It has been a busy week. I started painting the house last week so then it started to rain. This early in the summer I figure I don't have to paint in the rain so didn't get much done. Wednesday was the Alaska Dogs Gone Wild summer solstice flyball tournament and since Maija and Scott were both competing we had to make time for that. I went on Wednesday and Mary went Thursday. Maija was running Zoom who was having a kind of bad day the day I was there, and Scott was running a borrowed dog since his Sweet Pea isn't ready for competition yet. Thursday after Mary left to watch flyball I was getting my painting things out when the telephone guy shows up to bury our line. We have been on a temporary line for about 3 months now so now that things have thawed out they were supposed to bury the line. The work order they gave the guy was not very well planned out. They had him going through a swamp to get to the phone box and that just wont work. So we spent a couple hours walking around in the woods to find an alternate way. Finally he called the engineer and told him to come out and look the options over and come up with a workable plan. Friday I went up to Brad and Maija's cabin to help Brad build the new deck to replace the one we tore down the previous weekend. We worked steady through the day except for a break Brad needed for a telecon he had to dial into for work, and got all the support work done. I was going to go up again Saturday but I wanted to wait until Scott got to our place so he could help me take a couple trees down that had been bent by heavy snow and were threatening the house. I got things mixed up because I thought he told me he had to work Saturday and would be up early in the afternoon. In fact he was at the flyball tourney until 4 o'clock so I wasted most of the day. I had pulled the chainsaw out and got it running and took one of the trees down before the saw stopped again. Around 5 I decided Scott wasn't coming so I figured out how to take the other tree down by myself without hitting the house and got my little electric chainsaw that is about 25 years old and took the tree down. That saw was ok to take the tree down with but since the chain oiler doesn't work I have to squirt oil on the chain after every cut so it doesn't over heat. For bucking up 2 60 foot trees the saw just wasn't going to work so I decided I would get a new GOOD chainsaw after doing a little research. I had been checking the weather up at Talkeetna on and off all day and it was pretty rainy so I figured Brad probably hadn't been able to get much done on the deck so I could go up Sunday to help him finish up and talk to him about chainsaws since he had just bought one. So Sunday I spent a couple hours laying decking and getting a hands on demo of Brad's chainsaw. The dealer is just down the road from the cabin so I stopped on the way home and bought a brand new Stihl chainsaw. It wasn't the model I had decided on because they were out of them but it was the next bigger model and wasn't much more expensive. I got it home and spent about an hour trying to get it started because I flooded the engine. Once I got it going it went through those trees I had cut down on Saturday like a hot knife in butter.
I plan on posting some pictures from flyball but I have to mow the grass before it starts raining again. Later.....
Monday, June 30, 2008
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Midsummer's night.
Well, it's officially summer but you sure couldn't tell it by the weather around Willow. Our average temperature around here is 10 degrees F below the normal average. Normally this time of year here is warm and dry. Almost every year since we first bought the cabin near Talkeetna by this time in June we would be praying for rain because the fire danger was so high. It was around this time of year in 1992 that fireworks started a forest fire that burned from Wasilla to just south of our house here in Willow. We didn't live here then but we had just bought the cabin in Talkeetna so I did keep an eye on it and had to drive through choking smoke one weekend to get to the cabin. Yesterday I noticed the Forest Service sign indicating fire danger around Willow was low. This is the first time I remember it being low in June.
Speaking of the cabin in Talkeetna. Since Mary and I moved to Willow we decided to sell it because it just didn't make sense to own a cabin in the wood when you live in the woods. Maija and Brad bought it from us last year and Brad has been working really hard to fix it up. Mary and I didn't use it much at all the last 5 years we owned it so it got really run down. So far Brad has it sided, new windows installed and insulation installed. Last weekend I went up to help him demolish the deck since it was getting pretty rickety. The whole deck was just a rotten mess. We barely even had to use tools to tear it down. I'll go up again this Friday to help him get the new one started. He wants to get it done by the Forth of July. The way he works, no problem.
My house painting is not coming along quite as good. I did get all the windows scraped down to bare wood but the sanding is taking for ever. It's a good thing I started when I did. Maybe I'll get it done before the snow flies this fall.
This week is Scott's and Maija's dog week. They belong to Alaska Dogs Gone Wild fly-ball club. Maija runs a couple of her dogs and Scott trains his Sweat-Pea but she doesn't compete yet. He is going to run a dog, a Jack Russell terrier height setter, owned by one of the club's members that can't be there the first couple of days. It is fun to watch the dogs having fun running the course. Some of the owners take it a little serious but all in all it's a good time. This is their third annual Summer Solstice competition with teams from the Lower 48 competing against the Anchorage club. Since this is all non-professional the teams from the Lower 48 usually don't have a full team so the Anchorage club fills in for them. I'll probably go down tomorrow and watch and Mary will go down Thursday.
Time to go to work.....
