skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Saturday we skied. It was a nice day with a thin cloud layer that kind of let the sun through, but not completely. It was a good to be on the mountain and we definitely felt it afterwards.
Sunday the sun came out in force. It was a wonderful spring day with the temperature hitting the 60's. I worked out in the yard a little bit while Susan did some stripping in the kitchen. I later told her to put her clothes back on because the neighbors where watching.
No! That's not right. She was stripping the paint off the door jam between the kitchen and the hallway. I later removed the trim on the kitchen side of the door jam. That was a bitch because it was in a couple of pieces.
Anyway, it was such a nice day that I pulled out my bike and went for a little ride. I was even considering riding to work the next day. The weather made the decision for me.
A record rainfall was set yesterday. The Weather Service says .62" fell but I had .67" on my WeatherStation 2000. I can tell you that a shit load of rain fell yesterday. They say more is on the way but it's quite nice right now.
A wet heavy snow has been falling most of the night. I woke up to use the bathroom at about 4 and it was snowing and sticking but not to the streets or sidewalks. By 6:15, everything was white.
The drive to work this morning wasn't too bad. It just sloppy everywhere. I passed a trailerless semi truck that was off the side of the freeway and facing the wrong direction. I'm not sure how that came to be but it took some finesse.
Beyond these reflections, it appears I hav nothing further to say. There goes a minute of your life you'll never get back.
Our old friend Vernal Equinox showed up last night and in honor of his visit, he brought snow this morning. That just adds to our crazy non-winter...soon to be late winter. You've heard of Christmas in July? It looks like we are having Winter in Spring.
Of course, it is not unusual for snow to fall in Spring. I can remember a Bloomsday several years back where it snowed lightly the morning of, and that's in May.
But Vern is here now and it's time he act like he cares.
We have had a lackluster week of no accomplishments around the house but lots of meetings to attend. Susan and I are spread out all over the place. We don't really care. But we want to finish the hallway so we can move on to getting the living room ceiling sheet rocked before the Solstice.
So we have a whole season. You wait, I say that now and we'll be scrambling come Solstice time.
As the header suggests, we have just completed a Fabulous Holiday Weekend. St. Patrick's Day fell on a Saturday this year and there was fun and festive festiveness all about. We slept in until 9 and then had breakfast at Dolly's Cafe with some friends.
We then went downtown to check out the St. Paddy's Day Parade. This is an event that requires no pre-requisite to be involved. The Sons of Norway trailered their Viking Ship through the parade route. We watched for about half an hour before heading out to drink some green beer.
This weekend has been planned for for quite a while. It is our traditional amnesty weekend where we go off the diet. I weighed in at 210.9 this morning. That's only a pound or so up. I'm trying to get to a flat 200 pounds. These last ten will be the tough ones.
Saturday afternoon we headed east for Wallace, Idaho. Wallace is a sleepy little North Idaho mining town with a rich ribald history that one might expect from a community populated by miners. One of the huge mines was recently shut down for six months by the Bureau of Mines of some government entity like that in order to reinforce the mine's integrity.
As such, the already depressed economy of the Silver Valley is even worse off. You can buy a fairly decent little house in Wallace for $40,000.00.
The only thing the area has going for it right now is the area. It's gorgeous country with lots of outdoor activities to enjoy. We were there to ski. In the summer, there are bike trails you can't believe.
Here are my collection of pictures from skiing this weekend.
This 9is a shot from the top of a run called Marmot looking down into the far east end of the Silver Valley. Montana is to the east at right.
This shot is at the bottom of the Marmot run. I took the previous picture from waaaaaaay up at the top.
This is the same picture that I cannot seem to delete.
This is the picture that should have been above there. It's taken from the same spot but looking west towards the Silver Valley. Wallace and Mullan are out there somewhere and you can see I-90 which takes you there.
One of the many gifts Susan gave me for my birthday was tickets to see comedian Adam Carolla. The concert was last night. After a day of working on our various projects, we headed downtown to the Knitting Factory.
It was the first visit to the Knitting Factory for both of us. We got down there about 20 minutes before the show and managed to find a pair of decent seats. I got into the 15 minute bar line to get us a couple of plastic cups of $6.50 wine. Each!
When I returned I found I was seated next to a group of six 30 something guys who had been drinking heavily already. When they returned from the bar, Susan said they each had three beers.
I was lucky enough to be seated next to the largest of these guys. I managed to move my chair a little bit out of his girth zone. He wasn't fat, he was solid. And...he was drunk.
The concert began with all of these guys feeling compelled to share thoughts with Adam. They all felt the show would be much better with their contributions. I know this because I used to be one of these Douche Bags.
Anyway, the guy was an affable enough drunk, at one point inviting everyone in our section to a party at his house after the show located at 151 Bacardi Lane or something like that.
It really wasn't too bad until the last 20 minutes of the show when the solid affable douche next to me started to fall asleep. At one point, he cupped his hands behind his head and his elbow slowly sank onto my shoulder. I know his friends noticed. I would roll out of his way and startle him back to consciousness, only for him to slip back towards his friend and then follow with a tide change back to me.
