Projects Galore

You all know how Pat cannot keep from doing projects. He has been home for a few weeks and has had the opportunity to get a lot done! A week or so ago, he brought a selection on cabinets home from a certain drop off location. Yes, it was the dump. Anyway, they were outdated, but still solid, more than our current kitchen cabinets, so he brought them home. Yes, they are on our front porch. I know. High class. We know you want to be like us.


After a little bit of paint and Pat's penchant for doing things as well as possible, we put a couple cabinets together to form a type of hutch/cabinet for the bathroom. Since there is no storage in the bathroom, this works so much nicer than my shower curtain-covered shelf-over-a-shoe-storage-thing. I couldn't take a picture of that part of the before. It was just too frightening.

Gosh, it looks so nice in there! It's much nicer to open a door to access supplies rather than lift a shower curtain and search through a cubbyhole.

Oh, there's much more!
A few days back, Pat started the project of the stairs to eliminate the ladder of death to access the loft in the garage. He's been diligently progressing on the project, and it came along very well.




The finished product has been a gorgeous sight to behold! He did a great job and the steps have the grating to prevent snow/ice from building up. He was quite the carpenter and made several difficult corners. I think his Grandad would be proud.
While Pat was preparing his steps, I got going on a few of my own. Beware of starting gardening projects. They grow, too! I guess I should've watered less. Actually, it was a fun project of creating a much needed path of steps down our yard.

We plan on continuing the terracing all the way back to the tree in the background. That tree will be gone soon as well. Cottonwoods are not our friends. We love the tree we planted. It is a Thompson Blue Spruce, a dwarf variety, that won't get over 8 feet or so. We got it to commemorate our 7th anniversary! Speaking of that, those stairs mentioned above were used that night to take me to "Frank's Steak House." After dancing, we had a marvelous moose steak dinner with some fabulous ambiance! Alas, Frank's seems to have disappeared as many restaurants do. At least the tree will be here a while!

Spring Bear, 2009

Today I went out to a popular hiking destination with our Youth Pastor, Jeremy. I had hoped to see a black bear, but wasn't really counting on it. We hiked up Fuller Lakes trail and planned on fishing for Arctic Grayling. Upon our arrival, we spoke with some Jr. High boys who had camped and they told us of a bear they had seen the night before and that morning across the lake. We fished for Grayling as we kept our eyes on the mountain side, hoping the bear would appear while feeding on the fresh spring grasses. After 20 minutes of slow fishing, we decided to head up the trail and expand our bear viewing. When we reached the other end of the lake, I saw a black dot way up on the hillside. I put my binoculars on the black dot and identified it as a black bear, so we continued on the trail, knowing the trail would bring us closer to the bear.

We got as close as we could using the main trail, and I used a laser range finder to determine that the bear was just over 400 yards away. The wind was in our favor and the bear had not detected our presence, so I headed down into the marsh towards it to close the distance. I got as close as I was comfortable and ranged him at 302 yards. Using a small spruce to steady my aim, I put the 300 yard mark on the bear's shoulder and touched the trigger. My 7MM Magnum barked but the bear didn't respond to the shot. He stood motionless looking in my direction, apparently uninjured. I jacked another shell into the chamber and again did my best to steady the crosshairs on his shoulder. This time, the rifle's report was followed by a satisfying thud. My handloaded Barnes Triple-shock bullet found it's mark and down he went, tumbling down the hillside.

We bushwacked through the alders to get up to the area in which the bear had stopped rolling. I knew right away that this was a large bear. I was relieved to find him there, dead. After taking photographs, we began the arduous task of skinning and de-boning the bear. We packed him down, 2 miles to the car.
In Alaska, you have to have the bear registered by a taxidermist, so we stopped by our guy and had him tagged. A bear's skull is measured by adding its length and width. For a comparison, the bears we've taken in the past, the skulls measure 14". This bear's skull measured 18 13/16". The hide measured 6' square, the average of lenth and width. An interesting note about this bear, he has a beautiful white "V" on his chest. We estimated the live weight to be 300 lbs. Keep in mind, the bear had just come out of the den and his fat reserves were depleted.

Oh, and Jeremy packed out the 75lbs of meat that this bruin provided!

WARNING! Following photograph not intended for young viewers. Proceed at own risk.

Monday Maintenance

OK, this actually happened yesterday, but it's close enough.

