Well, it's certainly been a while since the last update! Here's what's going on down here in the land of huge belt buckles, cowboy hats, and people spouting out "y'all"s with wild abandon:
The August trip up north was good. Probably anyone reading this was a part of our time up there, so there's no need for details. Right? :)
Our spider (see two posts below this one) has passed on. We realized that her substantial girth was due to her impending motherhood. After she spun and filled TWO egg sacs (sacs bigger than her), she met an untimely, Gus-induced death. Her evil, cute little spawn will not carry on her legacy, either. RIP spider(s).
On October 17th Gus and I celebrated our 9th (!) wedding anniversary! The years have flown by, in a good, very happy way!
Halloween was great. We carved jack-o-lanterns! We bought a metric ton of candy! And then, on Halloween evening, we turned out all the lights, locked the door, watched a movie, and ate the candy ourselves. :D
Angela's pumpkin
Angela's pumpkin, lit from within!
Gus' pumpkin. Spooooky, eh?
In other news, we are having our sunroom worked on. The foundation was cracked. Actually, "cracked" is too mild a word. Perhaps "torn asunder" would be more accurate. The house had originally had a small (maybe 4' x 8') patio off the back. The previous owners built the sunroom (12' x 20'?) up around it, but neglected to do proper foundation work. They basically just poured concrete up to and around the original patio slab, not tying the two pieces together in any way, trusting - naiively - in the two concretes to meld. Over the years, with the odd Texas tradition of houses shifting with the seasons, the two slabs pulled away from each other, with the newer one more or less drifting away from the house.
Since this made the sunroom pretty much useless, we hired a foundation repair company to come in and fix things. So far they have done this:
Obviously, a vast improvement. :P To reach this stage, they first removed all the sun-blocking bushes that were growing along the outside of the sunroom. Then they dug eight deep holes (10' deep, I believe) at intervals along the sunroom walls. Then they filled these holes with concrete and gave it a week to cure. Meanwhile, they jack-hammered the foundation and removed (almost) all traces of it. Today they came in, placed support pipes in each of the holes, and jacked up the sunroom to lift it off the remaining foundation.
Exhibit A: A pipe in a concrete-filled hole, holding up the sunroom wall
Next, they plan to remove the rest of the concrete, dig some big ditch along the outer edge of the wall, and pour an all-new concrete foundation.
At this point, the sunroom door to the outside won't fully close:
Exhibit B: Sunroom door sitting at a jaunty angleBut that's just fine. Soon it will all be fixed, the room will be as good as new (better than it's ever been, actually), and it will be habitable once more. We just need to figure out if we're going to carpet the new floor, tile it, stain it...so many choices!
Sunroom floor!
More sunroom floor! (Note: The door is once again in place.)
The exterior, with its new gravel-topped French drain. We tested out the French drain by running water on it for about 10 minutes (from the garden hose). None of the water pooled on top of the gravel, and a few minutes after we started, water was pouring out the far end of the drain, which empties onto the street in front of the house. It works!
Here's what the French drain looked like before the gravel was added. 
