And Then, the Wind Came

I was so excited to have the Magical Potting Shed done enough to start decorating, and playing in. And then, we had a "wind event". Wind isn't new to our area, we get our share. Sustained, high winds, though, that's out of the norm. The wind was a sustained 25-35 mph, with gusts double that.

We live north of Greeley, out on the plains.
I'm fairly certain that our gusts were stronger.

Unfortunately, I did have to leave the house on Friday (dang it!). I really didn't want to, because it was so gross out, but I had a private lesson to teach and money overrides my displeasure over wind. When I pulled into the driveway, I was dismayed to see part of Maggie's roof flapping in the wind.

I took video, but for some reason can't get it to upload. I wasn't going to mess with the metal panels while the wind was whipping, and decided I'd deal with it once everything calmed down.

Mom came over on Sunday, which was still kind of cold and breezy. I had no desire to go look at the destruction of the roof, so I told her, "as long as it doesn't snow Maggie will be fine until tomorrow, when it's supposed to warm up." 

That seemed like a safe thing to say, since we haven't had any snow since December 20, and that was a joke. It barely counted as snow. Prior to that, our last snow was December 3. So what if my weather app was calling for snow? Weather apps are always wrong, and we've been unbelievably dry.

I woke up to this ...

It would figure that the one time I'm counting on the weather app to be wrong, it got it right. Well, a broken clock is right twice a day, as they say.

Luckily, it was just a dusting, and by the time Mom came over to help with the roof, the sun was out and most of the snow had melted. We bundled up and headed out. I thought it was going to take both of us to wrestle the panels back to where they belong.

I climbed up onto the potting bench, lifted the tin panel, and the poly one slid right back into place. It is cracked a bit, but the crack is well under the tin panel. It took a whopping two seconds to fix. I should have done it on Sunday.

I thought I had anchored the panels to the cross beam, but obviously hadn't. When I took the time to think about it, I realized that I'd placed it on my "to-do" list and forgotten about it. When we first placed the panels, the metal ones had such a huge overhang that we couldn't reach the cross beam until they got trimmed down. When Chief did trim the panels down, I plain forgot about climbing back up there to secure them.

With the cold and snow still being on the roof, I again chose not to drag the ladder out to fight with securing the panel to the cross beam, and suspect I might regret it in the future. My plan was to do it this weekend, but we've got some really cold temps coming. After all of this unseasonably warm weather this winter, now it gets too cold to work outside.

Maggie's Complete (ish)

I finally threw in the towel and admitted to myself that I was never going to get around to putting in Maggie's insulation and putting up the walls, so I hired Autobot and her S.O. to finish it up. They finished placing the insulation and covered it with OSB. Not the prettiest of wall choices, I'll admit, but cheap.

Since Maggie is supposed to also double as a guest room on occasion, it'll be much nicer now that she's insulated. There's just enough room for a twin-sized blow up, or a camping cot in there, so I'm looking forward to sleep overs with Mav when he's old enough to want to spend the night with Lola. When we start our seeds this spring, a little oil heater plugged in at night should keep the seedlings nice and warm.

Mom came down this past Sunday and helped me paint and organize. It definitely is more fun to "play house" with someone else. When she was sweeping out all of the dirt and sawdust, I told her that it felt like we were playing Boxcar Children.

There is an art to sweeping, and Mom
has mastered it.* The floor was clean enough
to eat from when she was done.

It took us a good couple of hours to finish painting and organizing, but it was fun. Now all that's left is the fun decorating-type stuff.

My Amanda gave me my little gnome, and my
young friend built him a house. When 
Autobot and Co. were putting up the walls, I
asked them to cut his house into the walls.

Yes, I know the tines should face inward for the
Gremlin's garden tools, but they don't fit the hooks
that way, plus access is currently blocked by the chalkboard.

The candelabra will go up on a shelf, once I get one built.
The antique recipe box on the right stores all of our seeds.
We built the potting shed around that amazing cabinet that
is now our potting bench.

Various planting/maintenance implements on the
little cart. Yes, that's a vase full of bones from the yard.

While I love the small bit of light let in by the 'skylights', I'll likely end up insulating the ceiling, in which case, they'll be covered up. Maybe. Autobot and Co. might be able to frame it somehow so that I still get a tiny bit of light.

