There are Two Kinds of Running Water

In my brief experience of owning a house, I have come to the realization that there are two types of running water. The first is a marvelous invention of humankind and a great convenience in modern living: Intentional Running Water. Such examples include the shower, the toilet, the sink, and all manner of other technological embellishments to improve the standard of living.
The second, as you must have guessed, is Unintentional Running Water. This generally takes the form of exploding toilets, frozen and cracked pipes, and broken faucet valves. Well I have had plenty (shall we say a spoiling?) of experience in the former type, my experience with the later has been quite abundant of recent years.
In chronological order of experience since acquiring the house:

• 0 Days: Shower continuously runs due to broken valve which, happily, can only be ordered by mail directly from the manufacturer. I say "runs" instead of "leaks" because the stream of water it produced while in the off position could have passed for a full strength shower in a campground. Had we known how much water costs in the new county we were moving to, we might have fixed this much sooner than we actually did.
• 4 Days: Clogged toilet with improperly installed o-ring and hole in the floor (also hidden by toilet) caused running water to come out of ceiling vents and light fixtures.
• 1 Week: Garbage disposal that had performed spectacularly for the home inspection decided to die, crack, and leak. While replacing it with the exact same model and brand, I discovered they had changed the unit's input from a male attachment to a female attachment. This required much tetris-ing of the pipes under the sink.
• 2 Weeks: Kitchen Pipes under the sink decide to start leaking. I'm unsure of the cause of this, as at the time we were struggling with a plethora of issues in the house, and had divided the resolution of each problem between the two of us. My husband resolved this issue, which was in no way a consequence of my previous fixing of the garbage disposal and the subsequent tetris-ing of pipes. Honest.
• 3 Months: Death of the refrigerator resulted in miniature kitchen flood.
• 3 Months, 2 Weeks: Death of dishwater, which did not leak, but failed to clean dishes and made the sound of whales giving birth while running. The "Unintentional Running Water" was a direct result of it's replacement: A brand new dishwasher that was missing a small seal at the corner to keep the water in. This resulted in miniature kitchen flood number 2.
• 5 Months: Broken sewage injection pump resulted in filled up sewage tank. If sewage can not get into the tank, it tends to not drain. I'm not sure its entirely fair to include this in the "Unintentional Running Water" list because we caught the issue about an inch before the tank actually overflowed, but it did result in the cessation of "Intentional Running Water" for the full weekend of our friend's wedding. Everyone loves smelly wedding guests.
• 7 Months: Broken seal on toilet resulting in periodic ghost flushing. I nominate this one for least traumatic event, even if it was not the easiest to fix.
• 8 Months: Self Inflicted: While digging in the front yard I was a little too industrious with the shovel and broken completely buried sprinkler. Thankfully by this point we had learned where the shut off is for both the inside and outside water. Yay learning!
• 1 Year: Partially Self Inflicted: The seal on our back window frame is broken so that when it rains heavily, water collects in the frame on the inside. It doesn't over flow, since its draining on the outside, but if it rains heavily you have a mini puddle in the frame part where the window would slide to open. I mistakenly put a towel in the frame thinking it would just soak up the little bit of water in the window frame tray. Upon checking it a few hours later, I remembered the capillary property of water and we had a full soaked bath towel, a very wet dry wall below the window, and a mini flood on the floor below. Science!
• A few days ago: Learning the pipe under our driveway was likely broken and causing the drive way to crack as it rushed down like a pleasant little water feature!

That brings us to this week...You might recall that the most recent backyard improvement was the appearance of the hose bib. While this was fabulous, it was less exciting for its lack of actual function, not being hooked up to any pipes yet.
This week, it appears as if all the pipes have been laid as we have observed the trenches filled with sand and then dirt until we have something resembling a flat yard again. Yesterday, my husband texted me in the late afternoon with exciting news: That hose bib? yeah, it now works. Water actually comes out of it.
Arriving home later that evening, I popped out to the backyard with anticipation. I was going to turn on the host bib and water would come out. Awesome!
Getting to the first one, I quirked a mischievous smile and twisted the knob. Success! Water came out. After doing my happy dance, I looked around the yard to see that there were dark spots around the other hose bibs where they had obviously been tested earlier in the day. That's when I noticed the large and lengthy dark spot running from where no hose bib was to the end of the yard. Curious, I popped over to find water bubbling up from the ground at an alarming rate. Recalling that a trench had previously run this way, I assumed one of the irrigation pipes burst and rushed to the front to turn off the outside water.

