What's So Sweet About It?

So when my neighborhood had all its, um, problems, one of the biggest sources stemmed from a “candy shop” across the street. When it first opened, it was truly a candy shop for kids – there were always tons of candy wrappers on my yard.

But then, things changed. The shop in question was bright pink, operated strange hours, covered up the windows with blackout curtains and shooed children away. The one time I ventured inside, the bare shelves boasted a few dusty cans of soup, a small fridge with cans of grape soda, and a few t-shirts and hoodies for sale. And lots of annoyed looks from the proprietress at my presence.

Plus, it was the only drive-up candy shop I've ever seen! Cars would pull up, and someone would race to the driver's window, and perform the transaction. They must have had call-ahead service!

Eventually things changed again, for the better. And the neighborhood quieted down. Kids started playing on the block again. It was great.

But now a new sweet shop has opened around the corner. And it reminds me of the old one. Which leads me to ask – why a candy shop as a ruse? Why take something so innocent and retro – heck, my small town never had a candy shop when I was a kid – and turn it into something so putrid? When I first bought my house – and closed on the same day as the pink shop's grand opening – I thought to myself, “How quaint. How suburban. How nice for kids, to have someplace in the neighborhood where they can spend their allowance money on candy.” Growing up in a cornfield subdivision that was miles from anything, I embraced the idea of an older neighborhood designed to allow residents to walk to their needs – and let kids do the same.

So why ruin that nostalgia with something so tawdry?

Hopefully I'm wrong. Maybe it really is just a candy shop, with its hand-made signs and shaded windows. Maybe they're trying to keep the sun out, not prying eyes.

The Door, Part 736

I installed a new back door last summer (Independence Day, to be exact). My parents, Don and I spent an entire day making the perfectly-square, new door fit with the settled, off-kilter, old house. It took lots of shimming and adjusting, and Dad left me tasked with getting the wood for the trim, staining it, and calling him over to make the perfect miter cuts and install.

Busy schedules, multiple job changes, travel and winter got in our way. Finally, a full year after I bought and stained the wood, Dad came over with his miter saw. And we quickly discovered just how not-square the areas to be trimmed are. In some cases, there's a full half-inch difference between the top and bottom measurements! So some of the boards fit, but others don't. Dad and I took very careful, precise measurements, and he went home to make the final cuts.

He comes back this weekend. We'll dry fit everything (fingers crossed) and then (if all goes well), I'll stain all the pieces (provided the hosue god consents and blesses us with a proper fit) and install it on my own (fit-pending). Then, once the trim is done, AT LAST I can paint the door and the steps to the basement.

But I'm not getting my hopes up. Some projects never end. With an old house, there are always multiple fun surprises in store.

Our Lawn, Seattle Style

What do you get when April and May weather continues through July?

Jungle lawn!

It's the close of the coolest July in decades - with not a single day at or above 90 degrees. We've had tons of rain, inconveniently spread on multiple days throughout the weeks.

Hence, the jungle lawn. It just keeps growing! And it seems to rain just frequently enough that it's hard to find a time to mow the lawn when it's actually dry enough to work with.

Perhaps we should get a goat. Or a couple rabbits. That should solve the problem.

Technical Difficulties

I got a new netbook to maximize my two daily hours of train time. I can write! On the train! Every day!

So I started writing and had drafted six or seven blog posts. Of course, I hadn't yet synced up and actually published said blog posts. Then I installed a bunch of updates to the netbook, which set caused problems requiring me to recover everything. Which, of course, wiped out those six or seven posts.Grrr.

But now I should be back in business. Stay tuned!

Thank you, Circle of Life

Around noon yesterday, I spied a squirrel lying on the garage roof. Later in the afternoon, he was still there, in the exact same strange, awkward position - sprawled out flat, not moving. Mid-day, I wondered if he was resting, but by evening, I assumed he was dead.

When Don got home, it was already dark, so I told him that the next time we were both home in daylight hours (umm.... Thursday? Maybe Friday?), we would have to go get the thing off the roof. This would involve the ladder (fun!) and shovel. That shovel - which came with the house - has done its fair share of animal removal duties, including Gus the Groundhog and the presumably rabid (or just plain batty) squirrel that spent an entire day twitching itself ten feet across the driveway, driving the cat nutty.

But this morning, in daylight, the squirrel is gone. I'll bet our friendly neighborhood raccoons took care of it for us. Thanks, guys! You're finally good for something besides scaring the bejeezus out of us when we deign to enter the backyard in the evenings.

Update: Don says that he actually heard the raccoons fighting it out over the squirrel carcass. Yum.

It's Time to Play.... Name! That! Plant!!!

Every year about this time, I play a game I like to call Weed? or Sprout?. In the weeks (month?) since I planted dozens of new seeds in my front garden - dozens of things have begun to sprout. Add monsoon rains, a dash of sunshine, and some transplants are suffering, but other new seeds seem to be thriving.

I started with a freshly weeded bed, added a couple new bags of soil and topped everything with mulch.

But the fact that the rain has enabled them to grow makes me wonder. Like this one - is it an offshoot of an existing lily that somehow migrated 5 feet north? Or is it a really big weed?

Or this one? The spiky leaves either indicate marigolds (yay!) or unidentified weeds (boo!):
With all the rain - despite the beautiful weekend, everything was still soupy wet - I haven't had a chance to investigate further. But I'm sure when I do... I'm going to have a lot of weeding. Sigh.

Stadium Lights

We're gradually making energy-saving adjustments to our old, old house. The new windows have helped our energy efficiency (and comfort!) tremendously. But for the most part, the changes we make have been, well, free. Or taxpayer-funded.

The city has been giving out those snazzy CFL bulbs at nearly every city-sponsored event I've been to in the past year, from picnics to lectures. And if you happen to be present towards the end of the event, organizers tend to hand them out in pairs or triples, rather than packing them back up. Which leads me to believe that the city knocked off a truckload of bulbs bound for Chicago. After all, every single individually packaged bulb (how's that for green?) is printed with the seal of the City of Chicago and the Richard M. Daley, Mayor insignia. Sometimes they have a "City of Elgin" sticker slapped over the top, but not always.

Anyway, like good citizens we've been installing the new CFLs as the old incandescent bulbs burn out. We were even proactive and bought (ie, overpaid for) bulbs for the front porch lights two years ago, since they're the longest running lights in the house. (Though it should be noted that the first ones last a mere six days - apparently brownouts burn the bulbs, literally browning them. But the second pair bought the next week is on its third summer, running every night from sunset until 2 AM.)

We haven't noticed a huge difference in the energy bills, but (mercury concerns aside) we've been pretty diligent. However, the quality of the light is very different than that from incandescent bulbs. This isn't an issue outside, where more light better illuminated the drug deals that used to happen across the way, and the security lights from HALF A MILE ACROSS THE RIVER blare into our bedroom at night.

But in the living room, with first one, then two and now four CFLs spotlighting the couch from the overhead fixture, we're just about to buy some more incandescent bulbs. They're so bright - Don has compared them to stadium lights - that they prevent relaxing (read: napping). I've found Don stretched out on the couch watching tv with his hand shading his eyes from the glare.

So we're not going green for the sake of being green. Rather, a little bit of common sense must prevail. Though we'll continue to collect the bulbs at city events - I wonder if there's an aftermarket.