2016 Part 2 March-April

This is my second post covering events of 2016. It has taken a while to get back to this work. Life has been intervening on a regular basis in recent weeks. So here is yet one more attempt to regain my former blogging form.

In Part 1 of my 2016 review, I covered through chilly February. As such, we pick up the action with -

March

Nancy and I spent most of March in Florida, some of which was spent in this interesting edifice - a Disney tree house.

We shared our time at Disney with our good friends the Dyles and the Wyatts. Here they are with Nancy and me enjoying a quiet cocktail on the tree house deck.

A full review of this memorable trip (sort of as it was happening) was reported last year in a series of posts beginning with A Trip Chronicle - Part 1. I refer you to those earlier posts for the gory details. The trip held many surprises for me, including a wild (and hopefully my last) broom ride through Hogwarts.

But there were other things in March worth noting. Like the great power pole caper. About four years ago give or take, DTE came through the neighborhood changing out old power poles. The pole that serviced my house and that of my former neighbors was sort of on the property line, but really in the neighbor's yard, just behind our garages. The new pole was put in about six feet to the east, in my backyard. Once the new pole was in, DTE moved their wires and cut the top half of the pole off. The lower half had to stay, they said, until ATT and the two cable companies that service our area moved their wires to the new pole. Then according to DTE, the company that moved its wires last would take out the pole. Uh....right.

Well, three years went by with absolutely nothing happening. We had a new pole for electricity, and an old half pole for everything else. And since the neighbors were long gone (the house sharing the poles had stood empty for a couple of years), nobody cared. It was sort of a conversation piece. Then, the house next door was sold to a family who planned to tear it down and build a new home. The first time I met my soon-to-be-new neighbor, he asked about the old half pole, which was standing just about where he wanted to put in a driveway and garage. He said he had been contacting various utilities about the pole, and none of them would give him the time of day because he wasn't yet a customer. I can't remember if he asked for help or if I just, in a fit of neighborliness, offered. But when the conversation was over, I had a new item on my task list - look into getting the pole removed.

So I started making phone calls. Since then, I have learned a lot. Like any pole with power on it belongs to DTE. And that's gotta be 99%. Also, I learned that no one in the utility community coordinates the relocation of wires from old poles to new ones. Everyone just does their own work and assumes that the other companies will do theirs. Again, uh....right.

After at least three months of talking to Comcast, WOW and ATT customer service reps, and personally escorting their field workers back to visually inspect the two poles and the attached wires, I was able to embarrass them one by one into moving their wires. Problem solved, right? This time, uh....no. As luck would have it, the last company to move their wires was WOW, the newer cable company in the area. It turns out that WOW hasn't quite matured into a full service cable company. As their field man informed me, "We don't do poles".  Well, they do climb them. And attach wires to them. But they don't take them out. Great.

Left with no alternative I went back to DTE, the big brother of all the local utilities. After hearing my sad tale, they grudgingly agreed to pull the pole. They were nice about it, but sort of made it clear that if WOW wanted to play in their sandbox, they should get their act together. So after another two visits out to size up the situation, and a couple more weeks to think it over, DTE came out with enough equipment to wire a small town and did the job. I have to admit, it was worth the wait. Here is a photo revue of what we now refer to as "pole day".

When DTE arrived and began backing their truck down my neighbor's drive, I was in the middle of my retirement morning routine. That would be lounging in my jams with a cup of coffee deep into a gripping Perry Mason episode. So it took me a couple of minutes to jump into my jeans and grab my camera. I caught up with the crew just as they were positioning their vehicle and its telescoping crane arm over the pole.

You can just make out in the above shot that there are three sets of wires running in front of the pole and three others running above it, complicating the extraction.

In this shot, taken from behind the garage, you can more clearly see the challenge facing our heroes.

From the next angle, you can see that the pole crane arm has grasped the pole and is gently pulling it straight up and out of the hole.

And here the extracted pole has been rotated 90 degrees and is being laid flat under the pesky wires. Note that there still seems to be something left in the hole.

It turns out that this pole, like most I'm told, was reinforced beneath the surface with a semi-circular steel sleeve (this one about 12 feet long), which also had to be removed. Here is a shot of the sleeve being coaxed off the job.

The hard part being over, the crew tucked the crane arm into its holster and began the clean up. Here is a closer shot of this very cool vehicle including its power-deployed side supports (just to the rear of the cab). If I am not mistaken they are just like the landing struts used by the Starship Voyager when it parks itself on a planet surface. Voyager's are probably a tad bigger.