There was indeed a broken pipe, which they dug up, and fixed today. Happily this seems to have been the only issue and now we are looking forward to whatever the next steps are. Cement? Side yard veggie boxes? Finishing the drainage creek? More digging?

Day 18: Trenches-B-gone. Now available in spray foam.

 

Acquiring New Enemies

I will admit now that I purposely try to piss off our mailman. This is a stupid and dangerous thing to do but somehow I can't find myself caring. Let me explain...
Moving into an REO comes with several interesting problems, some of which I've detailed earlier. The most perplexing part of not knowing the former owners or how to contact them generally centers around the mail...or the police when they surround your house looking for the previous owner. This happened to me a few days after we bought the house while I was waiting for the carpet guys. While waiting I noticed want looked like multiple shadows going around the side of the house and some gathering near the front door. Curious, I went to the front door and opened it as they were preparing to knock. At least I assume they were preparing to knock. I was not expecting to see several sheriffs with itchy hands fingering their weapons. After several minutes of explaining and showing multiple forms of I.D., it was determined that I was, indeed, who I said I was. Which, as the smartest of the bunch said, "That would explain why the car out front was registered to a different person than they were looking for." They searched the house to verify that I was not hiding the previous resident and did not have any evidence that might be material to why they were looking for him. And after instilling in me that finding this person was of the most serious matter and I should contact them if I do see him, they decided to leave. All this before we even met the neighbors.
The mailman seems to have a similar problem as he keeps delivering the mail for that person to the house. This was to be expected for the first few months, I thought, and each time I would write upon the mail "Return to Sender. Does not live at this address. No known forwarding address." and return them to the mailbox. This was almost two years ago and we receive the same amount of mail for this mysterious previous residence as we did the first week. Mind you this was after the house was abandoned for several months so its not like he doesn't know. I've met our surly mailman. Tried to be friendly, say hi, but all he can manage is a gruff nod and a glare. I'm not sure what I've done to anger him but clearly delivering our mail is a very tedious and arduous task, obviously deserving of great praise and adulation. Regardless, I appeared to have made an enemy of him long before I actual did anything to deserve it. About a year into owning the house, he left a note in our mailbox asking us to move the trash cans to the opposite side of our driveway. Let me add that our trash cans were nowhere near the mailbox. It just happens that our house is on the curve of the street, so where they were placed would block him from an easy angle getaway to the next house. Of course we acquiesced to his request, but it didn't seem to help much. Our mailman doesn't arrive until after the garbage truck and the garbage truck people rarely set the trash cans down where we put them. It seemed pointless to point this out to our mailman and rather than piss off the garbage truck people complaining they are setting it down too close to our mailman's getaway exit, we have accepted that our mailman thinks we're jerks.
Once you've accepted this, its hard to care about making his job easier. Will it make him bring the proper mail to our house and stop delivering the previous residents court summons and collections letters? Probably not. Will it make him more friendly and deliver our mail before 7pm? Probably not. In all fairness, he probably is underpaid, over worked, and doesn't have the time to even look at the address he's delivering it to. It might even be pre-sorted at the office, so really I have only the sorting machine to be angry at. In either case, I have clearly made an enemy of the mailman at the expense of staying friends with the garbage men.
Yesterday, my husband texted me with the question: "Was there a big pile of rocks in front of the house when you left?"
Thinking hard as I am rarely observant in the morning, I responded with a fairly certain, "No. Picture?"

His Response

Ah, no. Shit. The garbage men are not going to like that. Neither will the mailman. <insert impressive and fairly creative swearing regarding the genetic lineage of the person who decided to dump the rock pile there>
After much discussion, my husband persuaded the landscapers to move the rocks, but not all of it and certainly not in time for the garbage truck nor the mailman. While they did take our garbage, I imagine we have probably made them fairly grumpy with our clearly inconsiderate rock pile. It is possible we have acquired another enemy. I'm uncertain how to soothe the garbage men after this failure on our part. I can't imagine leaving fresh baked cookies on top of the garbage can with a note will be expectable. Perhaps instead we should complain about where they put the garbage cans and try to win back the affections of our surly mailman.

I'm not a (insert profession) but...

