it continues

We have DSL now, making the place quite a bit more homelike. The DSL installer ran a nice fresh cable through an existing hole in the stucco, helpfully drilled by some previous occupant who split their DirecTV feed through every room in the house, via coax cable running mostly along the outside. One of the coax splitters outside--an uncovered splitter which is not meant to be outside--is "grounded" to the metal box housing the circuit breakers and the eletric meter. Just sort of clamped on. There's a phone wire going up and over to the garage, to service the former illegal apartment there.

One side benefit of the DSL install is that I now know which wires I can safely remove: all but one. I'm going to need a bigger ladder.

It looks like two of the trees in the back are probably cherry trees. A third looks pretty dead, and a fourth may be another Mystery Fruit. The house came with far too many lethally spiky things: ten rosebushes, two lemon trees, and in pots, a healthy prickly pear cactus and some big aloe plants. I tend to think we can trim the thorns off the lemon trees and ditch the roses and succulents; Anna and J seem to take the presence of the spiky things as a personal affront, and vote for removing the lemon trees as well. We'll probably keep the healthier lemon tree.

We're down to two urgent projects: flooring in the back entryway so we can install the washer and dryer, and window coverings for the street-side windows. After that, we've got a fully functional house and we can take our time a bit with more projects. For myself, I'd like to clean the outside and make it look more cared for: strip the redundant cables, scrub off all the cobwebs, paint over the graffiti, get some surplus materials and make a first pass at a fence, to discourage people from taking our roses and wandering around the yard.

Feeling like we can take our time is a whole other practice.