Below is a pic of the clean up. About five guys appeared out of nowhere with bags of dirt and began dumping them into the now prominent former pole hole. They kept at it like a fire brigade until all signs of the hole were eliminated.

Having tidied up the area, all that was left was to drag the poor victim off for a proper disposal.

In this final shot, the expired half-pole has been lifted onto its temporary resting place for transport to wherever old power poles go. Perhaps to be re-purposed into fence posts or deck railings. Or for the less fortunate, firewood. I'm sort of glad I don't know.

Well there you have it. If you've never before witnessed the demise of a power pole, you can cross that one off your list.

Now, at the end of my aforementioned posts on our Florida trip in March of 2016, I had this final closing entry: Day 13. We packed. We loaded. We left. Thus endeth the trip, and this chronicle.

That wasn't entirely accurate. While the other members of the group did head for home, I headed back over to my mother's home in Zephyrhills to assist with some unexpected family business. That business kept me in Florida for an additional week. That time was pretty busy, but still afforded me the opportunity to hang out with my mom for a few more days and meet her new buddy - Lola. Here she is with her housemate Laci, introduced in the previous post.

Earlier in March, my mother's Boston Terrier of 10 years passed away. Not to be maudlin about it, Baxter was an important part of Mom's life. And that role had to be recast. Lola - a young chihuahua - landed the job. She's perky, affectionate, well-behaved, and just the right size to cuddle in Mom's lap. And she and Laci have become fast friends, playing together, looking out for each other, and bringing a great deal of comfort for Mom.

I would like to mention one other item from last March. As some of you know, my golf game could stand a little improvement. Okay, you could say that it would be nice if I actually had a golf game. I do admit that I worry less about my golf game than most others worry about theirs. So I have that going for me. 

I do thoroughly enjoy playing "at" golf. And have actually thought about practicing more and taking the game more seriously in the coming years. Time will tell how well I do at that. Frankly, I try to keep the list of things I take seriously to a bare minimum. But in an effort to ease the pain of those close friends who find themselves trapped out on a golf course with me, I'm going to try to do better. As proof, here are some shots of me out last April rehearsing my approach. I call these positions the "warning",

The "threat",

And the "whack".

Maybe my terminology needs a little work, too.

April

Those of you familiar with this blog will remember a previous post entitled Hell Month. In that elaborate appeal for sympathy I related how for over 30 years Nancy and I have toiled through mid-April and May to complete home fix-up projects, perform periodic maintenance on the many things that require it, and in general reclaim the house and yard from the throes of winter. So that we are properly motivated, we invite just about everybody we know to a picnic the first Saturday after Memorial Day. 2016 was no different, though a bit less taxing than in most previous years. I haven't figured out if Nancy and I are getting more efficient, becoming too lazy to take on big projects, or just don't give a hoot anymore if people notice a little dust or stumble across a little chipped paint.

But there were a few tasks undertaken in 2016. One of them was procuring and assembling yet another place for Nancy and I to sit and have a cocktail. This addition included a couple of composite (read fake rattan) chairs with clever "tuck away" footstools and a matching side table. Here are a couple of shots of me performing the onerous tasks of figuring out which end is up, what type of screws I will be dropping through the cracks in the deck, and how many band aids will be required.

And the final product, before 5:00 -

And after 5:00.

Another, more involved project was replacing our deck fence. I say more involved, but not actually for me. For this job I used my favorite tool - the Yellow Pages. The company we hired became very involved. Even a little more than they bargained for.

Our original deck had been installed in 1969 when the house underwent major renovations (the family room, new master bath, garage, and the deck). When we finally replaced the deck about five years ago, we kept the old fence that ran along the west end, shielding us from the goings on of the neighbors. But a close inspection of the fence this year, about the time the new neighbor was planning to pour his drive way, revealed that it was time for the fence to be relieved of duty. More importantly from an aesthetic point of view, the treatment of the west end of the deck itself was pitiful, as shown in the picks below.

This is what my poor neighbor would have been staring at as he sat out on his back patio wondering just what kind of riffraff is living next door. So we hired a local fence company to solve the problem. The owner had a crew get right to work (that was, right after a fair to middlin' size check was cut). The crew did a fine job. Here are a few pics of the work in process.

