It's late, but I wanted to share the latest update, however small. Yesterday, temporary no parking signs showed up all along our side of the street. Apparently to give the regular street sign installers more time? Who knows.
Our autumn has been mild, overall, and I think I heard the mildest on record. We started yesterday with a wintry mix (slush) that turned to light, wet snow, then more overnight to officially get our first snowfall of the season. Below is what we had before I left for work this morning.
It continued with sideways, wet snow all morning with temperatures just above freezing and sustained winds 20 or more miles per hour, but by this afternoon it warmed up a few degrees and turned to a light rain. Temperatures are expected to remain several degrees above freezing while the wind dies down overnight, so I don't expect to see much snow, if any, left tomorrow. The foreseeable forecast has temperatures just above and below freezing, day and night, but I do see one day where we are not expected to get above freezing all day.
I'm not ready for this, but I never am.
I believe the same day of my last Street Reconstruction post we received a letter from the city that the contractor had completed their work. Yesterday morning as I left, though, there were two of them out front; they had come back to try and connect my cable back to the top of the pole so they could get their pole holding the wire over the street, back. From what I saw this afternoon, the newly-kinked coaxial cable is now pretty useless and would need to be replaced anyway, if we have a need for that again. I should have just cut it off the house when they knocked it loose.
We got another letter today with a bit of information on caring for the grass or native plants, depending what the homeowner chose, and saying any trees would not be planted until spring. Still no word on the unnecessary footbridge over the creek yet. A waste of money, and this last election day a city referendum to raise our property taxes over state limits passed, inexplicably (who are these people voting for this crap?!). We'll now have to pay a few hundred dollars more per year - with no end date - to see our money wasted on projects like that. Ugh.
Moving on, there's now a new sign at the top of the street showing a 20 mph speed limit, but not any no parking signs on our side of the street yet, so everyone is parking as they had before but now on a narrower street. I'd think with winter coming the signs would be a priority, and I expect to see them soon.
I'll continue with updates as they happen, but surely fewer and farther between now. All in all, this went smoother than expected and we're glad the worst is over.
Since late last week they started filling the terraces and other areas with dirt, and when I got home today we had all the dirt, seeded and covered with a straw mat. I do have grass growing in a spot I seeded in the back just a couple weeks ago, so maybe there is time yet for a little growing before winter.
As far as I can tell, signs need to be installed and the cable company must move wires so some poles can be removed. Not sure if anything else is left.
As I sat to write this my phone made a noise... after the break!
Earlier in the day I spent some time cleaning up the back yard; mulching leaves, cleaning up the gardens and flowerbeds, put the compost soil in the gardens and get the bin ready to receive on the right side while giving a good turn to the left. I have a couple buckets of yard waste to get to the dump, just a bit of sod, and some woody stems and dead raspberry branches from the gardens. Technically it all could go in with the compost but I always end up pulling out a few chunks and sticks and tossing them into the other side of the bin so they have another year to break down, and the less of that the better.
There's not a whole lot else to do outside before winter arrives. I still have to clean out the gutters, though our windy weather has me hoping that will be a, um, breeze. And I still have to make sure the snow blower starts and move some things from the garage to the basement. Other than that, just keep on top of mulching the leaves, is all.
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So far I'd only tried their Yeasted Baguette recipe, and I liked it but I used a combination of the methods in the recipe and what I'd done before. They turned out great, but I wanted to more closely follow and practice the book to learn. Mainly the differences were wet handling/proofing with oil spray or now dry handling/proofing with flour and a couche (which I had done some of before), and using the peel and stone for baking rather than the baguette tray.
Everything got done in about 6 hours total, ending around 3 in the afternoon, and my legs were tired from standing. The Packer game started shortly after so I was able to put my feet up and watch the game. I'm glad I got done as much as I did, but I don't think I'll try to do quite as much in one day again. I do look forward to trying other recipes from the book, but I have no idea what the next one will be yet.
