Yesterday our handyman finally completed the drywall project he started about a month ago. The wife is a very tired of having to hang around the house while he was working, and I just wanted to be able to use the room again.
It's a weight-lifting and storage room, so all that stuff had to be moved out of there while he was working on it. We had moved it into the downstairs guest bedroom for the duration of the project. But we have visitors arriving for Thanksgiving who will need to use the guest bedroom. The guest bed is currently being blocked by stacks of storage boxes. I will need to move those out of the way tomorrow, so that our guest will have a place to sleep.
The drywalling is done, but there are a few items that still need to be taken care of, like finish carpentry and a couple of touch-ups near electrical outlets.
Also there is some work under the crawlspace that needs to be completed, but that can wait.
An advertisement-free blog about motorcycling, Northern life, home improvement, power plants, submarines, nuclear stuff, and a few other off-beat subjects. Comments are welcome. (Image is the Selway Crags in Northern Idaho)
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Sunday, November 18, 2012
Texture and Paint
As I type this, our handyman should be two-coating the big room in the basement, and finishing the majority of the project. Here he is on Friday night, finishing up the texture.
There will be a few things remaining to do, such as texture and paint the closet, install the closet door, and have the electrical outlets connected. Also the crawl-space area is not finished. But the month-long project is nearing completion finally!
Just in time for family to arrive at Thanksgiving! We now have to quickly move a bunch of storage boxes from the guest bedroom, back into this storage room. And clean house. Ugh.
Just in time for family to arrive at Thanksgiving! We now have to quickly move a bunch of storage boxes from the guest bedroom, back into this storage room. And clean house. Ugh.
Monday, November 12, 2012
Veteran's Day Honors
Grace's school sent home a note a couple of weeks ago, stating that they would like to honor any veteran parents who would like to attend a Veteran's Day event they were holding. Grace asked me to come to the event, and so I told her that I would.
Today was the day that they held an assembly. There were 3 rows of chairs at one end of the gymnasium, at which several parents were seated.
In California and Oregon, kids are let out of school for Veteran's Day. Here's how it goes in Idaho.
I sat in one of the empty chairs, and as Grace's class filed in, she came and sat with me.
The High School band came to Grace's Elementary School to play. A Cub Scout color guard marched in with the US and State flags and set them in their holders. The band played the National Anthem.
Next, Veterans of each military branch were asked to stand as the band played each service hymn. I hadn't heard "Anchors Aweigh" in decades. Afterwards, we were each in turn asked to stand up, state our name, branch of military, and dates of service. Then the band played a few more hymns.
Toward the end of the ceremony, a pastor gave a brief speech and asked for the children to raise their hands if they knew what happens during a war. He selected one girl, who said, "People shoot at each other and die." He said that was correct. Then he told the children that each one of us had sworn an oath to uphold the constitution, even to death. And that was the purpose of Veteran's Day.
After that, the entire school, and the high school band stood up and clapped for the handful of us vets seated at the end of the gymnasium. It was very, very humbling. And it was a lot different than having Grace out of school for one Monday in November.
Today was the day that they held an assembly. There were 3 rows of chairs at one end of the gymnasium, at which several parents were seated.
In California and Oregon, kids are let out of school for Veteran's Day. Here's how it goes in Idaho.
I sat in one of the empty chairs, and as Grace's class filed in, she came and sat with me.
The High School band came to Grace's Elementary School to play. A Cub Scout color guard marched in with the US and State flags and set them in their holders. The band played the National Anthem.
Next, Veterans of each military branch were asked to stand as the band played each service hymn. I hadn't heard "Anchors Aweigh" in decades. Afterwards, we were each in turn asked to stand up, state our name, branch of military, and dates of service. Then the band played a few more hymns.
Toward the end of the ceremony, a pastor gave a brief speech and asked for the children to raise their hands if they knew what happens during a war. He selected one girl, who said, "People shoot at each other and die." He said that was correct. Then he told the children that each one of us had sworn an oath to uphold the constitution, even to death. And that was the purpose of Veteran's Day.
After that, the entire school, and the high school band stood up and clapped for the handful of us vets seated at the end of the gymnasium. It was very, very humbling. And it was a lot different than having Grace out of school for one Monday in November.
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Power Dieting
I started a diet on October 1st. In about 40 days I have lost 27 lbs. As of today I am officially no longer Obese according to the Body Mass Index. Here is a BMI calculator. I anticipate being to my goal weight some time around New Year's. At that point I will begin eating more and lifting weights again.
