Oh My!

There was much excitement here at DIY Insanity. No, not putting in the plastic, filter cloth and gravel into the drainage near the path I'd worked on before (the only thing less exciting than a trench is a filled-in trench). No, not installing conduit and wire in the basement.

Instead, we had excitement for the whole neighborhood. While watching the Giants vs. the Eagles on Sunday Night Football (gotta love John Madden), we heard heavy trucks go rumbling by and saw some flashing lights. A short time later we heard some more; I figured it had been a false alarm and they were going back to the station up the hill. K could still hear rumbling, though, so she went to investigate. She quickly returned and reported there were multiple fire engines up a few houses. We went out to investigate, and found out that it was a house fire in the next block.

We couldn't walk up our street, so we walked around the other way, and saw a whole bunch of fire equipment. K counted 9 or 10 fire engines, 2 ladder trucks (the big ones with the 2nd steering wheel in back), 2 police cars, and an ambulance. And a PG&E truck for good measure. I saw a friend from Oakland Firefighters Random Acts who's in the department said it had gone to a second alarm in part because the residents were pack rats and the house was literally full of stuff. When it went to a second alarm, and in anticipation of a long night, they were dispatched with the department's O₂ truck to refill air tanks as needed. So there were crews from at least 3 stations there. Fortunately no one was injured; the owners weren't at home when the fire broke out.

When I walked by this morning, the lower floor looked completely scorched, and the windows were knocked out (common when fighting fires to clear the debris and the smoke out.) The upper entrance floor (common here in the hills) looked OK, but based on how much smoke had come out the lower floor, I imagine there was a fair amount of smoke damage up there, too. Oy. I'm just glad no one was injured.

Bad Plumbing Ju-Ju

Given my recent posts, it's probably no great surprise I spent today working on plumbing. What's less expected is that it wasn't the plumbing in our house. My friend Cindy that helps run Oakland Firefighters Random Acts told me the back door of her mom's house wasn't shutting. You may remember about a year ago I did a bunch of work on her parent's house, mostly replacing a burst water heater, but I ended up working on other plumbing, and the back door that had been kicked in by a SWAT team and then replaced by some firefighters with Random Acts (people normally have to replace damaged property like that on their own; the police don't really take responsibility for it). They unfortunately didn't do a great job when they replaced the door, so I had to plane the door a bit to get it to shut. With time, hot and cold, and changes in humidity, it was again no longer shutting, so Cindy said it needed to be planed some more. Well, there was a bit more to it than that. The hinges hadn't been set right, so the door was binding against the inside of the door stop, and trying to close the door had caused the screws in the top hinge to split the wood and pull out part way. So I had to trim the door stop (I did so messily but as quickly as possible), replace the screws in the hinges with longer screws, as well as plane the door a bit.

But there were plumbing issues, too. The faucet in the laundry sink was leaking. Rather than tell anyone, Cindy's mom's caretaker had stuck a plastic bag under it. Over time, the water had gotten behind the block supporting the faucet, and into the plaster and lath wall. I fixed one leak and shut off the water to the faucet, but it needs time to dry out before any more work is done. The wall may need to be redone. Yrch.

And Cindy mentioned that the kitchen sink wasn't draining very quickly. Sure enough, it would start filling after running the water hard for a few seconds. I looked in the cabinet under the sink, and was dismayed to see drain pipes with signs of previous leakage, including electrician's tape wrapped around the middle of one pipe. But I gamely went forward, disassembled the trap and attempted to clean out the drain. The trap was clean, and I discovered that the main blockage was just inside the wall. Unfortunately it wasn't just gunk (though there was plenty of that), it was primarily rust, which neither the snake nor a bent hanger could do much with. I also ran the snake into a clean out down below the sink, and discovered that some where down the line there's stuff slowing things down there, too. At least that's just gunk (I think), but it was beyond what I could get out with the snake. So Cindy gets to call RotoRooter or the like and have them clean it. Though I don't think there's much they can do with the rust-filled pipe in the wall, either. I think that may need to be replaced, and that means ripping open the wall. Double yrch.

Habitat for Humanity Build-a-Thon

I survived. The last couple of months have been hecka busy, and the last couple of weeks particularly so. But the Mexico mission trip, the Habitat for Humanity Build-a-Thon, and the Oakland Firefighters Random Acts Dinner Dance fundraiser were all successful, and I managed to complete all the other stuff I needed to, as well.

OK, sure, I'm taking an extra week between apheresis appointments (last year they had me take an extra week after Mexico anyways), there were a couple of messages waiting for me that still need answering, and it's going to take me a while to catch up on my sleep (last night I got 12 hours, and would have gotten more if the cats hadn't woken me for breakfast) but for the first time in too long I've got spaces on my calendar.

