Proof of Global Warming, or Climate Change, or Just a Warm Day

Perhaps I can maintain some semblance of a routine if I can manage to post every Sunday-ish. I'll try that.

It is January 25th and nearly sixty degrees outside. It's been a very nice day for goofing around in the yard and accomplishing some minor accomplishments.

My main reason for posting today is to announce my entrance into the Grandfather of the Year Competition. My reason for my entry is because I have finally started to establish a relationship with my grandson, Alex...who is thirteen.

I have no excuse for not being a part of his life up until now. One might suggest that one is a scumbag for neglecting one's grandson for so long. I, for one, could not offer a good rebuttal. 

Nonetheless, a relationship has been established and we move on from there.

I picked up Alex yesterday and spent the day with him. He helped me with some clean up in the yard and the subsequent trip to the dump to relieve ourselves of the clean up. Then we had a nice lunch at Domini's. 

After a quiet afternoon of hanging out at the house, we went to the Spokane Chiefs Hockey game. They lost to the Tri-City Americans, one to nuthin!

My future plans include teaching Alex to ski. I am hoping that will happen in about two weeks.

On the other hand of the Grandfather thang, we had planned to attend a birthday party for my step son Rob's son, Lucas. He turns one today but is suffering from the flu, so the gathering got canceled.

Since no trip to the valley was required, that allowed me to hang about the house today and do some jobs in the out of doors, as I mentioned earlier. It was uncharacteristically warm, which empirically proves Global Climate Change is true.

Skiing and Football

It has been a loooooong and eventful day!

The plan was that our friend Mark had $10 vouchers to ski at Schweitzer Mountain. A regular weekend pass is $75. The vouchers had to be used by January 28th and with all our varied, mixed up schedules, today seemed to be the best day to use them.

The only hitch in the plan was that the Seattle Seahawks Football Club was playing the divisional championship contest again the Green Bay Packages. The winner would be going to the Super Thing. Mark wanted to see the game. 

I said that since we are only paying $10.00 for our lift tickets, who cares if we get there, ski until noon and then hit the bar and watch the game.

Another hitch in the plan was that Susan worked the rodeo the previous night and was not terribly excited about getting up at 6 AM on a Sunday. But she is a trooper and didn't want to watch the game all by herself, so she agreed to the plan.

We arrived at the mountain at about 9:30, a little off my planned schedule but no big deal. We had to park in the parking lot at the bottom of the resort. That means you either get on a shuttle bus to the lodge, or put on your skis and ride the Bunny Lift up. We chose the Bunny Lift.

We got in line to purchase our tickets, only to discover that our $10 vouchers were no good on Martin Luther King Weekend. It was in the fine print which nobody bothered to read. 

I neither get a day off for MLK nor am I black, so it is not a holiday that has ever really effected me. Therefore, it didn't occur to me or any of us that there was going to be a problem.

Mark was really apologetic and upset he didn't see the fine print. It was no big deal to Susan and I. Besides, the conditions did not appear to be all that ideal for skiing that day.

So we skied two runs on the Bunny Hill, got in the car and headed for Sandpoint.

We ended up in a wonderful spot called Sweet Lou's. We walked in and got a table. There were about 27 thousand TV's in the place, so watching the game was not going to be a problem. The added bonus was that the place was full and pretty evenly divided between Seahawks and Packers fans.

The Seahawks played perhaps one of their worst games ever for about 56 minutes. They played their luckiest game ever for the last four minutes. AND they played well enough in overtime to walk away with a win. It's the first time in about eight years that a defending Super Bowl Champ returns to the big game.

We ate, drank, yelled at the Hawks, and cheered our faces off until it was over. It was a great day!

The only really bad thing that happened was that there was a prize give away going on during the game and Susan won a Taylor Hicks CD.

Remodeling 2105 Style

I think it is about time to start talking about a remodeling project. That is the alleged point of this so called Blog after all. Additionally, in order to maintain the stringent requirements of (H.I.B.A.A.) the Home Improvement Blogging Association of America as well as the strict guidelines of M.W.C.B. (Men Who Can't Build), I must occasionally talk about remodeling here.

I went skiing yesterday. It was fabulous and I think I did well for my first day up for this season. That is, until I got home. By then my body had realized what I had been doing all day and started to complain. Most specifically, it complained in my legs, my butt, and my ability to stay awake. I was in bed by 9.

Fortunately, sleep is the great healer and I awoke this morning with nary an ache or complaint.

That allowed me to concentrate on the next remodeling project which will be........drum roll........the new upstairs closet.

The next part of this project will be to put in a door. Doors are good because they help facilitate access to spaces that are between walls.

The plan is to slightly move the existing wall, perhaps a foot, to create more room in the closet.

My jobs to accomplish today are simple.
1) Discover if the existing wall is a weight bearing sort of structure.
2) Shop for pocket doors.

Update-7:48 PM: It's a quiet night around the estate. I'm watching the Seahawks in their playoff game with Carolina. It's into the third quarter and Seattle is up by four.

Susan and I took a trip to Home-A-Rama to check out the cost and availability of pocket doors. They are available and it looks like it will cost us about $35.00 for a door and $85.00 for the pocket door assembly and frame.

I checked to see if the wall is a load bearing wall and my uneducated guesstimate is that it is. I will be assembling my team of experts to confirm and verify in the weeks to come.

Now we have to start figuring out logistics. We've been sleeping in the back bedroom because it has the Sleep Number bed, which we really like. We are going to have to move most of the furniture and stuff out of the room for this remodel as we'll be doing a few other remodeling things in the room.

I hope to be getting this underway in the next couple of weeks.

WELCOME TO TWENTY FIFTEEN

Happy New Year!

We are enjoying the day by doing nothing. At least, that is what we have accomplished as I write at 12:43 PM. We are heading for the hot tub, which will test our mettle with the temperature at 24 degrees.

Later we are off on a journey of discovery for our friend Mike of Arabia. He found a listing for a house for sale on Craigslist and wants us to check it out. They are supposedly having an open house today starting at 3. 

So that's our big adventurous plans for the day.

6:00 PM: Well, that was bust! As far as trying to find this place, it's a ghost property. The main problem I had was the CraigsList posting did not offer an address, and when I went back to it today to try and nail that down, the post had been removed by the author. 

I knew the general area of the property as they had shown a map. So we drove out, possibly hoping they would put out an "Open House" sign that would help us to locate it.

That was just simply not to be. Perhaps they found a buyer already. I don't know. I just know that Mike will not be buying this place.

To be fair to Mike, he told me he wasn't in a position to be buying a place yet. But, I thought it would be a nice outing for us and if nothing else, it would get us out of the house.

As it is in most situations, we ended up at the Hub and had a couple of pitchers and watched Oregon decimate Floriduh State in the Rose Bowl.