We had a good time and Adam Carolla put on a totally different show than I expected. I think he is usually pretty extemporaneous except when he goes to a place he has never been. It was clearly a thought out presentation with plenty of room to riff and respond to Douche Land next to me.
I thought he would be too crude for Susan...and he was crude. But, he was just plain funny too. I'm glad I went and I will go again.
We left the show and had a couple more glasses of wine at a new spot we found downtown.
We finished the night at home with a dip in the hot tub and then off to bed to prepare for the change to Daylight Savings Time.
I'm not sure why I'm writing today. I think it will come to me but right now I don't have an agenda, an direction or an subject...just poor syntax. In any event, it is clear to me from this opening paragram that this is going to be my Best Post Ever. So let's begin.
Not much work has been going on at the house over the last few days as we have been steeped in concentration over my birthday, which was yesterday.
Susan showered me with gifts all week. On the first day of my birthday week she gave me a version of Freecell on the new Macbook. Freecell is my favorite computer game and Susan is becoming a fan as well.
On the second day of my birthday week, I got a pair of movie tickets.
On the third day of my birthday week, I got a gift certificate to replace my windshield. It has a big crack in it but nothing that's really blocking my view. It'll be nice to get that fixed but I'm going to wait until after the spring gravel season.
The fourth day of my birthday week, I received a gift certificate to my favorite store, Jim's Home Brew.
On the fifth day of my birthday week, my true love gave to me...
I can't remember. I'll figure it out.
On the sixth day of my birthday week I was invited to join Susan at the Hercules Inn in Wallace, Idaho.
On my birthday, I received tickets to see comedian Adam Carolla this weekend. I also got a bottle a wine, which we drank, and a wonderful dinner.
I'm 55 now and it is time I grow up and take on some responsibility. But probably not.
I have an App on my iPod called the Death Clock. You answer a bunch of questions about yourself and then it calculates how much longer you have to live. As of today, I have until age 74. The actual countdown I have available to me as I write this is 18 years, 11 months, 28 days, 23 hours and 54 minutes. Oops! Make that 53 minutes.
You know, if I make to 74, I think that's a pretty good run. I'll be happy with that!
In the meantime, I have to start planning. How much beer could I drink between then and now?
Today is the end of Phase One of the South Beach Diet, which means I drink again. This is especially important in view of this very special day from whence I sprang forth from my mothers' loins not but two score and a tricade ago.
I made up tricade to denote 15 years. I like it. I think it works. I'm going to get into some on-line dictionary. Then, after having it copy writed and registered it with ASCAP and BMI, I can sit back and rest on the income it will generate every time somebody uses it in a sentence.
After work, I went to the Hub where Lee Nordstrom showed up, along with Robba, Olga, Steve and another guy. I had more than one beer which was bad.
But it's my birthday and that's good enough for me.
It has been a busy and productive weekend around here. We both worked on our separate projects and we both made great progress.
Susan was busy painting everything in the back hallway needed to be painted. I think she is just about ready to start the wall papering. One other project I have to get going on is the mirror we took out of the hallway. The frame needs to be stripped and then re-painted. Susan will be wanting that mirror up when she's done with the wall paper.
While she was stuck inside, I was out and about and all around the yard. My main focus was to continue with the stripping of the trim. But in between waiting for the stripper to do its work, I bounced around the yard and did a few things there.
I raked up some leaves. I fertilized the hot tub with it's assorted chemicals. I got out the leaf blower and gave the deck a nice blow job. I fed some squirrels. I trimmed the grape vines. And I stripped and scraped.
It was a beautiful day where I saw the temperature at the house get up to 64 degrees, maybe even a few degrees higher. The record for this day was 63 degrees, set back in 1987. I don't know if we reached it or beat it, but it was a nice day to be out.
I got a few shot of the house along with some squirrel pictures.
Here is my large clamp that I got for Christmas being used for the first time. It did what it is supposed to do and made my work a little easier.
I have only one more board to strip. That's it on the left of all those other boards. I have stripped a total of ten boards, plus the three I have already re-installed around the dining room door.
It's a hell of a lot of work and now I understand why those strippers are always so tired.
The massive snow storm that has been forecasted for the last couple of days never turned into anything to get excited about. I think they got some great snow in the mountains. Mt Spokane got a foot and Schweitzer got 18 inches. But nothing ever stuck very long down here in the low lands. The snow expected for today just never really happened.
We have some people coming in to the house for estimates on a couple of future projects. One project is to get a decent rain gutter across the front of the house. I'm hoping to spend less than $500.00 on this project...which seems like a lot to me for something like rain gutters.
The Home Depot rain gutters I put up last summer did not work because the roof is not built in such a way as to accommodate them. The facia is too far back from the edge of the roof. The runoff would fall right over the gutters.
Anyway, Susan insisted that the house needed to be cleaned up and frankly, I agreed with her. We've really let it go due to all the plastering and sandering.
