September 16, 2008

Hurricane Ike says hello to Cobden

Well, it is official. When I moved here, it was because I wanted to get away from bugs, heat, hurricanes and we wanted to have some snow to play in. So far, we have had almost no snow, bugs on biblical proportions (you should see the chiggers we got into a few weeks ago!), 100+ degree August days and now Hurricane Ike.

I have been a good American and have ignored the news pretty much lately, choosing to live in my own little bubble impervious to the Palins of the world State of Alaska (I forgot, she’s never been out of Alaska). This means that I missed the fact that Hurricane Ike was beating a path right towards Southern Illinois. My work’s headquarters are in Houston and they evacuated on Thursday, so I was feeling sympathy for the folks about to be hammered.

Saturday night we started to get a bit windy, but I love a good storm and my bedroom has five foot tall windows for the best night time watching, so I was ready. Three am, the screen door started banging back and forth like we were in Kansas, Toto. It was simply amazing by eight am, so I got out of bed and turned on the weather radio for the first time. They kindly reassured me that we were currently experiencing winds up to 40mph and, not to worry; it would be gone by lunch. LIARS. It was more like 60-70mph and while it was gone by lunch, we will be dealing with it for quite some time.

Immediately after checking the weather radio, the power went out. No problem. Oh, wait, I have about $500 worth of meat and stuff between two freezers. And no generator. Chad convinced me to go to Lowes and buy a 3,500 watt generator. On our way there, we stopped at McDonalds where we learned that half of the area towns were also out of power. We got to Lowes and bought the last small generator they had.

Now, prior to leaving, small branches and a few limbs were down. When we came BACK though – holy crap. My neighbor at the beginning of the street had an entire tree down across his little truck. I came back to see that the post oak in my back yard had lost its entire top – about 20 feet worth. (click here for the before storm picture)


Chad, being the workaholic he is, decided we needed to clean it up right then. Unfortunately, the tree fell against a granite wall with about six huge limbs propping it up in between. It also slid backwards a bit into the V of the tree meaning it wouldn’t just fall down if cut. Did I mention the three other trees it took down along the way?


So, Chad with pole saw and chain saw, cut and cut and cut. Four hours later, it barely looked touched. We kept expecting the limb to roll and fall with each supporting branch cut. No such luck. At the very end, we got a little satisfaction when it fell and replanted itself half way down.


We discovered that the whole tree was hollow which is probably why it broke. What we did not anticipate was that it was a snake nesting site. Chad found a few snake skins hanging from the branches which is not unusual at my house. A little ooky but okay considering they are generally king snakes which keep the rodent population under control. Imagine Chad’s surprise when he cut a limb and two LIVE king snakes fell out from inside! One was about four foot long and the other was about two foot long. They acted stunned for a minute and then slithered away. The biggest one simply crawled into a hole in the bottom of the tree! We were amazed that Chad had not accidently cut them up with the chainsaw. Chunk of the branch can be seen below:


So anyway. We ended up getting power back on at about 8pm. The generator worked like a charm and I am glad to have it in my emergency supplies. We will be doing clean up for the next few weeks. I understand that my Dad’s property looks like a bomb went off as well but I haven’t been over to see it yet. Here is an article from our local paper

Compared to the folks in Texas who were truly devastated by Hurricane Ike, we came out pretty well.

How did everyone else do?

Posted by DebC at 2:00 PM | Comments (1)

September 2, 2008

My Son Shot Me and It Hurted

Attention, the following entry was edited to include the distance of the penny shot!

Yep, you read that right and in fact, that is a new sentence that goes on my list of things that shouldn't have to be said. The seven of us just spent an all boy weekend that included a fair, camping, atv'ing (can you use that as a verb?), shooting multiple weapons and airsoft wars. On the hottest weekend imaginable.

