The calm before the storm

Next week is going to be exciting. At work, we roll out our product for another part of our corporation. That will keep me busy. Shortly afterward Thanksgiving comes a-knocking, that will keep both Kristen and I busy.

So, we took it pretty easy this weekend. I worked a bit on Saturday, Kristen ran a bunch of errands. Sunday involved some yard work, and various small tasks around the house for me. Kristen headed down to Denver to meet up with some family. Maddock got to visit Santa. I think he looks a little suspicious about the whole deal.

A month ago or two I bought a robotic vacuum cleaner. I didn't think it'd be that effective, just a cool gadget. It works better than I expected, our house is getting vacuumed a lot more than it used to, mostly because the thing is fun to watch. Here's 5x normal speed timelapse of "Flo" cleaning the sun room.  Hmm, I just noticed that there 6 minutes of black at the end of the video.  Oh well.

Last Year's Snowboarding

After many hours of editing, here's the summary of last year's snowboarding:

Ada is not amused!

We had a pretty slow weekend.  Both of our work situations have been a bit hectic, so we didn't feel like doing much.  We did head out on Friday night for the annual viewing of the new Warren Miller ski movie.  It was a lot of fun, as always.

We've gotten some colder weather, and a few traces of snow here and there.  The mountains are starting to get some accumulation, which means that the snowboarding season is just right around the corner.  I'm getting pretty excited.

We got our front drapes hung, the mattress for the guest bed showed up, we picked up some bedding, and generally tried to finish up any other house duties that are outstanding.  We have yet to really tackle the garage, neither of us really felt like getting out there in the colder air this weekend.

We did manage to figure out to get the fireplace open, so we had a good fire on Saturday night.  However, on Sunday the downdraft was strong enough that we failed to get it lit then.  I'm sure we'll get better with practice.

Indian Summer

The weather continues to be unreasonable.  We hit 76 on Saturday, and were in the 70's again today.  A big change is coming on Tuesday, we'll have several days in the 40's and 30's.

Kristen and I managed to get out and enjoy the weather a bit on both days.  We did a bunch of hiking/walking on Saturday, and spent a good amount of time working on the yard both days.  I raked the leafs up on Saturday, just to find the yard covered with them again on Sunday.

We've been spending time trying to winterize the garden.  We're still eating salad from the garden, and hope to get it to last a bit longer.

We also did a bit of shopping for the house on both Saturday and Sunday.  We ordered drapes, art, and a queen sized mattress for the guest bedroom.  Hopefully that about does it!

Pumpkin Carving

On Saturday Kristen and I hosted a pumpkin carving party.  We didn't take a lot of pictures.  We had a pretty good turn out, and a lot of pumpkins were carved.

On Sunday we really took it easy.  It was the laziest day we've had in a while.  Felt pretty good.

Here's some random video from the Indiana trip.  Some time on the Island Queen, including a time-lapse cruise around the lake.  Also a time-lapse of me closing up the treehouse.

Farm Trip

Last weekend I spent I took a few days off to check on the tree house.  I hadn't been back to the farm all year, and was concerned that the door had blown open, a window had busted, or something similar had happened.

Luckily everything looked more or less fine in the tree house.  A lot of wasps had gotten in due to the venting in the chimney structure, and the tree was showing signs of stress, but everything else looked good.  I managed to install the solar panel, putting the last piece of that project in place.  It managed to fully charge the battery every day.  I also hung the inside/outside thermometer, and did a few other small projects around the place.

The weather had been very dry for a long time, so I was able to walk the creek (named "Sugar Creek" on the old maps) from one end of the farm to the other.  Lots of fun stuff to look at.

The first night I got in, I saw the Island Queen cruising across the lake toward a nesting place.  It was a pretty cool sight.  We spent a good amount of time cruising around the lake on the Island Queen in the following days.

We also did a bit of work on the bulldozer, and mulched the old pond that Dad had re-sculptured recently.

It was a great, but short trip.  It ate through the rest of my vacation time for the year, so I'll be enjoying fewer trips until the new year.

Another weekend in Boulder

Kristen and I enjoyed our second consecutive weekend at home. On Saturday we took delivery of some new furniture for the basement. The giant bean bag wasn't cutting it for seating, so we have a new large L-shaped couch. It's a cheap one, we're still convinced the cats are going to tear it up.

We also mounted the TV to the wall, which should free up some floor space once I figure out how to route all the wiring through the wall into the office.

Saturday night we thought we'd celebrate the new space by lighting our first fire in the fireplace. I got the main flue open without issues, but there's some kind of flapper at the top of the chimney controlled by a chain. I apparently didn't get that open properly, and we smoked ourselves out for a bit.

Sunday morning I headed over to Matt's to continue help build his deck. It's starting to look like a deck, but there's plenty of work to do yet. He's overbuilding the heck out of it, I think you could probably drive a truck onto it without causing any issues.

The weather has turned a bit cooler. September was amazingly nice for pretty much the entire month. It's starting to feel more like fall now, and the Halloween decorations are starting to show up in the neighborhood.