Rain and Floods

We had an amazing rain storm the weekend of the the 14th of March. It rained and rained, and the rivers started to flood and spill over onto major highways. We made it home from church before they shut down Highway 3A at the Shawsheen River, about a mile from our house. The rain cleared on Monday and the sun came out, and by Tuesday the road was re-opened as the river had gone down considerably. There is a wide meadow around the river at 3A, and it was a lake instead of a meadow when I walked up to see what was going on.

I took some pictures of the meadow because it was so amazing that there was so much water. The news was reporting that the weekend storm had been a hundred-year storm - that they hadn't had that much rain for many years.




















We felt pretty glad that there had only been a small amount of water in one corner of our basement through all this. Robert left town for business, and I got up Wednesday morning, went downstairs to check my email, and then came up for breakfast. After breakfast I went down to work, and was horrified to discover that I had a lake in our family room. The water was silver on top of the carpet and was about 3 or 4 inches deep, considering the height of the pad and carpet. I started using our wet/dry vacuum to suck up the water, thinking that this was just a temporary problem. Four hours later I was calling people for help, and thank goodness many of our family and friends showed up to help, because it was hard going. It was bad enough using the vacuum to pull the water out of the carpet, but in addition we had to repeatedly carry the 15 gallon tank up 6 stairs out the bulkhead and out to the street so that we could dump it into the storm sewer.

After a couple of days of this, we started to realize that this wasn't going away any time soon and that we needed to come up with some way of dealing with this over the long term. With the help of friends, we moved furniture and pulled up carpet and pad out of half the room and hauled it outside. Another friend brought over his surface pump (I never even knew that such a thing as a surface pump existed!) so that we could put the pump into the vacuum tank and suck the water up and out to the street through a hose. We were able to see that the water was coming in where the floor met the wall. We set up the vacuums and some sand bags in an effort to keep ahead of the water.




















After all this hard work and trauma, we were assisted by our friends Barry and Jim, who suggested putting in a sump pump and carving a channel in the concrete so that the water would be directed to the sump and then get pumped up and out. We agreed, and they set to work on the project of chipping out a hole for the pump and using a concrete saw to cut the channel. Once this was working, we were able to let the pump do the hard work of getting the water out, which was a big relief. Here is a picture of our pump plus the chaos of the furniture stacked up and out of the way. The long strips of white are the baseboard that they pulled off the wall so that they could carve the channel.














With the pump working and water leaving the house, we could finally sleep again instead of taking 4 hour shifts removing water. We were quite relieved, and then... the next weekend we had a "30-year" storm. Unfortunately the ground was so saturated that the water had no place to go but inside our basement some more. This time it was coming in the back of the house as well as on the sides, and after we removed the rest of the carpet, discovered that it was spurting up through small cracks in the floor. We now had a 4-5 inch deep lake that filled the furnace room as well as the family room. Luckily the people who remodeled our house before we bought it had put the furnace and the water heater up on bricks, so they were not damaged. Unluckily, we discovered that there had probably been a sump pump in the family room that they had removed and covered over. Our friend Barry helped us again, and carved another channel with his cement saw and installed another sump pump at the back of the house to catch that water. He also suggested that we cease and desist vacuuming the water until it was around 4" deep, which was an excellent suggestion, because by this point we were so exhausted that we couldn't think straight.

I took a short movie of one of our bubbling fountains in the middle of the floor. It's not too good, but maybe you can get a sense of the power of water pressure outside and under our foundation.









It took about 3 more weeks for the water to dry up totally. Hearing the sump pumps do their cycling was such a happy noise. For the uninitiated, the pumps have a float on them, sort of like the float in a toilet. When the water gets to a certain level, the pump activates. As the pump works, the float sinks to a lower level, eventually turning it off until the next time. Hearing the pump during the night meant that I could be in my bed instead of downstairs fighting the water.

At some point during this time we moved as much of the furniture as we could out of the basement and into the upstairs. We also were able to put the ruined carpet out for the trash pickup. And no, unfortunately, none of this was covered by insurance.















