Book Review: Midnight for Charlie Bone

Midnight for Charlie Bone (The Red King Series) by Jenny Nimmo

I don’t remember who suggested this series to me; but they mentioned it in a kind of “If you liked Harry Potter, you ought to read Charlie Bone.” Our family loved Harry Potter so I thought I would try this series and give Kristie something else to read. But here is MY warning! Other than magical abilities and a school for “gifted children,” I found this book to be NOTHING like Harry Potter. I almost quit after 100 pages, but Kristie finished in record time. She spoke excitedly about the fast paced plot. So I soldiered on and finished.

Content

Charlie Bone is a young boy who discovers he can hear voices from photographs. At the same time, he acquires a mysterious case that is the key to finding a girl who was lost as a child and would be Charlie’s age now. Charlie’s grandma and 3 great aunts immediately send him off to Bloor’s Academy, a school for gifted and talented children. But Bloor’s is not Hogwarts. It is not a home away from home, but more like a boarding school straight out of a Dickens’ novel.

Charlie enlists the help of new found friends to solve the mystery of the missing girl rumored to be at Bloor’s. But in so doing, he finds himself at odds with the headmaster and his daunting Grandmother and aunts. But with the help of an oddly powerful uncle, Charlie may have a chance to find the girl and uncover a greater mystery about himself.

Recommendation

I give this book a 5 out of 12 buttered rolls. I’m just not a fan. The backstory is so flawed, I can’t figure out what Charlie doesn’t know or understand and what is common knowledge. The character development was non-existent. Characters who were passed over as merely names, later accomplish important tasks and then treated like an integral part of the storyline. In the last few chapters, the characters discuss maintaining the balance between good and evil, but the entire book focused on the evil characters, good guys were merely footnotes.

There was nothing in the story that I would caution readers to avoid (or discuss with their children), but I found the whole thing kinda lame. Kristie’s excitement has me reading book 2 though. I guess with this kind of beginning, things can only get better from here. However, I thought it only fair to give the recommendation of my 11 year old daughter, Kristie.

I love Midnight for Charlie Bone because there is a lot of adventure and fun in it. It is fun to read about stuff like this when I can figure out what to do and what is going to happen in it. For example, I’m pretty sure I have figured out who Charlie’s Dad is, even though they have no idea. I really like adventure books and it reminds me of books like Harry Potter and Fablehaven. I like adventure and I really like books that have nothing to do with love. It is annoying to read a book when all they focus on is love. The only love in Charlie Bone is the love between family members. It is mysterious and cool how they are able to use there powers and able to solve the problems.

There you go. I need a proper backstory or proper updates of history, non of this mere, “Oh yeah…by the way” stuff. One-dimensional characters make one-dimensional books. However, young readers are more forgiving of those fatal flaws.

16 November 2017

More Roofing Fun

Turning this:

Into this:

Creates this:

We did 2 of those in the last 2 days. The tractor bucket made a great “ladder” to stand in and hold us at the perfect height. It also made clean up easy since all old shingles and cut scraps went straight into the bucket to be dumped in the garbage trailer for hauling away.

We’re slow, but we do good work!

13 November 2017

All About Roofing

Today’s Project

This is the west side of the roof over the front (north) door of the house. This roof leaked last winter/spring, and I bet that you can understand why. And since winter is coming, I thought I better go ahead and get this fixed, NOW! I’d have done it long ago, but the projects that gave us living space have all seemed more important up until now.

Damage from leaking last winter/spring – before we lived here

The Demo

Thankfully all of the needed supplies and tools were here already. Dad reroofed almost the entire house a few years ago and had plenty of extra packages of shingles just waiting for me to use.

The hardest part was taking those old shingles off. As worn out and rotten as they look, they were still solidly attached to the roof. The shingles in the open were fine, but that small section under the overhang… those were rough. As that space disappeared it became almost impossible to get the nails out. And the space to grab onto them was almost too small as well.

It took about an hour to get that portion cleaned out on both sides of the door. Truth be told, I did end up leaving a portion of the old shingles on the East side. No amount of pulling or mangling could get it released since that upper portion of house was built on top of the already shingled entry way. But since it is well hidden it won’t be an eye sore, and being covered the way it is there is no way it will cause a water problem.

Roofing

When the demolition was complete we found that the tar paper was actually in really good shape. On one side we left it in place, and on the other I did lay some new tar paper to cover a spot we ripped it while tearing shingles off.

As mentioned above, the shingles under the eaves had been put on prior to the eaves being built when the house was under construction 35+ years ago. That made nailing down the shingles then easy to do. Not so much today though. There is no way to get a nail gun nor hammer into that space to secure the shingles with nails.

Instead, we glued them down. After nailing each shingle down as much as we could, we used roofing tar to glue them in place. No shingle is ONLY held by tar though. We were sure to not to put any partial pieces in under that area that couldn’t be nailed. Every shingle has at least 4 nails in it out in the open, and then some tar under the eave to glue that portion down. I hope it will be just fine.

It only took about an hour of work to get the new shingles on. It took more than a couple of actual hours due to the breaks I kept taking for my back and feet (ached terribly from standing on the ladder). I knew this was going to cause a fair amount of pain, so I asked for help. I guess my Elder’s Quorum (church group) dropped the ball on me. C’est la Vie.

Siding

If you look closely at the photo you’ll notice that the fascia was never installed around this door. Dad, who worked in construction his entire life (He was a project manager for building hospitals, shopping malls, and an LDS temple) never got around to finishing that small project.

So, after roofing, Julie and I decided that it was high time that it got done. Again, all the supplies were here already.

