05-SEP-B-4
THE SECOND STORM AFFECTS MICHAEL AND
MARTHEEN,
AS I WORK ON A LONG-RUNNING WEEKEND AT
DERWOOD
September 24-25, 2005
Martheen
and Don have an unexpected few days at home in Michigan, since they were going
to leave on the autumnal equinox to drive over two days to Houston where they
would set up their next interim for three months. They had the vehicle packed, but had been
advised to postpone the trip until next week, as even the church officers were
evacuating to go north out of the path of Rita.
Michael and Judy have a family of guests—a couple with babies who are
from
The Dutch have proven that, and so have the
people of
I have a call in to Michael and Judy and they are out just now, so I presume that the winds and other storm related events that were picking up when I talked with Judy last afternoon may have stabilized enough that they are out with their unexpected houseguests. I had hoped to be on of the se houseguests in tow weeks, and will try to get Don and Martheen over the two and a half hour drive I had first done with a rental car on flying my way back from India to Houston and being marooned for a couple of days—conveniently just after the twins birth. So, they have the hatches battened down and are waiting for a weekend of weathering to pass, whereas I had spent the last two weekends in the aftermath of the same flooded New Orleans that is catching it again today.
EVENTS IN
AND AROUND DERWOOD AT THE FIRST DAYS OF FALL FOLLOWING THE AUTUMNAL EQUINOX
Yes,
it is fall. It may have been 90* on
Thursday afternoon just before the sun stood still at 6:23 PM over the Equator
to give us the Equinox of twelve hours of both day and night, before it retreats
into the springtime in the Antipodes to shorten our days, lengthen our nights
and cool our temperatures. How I know
this best is that I have had to sweep the decks each day of the falling leaves
already. The withered leaves, formerly
green, of the “Jack-in-the-Pulpit” that Shirl had spotted with its large
cluster of green fruit has now turned bright red as she had predicted, and
others are seen through out the woods. The
salt block Milly had gifted me with at Christmas time is set out along with the
Game Camera and its digital recording and short-lived replaceable batteries
will soon be recording the deer coming to the “crush and run” drive where the white
oak acorns will be falling in profusion and licked up shortly after they
fall. I had used the “Lopper” to cut a
twelve inch segment out of the English Ivy vines, an invasive exotic creeper
formerly crawling all over the front and sides of the brick house and now
threatening to smother the big trees around the house. I have been picking up the downfallen
branches of the tail ends of the southern hurricanes. The Garden Plot is now open at the gate and
the interior trimmed out by the neighbor whom I never have met, while the
Lubers had taken care of the big tree that fell at the time of Katrina’s
destruction further south and just at the time I was called to prepare to leave
for
The house was a mess as I left it,
and it is no different now, despite several days at home to accommodate the
cleanup which still has not happened despite twice daily calls to several
agencies. Now there is a bigger
problem. Despite the air scrubber and
dehumidifier sucking my electricity and blowing scented air around the basement
where nothing is happening at all since the disposal of the two
refrigerator/freezers down there and the disconnection of the small freezer
unit, the big problem is in the middle of the kitchen floor on cracked Mexican
tiles. The disable Viking is standing
propped on rail ties, as its big doors are propped semi-shut although their
hinges are broken. Unfortunately, they
are neither open nor shut, and the stuff in the refrigerator that did not
cascade down onto the floor has rotted and is now making its own stink, far
from the air purifiers in the basement which should have been picked up almost
a month ago. But, still no one has come
to clean the tiles behind and under the refrigerator which is why it had been
pulled out into its precarious position in mid-kitchen floor. The Environmental Solutions Inc. has been
here and filed a report, but the C & C Complete Cleaning Company has not
come back to do the kitchen cleaning for which they had insisted that the refrigerator
be moved and perhaps the tile taken up.
