Christmas Tree

As you can see, I have a Christmas tree!

Debbi and I went out shopping yesterday and picked this up for the low, low price of <way too much money>, but it's a pretty nice one. Very dense, I actually trimmed it back some today once it was up and had settled out overnight. It's fully decorated (well, we might throw more stuff on later, but it's more decorated than any other tree I've ever bought myself!) and is sitting right in the middle of my living/dining area, which turns out to be a good place for it. (It forced the papasan upstairs into my office, which turns out to be convenient since the cats are snoozing on it even as I type.)

I like having a Christmas tree; it's festive. Debbi, on the other hand, is absolutely bonkers over Christmas and decorating, as far as I can tell, so I suspect I can just wind her up and let her go and not have to worry about it too much. (Oooh, she's going to hurt me if she reads that!)

Anyway, this will be the first time in four years that I haven't gone back to Boston for Christmas with my folks. Which isn't a bad thing, and indeed I spent four or five years in Madison without going back. It'll be nice to spend it with Debbi, though.

This being my first weekend in two weeks home, I got a lot done this weekend on the house.

Well, the main thing was actually driven by a small pond-related crisis: Yesterday morning I woke up and noticed that the pond level had dropped precipitously - maybe 4 or 5 inches, which is quite a few gallons of water, even though it's a small pond. Being new to this pond stuff, I wondered if it was just returning to its normal level in the wake of all the rain we've had.

Anyway, as I understand that one of the purposes of a pond's pump is to help clean the water, I've turned the pump on the last few mornings, so I did so yesterday morning and went upstairs for my morning routine.

An hour or so later, I noticed the water had fallen several more inches!

Being one of those thinking mammals, I figured that the pump was probably responsible, and turned it off. But I was unsure of what to do now: I didn't know if I could use hose water to replenish the pond (the book I bought suggests not doing so without adding a dechlorinating agent). And what if the pump or the hose had a leak in it? Fixing it could be a chore, since the hose is mostly buried.

I had gotten a phone number for the previous owner from my real estate agent, and called, but left him a message detailing the problems. Eventually, I decided to go out and buy a dechlorinator from a pet store - and also some fish food, as I have goldfish in the pond - and came back (having also run some other errands with Debbi, including buying the tree) and found a message from the seller on my machine.

Well, it turns out that it's not the pump or the hose, but the stream from the end of the hose which runs back into the pond which leaks. Specifically, it's not watertight, and he says he always had to refill the pond a bit after using the pump, and usually had to add water every few days anyway, and that he always just used hose water. So there's nothing really wrong after all; it's just not a watertight system, and I need to undertake a little more maintenance of it, which is not a big deal. (Heck, someday if I feel ambitious I probably could line the stream to make it watertight.)

So I refilled the pond, the goldfish swam around, and everyone was happy.

Oh, and it turns out he never fed the goldfish in the last five years.

Anyone need some fish food?

Another house project was to put my empty computer boxes in the attic.

Yes, I have an attic. It's entirely unfinished, with all kinds of loose insulation hanging around. But there were empty boxes up there before, so I figured that would be a good place to put 'em.

Well, it turns out that the boxes up there were kind of gross, covered in sawdust and with a few cobwebs. I pulled down two of 'em and threw them out, though the third one was out of reach unless I wanted to really walk around up there. Blech. So I decided to put the boxes in the garage and figure out alternative storage plans for them, such as wall-mounted shelving.

Funny thing, though: One of the boxes I pulled out of the attic was marked with a first initial and last name I hadn't seen before. Not the same of the guy who sold me the house, nor his wife, I think. Which means they've been up there for more than a decade, if they belonged to an owner before him. And which also means that they were up there when the roof was replaced a few years ago.

Which would explain why they're so dirty.

I still don't think I'm going to store anything up there, though.

But I might change my mind in a few months.