Yes, that is me down on the dolly. I told my husband that I would like to learn how to change the oil in our car. He's been working pretty solid the last few weeks, so I haven't had to give in to that request. I say these things, and I'm not altogether sure that I mean them. He finally finished this hitch of work this weekend, and we stopped by NAPA on the way home from church! Oh joy. I must admit, that as unsure as I was about this project, God had really blessed me this particular Sunday and I felt more confident and adventurous as ever! Today was the day. We made it home and promptly took a 45 minute nap that somehow lasted 2 hours. I normally do not function well after a nap that long. Again, God was blessing me yesterday and after a few groggy minutes of walking the dogs, I was awake and ready to tackle the oil change.

My fabulous husband got me set up with the car up on jacks and showed me where to unplug the oil pan. I took the socket wrench and rolled up under and proceeded to turn the plug. Nothing really happened. It turned, mind you, but never loosened. I alerted my love of the situation and he took a turn on the wrench as well. Same result. We then discovered that there was a nut in a bolt type thing that was the plug. The plug was eventually removed and the draining commenced. It commenced for a long time and looked a bit odd. After a large amount of fluid and time passed, it finally stopped and my stud-man took a look at it. He also noticed the odd coloring. Once he examined the fluid closer, he realized that it was indeed transmission fluid. We had successfully drained all the transmission fluid from the car. Oh dear. Perhaps that 2 hour nap did more damage than we thought.

When I realized that my honey thought it was a bit funny, I relaxed and we enjoyed the laugh! We refilled the transmission fluid through his ingenious funnel Macguyvering and proceeded to find the correct plug for the oil and, yes, I changed the oil in the car! It was not difficult, though I appreciated the loosening of the plugs and filter beforehand. What should have been a 45 minute to an hour job took several hours and we got very dirty. I was glad I put on a pair of my husbands Carharts. I felt pretty proud of myself by the end of it all. It was a fine end to a fabulous day.

I am so thankful for a husband who is willing to show me how to do things, and then have the humility to laugh when he's made a mistake! I enjoyed the opportunity to share with him more of the life lessons he has taught me and how his examples have helped me to mature and grow in the Lord. I am so blessed. I am a huge receiver of God's grace. I certainly don't deserve any bit of it.

GREENS!

I didn't want anyone to falsely believe that our home is lifeless or bland. We are greening up nicely, though large scale pictures don't reveal it. I thought I'd share some of the greens that are showing up all over!

Unfortunately, the above photo is our "lawn." Fortunately, it's only the front! It's a bit mossy which is a common theme around our yard this time of year especially.

Breakup!

Rowdy is certain it is here! Yes! Break Up is here! Actually, it's been here for a couple weeks, but in the last week we have seen most of our snow melt. Three feet of snow melting in a week makes for lots of water and slush. Never fear, however, we will have snow for a while yet.

This bank in front of the house has a ways to go. That's the one that came in over the railing to the door. The sun is out for forever now, so it won't take long for that to be in the sun and melt away. Note the drainage system we have in place below. It is highly complicated, so please don't try that at home. It's taken hours to perfect.

Kennel Progress!

Pat has been home the last few days and has completed a couple projects, among which is this kennel floor! We had discussed options for the flooring of the kennel and had not looked forward to hauling rock. Pat had a genius idea of making a deck of sorts with plywood. Upon inspection of our project piles, he discovered this tongue-in-groove siding that was given to us. He had enough to make a nice sized deck over the mud and muck, and the dogs love it!


The mountain is still steaming, but nothing new. It's been gorgeous! This one is courtesy of Pat's photo skills!

Steaming

These are actually my pictures, for once! Yesterday was a gorgeous day, so on my way to work, I stopped and enjoyed the view. Redoubt is still mostly just spewing steam but that will likely change at any point. I am also excited that there is a patch of lawn visible!!! We still have tons of snow, but it is shrinking and becoming more and more slushy. In light of the soon to be diminished walk across our water, we have considered getting a treadmill...for the dogs!

cleaning the chimney, wood fired radiant heat

I finally cleaned the chimney this week. I had been dreading the job because I assumed I would have to climb up on the roof, build a scaffold, climb a ladder and risk my life or spend untold hundreds of dollars to have it done. After all, the point of the stove was mainly to save money. As you can see, I decided to remove a section of pipe from the inside and clean it that way.
This worked perfectly. I can not believe how clean and efficient our wood stove is. In the eight plus cords of wood we have burned this year, we have generated only enough soot in the pipe to fill a coffee cup twice. (I used Melissa's coffee cup to find that out). The ash taken out of the stove in that time was only enough to fill a five gallon bucked twice. The beetle killed spruce that we burn is not the best fire wood but it sure burns clean in my stove!


