Category Archives: Our ICF Home

Where I will occasionally mention the new ICF Home we were trying to build.

Aug 29

Things Been Fairly Normal Around Here!

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But, my life is fairly normal nowadays. I finished pushing the dirt from the old “Dome Hole” last Monday. It took me only 3 days with that dozer I rented! Three days! (I’m gonna have to find before & after pictures and post them.) I moved a LOT of dirt and I moved it for about half what one contractor wanted to charge me. Cool!
Got home Monday evening and called Premiere Rentals to come out and pick up the dozer. (Jim?) said he’d have someone out there at 1500 Tuesday to pick it up. So, Tuesday I went on out to the property and ran up and down the road with the blade trying to smooth it out and make it a bit better. Had stopped by the gas station on the way in and filled 6 (SIX!) 5-gallon gas cans with diesel and poured them all into the fuel tank on the dozer. Damn! $150 for fuel! Damn! Remember when diesel was $1.50 cheaper than gas?… Anywho, 1500 came around and no one arrived to pick up the dozer. 1600. 1700. 1715 I left for home. Tried calling Premiere Rentals but their answering machine (if they even have on) obviously wasn’t on so that was that for the evening. All that waiting did give me time to clean as much dirt off the tracks as I could though.
Wednesday I had planned to stay home all day and get things done that I just haven’t been able to do what with going out and moving dirt. Unfortunately it didn’t quite work out that way. Called Premiere Rentals early and talked to (Greg? Craig?) and tried to explain that someone was supposed to pick up the dozer YESTERDAY at 1500 and I had waited until 1715 but no one had showed up and he cut me off with “We pick up those when we have a driver and equipment available.” I tried to say that I’d MADE PLANS that I couldn’t get to as I was waiting on THEM but he cut me off again. Said they’d get to it “When they could.” Fine. Give me a call when you’re ready cause I have to drive out to the property and take the chain across the driveway down and BRING THE KEY to the dozer with me. 1200 comes and goes. 1300 comes and goes. 1400 comes and goes. So I call them and get (Jim?) again. He said “Trucks leaving in 15 minutes.” Cool. So I drove out to the property and their driver (nice guy) showed up about an hour later and picked up the dozer. I drove back home but never did get everything done that I wanted to do…
Thursday: Went out to the property and drug the last of the logs to the bottom of the hill. (Gotta remember to call Steve and ask who he sells logs to…) Gave a neighbor a truck load of dirt. (After all, I have a butt-ton of it laying around.) Came on home and took SWMBO to COSTCO for soda’s and we ate hot dogs there. Both of us can eat a meal for less than $4. Cool. Home Teacher visited around 2000 for an hour.

Today: Had a 1000 meeting with the Architect to go over the house plans. He does good work! Gave us printouts of the plans to go over this weekend to be sure that everything’s where we want it. Cool! Took SWMBO to the Silverdale Mall so she could have one of her favorite sandwiches and we walked the mall for awhile. Stop by our site and check the plans out!
A week or so ago SWMBO had put a plastic water bottle of grape juice behind her seat since it tasted like it had “turned.” We had just left the mall and was driving through the parking lot of the Silverdale COSTCO when the damned thing exploded! No shit! It made a noise like someone had stuck a big-caliber gun through the window and shot one of us. Damned near scared the crap out of me! Because of the enclosed space in her car it sounded a lot like that dozer battery that blew up on me a couple of years ago. Funky smelling grape juice all over the place! Had a good laugh about it LATER. Except it screwed with my head for the rest of the afternoon. Guess it brought back too many feelings about some experiences during Desert Storm and that battery. Got over it though.
Still making time-lapse video’s of clouds and sunsets and then adding music to them with Magix Music Maker. You can check those out on MY site if ya want.
I think Summer is pretty much over up here…

Aug 21

Gonna Be Busy!

