So we bit the bullet and got a new car. It's my first new car in 20 years and Crys' first new car ever. :D It's a Nissan Versa. It's about the least expensive new car you can get but we wanted a new one since retirement isn't that far off and we'd like to do a bit of traveling. We got it at Economy Nissan in Durango. They were straight forward to deal with and never tried to game us.

So now we have a new car. It's odd after so many years of driving old junkers. :D We'll put the 1988 Honda wagon on the block and keep driving the 1990 Honda. The '90 is in really good shape and is pretty darned reliable, plus it gets about 40 MPG (like the new car) so it makes no sense to part with that fine auto.

This spring we've planned a nice long trip up through Canada to Maine, then down through Maryland and back through Oklahoma to see our wide spread family.

But for now we're just celebrating.

Bonus day

Today was supposed to be a work day. A nice fat double time work day. I was headed up the 75 mile drive to Salida, CO to build powerlines at 6 AM. At 6:30 the foreman from up there, Clint, called to let me know that because of the snow we couldn't work on the highway due to CDOT restrictions on the job.

My response was, "Oh? I have to turn around, get 2 hours of double-time for nothing and go crawl back into bed with a hottie?" His reply was that he was feeling the same thing :D. We spent 10 hours beating poles into the colichi the day before. That's spelled wrong but it's what we call the combo of dirt and big donies (rocks) you gotta backhoe through to set poles. I'm sure some of my co-workers are all bummed about it. Why am I not?

I'm 54 years old and I've been doing powerline work since I was 18. I've been through a goodly bit of difficulties in my life and when the world grants me a "bonus day" like today? I smile, thank my goodness, and enjoy it for all it's worth. At this age? I feel good, my mind works as well as it ever did, and I'm settled into a happy home with a delightful partner and even pets that bring me joy. As they say, no one ever wished they'd worked more when on their death-bed. I'm (hopefully) no where near my death bed for some time to come, so this is the time to enjoy the life and love I've got.

We've spent the day decorating for the holiday, attempting to make ice cream in a new appliance (dubious success) and chilling out at home. At the moment we're sampling a sugar maple porter beer that we made not long ago. The wood stove is going merrily, we even have a couple windows open just a bit to keep it temperate. The big outside winter projects are done, family is coming for the holiday and life is good.

Hope yours is too.

End of my long break.

I'm watching a beautiful orange sunset on the last unstructured day of my nice long fall vacation. I'm reminded of just how very lucky I am to get to even have time off. Many of my friends don't get that. 

I'm calling this one: the long fall vacation filled with invisible projects. That's because I spent the better part of a week trenching in underground secondary wire to serve various projects that we want to accomplish over time around here. A good trench job looks like you were never there when you get it done, hence: invisible. It's great to get it done. We've had a really dry fall, and pretty warm. Most years it would have been impossible to do anything like this in late November/early December. But it's done. 

It's much the same thing with yesterday's gutter prep project. We're having a local fella put up seamless gutters. Wouldn't you know it? Our soffit board was rotted for 40' on one side. SO for a day I took off all the metal, replaced the bad board and put the metal back up. When I was done? It looked exactly the same as it did before I started. OK, perhaps a little bit more straight and tight, but to nearly everyone that sees it? Exactly the same. 

It was the same with the battery maintenance I did. Being off grid means that a few times a year you open up the giant battery box filled with thousands of bucks worth of flooded lead-acid batteries and top up the distilled water in them. It's kinda tedious and not much fun but now I don't have to worry for the rest of the cold-to-come part of the winter. 

Now my invisible projects are done. The batteries are maintained, the soffits are ready for the gutter man, and I can finish the above ground part of my wiring project a few minutes at a time, at my leisure. 

You really can't put a price on that. 

Along the way? I kept the house clean, took care of our chickens, alpaca and llamas, and cooked a good bit. We made a trip to La Junta in there, I went to Denver for an E-board meeting with the hall, and stayed up all night to get some Stranahan's limited edition Snowflake, Mt. Bierstadt whiskey. 

I go back to work on Thursday. Tomorrow we run to Pueblo. I gotta see a doc and we'll look at some cars (we're about to get a new one before I retire) and perhaps we'll get to do some holiday shopping. It'll be a nice end to a long respite from work. 

I wish everyone got the same thing. 

Power to the chickens!

For the last 3 days I've been working on a little wiring project. It involves running a couple different sizes of underground secondary a total of 400 feet. It comes outta the house, under the foundation, then heads both south and west. South is to a plug for the Christmas tree, one for the tractor and then it heads through the pound yard into the chicken coop. To the west it feeds Crys* 5th wheel fiber studio and then on to a duplex RV plug. 