Julie actually took over this portion of the project. My back was killing me by the time we got to this point, so she found the items and started measuring and cutting. She can do it all (must be part of her Cyborg programming).

(I wrote the previous paragraph while she was indeed out working and I recuperated. After about 45 min I went out again and found she hadn’t put up any of the soffit or fascia, so I proceeded to do it myself while she went and got kids from school and ran them to/from various locations. I left that paragraph in the post just to rub it in a little bit to her – a good natured laugh we were having).

More to Come

I wish that we were done with this, but it turns out there are 2 bay windows that Dad failed to re-roof as well a few years back. So those are also on our to-do list this week.

8 November 2017

Connex Woes Be Gone!

I wrote last week about my shipping container woes (Connex). Here is an update on that.

Bluffdale City

I went in and met with the Bluffdale City Code Enforcement Officer, Ben Henrie. He’s a very nice guy who seemed willing to find a way to make things work for me. I was impressed with that. He discussed with me several options for how I could make this work within existing code.

Roof

He had printed out a picture of what another resident had done with their connex. This person had put a pitched roof over the top of it using what appeared to be pre-built trusses.

I kind of laughed at that because the connex’s are already water proof and so the roof was superfluous. It also did NOTHING to hide the sides of the container (the part that is visible) from the neighbors, and it was the appearance that made the container not work with city code. All adding a rood did was add to what the neighbor saw, not hide it at all. But it moved the container into a category of a building, and that fit that code just fine.

I don’t want to do this. It is needlessly expensive and provides no benefit other than to satisfy arbitrary rules imposed by government. Also, I might in the future want to bring my container from MO, and would probably then use them as the walls of a “barn” and put a roof over the middle. I don’t want to put up one roof and then in a few years tear it off to build another one.

Covering

If, as Ben and a co-worker (Pam) were telling me, the only real issue is that the connex shouldn’t be visible to neighbors, I would be happy to get it covered. My dad has a plethora of 2×6’s from a fence he de-constructed, and I would use them to make an edging around the top that I’d hang something from to hide the container. That would be something like a tarp or visqueen. They kind of frowned at that, but didn’t sound like they had a reason it wouldn’t fit the code. It would hide the appearance of the container.

Fence

Ben did say that another way around things was to put a “sight blocking fence” around it. It was here I think that he emphasized that the real issue is that it is a visual nuisance to the neighbors and that if it can’t be seen than it is perfectly acceptable. Heaven knows I don’t want to build a fence around one, so this option won’t work for me either.

Burial

With the issue being sight, this should be acceptable. I didn’t mention it, and neither did they, but I don’t see how they could object to it. I don’t want to do this, but it is doable.

Follow-Up

When we left we didn’t really have a good answer from Ben’s boss on what I could do to make a connex fit into the code. The boss wasn’t there and couldn’t be reached. They were having a staff meeting later that day however, with all persons who would have input on this including “the head man” who would have final say on these issues. I was told by Ben and Pam that they’d bring it up and see what was determined.

I reached out to Ben today to ask how that meeting went and what I can do. He said that they came to the conclusion that I CAN have a connex. He said as long as it is only one, and that it is in the back yard, that it is allowed under the current code. I asked for something in writing from them to that effect. He sent me this: “After my staff meeting it has been determined by the planning department that one container placed in the rear of the property will not constitute open storage under the current interpretation of the city code.”

Ben did tell me over the phone that the code was likely to change in the next 5 years or so. He wasn’t sure how it would change, but said that I shouldn’t have a problem. Apparently all the decision makers were present, and they agreed I’d be fine.

Getting a Connex

After posting about my woes finding a container, I got a message from someone telling me that they sell them in SLC and to give them a call. So with my good news in hand, I called. They do indeed have a variety of them available that I could have delivered in about a week. \

I’ve found me a connex. So I looked at finances, and the only woe at this point is affording one. I don’t exactly have thousands of dollars lying around. In fact, because I’m trying to pay for a home that no longer exists (rather than just declare bankruptcy), I’m decidedly upside down financially.

So… now what? Do I leave thousands of dollars of stuff out to be snowed on, stolen, or rusted? Or do I spend thousands I don’t have to protect that stuff AND to help clean up both the yard and the garage/driveway here at my parents place? I spend a couple thousand I don’t have in one situation, and potentially waste/ruin several thousand more if I don’t.

That’s the rock and hard place I’m trying to work out today.

Any good ideas?

7 November 20177 November 2017

Bella

I was given a new dog, Bella.

She is a Blue Heeler/Pit Bull mix. She is a LOT more energetic than Iris was. Where Iris was more like furniture that breaths and snores, Bella is up moving around, wanting to play, and paying attention to things going on around her. Exploration and games keep her moving a lot more.

Service Dog?

I didn’t get Bella from CWAC, but from someone else. So she hasn’t had any service dog training. Working with CWAC though I could train her as my service dog. That is the thought anyway. I could always just keep her as a family pet if I wanted and keep looking for another service dog. I’m going to have to see what the CWAC people recommend. I’d like to train her.

She is already quite well behaved. She goes on the leash really well, she is house trained, and she is just fine with all my kids. Before I take her in public though she’ll have to pass a number of tests.

Because she didn’t come with a kennel like Iris did, she has just been loose in our bedroom as we slept. Iris was as well and always slept on the floor next to my side of the bed. Bella however is used to sharing the bed, so … now I have a spouse issue. Julie isn’t a fan of this arrangement. She isn’t up on our faces, but instead sleep ON my feet. Technically she is just as far from Julie as Iris usually was, but just the concept of having a dog sleeping on the bed isn’t exactly pleasing to Julie. She loves me though, so we’ve done two nights like this.