As you can see, we put a trash bag around the pipe and fished the cleaning rod up through a slit in the bag. The bag caught all the soot and the pipe was very easy to re-install.

Below is a picture of the heat exchanger that I built. It heats water that is circulated through tubes affixed under the floor of the bathroom. This heats the bathroom floor (radiant heat). There is much more to the exchanger than just a steel box, but if you want to know more you'll have to download the plans from my internet site.......someday.
As you can see, there is a pipe bringing water in and another taking water out. A third pipe is for pressure relief in the event of a boil over. It has a temp. and pressure valve on the end like the one on a home hot water tank. On the back of the stove I mounted an aqua-stat that tells a circulation pump when there is a fire in the stove. At a set temp. the pump kicks on and the floor heating begins.





Here is my circ. pump located under the house directly below the stove. The pump is on the out going line, the incoming line can be seen above it. I added valves on the lines that can be turned off so the hot water can be diverted to a temporary line to thaw a walkway or something neat like that.

The point of this project was not only to heat the bathroom floor, but to learn about radiant heat and experiment with the use of wood fire in this capacity. There is more to it than you might think. Ratio of volume to exposure time, engineering the heat exchanger to heat the water without overheating, installing the lines so they will radiate heat into the floor efficiently and insulating pipes and lines to minimize heat loss. This of course took some experimenting, but after only two boil overs that spilled anti-freeze into the living room, it works wonderfully and I have already generated some potential work for my welding business.

Relationship Insights

I got this email from a friend of mine and after reading it to Pat, I had to share. It cracked us up! The parenthetical extras were there and not written by me, though I do agree with them! Enjoy a random post!

HOW DO YOU DECIDE WHO TO MARRY? (written by kids)
You got to find somebody who likes the same stuff. Like, if you like sports, she should like it that you like sports and she should keep the chips and dip coming.
-- Alan, age 10

No person really decides before they grow up who they're going to marry. God decides it all way before and you get to find out later who you're stuck with.
-- Kristen, age 10

WHAT IS THE RIGHT AGE TO GET MARRIED?
Twenty-three is the best age because you know the person FOREVER by then.
-- Camille, age 10

HOW CAN A STRANGER TELL IF TWO PEOPLE ARE MARRIED?
You might have to guess, based on whether they seem to be yelling at the same kids.
-- Derrick, age 8

WHAT DO YOU THINK YOUR MOM AND DAD HAVE IN COMMON?
Both don't want any more kids.
-- Lori, age 8

WHAT DO MOST PEOPLE DO ON A DATE?
Dates are for having fun, and people should use them to get to know each other. Even boys have something to say if you listen long enough.
-- Lynnette, age 8 (isn't she a treasure?)

On the first date, they just tell each other lies and that usually gets them interested enough to go for a second date.
-- Martin, age 10 (isn't he ready for the world of dating?)

WHAT WOULD YOU DO ON A FIRST DATE THAT WAS TURNING SOUR?
I'd run home and play dead. The next day I would call all the newspapers and make sure they wrote about me in all the dead columns.
-- Craig, age 9

WHEN IS IT OKAY TO KISS SOMEONE?
When they're rich.
-- Pam, age 7

The law says you have to be eighteen, so I wouldn't want to mess with that.
-- Curt, age 7

The rule goes like this: If you kiss someone, then you should marry them and have kids with them. It's the right thing to do.
-- Howard, age 8

IS IT BETTER TO BE SINGLE OR MARRIED ?
It's better for girls to be single but not for boys. Boys need someone to clean up after them.
-- Anita, age 9 (bless you child)

HOW WOULD THE WORLD BE DIFFERENT IF PEOPLE DIDN'T GET MARRIED?
There sure would be a lot of kids to explain, wouldn't there?
-- Kelvin, age 8 (I like this kid)

And the #1 Favorite is ...