I borrowed a trencher. Never borrow a trencher. Rent one. Rent a good one. 

Monday and Tuesday I spent all day trenching. I finished up the initial digging Tuesday night about 5:30. Today I returned the lovely trencher, got some material and started making up and back filling. This was an early day, I finished up around 4 PM. Tomorrow I'll work on getting the power out the the chickens so we can quit using an inadequate set of extension cords to keep the waterer thawed. 

Man, I was totally beat Monday and Tuesday night. Yesterday afternoon while I was hauling out a boulder with a digging bar I fell and just laid there for a while convincing myself that it was worth getting up and getting back to it. :D I must be getting old. 

The good news is that now that is done. There are plenty of horsing the trencher stories, but for now I think I'll just enjoy this beer I have opened to celebrate.

Time off for Fall.

Hey! It's the first day of my vacation. The weather has turned here in El Valle. It didn't get over 25 today, cold blustery wind too. I got a little bit done. Mostly my play/work plans didn't pan out so I did other stuff. It was WAY too nipply outside to try to hang that errant piece of siding so I took some into the shed for a day it won't turn into a sail with me as the boat. My new trailer kit got delivered to my buds house, we'll start cleaning the garage space probably on Wednesday. Then I can get it put together and start sourcing the stuff I need to build the teardrop trailer body on it. I also get to pick up a trencher tomorrow. Might finally get some power run to the sheds and such. That'll make winter a lot more fun since we usually leave and arrive home in the dark during December/January.

There's a nice fire going in the wood stove and it's a toasty 73 here in the house. The woman oughta be getting home in another hour or so and we can settle down. I love being on vacation, no worries that the phone will ring in the wee hours and I'll go freeze my ass off pluggin fuses and tracing down outages.

Yep, didn't get much done today.... but we'll give 'er hell tomorrow.

And the next project is:

I'm ordering bits for my next project. I've decided to try building a teardrop trailer. I bought plans from this outfit: http://www.theteardroppers.com/ and we'll just see how I do. Apparently there is a line of folks to get one if the plan comes together. :D Isn't that always the case? I'll keep a list and make a log of what I've spent and what it costs to make the thing. That'll give me a good idea of how to quote a friend that wants me to HELP them build a trailer.

Winter planning.....

We're on a rainy day schedule again today. Got a few chores to do outside but we're not going to get our panties in a wad over it. So we're chillin, having some single malt to celebrate a friends birthday (he's joining via internet) and making plans.

I ordered a kit for tear drop trailers today online. It's the most basic and challenging one I could find. Now I'll see if I can figure it out and get it done. The website says it should take 40 hours or so to build. Maybe if my friend Marian lets me use her woodshop...... With any luck at least 3 of us will use the plans and share resources. We shall see how that works out. Sourcing the materials might be the hardest part. I'm sure I'll spend a bit on some of the harder bits. Maybe I'll take a week of vacation to do it. I got a week or two to burn.....

It's still really pretty and the longest, nicest fall we've had since I moved to the valley in '95.

Rainy day schedule

It's a quiet morning at the homestead. We woke up to rain, very welcome here in the high desert. Now we have kitties on the couch, warm Irish oatmeal, the wood stove warming it up and the sun working to peek through the overcast.

This weekends chores are replacing the soffit board on the South side of the house and re-racking 3 beers to the secondaries. I think we can handle that.

Today's project is the rustic table, lineman style

Built a table today on cut off dead trees, with crossarms and waste pieces of 3/4 plywood. Should be nice when the weather is good. :D

Beer and paintings.

This weekend we're watching our god-son Mason. We've been busy. :D He's a lot of fun. My new nick name for him is Random Jones.

I got three new beers brewed this weekend: Thundercookie Gingerbread Stout; Maple Sugar Porter; and Carmel Apple IPA. We bottled a porter that gave us some trouble fermenting and surprisingly ended up at 6%. While all that was going on we were hanging Crys*' paintings up on the OSB wall of the studio. That was was originally an outside wall and shows it even though we painted it. The really large paintings were ones she told me to throw out because they were too hard to store. As usual, I didn't listen.

SO, yesterday morning Crys* cleaned and sealed all the paintings, then we worked together to put them up. There were only a few we moved around on the wall, but that was fun too. As the studio progresses there will be shelves in front of the art work and they will be the back drop of our life as they always have been (though unseen).

In fact here's a celebratory pic:

Brewing and prepping

This weekend we'll do the initial boil on 3 beers for winter. A gingerbread stout, an apple IPA and a sugar maple porter. The stout is going now, and we're defrosting the fridge.

Defrosting the fridge you say? Yes. When one lives off grid and had a propane refrigerator it takes the occasional defrosting like in the old days :D. It's easier in the fall and winter, when we put the food out on the deck in coolers there's no rush to get it all done.

