So the title about sums it up.. if you don't make regular posts to these things, I don't think it will work right. Who knew?! Since I haven't updated this thing in a while, I will have to cram a lot into one post and rather than start way back in November with anything interesting, I will start with what has happened recently.
What, you may ask, is this lame picture to the left? Well, as it appears, it is a picture of the side of the house. The item to the left of the window sitting in the snow is the bundle of roof shingles I was bracing my foot against when I decided to get off the roof the fast way. The disturbed snow area is where I came to "rest." Nothing appeared to be broken or otherwise in bad shape, so I got back up on the roof again. Now maybe you are asking yourself "Why is this idiot on the roof?" Or maybe you just know me well enough to know that question answers itself.
The main problem I've been having since before Christmas is the
craptastic weather here in central PA. Not only is it cold, more than negative 10 a week ago, it is
icy. I enjoy snow and I have come to detest ice. Less than 48 hours after I got the roof shingles deliverd and hand stocked them across the roof, we had a doozie of an ice storm, followed with snow storms which were intermingled with more ice storms, and then a wind storm that would make Flagstaff folk feel at home. So I ended up with a roof with a few hundred square feet of felt paper torn off by the PA style tornado, covered in an inch of solid ice which in turn was covered by 6-8" of snow. Yay. After realizing I probably couldn't wait for mother nature to work her magic and melt the roof off so that I could start laying some shingles, I got up on the roof and started shoveling snow, chipping off, and sweeping the roof clean. This led to this:
which happens to be the start of me shingling the roof. This past Friday it was in the low 40's, yes a
heatwave struck central PA and I'm sure somewhere, someone died from heat exhaustion. I spent the afternoon in a t-shirt up on the roof and made good attempts to get off the roof the fast way again, but failed miserably. So now it is Sunday and breezy and snowing lightly and cold and miserable again - yes, back to standard PA winter weather. I managed to get the roof about 20% shingled and 90% clear of snow and ice before today. I am hoping tomorrow that I can convince the building inspector to let me insulate and start drywall even though the roof is not on. That is the stage the house is at - a roof partly done and ready for insulation and drywall inside and waiting on the siding crew to get started on the outside.
On the soccer front.. I flew out to central CA (Lancaster, CA) the first week of December for the US Soccer youth development academy. This was a 4 day tournament where the US Soccer program recruits players from U15, 16, 17, 18 teams for the US national teams. The U17 team from Brazil and also from Australia were at the venue and played a round robin of friendly games with the two US U17 teams. I was slated to referee games Fri, Sat, Sun, Mon, but managed to screw up my IT band (my knee) on my first day so didn't work any games Sat/Sun and then had 3 more games on Monday. My final game late on Monday afternoon was between the Nike Rush team from Virginia and the DC United U18 team. There was no love lost between these two teams and it was quite a challenging game. That ended the 2008 soccer season for me - it was nice to end with a difficult game.
As I was preparing to travel back to PA at the end of the tournament in CA, I instead ended up traveling only so far as Phoenix and spent time with family there and said a goodbye to my grandmother who had lived a
phenomenal 95 years. She passed away peacefully while sleeping in a morphine wonderland. And as with the passing of one life, the start of a new one was not far behind as Pat and Dusti Prentice welcomed a little girl (Rori Jordan) into the world in the first part of January 2009.
So now I am all caught up with my blog duties. Soccer has already struck as I attended a referee admin meeting in Pittsburgh last Sunday which made me realize just how soon the spring soccer season starts here in the East. In a month I have a new referee class to teach and soon thereafter starts the spring season and the uniform goes back on. With a pro clinic in Ohio in April and state cup in May and regionals not too far after, I'm sure it is going to be a very busy spring. I still hope to finish the house up and be moved in by the end of March.
To make myself feel better about getting down off the roof the fast way, I thought I'd share some other construction "incidents". Safe for work - enjoy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8h0RtMqx94-John