I haven't been completely idle today (the cats took care of that department after breakfast was served). I started a blog to update people on the progress of the Thrivent Builds house with Habitat for Humanity East Bay. The Build-a-Thon finished yesterday, and 8 houses went from foundation slab to roof trusses in 4 short days. Pretty darn amazing. You can read more about it on the HEBTB blog.

Breathe

I feel like I've barely got room to. Breathe, that is. We got back from Mexico Saturday evening, short a vehicle (dead transmission; it was the one towing the equipment trailer) and I did a hurried job prepping the media for Sunday morning. After church I spent a wonderful afternoon with Katarina, talking, reading, playing with the cats, and generally relaxing. Deep breath.

I knew this week was going to be busy. Thursday through Sunday is Habitat for Humanity East Bay's big fundraising and building event, the annual Earth Day build-a-thon. I've missed it for a couple of years because it was the same week as the Mexico trip, but it's a great event and I've missed doing it.

This year I'm the chapter specialist for Thrivent Builds, helping to coordinate things between Habitat, Thrivent, and local Lutheran churches. Thrivent is now the biggest sponsor of Habitat ever, but the catch is that local Lutherans need to raise money and volunteer. So I knew I was going to participate, even if that meant *gasp* skipping the Mexico trip. Even though they didn't fall on the same week this year, as busy as I've been the last several months, I was seriously thinking about skipping the Mexico trip. But I looked at the calendar and figured three days of rest would be enough, and decided to do both.

Of course there were the little matters of prepping the media for Sunday (including a video slideshow of the Mexico trip) even though I won't be there, Oakland Firefighters Random Acts having their big fundraising event on Saturday (I'll be ducking out of the build-a-thon early to help), and the host of mundane details that fill up every day life.

Then Sunday night I got an email from Random Acts that a young man I knew named Irving had died. He'd been battling cancer for years, and had been near death a couple of times, so Random Acts, Make-A-Wish Foundation, Children's Hospital, etc. knew him quite well. A wonderful kid, always smiling and cracking jokes, and just wanting to be a normal kid, not a depilated pincushion. Miraculously he was doing a bit better and had gone home from Children's for a while, so this was a punch in the gut for all who knew him. I can't even begin to imagine what his parents and brother must be going through.

So it's time to fire up ProShow Gold and make YAMV (Yet Another Memorial Video) for the funeral on Thursday. I got a break from them a while back to do a video for my sister-in-law's 40th birthday, but I feel I'm getting entirely too much practice at the memorial kind. Say a little prayer for strength for me, and a whole bunch of prayers for Irving's family and friends. Vaya con Dios, Irving.

Pass the Boot

Last weekend they had 'firefighter appreciation day' at the Cal basketball game. They had a working fire engine plus the Random Acts fire engine (a 1967 open cab Van Pelt, used for parades and events like this). Kids of all ages seem to love fire engines. Besides the rigs, there were firefighters from Oakland, Berkeley and Contra Costa County, giveaways of t-shirts from various stations, a half-time contest, and a Berkeley firefighter rapelling down with the game ball to start things off.

But it was also a fundraising event for the daughter of the Oakland firefighter who died a couple weeks ago. I created a short video of Kevin (30 seconds to show a lifetime is not enough; I could do a nice 3 minute show of just his visits to kids at Childrens Hospital), and firefighters 'passed the boot' to collect donations during halftime. I don't know how much was raised, but lots of people gave, and gave enthusiastically.

Well, now I'm passing the boot. The cause is less personal (the recipients haven't even been selected yet), but no less noble. I'm raising money for my local Habitat for Humanity. Habitat works world-wide to eliminate poverty housing, and there's plenty of that right here in the good ol' U.S. of A.

Habitat East Bay's build-a-thon is a fund-raising event that's also fun. The goal is to raise money, but also to frame 8 houses in 4 days. Build-a-thons are hard work, but ton of fun. Think barn-raising times 8. If you want to contribute or just to learn more, check out my fund-raising page.

Dark Side of the Rainbow

It exists. I recently borrowed a copy of The Wizard of Oz to do a little spoof for Kevin's family of him as the munchkin on the right (He really did look kind of like him. Of course, we also noticed that our friend Larry looks a lot like the cowardly lion. Who knew?)

So after finishing that up, I told Katarina about the Dark Side of the Rainbow phenomenon: that by playing Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album in time to The Wizard of Oz, there's an unusually high correlation of the lyrics and tone of the music to the action on screen. I'd heard about it before, but in the 33 years of the existence of Dark Side of the Moon, I'd never experienced it.

