Still looking for inspiration......

Okay, so I've been a "blogger" for three weeks now and only have one post. I'm very disappointed in myself. I really thought that when I signed up that I would be struck with inspiration and the world would be introduced to the second coming of Mark Twain. Not to say that won't happen, but I have been pretty slack so far.

Here's what I did today:

Woke up at 7:30. Checked my email. Let the doggies out and fed the kitty. Off to work (8:30). I've been working with my buddy and baseball teammate, John Newland, on a house he purchased on King Ave (behind Athens Regional). Today I set my sights on cleaning out the basement. The house was originally constructed in 1936 by the Mayer (no kin of John(that I know of) family. Mr. Mayer owned a metal shop in town. What is the significance of this? Well, the basement was filled with every trinket of metal the old man never sought fit to toss. This, added to the heavy debris from our construction up stairs had left the basement looking like Sarajevo. In the corner stood a set of metal filing cabinets that had been there a long time. I had opened them several times but never noticed anything in them until today. In the very back of the bottom cabinet were two clippings of the same article (not dated) from the Athens Banner Herald. The clippings were actually a feature on Mr. Mayer. The family had moved to New York from Germany in 1933 where Mr. Mayer worked for Bosch Magneto. Upon moving to Athens in 1936, Mr. Mayer set up business as a metal miller. Two weeks after Pearl Harbor (1941), an FBI agent came knocking on the Mayer's door. Apparently neighbors had turned them in as German spies. Only Mrs. Mayer was arrested and taken to Atlanta in custody. She was found not guilty, but spent another 6 weeks in jail after her acquittal. The main reasons they were suspects was because both were German and spoke little english, drove a top of the line Packard, and often had visitors with "Yankee" plates. Upon being released, Mrs. Mayer never spoke German in public for the rest of her life. The Mayers lived in the house until 1999, when both died of natural causes a month apart. Amazing!

So.......I loaded up all of the metal (over 700 pounds of it) and took it to the metal recyclers. I had never been before and didn't really know how the system works. Pretty straightforward. We (John and I) split the 97 bucks and were pretty happy.

Shortly afterwards (3:00 p.m.-ish) I met my plumbers over at our rental house to have the sewer line snaked out. They ran the snake all the way into the street and it did nothing, which means the city's sewer is backed up and backflowing into my yard. The plumbers called the city to have them come out. They said they'd send someone right away. As of 8:00 p.m. tonight, nothing has been done. So, if you have to stop by and see the Veteto's (my tenants), please don't roll around in the front yard. I'm also wondering if the city is going to refund my $100 I spent to have my line snaked. Probably not, but that pretty much sucks. I had to think back to Harris' nightmare situation in East Atlanta.

Upon finishing up work, I headed down to my workshop (under Normal Hardware) to do a little work on a 1600 dual port engine I'm building for my 1969 VW Westfalia camper. Finished getting the block back together, so tomorrow, I'll start building the top end (carb, distributor, exhaust, etc...). I'm still pretty new at the engine build. My first few were fucked up, but my last three have been pretty solid so far. I actually traded one engine I built for a 1964 Beetle project and quickly turned around and traded it for the Camper.

On the way home, I decided to stop and check my air pressure in my tires. The first gas station I stopped at stole my money so I went across the street. Second time's a charm sort of . Though the air pump worked, the gauge was sort of screwy, so I didn't fill them up as much as I would have liked (optimal 32-34 psi).

Got home. Let the dogs out. Noticed that at some point today, Ruby (our golden pup) decided to eat the dvd case for our movie rental (luckily not the dvd).....(unluckily she did chomp up my Cable Guy dvd)...(Good thing its on tv about every 3 hours). Normally she likes to drag mine and Christina's socks out of the hamper and carry them around (much like her predecesor, Thurston) but rarely destroys anything besides paper (phone books, coupons, etc.) I'm hoping she's not entering into a new "bad girl" phase.

Christina called from work to tell me that she would pick up dinner if I took out the recycling. She's now working at the UGA Health Center and doesn't get off until 8 p.m. I took out the recycling, but then she called and said she might not be home until closer to or after 9 p.m. I'm not sure if that meant I am to fend for myself or not. I guess I should have asked. Well, it's 8:54 p.m., so I should find out soon........