And a look at the finished job.

Of course, rarely does any project unfold without at least one wrinkle. This one had a full blown pleat. Take a good look at this pic. Notice anything peculiar?

It looks like the deck has a little new lumber itself. That's because it does. Here's why. 

When the neighbor had his survey completed, it revealed that my deck was about 3/4 of an inch over the property line. And the portion that was over the line was the old fence due to the 4 x 4  inch posts which supported it. So I figured I would have the fence guys saw off as much deck as needed to assure that the new fence - which would rise from ground level - would be totally on my side of the line. Best laid plans.

Well, as we used to say in the quality management business, we had a breakdown in communication. First, I asked the fence guys to saw about four inches off the deck. That would have been just about right to fit a new fence using the same 4 x 4 inch posts safely within my property line. But fencing technology has apparently moved into the 21st century. As it turned out, the new fence uses the latest steel u-channel posts that are only about an inch and a half thick. No one mentioned that to me. 

Now, things would have still been okay. I would just have a new deck fence set 3-4 inches inside my property line. A little neighborly buffer zone I would have been glad to provide. However, because I had initially told the fence guys that my goal was to have the fence be just inside my property line, that's where they sunk the new steel posts. In concrete. Four inches from the end of the now shortened deck, leaving an unsightly and somewhat dangerous gap between where the deck ends and the fence begins. 

They performed this feat of craftsmanship while I was up north checking on the cottage for a couple of days. I mean what could go wrong? It's just a fence. Needless to say, when I returned to see the fence-as-industrial-art, I was not happy. I couldn't imagine the fence crew not knowing that the number one requirement for a deck fence is that it actually be part of the deck. When I invited the company's owner over to gaze upon this development, he was speechless. I felt a little sorry for him as he tried to come up with an explanation for this travesty. Something like "I thought you wanted to build an insurance hazard into your deck." Or "We meant to do that - it's the latest in deck fashion. Everyone's doing it." But my compassion lasted only a few seconds. 

After a round of verbal jousting about blame, some references to each other's questionable lineage, and his realization that I hadn't yet paid the balance of the bill, the owner ended the discussion with the old standard, "I'll get back to you". He went back to his truck and out of the drive. A little while later I noticed the on-site crew chief, who was building fence panels out in the backyard, clutching his cell phone with a certain ferocity while speaking through tightly clenched teeth. After a few minutes, the call ended. I saw the crew chief hang his head in what appeared to be quiet desperation, and return to his fence panel work.

Shortly after that, the fence company owner called me back and said his crew chief was a licensed carpenter by trade and would figure out how to fix the gap. I expressed my gratitude, and agreed to share any additional expense as it was evident that we both bore some responsibility for the communication breakdown that led to the problem.

True to his word, the crew chief fixed the problem through some creative engineering and a few new pieces of decking. His handy work is the unfinished wood that looks like a border around the west end of the deck. It seems structurally sound, and will blend in with the rest of the deck at its next staining. So it all ended well, and we very much like the look of the new deck fence (as does my neighbor).

I'll end this segment of my 2016 chronicle here, and resume with the equally exciting events of last May and June soon.

Grosse Pointe Charles

2016 Part 1 January-February

Last year I began a tradition of summarizing each year's activity in a series of posts. This is a supplement to my ongoing plan of preparing photo summaries of all past Burk family years as I progress through my (woefully behind) project of digitizing our family slides. And, as 2017 is now nearly one third in the books, I need to get on with my 2016 review. So here goes.

January

As has been our way for a number of years now, Nancy and I awoke on New Year's Day on Captiva Island, just off the coast of Ft Myers, Florida. This delightful habit has been enabled by our good friends Robyn and Dave who have hosted us over the New Years holiday most years since the mid-90s.

After a day of college football, and renewal of 2015's unfulfilled resolutions for the new year (saves having to come up with new ones), we headed north to my mother's in Zephyrhills. Here is the first picture of the year - me with my two buddies Lacy on the left and Baxter on the right.  

Baxter was my mother's dog of 11 years. I say was as Baxter has since gone to that luxury puppy spa in the sky. More on that later. Lacy was the dog of my sister Wendy and her daughter. But through a chain of unforeseen events, Lacy had relocated to Carnation Lane and become Baxter's live-in partner. She was almost 10 years old at the time of this picture.

