Somehow I lost the idea of writing in the ‘Alaska or Bust’ site. Could chalk it up to some sort of senile psychosis or absent mindedness or, maybe, just plain old too busy to work on it. Truth is I’ve been posting on my Fakebook account and failing to put it on our WordPress site. I’m going to try to find and post those in their proper order. Like Curly says, “It couldn’t hurt”.
Here in Fritz Creek, I have been leveling the house over several months. Getting the house level means being able to do the redo kitchen and install the missing sheetrock. The house is tenable but unfinished inside. The leveling has been a hit or miss proposition. Seems everything has been getting in the way of the house leveling progress. First was procuring, cutting, splitting firewood and stacking 6 cords of wood. All of this took over two weeks. During all of the wood processing we put up two tents for the firewood. Then a big tent with as storage for all of the stuff that we probably shouldn’t own or likely really don’t need. I had to put a 14’x24′ wooden deck down for this tent, to make sure out useless possessions weren’t lying in the mud or snow. This ate up over a week, if you include the tent construction. Following the construction of the tent came shelving to hold all of the stuff we don’t need and then a few more days of moving said useless items. That project finished the next impediment was nearly two weeks of rain that turned the underneath of the house into a mud pit.
The trek through the myriad of side tracks both noted and unwritten took months. The side tracks took me to places I really didn’t want to go. However, in the past several days, I have managed to get some work done in the leveling process. I moved about a half ton of concrete blocks and raised the house off the pilings. The pilings have been cut to the new level. I installed some of the jack posts to be able to lower the house to its’ new home. Need to install three more jack posts before the lowering can commence. Now only about a week from finishing the process, my blood pressure has gone crazy. It has been running above 200/100 for days. Doctor said I should refrain from heavy labor until he could get some tests and reduce the pressure. SIDETRACKED AGAIN. I am beginning to believe that the house is causing all of these sidetracks just to keep me from put it where it belongs.
The ducks, geese and a couple of chickens have been cohabiting the greenhouse. The arrangement went along pretty well for a couple of months. THEN the goose gander decided he didn’t like the drake duck. He pulled, virtually, every feather out of the poor duck’s body and left him a bleeding mess that died. A day or two later the gander attacked the rooster. I heard the racket and intervened. It appears that the gander just went stir crazy from being confined. Finally, we just opened the door and made it possible for them to go outside. This seems to have solved the ‘stir crazy’ problem as the ducks and chickens were able to go outside. It was several days before the geese decided that it was safe to go outside. The upshot is that peace in the greenhouse has been restored. At least, temporarily.
Summer had me put a couple of shelves in the house windows facing the southeast and south. She has a bunch of seeds and she spent a couple of hours putting dirt and seeds into trays. She got a late start last spring and her gardening efforts didn’t pay off. This year she is putting a lot of extra effort into the gardening, in addition to starting much earlier.
Another sidetrack was that our Pasquali tractor (built in Italy) broke an axle last fall. The factory no longer supports the tractor. I spent hours on the internet trying to find parts. The only person who seemed to sell the parts does not return calls. Then, just by the purest of accidents, I found one locally that wasn’t in running condition. Fortunately, it did have the parts I needed. THEN it started snowing and snowing and snowing until the snow was half way up the wheels on the tractor. That project now awaits the melting snow and warmer weather.
Today after three calls to the doctor’s office and three to the Imaging Department of the local hospital I was able to confirm an appointment for a scan of my kidneys. I’m not a fan of the medical industry. Mostly because they scare the crap out of me. The doctors seem to work mostly off of experience. What concerns me is that when I used to hire people for my HVAC business many of them reported having 8-10 years of work experience. The problem is that many of them had one years experience 8-10 times. I always afraid that the doctors are suffering from the same affliction.
Well, today was a bust. The wind was blowing like crazy and raining. Got pretty much done nothing. The new dishwasher arrived. This meant uninstalling the old dishwasher and installing the new. This project took all of an hour. Anyway, I’m bored silly and starting to guzzle vodka. Kidding, sort of.
Alaska or bust 