I was told by neighbors that the city has been coming every 4 years or so to prune it back, since it is near a power line – which is strange, since the pruning involved topping the tree, which I know is not recommended at all. I was looking up details, and here’s the story:

www.seattle.gov/trees/expertsArchive.htm

09/05/2008

Trees under powerlines

Q:Years ago someone planted 2 cedar trees on the strip between the sidewalk and curb in front of my house. These trees are huge and are under power lines. The city at some point topped the trees and continues to cut and butcher them every year. It is a shame but I think these trees are better to be cut down. Is the city able to help me take care of this?

A: Our City Light experts had this to say:

It sounds like the trees are too big for their location and have to be trimmed to maintain a safe clearance around the power lines. Seattle City Light maintains a 10 foot clearance around the high voltage electrical lines by having electrically qualified tree trimmers safely prune the trees (www.seattle.gov/light/neighborhoods/nh4_trtr.htm ).

Long term, it makes more sense to replace trees like this with smaller trees that don’t require such extensive pruning to protect electrical safety and reliability. Seattle City Light will replace trees when we are working in a neighborhood so you may have to wait until we come back. When work is upcoming, we leave door hangars for residents whose trees are going to be pruned. Use the contact numbers on the door hangers to discuss opportunities for potential removal and replacement of your trees through the Urban Tree Replacement program (www.seattle.gov/light/neighborhoods/treetrim/tt3_replace.htm ).

Planting the right tree in the right place is key to keeping Seattle green.

As I mentioned previously, we’ve started the process of getting our nursery together. Last week, the dressers and crib got delivered. While the dressers were pre-assembled, the crib required assembly. As always, the idea of leaving the big box just sitting there didn’t match our mental makeup, so we tackled the job over this weekend – turns out, this was one of the easier furniture construction jobs to do – the parts and steps made perfect sense (thankfully, given how critical it is to have the crib constructed well). Moving all of the carboard pieces into the recycling bin was actually a harder task!

Having the crib put together is yet another of the steps that caused us to realize how soon the baby will be born – Joelle is now just over 30 weeks (obligatory belly shot on the right), leaving (estimated) only 10 weeks left to go. Unbelievable how fast time is flying!

(Note: I am trying yet a different format for posting pictures – so click on any of the images on the right to see pictures in full detail).

Between Joelle and I, we got everything done, but I made sure to schedule painting for a day when Joelle was at work – even though we were using Low-VOC (i.e. low toxin) paints from Benjamin Moore. So Clodagh (thanks again!) came on over, and painting her and I did. Turns out, this paint (we used Aura paint in Acadia Green for the nursery, and Aura in Queen’s Wreath for the bathroom), is amazing. One coat, no primer, even over our brick red bathroom; no paint even dripped off of the brush while painting – it was pretty darn thick. Highly, highly recommended, especially for the time savings, but also for the cost savings due to not needing the primer or second coat.

Pictures, of course, tell the story:

Dogs love the snow – so of course, they were out to play a lot. Videos were taken. (If you are in a RSS reader, you might need to visit the page to see these).

Today is actually my birthday, but we had to cancel my birthday party due to the  treacherous conditions; we didn’t want anybody to have to drive. Instead, my sister brought over a cake to the house, and we celebrated with me and the girls (Joelle, Elana, Little Hobey (to-be), Molly and Shay); I actually rather enjoyed it!

FInally, to cap a great weekend, Hannukah started tonight, so we took a walk over to Kavana’s Hannukah Party, which met just down the street.

There’s nothing showing our house directly, but as we have the West Queen Anne Playfield just across the street, they have a bunch of photos that show our house (albeit small). Here’s a sample – for all of them, see the Seattle Municipal Archives Photograph Collection

1965 tinyurl.com/3q2kva	Jan 26, 1968 tinyurl.com/6hwhxk

If you notice on the top of these pictures, there’s a community center across the street. There are some awesome pictures from the late 1930s during the Works Progress Administration construction of said community center (or shelter, as they called it then)

Dec 21, 1936 tinyurl.com/3pvdpr	Mar 24, 1937 tinyurl.com/4kx2t5	Mar 24, 1937 tinyurl.com/3stwdj

Also, I found the Sherwood Park History Files, which has a pretty cool pdf of the old plans for the playfield – see www.seattle.gov/parks/history/QueenAnnePF.pdf for it in all of the full glory.

And for final good measure, here’s a 1938 view of Queen Anne Ave (the main street by us) just a block or two from our house (i.e. right in front of Blaine):

1938 tinyurl.com/6elhdl

I love this old stuff – can you notice I am not working yet? Spending 15-20 minutes at a time surfing the web, and this is what I end up with :)

And yes, you can also call this post: Aaron is clearing out his camera from old pictures!

