Roofs, Ralphing, and Rutabagas

Sigh. There never seems to be enough time to update the ole’ blog.

Here’s a too-brief-to-do-it-justice recap of the last month happenings:

My lovely parents were here in lovely Nor Cal (see Dad – I used it!) for a little over a week. The vacation, urr, I mean “holiday,” started out smashingly: they picked up their rental car, drove to our house, and then whisked us away to Bodega Bay, where we stayed for 3 days/2 nights at an adorable seaside cabin. Beautiful weather, exciting whale watching (in October!!!), delicious seafood, much needed sleep, Texas Hold ‘Em, etc. Wonderful all the way around.

We returned home, did some other fun things like bowling with Dad & Mom (BTW they both got turkeys – AKA 3 strikes in a row – and kicked the pants off us younglings), and then had the roofers come midweek to reroof our house. This is where “vacation” came to an abrupt halt, and “ABORT! ABORT!” was all we could muster to mutter out of our mouths. Long story short: the roofers ripped off our roof and discovered some major problems, like that the our evil nemesis, the original builders of our house, decided to have 36" between rafters instead of the normal 24". They also did some funky things with the original 1x4's, yadda, yadda, yadda (no, I’m not “yadda yadda yadding over the best part… just wait). Because of all this, the roof would not pass inspection, so we tore off more stuff, added rafters, repaired a lot of junk, etc. My dad and Cody agreed to help the roof crew since the roofer was open to extra help (at $60/hour for labor, it adds up quickly, so it's nice that the guys could help).

So, Dad and Cody woke up on the day that all this roof repair stuff was supposed to go down and they were as sick as dogs. Flu sick. Sick. Sick. Sick.

Somehow, the guys managed to work on the roof despite this sickness – Cody fell through the rafters; my dad almost vomited off the roof (but he made it down the ladder just in time). Poor guys. The next day, they were feeling better, but still very ill, and continued to work on the roof. Fast forward: Continued roof drama, plus continued sickness. We finally got away again from The Money Pit on Saturday the 18th…. we spent all day at lovely Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, and even rode a double surrey (a 4-person bike that looks like an old model T Ford). On the way home, I got sick. On Monday, Mom got sick. Then Dad and Mom flew home.

Great vacation for Dad and Mom, huh! It was sure nice to have them here, though!