I have a very effective diet that I have used in the past to shed weight rapidly. It's a combination of fasting and Low Carb. The thinking goes like this: I can eat a negligible amount of food since I have plenty of body fat to burn that will provide energy for essential bodily functions.
There is an energy balance in the body. Basically calories eaten minus calories burned = weight gain or loss. What most people don't realize is that exercise doesn't affect this equation very much! The largest part of the minus side of the equation is called BMR, or Basal Metabolic Rate. Here is a BMR calculator. My BMR is about 2100 calories a day, with no exercise at all. If I were to add a mile of jogging at 5 mph, I would only burn an additional 100 calories. That's all, an additional 100 calories! So clearly controlling diet is FAR more important than exercising at this stage.
To be blunt, you need a lot of your body to be active muscle mass for exercise to be an effective way to burn calories. At this point, I am mostly bones, organs and body fat, not muscle! Here's another thing people don't realize. It's not a good idea to try to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time. Building muscle requires an excess of carbs and protien - the same things (combined with inactivity) that causes people to get fat in the first place!!! So... first we lose the fat, then adopt a program of eating right and exercising.
Back to my aggressive diet though... When I get hungry, I initially try to avoid taking in calories, either by drinking coffee, a low-carb energy drink, or a diet soda. When the hunger gets too great or I get a splitting headache, I will either have a protien drink (160 calories), an ounce of cheese (110 calories), or a couple of hot dogs without the bun (200 calories). Rinse and repeat. I am burning off 4-5 lbs each week. One caveat: I am religious about eating a multivitamin and a fish oil pill whenever I am doing this, because I am certainly not incorporating all the essential nutrients in my diet.
Some folks would probably say that it's dangerous to diet this way. I would like them to explain that scientifically. The last time I was on this diet, I had a full set of blood work done. My triglycerides were excellent, my cholesteral was normal, although a the LDP/HDP was a little high and the doctor recommended I eat some stuff containing good cholesterol. I think he specifially mentioned adding nuts to my diet.
So there. Actually I really enjoy the challenge of dropping weight, even if I don't feel very energetic or 100% mentally acute. It's the enjoyment of tracking my progress and having clothes fit again that brings its own set of rewards.
Then too, I am also looking forward to eating like a horse and exercising like one!
I have a very effective diet that I have used in the past to shed weight rapidly. It's a combination of fasting and Low Carb. The thinking goes like this: I can eat a negligible amount of food since I have plenty of body fat to burn that will provide energy for essential bodily functions.
There is an energy balance in the body. Basically calories eaten minus calories burned = weight gain or loss. What most people don't realize is that exercise doesn't affect this equation very much! The largest part of the minus side of the equation is called BMR, or Basal Metabolic Rate. Here is a BMR calculator. My BMR is about 2100 calories a day, with no exercise at all. If I were to add a mile of jogging at 5 mph, I would only burn an additional 100 calories. That's all, an additional 100 calories! So clearly controlling diet is FAR more important than exercising at this stage.
To be blunt, you need a lot of your body to be active muscle mass for exercise to be an effective way to burn calories. At this point, I am mostly bones, organs and body fat, not muscle! Here's another thing people don't realize. It's not a good idea to try to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time. Building muscle requires an excess of carbs and protien - the same things (combined with inactivity) that causes people to get fat in the first place!!! So... first we lose the fat, then adopt a program of eating right and exercising.
Back to my aggressive diet though... When I get hungry, I initially try to avoid taking in calories, either by drinking coffee, a low-carb energy drink, or a diet soda. When the hunger gets too great or I get a splitting headache, I will either have a protien drink (160 calories), an ounce of cheese (110 calories), or a couple of hot dogs without the bun (200 calories). Rinse and repeat. I am burning off 4-5 lbs each week. One caveat: I am religious about eating a multivitamin and a fish oil pill whenever I am doing this, because I am certainly not incorporating all the essential nutrients in my diet.
Some folks would probably say that it's dangerous to diet this way. I would like them to explain that scientifically. The last time I was on this diet, I had a full set of blood work done. My triglycerides were excellent, my cholesteral was normal, although a the LDP/HDP was a little high and the doctor recommended I eat some stuff containing good cholesterol. I think he specifially mentioned adding nuts to my diet.
So there. Actually I really enjoy the challenge of dropping weight, even if I don't feel very energetic or 100% mentally acute. It's the enjoyment of tracking my progress and having clothes fit again that brings its own set of rewards.
Then too, I am also looking forward to eating like a horse and exercising like one!
More Drywall, plus Elk
Drywall and Elk don't have much in common, other than Drywall is ongoing in my life, and I spotted a few Elk on the way home from work today :)
Latest on the big basement room - Tape is done, and mud is going on:
Tiny herd of elk. Poor lighting conditions, large distance, and using a Blackberry camera from a moving vehicle. Meh.
