Grandpa Lee and Grandma Stef made the trip up the day after the Grandparents V and got to see the grill and DHV in action. Here Grandpa Lee looks on proudly at the chaos created by DHV.
In honor of the midweek heatwave we inflated the kiddie pool and set DHV to work on it. He seemed to warm to it after some initial hesitation.
People may have been wondering just what these new homeowners have been up to. Here's a short photographic tour.
A new mailbox. DKV unsuccessfully tried to sledgehammer it through a large buried tree stump ("I knew that spot was too clean!") and wound up digging a hole and pouring some concrete.
Our uber-organized basement, or "Shelf City, U.S.A." The shelving instructions said "assembles in minutes." Indeed, they did; the organization took days!
A backyard compost bin:
A Hydrangea (a bit sad looking in this pre-blog nighttime shot):
Wee trellis climbers:
A window box:
And lastly, the cardboard. The move generated a LOT of cardboard. We set one batch on the curb and watched it not get collected; our realtor clued us in to New Haven's requirement to tie it with twine. We slogged out to the curb to find salvation - someone had come by and picked up our load of boxes. Well, one more week of unpacking this and that, buying odds and ends, and getting deliveries of the good, the bad, and the ugly created another Godzilla pile of cardboard which occupied our garage in an
open and notorious manner. WifeHV and HusbandKV tied it all up in neat bundles and set it out for trash day.
It stayed on the curb for two days, until we called
New Haven Public Works today. Oh, it has to be tied in 3x4 foot bundles, they tell us. Mind you, this information is not made widely available to the general public. "
Sanitation Divas" is what WifeHV aptly titled them. So we trudged out to the curb, piled the nearly wrapped cardboard on top of the Accord, and brought it back to the garage. Here it is; some more of it is hiding behind that mother load!
Anyway, armed with a boxcutter (good idea, Matt), some cooking twine, and touch of rage, HusbandKV made a full frontal attack on that pile of cardboard.
Look upon my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Exactly 3 feet by 4 feet by 4 feet. Only 5 days until trash day; maybe we'll only find 50 spiders when we move the stack for the third time.
After seeing a bit of DHV, we put them to work on some doors that don't quite shut all the way. Matt and HusbandKV managed to make this one even more difficult to close after tweaking it six different ways.
We popped some bubbly to celebrate Nick's imminent employment as Professor of Art History at the flagship university of the great "Pelican State" of Louisiana, LSU. Courses 4405 and 1440 are the ones we're looking forward to seeing in podcast form. Matt, ever the gentleman, shared with DHV.
Even after [redacted], Nick was up after only 5 hours of sleep. It must have been that extra "potency" after his trip to Europe - maybe he picked up something from the Tour de France cyclists! Male pattern baldness is a known side effect of testosterone; DHV inspected the damage and tried to cheer NMC up, "My hair used to be like this, but look at what I have now!"
Playstation and a smiling baby; what more could an art professor want?
After our friends left, the whole family devoted ourselves to cleaning up the cardboard that New Haven's finest unionized sanitation divas neglected to pick up for 3 weeks. Maybe if we disguise it as trash they'll get the point?
