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Friday, August 27, 2004
Present Day
For the time being, I’m putting my 60’s
journal on hold. Frankly, reliving an unhappy period in my life became such
an emotional chore that I reached a point where I began dreading the
process. I’ve had people tell me that it was the more interesting portion of
my journal and they looked forward to reading it. Sorry to disappoint those
readers but I need a little time off. Eventually I’ll continue and I’ll make
some sort of announcement to those on the “Notify
List”.
For now, I’d prefer to focus on the present rather than beating myself up
over things that happened 30 years ago. I’ll leave that to the presidential
candidates.
It’s been a while since I wrote and Catherine and I have been working full
time at rebuilding our property that burned in the
October fire storms. We decided to replace
the house that burned on the north end with a manufactured home.
 A job of
that size gets the attention of county officials and we spent several weeks
just getting building permits. The health department, rural fire district
and county all have specific requirements that must be met before they even
allow you to start work. We had to draw up a plot plan, get it approved by
an engineer and then walk it through the various county offices. A tedious
process but I’m told we saved around 3 grand by doing it ourselves.
The rest of our time has been spent preparing the property for the upcoming
construction. That meant doing things like digging up an old septic tank,
trenching for the new power line and installing a fire hydrant. All those
projects are in various stages of development. We were finally able to get
one water tank installed on the north side and we’re negotiating for the
installation of the south tank. Believe it or not, in a couple of weeks
we’re having it lifted by helicopter to its remote location. I’ll try to get
plenty of photos.
Unfortunately, the buildings that burned were only insured for liability so
the cost of all this new construction is coming out of our own pocket. A
strong incentive to do as much of the work as we can ourselves. Luckily, I
can muddle through by doing the electrical and plumbing myself. I know just
enough to be dangerous and I can usually find a neighbor for advice on the
more complicated tasks. Cement work is not one of my job skills so I’ve
found a contractor to do the foundation work.
The next 6 months will be pretty busy but I’ll try to do better with my
updates.
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