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.

Last Weekend

Last weekend was the first weekend in a long time that we didn't have anything planned.  We ended up staying pretty busy, instead of kicking back and relaxing.

Friday night, on the spur of the moment, we decided to head up to Blackhawk for a bit of gambling. Kristen did really well, I lost $40.

Saturday morning I headed over to Matt's place to help him build his deck.  It was a full day endeavor, we got about half of the framing done with a lot of help from the neighbors.  He cooked up some barbeque as payment, which I gladly accepted.

Sunday was a big furniture shopping day.  We still need to outfit the guest bedroom, we're missing a couch, and could use a dresser.  We hit several of the big furniture stores around.  One was closing their doors, so we got some good deals, and hopefully have the majority of our furniture shopping done.

I didn't take any pictures this weekend, but I do have some random footage from the Canada trip.  This is it for the Canada content, I promise.

Goodbye Nono

 We'll all miss you

Week Two: Sunsets and more

Tony brought a nice camera with him, most of these shots came from that camera.

Canada Week Two: Projects

We managed to get a lot of work done at the cabin with four guys in camp.  We put a new roof on the outhouse, and learned our way through the shingling process.  We also installed a new seat.  The green cushy seat of my childhood is no more.

We also put two boat loads worth of rock around the supporting posts of the dock.  Nate and Tony manned the boat, Matt and I swam around and place the rocks as best as we could.

Nate and Tony managed to re-plank the remaining old portion of the dock, which made it a lot nicer to walk on.

We also pulled the 12 foot 2" X 6"s off of the Manitimeig dock, replacing them with 8 foot sections of treated 2" X 6"s.