We Found Good Help This Week - Home Grown

Jay and Dad in the sky!

<-We needed to clear this out
Jay and Dad's lumber rack (patent pending)

<--- Jay and Andrew - Church friends from elementary school days in St. Louis

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For the 1st two weeks of January, 2007

HIGHLIGHTS

1. We were thrilled this past week to have Jay, our youngest son, visiting with us from Puerto Rico. He is between semesters at school and was able to come for a visit. OSHA Babe stepped into a phone booth and came out as "Mom" as she baked cookies, made brisket, fussed over him, and got to nurture a while. Old Dad, on the other hand, hearkened back to early pioneer days and "bonded" with Jay, i.e., put Jay to work.

.....Jay is a hard worker and tackled everything that was thrown his way. In the first picture above, notice him 30+ ft in the air scraping and painting the highest point of the house. The setting up of the scaffolding and getting it down would not have happened without him. Additionally, we needed to clear the house in preparation for the sheetrocking that hopefully comes soon. To do that, Jay and I made storage racks for lumber that was in the two back rooms of the house. Pictures 2 and 3 above show the "before" condition of the room and the storage area during its construction stage. Jay worked right along side and we got it done. For his effort, he put a bit of $$ in his pocket that should help with rent and living expense in Puerto Rico.

.....We got a lot done while Jay was here. Son, it wouldn't have happened without you. Thank you.

2. Three people came by to gather information for completing the sheetrocking. Only one has given me a bid. I hope to have a decision this coming week and move forward with that.

3. The plumbing saga continues. My neighbor and I worked together for about 10 hours over the past 2 weekends and ran into some surprises. Fortunately, we have not connected the new water supply lines and did not flood the house. What we discovered is that there are some mysteries about which pipes go where and how they are connected (or not) and that I'd better get someone who can work on this full time until it gets finished. Scrimping on the plumbing work is not a smart thing to do.

4. Good News! The electrical work is essentially complete. I need to buy two motion sensitive fixtures that will be mounted outside (one to light up the driveway, the other to light up the back yard) and call Jimmy back to install them along with the outlet for the microwave that will go in after the kitchen cabinets are mounted. With that, we will be 100% done with what we asked Jimmy to do.

5. Cat Mystery. We seem to be bad luck for the neighborhood cats. First, Little Leo injures a leg to unknown causes and has it amputated. As of press time, he's still convalescing at one of our neighbor's sister's house. He needs a permanent home. Any ideas?

....Our second domestication, Miss Blackie, has disappeared. After returning to the house following New Year's Day, we have literally seen neither hide nor hair of her. Conspiracy theories abound. The most popular stories are 1)killed by the pair of racoons that roam the neighborhood and 2)abducted by someone who wanted a beautiful black cat with white boots on her front feet and white stockings on her back feet.

....The other cats in the neighborhood are meowing among themselves and are wary of getting too close to the Brockmans. Even OSHA Babe is suspicious when I offer her Whisker Lickers snacks. (But they are fish and chicken flavored!)

6. Visitors - The young man alongside Jay in the fourth picture is Andrew Roland. His family attended the same church as us in Ballwin, MO where he and Jay were Bible Class buddies from early elementary school days. Andrew and his wife are teachers here in San Antonio. He and Jay seemed to enjoy visiting as adults for a little while on Saturday.

NEXT STEPS

1. KITCHEN CABINETS are scheduled to be installed on Tuesday. Robert, the cabinet guy, came by for fine tuned measurements and indicated that he's ready for installing this coming week. Hopefully, we'll have pictures soon.

2. Let's make a decision on the sheetrock bid and get it done.

3. I've got to make some calls and begin the process of plumbing bids. This is standing in the way of finishing bathrooms. Stay tuned.

4. The Big One of 2007, i.e., winter storm, is upon us. We have freezing weather in the forecast for the next 2-3 days. We need to get the oranges picked. This year's crop has been a good and tasty one. I've eaten so many oranges that I may never get another cold.

..... The horticulturist in me Googled "Pruning Citrus Trees" and will likely do that in February in an effort to get the tree to a more manageable size.