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Don’t know when I’m going to be catching up here for awhile. Starting tomorrow I’m gonna be busy. Rented a Dozer for a week so I’ll be up at the property early every day and stay late. Gonna get my $1500 worth! The week after I’ll be concentrating on finishing up cutting the downed trees to length and getting them to the bottom of the hill then calling someone to sell them. Then I’ll concentrate on cutting enough wood to fill our ’woodshed.’ Then renting a splitter again and getting that done and stacked. Gotta disassemble the woodstove and give it (and the flue) a good cleaning. So, I’m gonna be busy (busier?) for the next couple of weeks.
Last Monday: I stayed home and got most of the things I’ve been putting off done. Dishes. Laundry. Straightened up the damned living room. Been watching Sci-Fi Horror Flicks since noon. (Well, not watching. Listening to mostly.) Ripped the 178th Annual General Conference-April 2008 & 15 Hymn discs for SWMBO.
Tuesday: Cut the logs in the clearing to length and dragged them down the hill. SWMBO made dinner. Fish sticks for me. Chicken for her. More dishes for me…. @ 2110 is was raining HARD!
Wednesday: Went to the property. Came home early from the property. Too wet & muddy. Cut one log to length and moved it to the bottom of the hill. Scary to be going along and have one (or both) tracks suddenly start spinning but not going anywhere! Except in circles! Not good when pulling a 1000 lb log. Been raining like a bitch off and on. Got up at 0600. Maybe I’ll be able to go to sleep early and sleep until the alarm goes off without staying awake until 0300 when SWMBO gets home from the office. We’ll see. POURED rain off and on all afternoon/evening. I mean poured! Spilled tea into my keyboard last night. Some of the numerical keypad stick now…
Thursday: Today. Got SWMBO up early to take her to the 1000 showing of "The Dark Knight". Too bad they changed the showtime to 1230. At least I got notified of the change before we left the house! So we went to breakfast at the FHP in Port Orchard then to the movie then on back home so SWMBO could get some work done today.
Excellent movie! Really enjoyed it! Heath Ledger played a wonderful Joker! I really thought he was excellent in the part.

Aug 17

I Been Busy! Really!

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Going out to the property and pushing over trees and stacking them. Haven’t too many left to do and I’m done! Cool!

Last:

Tuesday & Wednesday: Spent most of the days out at the property moving logs from the clearing down to the bottom of the hill. Time consuming as my digger can drag only so much..Wednesday SWMBO went in to her office as usual.

Thursday: More of the same. Pushed over a couple more trees and got them to the clearing and stacked.

Do my days seem pretty much SSDD? I know I post "Spent the day pushing over trees" a lot but you gotta realize that I have a MINI-excavator and it can take over an hour (or more) to dig out one side of a tree (especially if it’s a fairly good size), push it over, get the rootball completely dug up and pulling it up to the clearing and stacked. Most times the trees are heavy enough that I have to back my digger up 6-8 feet, grab somewhere on the root and pull the tree to me. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat until I get it to where I’m going to stack it. That can take awhile!

Friday: SWMBO and I went to the theater in Gig Harbor for the 1030 showing of "The Dark Knight." Too bad it started at 1000! Damn! So we went to the bookstore in that shopping complex and a "foo-foo" Pizza place. Pizza tasted okay BUT… It was too expensive for what we got. Got home and then it was back out to the property for me.

Saturday: Was more of the same. About the only thing I can say is nearly every day was DAMN FINE HOT & SUNNY!!! I really enjoyed it! You should hear the people up here bitch about the "heat wave." You’d think God was purposely trying to melt them into little puddles or something.

Today: Pretty much more of the same for me. Didn’t go to church as they’re having conference and SWMBO would have had to sit with the Choir anyway. So I went on out to the property and got to work. SWMBO was supposed to be there about 1400 with the makings for dinner. She showed about 1500 or so. Grilled us steaks! They was good! Heard some thunder (and thought I saw a flash of lightning once) and it got real windy (and I got sprinkled on a couple of times) but it was still nice up there. Especially with SWMBO there!

Yesterday & today there were a couple of old looking planes up dogfighting with each other somewhat over the property. But not shooting bullets, of course. But it was kind of neat watching them zoom around trying to get on each other’s tails. Saw a formation of military jets go by also.
Upward Bound 1970-Tim Howard and Trini Pineda

There’s just not much going on, folks. I’m so busy trying to get as much done ’pre-construction’ at the property that I’m not doing much of anything else. Even ’housework’ gets put on the back burner. In the evenings I ’play’ on my computer and listen to the tv or convert videos and listen to the tv until around bedtime. Then I read an hour or so and go to sleep and repeat the whole thing the next day. Not exciting to the vast majority of y’all, I know. But that is real life.