(As always, click on the pictures for larger versions)

• We’ve been wanting to get a fence put into the front yard – it makes the outside of the house enclosed, so if we are BBQing, doing yard work, or just reading and enjoying outside, Molly can now be with us. So we hired some folks (clearly, I couldn’t do it myself, with or without the back condition) to put in our cliche white picket fence – very white indeed until it starts raining again!

• Joelle finally found planters she likes, and put them out on the front porch:

• Molly bought me a book on Macaroni and Cheese for Father’s Day, so of course, I immediately wanted Joelle and my mother to make me one of the dishes – asparagus macaroni gratin. Fantastic, albeit a little heavy, was the universal agreement. Perhaps better as a side dish so you don’t try to eat too much of it.

• Got a Get Well Soon cookie from some really nice friends – overnighted from New Jersey, OU-certified and everything:

• My mother bought Molly a necklace thing from the Edmonds Art Fair (she went with my sister). I am not one to know these things, but everyone commented on how pretty she was with it on – on her end, at least she didn’t mind it the one time she wore it!

I knew we didn’t drive a lot, but after looking at our paper work to figure out when we last changed our oil, this is getting ridiculous:

• My car: It had been 9.5 months since my last oil change, and I only went 1800 miles. My manufacturer (Saturn) recommends every 3 months/3000 miles. So on the mileage number, I still had a while to go.
• Joelle’s car: It had been about 14 months, 3500 miles. Her manufacturer (Scion) recommends every 5 months/5000 miles. So she also had a ways to go, and it had been a year-plus (a little before we were married!)

How do we drive so little?

• Both of us bus to work every day
• Grocery shopping is mostly done around our neighborhood (Queen Anne, Seattle) – Trader Joe’s, Safeway, and Metropolitan Market (and 7-Eleven, while we are at it, though we never go there) are all within 4 blocks – so we walk to all of them
• Most dinners, by ourselves or with friends/family, are on Queen Anne Ave or at our house
• Even our doctors are either 5 blocks from home or right by work. Some of the specialists I saw were a little farther away, so for those, we did drive.
• Given my back situation, I haven’t driven a car in 3 months! That helps keep things down :) Looking forward to getting back into the swing of things…

Needless to say, the rising gas and oil prices hasn’t had a major impact on our direct budget, thankfully. Chalk one up for the urban density crowd!

go us for finding leftover paint in the garage! (and a small amount of primer).

Of course, I did very little of it, since I am still not 100% (or really, even 70%), but that’s a discussion for another post. But go Joelle!

Well, yesterday was that day, and all went smoothly. I haven’t made it up to the attic yet to check out the new stuff (I’ll wait until I feel comfortable stepping on a ladder again), but it is pretty clear that the exterior blow-in insulation was done – our house looks like it has chicken pox! (or polka dots, if you will)

These dots (seen in the picture on the left – click on the link for a full image) are where they drilled in 1 1/4 inch holes into the siding and cavity, and then blew in the new insulation. They then plugged the hole up, patched it, and left it (we knew this was going to happen). These were done around the entire house, just about entirely on two straight lines of siding – a lower piece and a higher one (except under windows, as you can see).

Other than looking funny, this will be easy (albeit time consuming) to finish cleaning up – the next nice day (which is supposed to be  tomorrow -  80 degrees, lasting through the weekend) – we need to lightly sand all of the holes and apply some exterior primer. Once that dries, a quick paint should fix it right up (which is why it’s really nice these are all in the same level of sidings – we’ll be able to go straight across).

The true measure of all of this, of course, will have to wait until the next winter when we see the reductions in our gas bill.

I have already felt our furnace working less, though, so that part, at least incidentally, seems to be working!

• We talk independently to each others family, friends, etc… since they call our cell phones, not a shared line. We miss just being the person to answer the phone and saying “hey!” and catching up.
• Unlimited minutes, fairly cheaply (we are using T-Mobile’s Talk Forever service, which is in Seattle and Dallas only for right now – though, supposedly, it is going to go nationwide on the 14th of May. You do need to have T-Mobile for cell phone). It is unlimited minutes from home, both local and long-distance, for only $10/month, so it is much, much cheaper than using the phone service or Comcast’s service (which was the reason we went away from having a home phone in the first place – they are so expensive!)
• The unlimited minutes would have been even more important this past month with me being at home so much. It was the first time I, for one, have ever gone over minutes. This should mitigate that for the future.
• Often, it is just a lot more comfortable to talk on a normal phone. We picked up some clearance cordless phones (with extendable # of handsets) from Office Max, so we can use the phones around the house.
• Another benefit we realized is that it is sometimes hard to hear someone when they are talking on the main floor of our house, when the other person is in the basement. With our new fancy schmancy new clearance phones, we can intercom to each other. Cool :)
• I wanted a new router anyway (I’ve been using a pretty old model for testing purposes for work), and this comes with an optimized one for the service (it has VOIP, or Voice Over IP, optimization built-in). It seems to be holding up pretty well – I am impressed.

