All Alone on the E Train

Over 8 million people in New York City and during rush hour I am the only one in this car on the E train.

Eerie...

Warp speed Mr. Sulu

Another Airport. Another Flight

And loud baby behind me again!

From Whiteboard to Reality

Several years ago the builders of this house took it upon themselves to design the landscaping. We started with some simple goals like drought resistant, deer resistant, and naturally offensive to fleas and ticks. We also wanted low maintenance, low overall water requirements, and last but not least it needed to blend in with the surrounding environment AND the house.

The photo of the whiteboard below was drawn in early 2006. The house is to scale as is the landscaping.


Mari Landscaping did a great job in taking this:

To this in Nov 07:



and finally, to this in May 08:

David Brown is going a great job and it shows not only in the work he did for me but in the reputation he continues to develop in North County.


And finally, a plug for Jeff Pipes of Pipestone Vineyards. Even tho he ran out of Zinfandel the Syrah 'almost' made up for it. ;-)

Jeff is doing some amazing work and I wanted to thank him and his wife for taking the time and sharing some of their experiences.

Don't you know i'm loco...

One of the unintended benefits of this blog has been that it is a unique form of therapy for me. So imagine my pleasant surprise when I happened upon THIS article.

Another of the unintended benefits I have personally derived in this experience on the blogosphere is rediscovering how much I enjoy writing. In a way I can sense the new neural pathways being developed when I am attempt to find ways to communicate in writing landscaping projects, flooring work, owls keeping me awake at 2am, and the battles of the tarantula hawks vs. tarantulas.

So to the friends and associates who have been supportive during these most interesting times, I say many thanks. To the ones who have humored me and made me laugh and see things from a different perspective, thank you. And to the very special people who have stood by me during the moments when I actually may have lost my sanity, I owe you a debt I can never repay.

A window to my

landscaping.

Had I known that having the landscaping done would significantly alter my perception of the house, it would have been done 2 years ago. No longer do I have 5 foot weeds to look out at when I sit in the great room...

Patio Work

It only took 1 year but I finally cleaned and resealed the patio. It makes a huge difference in how it looks and hopefully how it wears. Here are the before and after pics

Before:
After after cleaning and scrubbing in 90+ degree weather, this is what it looks like:Of course a weekend in Paso Robles would not be complete with out a little:

Play an accordion, go to prison. That's the law!

On New York Time

Another great day in the naked city

Babies everywhere, must be the red eye to JFK

Babies 2 the left and right. This was one of the worst flights of my life. There were two infants in front of me and one behind. To add to the mix, was a person with the worst smelling body odor in the aisle across from me. Never again will I take the red eye. NEVER

Another airport

and now a word from our sponsors

For the first time in over 40 years a leading politician has made a head on attempt to begin the discussion of race in this country and to begin the discussion on why racial division persists in this country today.

Very rarely in my life have I read or heard a speech that touches my soul.

Obama's 2008 Philadelphia Speech

This is a non-partisan attempt to begin a substantial discussion that has been pushed to the margins vis a vie 'playing the race card for as long as I can remember.

I truly hope that we begin this discussion. Not just on the racial stalemate Obama so accurately touched upon, but by beginning the discussion of "investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in the criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations"

This is the discussion that needs to happen along with why we have this racial divide 45 years after MLK's 1963 Washington Speech

The politics of the last 40 years has been one of division, of Blue vs. Red, Left vs. Right, White vs. Black, and the Haves vs. the Have Nots.

Obama states that "It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper."

Perhaps America will rise to the challenge of having this discussion. Perhaps we will look past the race baiting divisive politics of the last 40 years. Perhaps we will see that the politics of 'values' is frequently used to divide us.

My hope is we will. My fear is that we will not and continue down the path of divisive politics and lack of true leadership.

The reach of the Web

I was chatting with a certain someone who is building a straw bale house in Atascadero and it was never clearer to me that with the proliferation of technology it is possible to influence, impact, and assist, people from all over the world. For example here is a map of one day visitors to this blog:What is amazing is how narrow a category straw bale construction is and yet people from Japan to South Africa find their way here.

Thanks Al Gore...

Spring is almost upon us...

The winter is receding into the background (along with the rain I hope) and warmer weather is on the horizon.

Amazing that the floors are done, landscaping is pretty much complete, and yet there are any number of projects that still remain to be done. Among them:

• Air conditioning
• Weed control
• Re-grading the road
• Sealing the Patio

But I have been finding time to visit a few wineries within 10 minutes of the house. The wines are great, the tasting rooms intimate and the staff are friendly and accommodating.

• Silver Horse Winery
  
• RioSeco Vineyards
  
• Mitchella Winery
  
• RiverStar Vineyards

The flowers are starting to bloom, the days are warmer and unfortunately the insects are coming out as well. Does anyone have a suggestion for environmentally responsible insecticide? Last year was a bumper crop for insects and I would appreciate not having to view the sequel.

