Tractors are so useful!

We've had some gorgeous weather in the Pittsburgh area lately. Today couldn't have been nicer - highs in the 70's and sunny with a slight breeze now and then. Look at that sky!

When the landscapers finished on Friday, the deck floor was done and the railing had been started...

DH was hard at work today, taking down trees (near the pool/patio - ones that were mostly dead, or just plain ugly) and clearing trees that fell in last week's storm. He tried to knock this tree over with the tractor...
It bent, but it wouldn't go over...
Plan B involved the use of a chain saw...
And some brute strength...
I think he ended up taking down 4-5 trees. Here goes one that he pushed over with the tractor after getting the job started with the chain saw...

TIMBER!
And another one...
The tractor also came in handy for moving the downed trees - this one was a bit off-balance in the front end loader and caused the tractor to tip up off the back left tire.
So the rest of the trees were attached to the front end loader with straps and dragged away...

And now we're waiting for the Steelers to make a comeback!

Deck details...

The deck is not yet finished, but it's getting there! All the diagonal boards are down and the ends trimmed so that the border boards could be added...
We really like it. The landscape guys have really done a great job with it...
In response to a comment on yesterday afternoons post, I can see how the person could think that there isn't anything for the ends of the boards to connect to. I hope the photos from today will make it more obvious how this deck is constructed. Some of the photos that I posted in past blog entries didn't show the support beams around the edge of the deck. These supports are what the ends of the diagonal boards are connected to...
It took a while for them to get the border boards under the seat wall, but it looks nice now that it's in there!

The step looks great too!
Here's the deck from another angle. The border isn't yet in place on the side that meets the house, the railing needs to be finished ,and the deck needs to be sealed. The landscapers planned to be done tomorrow, but I'm not so sure that will happen.
Here are a couple of close-ups of the screws in the ends of the boards...
and in the middle of the boards. I don't think this deck is going anywhere! :-D
I restocked the refrigerator today. I'm glad I didn't do it last night, as I had planned to, as the refrigerator door was accidentally left ajar last night and I would have had to throw away all the new food. Replacing the food once following the power outage is definitely enough!

Remnants of hurricane Ike got us!

Well, we've been in the dark here in Western PA since Sunday night, around 9:20pm. No electricity, no hot water (we have an electronic starter on our gas water heater!), no phone or internet (we have Vonage phone), etc. I can't open my oven door (I was in the middle of a cleaning cycle), the dishwasher has undrained water in the bottom, as it was running at the time, and yesterday I had to throw all the perishable foods out.

The awning that belongs to our landscaper didn't fare well in the storm...
Our pool was a mess from the storm - those are pieces of styrofoam that were packed around the pavers on the palette...
We lost a couple of trees and some large branches. This tree trunk just twisted right off...
Here is the rest of that tree...
And we lost this medium-sized tree...
But my favorite tree was safe, so that was good!
The landscapers spent Monday cleaning up the debris around the patio area and I scooped out most of the debris from the pool...
Our neighbor lost his barn in the storm. Part of it fell on Friday during some high winds and downpours, but the rest of it fell during the storm on Sunday night.
I don't know when the power will be back on - according to the electric company's web site, it should be back on sometime this afternoon. I'm at King's Restaurant eating breakfast and using their free internet access. My battery only has half-power though, so I don't have too long to post.

I tried to go to the local library yesterday and get a library card. I couldn't, because they were running a program on their computer that they couldn't interrupt. I was told to call them on Friday and see if the program was done running! They let me get on one of their computers for 30 minutes (only if I gave them my license to hold - the computer was all of 2 feet away from the checkout desk). I asked them if I could sit at one of their tables, plug in my computer to charge, and do some work offline - no, you can't do that here! Unbelievable! Fortunately, I remembered that I have a power converter in my car and was able to plug my computer into that to charge.

I'm about out of battery - not sure when I'll get back on to post again, but hopefully soon!