Speaking of the cabin in Talkeetna. Since Mary and I moved to Willow we decided to sell it because it just didn't make sense to own a cabin in the wood when you live in the woods. Maija and Brad bought it from us last year and Brad has been working really hard to fix it up. Mary and I didn't use it much at all the last 5 years we owned it so it got really run down. So far Brad has it sided, new windows installed and insulation installed. Last weekend I went up to help him demolish the deck since it was getting pretty rickety. The whole deck was just a rotten mess. We barely even had to use tools to tear it down. I'll go up again this Friday to help him get the new one started. He wants to get it done by the Forth of July. The way he works, no problem.
My house painting is not coming along quite as good. I did get all the windows scraped down to bare wood but the sanding is taking for ever. It's a good thing I started when I did. Maybe I'll get it done before the snow flies this fall.
This week is Scott's and Maija's dog week. They belong to Alaska Dogs Gone Wild fly-ball club. Maija runs a couple of her dogs and Scott trains his Sweat-Pea but she doesn't compete yet. He is going to run a dog, a Jack Russell terrier height setter, owned by one of the club's members that can't be there the first couple of days. It is fun to watch the dogs having fun running the course. Some of the owners take it a little serious but all in all it's a good time. This is their third annual Summer Solstice competition with teams from the Lower 48 competing against the Anchorage club. Since this is all non-professional the teams from the Lower 48 usually don't have a full team so the Anchorage club fills in for them. I'll probably go down tomorrow and watch and Mary will go down Thursday.
Time to go to work.....
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Been Busy
I can't believe how much time has passed since my last blog entry. I guess I've been keeping busy enough not to have time to sit around on the computer so much. I probably wouldn't have checked in today either because I have lots of stuff planned for today, but I got an email from a friend who had received an email from me when I got mixed up with that REUNION.COM outfit. This friend was a little confused because the email address was different from the one she had on file for me. She said she started signing up for a reunion.com membership but then decided not to until she heard from me directly. She is way smarter then me. I just plowed right through and sent all those emails.
Let me make it completely clear. DO NOT SIGN UP WITH REUNION.COM ON MY ACCOUNT. I believe they are a big scam outfit. I canceled my membership the same day I took it out so even if you did sign up with them looking for me I wont be there. I think most peoples email providers filtered those emails from me as spam since most of them were rejected and sent back to my email which then handled the rejects as spam.
Now to bring everything up to date.
I went out and bought the house paint yesterday so you know what I will be doing the rest of this summer. We will be painting the house to match the color of the shop. I can't think of anything I hate to do more then paint. When we lived in Pierre I started painting our old house. The color that Mary had made up was a waaaaaay too bright of a blue. I got maybe a quarter of the house painted with it and gave up. A few months went by and I just couldn't finish painting. I hated the way it looked and it was really hard to paint because it was cedar shingles so it had to be painted with brushes. Finally a friend of mine got so tired of seeing the partially painted house that he showed up one day with his own brush and said if I would do the parts that had to be reached by latter he would do the rest. We painted the hole thing in the hideous blue as an undercoat and then painted it again in a dark brown, which was about the only color we could find that would cover the blue. I think I inherited my hate of painting from my dad. All the other houses that were built on Garfield avenue in 1949-50 were sided with wood that had to be painted about every 5 years. My mom knew my dad hated painting so they held out for stucco so all that ever had to be painted was the trim. They had aluminum widows install shortly after the Anderson window company opened and not to long after I left home they had the rest of the trim replaced with aluminum trim. The garage was still wood sided. The builder didn't have enough stucco when he built it so they just had it sided with cheap wood siding. That stuff never would hold paint. I painted that damn garage almost every other summer from about 6th grade on. Even after moving to Alaska I the FAA sent me and the kids home to Minneapolis every other year as part of my contract for working in Alaska. It would be 100 degrees out and I would be out painting the garage. I think I painted it once more after my dad died in 1990 and then Ma had it sided with aluminum siding so all I had to do was paint the garage door when I went home. Now even that has been replaced with aluminum. So this summer I will be spending with a roller in my hand. Our house is sided with what is called T-1-11 which is what most houses that people with middle class income is sided with. It is basically a sheet of plywood with a finished surface on one side. Our houses previous owner had just had the house painted before we bought it so the paint is in pretty good shape still. The trim around the windows is starting to peel but the paint on the siding is still sound.
Normally on Sunday morning I get up and watch Meet the Press from 7 to 8 AM. This morning they had a tribute to Tim Russert, the moderator, since he died of a heart attack Friday. His death really got me thinking again to live life like each day is your last. Tim had just had a complete physical the end of April that included a stress cardiogram and the doctor had pronounced him completely healthy. He was being treated for high blood pressure and high cholesterol, just like me, but they had them under control. He had just turned 58 like my sister when she died and a close childhood friend of mine. Susie smoked and drank too much so she really wasn't a surprise and Bob had a disease that had been treated for years that finally took him so he really wasn't a surprise either. But to hear of someone that you watch on TV every week die like that is kind of scary. This mornings tribute to him was very tasteful and I'm glad I got to see it.
Time to start my chores for today. I promised Mary I would get her bike ready for her. It has been sitting under the deck since we moved up here and the chain was rusted solid so you couldn't even peddle the bike. The tires are completely shot too so I have to replace them also. I've just about got fixed so she wont have any excuses now.
