Stump removal

Today we had to spend the morning at the apartment waiting for people - both the postage meter guy and the guys delivering the washer and dryer were scheduled to come in the morning.  Actually, the washer and dryer was delivered before 8:30, so that was good.  It was a little scary seeing them drag this up our rickety stairs, but they had good straps and obviously were used to doing it - although I'm sure that not many of these units are sold and it appears to be very heavy.  But it will fit well in the kitchen area and then - no more Laundromat!  These days, nothing comes with appliances - not even a power cord! - so tomorrow we will go out to Lowe's or Home Depot and get what we need to get it working.  And not a minute too soon - we're running out of the basics!

New washer/dryer unit!

Then the postage meter guy came.  What I thought would be a quick, 10 minute thing turned out to be almost 2 hours!  When I called the company in Cleveland and told them I was moving, they sent someone to the house to take the meter out of service.  They gave me the contact info up here and said I should contact them when I moved and they would set it back up.  Well, of course, when this guy came he said he should have just removed it from that post office, not taken the meter out of service.  So he had to go through the meter company to try and get it put back in service.  That required a ton of wait time.  His next appointment was in Schenectady, so it wasn't like he could go down the street and come back.  So we heard all about his rebuilding of his VW Rabbit, his grandparents' cabins, and actually some kind of cool history of the area.  He said that the Great Sacandoga  Lake was actually made by flooding an old town way back when - kind of like they were talking about doing with Zoar down in Ohio's Amish country.  This is the lake that is now 42 square miles.  They use part of it to regulate the Hudson River, he was saying.  Eventually, he got my meter up and running - one more step to being back in business here.

 

 

Then I had to set off to pick up printing and Jim headed off to the land.  His focus yesterday and today was to clear the area by the road where they are going to put the pole.  They had to cut down 2 trees and so Jim had to remove those stumps.  This process was nothing like when Jim cut down the dead tree and was able to easily remove the stump with the excavator.  These were huge stumps and they have grown to be part of the cool stone walls that surround the property.  Jim discovered that these walls go down far beneath the road surface - obviously, since they were there way before the roads!  But the boulders are huge - he has moved tons of rocks so far.

 

This is the first stump that he removed on Thursday - that's incredible!  Looks as big as the Bobcat!

That's huge!

Today when I stopped, this is the stump that he was working on.  You can see the giant boulders.  Jim had to attack the stump both from the lot and by going out onto the street. 

Stubborn stump

I was there when he finally broke it free and got it moving out of the giant hole it was in!

 

Success!!

 

 

 

You can see how big this stump was!

 

I left Jim as we was going to work on getting the stump on the Bobcat and then up the hill to where he has a pile of stumps that we'll deal with later.  I ventured off to the mall to get a haircut - I was starting to look very scary!  But not an easy task - I had trouble finding a place.  I finally went into the mall and found a salon.  Certainly not quite the same service I was used to back home, but it was much cheaper and, besides Jim, no one is going to really see me anyway!  It's a little short but it's fine.  While I was talking with the stylist, she said she had just gotten divorced and moved and we got to talking about storage units.  Earlier in the day, I had gotten a hold of some place in Ballston Spa that was an archiving facility that could store my books.  The monthly price wasn't too outrageous but there were quite a few upfront fees you had to pay because only their people could pack the materials into the unit.  The stylist told me about a place right near the mall that offered climate control units.  So I went by and got the number and I'll call them tomorrow.  Time is ticking - I have to find a new home for my books by the end of the month.

 

It was later than I had hoped by the time I got home - I had hoped to have enough time to go to a bigger grocery store while I was at the mall.  But it was fine - we'll be heading out that way tomorrow to pick up washer & dryer parts.  So Jim and I had a normal enchilada Friday night - back to some normalcy!