Sunday, November 30, 2008
Colossians 3:16
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.
posted by Cheyenne at 12:02 AM comment(s) made:
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Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Have A Scrumptious Holiday
I am looking forward to turkey and all the trimmings made by my own little hands, in the quiet comfort of my own home, alone with my charming husband, while watching all those football games all day long. Yes, I have much to be thankful for these days.
My next installment of the Basement From Hell will occur sometime after the holiday.
posted by Cheyenne at 1:24 AM comment(s) made:
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Sunday, November 23, 2008
Mark 8:38
Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.
posted by Cheyenne at 12:36 AM comment(s) made:
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Friday, November 21, 2008
The Basement From Hell - Part 3
This photo can give you a general idea of how our entire basement was finished. This was the only part of the basement that wasn't nasty from the mold. All the ceiling tile was in place, all the sheet rock was painted white, all the T-1-11 and chair rail below the sheet rock was carefully painted in Colonial Blue. The color had to be mixed to the exact color I wanted. (I can be very anal about those things.) The wall with tongue-and-groove boards was also Colonial Blue and separated the main basement from the workout room where we also kept our humongous chest freezer. At one time it held half a steer, a pig (both cut up and packaged) and various other foods. It was hauled away, as it was contaminated. And everything you see in this photo is also gone.
My husband put in many hours and a lot of hard labor to finish our basement. He worked as a trucker by day (and his quitting time was always different so sometimes he would get home very late, or have to lay over), and then he would go downstairs and work some more on the basement.
This next photo was taken the day after the bio-hazard crew showed up. As I said previously, they arrived decked out as wannabe astronauts, just not as elaborate in their uniforms. They were covered from head to toe in white and wore masks. It was then that I realized just how bad our situation was. Up until then I guess I was in denial. At this point they were drying the floor with whatever that thing is in the middle of the photo. I wasn't around while they were working so I don't know what all the machines are called that they used. 
This photo shows their bio-hazard truck. All the bad stuff was pumped into a container in the truck via a large hose which you can see on the ground to the right of the truck. I was able to watch a lot of this through the window in our family room.
And this last photo is of the dump truck that they used to haul away all the contaminated things. Which was most of the items in the basement. They took two loads piled to the top and tarped to wherever it is they take that type of nastiness.
This was just the beginning of the clean-up. From October 8th through October 27th (three weeks) is how long it took them to get us back to almost normal. I say almost because we will never have what we had before the mess began. More to follow soon.
posted by Cheyenne at 12:05 AM comment(s) made:
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Monday, November 17, 2008
Tattered Flag Tattered Season
This flag, that has flown in front of my house the entire 2008 NASCAR season, sort of represents the last half of Dale Jr's year, especially his final race. Mechanical failure did him in causing him to finish 41st in the race and 12th in the Chase points. Only the top ten drivers go to New York to be on the stage, but I don't think Junior cares about not being there.
I'm glad the season is finally over. I need time to recuperate from all the boredom NASCAR handed out every blessed week. This is the first year where I was not enthused too much during any given race. On the other hand, I am looking forward to next year and I hope that both Dale Jr. and Tony Jr. will have their act together and do better. Or Mr. H may make changes they won't like.
And, yes, I have a new, stronger flag ready and waiting to fly starting with Speed Weeks in February 2009 at Daytona.
posted by Cheyenne at 3:32 PM comment(s) made:
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Sunday, November 16, 2008
Matthew 23:22
And he that shall swear by heaven, sweareth by the throne of God, and by him that sitteth thereon.
posted by Cheyenne at 12:16 AM comment(s) made:
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Thursday, November 13, 2008
The Basement From Hell - Part 2
Once we called our insurance company, they coordinated what would happen for the next four weeks. Our basement was now considered a biological hazard zone and was to be treated as such until the day it was declared safe. The insurance company works hand in hand with a company that cleans up biohazard messes such as ours.
This next photo shows fungi growing out of the rug, which was sopping wet. At the top of the photo you can see the cedar chest we had that was sitting directly on that sopping wet rug. And yet, nothing was wrong with the chest. Absolutely nothing. No mold, no fungi, no nothing. We were able to save it. But those things you see scattered all over the rug? Fungi. They reminded me of a square of American cheese left unwrapped on the counter, all dried out and turned up at the corners. This was one of the most disgusting things I had ever seen and it was in my basement.
These next two photos show the closet that was built in the room where the freezer and our workout machines were. We had commercial rugs on the floor. It is in this room where the water came through the wall caused by the broken pipe from our well. Behind this closet is the room in the previous photo, so it too got most of the water before it entered the rest of the basement.
This photo shows the sheet rock that is behind the closet in the photo above. As you can see from these pictures, this didn't happen overnight. And we will never know just exactly when it did happen.
My beloved wine rack. My first action was to scoop up all my wine, put it in a box, and take it upstairs. No way were they going to throw my wine out. I did that before they arrived. That white stuff on the rack is mold. Behind the rack is a color TV that was in working order. The back of it had yellow mold spores on it. Directly behind the TV is a working stereo also in a wooden cabinet. We lost everything in this picture except the wine. Ain't nobody gonna take my wine away from me. Ever.