Everything else that needs done really is the fun decorating stuff. I've asked Jay to paint a 'home' around the gnome's opening. My SIL, Mrs. Deejo, made me a really fun mirror that needs framed and hung, L.E. gifted me the perfect framed puzzle for Maggie, and there are just a ton of other small little things I want to do.

I'm so thrilled that I was able to get Maggie built, and she truly lives up to her Magical Potting Shed name.

*I have a very similar picture of Mom sweeping out the shop when Bill ran the electric to it. 

Plea Deal

 

Beel and Ranger Danger

I've been dragging my feet on posting about the plea deal that Daniel Graska (a/k/a Sincere DeValencia) was offered and accepted. The virtual pre-trial hearing, when he was offered the deal, was on January 5th at 10:00 a.m. (1,141 days (3.13 years) since the accident).

We'd been joining in on all of the court proceedings via Webex since the whole thing started. The link to join had never changed, so at our prescribed time, we attempted to log in. Mom, from the Lodge; me from work. The Webex link that we've been using since the very first court date didn't work. We were texting back and forth frantically, and I finally went to the Utah state courts website and searched for the case that way. I was able to get in about four minutes late, but my audio wouldn't work. My coworker tried helping me to get my speaker to start working, but nothing happened. I could see that, for once, our case was first up and already underway, but I couldn't hear what was going on. I tried the "call me in" option for audio, only for my spam filter to block it without any way for me to recover the number. I watched, horrified, as that awful man answered the judge. I'm a terrible lip reader, so I started clicking around, looking for the closed captioning, and finally found the automated transcript.

Everything happened so quickly, that by the time I found the transcript and started taking screen shots so that Mom could see what was going on, it was over without representation from our family. 

Apparently, the courts used a different log-in for this court date, and no one had bothered to let us know. I was beyond livid. This was just one more way the Utah court system had failed us, and I wasn't shy about letting our victim's advocate know how I felt about it.

For a refresher on the original charges, go here.

They dropped the charge for almost killing Mom completely, and offered him this:

• Automobile Homicide. 3rd degree Felony; 0-5 years Utah State Penitentiary; $5,000 fine, plus 90% surcharge.
• Metabolite DUI. Class B Misdemeanor; 6 months jail; $100 fine, plus 90% surcharge.

That's it. 

Bill's death is worth $5,100 in fines according to Utah state law. Mom's injuries were insignificant enough in the eyes of the law for that charge to be dropped. As I said in my last post, we have a legal system, not a justice system.

I will say that the judge has been consistently good, and has taken no shit from Mr. Graska or his attorney. We do have the opportunity to influence the judge to give Mr. Graska the maximum sentence via our victim impact statements.

My anger with the court system is not because of the prosecutor or the judge, who are working as well as they can being handcuffed by the laws. My anger is due to the fact that it took so long for the investigation to be finished (590 days (1.62 years)), and the charges to be filed (725 days (1.99 years)). Add in the fact that we were never given the link to the pre-trail hearing, and I'm less than pleased with the Utah Court system. By the time he's sentenced on March 16th, it will have taken 1,211 days (3.32 years) to close this case.

The sentencing will be in person, and we will be present. Then, it'll be as over as it can be, and we can continue to go about rebuilding our lives without Beel.

New Year, Still Waiting for Justice

It's been six months or so since I posted the update for the court stuff regarding the accident that almost killed Mom, and did kill Bill.

The County Attorney spoke with Mom again on Tuesday, and delivered a gut-punch. They're really pushing for a plea deal. Currently, they want to drop the 3rd degree felony charge (for Mom's injuries) and decrease the 2nd degree felony (for Bill's death) to a 3rd degree felony in exchange for a guaranteed conviction for DUI and felony homicide. The plea deal would put him in prison for only two years. So, we're to disregard that he nearly killed Mom, and give him a "oops, we know it was a mistake" pass on killing Bill?

Mom can still push for trial, but the attorney warned us that if even one juror wants to throw out the drug charge, everything drops to a misdemeanors and he'll probably not do any jail time.

I think Mom's going to talk to the attorney about a counter, but we don't know what that'll look like. She has until Friday to get back with the attorney, but it's ultimately his decision. Pretrial is set for Monday, January 5th, so we will either have a plea deal or be headed to trial the last week of January.