That is no longer a question since the tiles will need to come up to be replaced. It is also no longer a question as to whether
the Viking is salvageable—whatever had seeped into the rubber seals is nothing compared
to its complete destruction. I have an
eight thousand dollar ton of trash in the middle of the kitchen floor. I cannot open the unhinged doors (it has
already had one chance to kill me and I will not try again) to throw out
whatever is rotting in there, and I cannot close it to keep the stench
inside. I have no refrigerator or
freezer in the house at all—after having had four working when I left for
The two new units, refrigerator/freezer and upright freezer for the basement are promised again by Lowes’ for delivery next week. They cannot even predict the delivery of the Viking form the Great Indoors, since they have to order one of the high end units from the manufacturer and they will call me when it arrives at the showroom. They added when I asked about delivery time (for a fee of four hundred dollars—despite signs saying that delivery is “free on any appliance priced over $399"—and I can assure you the Viking unit applies rather handsomely twenty times over---“But that does not apply to ‘built-ins’.” I said that they could carry away the other unit they had delivered just a year ago for that price, and they got to calculating what the disposal additional fee would be for the Viking unit in the middle of the kitchen floor. So, I am at home, unable to cook in the stench of a formerly beautiful kitchen, and with nothing I can pull out of the refrigerator where once I had four units (“redundancy in depth” NASA calls this), but as Debbie Luber had added: “When things go South, they cascade at a rapid pace all their own….”
Now, on the positive side (before I get to a still further negative issue of “home improvements”) I had framed a couple of certificates that I had hoped to hang in the den. It was trouble getting the right frames and I got several extra at the Great Indoors where they had such fun charging me for custom framing once before. I had to cut the Prague Marathon Certificate to get it to fit in the frame, and finally got it suspended and hanging form the hook, not on the “bite” of the picture hook, but on the top of it. Trying to move it, it got half pinned on the hook, and when I turned away it crashed through the rack of marathon medals and the picture frame broke on the floor. I had to go back and get another new frame and might have tired again but for an interval event. While in bed, I heard a crash and figured that the repaired but unacceptable picture frame had toppled off the wall again. In the morning I discovered the glued and sprung open picture frame still hanging on the wall---it was the marathon medal bar and all its medals in a tinkling cascade of wind chimes that had twisted of the wall. So, reframing several of the certificates, I started over with several anchor plastic bolts in each end Finally, the marathon medal bar is up again and the marathon certificates are with it, while the Explorer’s Club membership hangs on another wall and the missions certificates are framed and in the book case.
Now what about my oak pedestal mounts
for red fox and wolverine which I was going to have doors cut into and a
lighted set of shelves put in each with a glass door for the photos and skulls
that would be displayed within these large decorative but non-functioning pedestals. I called Gina Tyler, taxidermist, to ask if
the Tur hide and skull had arrived yet for the full mount. I had pictures of the Tur and its habitat put
together for her at whatever day we come over to collect the pedestal
mounts. “No, nothing had been see (she
could have said “Hide nor Hair”) of the Tur.
So, I called Jan, mother of Patrick Montgomery to ask if he had sent
them on. She apologized for his
post-hunt behavior in Baku, then said that Patrick was out for the week, but he
had told here the at the person George Sevich was sending to the airport at new
York at JFK to meet the plane and clear the trophies in was not there, and his
incoming flight was late. So, the Tur
trophy to be directed toward Eastern Shore Taxidermy on the day of its arrival never left
And, now as for school. I am so far behind I do not even know what
the assignments for the “Deliverables” might be and participated in a Conference
Call, only to learn we are in a small team to get together for an
“organizational Diagnosis.” For a problem in a company in Indianapolis and a
small team of us should go out there and look it over to come back with a
report. I will earn when and if this is
possible for me to join, since I will be leaving right after the class weekend
on October 9, after tapes and handouts from the missed weekend two weeks ago
when I was in New Orleans will be forwarded to me by mail. I will leave to go to visit Michael Judy and
the twins, and will arrange to have Don and Martheen drive over from
A
PHOTOGRAPHIC BONANZA—
“OPERATION
LIFELINE” OVERFILLS ALBUM “X” OF 2005
I have just started up Volume XI of
the photo albums of 2005, and there may be many more still to come I had
printed the discs photos at Ritz camera last night and stayed for dinner at the
Panda for Lemon chicken—a far better idea to dine out than to return home to a
refrigeration-less house and suffer the kinds of smells I had to clean out at
both the Meadowcrest Hospital and the Lincoln Elementary School. But, this also allowed the one hour they
needed to print and additional 150 pictures in addition to the two Photo Works
rolls of film I have sent to you for access.
So, after