Respect the Water

No progress has been made on the living room because there is too much fun going on in the Living Room of Life, also known as the out of doors.

I took advantage of the nice weather today and put my White Water Canoe in the Spokane River after three years in dry dock. It was fabulous!

Currently, the river is running at 13,200 C.F.S., which is not really big but it's enough to make the Spokane Falls look pretty spectacular. It's big enough to make a run from Harvard Road to Mirabeau Point last just over an hour.

The stretch from Harvard to Barker Road is pretty tame, which allowed me the opportunity to get familiar with my boat again. The canoe is 12 feet long and all rocker. You cannot really propel it forward, you just spin it. It has air bags front and back...oops...forward and aft, and a saddle in the middle that I kneel over. I can put straps over my legs to secure myself in the canoe and actually become one with the canoe.

It's not a particularly comfortable position to stay in for any length of time. I got the Barker in about 20 minutes and stopped to return the circulation to my feet and legs.

From Barker to Sullivan Road is where the fun is. It's a great stretch of rapids almost the whole way. I had to stop again after the first stretch of rapids and almost fell over as I got out of the boat. My legs where totally numb from kneeling all that time. I'm going to have to work on some stretching exercises to make myself more comfy.

I'm going to do it again next week and hopefully will be able to take some pictures.

First Mow

Today was my first mowing of the year. Some parts needed to be mowed more than others. But, I broke out the mower and it fired up on the fourth pull. It still runs rough when its cold.

Later in the day, we slapped up the first coat of paint on the Living Room ceiling. That is to say, the first coat of paint on top of the primer. The paint went up well and we got it done in just a couple of hours. However, we have a couple of issues that will require more plastering. We are letting some questionable spots go and we'll just live with them. Most people won't notice them at all.

After that, we had the rest of the day to putter. I puttered in the yard. Susan puttered in the kitch.

We ended the day with a couple of pork roasts on the barbeque. I put them on the rotisserie and they came out beauty after about an hour and fifty minutes.

That made for a lovely dinner for the last night of our friend Mike's visit. He's off to Saudi Arabia for a few years of massive earning potential teaching the Sand Peoples to speak the English.

Scum Bag Patrol

During the night, some Scum Bag stopped by and stole one of the flood lights from the front yard. I didn't even know until my neighbor dropped off the staked fixture someone found in the park. So I trundled off to the store and bought a new flood light.

I know a few details about the Scum Bag but I am not willing to share them here. 

All I can tell you is the light will be back on tonight.

We painted two sky walks downtown today. It's a promotional thing for the Susan G. Koman Race for the Cure next weekend. We managed to get both of them completed on Saturday. That is awesome and we are pleased with ourselves. 

Living Room Work Part 43

We were finally able to get to painting the ceiling today. There has been lots of crazy going around and we have been in the middle of it. But we buckled down today and made a serious effort to do something. 

We got a coat of primer up on the ceiling. That allowed us to evaluate the quality of the mudding and sanding we have done thus far. For the most part, we were happy. There was a particularly troublesome area where two corners of separate dry wall didn't line up very well. Susan did a great job of laying over and hiding it. But we had a lot of areas like the one shown below.

You would think this would have stood out like a festering puss laden open wound with maggots slithering about. But it didn't...until the primer went up.

So we completed the painting and after a reasonable dry time, Master Mudder Sue went to work to perform her plaster magic.

Hopefully we will get to some sanding tomorrow and then assess our next step.

We're getting closer.