all quiet for now...

I don't have the luxury of time this morning. But I wanted to post a few pics of the state of our surroundings. Here are a few scenes from yesterday.

Piles of stuff in the side yard. (above)

Workers scrambling to finish cement-work at the foot of the new bridge.

All this stuff was in my yard. Seriously. There is still more, but it wouldn't all fit.

Up the road. Notice the new stripes. Notice the lack of traffic.

Down the road towards the bridge.

This smiling face brings me much joy. We will sorely miss seeing Luke work his tail off from our kitchen windows.

The bridge will unceremoniously open late on Friday. I will not be here to witness it. Will I remember on Sunday to come across it? Or will I automatically take the detour without thinking?

I'll let you know!

a new idea

Today, Bill and his team are working on tearing off the old metal roof over the existing kitchen and prepping it for shingles. Bill also had the use of the construction crew's track-hoe. He used it to clear debris from the yard and move some very heavy items. (-like an old furnace, for example!)

We had our windows for the addition delivered. Also, Bill picked up our exterior doors. Soon they will be installed!

Yesterday, he brought home these windows from Merriman's. They were a special order that were never purchased, so Eric showed them to Bill with the hope that we would be interested in them.
We purchased them at a steep discount. They will be installed along the ceiling line in the family room. The chimney for the wood-stove will run up the center with the two sets of windows on either side. I think it will look great!

Ben was hoping for a single round window at the peak, but the wood-stove placement made that impossible.

Here is an outside shot to give an idea of where those windows will be: at the peak facing the river.

We like to go with the flow, as they say.

inside & out

Here is our old stone home. She doesn't let all the fuss & feathers around her disturb her peace.
Above Grandma Jean's front door and tucked under the pressure-treated wood that supports the front porch is a white marble plaque. It is engraved with the date 1843.

I was first thrilled and then puzzled at this discovery. I mean, this is not the type of town that has marble plaque over the doors. We are a humble bunch of dwellings.

As far as I can figure, ours is the only house with such a regal thing.

Then I ran across an interesting tidbit in an old Madrid newspaper that illumined me. Originally, the ground floor apartment was a stone-cutter's shop. Its main business was carving headstones. Many of the beautiful stones that grace the cemetery down the street were fashioned here. Fancy that!

One can assume that a stray piece of white marble was put into service as a date-marker.

Across the street, we have new sidewalks! I resisted the temptation to scrawl my name into the wet cement. If I had done so, I could claim I was merely carrying on the stone-cutter's tradition.

The Big Project, as I affectionately call it, is coming along nicely. Here, Bill and his brother John seem to be taking a you-tube break. Hey, whatever it takes to get them through the day, I say!

We have windows galore. Almost every one of them has a river view. But don't confuse that bright blue of the tarp in the yard for the river.

From the outside, one can get the bigger picture. These sunny and relatively warm November days have given the guys opportunity to finish shingling the roof!

-and I say YAY to that!

a stroll around the yard

These pictures were taken a mere ten minutes ago.

I wandered around our yard (I use the term "yard" rather loosely) with the camera to see what there was to see. Here is the mean machine that has been shaking my timbers all morning.

It is a veritable fire-breathing dragon.

Here is a member of the road crew. He is eating a hot dog. He is in need of a napkin.

Something about her expression tells me she doesn't want this picture of her eating hot dog to show up on the world-wide web.
From the front porch, I see this machine which is moving piles of dirt.

I see across the street towards the town dock.

I see my kayak perched on the bank of the town dock. It looks so cute there.


If it were warm enough to eat lunch on our zappy blue table, I would see this kind of stuff.

See the new bridge swathed in plastic? The plastic sheets are stretched over a wooden skeleton. Together, they keep the freshly-poured concrete from freezing. I call it The Greenhouse Effect.

Just a little more to the left, I see my side yard. Oh my goodness gracious dear me.
Can you understand WHY I chose not to rake this year?

Later today I may post some pics of the progress on the Big Project out back.

two teams at work

I will bet my bottom dollar that not everybody had this going on in their front yard today.

Or even some of this.

You see, we have a few projects going on simultaneously. One project is The Bridge and the other is The Road. On days like today, they cross paths.

-and when I say "cross paths", I mean literally. Both crew were crawling all over our corner of town this afternoon. They all brought stuff that made lots of noise. As a matter of fact, when my piano tuner showed up at the front door looking rather bewildered and ruffled, he was wearing these. Really, it was that loud.


Here, the paving guys are doing their thing. These curbs are pretty industrial.

From my front steps, I watched as this nifty ( and probably 60 ton) machine formed them. It was like those plastic squeeze things that you put play-dough into.

Way cool.

guys playing with large machines

I am sorry if photos of large machines are not your particular cup of tea.

But that's all I've got right now. At this present moment in time.

The crew is now ripping up my road. They already ripped it up to install sewer lines in July.
They ripped it up in August to install gas lines.

Last month, they ripped it up again just for the fun of it.
No. They had a reason, I'm sure. I am just not aware of it.

Now they are ripping it up to put a new road down. Then, in the spring, they will rip it up ONCE AGAIN because this layer is temporary. Just to get us through the winter.

I have a theory. I suspect these guys are ripping up the road merely so they can run heavy equipment and make noise.
As a matter of fact, on Halloween I spotted some of the very same guys going door to door with their orange vests and hard hats on.

Totally kidding. But my point remains: these guys love to dress up and play "construction".

When night falls (which is does an hour earlier now) they blare airport-quality spotlights
and keep finding stuff to do.

This is not the road crew. This is the bridge crew. But they are all cut from the same crazy cloth.

"Hey guys. I know what. Let's pour cement before we quit for dinner. So what if it is 5:17 pm and dark?"

This last quote was imaginary. But I truly heard them hooting and hollering with glee mere moments ago. I am not making this up.