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Drywall
The drywall job is not moving along as quickly as I had been led to believe. Our handyman has himself spread pretty thin and so he has had to take care of several smaller jobs. I'm OK with the waiting because he is doing the job right and also has tackled some other issues he found in the crawlspace.
Here is a picture of the progress though. The room is entirely drywalled now and it will be taped and mudded today.
Here is a picture of the progress though. The room is entirely drywalled now and it will be taped and mudded today.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Organizing and Framing Up
So, between shopping for a car, fixing hydraulic leaks on the new (used) tractor, working, and entertaining visitors, I've not accomplished much around the house until this past week. But it's coming along again.
I managed to clean all the rain gutters. I assume this was the first time they've been cleaned since I found roofing nails and bits of shingles in them. I also repaired a seam in one of the rain gutters that was dripping onto the deck and ruining the eave.
I had a 5KW garage heater installed, because we store canned goods in the garage, and I'm not sure how well the garage refrigerator would work when the ambient temperature got lower than the temperature I want my food kept at. So I set the thermostat for forty degrees. I hope that works out!
And lately I have been (finally) trying to get the shop a little bit more organized. It's a huge process, because half of what's in the shop either doesn't belong there, or needs some storage. However I have made a start! I wanted to begin by setting up my workbench and organizing the tools somewhat.
Before:
I managed to clean all the rain gutters. I assume this was the first time they've been cleaned since I found roofing nails and bits of shingles in them. I also repaired a seam in one of the rain gutters that was dripping onto the deck and ruining the eave.
I had a 5KW garage heater installed, because we store canned goods in the garage, and I'm not sure how well the garage refrigerator would work when the ambient temperature got lower than the temperature I want my food kept at. So I set the thermostat for forty degrees. I hope that works out!
And lately I have been (finally) trying to get the shop a little bit more organized. It's a huge process, because half of what's in the shop either doesn't belong there, or needs some storage. However I have made a start! I wanted to begin by setting up my workbench and organizing the tools somewhat.
Before:
After:
For the record, I am NOT a fan of pimped-out, polished diamond deck cabinets for my crap. I think that's a relic of the housing boom easy-money years. I'm miffed that I can no longer buy cheapie cabinets like these - just eye candy that costs 10 times as much. Thanks a lot, you Martha Stewart shop rats.
Lastly, there is a big 15x30 foot room in the basement that we are having finished. The exterior walls were not framed, so that is in progress. After the electrician addes a few outlets to these new frames, the drywall can go on.
This will be a storage/exercise room after we have it completed. I would have tackled this job myself, since I think I have the skills to get it done. However, between work and the holidays, we would be halfway through 2013 before I would have managed to get it completed. Instead, I hired the job out, so it will be completed in another week.
We want to paint the new walls, coat the floor with an epoxy, and add baseboards like so...
...and then FINALLY get all these boxes out of the garage! Ugh!
September-October Update, Part 2
The summer and fall seasons here, like much of the nation, were very very dry. Up here in the forest, drought has more serious consequences than a lost crop. If the dry forest catches fire, it can easily burn your home to the ground.
In fact, there were a couple of nasty lighning-sparked forest fires upwind of us in the Okanagan and Cascades. Most of the summer was miserable with smoke from fires over 200 miles away from us! Nasty air...
In fact, there were a couple of nasty lighning-sparked forest fires upwind of us in the Okanagan and Cascades. Most of the summer was miserable with smoke from fires over 200 miles away from us! Nasty air...
Because of the drought, I became worried enough about how close several trees were to the house. The recommendation is to clear trees for 30 feet, and to thin them out to 100 feet. So I got going with the chainsaw. I now need to re-sharpen the chain and remove the fallen trees.
We grew a tomato plant this summer from a small seedling. It grew a lot of tomatoes, but they weren't ripening quickly enough to get any before the first frost would arrive. We put the plant on a roller cart and started bringing it into the garage each night. As a result, it was able to provide us with some wonderfully tasty tomatoes, and it still has a few ripening up!
Autumn arrived, and the fall colors have been beautiful. I haven't had the opportunity to stop and take a picture of any of the aspen groves around here, but I did take a couple of the tamarack pines on the property. I never knew any pine trees turned yellow and lost their leaves...
September-October Update, Part 1
I see it's been a while since I've posted anything here. It's not that there isn't anything to post, but that life has been a bit full lately!