It is snowing...

Ah.. first 13 degrees and now snow. NYC in Feburary
No kids playing in this park:

Hula n East Village

Blame Dima

New York State of Mind

Paso worked me..

I finally finished 'remodeling' the master bath. The thing about trying to get a occupancy permit by a certain date is that you make choices about things that are in the heat of the moment. Sometimes not so good choices. The master bath was the epitome of poor choices.

Having written that, here is where the master bath is at today:

Along with that, the floors were in for a serious cleaning and sealing. Imagine having to mop a 2700sqft floor 6 times. That is what needed to be done. Here is looking from the kitchen to the great room:

This is facing the front door:
and this is facing the back door:

Not that Paso

How did I end up here??

Yet another line...

San Diego Southwest line. A01 boarding pass rocks

2007 Was a Long Year

It is hard to believe this year is coming to an end. Many things have changed. Some for the better, others not so much.

The house saw a combination of frenzied activity starting with the pump freezing at the start of this year, to neglect in the summer months, and finally, the landscaping being mostly done.

To that end I want to share these final images from 2007 that show the beauty that was so often not evident in the building of this house.

Ask 7 about the landscaping

If you were to ask 7 about the landscaping, what do you think she would say?


I think the following picture answers that questions. ;-)

Can you believe it...

Landscaping has not only started but there is measurable progress.

I am adding a few pictures for but the great part is that it is drought tolerant, deer resistant, and blends in very nice with the house and the surrounding area.


Mari Landscaping is doing the work.

Denver airport security line

Yet another line in life

Laid back 7

7 after a hard day in Paso

Landscaping is sooooo close

Landscaping is so close I can smell it. A mix of lavender, rosemary and sage. Wish me luck.

I just don't get it...

Are all contractors incompetent asshats? Most likely not. Are most contractors manipulative bastards? Unlikely. But what is true is that a significant percentage of contractors are incompetent, manipulative asshats.
I mention this not because of my own experiences but with a friend of mine who lives on the east coast. The contractor they are working with has lied and manipulated them to such an extent that it should be criminal. While their situation is markedly different than mine, the excuses are the same, the shifting of blame is the same, and evasive, dismissive, communication is the same.

What I don't get is why some contractors manipulate the dreams that people have. How they play off your emotions. Continue to mislead you to cover their incompetence, ignore your request for truthful information and take advantage of the your desire to work to get your dream. Some contractors take your money, take your time and offer nothing but excuses in return.

If you are a honest contractor who lives up to their word, communicates effectively, and works with their customer to help them achieve their dream, thank you. If you are the contractor who makes excuses, manipulates your customers to cover up your incompetence, and refuses to take responsibility for ruining peoples dreams I hope the next client you take advantage of uses this medium we call the internet to let people know that you have liens against the homes you build, that you do not pay your subcontractors, that you consistently lied about your progress, and that overall you are a miserable human being that should not be allowed to ever put hammer to nail again.

I hear my friends pain and frustration. I understand much more than I would ever want to admit the hurt, the disgust, and the loathing they are now experiencing. I wish I could do more for them except listen and offer limited advice. I so wish I could pimp slap every contractor that treats people this way.

Stay strong, you will get through this.

Only in Paso

Mom's 60th birthday n virginia

Mom having fun on birthday

Paso is not red

Guess where i am

Subway

This is cool But warm this time of year

Lincoln Center Jazz

Just a Ballad

View From Offices

Great morning here in NYC. The sky is blue, the city smells... well like it should, and here is the view from the deck adjoining the cafe.

Chrysler Bldg

Hudson River

Central Park in the distance

Here's a hint

Guess where i am at

Fight is over

Zab Judah ko'd in 11th rnd

Let's Get Ready To Rumble

Zab n da house

Almost time

Fight Night at Madison Square Garden

Big Big hot dog at The Garden

Am I dreaming

Mecca of boxing

Still not in Paso

Madison Square Garden

Not in Paso this weekend

My room n NYC

7s' memorial day christmas tree

7 wants landscaping 4 her xmas tree. These posts r taken and posted with my phone

7 needs landscaping

As you can tell, 7 would appreciate someplace to lie down. Any landscape people want to help?

This Rocks

Landscaping has begun with a small experiment. Since there are no rain gutters and having standing water next to your house could be bad, follow these instructions:

• Order 1.5 cubic yards of cobblestone and 3 cubic yards of pea gravel
• Rent BobCat
• 
• Buy 125 feet of bender board
• Dig trench 6 inches deep, 53 feet long and 4 feet wide
• Place rock as pictured

Got Work Ethic

Remember elementary school where you got kudos for perfect attendance? There were some kids who went 3-5 years without missing a day. I remember my 2nd grade teacher never missed a day of school for 4 years. Amazing consistency and dedication to her job.