So there you have it, we are now proud owners of a new home phone number! If you want to know it (and we know who you are), shoot one of us an email.

Don’t worry – our cell phones aren’t going anywhere. This is just an added option for us…

• One of the projects we had in mind when we purchased the house was to update the electricity to modern standards; our home inspector had told us that we had nothing to worry about, but we were still about 20-25% knob and tube electricity (basically the old electricity used prior to 1930). Researching online, it’s actually relatively safe, but has a couple of problems:
  • Insurance companies don’t love it; it has a theoretical possibility of burning down if rats, etc… eat through the wiring (or if amateurs do poor repairs). Many won’t cover houses with Knob and Tube. We were able to find a bunch of companies that did, but we ended up with a company who asked us to promise that “over time” we’d clean up the electricity. Technically we did that even prior to this work – we had some general electrical cleanup done right away (paid for by sellers inspection money), and they replaced some of wires with newer, romax, wiring. But now it’s all gone, so insurance won’t be a problem in the future.
  • By code, you can’t put in new insulation on top of Knob and Tube – that’s a definite fire hazard. After seeing our gas bills for this winter, and knowing that Puget Sound Energy would cover much of the insulation work as part of their weatherization rebate program, I really wanted to beef up our attic insulation and install wall insulation on our main floor (there is none now). To do that, first though, we needed to get rid of the old wiring.
  • It doesn’t have a grounding wire, which isn’t good for computers, as they discharge static electricity through the ground wire… We were fine, as we just use some of the plugs that had been updated, but now we can use any of the plugs in the house :)
  • So now we are all up to date and good to go; the insulation work is scheduled to be done next week (it was supposed to be this week, but delayed due to my back issues….)

• My nervous system – that’s a different issue – I alluded to it in the previous post on dog parks – it’s impacted my ability to walk more than a couple of minutes, but should heal completely at some point. Can’t wait until this gets better!
  • This all started about a month ago, with some pretty acute back pain and left leg pain. After seeing my doctor, following his advice on ibuprofen and physical therapy, then steroids and lay-on-the-floor-rest, nothing was making it better – in fact, the pain moved to my right leg pretty strongly, and my right foot went numb – I haven’t felt it in a week! I saw a few other people (chiropractor, a new general physician, taking an MRI), and finally, an orthopedic specialist.
  • Turns out, I have a ruptured (or herniated) disc in my lower back, which is pinching a nerve, causing sciatica (and thus, leg and foot weakness and tingling) which has been pretty annoying to have – I miss feeling my pinky toe :)
  • Next step, along with more rest and vicodin to relieve pain, is to get an epidural steroid injection (another good info sheet can be found here) on Thursday, hoping this helps… the goal is to release pressure on the back, and hope that the disc starts to heal. Often, people feel better within 3 days – praying this is true!
  • Things I have learned:
    • Working from home is productive and useful for a day or two. After a couple of days, it’s really hard to keep up with what’s going on in the office as so much occurs outside the scope of emails (and phone calls are hard to hold too many meetings by…)
      • Everyone at work has been super great with everything. thanks all!
    • I need more minutes on my cell phone plan (or else get a home phone – we are considering T-Mobile’s Talk Forever service, as we have T-Mobile’s family plan for our cell service). Given the amount of calls to work and to doctors, we’re running out of our monthly allotment!
    • First time I’ve ever called into the on-call doctor over a weekend (as opposed to going into ER). They got back to us pretty quickly to get us vicodin, which was great. What was funny was that since my (new) general family doctor is part of a family clinic that serves both adults and children, they sent my request over to an adult physician and to Children’s Hospital. So we got a call back from a doctor at Children’s at first, and she stated: “I don’t know how to help you. You’re 29!”
      Luckily, the adult physician also called back and was able to get me the pain-meds I needed!
    • There is very little good on television, no matter how many channels we get!
    • I have a temporary disabled parking permit – haven’t actually used it too much yet, but it’s helpful – of course, since I can’t drive right now, it is just as easy to have Joelle drop me off at the door and park in a standard spot, but it’s a nice fallback to have in case we need to go anywhere.
    • Passover seders are a lot tougher when you have to stand up the whole time! (sitting hurts…)
    • Joelle is fantastic – nothing new here – but she’s taken care of everything for me (and for Molly) this past month – it has been a lot of work, I know. Thank you honey!

