At long last, we are starting our first legitimate growing season. We missed the train on getting a summer garden going, but took the opportunity these past weeks to prepare the soil for a fall garden. Our composting method is simple, and unlike previous attempts at composting, (see vermiculture here) we are able to compost just about all our raw veggie and food waste (minus strong citrus), PLUS all our egg shells, coffee grounds, and tea bags. Quick aside: Tonight is Trash Night in Seneca, and I noticed when changing the bag that we were on our last bag from a box of 20 that we bought when we first moved here on May 15th. When you compost, you don’t need to change bags as much, and bugs are not attracted to your garbage. Composting with worms is cool, and is a good option for people without access to a yard that they can dig around in, but worms have a limit to what they can process, as well as a limited palate, compared to micro organisms. …Read the rest »

I know it’s been awhile. Work has been all-consuming; I get home, take a shower, La and I eat dinner, we watch Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy, take the dog for a walk, and by then I’m sleep walking to bed. My first week on call was 80 hours plus, which was insane, but worth the paycheck. In terms of time commitment, this summer of air con is like that first year of teaching all over again, but with a shorter, merciful “high work load” period.

HVAC is slammed during the summer, when teachers are off, but come autumn things slow down, while teachers are up to their eyeballs in work. Then things get slower still in the dead of winter, and ramp up slowly in the spring until the summer. This will hopefully lead to more writing and reading during those slow times.

Did I mention we got a dog two weeks ago? She’s a two year old black toy poodle named Sophie. AKA Sonic. AKA Struddle.

Sophie in brief: Craigslist special. Recycled from a failed marriage, mom took the kids and the dog, moved to an apartment, can’t have pets. Or maybe she just had a lot going on and needed minimize stresses. Either way, we got Sophie for a song, though she came to us with fleas, worms, mites in her ears, and dreads. Hadn’t been to the groomer in quite some time. Neglected. We got her bathed, shaved, and medicated, so now she’s cool and shadows Laura wherever she goes.

So that’s why I haven’t been so present. Add to that moving into a new home previously occupied by four undergraduate D&Ders, and all the crap you have to do to make a well-priced rental habitable. Free time has been short. But we are on our way now, gardening, composting, re-invigorating the lawn, collecting firewood kindling for winter, and trimming. And inside, the walls are painted, the floors are scrubbed, the bedroom doesn’t smell like cat litter anymore, and the guest room is ready for YOU, dear reader. You’ll have your own bathroom, TV, and access to WiFi. Come visit us when things cool down and the foliage starts to turn. We’ll take you to our “club” on the lake, and go hiking in the woods. And soon our patio will be an outdoor oasis with strung lights and citronella plants all around, ready for garden party dinners. Though Ray will not be in attendance.

My first week of work as an HVAC service technician was a lot of fun. I’ve been in the truck with a guy named T. who has been a good trainer in many ways, and has expressed the realities of the trade eloquently: “No one is coming to help us.” …Read the rest »

So tomorrow will be my first day of work as an air conditioning technician. I’m trying to remember my other first days of work. I can’t remember how I felt before starting my first day at Davio’s. I trained for a few days, for free, before they hired me. So it was more of an extended interview feeling. I remember feeling very nervous before my first day at Thurgood Marshall Academy. That was a total overload, as every first year teacher knows. Other first days…I’m drawing a blank. I guess I’ve had a lot of jobs “just to get me through.” This is the first job I’ve actually spent time preparing for in a very specific way. You could say that I spent time preparing for teaching, via my high school and college educations, but the timeframe between deciding to apply for my first paid teaching job and the first day of work was literally, like, two weeks. Like a lot of teachers, I guess I ended up teaching out of necessity. For this, I made a well-researched decision a year ahead of the schooling, and then two accelerated terms at Tech cranking through the lab book. I realize now I never picked up my lab book after it was graded. I do have, however, my text book, prominently displayed on my new used bookshelves, alongside two spirals and two binders—my sum total knowledge of vocational school.

I’ve got my clothes laid out next to my tool bag and my lunch in the fridge. Tomorrow morning I’ll wake up early and make a good breakfast and drive down the road to check-in at work. They’ll put me with someone for the first few days, and that will be that. Pretty soon I’ll be handed the keys to a truck and a Nextell and off you go. Looking forward to that first pay check.

We are moved in to our new house in Seneca! The house has good bones but certainly has its fair share of needed repairs. Thankfully nothing too major, and thankfully we are just renting, so that things like the plumbing aren’t coming out of our pocket. But in terms of deep cleaning, gardening, and drape hanging, we have been putting our all in these past seven days. (Has it really been a week already?)

I’ve got a To Do list three pages long which includes such gems as “build shelves for books” and “prune trees in front yard”. Fun Fun.

On the job front, I’ve got two irons in the fire, one glowing red hot, the other whose temperature I’m not quite sure about. Hopefully I will know which one to use on Monday morning. At that point, I expect to be employed as an HVAC technician.

On Saturday I will drive a 17 foot U-haul containing all of our worldly possessions to an address in Seneca, SC where Laura and will live for at least two years, the longest continual address I will have ever had in my entire life. Side note: what tense is “will have ever had”? Future-past perfect? If for what ever reason you’re interested in reading some good literary fiction about my soon-to-be home, check out One Foot In Eden by Ron Rash.

On Monday I will meet with two different HVAC companies and hopefully secure a job. I will be sure to remind both companies that I recently graduated from Horry Georgetown Technical College with EPA, ICE, and NATE certificates, and that during our end of year job fair, I was given honorable mention for “Top Tech.” (The two “Top Techs” were a master electrician and a mechanic, both 50+; not so bad, considering the competition, I think.)

Reading Girl W/ the Dragon Tattoo and loving it. Also excited about the new vacuum cleaner we bought recently (Shark Navigator).

Last week was my “spring break” and thankfully I was able to get most of my shifts covered at the bookstore so that Laura and I could get up to Clemson and look at housing options. We saw about 15 properties over 6 hours and ended up signing a lease on Good Friday for a really great 4 bedroom house in Seneca, about 15 minutes from campus. Some of you might be wondering why little Laura and I would ever go for a 4 bedroom 2.5 bath house. Well, you might too if the rent was only $600. YEAH. I know! Corner yard with plenty of garden space, 1,600 sq ft, hard wood floors, fire place, central air and gas heat ($clutch$). There is a room that was built on a few years ago that will be my studio/laboratory with its own entrance, so I can store my bikes easily. Laura will have her own office as well, and we still have a dedicated guest room for all of you who we would love to see at some point over the next two years. …Read the rest »

Today I passed my EPA license exam, which means that I am legally employable as an HVAC tech. I have to tell you, I wasn’t expecting it to be like passing the bar or anything, but I am relieved to have it out of the way. It’s kind of a bull shit exam, kind of like a driving test, where if you don’t know the answer most of the time, you really have no business messing around with it. Questions like, “Is R-503 able to be mixed with R-22 in the same system?” No—you don’t mix refrigerants at all, because different things boil and condense at different temperatures. BUT, if I was taking this test at the beginning of the fall semester, I might very well have thought, “Yeah sure, hybrid refrigerant—go for it!” …Read the rest »

Laura made a great meal tonight. Very yummy, super healthy. Check it out on her new blog!!

What would happen if I were to write a new story week by week, and share it with my most important audience (you!) like a television series? I’d set the posts to publish on a regular schedule, say Wednesday mornings, so you can set your RSS feeds to deliver 15 minutes of fun fiction on Hump Day. I’ll keep it to short chunks, say 1000 to 1500 words, so people can take a good bite, and then get on to reading the Times, or whatever. …Read the rest »