The windows mummy is no more this year, but I did get a neat black skeleton with lit eyes to hang on the front door tonight. I also got a cheap purple spider web that I was hoping to cover from awning to bottom rail but it was way too windy to try and set that up, so it'll be put away for next year. A flickering flame porch light and a couple squat pumpkins would round out our Halloween look this year.
I had a good day with some Halloween celebrations at work, then getting ready for trick-or-treaters at home. We'd had great weather the last few days. I was even able to wear shorts and sandals out and about the last couple days, but today was to be different.
It had been windy recently with a couple nice warm days, but today was more windy, sustained winds 15-20 mph with gusts that can stop you in your tracks. Thankfully that's easing off a bit tonight, but we've also gotten so much colder with this front coming in. By morning we'll be near freezing with barely a breeze.
Despite the weather, we had a few more trick-or-treaters than last year, but still only 14 by my count. We shut it down before 8 tonight, more than a half hour since the last ones. Gave out less than half of the candy we had, so now we have that problem, too. Happy Halloween, everyone.
I noticed today the gap between the base of the tree and where it was growing over the old curb and now with the new curb and thought to provide a different view here. The street is one foot narrower on each side now.
There hasn't been any big updates lately, they've just been cleaning up the terraces and where they had to dig out for new sidewalk to a depth of so many inches, presumably for fresh soil to plant grass and trees. They've also been raising/replacing the water valves (blue marker) to be at the height of where the ground will be. I don't believe they had to do ours as it is close enough, I guess.
I'm afraid this series will last until spring for the planting of the terraces, but we'll see what happens.
There hasn't been much visible work done on the streets since last post. It appears they have prepared some of the terraces for adding dirt, grass and trees, but no update until ours is done. They've also not started on the foot bridge that is part of this project, and I hope they came to their senses and save that money but probably not.
I got the car back on Tuesday last week. All they found was a wheel bearing that needed replacing on the right front. Thankfully it wasn't more serious, that bearing made a hell of a scraping sound. So about 100 bucks to tow it to the shop then about 900 dollars to fix. Could've been worse and I consider myself lucky.
Also Tuesday after work I returned the rental car, so I had the rental for 8 days. It was all rather confusing when I rented it, but it appears the rental car cost me about 50 dollars a day. All in all, not as bad as I feared, yet the total cost of my car breaking down approached $1500.00.
Also on Tuesday evening, after returning the rental and fetching my car from the shop, I got a call from my sister. Seems my Mom was having a health emergency. I talked to her but she didn't want me to come down because they were hoping to get her into a Madison hospital the next day, which they did. So I met her at one of the hospitals here in town the next morning. Later that Wednesday she had a procedure done, and the next day she was discharged in the early afternoon. I took her home and spent the night, but wound up leaving around midday on Friday and my sister and her kids got there later in the afternoon and spent the weekend with her.
Mom will be okay and has a chance to recover completely, but will need to exercise, take her medicine, listen to her doctors and go to therapy. So it will be work, but I know she can do it.
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The work this week consisted of wetting, grading and compressing the gravel, and raising the manholes to the new street level (the orange barrels in the middle of the road).
There are still wires to move, poles to remove, terraces to finish, trees to plant (next spring?) and signs to put up, but the worst appears to be behind us and the end in sight. We've been parking a block and a half away for quite some time now so it will be nice to park at home again - though we may not be able to some days due to the continuing work. And I'll have to have the local second hand shop pick up a dresser in the garage so I can park in it again.
As for my car, I talked to the shop first thing Monday and they were booked for the week. I've been taking my car there for 15 years and trust them, so do I wait or try to get it into an unfamiliar shop earlier? I chose to wait, but did have it towed to the shop that day as they said if they had a cancellation or extra time they may be able to look at it earlier, otherwise it's scheduled for Monday. Well, I heard nothing from them all week so I assume they never had a chance to check it out. I have the rental car through Friday though I hope to be able to return it sooner.
