I have read the whole thread and the thing that strikes me most is that you think you could sell your property for a great amount of money with this "contract" easement issue hanging over it like the Sword of Damoclese.It sort of applies to this situation, see below. Every prospective buyer I have ever known, including myself, looks at every piece of info about a property before buying. The law ,of course, says you have to disclose this "contract" easement to the buyer. I also know from my daughter who is in real estate in Atlanta , that she has every single customer she deals with go to the place they are thinking of obtaining and look at it at several different times of the day/night and different days of the week. It is a real eye opener on a property. That being said I would be hard pressed to purchase your property with the fantastic home and views because of the huge nuisance of the easement. Maybe there will be someone, should you decide to sell, that won't care but a lot of folks would be as irritated as you seem to be. As far as biking and hiking clubs being "welfare recipients" whoa...I will have to share that with all the NYCC members I ride with in New York and all the trail runners/hikers here in my town...they would be "intrigued" I am sure by that description LOL. c Here is a link that might be useful: Sword of Damoclese

@tishtoshnm: Oh hun, I don't split the wood with a maul, I use a 3-ton, PTO hydraulic woodsplitter! We burn 5 to 6 full cords every year and if I had to use a maul we'd have frozen to death years ago! Remember, the very first thing on my list of DH's jobs was keeping the d*** cars and machines running, and that includes the woodsplitter and its power supply. I probably glossed over it a bit in my post above, but we had some really hard times over chores in our early years, too. I blush to remember quite how grumpy, cranky and just plain, b**chy I was about it. Sometimes (but more often not, I fear) with justification. Like when the above-mentioned woodsplitter was often on the fritz for months on end preventing me from getting the wood done in time for good seasoning. Of course, I could have hired someone to either bring the wood (not split the way I would have wanted it) or to fix the wretched machine (not done the way he would have done it) but instead we squabbled over it, endlessly. Ex: When we married we were both wood-burners. I was horrified to discover that my DH was content to dig wet wood out of the snow and throw it hissing and dripping on to a smoldering fire. I need to have wood stacked up two or three years in advance to feel secure. I needed to have wood separated by species so I could match the BTU-load to the heating demand of the day's weather. Because I have small hands, I needed to have the wood split into relatively small sizes so I could pick up a log in one hand and load it safely. I needed to have dry kindling in the house every morning to re-kindle the fire. I am terrified of chimney fires so I need the chimney swept regularly (multiple times per burning season). I get great psychic comfort from neatly filled woodricks. I also was at home all day in a house heated ONLY with wood, while he was away in an overheated office. (Once he began working at home, the need for dry wood seem to be driven home to him for some reason. Hah!) Finally, it dawned on me, or maybe desperation took over, and I took command of the fuel issues. (Except for maintenance of the machines.) And Peace finally reigned in our household on this topic. But I really did have to get over my own embarrassment that I had taken over this "masculine" task. I used to be quite cagey about revealing who actually did the wood work in my family. What I learned from this was that I could get it all done, alone, and done in the way that made me happy. (Except for fixing the machines, which is still an issue.) And it taught me that I would be able to continue to live here if I was left living here alone. (Except for fixing the machines, of course.) We gradually started to practice a regime of "whoever is bugged the most about something, does it. And for the rest, who cares?" Not elegant, but practical and it certainly makes for a calmer, more generous and loving household. And that, over multiple decades, is pure gold. L. PS: There are different weights of splitting mauls, you should try more than one if you have to do it by hand, as I did before I married Machine-Man. Handle lengths also make a big difference, too.

My Cuisinart was from my mom, I know she got it for Christmas when they first came out, probably mid to late seventies. She used it maybe once, I was the one who always used it so when they moved and pared down I got it for my new house. The shaft is cracked but Johnliu showed me a Web site where I could order a new one, but with grad. school and all my odd jobs going, who knows when I will find the time. BF and I got so inspired by the backsplash experience that we are redoing my tub/shower surround. It's not an easy job since it is a "vintage" tub and we don't want to go through the trouble of ripping it out and replumbing due to the bathroom's tiny size and the tub's odd yet perfect dimensions. So we're also redoing with vintage fixtures if we can figure out how to plumb it. The current bad modernization is a Rube Goldberg masterpiece! John, sounds like we were doing the same thing as you guys this weekend! Sunday was gorgeous and we spent the whole day outside trying to get a handle on my yard, and then we had our first of the year outside meal, and then christened our new fire pit!

I'm taking a new approach. I had a weightlifting set with a weight bench, but it was taking up half of a room and in my tiny house that was just too much room. So it is gone and in its place I have 3 sets of dumbbells in a large basket (light, medium, heavy) and an exercise program called Stack 52, a set of cards that illustrate and give info on a total body workout using only dumbbell weights. Less space, and the card method is kind of fun, keeps it interesting, you can shuffle the cards and deal yourself a new set of exercises every day. The weights, along with dog walking and bicycling, make the road to fitness fun. I think the reason many people start and then stop exercise is that it gets boring, but if you have several things you like to do, you have the opportunity to choose what you feel like doing that day, and adjusting for bad weather/extreme heat or other reasons you may not want to do outdoor exercise.