My parents have an amazing work ethic. My mother worked her way up from the fabrication line at a semiconductor company to upper management within 10 years. Before my mother returned to work, my father worked two jobs to make ends meet and was still working 2 jobs in his 50s'. They instilled a similar work ethic in me. Sometimes it is to my detriment, but it has been more good than not.

That said, I have decided to do the landscaping on my own. This after 8 months of dealing with the local landscaping companies that do not call back, do not show, and do not follow thru. They all talk a good game, tell you how much they know, kick down some knowledge but then they do not follow thru.
Here is the list of landscaping companies who failed to either call back, show up, or follow up after the initial meeting:

• R&S Landscaping
• Elements Landscaping
• C&C Landscaping
• AAA Landscaping
• John Flanigan Landscaping
• Cumbria Construction
  

In the event that I would get a bid, it would be so generic that I could not tell the scope of work, would be rife with misspellings and if you can believe it, there would be simple mathematical errors in square footage/material costs. My two favorite interactions have been:

• The initial $18k bid that morphed into a $36k bid when I asked the person to come back with a lower cost proposal.
  
• The father of one 'contractor' who tells me his son went to the snow and will get back to me and the other 'contractor' who calls to tell me he is going to the snow and does not have access to the bid to discuss the inaccuracies.

Remember, Paso is Darn Near Paradise!

Straw Bale Tour

I had the opportunity to tour another Straw Bale structure yesterday. They did some cool things like color coding the exterior walls to denote framing and using water tanks built into the walls to moderate temps in the structure.

What I really like is the exterior truth window:And something that said a lot to me which is a poster of Malcolm X next to a truth window. Appropriate if you ask me:Reminds me to do my truth window...

99 Degree Difference

6 months ago the temperature was 113 degrees this weekend it was 99 degrees colder.


The booster pump on the water tank froze and failed. They tell me this happens when it is 14 degrees. It was replaced and the resulting damage repaired for about $900 by the pump division of Farm Supply. As I have come to expect, they were professional and courteous. Most of the neighbors had bursting pipes, or some plumbing related issues due to the extreme(for California) cold. I will break out the costs and materials of this in my next post.

SLO B Slow

What a past few days in SLO County. The weather has been mild and that has allowed some very important erosion mitigation in the areas that were burned this summer.

Straw rolls or waddles, and jute netting is not cheap but Farm Supply comes through again with low prices, great pricing and much help in finding the right vegetation to plant in the burned areas.

Also, the tortured tale of landscaping continues its' slow inexorable march. Perhaps it will begin sometime in Feb 07. In trying to find landscapers, there seem to be some fly by night operations and I seem to be going thru them alphabetically. For example, the companies that I have contacted, AAA Landscaping, C&C Landscape, and R&S Landscaping , either stopped returning calls, did not follow through on when they said they would provide a estimate to me or failed to show up.

Happy Holidays!

Hopefully the gentleman who I am working with now will follow thru. Wish me luck.

...and then there was the Blogosphere

My apologies for not keeping up to date on my blogging. It has been a busy time with the holidays, travel, and work.

As for the Paso Straw Bale House, the December cold weather wreaked havoc with the pipes from the well, to the pump, and to the water tank. Several days the temps dropped to the mid 20s and by 5th day of cold weather, the exterior pipes finally froze. Good thing is that after the ice thawed out, insulation was added to prevent a recurrence, the bad thing is that there was no insulation in the first place.

Unfortunately a bigger problem surfaced, mainly a broken piece of PVC at the well. This resulted in a mini-geyser while the pump was on. Luckily a cool head and fleet feet cut power to the pump and called Farm Supply in Paso Robles. If you ever have to call the Pump Division of Farm Supply on the weekend, be prepared to spend $200.00/hour. Fortunately they were not needed on the weekend and during the week they charge $100.00/hour.

FLASHBACK:
In July I blogged about a grass fire. This fire damaged some of the plastic PVC that went to the CDF line. I called out Miller Drilling(who originally installed the well lines and water tank) and received a bid as follows,

• Replace a pressure Gauge $4.50
• Check Valve 1, 1 1/4x80 $35.00
• Misc. Pipes & Electrical Fittings $150.00
• Sales Tax $13.74
• Labor: Replumb Booster, 4" CDF Line $500
• Total: $703.24

End Flashback

Farm Supply came out on a Monday, fixed the broken PVC at the well that was causing the geyser AND fixed the damage from the fire in July for the grand total of $224.29. For those of you keeping score at home, that is a $478.95 difference with a larger scope of work. Farm Supply good, Miller Drilling, perhaps they do a good job but I cannot understand the price difference.