At this point in my taking pictures, we were still poking through things trying to figure out what to do. These were taken on the 4th of October, and the insurance adjuster came to look and document things on the 6th, eight days after our discovery. That afternoon the bio cleanup crew arrived wearing those white bio suits, covered from head to toe, looking like they just came from a moon-landing. And to think my husband and I were touching things, not to mention the fact that I waded through the 4 inch water days earlier and had also stuck my hand into the drain to see why the water wasn't going down like it should have been. Once the bio crew supervisor looked things over, he informed us that everything had to go. That included all the t-1-11, the ceiling tiles, the sheet rock, all the insulation in the ceiling, the studding (meaning no more closets, rooms or anything that we added on), and of course just about everything that was on the floor that was wet or had mold and fungus on it.
There is much more to come and more pictures also. We were now at a crossroads with our water supply. Keep the well, or hook up to city water?
posted by Cheyenne at 7:45 PM comment(s) made:
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Monday, November 10, 2008
The Basement From Hell - Part 1
Finally, the long-awaited saga of our basement disaster. Let me preface this post with the fact that our basement was nothing more than a place for storage. And since we have a ranch home, the basement is quite large. There were things down there that my daughter left behind when she moved out, along with a lot of stuff that we no longer used, although we had every intention of using it eventually. You know how that goes...in other words, the basement became a catch-all of a mixture of things.
Because of its stature as storage space, there was no reason for either of us to go down there more than we had to. About four months ago I did go down to empty out a large freezer we had in the back room as there wasn't much in it, and we no longer needed to use it because we have a smaller one in the garage.
My daughter will be moving from a small apartment to a house early next year. She asked me awhile ago if she could have the toy chest/deacon's bench from her childhood and of course, I said yes. So the next time she visited we decided to go downstairs and take a look at the bench. That was on September 29th.
We got halfway down the steps when I realized what had happened. There was 3-4 inches of water covering the entire floor. And yet I wasn't too concerned at that point because I really didn't know the extent of what I was seeing. It didn't seem all that bad. We turned around and went back upstairs and I casually told my husband that we had water in the basement, again. He wasn't too thrilled, but he did ask how much. I replied, uh...like a lake.
This is what we saw:
We debated back and forth for a few days just exactly how we were going to handle the entire situation. I think we were in denial. I know I was. I thought between my husband and myself, we could carry everything outside, let it dry out, and take things from there. However...and boy, is this a big however...it wasn't going to be that easy. In this next picture you can see the hose that my husband put in the drain on the day of discovery. It was determined that the water was coming through the wall from outside, and we figured our well had something to do with it.
These next pictures show the damages (more to come later). My husband worked long, hard hours finishing off the basement a few years ago. When we moved here, there was a bedroom in one corner. My husband made another room where the freezer was and that is where we also put all our workout items like the weight bench, cardio glider, stationary bicycle, rowing machine, etc.The bottom half of the walls had T-1-11 which we painted Colonial Blue, with a chair rail separating the painted sheet rock at the top half. Three closets were added and this picture shows one of them. Those plastic bags have clothing inside, all which had to be thrown out.
If you make this next picture larger, you can almost see the toxic crap just bubbling away on the cement doing its dastardly deed. We have no idea when the leak first occurred, or how long it was going on. The water coming in wasn't a drip or a trickle, but it was enough to cause the problem. Ground came with it and the resulting mud and silt caused the drain to clog and not take the water away at the same rate it was coming in.
See those boxes? I think they were empty but you can see the bottom two have wet corners. Everything was a soggy mess. And we had no idea being down there poking through things could have put us at a risk far greater than we could ever imagine. Mold spores are not nice creatures.
Of course, once the water was turned off, what was on the floor receded, leaving behind a muddy, slimy, moldy, mildew mess. Upon further inspection, we realized it was a far greater task than we could ever attempt to tackle. We finally gave up and called our insurance company.
Little did we know what we were in for, so stay tuned for the rest of the story.
posted by Cheyenne at 2:10 AM comment(s) made:
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Sunday, November 09, 2008
Micah 4:3
And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.
posted by Cheyenne at 12:31 AM comment(s) made:
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Wednesday, November 05, 2008
He's Not My President
I write this post with a heavy, heavy heart. I know there are a lot of people out there that never accepted George W. Bush as their President, so I am taking that stand now and refuse to acknowledge that B.O. is my President. I have that right, after all, because this is America.
If I don't believe in something then I don't have to acknowledge that it even exists. Listen people, this has nothing to do with the color of the man's skin. That is the farthest thing from my mind. But it has everything to do with what he stands for and what he thinks he's going to do with my money. What little we have left after the stock market sank its ugly teeth into it, that is.
I hope, that within a year or so, the people who voted B.O. into office understand what they have really done and I truly wonder how they will feel about him then. Because by then, we will all be in the same boat. I know where we are headed...do they?
posted by Cheyenne at 12:02 AM comment(s) made:
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Monday, November 03, 2008
This Is Where I Stand
I was raised in a family of Democrats. But I'll be damned if I would vote that way this election. And don't bother asking me why.
posted by Cheyenne at 6:40 PM comment(s) made:
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OK, I Couldn't Resist
Dale Jr. drove this car on October 5th at the Talladega SuperSpeedway. I posted about this earlier and told you both our names were on the car that he raced.
I wanted to purchase this diecast when I first heard about all the names being on the car and that was long before he actually raced it. But I kept putting it off. And then I thought about it...both our names appeared on the car. Mine was in the one 8 on the roof, and my husband's was behind the front wheel on the driver's side. So one day last week I decided to order it anyway. Screw the economy. I simply had to have it because of our names being on it. Wouldn't you?
Here is the picture I took of the area where my husband's name is. I also took a picture of mine but because it's red my name is hard to see. I won't tell you which name is his, I'll let you try and figure it out.
posted by Cheyenne at 12:09 AM comment(s) made:
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