A catch-all, catch-up post
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It was a happy Father’s Day for me. Ate a nice pancake breakfast made by Kelly, talked to my own dad on the phone this morning, and went on a 10 mile bike ride with the family to Lassiter Falls and back. We stopped by Qdoba for lunch and then cooled off at the house for the rest of the day. Fun, fun!
I’m pretty tired now, but comfortable. Looking forward to a nice, quiet evening reading and then sleeping.
Hope your Father’s Day was fun, too.
We had a great time biking into downtown Raleigh and checking out Stormfest 2011 at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. The museum was packed with people checking out all the storm-related tables ranging from information, science demonstrations, and local weather forecasters from both the National Weather Service and local news stations.
My first stop was the CERT table, where I picked up a schedule showing the upcoming training. I’d heard about CERT a few years ago when I invited the city’s emergency management director to my East CAC meeting. After my mailed application to join CERT came back undeliverable I gave up on the organization. It was only when I met volunteers helping with the tornado recovery in my neighborhood that I pursued them again. I hope to be in the upcoming classes, learning how I can better assist during a disaster.
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I enjoyed the weekend. It began Friday afternoon with Hallie’s violin performance in the Conn variety show. Our girl stood in front of half the school and absolutely nailed her piece. Kelly and I are constantly amazed that the complete confidence our kids have for performing in front of a crowd. She had not one whit of stage fright and played beautifully.
My parents came over to see the performance and Kelly’s parents came down for that and to stay the weekend. We spent Friday evening at Music on the Porch and were ready for bed around 10.
Saturday morning, I cooked pancakes for the family. Then we went to the NC Museum of History to check out a toys exhibit. It was fun looking through the exhibits, many of which I hadn’t seen before.
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It’s not every day that I awake to find police cars and news media in the neighborhood, fortunately. It was because there was an amber alert in our neighborhood, with a 15-year-old girl reported missing early this morning. While the news was at first certainly distressing (especially since I’m acquainted with the family), when I realized who was missing I was almost certain there was no abduction.
It started just after midnight this morning. According to the 911 tape which was released later today, the girl’s mother got texts that indicated her daughter was in mortal danger. The search by police began soon after (followed by the media stake-out). Police put up crime-scene tape around the home and blocked off the road in front of the house, steering the media away from the home.
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The suspect
I’m locked in a doggie arms race when it comes to the garden. Once the plants were in the ground, I surrounded the garden with a two-foot-high wire fence, thinking that that would be enough disincentive for Rocket, our boneheaded Labrador, from wandering in and grazing.
I should’ve known better. At first I surrounded the garden on all sides but one, leaving a three-foot-wide opening to walk in. I was anticipating Rocket would be too lazy to walk all the way around. Needless to say, it didn’t take long to see that this wasn’t working. A few days later, I put up more wire fence to block it all the way around.
Then I saw the fence next to my new fence was dented outwards, as if a big, clumsy, lazy dog had not quite cleared it on his way out. I didn’t do much about that, preferring to keep an eye on it. Turns out I never saw that happen again: it seems the height was enough to keep him from jumping it.
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As I mentioned before, I’ve been enjoying gardening this season: all two and a half weeks of it (ok, ok … I’m obsessed with it). My plants are going like gangbusters with the exception of my jalapeno pepper plants, which seem to be withering. They’re hanging on, though, so I haven’t given up on them yet.
I spend spare time during my day in the garden, pruning the plants. I was delighted to see many of my tomato plants sprouting flowers already. And, thanks to sites like vegetablegardener.com, I now know what kind of care these plants need. The 15 minutes I spent before work this morning out pruning my plants was some of the most delightful time I’ve enjoyed all day. There really is something zen-like about gardening.
After my plants were finally in the ground I saw how much our kids enjoyed gardening. That gave me the idea to start a gardening email list for Raleigh gardeners. After only a few days it had 65 enthusiastic subscribers. It’s now up to 67 and I’m expecting that to rise. If you’d like to join in and share your gardening experience, you can sign up for the list here.
I’ve been spending the past several weekends finally constructing some raised garden beds in the backyard. I’ve had a vegetable garden since we moved in but the ground wasn’t level and I got tired of the water I put on it draining into the yard (and the weeds moving from the yard to the garden). So back in March, I bought several landscape timbers and some spikes and engineered two nice, level beds for this year’s garden.
It took 3 cubic yards of topsoil, 2 cubic yards of compost, and 4 cubic yards of mulch to fill the area but it’s now full. We’ve got several plants in the ground now, courtesy of the N.C. State farmer’s market. I’ve fenced the garden off (mostly) and spent the past two days putting down soaker hoses for watering. My 330-gallon “Lake Turner” rain tank is now hooked to a sprinkler timer, which feeds the soaker hoses every three days. And, because it’s now level, the water in the hoses doesn’t all drain out the lower end. Sweet!
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Around 9 PM last night, I heard a multitude of sirens all converging somewhere close by in the neighborhood. I was curious to know what was going on, so I hopped in the car and drove around until I located the incident. Coming up on a family sobbing in the yard and a half-dozen police cars, an ambulance, and a fire truck nearby, I wondered it this was a domestic dispute, or some hapless individual had gotten shot while buying drugs, or if it was some other dangerous criminal event.
Instead, a police officer let me know that an elderly resident had passed away peacefully. During our chat he remarked at how quiet the neighborhood is, crime-wise. I had to agree, and thanked him for being on the job. The neighborhood hasn’t always been quiet but it has made amazing strides just in the time we’ve been here.
It’s nice to live in a quiet neighborhood.
I went to a talk by author Peter Lovenheim last night. It was sponsored by the Raleigh Citizen Advisory Council, of which I’m a part. Lovenheim wrote a book about his neighborhood and asked his neighbors if he could sleep over to find out more about them. I’ve just gotten his book In The Neighborhood this week and haven’t had a chance to dig into it yet.
I’ve been meaning to write up my thoughts about his talk but I’ve been getting up at 4 AM every morning this week to conduct training for work. Conducting training takes a lot of energy itself, but when it also begins at 4 AM it is especially draining. A full write-up will have to wait until I get a little downtime!
Over the past week, I’ve lifted thousands of pounds of tree limbs; climbed over a rooftop, patching holes; driven through debris-filled streets without functioning traffic signals; and stood in the street, directing traffic. None of these activities injured me the way two harmless-seeming things did.
As I searched for a place to send a blog post Sunday night, I parked the car outside of the Cameron Village library. Stretching across my front seat, I sent my two blog posts while seated in the driver’s seat. Just 45 minutes in this twisted position wound up wrenching my back. Only today did it feel normal!
The other injury took place when I opened the box containing a new extension cord. The edge of the cardboard gave the knuckle of my left middle finger a wicked paper cut! All through the cleanup, I constantly brushed against this cut, aggravating me every time.
I find it funny that out of all the dangerous stuff I’ve done over the past week, this is all I’ve had to deal with. Pretty lucky, if you ask me!
