February 2008

More Pix

I took more pix, here they are:

This is Bob up on a scaffold that he made, he was putting up more panels of wood on the south side of the cabin, the scaffold is about 12 feet in the air.

These are in front (south facing) of the cabin.

This is on the west side of the cabin, this is where a lot of activity is going on, you can see one of the concrete (soilcrete) walls, it’s not much to look at, yet, but it’s a work in progress.

This is the same pix as above, I highlighted the concrete wall in red, it is poured in layers, each layer is about a foot deep, the first layer is highlighted with yellow, the next layer we poured is highlighted in magenta. Between the yellow and magenta layers, we poured that layer too thick, the problem that occurs is with the weight of the concrete, if the pour is too thick, it will cause the form to bulge, we got lucky, it did bulge, but not too much. The form for the next layers is the wood panel that is above the concrete, highlighted in orange. This is only part of the concrete work, this is sort of a bump out, the other concrete work is being done under the cabin just behind what is visible in this picture. The bump out is going to house part of the water system, the top will be as tall as the floor on the cabin (about 6 feet in the air), sorry if I’m not explaining it well, I’ll take more pix as we get more done, it’s true that a picture is worth a thousand words. :)

This is Bob removing the wind part of the weather station, he had to do this in order to put up one of the panels on the cabin. You can see what is referred to as a radar net or camoflage net, it’s old military surplus, we have several of these, it works good for us to hide the work in progress, we don’t want our few neighbors who can see us to have to look at the half way done work on the cabin, it also helps us to blend in with the natural scenery, Bob eventually wants to place one on the roof so that when Google Earth updates their satellite images, our place will not show, we like being hidden from the world. ;)

I took more pix today of the cabin from much farther away, it will take me a few days to get it placed on the blog, it’s quite a process, I have to take the picture with the camera in my cell phone, I have to send the pix from my cell phone to my email address, then I have to go to my …

02-26-08

The month is almost gone, time goes by so fast here, it seems like we just got here and it also seems like we have always been here, I can’t say that I have forgotten my life before this, but it is fading. Before we moved here, I didn’t know how I would be able to leave all of my responsibilities, I felt a great responsibility to do the jobs I had, both at Best Buy and at Curves. I did a lot of key things at both places, things that no one else did for the most part, and I enjoyed working at both places. I enjoyed the people I knew there. I know that I did a good job at what I did and I cared about it, I am afraid that things aren’t getting done as well as I would do it because I did care about what I was doing. The few weeks (or was it months?) that I was still in Irving after I quit both jobs, I felt like a fish out of water, I felt like I didn’t have anything to do, in reality there was lots to do with all the last minute packing and keeping the items on the trailer safe from the weather… well, once we got here, that all changed, I do not worry about things back in town like I thought I might, I do miss everyone I knew there, but I am pretty busy here, and what I do is so much more enjoyable and rewarding, I do not regret making this major life changing move.

Tonight is pizza night, I am making the dough, I make a yeast dough and right now it’s rising on the wood stove, the stove is still warm from this morning and it’s the perfect temp for the dough. I have some hamburger meat that needs to be cooked and I have some left over deer sausage that needs to be eaten, that will go good on the pizza. I am making the dough here in the cabin, but I’ll cook it at our neighbor’s house, it’s pizza night for him too! :)

Bob just scared me to death! I am inside the cabin, he is outside on a very narrow scaffolding attached to the house, he is putting up more siding, he is up pretty high, I heard a crash and other sounds that you don’t want to hear in this situation, I had a vision of him falling, I jumped up and ran to the door while calling out to him, he answered that he was OK, I still went out to see what happened, he had nearly fallen, the scaffolding he is using is a ladder with some boards on it to walk on, he said he was focused on what he was doing with his hands …