This is probably the most dreaded phrase professionals of any area can hear from a client. With the easy of access to information provided by various websites and search engines, almost any one has instant access to information once only available through years of training, education, and the dreaded white paper. Now anyone with a smart phone can find out which streets are normally crowded at 5pm on a Wednesday in a city they've never been to. I imagine doctors take the brunt of this with the amount of medical (mis)information available on the internet. I'm not saying the availability of this information is a bad thing, merely that its painfully obnoxious to have someone freaking out, convinced they have a brain tumor, when they are merely dehydrated. (Sometimes I just put in how I'm feeling that day into the WebMD symptom checker to see how many times I can get thyroid cancer to show up). Regardless, this happens in every industry, and as much as I dislike being on the receiving end of this phrase, I truly hate finding myself saying this.
The other evening, while admiring the new progress in the backyard, my husband says, "I wonder why they only have one gas line. This one goes out to the fire pit. What about the line for the BBQ?" To set the stage a bit more, here are two techno-geeks outside in their business attire staring into a trench with a yellow plastic hose "guessing" that its the gas line and wondering if they know more than the very experienced, hard working landscape contractors.

bright yellow line to fire pit

Neither my husband or I like being in this position. We're fully aware we are not the experts, but on the off chance something was forgotten, is it better to speak up now while fixes are easy to make. After tactfully wording an email, we decide to ask the next day.
It turns out that this was, indeed forgotten and there was some mild panicking as the inspector was suppose to come that afternoon. Things were fixed, disaster averted, Toyko saved, and we learned a valuable lesson.

Fixed! Duct tape solves everything...

It turns out the plan didn't clearly show the gas line split for the BBQ, and even though it had been discussed with the main contractor, it wasn't communicated to the foreman. We reviewed all the other details that weren't necessarily on the plan with the foreman to make sure everyone was on the same page. So what is the lesson we learned?
Get everything in writing?
Make sure everyone has a copy of all the details?
Trust your instincts?
I'm not a doctor but I'm farily sure I know which leg is broken?

Maybe we didn't learn a lesson.

Day 13: Still trenchy...

Things You Never Thought You'd Say

I've heard that your personality completely changes every 10 years. I don't really think that's true, but it makes sense that your decision making patterns change as you accumulate more experience. When you are little, you have limited experience, and so new experience causes change faster. For example,
Knowledge base: With a mask and snorkle, I can breath underwater.
Experience: Run through a camp fire and big cloud of smoke with mask and snorkle on.
Result: Addition to knowledge base that mask and snorkle do not grant you the ability to breath in all environmental conditions. Will probably treat all camp fires with more caution in future.

As you get older, your knowledge base is larger, and so new experiences make a smaller impact on you, resulting in a smaller change to you over time. That being the case, I'm still consistently surprised by my growing mental list of things I'd never thought I'd say.
Some things are the result of having a more refined taste as you get older:
Wow. Xena: Princess Warrior is awful. How did I watch two seasons of this?

Some things are the result growing out of disliking things because they are popular:
Ok, so yoga is kind of fun... and hard.
*Note: I'm still not willing to take back my theory that Yoga primarily the hobby of tiny stick figures who only do it so they have an excuse show how good they look naked to a wider audience than the beach.

And some things are the result of embracing your stupidity:
OMG! Say YES to the dress marathon! Call out for pizza! mama's parking on the couch for the next 12 hours.

However, most of the things that get added to my list are the direct result of sheer increduality:

• Why does the kitten insist upon licking my foot (everyday upon getting out of the shower)?
• Shit! The only way down is to jump over that rattle snake.
• We might have to jump into the outhouse pit (in response to the question, "what do we do if the bear breaks down the outhouse door?")
• Do NOT pet the baby bear cubs! (strangely, these were two separate bear related incidents)
• A.J.! There's the penis from the history channel! (Referring to a paving stone in pompei that directs you to the nearest brothel. I think I may have unfortunately said that a bit loudly and excitedly...)
• No, I did not put the plant in the cat's water dish

In all fairness that last one instituted the extremely helpful "least concerning" clause. This little rule requires one party not get mad at the other for asking a stupid question if they can explain why that was the least concerning scenario.
For example...

A.J.[9:04 AM]:
 Did you put the wheat grass in the kitty's water dish?

Mandy[10:17 AM]:
 What? No. Why the heck would I do that??

A.J.[11:12 AM]:
 An explanation of my txt...
 I figured after seeing the wheat grass in the water dish that it had to be 1 of 5 things that occured.

1. The plant was thirsty and climbed in on its own. (very concerning) 
2. I somehow did that without knowing. (very concerning) 
3. Abby [the cat] somehow picked up the plant and put it in there despite having a hard enough time eating it without knocking it over. (concerning) 
4. Someone came in the apt while we were gone and stuck the grass in there. (extremely concerning) 
5. You did that and had some logical explanation for doing so.