So given the unusual presence of The Wizard of Oz DVD in the house (Dark Side of the Moon has been in my CD collection as long as I've had a CD player), we decided it was worth watching at least a little of it. We don't have a separate CD player in the living room, just a combo DVD/CD player, so I wasn't sure how easily we could pull it off. But then I remembered my aging PC has a CD drive and a DVD drive, so pop went the disks into the respective drives, and after a little fiddling to get the audio on the DVD off, we were off to see the wizard.

And it really does exist. It's not 100% (well, maybe if you consumed enough controlled substances it might be), but there is enough correlation to be interesting, and it's surreal enough to be entertaining. (But you'd have to consume a lot of controlled substances to think there's anything to the suicidal munchkin story. It's a crane wandering around the set, along with the peacock, toucan, and other birds.)

All that to say, I have actually gotten to work on the house some this week. I've begun disassembling the old front hallway in preparation for making that and the old entryway part of the kitchen. But given my adventures in Oz, cleaning up photos of the memorial for presentation to Kevin's family, and other media work, I haven't done as much as I'd like.

But darn, it feels good to be working on the house again.

Death, Take a Holiday

Progress on the house in the last couple weeks has been limited to about 15 minutes of disassembling the old French doors from the dining room, plus the new gutters that LeafGuard installed. It's been a variety of things keeping me from the house, but the most recent was a sad one. I volunteer with Oakland Firefighters Random Acts of Kindness, doing a variety of things (tech support, photography, media creation, home repairs, valet parking, etc.)

Last week, an Oakland firefighter fought a house fire on Friday night, and went to the gym to "work the smoke out" when he went off-shift Saturday morning. He collapsed, and despite efforts of the gym staff and then the fire department, he died. He was only 47, which no matter how you slice it, was too young for such a great guy. At least 999 other people agree, since the church filled up with family, friends and firefighters from all over the state, and hundreds had to listen to the overflow speakers outside. Kevin Reed was a big volunteer with Random Acts, too. He was at Station 8, a few blocks from Children's Hospital, and was a regular visitor to the kids -- he was scheduled for another visit the following Monday.

So I photographed my first funeral on Friday, including fire engine procession, color guard, honor guard, etc. It's not a skill I want to get any practice at. I took almost the identical picture to the one the Oakland Tribune ran (not surprising since the Trib photographer was standing next to me at the time). Rather than repeat it, I'll show a picture that my friend Cindy from Random Acts took, which captures Kevin's spirit far better than any words I could write will:
That's Kevin with Father Jason, the Oakland Fire Department chaplain and Kevin's classmate back in high school, after a whipped cream fight during a Random Acts fundraiser at Fenton's Creamery.

You're with God now, Kevin. God, be with Kevin's family, especially his wife and daughter, his friends and co-workers. And when a boisterous guy who looks kind of like the munchkin on the right greets you at the pearly gates when it's your turn, you'll get to meet Kevin, too.

I Hate Technology

Hello, fine readers! I know of DIY Insanity readers all over the SF Bay Area (hi Pete, Jim, Melissa, John, et al), Michigan (hi Paula, Dave, Jimmy, Tim), Florida (hi Mom and Dad), Indiana (hi Liz and Paul) and Germany (hi Kirsten, when you finally make it onto the computer). Drop a line if you're reading this from someplace I didn't list. Or even someplace I did.

Sorry for the lack of updates. This past week has been a blur. Largely a rain-soaked, exhausted blur. I've done some work on the house, but given the rain, it's all been electrical work indoors. I know with some creativity I could take some interesting pictures of the work, but for the most part, electrical doesn't make for very intriguing photos.

I can't complain too much about the weather. Despite the frequent rains here, so far there's been pretty minimal damage. Which can't be said for the areas in Europe that are flooded, the areas in Arkansas that got flattened by tornadoes, or the people in Mississippi, Louisiana and elsewhere that got flooded and flattened by hurricanes and still haven't been able to rebuild.

Oh, right...technology. Thursday I got a panicked email from my friend that runs Oakland Firefighters Random Acts, a local non-profit I do tech support and graphics for. Saturday was their big fund-raiser, a dinner/dance/auction/awards ceremony. Not only was the firefighter (now arson investigator) who normally creates the slide shows to go with the awards part not able to create them this year, she wasn't going to be able to run the video projector during the ceremony, either. I'd already volunteered to take pictures again so I planned to be there, but this was more important. They'd find someone else to take pictures.

