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.