In retrospect, we were lucky that our furnace and water heater weren't damaged. We were assisted by some good people who donated their time and expertise to help us out and to teach us about our options and the best way to proceed. In the grand scheme of things, a flooded basement certainly isn't the worst trial to endure, but all in all it has been quite an experience. I don't address how we are fixing things yet - I'll post that information next time.

Stormy

Life without dogs is... well, life without dogs. We decided to get a new dog. After watching petfinder.com and applying for several different dogs, we finally got Stormy. She is 1 year old, and is a schnauzer-poodle mix. Her foster mom rescues dogs in Tennessee. She loaded Stormy on a dog transport and we picked her up in Londonderry, NH on Saturday, Feb. 27th.


The transport trailer is pretty amazing - they pull up with a big trailer filled with dogs. There were 20 or so families waiting for their dogs. One by one they handled the paper work and then gave the dogs out. The dogs were everything from chocolate labs to terrier mixes to Boston terriers, to our schnoodle, Stormy.

We immediately took Stormy for a "pack walk" so that she would be tired out for the ride home. We have since observed that she loves to ride in the car and doesn't fuss about jumping into her kennel and sitting quietly while we drive along.

Here are some more pictures.

	This little guy got away from his new owners and caused quite a stir as people tried to catch him
	Here's Stormy sitting in my lap. She is very well behaved and doesn't get on furniture unless asked.
	Because she has a poodle type coat, she's hypo-allergenic, but it also means that she needs regular grooming. I'm drying her off after giving her a bath at the self-service dog wash. One of her favorite places is the driveway where she lays on her back and rubs back and forth in the dirt. When I bring her in, she shakes a cloud of sand all over unless I dust her down first.
	Starting at around 3 in the afternoon, she expresses her desire to go for her evening walk by hanging out at the back door waiting patiently for me to finish whatever I'm doing.

I actually started this post somewhere during the first couple of weeks in March, but I'm just finishing it up on May 30th. My other posts will explain why there has been such a delay.

In Memoriam

Our dog Nyssa passed away today. She was 15 years old, and had been suffering from heart disease for a while, and it finally took her.

We adopted Nyssa from the Humane Society of Utah during December of 1999. We wanted a small dog or a puppy, but all they had were big dogs. We finally decided to take one more look and found her in a cage with a very large dog, cowering over in the corner. Her previous owner had named her Raisin, but we soon decided to rename her after one of Dr. Who's companions. When we took her outside before adopting her, we noticed that she was only using 3 legs and wondered if something was wrong. Turns out she was very fastidious about keeping her feet warm and dry, and because of the snow on the ground she didn't want to get her delicate feet cold. She was 5 years old at the time that we adopted her.

I have been remembering her and the fun times we had together today. One time Tiffany and I took her up Mueller Park Canyon in Bountiful, and let her off the leash while we hiked up the canyon wearing our snowshoes. She ran back an forth on the trail, and by the time we turned around she had probably gone 3 or 4 times the distance that we had hiked.

She enjoyed scrounging in the trash whenever possible. One Thanksgiving she was able to open the cupboard door to retrieve the turkey carcass and enjoyed picking away at the bones. Another time she fetched a dirty diaper from the trash - I discovered her with poop spread all over her muzzle. She was also especially fond of used Kleenex.

We have had some great rambles together. The Pinehurst area has some good hills and nice places to wander, and everyone who saw her commented on how well-behaved she was. She liked to bark at squirrels in the back yard, and to chase away the birds that had come to feed at our bird feeder. She was also very protective of her family, including challenging any visitor who happened to shake hands with her "mom" or "dad".

Nyssa had a vacuum phobia. As long as the vacuum was silent and immobile, she ignored it, but as soon as it was plugged in and turned on she would dash in and nip the bumper or some other part of it. The Smiths were tending her once, and she successfully removed the bumper from their vacuum with a speedy and concerted attack.

Her terrier instincts were apparent any time we presented her with a furry squeaky toy. Most toys with squeakers didn't last for more than 15 minutes before she successfully killed them. She also loved to play fetch and hide and seek with a tennis ball. Robert would hide the ball somewhere in the house and then tell her to find it and she would locate it nine times out of ten.

