Our new home is amazing.  In fact, many of the things we liked about our Hyde Park place went into the design of our new home and the choice of location.  We’re still walking distance from a downtown; Montgomery’s Heritage District.  We really did our homework when selecting our builder  John Hueber Homes.  I can’t say enough positive things about the people there, the quality of work they do, and the professional way they handled our project.  We’ve heard some horror stories from friends building with other custom home builders, but we really hit the jackpot with JHH.

We’re still in the process of finishing the house because we started out just going for a simple LEED Certified rating of the home, but when we finished we were closer to Silver than Certified so we’re updating our landscaping plans with the help of Marvin’s Organic Gardens to get us more points in water efficiency and materials & resources.

Hopefully more to come now that things are settling down a bit more. I know I have many thoughts about the building process, my plans to get involved in Montgomery, and many ideas I got about my career when I spent some time away from work.

In January I submitted the five photos below which will be turned into an on Demand video on the local channel 1111. Between February 14 and March 31, the baby with the most views will win a prize (you need at least 100 views to even be considered).

If you’re a TW digital subscriber in Cincinnati, please watch Maya’s video over and over and over!

Andy Zilch,

Thank you for submitting the pictures of your baby for our Local on Demand Cutest Baby Contest!

Viewing of these videos on Local on Demand channel 1111 will be between February 14 and March 31. Remember, you’ll receive one vote each time someone watches your baby’s video during that time. The baby video with the highest number of votes will be awarded. Prizes will also be awarded for second, third, fourth & fifth place vote totals.

Want to give your baby an edge? Talk to your friends, neighbors and relatives – especially relatives! Anyone who has Time Warner Cable digital cable! Beginning February 14, tell them to tune to Local on Demand Channel 1111 and look in the category: Cutest Baby. Vote early! Vote often!

And while you’re on Channel 1111, check out some of the other interesting videos available.

Thanks to our friend Suzanne for getting us in touch w/ the volunteer opportunity.

When Mom and Dad S. said they were sick we understood it might be better to let them rest than to make a trip to Detroit and disrupt their recovery; after all they have a cruise in a couple weeks. We had declined an invite to our friends’ Thanksgiving dinner earlier, but one quick call and we were back on the guest list. Our job was to bring potatoes and pie. This morning though our friends called to say they too had the flu, brought to them from out of town guests. hmmm…. there seems to be a pattern here.

Luckily though we had a bag of stuffing in the cupboard and chicken and cranberries in the freezer. Together we whipped up a fabulous meal and had Thanksgiving dinner in our pajamas. Not a bad year at all.

Happy Thanksgiving to anyone who might read this post!

Tornado sirens going off now… time to be smart and get in the basement

I suppose though now that the building has been removed there is no point getting in the way of a nice looking, very well landscaped parking lot being built — hint, hint St. Mary’s.

Our church, St. Mary’s in the background, will build a new parking lot and attractive landscaping for the Suburbans, Escalades, and Navigators that shuttle kids to and from school each day. The street does open up quite a bit with the building, which was very close to the curb, no longer there.

So after cleaning the space out, I decided we needed to fill it in with dirt. So I had some dirt dropped off. Dropped off is an understatement.

I had just eyeballed the measurements (8′ x 20′ x 8″) for how much dirt we needed. That came out to about 106 cubic feet which is just shy of 4 cubic yards. Well there was no way I was picking up one-hundred six 1cubic foot bags from home depot so I called a few places about delivering dirt. I found a great place, H Hafner and Sons, where same day delivery is included in the cost per cubic yard (and it wasn’t much more than I would have paid to get 106 x 1 ft^3 bags).

Hafner’s had a price break at 4 cubic yards though so I ended up getting 5 cubic yards for the same price (I figured a little extra dirt wouldn’t hurt).

Well 5 cubic yards ended up being plenty of dirt, in fact, I think they were generous w/ the portions and I probably ended up with more than 5 cubic yards. It took a dump truck to get it here and it took me all day to shovel it in my wheelbarrow and put it in place. That one extra yard is spread around our yard, our neighbor’s yard, and piled high under our deck.

The after shoveling all that dirt, we let it settle for a few days and this past weekend, we laid down a weed barrier, planted some hostas and bleeding hearts, and put down a layer of mulch. We even made use of the old pallet as a city-chic decking.

]]> http://sarita-andy.com/2007/04/our-not-so-secret-garden/feed 0 http://sarita-andy.com/2007/04/can-you-say-minority-report http://sarita-andy.com/2007/04/can-you-say-minority-report#comments Mon, 23 Apr 2007 18:59:32 +0000 Andy Zilch http://sarita-andy.com/blog/?p=118 The 2002 film Minority Report was based on a premise that three human “pre-cogs” could see the future and, working with law enforcement agents, prevent violent crime. Tom Cruise, the film’s protagonist plays a down in the dumps police officer whose own system turns on him when he’s determined to have committed a pre-crime.

On the screen the whole thing seemed a bit far-fetched, but Cincinnati seems to be playing with just that premise. The Enquirer today reported on a ‘likely killers’ list that the Hamilton County board of commissioners has developed and they plan to hand over to law enforcement.

I appreciate the reason this was created; especially after reading that one of the committee members responsible for the development had her husband shot to death on her front porch by a criminal with a violent past (if ever I had that same experience, I doubt I’d be able to channel my energy into such a productive activity). That said, what is law enforcement supposed to do with the list? They can not arrest someone because they look like they might committ murder. They can not follow someone around 24/7 waiting for the moment he/she might committ murder. I honestly do not see any way this list could be used without violating the civil rights of someone on it.

I hope in this heightened mood of insecurity (around the VT shootings, around general terrorism, etc.) that the community does not jump to irrational conclusions about the usefulness of this list.