HOW WOULD YOU MAKE A MARRIAGE WORK?
Tell your wife that she looks pretty, even if she looks like a truck.
-- Ricky, age 10 (He'll be married forever)

Blowing steam

No, I didn't take this picture either! Thank goodness for the AVO pictures! I did convince Pat to take the long way home from the Nikiski Hardware Store so I could get a glimpse from the perfectly clear sky of Redoubt blowing more steam. I didn't have the camera, of course. Maybe tomorrow I'll remember the camera and either on our way to or from church we'll get another perfect view!
I've been back to work this week, and even though our weather is still wintery (we got more than 2 inches of new snow), there is still a hint of breakup! No, we don't call it spring. That is too positive sounding. Breakup is a much more accurate description of the season. I actually find myself a bit hesitant to give up our frozen pond. It is our ticket to the back woods! I don't know exactly what I'll do with the dogs when we can no longer walk across the pond. I guess we'll just do what we did last year...whatever that was.
Pat continues to work. I think he'll be back on the barge this week. It's not the best gig, but it could be worse. We are just thankful he's still working. It is nice that he comes home every night. I have adjusted my schedule to hopefully make it home before he does! Sometimes it even works!
The dogs are driving me crazy. Bella is nearing her next heat cycle and Rowdy is...well, he's acting accordingly. I think later this week she'll go outside for a few weeks!
I don't have any new pictures. Things look pretty much the same: white. The snow has piled up against the front door, but is melting a bit on the south side. Oh, it did get to 90 degrees today in the greenhouse! I ran out and stood in it for a while. It was lovely. I think it was somewhere above freezing, but less than 40. I just wish I could fast-forward to June when it's all green. Ah well, the joys of Alaska!

Ashfall

This is what round one has looked like. Pretty tame. I'm so thankful that it hasn't been worse. It is definitely coarse and grainy stuff. I imagine all the dark bits will help our snow melt when it's time!

These pictures show the ash cloud over our house. It looks a little like a raincloud. Actually, it looks a lot like a raincloud! In the picture above, you can see the blue at the treeline. It was a bit eerie! The thunder was really crazy! What an amazing thing to hear thunder from the volcanic clouds!

This is not a sample from a corian chip or granite piece! This is a close-up of the snow with the ash in it! The picture below is ash on the roof of our house. It looks like a dusting of snow, but it's not! Redoubt keeps blowing, so I don't know if it's going to be like this for months off and on like 20 years ago or if it will be a shorter run. I hope it's a shorter run!

Before the Blow...

Before Redoubt erupted, Pat took me on a date to the beach! It was a gorgeous evening! Yes, it looks like the middle of the day, but it was about 5:30pm. We parked and had a 1/4 mile walk down to the beach. The sky was clear and the mountains were perfect.

When we got down there, we found the ice was pushed up on the beach. We scouted a place to climb down to beach level. The dogs were a little wary of that drop!

Ice caves are fun!

The dogs loved running around and playing on the beach! I think they would have loved it if they would have discovered any other critters out there!

Rowdy seemed interested in the water, so Pat threw a chunk of ice out there to see if he'd retrieve it. Poor dog! He tried to figure out how to do it, but it just didn't work. He seemed just fine in the water, even though it would put us into hypothermia in seconds! Somehow we never looked across to Redoubt, but the big mountain on the right that goes out of the picture is another volcano, Mt. Spur. I think it is much more impressive, and I laugh when people think it is Mt. McKinley. I don't tell them anything, as I'd rather they believe they've seen the "Big One!"

Yesterday, Pat came home and had a little surprise for me! He hid out in his new shop and in support of my March Madness Addiction, he brought in this fabulous gift! I love it! For a guy who really couldn't care less about it, he sure is sweet in supporting my interests!

Redoubt

Here is an accurate picture of what happened yesterday. We were unable to see anything due to the cloudy weather.

Fortunately, none of this ash fall came near us. This is not a black and white photo - at least the camera was not in that mode! I'm glad for the lack of ash if it changes the landscape so drearily, among other reasons!

Thar She Blows!

He looks at the earth, and it trembles; He touches the mountains, and they smoke.
Psalm 104:32

Yes, it has begun to erupt! Fortunately, we are not currently in the ashfall area and have not had any adverse affect from the eruption. It is likely to continue, so we are not out of the woods yet, but I'm excited to have the sun come up and get more information! I want to see it! I choose to think of this as an amazing display of Creation!