Weeds and grass roots

August 17, 2013 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 26 Comments

The front yard — The House Back East™ gets a front-yard makeover.

The rain has abated for the moment and the home-improvement projects have resumed with a vengeance.

The deluge reminded us of just how badly the garage roof leaks — it had become less of a garage and more of a free car wash — and so the roof got replaced yesterday.

The back yard looked like a scene from “Platoon” before Herself and I spent an afternoon defoliating it by hand.

Also ongoing is landscaping at The House Back East™, which had developed a bumper crop of noxious weeds during our extended monsoon season. The front yard has gotten a colorful layer of mulch, and the much larger back yard is awaiting similar treatment.

You want a reminder of how feeble you have become in your dotage, spend an afternoon doing squats while pulling a metric shit-ton of weeds. The next morning, assess the plummeting property value of your crumbling temple of the soul. Comparables from the immediate vicinity probably won’t help much, if your wife is seven years younger than you, lifts weights and does yoga.

Speaking of things getting fixed up, a group of local investors has transformed the old Ivywild School, shuttered due to declining enrollment, into a mixed-use development that houses Bristol Brewing, Old School Bakery, the Meat Locker deli and any number of other worthwhile operations.

“This is a celebration that says, hey, if people work together, this is what can happen,” partner Mike Bristol told The Gazette. “We can do this again. Not me personally, but as a community. We can do other things like this.”

Yes, please. And thank you.

Welcome to the working week

July 22, 2013 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 26 Comments

It’s Monday. Know how I can tell? There’s a plumber in the driveway and my Visa card just spontaneously combusted.

One of the few downsides to living in an old neighborhood like ours is that the plumbing is even older than the residents. I think Hammurabi laid the original pipe, and the Romans handled most of the maintenance (But other than that, what have the Romans ever done for us?) until the Vandals came along and ensured that the pumps would no longer work by appropriating the handles.

Anyway, the lone bathtub at The House Back East™ has become something of a wading pond, and a plumber is over there panning for gold as we speak. I expect he’ll find some.

Stumble To Work Day

June 26, 2013 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments

Java stop — The point of getting out of bed in the morning.

It’s Bike To Work Day here in Colorado, but it seemed silly to go out to the garage to fetch a bike for the 27-step slog from bed to coffeemaker to iMac. So I walked instead. Sorry ’bout that.

I don’t see a word about BTWD on either of the websites attached to the newspapers that grace our fair community, surprise, surprise. In fairness, there are other stories to be covered, like the Supremes wiping their black-robed asses with the Voting Rights Act, Fort Cartoon losing a brigade and our summer-tourism piggy bank roasting on a very big spit.

Still, if more of us were encouraged to cycle to work instead of firing up the family battlewagon, maybe we would be less inclined to build our homes 30 miles from the cube farm, up in Yahweh’s kindling pile.

Sometimes a grate notion

September 28, 2012September 29, 2012 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

The bathroom grate — What a grate way to wake up on a September morning.

A scorched, musty smell and a low rumble at 5 a.m. told me that fall was indeed here, as the furnace kicked on for the first time in months.

It was something of a shock to the system, as always. It was only a few short days ago that I was motoring in a fog of my own sweat through 105-degree heat in Bullhead City, Ariz., for the dubious privilege of chasing bike parts and Scotch around Sin City, which was only a half-dozen degrees cooler.

I’m not sorry to bid adieu to a truly awful summer, but I’d sure like to hold onto sunny-and-70 for a stretch. Autumn is my favorite time to ride a bike, and I’m not ready to pull on my big-boy pants quite yet.

Fire on the mountain

June 24, 2012 ~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 4 Comments

Waldo Canyon from Palmer Park — The Waldo Canyon fire as seen earlier today from Palmer Park — which is now closed to keep it from getting lit up, too.

The mercury is knocking on the century mark down here in Bibleburg, but it’s a whole lot hotter in them thar hills.

Manitou Springs got cleared out last night and early this morning, and the Air Force is weighing in with a couple of C-130s that can drop 3,000 gallons of fire retardant in less than five seconds, according to The Denver Post. Two more are inbound from Wyoming.

Down here in the flats it’s oddly quiet. Lots of folks are watching the fire the way a bird eyes a snake, taking cellphone pix and muttering to themselves.

We’ve gotten a few calls from friends and family who wonder if we’ve been forced out onto the open road with only a few simple possessions and the menagerie enjoying a Romney ride atop the Subaru.

Nope. Herself is still at large in Mouse Country, I’m stuck in an un-air-conditioned office wrangling word count and the critters are trying to find cool spots to stretch out. Good luck with that. It’s not exactly fur-coat weather, is what I’m saying.

Still, there are worse things. We know a few folks who’ve been chased out of their homes by this bloody fire, and a few of them are staying next door until things cool off a bit. They may be waiting a while — there’s nothing but sun, heat and wind in the forecast for the next 10 days. Y’all start doing your rain dances now, please. And thank you.