9.24.2013

Another very foggy morning. I took this picture when I went to the post office about 8:00.  Jim had left even earlier to go to the lot to open the gate for the sand delivery.  He called me 5 minutes or  so after he left and said as soon as he got down the street a bit, the fog all lifted and it was a bright blue sunny sky.  These nice days and cool nights make for foggy mornings right by the Hudson River.

Very foggy morning

I had to go into Saratoga for a dr appointment and some errands and then spent the afternoon working on a fire school mailing.  But I went and visited the land late afternoon...Jim had about 150' done of the trench. Looking good!

Great progress on the trench

And this is our first official construction delivery - sand!  This has to go in the bottom of the trench before the line can be put in.

9.23.2013

We started the day by going down to the barn. The plan was to pick up the outfeed table and then set it up in the book storage unit. Of course, that's easier said than done since the table top weighs a ton!

Here's the truck full of all my books awaiting transport to their new home.

I guess I'm a book hoarder

We got the table on the truck and then Jim spent some time reorganizing a bit. We still have lots of tools to bring back from the Ohio unit that have to fit in the barn. And of course the barn will soon be the home of other people's classic cars so we have to scrunch to fit in our allotted spaces.

Right down from the barn is this orchard.  We've been watching the apples on the trees ripen on all the trips. Today we stopped - it was small, probably family owned, but very cool. They had honey crisp apples - our favorite - so we had to take those home, along with some pumpkin butter.  I'm sure this will be the first of many stops here.

Knight Orchards

Jim's thinking about apple cake!

Then it was back to unload the books.  I felt bad for Jim because he did the lifting of the table by himself. Thankfully this place has nice carts and giant elevators that made it easier.  

Here's Jim with one of the 5 loaded carts it took to get all the books in.

And this is after we're done - still plenty of room, which I'm very excited about. There's lots at the apartment that can go in here and make things less congested there.

Back at the lot, Jim had talked to the guy about sand and it was supposed to be delivered this afternoon. But he never came - so now it's scheduled for tomorrow morning.

Meanwhile, he went back to trenching.  He probably has 100 feet done now.

It's slow going because he has to stop every few feet and get the big rocks out by hand. Look at the piles of rocks next to the trench!

9.22.2013

Wow...the first day of autumn.  Hard to believe - although here it seems like the leaves are changing daily.  It really makes us excited to see what it's going to look like here in a week or two.  But as Jim and I were leaving church this morning, we said that just a week ago we had just gotten in from the trip with a truckload of furniture.  And then Jim had to make another trip back and forth from NY to OH.  Things are feeling much more comfortable and homey here - and Jim made some good progress at the land working on clearing the area by the rock wall.  I think that we have made a lot of progress in a short period of time.

Today I ventured out again to Saratoga to drop off a flyer at Staples, return some things to Lowe's and go to the grocery store.  Each trip feels a little more normal although it will certainly take me some time to get used to it all!  But Jim and I have always said that this area never felt foreign.  Sure, it's different but it always felt comfortable and we were always sure that this would be a great place to call home.

We are a little sad that we can't watch Browns games here.  Despite what one Time Warner rep told me, there doesn't appear to be a package that we can get at all.  We should be able to get NBA League Pass and watch the Cavs, but no Browns.  And...ta da...they won today!  At home, Jim can stream it so we can listen to it online, but the radio app won't work so you can listen to it live.

Jim and I met up after our respective errands (he went and picked up the truck and did a few things to it) and we headed to the Corinth storage unit.  He put some things away that we had brought back from our last trip the barn and then we emptied out the book storage unit.  Tomorrow we plan on going to the barn and picking up his outfeed table.  Then we'll go to the new storage space we got and start setting that up.  We know that will take some adjustments - there's plenty of things here at the apartment that we can put in there if we have room - but it will be a good start.  That way we can close out of that other storage unit.

Happy Fall!

9.21.2013

Although it's very unoriginal, now that we are here and busy every day with a multitude of things - and just wait until spring! - I'm going to just date the posts instead of a fun name.  Although there will probably be some fun names sometimes!

This morning Jim and I headed out to the mall to get parts to install the washer and dryer.  We decided to swing in and look at the climate controlled storage unit first.  Wow - quite the complex.  They have 1000 units in two different buildings and it's just rows and rows of units of different sizes.  It's nice because they all have open tops with just a screen over them so that air can circulate.  It's extremely secure - you have a computer chip key fob that lets you in only to your floor.  You can't even take the elevator to another floor.  They have easy access to back the truck in, they have carts to help you take things back/forth to your unit, and everything is recorded by cameras.  We decided to get a 10'x5' unit, so it is 10' wide in front and only 5' deep, which allows easier access to things.  We are going to put Jim's heavy maple outfeed table in there so we can stack two levels.  I'm really excited that we found a place.  It's only $25/month more than the cruddy outside unit they are in now.  We hate to pay for yet one more storage unit, but this should be really nice.  Hopefully it will be big enough that we can even put some things from the apartment in there too and free up some space in here.

