RootsRain

I got the idea of doing a do-it-yourself “Topsy-Turvy” planter from Camille Lewis’ blog. I modified the design a little and just smashed in the top of a 2 liter root beer bottle rather than cutting it off, inverting it, and hot gluing it back on. The result isn’t gorgeous, but I think I’m in for some good tomatoes.

Not that I really need any more tomatoes. I planted 10 tomato bushes this year and the one that sprouted earliest already has 27 tomatoes on it. But it would be interesting to see if this method of planting really keeps away the normal soil-borne diseases and pests that you get with in-ground tomatoes. And I’d like to see if I can keep it growing indoors throughout the winter.

So this is just a little experiment.

Update: I would definitely use a larger bottle than a 2-liter soda bottle. It just wasn’t enough to effectively support a lot of growth. So something more like a 15 quart pot would do. Also, I’d probably add a bunch of sphagnum moss to the pot to allow for more water retention (as a less organic option, I hear styrofoam chunks may also work). I had to water the pot every day and the plant still got a fair amount of drought stress.

A little while back, I got some extra money and I decided to donate it to Voice of the Martyrs, a wonderful relief organization that mainly helps persecuted Christians in closed nations get food, shelter, legal help, and Bible literature. I went to their website and they have a kind of shopping cart where you can select where you want your money to go… you add different donations to your cart and then check out. Well, I saw “Sudan Action Packs” and it said something about buying packs of clothes, toiletries, etc. (+ Bible literature they add in-country) that would be sent to displaced people in Darfur. Cool, I thought, I’ll donate to those. So I spent my $25 on it and thought that was that. Someone in Darfur would now get clothes and the Gospel.

Nope. Someone in Georgia would get a couple of sealable plastic bags with mailing labels. Read the rest of this entry »

I apologize that this will be a slightly odd post. I had to change the oil in my VW Beetle for the first time this week and I couldn’t find anything on the internet about how to do it (where’s that darn filter anyway? how many quarts does it hold? what kind of oil does it take?). I can’t exactly consult the owner’s manual provided to me by Volkswagen, because all it says is “Don’t even think about changing the oil by yourself, you cheapo. Take it to a VW dealer so we can charge you $50.” Comparative Advantage aside, I still hate paying someone good money for something I can do myself. Plus, I get a resounding feeling of accomplishment that never tingles through me while sitting in Jiffy Lube’s lobby.

So this is my individualist attempt to schtick it to der Mann (this is Volkswagen after all). Below are my step-by-step instructions on how to change the oil in a 2007 VW Bug (keep in mind that I am not a mechanic and I in no way make a claim that this method of oil changing will meet manufacturer’s guidelines, warranty requirements, or any other damaging stuff you might want to sue me over… so there):

Jack the car up, of course, making sure the parking brake’s on. Open the hood and remove the oil cap.

With your trusty oil pan and a good set of channel locks, you’ll want to loosen the drain plug and let all the oil drain into the pan. Once it’s finished draining, screw the drain plug back in and tighten it with the channel locks.

Then you’ll need to remove the central rock and mud shield underneath the engine. It only has four screws in it and is very easy to remove. You’ll need a torx driver, though. (Note: Volkswagen apparently changed the design under the engine in mid 2007. There are now “six 12 point caps screws and two 16mm bolts” holding the rock & mud shield in place. HT: Gregg)

You should see the oil filter right away. There are some cables slightly covering it, but it’s still pretty obvious. Position your oil drain pan beneath it and unscrew the drain cap. Nothing drained when I unscrewed it but yours might be different.

Now comes the gooey part. Unscrew the filter housing with an oil wrench (or, if you have enormously strong hands, you could use them instead). Be careful when you pop it from its housing because it will dump oil everywhere.

Grab a screwdriver and push its tip into the red plug in the center of the filter housing. Push the red drain tip back and then to the side and the oil should drain out of the housing. (HT: Gregg) Once everything’s drained, take an oil wrench and unscrew and remove the filter housing.

Set the housing upright on the ground and pull the old filter off. Then be sure to remove the old rubber O-ring from the housing. There’s a little tab that sticks up from it so you can grab it with your hand. Seat the new O-ring in (comes with your new filter) with your fingers and put the new filter into the housing (be sure to push hard enough that it clicks… that pushes the red drain tip back into position).

Add some oil to the oil filter. (I’m not sure what good this does, but the practice has been recommended to me by a mechanic.) Make sure the oil you’re using is 5W-40 full synthetic (although VW does say that 5W-30 full synthetic can be used in a pinch). Expensive stuff but required by the warranty, I believe.

Now put all that stuff back together. I hand-tightened the filter housing (I’ve got strong hands), screwed the drain cap back in place, put the rock shield back on, then added 5½ quarts of 5W-40 full synthetic oil, replaced the cap and closed the hood. No problem.

Oh. And don’t forget to remove the jack.

Well, it’s official official. We’ve finally moved into our house. I carted over the few things we were living with (one cooking pan, 2 forks, 2 knives, some clothes, toiletries, a computer… and… well, that’s about it. Oh yeah: we used a Tupperware container for a bowl and its lid for a plate. We had to eat breakfast and dinner in shifts.) Not we’re reeling in all kinds of space with nothing to fill it up. It’s surreal. Em and I sept last night on an air mattress in a bedroom so big you could play football in it. I found that when I sat down on my side of the mattress, I could just about pop Emily into the air on her side. And while we shifted and squeaked around on our air mattress, I taught Em the song “I Will Bless the Lord at All Times” that my dad taught me when I was little and we went to sleep praising God for His amazing grace, for His abundant pardon.

I figured I’d post some pictures of the almost completed house since my blog’s been collected cobwebs for the past few days.