We're watching our god-son this weekend. He's 6 and currently watching some cartoons. He forgot to bring a coat so we won't be getting him outside for a while yet. But sometime this weekend his Tia will take him for a wild buggy ride.

We're also gonna try to get Crys*' big paintings from her art school days sealed and hung up in the studio so we can start making shelves for that space and get it to a useable condition. And I might try to make the outside stand-up bar down by the creek. I'll lineman the heck out of that, crossarms and all thread and big holes :D.

It's another good weekend. We plan to enjoy it till it's all gone.

Prettiest Fall so far.

This has been the prettiest fall since we moved out to the place. They've all had their beauty but this fall the nice weather is lasting into late October. The days are warm, the nights are chill and the evening skies are often clear for seeing the stars.

We've been remarkably productive, sometimes in spite of some lingering health "stuff" that tries to keep us down but doesn't quite manage. In addition to getting the deck sealed for winter we got the house all arranged for the cold season and company recently. As is usual it was prompted from someone being nice to us. A friend we're helping get ready for a big move gifted us a new coffee table, end tables and some wicker furniture. SO we re-arranged the living room and cleared out a bunch more stuff to fit the tables. The wicker is out on the deck for lounging. :D. The outside is all cleaned up and ready for snow as well. We even have a dry place to put our rick of wood for the first time ever. Last summer we picked up a nice little snow blower so perhaps my back won't go out shoveling the hundreds of feet out to the critters or keeping the decks cleaned off.

This weekend we'll get to watch our god-son and I'll brew up the 3 beer kits I ordered in. As is usual they're a little on the fancy side and we'll enjoy getting to try them around Christmas :D They do tend to make good presents.

Time to get up and poke the fire. It's only the 3rd one this year.

Since it wasn't going to do itself, we finished the deck.

This morning we are sitting under blankies, with computers and kitties. We're looking out on our 2 weekend project, the deck. It took 3 full on days of sanding. Not a little here and a little there but 14 hour days. :D The first weekend I sanded until dark on Friday night, then Saturday till 7:30 PM, then it rained for 5 days. We started up again Thursday night and sanded till dark again, started up Friday morning and went till dark and I finished the edges at 2:30 PM on Saturday. Crys* was staining like mad and I was trying to keep ahead of her yesterday. A friend of ours (who does not wish to be named here) helped out bringing us more toner and mineral spirits and pitching in on the application. The funny part? The deck wraps around the trailer so to get in and out we had to climb in and out of an open window by standing on some concrete blocks. :D We finished about 5:30 PM so we have today off. We have to keep using the window until at least this evening, so if you come out go around to the west side.

Eggrolls with the kiddo

Last weekend Autum and I decided to make eggrolls and three different dippinh sauces. She made all the sauces with my help on gathering ingredients. We had a hot mustard, sweet & sour, and a spicy soy sauce. They were all delicious! She helped me roll up the ingredients including cabbage, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, bean sprouts, and a touch of cream cheese. I fried them up in our fancy wok and we proceeded to feast. 

We've decided that we need to start posting more.

This is the year we hope to finish up lots of the stuff that we had to start and leave in limbo while we were building and settling in.

Thus far we are making really good progress in getting our shed finally gone through. Since we both had to move in a hurry and then had the summer/fall to build the place before we froze to death... many things were just thrown haphazardly into storage. That coupled with the amount of stuff that kept appearing for us to find a home for just lead to an entire building filled with way too much unorganized crap.

For 3 years we've been hauling out everything until we find what we need and then dumping it all back in to get to what needed to be done. This ended when I was putting new shocks on the car. I needed my spring compressors. I spend a day and a half looking for them because I'd already decided this would be the LAST time things got left in disarray.

It is now 2 weeks later and it's finally all getting put properly back together. Work and life gets priority, as we've decided nothing gets to get in the way of living from here on out. On the 1st weekend 43 boxes went to the trash. Crys* is now going through and listing for sale, 12 boxes of books. I'm going through my tools and categorizing everything for easier access later on. There's lots more room and we don't trip in there anymore. We hope to mostly finish up tomorrow.

That is all. Oh the critters are all good, and life is swell. :D

New Years Day 2014

New Years Day 2014, a photo by polyartgirl on Flickr.

An umeshu and champagne kind of day... We relaxed, cooked, and did a whole lotta nothing all day long.

Caprese lunch

IMG_0160, a photo by polyartgirl on Flickr.

I'm loving my new camera! This delicious light snack held us over while the lasagna cooked. I'm moving toward lighter foods and losing some more weight.

I believe a "diet" or whatever you want to call it, can be delicious and beautiful!