Aug 23

Been Workin’ My Ass Off!

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Even so, there’s still an awful lot of it still hanging off the back of me!

Been up at the property the last couple of days moving dirt. Premiere Rentals delivered the Dozer I rented for the week yesterday at 0930 and I was on it pretty much the rest of the day. The "Dome Hole" is no longer a hole. After two full days of pushing dirt around it’s now one big mostly flat area to build the new ICF home we’re trying to build. But am I tired when I get home! Last night I went to bed at 2230 and went right to sleep. Woke up at 0600 this A.M. and thought I might as well get up as the alarm was set for 0630 anyway. Next thing I know the alarm has gone off. Damn! All that noise and bouncing around gives me a headache…

Check out my latest Time Lapse Video…



That’s it for now. Just wanted to check in…

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.

Aug 11

Ought To Get Caught Up!

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Last Saturday I went to the 1000-1400 session of the USS Turner Joy (DD-951) Reunion aboard the TJ. Was okay. Lots of "older" guys there from all over the country. Most of them seemed like decent people. Was nice walking around the ship. That smell of tile, oil and whatever hits you in the face when you step inside and it’s like you’re still stationed aboard. Flashes you back instantly.

During the meeting they were brainstorming on how to get move visitors aboard and one of the guys, that works on the USS Midway (I think) down in San Diego, mentioned those wireless headsets and the canned talks given throughout their ship. I mentioned that I had a lot of crappy old video from the last Westpac and they ought to put up a big screen tv and show (most of) that video I took. Somehow I volunteered putting something together. Then somehow I wound up with several old TJ cruise books to scan and do something with. That’ll teach me. The TJ’s in dire financial shape. I’m thinking of putting a "Donate" button for the ship on my sites and starting a paypal account just for that. Any suggestions out there?

Sunday: Had a short meeting with the TJ crowd and got some more pictures to scan. I think this project will be fun. Afterwards I went on out to the property and pushed over some more trees. Sunday evening I spent working on our New Home Site.

Today: Back out to the property. This time I started cutting all the trees I’ve pushed over into lengths and neatly stacking them off to the side of the clearing. Tomorrow I’ll finish up the pile I have left plus the couple I have to move to the pile and start hauling them down the hill.