So I figured I would eliminate the least frightening prospect first.

Mandy[1:22 PM]:
 No, I did not put the plant in the cat's water dish.

Claiming "least concerning" has stopped many a stupid arguement and spousal grumpiness. I will admit it is usually me to say the something stupid... and probably too loudly ...and possibly with witnesses...*sigh*...
But now I have a new thing to add to this list of things I thought I'd never say:
"Oh my God! A.J., look! There's a hose bib! We have a hose bib!!"

a fore mentioned exciting hose bib

We now have something recognizable in the backyard as completely object. Granted, its not hooked up to anything just yet, but the pipes are laid, the trench is covered, and the hose bib stands. I never thought I'd be that excited about a hose bib, but there you have it. You'd think our backyard was like 99% complete for all my dancing around and multiple pictures. And I mean, really, all they have left to do is the rest of the irrigation, the drainage, the electrical and gas lines, the grass, the patio, the side yard garden beds, the pergola, and the lights. Practically done.

ok. I might have celebrated a little early, but progress in any form is exciting. Stay tuned for the list of "things I thought would fit in my car...but didn't"

The house by any other name is still the same damn house

How does one identify a house? I naively once thought it was as simple as an address, but various government agencies have shown me the error of my misguided thinking.
Our house has:

• an address
• a parcel number
• a lot and unit number with an estate location
• an assessor map number

Each of these things uniquely defines our house as an entity. However, depending on which government agency you are working with you may need to identify your house by one or all of these various numbers. I'm a bit confused by this concept.
Why does the county builders office use the parcel number, but the approval form needed to request a permit only references the lot and unit number?
Why do the property taxes reference the parcel number when clearly they are mailing it to the address and the value is based off the assessors report??
Why does the assessor report only refer to map number???

As a person I have several identification numbers. As I am a series of numbers and not an actual person to most agencies, I have to worry about my identity being stolen. But now I'm wondering if I have to worry about my house's identity being stolen...
Maybe I should tell the house to stop buying stupid stuff off of questionable websites. No more "no prescription Prozac" for this house.

Day 9:

Half Wall: looking more like a horse jump each day!

Backyard: now with more trenches!

The camera ate my homework and other excuses

If you're wondering why I haven't posted more pictures in the last couple posts, the card in our camera decided to die yesterday. Particularly obnoxious as I had not pulled the photos off for day 3 through 5 last week. Though in another light, I suppose there's only so many way to post a picture of a trench and say "Look its longer and deeper" (Editor's Note: adding pictures captioned with that phrase to your blog brings in a lot of interesting traffic from search engines. Re-phrasing suggested).
We've entered this phase of construction where its not entirely possible to tell what was done that day.

We aimlessly wander around the yard after work and think, "Is that trench deeper?" or "Was that hole there yesterday?" And while I'm sure our neighbors can tell you exactly how long it took to jack hammer another inch off that rock buried in the main trench, it is hard to look at the end of the day and identify the progress that was made.
Day 8: Main features of note...

Trench: Now long and deeper!

Rock: Now a few inches shorter!

Other Trench: Now with drainage pipes!

Half wall: Now looking more like a half wall!

Ok, that last is a little unfair. One modification I insisted on for our design was a wide double stair from our patio down to the grass area, with a slightly higher half wall on each side that can serve a bench for the grass area. I'd like to claim that this was an artistic measure. Realistically, I see myself running out the door, across the patio and using the half wall as a leap point to fly over into a nice tumble roll on the grass. I have several excuses lined up for why someone my age would do this ranging from ludicious to arguable (one must practice falling if you are to prone to it anyways and wish to remain mostly unharmed). However, I think it just sounds like fun and there's no one to see me make a fool of myself in the backyard...Other than my husband...and he knew what he was getting into when my dad said "no backsies" at our wedding.
Regardless, the half wall is the most interesting thing in the backyard at this point and I'm truly excited by it because its the first thing that it starting to show us proportion and placement according to the design. Now we can look out into the yard and know about where the patio and grass areas are. It's also slightly entertaining to look into the yard and just see these two little cement and cinderblock walls. I imagine our neighbors looking into the backyard and thinking, "Are the putting in small horse jumps?"