The irony is that Miller Drilling did the original install and did not use insulation. Needless to say, Farm Supply has my business from here on out.

Panning the Paso Straw Bale House

I would like to share some of the views I have had over the years as well as some interesting Panoramas of the house being built. Click on the pictures to see the full size photo. Enjoy!

Foundation Form

Post Harvest

Early Framing

Post Storm

1/3rd Framing Complete

Summer Heat

Center Beam View

Over the years I have taken hundreds of pictures of the house, the surrounding countryside, and the vineyards. The view from the Paso Straw Bale House is awesome. I sit for hours gazing out over the vineyards, listening to the horses, and enjoying the scents of the grape harvest.

Harvest Time

I have to say that this is my favorite time of year. The vines are heavy with fruit,
it is warm in the day but cools down nicely in the evening and the sunsets are breathtaking.

In light of the beauty of the harvest and the smell of fermenting grapes, I do have several projects that I am contemplating for the winter:

• Re-staining the porch area
• L-Headers for windows
• Polishing the interior concrete floor
• Landscaping

If anyone has experience in polishing concrete floors, hit me up. I would like to know:

1. How much does it cost for the machinery and polishing pads?
2. How messy is it?
3. How long does it take?
4. Is it really a DIY task?
   

Blue Pill, or Red Pill

For those of you who have seen The Matrix, the premise is that we are all living in a programmed dreamlike reality controlled by computers. The lead character along with other has figured this out and now are fighting against the 'machines'. At the end of the 1st Matrix movie, the lead gains the ability to see the 'the Matrix, e.g the dream world in the native code that is used to construct 'reality'.


I bring this up because I believe I look at this house in much of the same way. I see how it was constructed. I see every nail, stud, post, shear wall, A35 connector, hvac ducting, pex, etc. It is like I am looking at the code used to construct the house. And for those who know how programming, sometimes code can be elegant, and other times, not so elegant.

It it those not so elegant code fragments that cause much consternation.


So the question is, do I take the Blue Pill and stay in dream world or the Red Pill and see how far down the rabbit hole goes?

Got Wood?

I have access to 80+ year old redwood timbers from an old building. I would like to have these re-sawn for moulding and what not.

The problem is finding someone or someplace to re-saw them. Suggestion are welcome.

Wild Kingdom Battle Royale

I remarked in an earlier post about the Tarantula Hawk. Here is a picture of a Tarantula Hawk as it drags a tarantula it paralyzed into it's lair:The Tarantula is to the left. But this was no ordinary tarantula beat down. After this Tarantula Hawk incapacitated its' victim, another Tarantula Hawk swooped in and tried to gaffle it.
A fight ensued between the two T-Hawks with the winner being the one that originally captured the Tarantula. After battling two worthy opponents, the T-Hawk dragged the paralyzed arachnid more than 10 meters to this spot in the picture.

Here are a few more pics of the dragging...

Needless to say I did not get that close because I have a healthy respect for any insect that can take out a tarantula, kick another Tarantula Hawk to the curb, and then drag it's victim 30 feet.

Take that Brady Barr!

Look Who Visits the House

Not for real, but virtually.

This is a cool way to see the reach of your blog graphically.

In short, a geographic representation of who has visited this blog for the last 12 hours'




Just a little snippet of internet love.

Are we there yet?

In my rants, I believe I have never mentioned that the house is fully functional. You can cook, clean dishes, bathe, run the climate control systems, watch the sunset over the vineyards, marvel at the red tail hawks as they float over the ridge looking for prey, and just relax. There are times when it is difficult to see past the memories, the mistakes, and the money spent on fixing anothers mistakes. But there are times when I catch a glimpse of what it could be, what it should be, and what it can be.

Ok, enough of that, this is what I have planned for this weekend. Touching up the paint on the eaves, staining the posts and if time and weather permits, re-etching the concrete patio. I will be satisified with getting two out of three of these done.

I am hoping to get the patio to look similar to this:



Does anyone want to bet whether or not I can do a better job than Dave Exline at staining concrete? :-)

Where is my fireplace...

So I never got a fireplace. No wood stove, no gas stove, no nothing. Strange that I remember asking for the draw of the fireplace and transfering the money to the contractor but I never got one. Funny how that works. But in my archives I found where my fireplace went:

----- Original Message ----- From: Leslie Miley To: Janice Exline Sent: Friday, October 22, 2004 5:56 PM Subject: Re: Invoice from Three Little Pigs Construction

Janice, All draw requests are deposited in the same account. For example when I request a draw from line 760, it is deposited in the same account that you withdraw funds from. I am trying to avoid either of us withdrawing funds that are not earmarked for our specific items. i.e. after you withdraw funds, the account balance should be zero or close to it. We had the situation with the fireplace where