But the real story of January was my discovery of the Pasco County Recycling Center. I need to back up a bit to tell this story properly. In 2013 my Dad purchased a house in Zephyrhills and rented it to a family member at a bargain price. The idea was to provide this family member a head start as she worked to establish credit, obtain a mortgage, and buy the house from him. A well-intended plan. But due to unfortunate circumstances (one of which was the family member losing her job due to a fire at her place of employment), the plan didn't work out. So by May of 2015, the house was standing idle and in a state of disrepair.

My sister Wendy is pretty handy from a house maintenance perspective. So she took the lead on cleaning up the house, installing a few improvements, and in general getting it ready to sell. By late 2015, it was ready to go on the market except for one thing. The residue from all the fix-up work was piled up inside of and around a freestanding shed in the backyard. And it looked very unappealing.

Enter the purge king (moi). As part of my holiday trip to Florida, it became my job (due to a well-documented obsession with neatness and order), to remove the impressive accumulation of rubble to shall we say a more appropriate spot. The first step of course was to sort through the debris, salvage anything that might have future value, and prepare the rest for transport. Here are some shots of the problem. First, inside the shed.

And outside the shed.

And some shots after the cleanup.

The whole thing took the better part of a day, including organizing the items to be relocated using my sister's pickup. First, the inventory.

And the load. This was actually one of two loads it took to complete the job,

Now, the fun part. Actually getting rid of all this stuff. Enter the Pasco County Recycling Center. A very cool place.

I have had previous experiences delivering materials to landfills, or what I knew in earlier years as dumps. But I had never seen anything like the PCRC. There were no dirt roads riddled with twisted metal and broken glass winding around nondescript piles of refuse. No garage-sized bulldozers pushing mounds of detritus hither and yon. And no tell-tale aroma of decay, as life's expired treasures are burned and/or plowed under.

No. The PCRC is like a modern theme park. There are smooth, concrete passageways, brightly painted activity centers, and "cast members" in neat uniforms stationed at key locations to help you enjoy your recycling experience. Here is a shot of the entrance. Looks more like the gateway to the Magic Kingdom than the "final destination" for tired and no longer wanted possessions.

And here I am at my first "activity station" (#6), properly gloved and anxious for the fun to begin. Note the super clean surroundings complete with overhead protection in the event of inclement weather.

As you can see from this shot, each station is really a concrete portico with a half wall, over which you pitch your items. Yes, you actually get to "throw" your items away, like this unfortunate futon. Can you tell from my expression the primordial joy that this experience can awaken?

I'm told that at the point you release your grip on an item and it clears the wall, that it's customary to utter an appropriate farewell message to the victim. Something like "good riddance" or "you're toast". Here I am honoring this local ritual with full vigor. I think my parting expression was "have a nice day".

As you can see from this additional shot of the futon's demise, these disposal stations are actually elevated above jumbo-sized dumpsters into which the flung items are supposed to land. A sad end for the flotsam of daily life. But tidy.

The highlight of my tossing that day was definitely the last stop - bathroom fixtures. Here I am toying with this jewel of a disposable item, muttering insincere words of comfort as I let it teeter on the brink, it not knowing exactly when the final push would come. It was shortly after I let this poor creature tumble away in confusion that I realized that lingering too long in a state of purge euphoria can bring out one's dark side.

And what about items too large to toss, you ask? They've thought of that, too. There is an area where large items (stoves, refrigerators, Chevies) can be unloaded. Neatly, of course.

You can't see him in this shot, but just out of the picture on the left was the guy who had the best job at the PCRC. He's in a front-end loader that he uses to smash the recently delivered items (in front) into smaller, more manageable shapes (the stuff piled up in the back). How fun is that.

I'll end the tale of my discovery of the Pasco County Recycling Center with this shot of my happy client - Mom - congratulating me for completing the job. I think I can expect some repeat business.

After the grueling "rubbish runner" ordeal, Nancy and I headed off to one of our favorite haunts, Disney's Vero Beach resort, for a few days of R&R. On the way we stopped by the Market Place at Disney World for lunch and a little shopping. What we discovered was a lot of construction on new stores, parking ramps and yet another redesign of the corner of Buena Vista Drive and Hotel Plaza Boulevard at the Southeast corner of the Disney Springs shopping complex. That corner now features walkovers to the hotels and additional parking. For those of you familiar with that corner, here are a couple of shots of the new look.

 

After lunch, we headed on down to Vero. The resort was of course all decked out for the holidays as shown in these pics of the main lobby.

