Up In The Air part 9

45,000 pounds. 22-1/2 tons. Ten yards of "mud."

They poured our basement floor yesterday. At roughly 4,500 pounds per cubic yard, that's how much concrete it takes to make a floor about 4" thick, in a space about 23' x 40'. No wonder there are a couple cracks in the sidewalk where the cement truck sat.

I'm not sure when it's safe to go down there and take a gander. Certainly nothing happened today, and I'm betting against any activity tomorrow. But I might toss a ladder through the egress window opening - I hate ladders, and I'm no good on them, and they kill my knees - and crawl down there for a look-see. This means, of course, that our old basement stairs were - mercifully - ripped out and new ones have yet to be built.

I'll want to be sure I know where the floor drain is, and the sump pump pit, and the roughed-in bathroom, and the laundry drain. I'll want to see if I can discern, without spilling a lot of water to test it, if the floor slopes toward the floor drain. And I'll want to call out some spots for ceiling fixtures (light) and duplex or fourplex receptacles (power).

The contractor will need to lower most of the appliances and the furnace through the egress window opening to put them in place. I want them to put in the stairs, and take the dryer down the new stairs, to see if it's at all possible to get such down and up for future appliance needs. The dryer is the lightest of those items that would need to go up and down the steps. Otherwise, there will need to be some permanent accommodation made at the egress window.

They also blocked up all the remaining openings in the foundation walls, except where the two lights (windows) and the egress window will go. All right: an egress window is the escape from the basement in case we or a future owner put a bedroom down there. I don't know what's going in those, or exactly what if anything will be done for window well and drainage. I know the egress window will require either a cover, or gutter at the roof, to keep water out of such a well.

A few treated boards need to be stuffed in between the block and the old house sill, and some sill repair still needs to happen. The plumber has much to do, as does the heating guy: almost all the sheet metal is being replaced and rerouted. Former cold air returns will now be heat vents and vice versa. Then the furnace needs to be hooked up to gas and power, and the central a/c unit needs to be reconnected and recharged. We've run out of luck on that score: days in the mid 80's leave the house pretty warm. The plumber will do a new supply line and reconnect everything, rescue one toilet, and get us a new water heater.

We still need to call out where the furnace and dryer will vent, and where the water connection will come out for garden hose, etc. This is our chance to get the hose hookup where it should be, near the back door. We might even be able to aim the furnace vent (in older times, chimney; now, PVC pipe out the side wall. Where's the elegance?) and dryer vent at the water connection, to help keep it from freezing.

Then comes the rebuilding of the front porch, the finishing of the back entry, and the fixing of the concrete outside the back door (perhaps these last two should be the other way around). This is where I recall that the contractor said, "four to six weeks," and we're finishing six weeks. The contractor needs also to do a make-good on a couple support beams and to have a look at some of the settling cracks and issues - for example, our kitchen counter has moved from 1/8" to 1/2" down the walls and pulled away from the wall by 1/4", although all the cabinets seem to be fine under the counter. The guy's truck bears the legend "Done Right the First Time," and we're not entirely sure.

When the house is done, we can begin to consider the yard and garden. Wendy thinks we can try to regrow the lawn by seed, and I can give that a go, but only if we get a lot of dirt in here to get the grade we need. We also get to redesign the garden spaces, the front walk (house to public walk), and - if we can scrounge enough brick - a patio-like space for a yard table.

Enough of that. Time to wander off-topic.

$4 gas is making itself known on the highway. I have said that I am now driving a little slower, let's say about 70 on the Interstate. This is down about 3 or 4 mph from my previous habits. At old speeds, I used to be passed regularly, about half the time by Minnesota cars and about 10% by even-faster Illinois cars. Today, for example, I was passed only by a motorcycle; I passed an Acura from Minnesota and a BMW from Illinois!

I have a bit of a fall-back position. My employer offers a stock purchase plan with after-tax dollars that gets us company stock at a bit of a break (discount from lower of current or previous buy-period price) and, although that's still attractive (bless me, I don't work for Circuit City, whose business and stock performance is so abysmal that Blockbuster walked away from an offer to buy the company), I could cover about half my monthly commute by pulling out of the program. Not yet, maybe, but a pad is a pad.

If you know me, you'll wonder when I might say something about beer. Here's one to try, but you may need to get west of Eau Claire and east of the Twin Cities to find. The Rush River brewery of River Falls, WI, makes two fine beers. Their "Bubblejack" IPA is tasty of the type, but to my mind their star is the "Unforgiven Amber." This is beautiful to look at and better to put in your mouth. Amber to copper, lovely head, full but not too thick, full-flavored but not cloying, good finish but not lingering aftertaste.

This is where I speak heresy. I drink wine. Sometimes I drink booze. Now, I seldom drink more than one of these flavor families per night, although a little nip of something is nice if not too many beers have preceded it. Generally, if I start with wine, I finish with wine, and if I start with a wee nip, I might well finish with another. Beer is wonderful: if I start with beer, and behave myself, I can finish with a shot; if I start with a shot, I can finish with a beer or two.

But I understand why old men drink straight booze, or wine. It's a cut to the chase issue. They have to pee less often; they may have to wake less often for that purpose. I have a healthy set of prostate problems, and as a beer-drinking man I may be up three or more times a night to drain. Most times, I can get right back to sleep, unless an unsettled house project weighs on my mind. When I drink wine, that might be down to two times, and if I sit with my friend George Dickel (not mentioned in George Thorogood and the Destroyers, "I Drink Alone" but it should have been), I might get by with the 12:30 whiz. The other night I tried drinking a glass of limeade (non-alcoholic) as the only beverage; I was tired and my liver needed a night off. I was still up twice, so I voted to not worry about abstaining. The longer I can stretch things between waking to pee, the more and better I dream. Since I believe that dreams, among other things, vent some pent-up issues in the subconscious, the more I dream, the more I like it. I feel better after dream-filled sleep, even if I don't recall much about any of the dreams.

George Dickel "Original Tennessee Finest Quality Sippin' Whisky" No. 12. Not to be mistaken for No. 9, Sour Mash Whisky. That's drinkable, after a fashion, for those who prefer sour mash. No. 12 is, to my mind, similar to a bourbon and better than Jack Daniel's, which generally costs $5 more per 750ml bottle. From what I have found on the net, the company has been up and down, has sold a few times including recently, has been in and out of production, et., etc. It still tastes as good as it did 40-plus years ago when I first learned about it in the alley behind Conkey's Book Store (Appleton, WI). As long as the recipe is true, the whisky will be honest with you. Hell, it's booze: if you have too much, it'll kick you in the ass, make you behave stupidly, and make you ill. But if you can manipulate such a liquor, get enough that you reach the land of pleasantness without flying past it, George Dickel is one of the more tasty ways to arrive there without making your wallet ill .

I am wondering how the new basement will be in regard to temperature. Our old basement ("Other people have basements. We have a cellar." - our daughter, in her early teen years) was, among other things, cool. It was a great place to hold beer and wine, in what I always called "cellar-cooled" temperatures. In winter, the sill along the stairway to the basement was a great place to keep good beers, as they were ready to drink at about 48-50 degrees, and wine from the basement was at about the same temperature because it was near the old floor. I will need a whole year, starting as soon as they tell me they're done, to calibrate the storage temperatures of the new basement and what changes in refrigeration and holding spaces will be needed to provide the happiest beverage moments with the least energy. I may have to go through some room-temperature George until I have some results to report.