Remember Remember Ye Randoms November

Mt. Vernon St, around the corner from our house.

'Sup, players.

This month encompassed the usual post-Halloween/pre-Christmas two-week time span, different from previous years with Abby contracting Covid and being forced to quarantine more or less the first two weeks of the month.  Fortunately, she was able to stay on top of her school work and, aside from missing a couple Pom performances, she didn't lose out on a whole hell of a lot.

Besides that, it was a pretty typical November.  A lot of leaves, a lot of moving totes of Holiday decorations around, etc.  I'll cut this short and just let you folks check out some of the random day-to-day nonsense that went down these last four weeks.

Enjoy. . . 

After a couple hours blowing and raking leaves into giant piles around the backyard - our oak and maple trees were particularly brutal this month - the dogs came out to run around and the girls decided they should bury Samson in one of the leaf piles.  See if you can spot the fat sum'bitch. . .

The girls 'helping' me with the leaves.

Ye another mountain of dead tree parts, ready for the city collection.

Since it was abnormally warm out still (low-60s), Kris decided she'd string the lights along the roof.  We relented and let the girls climb atop the house, too.

Doing it this way is much, much faster than the old way I used to do it (standing on a ladder and slowly moving down the edge of the roof.)

Selfie on the roof.

Can honestly say I haven't seen this perspective of our backyard before.

Abby's artistic abilities have exploded this year - she draws all the time and has gotten really, really good.

Trying to clear out space in my beer fridge in order to make room for the usual Holiday/Winter stouts, I've been attacking my fall beers and ciders with a vengeance lately.

Just a week later, it looked like I hadn't done a damn thing the previous weekend.

I sincerely hate raking leaves more than shoveling snow.  There, I said it.

One Saturday a few of us dads all decided to hang out and, as usual, grill up a bunch of meat.  Mitch smoked a bunch of beef jerky, which was really awesome.

Candy-bacon wrapped salmon rolls with jalapeno cream cheese.  I didn't try this - I was pretty full at the time - but it sure looked awesome.

This was not as good as I had hoped.

These dads will put down some food, folks.

Elk burgers are not my favorite.  If I live the rest of my life without ever again eating elk, I think I'd be okay.

Abby and Ella, practicing some of their pom routines in the backyard.

Kris bought a new phone this month, and so of course selfies were in order so she could test out her new camera.

One Saturday morning, the Northeast Pom Team marched in Midland's annual Santa Parade.  We drove down by Kroger and staked out a solid viewing spot along with the Johnsons.  You can spot Abby in the center directly behind the Northeast banner.

Following the parade, us and the Johnsons went down to Kris' church - Midland's First United Methodist Church - to help out with their annual Roll Bake fundraiser.  Yours Truly manned the ovens, which was way more complicated than you would think when baking hundreds of pans of cinnamon rolls. . .

The girls, taking a break from their kitchen duties at one point, playing a not-at-all-church-appropriate game of Hangman in the church basement.

The dining room, where hundreds of cinnamon roll pans were laid out to cool before being wrapped up and labeled.

Later that evening, we went over to the Griffin residence for our annual Friendsgiving feast with our usual Midland group of families.

Not surprisingly, the dads get to eat last.

A bunch of hens, clucking.

The Real Housewives of Midland

A bunch of dads, cluttered about the kiddie table.

Later on, we drifted into the basement to play cards and get away from the wives and children.

Erik, Lonnie, Ryan and I at the end of the night, throwing some darts.

Watson was apparently trying to dislodge a bit of rawhide that was stuck in his mouth.  Dogs are dumb.

Juuuuuuuust about there.  By the end of the year, I guarantee she is gonna be taller than her mom.

Abby has been really into guitar lately:  she's been obsessed about picking up the bass and wants to practice on a full-size fret board.

Kris was out shopping with friends and Abby was away at Great Wolf Lodge one weekend, so Alayna and I were left to fend for ourselves.  When I asked her what she wanted for dinner, she said she wanted a microwavable meal with chicken nuggets and mashed potatoes.  I'll take it.

The first snow of the year, a day after Thanksgiving.  Even though it was a brief dusting that soon melted away, it was a fitting for the arrival of the Holiday Season.

Samson will dig into garbage cans - especially bathrooms ones - in order to dig out stuff to chew on, and he always insists on bringing his newly-found treasures out into the living room to chew on.  So when someone comes home, we first check the living room floor to see if he's gotten into anything.  This is his default defensive move whenever he gets busted for this - to lie down on his back/side and look ashamed.  He's an asshole.

Alayna and I playing Mortal Kombat 11 on the PS4.  She's been playing it with her friends lately, and so when she challenged me I of course had to take her to school.  She's looking down at her phone here so she can find out how to do fighting combos.  Needless to say, I slaughtered her.