She had a large vocabulary: kennel, ball, walk, upstairs, downstairs, bed, out, down, treat, no, good dog, to name a few of the words that she knew.

She was ever hopeful that food would fall her way when I was cooking in the kitchen. She watched very closely anytime there was any cooking going on, and could be roused from a nap by a muttered "oops" when something fell on the floor. One time I dropped a butter horn roll from the cookie sheet where it was rising and she snarfed it up. She then spent most of the night un-snarfing it - we had quite a mess to clean up.

She loved to snuggle and cuddle, especially at night. Our bedroom was her favorite place to hang out. Around 8:30 or 9:00 at night, she would come to us and indicate that she wanted to go to bed and that we should too. She also loved to have Robert put her out to "do her duty," because he always gave her treats after. Sometimes she convinced him 3 times in half an hour that she needed to go out, just to get her treat.

Last week I had a mostly empty popcorn bag on my sewing table, which somehow got brushed to the floor. A bit later, I heard some rustling under the table. She had found the bag and was actually wearing it - it was on her head, with the little left-over pieces of popcorn cascading down her shoulders. She couldn't figure out how to get it off her head, so I finally had to help her out in between laughs and giggles.

One of her favorite perches was the back of the upstairs couch. The cushion is permanently bowed from where she enjoyed laying on it. In the last few months when she has been ill, she slept there with her head lower than the rest of her body. We think that maybe it helped to get blood to her brain.

She has had a heart murmur for a while - the vet has mentioned it off and on over the years. About six months ago it started to get worse, and she went into congestive heart failure. We dosed her up with several high powered medicines, including a diuretic, and she was doing moderately well. We had to curtail her activities, such as walks, because when she got over-stimulated she would have fainting spells. She has been slowly declining, but was still enjoying life until about a week ago, when she started fainting just walking down the hall or down the stairs. The vet found that she had a heart arrhythmia in addition to the murmur, and that she was slowly dying from a lack of oxygen.

Special thanks to McGrath Animal Hospital; to Dan and Tiffany and Lisa for helping out when we had to travel and leave her; for the Squires and O'Briens for opening their homes to her; to Rob and Sadie and the kids for helping out; to Crystal H. and our neighbors the Ferri Family for watching her; and to everyone who has loved her as much as we did.

Nyssa, we love you and know that "all dogs go to heaven." We hope you are chasing rabbits and running to your heart's content now.

Nyssa loved to lay and cuddle on quilts. She would often work carefully by pulling them here and there until they were in just the right pile for her to lay on.


Nyssa on the couch, one of her favorite places to nap.


We tried her out in a dog run to see if she could be left during the day. She was happy and content as long as we were in sight, but barked and whined when we left her.


Nyssa is eating her dinner. While she was eating dry dog food, she would snatch the first few bites out of the bowl and then spit them out on the floor, where she would then eat them, all pieces except a few small ones. I had to regularly sweep up the leavings.


Ever-hopeful Nyssa in the kitchen waiting for someone to drop something on the floor for her to eat.

October Asia Trip - Part 2 - Osaka, Japan

I arrived at the Osaka Airport the evening of October 11th. After collecting my baggage I bought a ticket for the JR train, the express "bullet train" that goes from the airport to the center of Osaka and on to Kyoto. In order to ride the express train, you purchase a regular ticket plus an "express" ticket for an extra 1150 yen. Somewhere between purchasing the ticket and before the conductor came to stamp tickets my express ticket disappeared. While I had a receipt showing that I had purchased both tickets, they wanted the actual ticket, not just the receipt. I hadn't converted any cash yet, and they didn't accept credit cards, and just when I was afraid that they would haul me off in chains, a kind Japanese lady who spoke English offered to take my American dollars and give me the required amount. I was very grateful for her kindness and will look for opportunities to help visitors to America to pay her back.

My hotel in Osaka was the Laforet Hotel, which is adjacent to the train station, within walking distance.