(If you are viewing this in email or in an RSS reader, you’ll likely be able to view it correctly only by visiting averbuch.net/2008/04/01/video-molly-and-steps/)

Reminder to myself for the future: fortress.wa.gov/lni/bbip/search.aspx

Been looking into getting some electrical work done, so this is helpful to make sure the people I speak with are licensed (and for how long they’ve been doing their stuff…)

While I am at it: web1.seattle.gov/DPD/permitstatus/default.aspx – look up Seattle Permit History on a house or building

• Electricians to bid on replacing the remaining 25% of our house which is still Knob and Tube wiring (all safe, but insurance companies seem to want to get you to get rid of the stuff, plus, our light bulbs burn out quicker than they should, which is just plain annoying). We’ve received one bid from an electrician who I have worked with in the past, but for something of this magnitude, we’d want a couple more bids.
• Insulation experts/weatherproofing. Our gas bill is higher than I would like, especially given that our basement is freezing. A bunch of this I can likely do myself, and it is on my list to learn, but some stuff (blowing in wall-insulation, for example), is clearly in need of professional assistance.
• Roof cleaning (gutters/moss/etc…) We’re in pretty good shape up there, but before next fall, I’d like to get a good cleanup done. Seems like I could do this myself, but Joelle has no interest in me getting on the roof; frankly, she’s right – I don’t trust myself that much either!

I am sure there are other services out there as well; one nice thing is that even though these companies are expensive, they tend to have pretty good promotional deals offered if you book at the show. I assume this is even more so during the last few hours of the event (which is when we’ll be there). If they haven’t hit their numbers, I assume they might be a little more willing to play "let’s make a deal!" Let’s hope so!

(via Morning Train and My Money Blog and Big Picture).

We finally got in the photograph of our house, from back in 1938 (and yes, it’s got for-sale signs in the window – it sold for 800 bucks that year. Quite a bargain!)

It’s amazing how similar they look (click for larger views)

And yes, that tree got much much taller, so for the angular view, it’s pretty dominating right now. In addition, notice the deck that wraps around the house that was put in during the 1980s.

1. Seattle’s been very rainy this fall/winter, and who wants to rake in the rain?
2. I hate raking!

As yesterday turned into a gorgeous day outside (50 and sunny), we decided it was finally time to tackle the challenge.

So I pulled out the rake:

But then quickly realized, I still hate raking! Especially with the piles of wet leaves, this seemed like an impossible task, and I felt liking I was digging up the grass in the yard with each rake-stroke.

But, as a technologist ought to, I decided there has to be a better solution – so decided to make a quick trip to Home Depot and purchase a new Toro Super Blower/Vac. Highly, highly recommended. Not only did it do a much better job than the manual work. Actually made us want to finish cleaning up all of the leaves.

A couple of nice points:

1. The blower was powerful enough to disrupt all of the piles of wet leaves and move them around.
2. The vacuum swooped it up nice and easy.
3. A nice neighbor lady stopped by to ask how well it was working; she was thinking of getting one. Anything that gets neighbors talking is a plus in my book.

And perhaps, even more importantly, it’s fun to use :)

Plus, my artistic skills just aren’t the same as Joelle’s:

So, no reason to put this one on the fridge!

(from www.drawahouse.com – not drawn to scale)

See if you can make out the:

1. Wrap around deck

2. Bench we put together

3. Our chimneys (preserved for legacy sake – we’ve since gotten rid of one of them – damn rains!)

4. bird feeder in front, including the cute little birdy :)

5. rocks and plants and stuff

Missing, of course, are the raccoons :)

www.raincityguide.com/2007/04/14/historic-photos-of-your-seattle-home/

has all of the info. Sending an email to them now.

Update, February 18, 2008: Pictures are now in (actually they came a while ago, but just posting today).

A week or so ago was a weird weekend of weather in Seattle; a couple of days of snow, followed by the second worst rain-storm in the city’s history (more on that another time). As it was the first snow storm in the new house, Joelle and I decided to check out the snow.

Turns out the new neighborhood is fantastic for this – good hills, people like to sled, and since it’s higher up in elevation, it tends to snow just a little bit more.

All of the pictures are up at: picasaweb.google.com/ahaverbuch/SnowDay2007

My favorites of us:

My favorite “nature” shots:

Saturday night, between Hannukah parties (Happy Hannukah to all by the way!) we stopped home for a bite to eat. As we walked up the front steps, we saw a racoon run around our deck. A second one soon followed, but this one decided to climb up our tree and hang out on our roof. Of course, not knowing what else to do, I immediately ran and grabbed the camera. It was a little dark out, so apologize for the contrast on the pictures below….

I still haven’t been able to find where the deck-bound critter ran to. Hopefully far away!