The closing date has been moved up to April 18th, so we will be moving in a little earlier than usual, which is nice. Emily can’t wait to start planting things in the flower beds. I can’t wait to have a desk. I’m seriously about 1/10th as productive as I could be when I don’t have a nice, large writing/reading surface. I like to spread out 5-6 books, stacks of papers, a nice inky pen, and a cup of coffee and just spend a few hours delving into intellectual or introspective stuff. But I can never manage it when I’m sitting up in bed or on the floor.

ummm… anyway… if you’ve read this far, I’ve got some grass you might enjoy watching grow.

And now for something… completely different.

The Masters is coming up this week (c’mon, admit it… you knew) so work’s been quite busy. This year we’re covering the Masters for both PGA.com (golf’s #2 site) and PGATOUR.com (golf’s #1 site) so we’re having to field sales demands and content requests from twice as many sources now. Oi. Like I’ve mentioned in previous posts, these are the times that you feel like you’re worth more than they pay you.

tingle

Sorry. I just couldn’t resist.

Emily and I went to Tribble Mill Park today after dropping by the house to see what was going on. It looks like they’ve painted, gotten the trim done, put in the cabinets, counters, and plumbing, along with all the flooring except the carpet (hardwood, tile, linoleum). It’s looking like they’ll be finished a month early at this rate.

I took the afternoon off on Thursday so Emily and I could have our Valentine’s Day date. We went to Moe’s and then out to visit the house. Since Monday they’d already gotten the roof shingled, the windows in, and all of the electrical, plumbling, gas, and HVAC work done. These guys are machines.

After our visit and a pleasant talk with the builder, Josh, Em and I walked around Tribble Mill Park again. It was quite cold out, but the air was crisp and the skies were clear. I was able to get some pictures that I thought represented the park a little better than the other ones I’ve taken previously:

I think this will mainly be a picture post. I’ve been collecting some pictures of our house going up and I wanted to post them before they become ancient history.

Em and I honestly feel like we must be living someone else’s life because we’re looking at this ridiculously large house thinking “Why in the world do we get to live in a place like this?” I often times find myself almost accusing God of not knowing what He’s doing because we shouldn’t be given things this nice. Aren’t we supposed to be suffering?! I still haven’t figured that one out. Maybe I have a warped view of God and He’s trying to straighten me out with beautiful things like a nice house, a beautiful wife, and a really great beard. I don’t know. But I do know that I feel really small when I walk in that house. And it’s not just that the house is big.

Another blessing is also that charming state park that I mentioned in another post. It’s within walking distance of our new home and Emily and I have taken to walking tours around the park on Saturdays. Tribble Mill Park is over 800 acres and there are miles and miles of walking, biking, and horseback riding trails. There’s also a large playground that I’m sure our little tyke will be taking advantage of. But the whole park is built around several large lakes, one of which is pictured in the photo below. (And, for those of you who care, this photo is actually a three-photo composite done in Photoshop 10’s brilliant new Photo Merge. It’s sooooo much better than the old one.)

And I can finally with some confidence call it “our house.” The realtor called about two weeks ago (I’m a slow poster, sorry) to say that our offer had been accepted by the builder. Now we only have to wait until April 30th for the house to be built. Joy. I’m envisioning a lot of trips out to the site to see if “maybe they’ve nailed another board in place” or, what I’d be grateful for right now, “Look honey, they moved the dirt pile off our lot!” (Seen photo of us in front of our new… umm… digs?)

One of the oddest (and coolest) developments with this house move, is that Tim and Stephanie liked the location, community, and houses so much that they decided to buy the lot right next to us and their house will be finished one month after ours. One of the nicest features is that the community is a conservation community, so a large portion of the community has to stay woods and streams. It’s also located across the road from the most charming state park I’ve ever been to.

Once we move, we’ll have to have everyone over. By twos, of course.

After the PGA Championship weekend, I was allowed to take Tuesday off so I drove back here to Greenville on Monday night alone to work on the attic. Emily had been at the house all last week packing things up so when I walked in to a house completely bare except for boxes stacked everywhere, something inside of me just about broke. It’s been the strangest feeling… like the house is evicting us. It’s a lot like being rejected by someone who used to love you. You feel like the person is still there and they look the same but all the things that used to make you comfortable around them are gone and there’s only the impassive shell… their presence is so close and yet so irretrievably lost…

I just never figured I’d feel this way about a house.

I guess since Emily packed away all the pictures, lamps, dishes, books… it’s like the house and I have finally ended our relationship. Up until now home was always here and I was just staying at my brother and sister-in-law’s. Now I don’t have a home. The house has chosen someone else and I have no place of rest and familiarity to retreat to. This may sound like a bizarre pity party, but I’m just amazed at this feeling of utter desolation. Being the homebody that I am, I haven’t until now gotten a taste of how painful it was for the Son of Man to have no place to lay his head. It really is a feeling of being utterly alone.

Of course, it’s also been making me think that Emily is the closest thing I have to home. While staring at blank walls, empty closets, and the single bare alarm clock on what used to be a cluttered night stand, I kept thinking: if Emily were here this would feel like home again. Things would be okay. It’s been making me extra thankful for a wife. I’m honestly not sure how single people do it… I guess when you’re single your roots only go down so far. You’re fairly ready to move on to the next thing. But when you get married something happens: germination begins and you push out in all directions, growing taller and reaching farther out while also digging and gripping deeper into the soil of the familiar. And you have to. The wider your experience grows, the more you need that tether to a center. Otherwise, the falcon cannot hear the falconer.

Well… the world is out of joint. The mirror has cracked. All paths are bent.

I just wish my last night in the house weren’t so filled with this echoing emptiness.

And I really wish Emily were here.