We spent most of our time there relaxing, enjoying the view and taking the sea air. The beach was spectacular, as always. Here I am on a beach walk in my typical Florida winter garb - shorts and a hoodie.

The nice thing for retirees about walking on the beach is that it's hard to get lost. Not of that embarrassing silver alert stuff.

One moment of excitement during the Vero visit was an unusual lunch. Nancy and I had taken a drive down the coast for a seafood lunch by the ocean. We had just ordered when we saw this impressive conveyance in the parking lot.

No, it wasn't the local firehouse stopping in for a bite. There was actually a fire in the kitchen, according to our waitress. No alarm was sounded. No evacuation through the closest exit. No stop, drop and roll. It was sort of a "swelter in place" protocol. A half dozen or so large burly types in what must have been 90 pounds of equipment each walked demurely through the aisles and went into the kitchen. Like, nobody would notice. We and the other patrons (restaurant was about one-third full as I recall) just kept chatting like there was nothing happening. About 15 minutes later, the firemen emerged from the kitchen and waltzed back through the front door to their truck and drove off. I've wondered since if it all was just a creative floor show to entertain the tourists.

Having recharged our batteries after a few days in the sun, Nancy and I had an uneventful trip back up north. The weekend after our return we made our customary mid-January trip to Wiser Times to check on things. This time we were joined by Cathy and Matt who were looking for a little getaway time. Here they are playing some sort of game from "a galaxy far far away". It looked a little complicated. More pieces than my original Erector set.

So I headed out for a little fresh air and a walk around the place looking for things that might make the spring fix-up list. It's fun to traipse around in the snow at the cottage in January. Fun for about 15 minutes.

The following weekend we were back up north with our friends Robyn and Dave at their Petoskey condo for what has for years been a joint family ski weekend. Nancy and I don't ski, but our kids do and they have always loved taking advantage of this opportunity to trade parents for a couple of days. So while Robyn and Dave would take their kids and ours to the slopes, Nancy and I would enjoy shopping and dining out in this quaint community. The kids aren't around as much these days, but the parents are keeping the tradition alive. Here's a shot of Nancy and I with Dave reunited for happy hour and dinner after a day of parallel play. I think Robyn was soaking in the hot tub.

Upon returning home from our trip to Petoskey, I returned to Florida for a few days to attend the closing of the sale of my mother's rental house (the one that led to my great rubbish adventure). After the clean up, it sold quickly. We were so excited to have unloaded sold this troublesome property that no one had the presence of mind to take pictures. But it was the perfect finale to a fun month.

February

We spent most of the month of February at home sitting by the fire, avoiding ice and snow as much as possible, and catching up on hobby projects. Coco sort of captured the spirit of the month for us with this fairly regular evening pose. Can you say happy dog?

We did take a long weekend that month to see my son Ted and his kids in Austin. We had a great time sharing parenting duties for a few days and seeing how much the kids had grown since the previous summer. I took some pride in demonstrating a few trampoline stunts for the kids. Here they are trying what I call an upright double quantum leap with an ankle twist (I had performed one myself earlier, but it went undocumented as the kids couldn't figure out how to take a picture on my android phone - they're Apple people).

Here they are, coming over to get their scores. They both were awarded 10s. And as you can see in the first pic, Leili is getting to know the tooth fairy (totally not connected to her trampolining - I swear). 

We spent an afternoon at the park during the visit. Here are some shots. First Cyrus showing his versatility.

Here Ted and Grandma are assisting on swings.

And the grandparents, happy to be in the Texas sun in February.

And the perfect ending to a day of fun at the park - happy hour. The kids with their form of escapism.

And the parents with theirs.

On the last day of our trip, we relaxed a bit with indoor activities. Here I am getting destroyed at a game of Princess, by the princess in residence.

Here Cyrus has invited us into his Lego universe. He tried explaining what everything was and how it works but I kept glazing over, longing for my Lincoln Logs.

My sister Wendy came to Michigan for a visit the last weekend in February and to attend an Il Volo concert. For the uninitiated, Il Volo are three young Italian tenors with world class pipes. Both my sisters are wannabe groupies. Here I am with Wendy and Cindy all gussied up and heading to the Fox.

To keep the length of this post from getting out of hand, I'll go ahead and publish Part 1. Part 2 will resume with the very interesting month of March.

Grosse Pointe Chuck