#68 - Mom and dad arrive! - Aug 9, 2012

This morning I got something odd done. We had a windstorm about a week back, and I noticed a tree had fallen in the forest. Nobody heard it. Ha ha. Ha ha. I had thought it was in the neighbor’s side, but later inspection revealed the trunk was on our side of the fence. I would have to take it down. I also needed to spend a little time on the pool, and check out Katrina’s van. She calls it Big Blue. I call it Smurfette.


Did a quick backwash of the pool filter, added some shock, and started up the filter running again. It appears to have more pressure out of the jets than it has for a while, so maybe the clogged pipe is getting better. I don’t know.

The tree presented an interesting problem. I went up to it to see how close to fallen it actually was. I thought it was a healthy tree that had snapped. Instead it was a rotten tree that had snapped. The upper portion of the tree had lodged in another tree, and the bottom portion was sitting on the 8’ stub of the trunk. I decided to give my ratchet straps a try. Might not have been the smartest thing ever, but it wasn’t the dumbest.

I untangled 3 of them and hooked them all together around the trunk I wanted to come down. I wrapped them around the trunk of the nearest tree as a base, and then tightened them. One by one, increasing tension on all 3 ratchets. When it seemed I wouldn’t be able to get more pressure out of them, the trunk started to move. And once it started, it moved quickly, and there was a 40’ section of trunk that was 30’ in the air and I suddenly realized that I was not completely out of reach.

I ran like a crazy man in a movie (or Laura Ingalls when she was mad in Little House), tripped on a branch, and fell. By that time the tree had fallen and stopped moving. I was fine, and I had accomplished my goal. I had felled a tree, my first since I was 11 years old and did it for a Boy Scout achievement. I don’t remember which one.

Then I check on Katrina’s van. Coolant level is fine, oil level is fine and the color is good. The temp gauge does not have any numbers on it, so I couldn’t give it an objective judgment. Then I started the engine and looked around to see what I could see. The engine sounded normal and looked normal from the top. I looked under the car for leaks and things, and found the smoking gun bag. Katrina had said that the car started smelling bad while they were parked at a grocery store. What had happened was that a shopping bag had melted to the exhaust manifold. It was still stuck there.

Smurfette is fine – she has a little smoking problem, but she’ll be fine.

My morning complete, I took a shower and left for the office. It was a good workday – finished some things, started some others, and found that my comanager has a problem to deal with. I don’t envy him, but it must be done. We interviewed a really good candidate for an open job we have, and we both knew that he was a winner. Usually we go outside and conference about these decisions, but we know each and our cues well enough now that we know when we’re both happy with someone.

So we told him right there that he had the job, and he left a very happy guy. So were we. Now we only have 1 spot to interview for. And I also found out that someone else we had given an offer to accepted, so he is officially in the door now. It’s about time we start to finish this hiring process. It’s been a long haul, and we’ve got to get the new people in the door so we can get them trained and relieve some of the pressure on our more experienced engineers.

I left at 3 and caught the train down from Beacon. Then the bus from Harlem to LaGuardia. In the mean time, I found out that mom and dad’s flight was severaly delayed by weather in Atlanta, so they would depart Atlanta until an hour after they were supposed to arrive in NY. So I spent a long evening in the airport, blogging and playing games on my MP3 player and computer. And FB on my phone. Yikes. My life has a lot of gadgets.

I was waiting for them at concourse D. And then mom called. They had come out and were in baggage claim. I had never seen them walk by. And then I realized that I was at terminal B, concourse D, and I should have been at terminal D. I hopped on a bus and found them. Then we had trouble with the city bus because my Metro card ran out of cash, so we had to find a change machine. We finally got on the bus, and that put us solidly on the road. The bus ride was easy, we got off in Harlem at 11pm.  We walked into the station, hopped on the elevator, and got seats on the platform.  A relaxing 20 minute wait later, we popped into our train and sat for an hour, got to Beacon at 12:30, and drive home.  It ended up as a 10 hour odyssey to pick them up, but should have been much simpler.  It worked out.  They got settled in Christian's room, and we all went to sleep, after Aria popped out of her room and gave them hugs.

It was a good night.  And finally over.