It was also a lot more work and not much time to do it in. Cindy and I worked much of the day and into the night Thursday selecting photos and creating slides. After a brief break on Friday for lunch and a tour at the Scharffen Berger Chocolate factory in Berkeley with Katarina to celebrate my birthday, I was back at it. It was pretty draining -- not just the staying up late part, but part of what I was doing was creating slide shows to go along with talks by members of the Urban Search and Rescue team (USAR4) that went to Mississipi and the OFD Swift Water Rescue team that went to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit. I lost track of how many pictures of the devastation and misery I looked at -- ugh. I can only imagine what it was like to experience first-hand (USAR4 also worked at Ground Zero for the WTC).

But Random Acts is about helping people and creating positive memories for firefighters. Since we didn't want the slide shows to be total downers, much of what we showed was of the team members, or the team members rescuing people. But there were an awful lot of other pictures to sort through.

Certainly other parts of the show were more positive: a group of firefighters that rented a truck and filled it with water, food, a generator and other needed items and drove it day and night to get to the devastated town in Mississippi where a cousin of one the firefighters lived. All the people and companies who worked together to restore the Van Pelt open-air fire engine to be used for Random Acts like bringing Santa to see children who are in the hospital. The Citizen Hero of the year, a woman who's been working with Special Olympics for 30 years. New Random Acts programs starting up in Oregon and Florida. All the different Random Acts that Oakland Firefighters have made happen in the last year.

But it almost happened that all of that happened without pictures. Friday I got a borrowed laptop to use for the show, and Saturday morning pictures of from past Special Olympics to create a show for the Citizen Hero award. But the laptop seemed kind of sluggish, and got more so as I worked on things backstage while setup for the rest of the program was going on. It eventually reached the point where I wasn't sure if it would run for the show, so I got another laptop loaned by a firefighter. It ran a lot more quickly, and I was able to get it to configure itself and recognize the projector as a second video screen. That makes running Powerpoint a lot easier, as you can do more than go forward and backward in a show. But then the laptop started crashing (ah, the joys of Windows 98). I tried a 3rd laptop loaned by yet another firefighter. I went home and got a blank CD-R and a blank floppy (amazingly, both the 2nd and 3rd laptops have floppy drives), but the CD writer on the 2nd one wouldn't work, nor would the floppy drive on the 3rd one. In any event, I couldn't get the 3rd laptop to recognize the video projector. I switched back to the second laptop, but it took me the better part of an hour to get it recognize the video projector at all, never mind as a second screen. I almost switched to a 4th laptop (thanks, Brian), but I realized I had no way of getting my changes from the second laptop to it. And more significantly, I was out of time -- the show was about to start.

The show did go on, minus the Special Olympics pictures. Everything else made it as far as I know, though I ended up having to switch laptops mid-stream to be able to show pictures of past Citizen Heros. Fortunately there was a DVD playing right before it, so the change over was pretty seamless. But by the end of the night, I was ready to fling all the laptops off a building somewhere. Sometimes I hate technology.

Waiting Game

As expected, I've been keeping busy with a variety of things this week. Monday I cemented the DWV lines together, and did some clean up in the basement.

Yesterday I pressure tested the DWV lines, and as expected there were no problems. I haven't tested it under the full 10' column of water, but there shouldn't be any problems with that...besides bracing the ABS pipe. 10' of water even in a 2" pipe is pretty heavy.

Then it was off to the Red Cross for apheresis, and in the afternoon I went and worked at Camron-Stanford House on the database. What a mess. I'm slowly getting my head around it, but I realized a long time ago that it had about 5X as many fields and forms as needed, and they're not consistently or clearly named.

Today I made a trip to Economy Lumber to order, well, lumber. Lots of different stuff for framing and sheathing the walls, all the way up to a 4"x12", 16 ft. long beam. That'll go across the dining room where the existing wall is, supporting the wall above it and the 5' cantilever section of the loft.

I also made a trip to Home Depot (I'm sure they missed me), and picked up some odds and ends, and some material to work at my friend Cindy's. She's the one who runs Oakland Firefighters Random Acts. And given her bad back, full-time work on Random Acts, and that job thingy, she can't do as much work on her property as she'd like. So I put some of the trim around the replacement windows I'd installed a while back, and did a lot of caulking. The wood shingle siding is in pretty bad shape, so I can imagine working on that at some point in the future, too. Then there's the steps that need finishing, if Cindy decides she wants the railing on both sides, the porch decking that needs repair, the deck in the back that needs building... well, between our house, Cindy's, Habitat for Humanity, and the Mexico Mission trips, I'll have no shortage of construction and home improvement stuff to work on.