Yes, I’m still very much alive.  Hubby and I have been working on all kinds of things here at the house.  He left this morning to head back to San Antonio, where he’ll spend the week loading the car trailer with more auto parts.

Last week, we moved the ’46 4-door into position in the storage garage and unloaded the Spitfire.  We also did a little clean-up in the storage garage and cleaned the gutters (which had, amazingly, filled up with leaves over the winter).  We found some gutter guards at Lowe’s and bought one to see if it would work.  It will, so I’ll be looking for more this week.

We replaced the first floor heating and A/C unit with a heat pump.  I’d forgotten that those things run all. the. time.  Installation is nearly complete, but the guys got it working in time for the weekend so we’d have heat.  Since last week was cold and rainy, that was really appreciated.

Oh, yes.  Our friend in the walls.  I don’t think I’d mentioned him.  Something was scratching behind the wall in the bedroom.  There was a repair on the wall where the previous owners told us a squirrel had come through.  That was where I isolated the gnawing to.  Hubby and I figured we had something between a mouse and a squirrel in size trying to come through the patch.  A couple of days ago, hubby called me upstairs and showed me where it had broken through.  Just a small hole.  It temporarily gave me the creeps, of course.  Hubby peeked up and saw fur and an eye looking back at him.  From that, he determined it was either a squirrel or a rat.  Based upon activity times (active at night and quiet during the day), he surmised it’s a rat.

For starters, we poked moth balls into the hole Saturday afternoon.  The critter scurried away, and I haven’t heard from him since.  We patched the patch with more expandable foam.  Then we went into the attic looking for signs of rat.  None.  But we looked down beside the chimney and noticed an old metal stovepipe extending from the chimney to the bedroom wall.  We figure he came down the chimney and into that pipe, so he’s not likely to get into the house.  Something in the chimney must be keeping him from coming all the way down, or he’d have found his way into the front bedroom easily enough.  We’ll be investigating that over the next few weeks.  We don’t really want the critter getting loose in the house even if it might make the cats’ day.

And, finally, I head to the local Texas Veterans’ Commission office tomorrow to begin what I expect will be an arduous process to file my claim for veterans compensation.

As for writing, I’m still on Scene 18.  It’s a scene I’m inserting, so it’s all new material.