I managed to get many things accomplished today, which was a welcome Good Thing. Several miscellaneous things at work are now off the plate (always nice). I got home and worked on a few various things, but most importantly was the chipping away at some of the thank you cards for all of Kirstin’s happenings (something about birth and all that brings this on).

Phase one of the thank you notes is now complete; the mail-out set. Well, they’ll go out tomorrow (Friday), so most will receive them by Saturday. That’s nice to have out of the way, even though it really only represents less than a third of the total notes to go out. About half of them are hand-deliveries (of sorts), so those don’t need to get mailed out, and then there are those that fall into the ‘other’ category. 🙂

And yes, I did categorize them that way. Mail, Hand Deliver, Other.

I wanted to wait on preparing any thank you cards until after Kirstin’s shower, mostly because I knew there would be some overlap, so rather than trying to keep track of those who had received cards, those who hadn’t, etc., it was simpler to hold off as long as possible. Seeing as how there doesn’t appear to be any more showers lined up for a while, now’s a good time. So early next week we can handle the hand-deliver ones, and those in the ‘other’ category as they come along.

I haven’t had much time to really play around with the camcorder much, but I have played around with it. I probably took more video this afternoon with it than I’ve done so far. It’s kinda fun. I’ve not transferred any video to the computer just yet (mostly because I haven’t had the time, but also because I’ve not really taken anything groundbreaking enough to justify spending time with it right now). But, I figure that by the time my FireWire cable comes, I’ll have enough stuff ready to go to justify some extra time.

On a completely different note, it looks like the basement is starting to dry up (hooray)! We really didn’t have much water coming in through the floor this year at all (a welcome change from last year), and as of my inspection this afternoon, many places have completely dried up now. Those that haven’t yet have receded quite a bit. So, I’m hoping that (unless we get a load of rain this weekend) by sometime next week the situation will have resolved itself. It’s not even really that concerning to me this year, because it’s been so minimal.

On that note, however, I’ve decided to change the plan for a sump basin installation. I was ultimately hoping to put it in the corner of the cistern closest to the center of the house (closest to the worst of the seepage through the floor), but that requires first to gain entry into the cistern (which is not going to be a fun job). After thinking about it, I am now thinking about instead digging a sump basin beneath the basement stairs. It’s a fairly remote place (not well used space, either), will be much closer to an eventual power source (It’s only a few feet from the circuit panel), doesn’t require access to the cistern be created first, and most importantly is the closest unobtrusive location to the worst seepage through the floor in the entire basement.

So, this may be a summer project for me. Rent a jackhammer and go to town. I’ve seen the process done before and, while I’m really not looking forward to it, if I can get the concrete work (jackhammer stuff) done in a short period of time (seeing as how I have to rent a jackhammer), the remainder of the work is just plain brute force (dig out underneath the foundation for the basin) and technical (wire and plumb) and shouldn’t be too bad. So we’ll see what happens. I don’t intend to do anything for a while, because I want the basement to dry up pretty well (and also want the water table to recede a bit so it’s less heavy/wet dirt to haul out.

On my way to work today I heard an interesting bit of information about April 19 on the radio. Most notably that 14 years ago today was the Branch Davidian compound bust (I remember that pretty vividly, watching it during a social studies class in junior high). 12 years ago, the bombing at the federal building in Oklahoma City (which I also remember from news coverage), and the Columbine massacre in 1999.

All three of those events (and obviously several more which have taken place) are really sad and frustrating. But it’s odd that three events of such magnitude happened to fall on the same calendar date. I’d never really thought about that before, so when it was noted to me I found it quite intriguing. In a perfect world, there will never be another event like those to fall on April 19 (or any other time during the year for that matter). I also think that some of the 9/11 business (most notably the engraving of the date 9/11) has tended to overshadow previous dates. In other words, the date of an event (e.g. April 19) was never really ingrained into our heads like that event in 2001…so it’s easy to not recall exactly what date those things took place.

Anyway, enough of that morbid talk. I probably won’t get in any blog posts this weekend, as we’ve got a few things going on and my Internet availability may be sketchy at best, so I’m guessing that Sunday evening I’ll return to the daily post again. Just a heads-up for anyone that happens to read this daily. 🙂

Until next time…

–MZ