Time Management & Other Stuff

Before we left to go to Oregon in August, my wife & myself make plans. Extensive plans on the jobs we should do while we are in Oregon. She wanted to do internal painting and hang curtain rods, etc, etc... I figured that we would get some of that done, time permitting. The real truth is that you never really get those things done - as planned. One of the things I found out real quick is that there were tasks that needed to be done right now. No time for those curtains, no time for painting. Not this trip anyway.

Have you ever wondered about your home's past history? In the case of our home, the date of construction was in 1948. Did I mention that our home borders a creek? In 1862 Gold was discovered on Canyon Creek. Canyon City was a gold rush town. Sometime in the early 20th century Canyon Creek was dredged on a large scale to extract the remaining gold. Mounds of tailings bordered the creek. During the late 40's someone bulldozed the tailings and developed the property where my house now resides. You would never guess it by looking at the neighborhood that this was the site of a major gold strike. I found out first hand about the tailings the first time that I crawled under the house. The foundation was built right over what could best be described as a gravel pit. I also discovered on my first trip under the house that I had a lot of work to do. Work that I had not anticipated nor welcomed. So much for the planning done earlier.

You can tell the history of the house in a couple of ways. Painting the house tells you about who painted it last and the order of painting jobs done. Just look under the cover of any AC outlet or fixture for the story. The painting job in our laundry room confirmed four earlier paint jobs. The order went like this, White, Lime Green, Forrest Green, Salmon and Off White. I speculated that these colors were popular during the time of application (remember back in the early 60's when Harvest Gold or Avocado were a popular colors for appliances?). The other place to reveal the home's past is to go in the crawl space under the house -or- the attic space. In the case of our house, the crawl space revealed that this place had not been visited in quite some time. The ground was littered with junk consisting of construction debris, rusted cans, some bottles and a large assortment of old soup bones left by a former resident's dog. The first order of business was to clean out this junk. Six hours later and enough assorted stuff to fill my Pickup's bed, the house's crawl space was now junk free. Second order of business, reapply all the insulation batting that had dropped from the joists. I had to run down to the builder's supply to buy a box of retaining rods. these rods are wedged between the joists to hold up the batting. The box contained 100 rods. I used every one. I also bought a roll of R19 insulation batting to place in areas where there was no insulation. Time spent on this endeavour, another four hours. Third order of business, correct all the 120v wiring boo-boos that I saw. More lost time, more history revealed.

My real goal was to insulate the water pipes under the house. This sounds simple bit isn't simple at all. First, I have to wire up a 120vac outlet under the house. This is needed because I want to wrap the water pipes in heat tape first, before the fiberglass insulation wrap gets applied. Heat tape plugs into a standard AC outlet like an extension cord. Adding standard insulation to the water pipes without having the heat tape is marginally better than having no insulation at all (in a vacant house). The heat tape becomes active at 38 degF or below. The combination of heat tape and insulation wrapping on the pipes should protect the place if we ever have that spell of 20 below weather. Assuming that I don't lose power to the house that is. This job is time consuming indeed. Total time on this job is about twenty hours. When the deed is done, I've had my fill of crawling under the house. I've also had my fill of dealing with fiberglass and working on my back on hard rock. I feel that I've been in a prize fight and have had the crap beat out of me. I'm also itchy from dealing with the fiberglass. At least I didn't have to pay anyone to deal with this at $45/hr. Small consolation here.

When finished with all the jobs that I had to do on the place to winterize it - We leave Oregon one day later than planned. Lessons learned: No matter how much pre planning we did before the trip, everything changed and the plans flew out the window. No interior painting was done, no curtain rods were hung and some of the other tasks that the lovely Mrs. G had planned didn't happen. I guess that there is always the next trip...

Canyon City is a small town of 600 people give or take. Everyone knows everyone here. They also know what goes on in the neighborhood. You get that feeling when you run into several people in town that have lived in our house at one time or another. My first encounter is when we opened our account at the Electric Cooperative. The lady that took down our account information said, "Sure, I know the property. We lived there ten years ago...". She then relates to us how they had to replace the Hot Water Tank. The latest was with our contractor, Andy. "Yeah, we lived there too...". Andy then gives me his history with the place. In both cases, they told us something about the place. Something physical about what happened while they lived there. Both thought well of the property. They just outgrew the place and moved on.

We got great neighbors too. Terry down the street keeps an eye on the place in our absence. She has been invaluable in helping us in one way or the other. Our other neighbor across the street has also kept an eye out for us too. Terry is our age and clues us in on the goings on in the neighborhood. Without her, I think that we would be somewhere in the ozone as far as local information is concerned.

One of our latest purchases from Home Depot was a patio table and chairs set. They were closing them out at $69. Great little deal on a plain Jane patio set. I set them up in the back yard under the Cherry tree. The perfect place to take that late afternoon break (sitting under the tree in the shade and having a cool one). One of the few pleasures I had on my last trip, I think. Mrs. G & myself sitting under the tree and discussing her plans for the next day - we hear someone walking on Hwy395 (behind our house) uttering random nonsense as he walks past. Looking at him, it's someone who lives 'outside the box', so to speak. You can tell by his mutterings that something is not exactly right with this dude... I look at Mrs. G and think WTF.

We later ask Terry, what's the story here? "Oh, that's bottle Dave. He's harmless." Terry gives us a tale of how 'Bottle Dave' was once a millionaire, now a bum. Brilliant, but unstable due to some chemical imbalance in his brain. Makes his living now by picking up bottles and cans from the highway. Even a place as modest as Canyon City has a character everyone knows about.

Lake Havasu had a character like this sometime back. Everyone called him 'Elvis'. Yes, you guessed it. Elvis thought that he was the long lost son of the real Elvis. A harmless fellow. Said to be taken advantage of by some of the company he ran with. We once shared a table with him over Thanksgiving dinner at St Vincent De Paul a few years back. As much as I wanted to ask him several questions over dinner about his relationship with daddy. I thought better of it. The lovely Mrs. G was a honcho at Vinnies and I would have been in 'trouble' if I had asked. I last saw Elvis talking on the phone outside of Wal-Mart in Havasu two years ago. Perhaps, Elvis has bailed out of Havasu. Who knows?

Canyon City is a quiet place for the most part. Our house sits behind the Shell Station on Hwy395. 'Bottle Dave' yells 'Hi' to the girls that work at the Shell Station. Except 'Hi' doesn't come out as 'Hi' but as almost as a yell or cadence call. Terry unravels this mystery to us. Dave hikes down to Chester's Thriftway in John Day to cash in his sack of cans. We hardly know that the Gas Station is behind us except for the fact of Dave's rants and their telephone ringing off the hook after 9PM every fifteen minutes.

Little by little, I am learning the quirks about Canyon City.