Let me make it completely clear. DO NOT SIGN UP WITH REUNION.COM ON MY ACCOUNT. I believe they are a big scam outfit. I canceled my membership the same day I took it out so even if you did sign up with them looking for me I wont be there. I think most peoples email providers filtered those emails from me as spam since most of them were rejected and sent back to my email which then handled the rejects as spam.
Now to bring everything up to date.
I went out and bought the house paint yesterday so you know what I will be doing the rest of this summer. We will be painting the house to match the color of the shop. I can't think of anything I hate to do more then paint. When we lived in Pierre I started painting our old house. The color that Mary had made up was a waaaaaay too bright of a blue. I got maybe a quarter of the house painted with it and gave up. A few months went by and I just couldn't finish painting. I hated the way it looked and it was really hard to paint because it was cedar shingles so it had to be painted with brushes. Finally a friend of mine got so tired of seeing the partially painted house that he showed up one day with his own brush and said if I would do the parts that had to be reached by latter he would do the rest. We painted the hole thing in the hideous blue as an undercoat and then painted it again in a dark brown, which was about the only color we could find that would cover the blue. I think I inherited my hate of painting from my dad. All the other houses that were built on Garfield avenue in 1949-50 were sided with wood that had to be painted about every 5 years. My mom knew my dad hated painting so they held out for stucco so all that ever had to be painted was the trim. They had aluminum widows install shortly after the Anderson window company opened and not to long after I left home they had the rest of the trim replaced with aluminum trim. The garage was still wood sided. The builder didn't have enough stucco when he built it so they just had it sided with cheap wood siding. That stuff never would hold paint. I painted that damn garage almost every other summer from about 6th grade on. Even after moving to Alaska I the FAA sent me and the kids home to Minneapolis every other year as part of my contract for working in Alaska. It would be 100 degrees out and I would be out painting the garage. I think I painted it once more after my dad died in 1990 and then Ma had it sided with aluminum siding so all I had to do was paint the garage door when I went home. Now even that has been replaced with aluminum. So this summer I will be spending with a roller in my hand. Our house is sided with what is called T-1-11 which is what most houses that people with middle class income is sided with. It is basically a sheet of plywood with a finished surface on one side. Our houses previous owner had just had the house painted before we bought it so the paint is in pretty good shape still. The trim around the windows is starting to peel but the paint on the siding is still sound.
Normally on Sunday morning I get up and watch Meet the Press from 7 to 8 AM. This morning they had a tribute to Tim Russert, the moderator, since he died of a heart attack Friday. His death really got me thinking again to live life like each day is your last. Tim had just had a complete physical the end of April that included a stress cardiogram and the doctor had pronounced him completely healthy. He was being treated for high blood pressure and high cholesterol, just like me, but they had them under control. He had just turned 58 like my sister when she died and a close childhood friend of mine. Susie smoked and drank too much so she really wasn't a surprise and Bob had a disease that had been treated for years that finally took him so he really wasn't a surprise either. But to hear of someone that you watch on TV every week die like that is kind of scary. This mornings tribute to him was very tasteful and I'm glad I got to see it.
Time to start my chores for today. I promised Mary I would get her bike ready for her. It has been sitting under the deck since we moved up here and the chain was rusted solid so you couldn't even peddle the bike. The tires are completely shot too so I have to replace them also. I've just about got fixed so she wont have any excuses now.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Dumb!
I got a message yesterday from an old work buddy with a web address of www.reunion.com/name of person. I had just recently been thinking of that person so I type the address of the link ( never click links I don't know about ) and it took me to the web site with the name and age of the person I was interested in but then said I had to create a login to continue. So I did. It takes your name and then suggests if you have a hotmail, yahoo, gmail or AOL account to use the box and sign in to that account and you will be verified immediately. I didn't think it through very well. I never should have put my username and password into somebody else's site. We all make mistakes though. Anyhow I was then signed on to reunion.com but still couldn't really look at anything unless I upgraded to a premium membership. So I logged off and went on about other business. A few hours later I came back in and log on to my hotmail account and that's when I knew I had screwed up. My mailbox was full of rejected emails.
As soon as I realized that the rejects were all from my hotmail account I knew what had happened and deleted my membership/profile information at reunion.com and changed my account information at hotmail. I also sent a nasty note back to reunion.com basically saying THEY SUCK! Some of the addresses that got mail from me were FAA addresses I had for when I was on the road and needed to contact people before the FAA got their webmail working. I'm sure the message I received was generated the same way that the one that I generated was and that person didn't realize that everyone they had ever corresponded with was going to get an email. What a chicken shit outfit.
I have to go and clean more rejected messages in my hotmail box.
As soon as I realized that the rejects were all from my hotmail account I knew what had happened and deleted my membership/profile information at reunion.com and changed my account information at hotmail. I also sent a nasty note back to reunion.com basically saying THEY SUCK! Some of the addresses that got mail from me were FAA addresses I had for when I was on the road and needed to contact people before the FAA got their webmail working. I'm sure the message I received was generated the same way that the one that I generated was and that person didn't realize that everyone they had ever corresponded with was going to get an email. What a chicken shit outfit.
I have to go and clean more rejected messages in my hotmail box.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)