Kicking off the Holiday Season with this Christmas classic.  Can't go wrong with the Griswolds.

- Brian

Chim-Chim-eny

Hey players.

So, a couple years back, when Kris and I were closing on our house, we paid to have a home inspection done.  The guy that our realty office hired for the job seemed like a nice enough guy, and when he went through the house he really only pointed out a couple different issues:  an outdoor outlet on the back patio had no juice, some of the drop ceiling tiles could be replaced for aesthetic purposes (whatever), and, lastly, there were some hairline cracks in a few of the bricks on our chimney.

Now, this last one was obviously the only real issue that he pointed out that Kris and I both felt was necessary to address, and when asked about it the inspector said that putting some 'sealant' on it would do the trick, nothing too serious.

Well I'm here to tell you folks, that that man was a complete f***ing idiot.

True, we put off sealing up the cracks for a couple years, but the problem was far more severe than a few cracks in a handful of outer bricks (which is what homeboy said the issue was.)  Nay, a couple months ago we started noticing that our chimney's bricks were starting to flake off.  Not in huge quantities or anything, but regularly enough that it was disconcerting.  Kris and I hired one of our handymen, and later the Chimney Doctor (Midland's local chimney expert) to come out and look at it, and both guys said the same thing:

Your chimney needs to be replaced.  It's more or less crumbling due to water seeping into the mortar.  Which the inspector would've seen for himself if he had gotten his old, decrepit ass onto a ladder and up to our roof to see the thing close-up.

Anyway.

We had a couple ways forward with this.

• Option 1:  tear down the entire chimney, all the way to the ground, and rebuild it.  
• Price Tag: about $6,000.  
• Option 2:  put up vinyl siding along the outside , thereby stopping moisture from seeping into the bricks and stopping future damage.  
• Price Tag:  about $600.

Not surprisingly, we went with Option 2.

John knows how to do this already, having done so to his own chimney (which is twice as big as ours), so he - along with my mom and brother, Jeff - spent a few mornings over the course of the last month or so encasing our chimney in vinyl siding.  I'm sooo glad we don't have to worry about this bullshit anymore - I hate owning a house sometimes.

Let me show you folks how this all went down. . .

May 18th

The first step in this process was to affix a series of boards to the outside of the chimney, first with masonry cement, then with a nail gun.   This was, by far, the slowest and most difficult part of the entire job.

Jeff operated the saw while I measured out boards and ran supplies up the ladder.

You had to frame each face of the chimney with these boards so that later on in the process we could nail on the various pieces of vinyl siding.  A definite pain in the ass.

A couple hours in, we realized the nail gun we were using - some random .22 caliber pipe thing that shot nails through the board and into the masonry with the sound of a gunshot - wasn't driving the nails in deep enough, so we had to send Jeff to Lowe's to pick up a crap-load of masonry screws and switch tactics.  This required drilling in screws with three different guns:  one drill gun for the board, one for the brick, and one for the screw.  Ridiculously time-consuming.

The impromptu construction site. . .

John ended up staying on top of the roof for the majority of this chimney job, with Jeff and I taking turns running stuff up the ladders.

(Mom ended up on the roof quite a bit as well.)

The framing complete, we called it a day.

May 26th

About a week later, we all reconvened on a Sunday morning to throw up the siding (which proved to be a FAR easier job than securing the framing to the brickwork.)

Jeff and I took turns cutting the vinyl according to John's specifications, and the only real pain in the ass with this stage of the job was cutting shorter panels for the sides of the chimney (as it naturally decreased in length the higher you went up the chimney, and you only had about a 1/4" margin of error.)

Working behind this bush that hugs the side of the chimney was definitely challenging. . .

Alas, we had to stop work for the day once we ran out of siding, which was fine since we couldn't really finish the chimney anyway seeing how we had to order a cap for it. . . and that had to be measured after the siding was up.

June 23rd

Nearly a month later (it took awhile for the cap - pictured here - to arrive), we once again met up on a Sunday morning to put up the last of the vinyl siding and affix the cap to the top of the chimney.  This time we were without Jeff, but that was okay seeing how the job itself was only a fraction of what the previous two days were.

Kris - all dolled up for Church - hands up a coffee to Mom on the roof.

While John finished the siding on top of the roof, I ran it up the rest of the chimney's sides.

Mom has a coffee break while John went out for last-minute supplies.

The cap in place, all siding complete.

Preparing to pack up, a couple hours later.  With everything in place, the last thing they did was hammer down that corner you see sticking up, there.  Again, a little more labor intensive than hiring someone else to do it, but waaaaay cheaper.   I f***ing hate being a home owner. . .

- Brian