The Importance of a Water Features and Space Golf

When talking about our backyard the first thing most people have asked is, "Oh are you putting in a pool?" I generally refrain from my first reaction of, "Oh God, No!", and instead patiently explain why a pool is not a reasonable thing for us. There are numerious reasons for not having a pool from safety issues with small children, to expense issues with maintenance and heating, to the general practicality of carving out a large hole in our rock slab - err, backyard. To further dissuade us, less than two miles from the house is...

1. a lake
2. a river
3. a community pool

For us, a pool is not particularly practical. That being said, they do add a beautiful focal point to a yard, so many contractors looked at our design and said, "where's your water feature?"

The short answer is we really don't have one. I'm not sure when in the course of the last twenty years we've cross from a simple lawn in the backyard to "outdoor living spaces" complete with terminology like "water feature", but I blame the DIY and HG channels. When we first started thinking about the backyard I wanted shade, a lawn, and a small vegetable garden to perform my ritual plant killing.
It grew from this simple idea to include more ridiculous elements partly because we had the space, and partly because at some point our backyard became a dream. A fabulous dream which never really seemed real or possible. Something that was on the "someday" list in the same way you always want to visit exotic locations but can't really imagine getting to the point in your life where you have the money or time. Being this unrealistic dream we just started adding exotic things to it because the entire concept seemed just as far fetched.
Imagine it this way: You really want to go to the moon, and so you decide when you get to the moon, you'd like to try to golf, so you start trying to figure out what the rules for space golf should be and designing the perfect space clubs. Its very unlikely that you'll get to the moon, but on the off chance you do, you might as well get to play space golf.
Our backyard is the moon and space golf is the fire pit, spa, and putting green. Mind you, none of our space golf features are in phase one, but they have the potential to be realized at a later date.

But wait! Isn't a spa a water feature? 

Apparently not if it is above ground and will be covered. Go figure.

We had our first unexpected additional cost today, but it wasn't in the backyard. Apparently one of the irrigation pipes under our driveway has been leaking for awhile and, more recently, the water now drains out of a small crack in the driveway when the sprinklers run. 

Am I a water feature?

Advantageous Digging Clauses

Early on when interviewing contractors we heard of someone called an "Advantageous Digging" clause. This is a fancy way to say if the contractor encounters a rock they can't dig up, they're going to charge us more. Given that our backyard, as previously discussed, is 99.2% rock, this concerned us. I completely understand that this is done to protect the contractor from losing money over basically bad luck, but the question became what is the "expected" level of rock digging effort. I mean, you can look at our backyard and see that its going to be filled with large rocks that are difficult to dig up, so we don't want to pay additional fees for poor planning.
The contractor we went with explained his clause like this: If we find a rock so big we can't dig it out or work around it, and we have to bring in a guy to blow it up with explosives, your fee will be what he charges. Not only did this seem fair, but also slightly awesome. I want to see someone use dynamite to explode a giant rock in my backyard! Of course, we don't want to have to pay extra, so we're hoping we don't encounter this situation, but at least it has an upside. Many times in life you have unexpected costs, most don't involve you getting to watch something blow up though. If my water bill came with free tickets to a monster truck rally, I'd probably be less grumpy about it.
Today they dug out what looked like most of the trenches needed for the drainage - which is a lot. Apparently the original builder decided that drainage for our house was completely unnecessary, so all the drains in the front yard and roof, all go to a pipe that is just an open hole in our side yard. This creates our seasonal side yard wetlands which has yet to become home to any endangered species, but does a fabulous job of looking like a swamp. Due to this, our most important task for phase one in the backyard was getting all the drainage put in correctly. This requires digging the trenches really close to the house's foundation (to connect to the downspouts from the roof) which unsurprisingly meant that you could feel every pick axe blow to the rocks they encountered through the floor...while I worked from home.
...type, type, type....ding, ding....type, type, type.....ding, ding, ding...type..ding...*sigh*

After they left for the day I went out to check out the changes and discovered over a hundred feet in new trenches. And in the dead center of the trench closest to the house, sticking up just a few inches from the top of the 3ft trench, was the top of a very large rock. Hrmmm....
Maybe they can work around that. Maybe they just got tired for the day and they'll get it out tomorrow. Maybe we'll get to watch this rock explode into tiny bits!!! mahahahaha...

