The City Mouse in the Country

 Recently we lost power when the transformer blew across the street.  We were without power for about five hours.  Another day we went without power for about two hours due to a fierce thunderstorm.  As luck would have it both these instances occurred when I was off of work (I work from home on a semi-permanent basis) and during the day.             As such, they proved to be not much of an issue, however it did give me time to test the generator, which has been setting out on our covered back porch awaiting this very opportunity.              Only it would turn over, but not start.  That could be due to a variety of reasons but old gas in the carburetor would seem the most likely culprit however.  It would also be the easiest fix to the problem.            I would simply have to open up the carburetor drain screw ,...

           What makes you fall in love with a house?  Is it the layout, the square footage, the way the sunlight dapples the floor?  Susan and I fell in love with our house for a lot of different reasons.   We loved the wood burning stove and hard wood floors.  We loved that we had roughly 2.5 acres of mostly wooded land.  Sue loved that the kitchen, although small, had original Amish handcrafted wooden cupboards.   However I fell in love with the house when I was walking through the backyard and realized that the small "creek" that flowed between two hills and away from our house was not a natural feature at all.   It was a drainage ditch that looked natural and drained the water into the sewer system out by the road..     It was man made, I could see where the cut for it began at the top of the hill and had been obscured by some underbrush.   I would trace its path down along the hill a...