We started off at the DuQuoin Fair, which was long promised as we have missed two, more local, fairs due to being out of town both times. It was well worth sucking sounds coming from our wallets! Most of us love roller coasters (Chad's oldest son, not so much), including the six year olds. As a matter of fact, the two six year olds rode the very scariest one at the fair (by MY definition) which was a free fall thing-a-ma-bob. I asked them several times if they were sure and they both said YES! The good thing about this particular nightmare inducing ride is that it only lasts five minutes with the free fall part lasting MAYBE 10 seconds. So I figured at least it would be over quickly (does this sound like a bad mother making excuses for traumatizing small children?). The ride is a giant square pole, probably 50 feet tall (seemed like anyway) with three seats on each side. The ride up takes forever and serves to increase the pending terror, inch by inch. We tried to ride it two times prior to getting on but the carnie kept shutting it down due to a "loose bolt". Smarter people probably turned away and chalked that up as a sign that it was maybe STUPID. But they were not us. We got on and chink-a-chink-a-chink-a'd up the pole. When we were near the top, without warning, WE FELL. It literally rips bad words from your gut. One six year old (Evan) and I decided that we were never, ever, ever doing that again. The rest of the folks decided that it was the best ride ever invented.

Then, Eli and Jake learned about gambling. There was a game that involved dropping five discs onto a paper with a large red circle on it. The object is to cover the circle so that no red shows. The prize in question? A Play Station III. The carnie was funny, nice and very slick. He showed them exactly how it was done. Then Eli promptly lost $15 (five bucks a pop) and Jake lost $10. Each time, the carnie patiently showed them exactly what they did wrong and how to avoid it. They somehow conned me into doing it and I lost $10. We r speshul. I am just very glad that, at that point, we were honestly out of money. Eli was talking about panhandling for a minute there before I got us unmesmerized.

The next day, we loaded up our camping world (a truly ridiculous amount of equipment) and seven ATV's and went to "the farm" which is a local chunk of wooded property a friend of Chad's owns. Very nice especially considering it is free! Chad maintains it by keeping the fallen trees cleared and making sure the owner gets firewood from it each year. He put us to work clearing limbs but we quickly realized it was too frapping hot. So we shot each other instead. For those who aren't familiar with airsoft guns, they are essentially BB guns that shoot soft plastic BB's. That hurt. wahhhh. It is slightly less painful and a whole lot less messy than paintball though. We ran through trees laughing and shooting hysterically. For some reason, my gun cannot be aimed whatsoever. You can watch the BB's curve upward as they leave the weapon. Which means that I couldn't hit a daggum thing. I ran up on Eli and he rapid fired off three shots before I could get out the words "I surrender". One of them hit me in the arm and actually drew blood. Hmmm, new rule, no shooting closer than 20 feet. Eli and Chad are crack shots, so the rest of us quickly decided NOT TO PLAY anymore. Just kidding. There was random drive by shootings for the rest of the weekend.

Chad brought out four different guns (I think). I am not a gun person, so I will not name them and be ridiculed for getting them wrong. He used to shoot competition with a .22 and brought that gun. Even I could hit the target nicely with it the gun is so accurate. Chad shot a penny dead center (AT 50 YARDS!) so that the penny collapsed around the bullet and embedded into the wood frame we were using. Now that is some straight shooting, very cool. Eli and Jake, being the junior terrorists they are, loved every minute of it. Eli is actually a very good shot himself. He did not get that from me!

When we got back on Monday, we started work on our newest project. I am buying the property next to mine from my dad because it has a decent basement that Chad wants to use while restoring the VW this fall/winter. Yay! The property has an old trailer on top of a rock face that has a basement blasted into it. At some point (probably next summer), we will figure out how the heck to get the trailer lifted off without damaging the cinderblock walls of the basement. I want to build a workshop on top of the basement that seals the basement off. Right now, the roof of the basement is the floor of the trailer.

In case you are thinking we have plenty of time, our other projects include (I am only listing the projects that want to be done within the next six months!):

Friend's wedding this weekend
Room remodel (50% complete at this point - will have its own post soon)
Finish rebuilding racing truck (Chad's project, obviously)
One last tractor pull in Corydon, IN
Seal trailer basement cracks and see if it can be made dry (looks promising)
Go back to Corydon, IN except this time for a fiber festival - YAY girl time at last!
Rebuild VW

Posted by DebC at 2:00 PM | Comments (5)