Planet Stahl

From March 2010

 Hockey is coming to an end… Summer is glad… Her team has not won a game yet!!!  Ouch.  Aiden’s won them all until tonight.  But its no biggie.  Its just Boys and Girls Club stuff.  Above is one of the rare action shots of Aiden!  He is not much of a body checker!  That’s OK… Pretty sure I sucked at this sport till high school.

From March 2010

Dead bug city is back!  Its getting warm… And our Southern facing rooms are starting to materialize lady bugs from every nook and cranny.  (Whatever those are!)  Its a constant vacuuming process.  It was good to note that the back porch that we just redid has a record LOW amount of bugs…  Now, how can we accomplish this with the inside of the house???

Speaking of the house.  I am renovating the last bedroom upstairs.  What has been my office.  Well, if you call a desk, lots of computer cables, and a couch an office!  Got that all cleaned up.  Thanks to Craigslist… I was able to ditch the couch.   Got rid of the desk on Facebook to a friend.  I LOVED that desk…. It was sad to see it go!  But, smaller and faster is the trend.  I am not sure where I will find the speed…  But I will definitely have a smaller setup from this point on.

Here are some pics of the process:

From House

The picture above is when all the junk was moved out.  Below is the destruction process.

From House

I loved pulling back the woodwork and finding that the previous homeowner had knocked out all the plaster to install electrical wires for outlets around the room.  This must the way it was done all over the house.  I never pulled back any baseboard trim to see this before.  Unfortunately… This office room sits right over an original bay window downstairs…  Covered by the front porch roof.   I have had  a breeze of cold air blowing into the room since I pulled the trim.  It is just uninterrupted outside air!!!  If we can fix this… I can only imagine how much it would affect our heat bill!

From House

Peter from Central Heating and Cooling came out and took a look.  He made some recommendations about removing walls and re-insulating.  Expanding foam etc…  But in the end, we decided to go low tech.  We are going to have massive amounts of insulation blown into the roof cavity and into the upper walls of this room.  Then hire a plasterer to fix the wall when they are done.

Lots going on.  Hopefully that will start soon.

Oh, and I have not mentioned it.  But the Toyota recall business is pretty overwhelming.  Know this…  We have yet to see a car with a problem.  And talking to other dealership people… That’s the same way across the country.  I think the Fed tried to shaft them…  It seems that most people have seen through it for what it is.  I don’t think this tactic is going to be enough to get GM back on top!

I had heard on the Radio that our new Senator from Peoria, Ms. Gordon, had just made some statements in Peoria to the effect of:  300 million dollars that will not be paid to local governments…  This hurts us more than it helps the Illinois budget problem.  (paraphrasing)

Ha Ha Ha Ha.   Are you kidding me???  This is the sense of entitlement that totally screws everyone.  ESPECIALLY when we are in debt.

If you cant make cuts at the local level…  Then how do you think the State and Federal levels can do it? 

http://www.pjstar.com/news/x1526471122/Local-officials-speak-out-against-Quinn-budget-proposal

Today it was 39 at 10AM…  NICE!  That meant working outside in the pasture for Ang…  Playing outside for the kids…  And me, being trapped in my old office doing more cleaning!

Picture of Rancho Del Stahlo from Summers Camera

From Summers Camera

Summer and Aiden walked out to the waterway and played outside for hours.  Should we have been shocked when they were covered with mud?  Probably not!  Summer took a Walkie Talkie and her camera.  Above are some pictures taken by her.

Ang went out and cleared horse poop from the pasture.  It is a mess!  The horses have eaten it down to nothing… And it got pretty soggy as the day went on.  So bad, that the Cub got stuck in the mud.

I came out to get the tractor stuck once…  And then had to get Katy out to make sure nothing else got stuck!  

We ended up walking down to the waterway to check out the step stone walkway that Aiden was creating in the water…  and the Tee-Pee that Summer had created with sticks and grass.  Classic kids stuff!