We got the things we needed at Lowe's and Jim is hooking up the washer and dryer now.  Of course, since nothing is really ever easy, one of the elbows we got was defective and I ran up to the little hardware store in town to get another one - at double the price.  Then the guys who delivered it said we needed hoses so we bought them at Lowe's and opened them up.  Only to find out that there were hoses in the washing machine.  Now Jim is having issues because the vent in the apartment wall has been all messed up and isn't hooking up well.  I know he's chomping at the bit to get out to the land, so I feel bad that this is taking him much longer than it should.

Well, Jim finally got everything situation and we gave it a test run - only to find out that they have the water reversed - the red faucet (which should be hot) is cold; the blue (which should be cold) is hot!  Gotta love this apartment!  I told Jim it was fine - he could reverse it later.  So he took off to the land.

Had to laugh as my first load of wash finished...the clothes were warm when I took them out which was odd...then I realized that all the rinse cycles were cold.  So I washed my clothes in cold water and rinsed them in hot!  I think I'll wait til Jim fixes it before I do any more wash!  Update:  Jim got home, reversed the water hoses and I was able to do a couple of more loads!

Jim didn't have much time at the land yesterday but said he got another 50 feet of trench dug so that's good.  Hopefully he can have some good quality time soon!

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!

 

 

More unloading

No more tears this morning - we woke up to another foggy morning which turned into a gorgeous day.  We spent a little time getting things situated - the postage meter guy is coming tomorrow morning so Jim needed to fix some plugs and make room for him to work in my office.  He also got the fax machine set up.  Then we hung up a couple pictures in our bedroom.  We're going to try and hang up a couple pictures every day until it we get that done.  Each little step just makes it a little more ours.

Jim had to go take stock of the Corinth storage unit and then came back and picked me up.  We headed to the lot to pick up the truck and then out to the barn.  We had to unload all of the things that Jim had picked up from the tool storage unit in Ohio when we was there.  We are still so grateful that we have this barn, even though we didn't get as many spaces as we wanted.  Since the neighbor is babysitting the Z, we are in good shape anyway.

This was one of those days when I wish we had another man to help Jim.  I am a poor helper moving these big tools.  Jim won't even let me touch most of them.  But he managed to get it all done.  It's not organized perfectly - we have to make space in October for the cars to come into the space.  But he can come back on a rainy day and get things situated.  By the time we got it unloaded, it was going on 3:00 and we hadn't brought lunch.

The barn storage

Jim is back at the lot now and I stayed here to get some typing done.  Tomorrow the washer and dryer come - yay!  I have laundry stacked to the ceiling in the corner of the bathroom - not an exaggeration!



He's HOME!

Even though Jim left Ohio really late, he was bound and determined to get home last night and not have to stay yet some other place for the night.  He got in about 1:30 this morning - beat, but so glad to be home.

So...this is now officially HOME!  It certainly will take some getting used to, but this is all part of the adventure.  I've always told Jim that home is wherever we are and we are putting that to test.  But it does feel like home.  Okay, so we don't have all the creature comforts we grew accustomed to but as we joked...creature comforts are for sissies!

Good news - Jim had the gray 4Runner that failed its inspection last time because of the gas tank re-inspected and it passed.  So it's now street legal in NY - yay!  The process with the other cards should go smoother because we don't know of any issues with them.  We'll probably wait until our Ohio tags are close to expiring to get them licensed here.

I have typing to work on today and Jim is chomping at the bit to get out to the land - says he needs it after sitting in the truck for days on end!

The weather is really beautiful here today - most mornings so far seem foggy, probably because we are in the mountains more here.  But it all burns off quickly and we are left with gorgeous blue skies and sunshine - and the temps are great today too.

Evening update...I got tired of sitting inside typing so I went to the lot to see what Jim was up to.  First...check out this picture I took - whenever anyone asks why we moved up here, this picture tells why!

Such a majestic picture

Jim had been busy during the afternoon.  He was doing some grading of the area where he has to clear by the road for the utility company to put the pole.  While I was there, this tree had to go...  And he got to test out the excavator on removing stumps.

Cutting down a tree

 

Looking cute in the excavator!

 

Making short order of removing the stump

 

On my way home, just had to stop and take this picture.  This little lake is just down the street less than half a mile from the lot - so pretty.  I can't wait to see this area when the leaves really start changing colors.

 

After we got home from the lot, Jim went for a run - where does he get his energy?  I started working on dinner.  I'm so used to having my double oven that when I realized I needed both the broiler and the oven, I decided to use the new toaster oven for baking and the oven for broiling.  Worked fine - until I also decided to use the microwave which I have next to the toaster oven - and blew a fuse.  We went ahead and ate - Jim loving the fact that he didn't have to take a wrapper off to eat it!  But afterwards, Jim realized that the frig wasn't working either and had to go exploring for a fuse box.  He found it downstairs in the hallway and got everything back on.  Then we were talking about how to alleviate that situation - the problem is that the kitchen has very few outlets.  Plus after Jim's discovery of outlets wired incorrectly, who knows if they are even working right.  All of a sudden it just made me sad - I left this gorgeous kitchen with outlets everywhere and everything set up - for this kitchen?  So a few tears before bed.