Evacuation

Yesterday was an interesting day.  I got home from work to change, then left to meet up with Heather and the girls at Livvi's Tae Kwon Do practice. From there, we went to Heather's mom's so I could install their wireless network so she could use her new laptop. From there, I left to go to my workout, while Heather and the girls stayed behind for a little longer visit.  After my workout, I texted Heather about 8:15 p.m. to see if she was home, yet.  She called me back to say she can't get down our street as there are emergency vehicles everywhere (Cleves Fire, Miami Township Fire & EMS, Addyston Police, Cincinnati Haz Mat, Forest Park Fire, Salvation Army Emergency Disaster Services, etc.  Long story short, the house immediately across from our house had some type of chemical spill or other hazardous issue going on.  All the homes immediately next to or across from this house were evacuated.  We were not allowed down to our house, even to just get some clothes, supplies, etc.  They weren't sure what would happen and it would be safer to stay clear from the area.  I asked how long it would be and they couldn't tell me, but had already been at it for 2 hours.  We got back in our cars and headed for my parents house to hang out and possibly sleep, if need be.  I called the Cleves Fire Department at 10:30 p.m. and got the "All Clear" to go home.  We dragged Joie out of bed and all headed home.  Needless to say, we're exhausted today!  We still don't know what spilled or how.

Wooded Facelift

One of the things we love the most about where we live is our backyard. We have a lot of woods and have been blessed with visits from all kinds of wildlife. The woods area, though, wasn't too friendly to yours truly as it had a lot of over growth, which included its share of poison ivy. We decided to hire someone to come and clean a lot of it out, including some dead trees. We figured it would expand the usability of our backyard, eliminate some bugs, dangerous dead trees, and the dreaded poison ivy. Here is a "before" picture:

Here is a video of a 40-50 foot tree (dead) being taken down. It survived Hurricane Ike and plenty of pretty bad storms, but it was no match for this small backhoe.

We also found a new friend when we were checking out the final product. He was about 3-4 feet long and we think it might be a black rat snake (not yet an adult). If you know it is something else, let us know:

Here is the "after" picture (much nicer and more noticeable in person). Now we need to plant some grass seed.