about it. So. Yeah. John and I made an appointment for the following Monday and I decided it was time to get to a couple of tasks I'd been putting off...

This ends part one of my termite story. The next bit has more pictures, so now you have something to look forward to.

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