Heading back inside, I decided to text my husband about the giant rock:

 

Visualization

Have you ever looked at the pieces in the ikea furniture box and thought, "Did I grab the right box?" I'm one of those people. I have spent hours going over the six 3x4 foot pages of architectural diagrams about our backyard but I have no idea how its really going to look when its finished. That's a pretty big deal when you are putting a ton of money into someone's vision of what they think you want.
I know there is cement, a pergola, and grass. I have a vague idea of where they are located in the backyard. I have a hazy idea of what I think it'll look like when its finished, but seeing the changes in the backyard is truly entertaining. Like going on a treasure hunt...
Look there's a hole! I wonder why there a hole here. Is this where they put the sleeves for the irrigation pipes? Or, wait no, there a spray painted G over there with a rod in the ground, so maybe this is for the gas line? Or is this the tunnel to the fall out shelter for the Giant Wolf Spiders in our garage? How did they get to the architect? I guess we could build them a pool too. 
Author's Note: We have some really large wolf spiders. When i say large, i mean like smallish tarantula size. You can hear them when they run. Did I mention they jump too? Delightful little monsters. However, they have a welcomed position in our garage and are encouraged to make themselves at home because they are really intimidating...and they eat black widows. Mostly the intimidating part though. 

Giant Wolf Spider Motto: Be Prepared!

At the end of the day today we have spray marks as to where the pergola will be going and some of the dirt has been re-arranged to form what will be the steps down to the grass. Now that I can see where things are going in the yard, it seems really big to me. And while the vision in my head is still try to adjust to the new proportions, they ask me about colors?
I assume the contractor knows I have no idea what I'm doing and he's just really nice about it. A.J. and I debated on the the color of the cement and the pergola for all of 15 minutes, then shrugged, and said, "I guess these". Now that we've picked it I'm having second thoughts. What if we picked the wrong colors? We were pretty limited on the colors for the pergola, and the cement colors looked like a box of crayola crayons. You ruled out 90% of the cement colors by just not being color blind and/or bat shit insane. We ended up with a pergola color that exactly matched the color of the house - which is amazing when you think that it took us three months of trips to and from home depot to properly match the paint color of our house. Yep, "Deer Run" was one of the six possible colors. I had intended to do a nice coppery black color for the pergola, but there were no dark color options. This made our choice of a dark gray cement possibly a little strange. 

And now this gets added to the list of things I worry about in the middle of the night:
What if A.J. dies?
What if my parents get sick?
What if I lose my job?
What if the cats get outside and get run over?
What if the house burns down?
What if I picked the wrong cement and pergola color?

I should really start keeping shoes and three cat carriers by the bed.

The Art and Business of Perserverence

One of the strange (and fantastic) features of the house is the drive through garage. No, this isn't where I forget to put the car in reverse and drive through our bedroom (a deep seated fear of my husband's though I've never shown any inclination toward doing so). Our garage is split into two: a regular garage, and a little garage that has a garage door in the front and back (opening up to our backyard) so you can literally drive through into the backyard. This is fantastic for getting things into the backyard with one minor exception: they can't be any wider or taller than the garage door itself.
Things that fall into the fantastic: BBQ, large table, kayak, wood, tools, ladders, small to medium sized mammals, hammocks, etc.
Things that have a problem: Our contractor's excavator. Oh, and a ski boat named Sam, but that's another story.
The excavator, as my brilliant 4 year old nephew will tell you, is the thing that digs (Like, seriously, this kid knows all the construction equipment. I didn't even know most had specific names! I once got a lecture when he was two over the difference between a "large excavator" and a "small excavator" because I failed to call them by their size descriptive names). And while our contractor's excavator was a "small excavator", it was still too tall to drive through our garage.
Being the glass half full kind of guy, our foreman went around to the fire road access in the valley below our house and drove the excavator up the backside of the hill. Apparently with proper balance and leverage, you make it up the slope (read: If you have balls of steel, you can storm the keep. Gravity is for cowards!). Now we know where those tracks in the google maps satellite picture came from. After celebrating his success of getting the excavator into the backyard (I like to imagine a round of beers in an old wooden pub while busty bar maids in old time corsets listened wide eye to his tales of valor with his trusty steed, excavator), there was still the arduous task of actually digging.
The amount of rocks they dug up in the 25 feet of the drainage trench that was finished yesterday only confirmed my theory that the backyard in 99.2% rock. While digging the trench we also got a better look at our possible storm drain pipe in the side yard and it is much smaller than we were envisioning. I was picturing like Shawshank Redemption crawl to freedom sized pipe, not cat sized hamster tube. 

More kitty tubes, MORE!

While its size is less than impressive, we did confirm its existence, and there should be no impact to construction or plans.

Status Day 2: Backyard still flat, more rocks moved, drainage trench mostly dug.