I was surprised Sunday morning to find a Georgia Power crew parked at the driveway of our new house.

The small (looking) white box at the right rear wheel of the rightmost truck is an old dishwasher that someone dumped at the side of our driveway sometime between Thursday afternoon and Friday morning. They pulled up far enough that they weren’t really visible from the street. The fact that someone would discard a kitchen appliance on someone else’s property gives you some idea of what a substantial minority (I hope) of our population is like here in Georgia. I will call the county to report it Monday morning. I found a footprint from the culprit next to the dishwasher. Based on the size of my own foot (around 10 1/2), the person who did it may either be or be related to Bigfoot.

One of the Ga Power crew said they were trying to catch up on work that has been delayed because of the rainy weather we have had. I’m still surprised they were working on a Sunday.

I first saw them when I left the house to walk the dogs. When I came back home I could hear their little backhoe banging on the rock that underlies the entire building site. Fortunately, they said they had little trouble digging through it.

They laid the cable from our temporary power post to the front of the house where our meter will be. Here is the backhoe working near the contorted maple we saved to haunt our front yard.

Of course we wanted the electric meter to be located at the rear of our house, but the engineer said that they had to put it on the front to minimize the distance they had to run the cable. I don’t think the difference is all that great, but apparently it’s enough that the engineer was worried about voltage drop over that difference.

I didn’t post about the visit by the I-joist manufacturer’s representative. He came out on February 17 to see the damage that the plumber caused. Based on his inspection, he thought it should be relatively easy to repair two of the damaged joists. The third will take a little more work, but it’s nothing the framer isn’t familiar with. The engineer is supposed to provide a letter specifying how the damage can be repaired properly, which I will have to show the county building inspector before he will pass the framing. I haven’t heard from the engineer yet. I hope it won’t take much longer.

I have had wood-burning stoves where I lived for about 30 years, from the little mobile home I lived in for six years when I moved to Huntsville, to the house I bought near the little town of Gurley, to the house where Leah and I live now. So, naturally, I wanted a wood stove in our new house. This time, instead of putting it in the basement, we’re putting it in the living room, so we wanted something that will look good even when it’s not providing heat.

There isn’t much in the way of choice in Rome, so a few weeks ago I drove down the Martha Berry Highway (US 27) to the small town of Bremen, not far from Interstate 20, to Bollen’s, which has a large selection of stoves. I was looking for a stove that would be small enough not to run us out of the living room with too much heat, but large enough that I can duct some of the heat into the bedroom and bathroom. I found several smaller stoves that would work. I took some pictures and brochures home for Leah to see. So on Wednesday we drove back down to make our decision.

Along the way we stopped at El Nopal in Cedartown for our traditional huevos rancheros.

Nopal is Spanish for cactus. The fruit of the nopal is called “tuna” in Mexico. In the US, it seems that the cactus and the fruit are called prickly pear, which is a native here, too, although we don’t eat them.

Every restaurant prepares their ranchera sauce differently. We like the way it’s prepared at Los Portales, our nearest Mexican restaurant. El Nopal’s was different, but good. We don’t usually eat the tortillas, but El Nopal’s were almost fluffy in a flat kind of way, so I ate a couple. Good.

After Leah ate and I stuffed myself, we continued on to Bollen’s, where we picked out our new stove.

It’s a smallish Hearthstove Tribute, which is made with soapstone rather than plate steel or cast iron. The iron framework is covered with what is called brown majolica enamel. The stove manufacturer doesn’t describe how they coat the iron, but it may be a porcelain coating, which would explain the term “majolica.” In any case, it looks very nice. It was available in a pale, blue-green majolica enamel, but everyone thought the dark, reddish brown would go with more colors. That’s a good thing, since we haven’t selected the wall colors for the living room.

There are other, larger soapstone stoves in the background. Soapstone and iron or steel stoves have somewhat different heating profiles. An iron or steel stove heats more quickly, but soapstone absorbs more heat before it begins to radiate, so it heats the room more slowly. On the other end of a heating cycle, iron or steel also cool more quickly, so a soapstone stove should provide at least some useable heat longer than an equivalent iron or steel stove. I hope it will also moderate the heating so that the living room doesn’t get too hot.

I’m used to flat black iron or steel, which can be fairly decorative, but this stove is really pretty. We thought that would be a good thing, since the stove will be a prominent part of our living room décor, even when it’s just sitting there without a fire.

We left the stove at the store, since we can’t install it or even store it in the house yet. I think we’ll be ready for that in about three or four weeks, depending on when we get an engineer’s letter for repairing the joists that the plumber damaged.