Shaking The Dust Off

A quick ride at Miller to start things going again. My overly sedentary life of late has been taking a toll and I'm hoping I can turn things around this spring.

I Don't Like Cats

Or dogs really, but Jubjub was alright. For the last fifteen years she's kept to herself, didn't like to be fucked with, hated traveling (but didn't freak out), and slept on our heads. Yeah, I liked Jubjub, maybe even loved her a bit (don't tell Michele). She died tonight. In a box. On the couch between Michele and I. She will be missed.

Fuck.

2012 - Year in Review

It's been another year. We bought a house, I worked on it, Porter got a year older and went from not talking to not shutting up (I'm not complaining, that's actually a good thing), we bought a beater truck, Michele continued to work her ass off, I set up the shop and built a handful of skateboards, we took a couple of trips, and had quite a few visitors. A lot happened this year.

This kid sure loves the beach, a visit to Salt Creek on New Years Day 2012 was how we kicked things off.

We traveled to Phoenix for Nana's 60th (my mom), Porter also got to meet Char for the first time on this trip (her husband whom we never met is where Porter got his name).

Many naps were attempted, not all were successful.

Dungeness Spit was a popular family destination.

Then we bought a house. I've left most of the projects out of this post, there have been many.

My brother Pat has come to visit once every couple of months. I always look forward to having him here.

Michele's aunt, uncle and cousin made the trip out from Ohio for about a week. It's not often we get to see Michele's extended family and it was nice to have them here.

Porter got sick once every few months, I often mistook it for him being uncharacteristically cuddly. He's still alive so I must be doing something right.

Almost every time Pat has come up, he's brought Kayla along. That's worked out nicely for me since she's the only person I've been able to con into mowing the lawn for me.

Probably not the best $1200 I've ever spent, but not so bad either. Makes going to the dump a lot easier and as I learned a number of years ago, hauling lumber and plywood sucks real bad in the Element.

Books on shelves. As nomadic as Michele and my life has been the last nine or so years, seeing books on shelves hit me pretty hard, in a good way.

Grandma (Michele's mom) made the trip out in July. Couldn't have picked a better time of year.

The shop has been slowly coming together.

Late September Porter hit two. 

Eddie, Star and Gavin came to visit for a little over three weeks. Many adventures were had.

I made this. I sit at Ikea tables no more.

The Monster does not fear monsters. I'm in a good place with that, it worries my wife.

Bringing it back to bicycles.

What can I say about Thanksgiving that I haven't already said. Most important holiday of the year.

Oh, and pie.

Tree from our own yard this year, and our first real tree since Spokane (I think).

Truck parade in Victoria with Paul and Sean. Easiest night I've ever spent in the same room as the boy. Still not a great night's sleep, but progress.

I think he's getting the true meaning of Christmas, loot.

So long 2012. Bring on the new year!

What I've Been Up To

Mostly I've been chasing Porter around non-stop, but occasionally I get some other things done too. I'm slowly working through the list of things to make the house our own. I've painted the master, the hall, living room and office. Still need to paint a little more in the living room and the kitchen. These are a few of the working on the house highlights:

Had the old cabinet shop build my entertainment center. They gave me an unbelievable deal, slightly more than it would have cost me for just the materials. The door panel is short in this picture, but they've replaced all three panels there and I'm just waiting to put them on. I still need to fabricate the top, the plan is a nice piece of black concrete, but I'm not yet tooled up for that, maybe in the next month or so. Also need to put hardware on but I'd rather wait until Porter isn't quite as curious to do that.

Replaced the non-functioning ceiling fan in the living room with this nice Modern Fan unit. It sits a little tighter to the ceiling than I would like but I left enough wire to accommodate a longer downrod in the future.

Turned the formal dining room into a large office with three work stations, all the carcasses are in place as are most of the finish panels. I've got all the material I'm going to need for the drawers all ready to go, just need to start working on them. The desktop was cut on the CNC at the cabinet shop, my understanding is that it was among the last things run out before the CNC was sold, I'm going to miss having access to that.

Added shelves to the opposite corner in the office. Each shelf is a single piece of 3/4" Appleply, also cut on the CNC at the same time as the desktop.

We've got a whole list of other projects to come as the money comes available. Of the big ones, the master bath needs some serious help and the kitchen really needs to be redone, it's big but is rather poorly laid out and has no room for two people to work due to a poorly planned out island.

Some of the other things that have been happening:

I had to give the pedo-van back to my cousin, so I picked up this '94 F-250 for all of $1200. It's not quite time for the Element to go and I really needed a truck for hauling trash and materials. When I found the truck on Craigslist I thought it was too good to pass up. I've put around 400 miles on it so far and I don't yet regret buying it.

Michele's aunt, uncle, and niece came out for a week.

My mom came out a couple of times, as well as my dad for a few days.

Michele's mom braved three days on the train each way to come stay for a week or so.

We also had visits from Tim and Lucy and my brother Pat and my niece Kayla. Star, Eddie and Gavin will be here from Japan just after Porter's birthday, my parents are coming back soon, and Pat's coming back up for the sprint boat races next month. Shit we're busy.

Porter approves.

Mowing Continued

Finally replaced my GPS over the weekend. For the inaugural use I stuck it in my pocket while I mowed the lawn yesterday.

7.21 miles. Most of the distance was riding but a good 50% of the time was on foot.

The raw data can be found here.

Not a Problem

Mowing

 So we bought a house. That's already old news. Here it is:

Clearly a satellite/aerial view, Google Earth in fact. Our place is the one closer to the center, off to the left is the neighbor's place (also for sale, we looked at it, total train wreck layout). Our lot has a good amount of grass, and it needs regular mowing, and to that end I have purchased a lawn tractor, a push mower, and a string trimmer. In case you're wondering, the push mower is necessary due to the fact that there is a fair amount of terrain that the  lawn tractor can't handle. Here's the same image as above, post a little awesome MS Paint work by yours truly showing the property lines in red and grass in green:

3½ hours. And I'm not done yet. Still need to bust out the string trimmer tomorrow for another ½ hour at least. I'm hoping that with regular maintenance I can cut that down to 2½ total, but fuck me, that's a lot of mowing. Sure glad I got the "fast" tractor.