Cleaning house

I had a great trip out to Rochester. “Hung out” with Zach for a week. His pull-up bar is the centerpiece of the living room:

We got a lot of house cleaning done. When we finished, we discovered a new room in the basement:

We filled up a big dumpster and took 600+ lbs of electronics to recycling:

Lots of memorable items ended up in the dumpster, but I took pictures of some of them, as photos are more portable and last longer. Like this photo of the clay model Laurie and I made when we were designing the house. It had survived several big earthquakes:

The garage also got a good cleaning. We filled up an old miata with tons of metal to recycle. It will probably need some help getting to the recycling center:

In the process, we un-buried Zach’s prized super-souped-up sports car. Not really a practical daily driver, as the doors don’t open and it requires ramps to get in/out of our drive:

But it is fast! He took me for a quick spin. This is just before he punched it for a few seconds … that is all the runway the frontage road (and my stomach) could afford:

Enjoyed meeting Zach’s friend Emma:

They took me to the climbing gym. They are both accomplished climbers. Emma started climbing to help her with a fear of heights!

Zach went all the way up and down this wall using just the crack and none of the other holds. And then he got stuck on the ceiling. Emma tried to rescue him, but her head got stuck there too:

I, on the other hand, played it safe on easier routes:

We cleaned up the yard a bit, creating a big brush pile that Zach turned into a big bonfire:

Straightened up a retaining wall and put a new cap on the deck railing:

Did some muddling in preparation for painting. Made the mistake of destroying some sheet-rock by taking down a well glued cork board:

I spent a few days at IBM, checking out renovations and attending a dept meeting:

Also spent a few hours ferrying some of one of Zach’s friend’s exotic collection of Zelda character sculptures to his new house.

Helen and doggies were glad to get me back home. In my absence, Helen took up sewing, and girl dog got her first period, which even to a fixed dog is apparently hard to resist:

Helen and I got these clever Oura smart rings that track blood flow and acceleration with enough accuracy that they can distinguish 3 different levels of sleep. I took a self-portrait in the shiny ceramic reflection:

I talk about them a bit in this a video tour I made of my home office:

Closing photo. Doggy and Helen got so tired one night that somehow neither of them minded this sleeping arrangement:

Bruce

Unlucky frog

Better version of this post over on Medium:

  https://medium.com/bruce-photos/unlucky-frog-3e2ac4730c6f


We had 10" of rain this last week, complements of tropical storm Cindy. In the thick of it, I toured our backyard trails to see how they were holding up:

Turns out there was a tornado touching down 5 miles from here while I was out traipsing about! After the rain lets up, we get about a week of nice post-storm creek action:

Those creek fountains are really pretty at night:

I did a how-to video on those fountains:

We did a “Honey, I shrunk the car”, selling our ’06 Subaru and switching to Irina’s ’11 Yaris, which fits in our garage much better:

I spent most of this month getting Irina’s house ready to put on the market:

One of the challenges was to find a home for the acres of alternative medicine supplies and equipment. Before/after shots of her pharmacy:

I don’t believe in homeopathy, but Irina deeply did, so in her honor, we donated 300 lbs of supplies to homeopaths across the country :

She had transformed an extra shower into a mini-library … I’m transforming it back, as potential buyers probably prefer showering:

The shed had the overflow supplies. Final counts included 20 umbrellas and over 30 spatulas:

The garage is the biggest challenge. We are having an estate sale in a few weeks, then putting the house on the market:

I discovered this unlucky frog in Irina’s backyard door jamb. Gotta wonder what he was thinking when he did not jump out of the way when that door was closing:

Countering yucky squished frog image with with a few of backyard beauties:

Next week I’m off to MN to visit with Zach and co-workers. Will be prepping the Rochester house for the market also. Hopefully we won’t be dealing with 20 umbrellas.

Bruce