This past spring we had a serious storm (that I missed because I was in Virginia for a seminar). It caused some flash flooding, and washed out several roads. Some of these roads are Town maintained and some are village maintained. Well the village has no money for maintenance and its roads were already in bad shape before this storm hit. In fact, you could identify the village/town line just by the repair of the roads. What's even funnier is that early this year they put up a "you are entering the village of" sign and it was exactly at the point where the road goes to crap. Anyway, we don't officially live in the village of Fleischmanns; we just use them for our mailing address since it has the closest post office. We do have to drive through Fleischmanns to get to most of the places we go. There is one road in particular that is somewhat narrow that was hit very hard by the storm. Just about all the way down one side the pavement was washed out leaving 8-12 inch wide gaps and in places the trench was as deep as 12-18 inches. With the wash out the road would only support one car at a time, and the village didn't do anything about it for several months (due to lack of funds I assume).

Recently some genius (or should I say village idiot) got the idea to fill in the trench with gravel, which at least allowed for two cars to make it on the road at the same time. However, if we can get rain that is powerful enough to wash away a paved road, what made this guy think that gravel would have the slightest chance of maintaining position during a downfall? As it turns out we had a pretty good storm last week and all of the gravel ended up at the bottom of the road, so now we are back to big trench in the road with room for only one car to pass.

This aught to be quite fun once snow season starts.

After missing out on summer, fall is starting to make itself known in this part of the world. I have this chill in my bones from the -50 below temperatures we experienced over the winter (which I'm told is unusual). I'd hoped I would thaw out this summer, but it turns out summer never came. We had a deluge of wet cool days for almost the entire summer. I'm told there were a few warm dry days here, but I was away on business and missed them completely. I am going to be making a pilgrimage to North Carolina for a couple of weeks at the end of the week. I am hoping to enjoy a little warmth and sunshine while I'm there. Otherwise, I'm going to feel like I was completely robbed. For the record this was an unusual summer season. Last year it did get warm (not hot) and it wasn't very wet, and that I think is more the norm.

I really miss the Savvy Traveler, and I have been looking for another show to fill the void. I recently rediscovered This American Life on my way home from Evansville one night. It is a show I had heard a few times many years ago, but it didn't come on at a time I was typically driving and so I never thought much about it. While listening to the show on my way home I decided to see if they had a website and whether or not they published the shows. It turns out the answer is yes to both of those questions. I have listened to a few shows and I must say it is a really good program. I would highly recommend trying it out.

The first program I listened to recently was called My Experimental Phase, and one of the people they talked to (among others) was a Hasidic Jew who had gone a-wall for a while. It was interesting to me because until living in New York I hadn't had any experience with them. It turns quite a few Hasidic families come to Fleischmanns for the summer. They keep to themselves and so they only things I really know about them are what Ali's family has told me, and they don't typically have good things to say about them. The show was interesting because it provided a little in sight into their world, although not a lot since the guy was going a-wall after all.

There was another show called Propriety that is also very good; part of it deals the recent changes in enforcement of decency policies the FCC has decided to pursue.

I have been meaning to relay this story, and I almost forgot.

The first wife and I were at her sister's this weekend for a family gathering of the sister's husband's side of the family. All the usual stuff food, fun, conversation -- At one point I was sitting there listening to the conversation, and somebody said, "so and so had wrecked their car." Someone else asked, "how?" and they replied, "hit a dear." Then several people look stunned and, one after the other said, "A dear? In Carlton?" Now the town name may not be right, but what was so amazing is that it was almost verbatim Monty Python's The Meaning of Life -- A tiger? In Africa? Only with a dear and they weren't trying to be funny. I nearly lost it!

In weird related news, I was reading a post on 1976design.com today, and the guy had taken pictures of a swallow, and someone asked, "What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?" The author replied, I wish I had thought to include that in the post and follows it up with this link http://www.style.org/unladenswallow/

Stay frosty.

Anita has wanted a new kitchen floor for a while now, and Harry decided to take on the project this summer. They decided to lay a wide plank pine floor. The material arrived in late June, and it required a few weeks to acclimate. Harry started laying the floor two weekends ago; he did the necessary demolition a few weeks ago. Kenny (Anita's cousin) and Pat (his wife) came up the first day the project got started. Kenny and I helped Harry with the work that day. Harry worked on his own throughout the week and on Saturday. I helped again this past Sunday; I was the designated nailer. I have been paying the price for the past couple of days, my legs are so sore I can barely walk.

<edit>I was just reading through this post and I realized it makes no sense why my legs would have gotten sore from doing all of the nailing. The floor is not exactly flat, in fact it is no where near what you might call flat. This meant a lot of the boards did not lie down nicely. It required standing on them in particular ways to get them to lie down whilst putting the nails in. It was this process that led to my legs being sore.

And to continue my rant from a previous post it has now been nice for three days (great cycling weather); well guess what, my legs are too sore to ride. I love that Murphy.</edit>

I think Harry was hoping to be done with the floor by this past weekend, but he didn't quite get that far. He worked on it again yesterday and made good progress. He is probably just a couple of days from getting all of the wood laid. After that the floor will need to be stained and tung oiled, this process will take around 5 days.

In the meantime, Harry has made a make shift kitchen in the dinning room. He moved the stove and refrigerator in there, and made some counter space out of the bottom half of the hutch. We had to move the kitchen table into the dining room as well. On top of that the wood has been stacked in the living room since late June. If the house was a bit cramped before with Ali and I living there, I'm not sure what you'd call it now while this work is going on.

So far it has been an interesting project and I'm glad I've been able to see it action.

I'll post more pictures in the photo album when it is all done.

I must say I am under-whelmed with the responses to the Jesus question. Thanks David, for being the one person who answered it. I was hoping with the large percentage of this blog's readership being Catholic, that it would have drawn more responses.

I had only put the question out there because I was reading somewhere how the resurrection is the whole foundation for Christianity and if it were disproved that particular religious movement would cease to be. I did find it interesting that even though it is a central tenant, that believers do not agree upon whether it was a physical actual (videotapable event) or something less tangible.

I was not aware of this, and was curious how important y'all believed the event to be to your faith. Anyway, so much for the interesting discussion.