One of the big items we had to take care of recently was getting a new car for Corie. She has never driven in the snow in her life, and I felt the need to get her an All Wheel Drive (AWD) vehicle before we get snow that sticks. In addition, the old Explorer was having some issues that would be expensive to correct. The differential was howling, and a damper inside the dash had come loose from its hinge. The damper didn't reliably direct hot air onto the windshield, so the defroster would become a huge issue in the winter.
So we spent a lot of my days off in September and October test-driving new cars. We also spent a great deal of time researching. We test drove a Kia Sportage and Sorento, Ford Edge and Explorer, a Honda CR-V and Pilot, a Mazda CX-9, and a Dodge Durango. We were almost ready to buy a Durango, when Corie spotted a Dodge Journey.
The Durango is a little bigger and taller, and felt a bit beefier. However, it was based on a truck chassis and therefore was heavy and needed a larger engine. We decided on the Journey over the Durango, primarily because of its better mileage and lower price. Otherwise they were quite similar.
The dealership was trying to get rid of their last 2012 models, and so we got a great deal on a loaded R/T model. It has way more gadgetry than any car I've ever owned, and it's the first new vehicle I've ever owned. All the functions are accessed from a touch screen, which I find distracting. On the bright side, it has a slot for a thumb drive, so you can play your own music.
I'ts not a color I would have picked out, given more choices (metal flake black, LOL), but it works. Life is full of compromises :)
One of the big items we had to take care of recently was getting a new car for Corie. She has never driven in the snow in her life, and I felt the need to get her an All Wheel Drive (AWD) vehicle before we get snow that sticks. In addition, the old Explorer was having some issues that would be expensive to correct. The differential was howling, and a damper inside the dash had come loose from its hinge. The damper didn't reliably direct hot air onto the windshield, so the defroster would become a huge issue in the winter.
So we spent a lot of my days off in September and October test-driving new cars. We also spent a great deal of time researching. We test drove a Kia Sportage and Sorento, Ford Edge and Explorer, a Honda CR-V and Pilot, a Mazda CX-9, and a Dodge Durango. We were almost ready to buy a Durango, when Corie spotted a Dodge Journey.
The Durango is a little bigger and taller, and felt a bit beefier. However, it was based on a truck chassis and therefore was heavy and needed a larger engine. We decided on the Journey over the Durango, primarily because of its better mileage and lower price. Otherwise they were quite similar.
The dealership was trying to get rid of their last 2012 models, and so we got a great deal on a loaded R/T model. It has way more gadgetry than any car I've ever owned, and it's the first new vehicle I've ever owned. All the functions are accessed from a touch screen, which I find distracting. On the bright side, it has a slot for a thumb drive, so you can play your own music.
I'ts not a color I would have picked out, given more choices (metal flake black, LOL), but it works. Life is full of compromises :)
Monday, September 03, 2012
Timber Terror!
I had 2.5 days off, and they (yet again) were full. On Thursday afternoon before going to work, I mowed the lawn. Afterwards I tried to mow the massive long weeds along the driveway, but eventually the big rocks broke my lawn mower and the blades quit working :(
Friday we cleaned house in preparation for visitors from Hermiston. Saturday we entertained our visitors, and the kids really had a great time, while we chatted with the parents.
Sunday was church, followed by a trip to Silverwood Theme park. Grace told me that she wanted to go on the "Timber Terror" Rollercoaster. It's clear that she had no idea what she was getting herself into, because she was terrified after the first drop... She was close to bursting into tears, but she held it together! Now she can brag about it, but I don't think she will be getting on a coaster again anytime soon.
After that we stuck with the log ride and shot rubber balls at the Battlezone boats :) It was fun because she could fire shots at the plexiglass right in front of the boat driver's face, hahaha! And in turn he could fire a little water cannon back at her. Good stuff!
We had a pretty good day, and that's as much fun as I've had in a while!
Friday we cleaned house in preparation for visitors from Hermiston. Saturday we entertained our visitors, and the kids really had a great time, while we chatted with the parents.
Sunday was church, followed by a trip to Silverwood Theme park. Grace told me that she wanted to go on the "Timber Terror" Rollercoaster. It's clear that she had no idea what she was getting herself into, because she was terrified after the first drop... She was close to bursting into tears, but she held it together! Now she can brag about it, but I don't think she will be getting on a coaster again anytime soon.
After that we stuck with the log ride and shot rubber balls at the Battlezone boats :) It was fun because she could fire shots at the plexiglass right in front of the boat driver's face, hahaha! And in turn he could fire a little water cannon back at her. Good stuff!
We had a pretty good day, and that's as much fun as I've had in a while!
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