Here are some pictures of the view outside my hotel room.






I spent Monday in my hotel as it was a national holiday and I had lots of work to do. I also had time to nap and recover a bit from jet lag, and went for a walk around noon to see the neighborhood. There was a lovely doll at the train station.

I was also amused when a small Japanese child noticed me and pointed me out to his mother. It's a bit of a twist to be the stranger that is different and gets noticed.

My hotel wasn't a typical American tourist hotel, but catered more to Japanese business travelers, and so the experience was quite different than I expected. The staff was very gracious. The lobby contained some beautiful flowers - the yellow blooms were unusual and quite striking. The lobby was also immaculate and spacious.




The area around my hotel is a major intersection, with the Shin-Osaka train and subway station close, so there was a lot of traffic. The sidewalks between the station and the hotel were elevated, as were the highways. I found out later that the "regular" streets were on the lower level. You can see some of that in the next set of pictures.







I took a taxi to the office on Tuesday. Japanese taxis are nice and tidy with lovely doilies on the seats to keep them and you clean.




The Japanese also drive on the other side of the road. Here are some shots from the back of the taxi. There were also many people on bikes - school children, people on their way to work, shopping, etc. Most cyclists rode on the sidewalk, especially the school children.







Close to the office is a tennis club - the building design is shown in this shot:



On the first trip to the office, the driver stopped on a small street in front of a shop that looked like a car mechanic or welding shop. He was quite puzzled and had to finally call someone to find out where the office was. It turned out to be on the other side of the block, and we had to go around, as there was no way to get through the block. The 2nd day, the driver did the same thing, but this time I knew where I was and indicated that we had to go around the block. I'm not sure that he believed me until we pulled in the driveway of the office and I pointed to the sign and said "AKT!"

The area surrounding the office is quite industrial, but there are occasionally blocks which are planted in rice.


After working in the office all day the Japan Sales Team took me out to dinner, where we were served "shabu-shabu." Before entering our room, we removed our shoes. The room had tatami mats on the floor, and a low table, which, luckily for me, had a space underneath so that I didn't have to sit on my feet. The waitresses were clad in kimonos. Shabu-shabu literally means "swish-swish." Thin slices of beef were swished briefly in a pot of boiling water or broth and then dipped in a sesame or soy sauce. We also ate various kinds of vegetables which were cooked in the broth - onions, carrots, tofu, and even slices of pumpkin. Both rice and flour noodles were cooked in the broth and eaten, as well as steamed rice. Dessert was "maroon" ice cream - ice cream made with slices of chestnuts.






On the 14th I also worked in the office. At noon we went to a noodle restaurant about 10 minutes from the office. On our return we walked through a park or green-belt area, where we saw some local kindergarten classes on a field day. We also saw lots of pretty flowers and some fountains that have water in them during the spring, but were dry at this time of the year.






One interesting difference in both Korea and Japan is the arrangement of buttons on an elevator. I was on the 14th floor in Seoul and on the 11th floor in Osaka. Here's a shot of the elevator buttons in Osaka:


My first reaction was to wonder where the button for my floor was, until I figured out the arrangement went from bottom to top in 2 columns.

The sales team also took me out to dinner on Wednesday night, to an Italian restaurant. I didn't take pictures, but the food was Italian with a Japanese twist. For example, one of the appetizers consisted of eggplant slices topped with cheese and tomatoes, but done up to look like sushi.

On Thursday I checked out of my hotel and took the bullet train back to the airport. I was careful to make sure that I had both tickets - the regular and express tickets. As I was departing during the day I was able to get pictures of the train.





I enjoyed seeing the city and country between Osaka and the airport. There were many industrial areas, but also apartment buildings with balconies where the people hang their clothes and bedding to dry. Other areas gave views of city streets and buildings. As we got farther outside the city there were also many rice fields, several of which were being harvested.






The flight from Osaka to San Francisco took around 9 hours, and after a brief layover the flight to Boston took another 6 hours. I arrived home at 10:30 PM on October 15th, and woke up to snow the next day, with more on Sunday.