Scott

Patchouli Problem SOLVED

2011-04-30T07:50:00.001-07:00

If you remember a few Blog entries back I had a personal crisis!
A Patchouli Problem
The patchouli oil I had used for years was no longer being sold, and I couldn’t find it anywhere else.
But eureka! A guardian angel was looking out for me. ( It was really my sister in California) She found the particular scent of Patchouli oil there and sent me a bottle by personal courier ( really my mother and father) So it seems my personal crisis appears to be solved!
How do I know it’s the same Stuff?
Well I have a secret weapon. One of the ladies at work has an amazing nose for scents ( I mentioned her in the previous blog) She has indeed confirmed that that it smells the same (see the email below) (Names have been redacted to protect the innocent)

I have even found a supplier online in Tucson AZ That sells it in bulk.
Kumba Made Tunisian Patchouli Oil
There is however a dark side to this happy tale off personal redemption ( Hey! take your personal redemption wherever you can get it!)
This particular type of Patchouli Oils is fairly rare. Its called Tunisian or sometimes African Patchouli and it is much more expensive than the run of the mill Patchoulis that are out there.

It also seems that it is often used as an ingredient in Witchcraft! (see the excerpt from the Wiccan and Pagen shop below)
http://www.wiccanleanings.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=50012_50117_119&products_id=5065

So now we now why this particular brand has served me so well over the years. It has mystical powers of mastery and love!
Beware coming to close to me while wearing my Patchouli oil as it may cast a spell over you!

The First Mini Road Trip (A Big one!)

2011-04-17T05:43:00.001-07:00

A great two weeks vacation is almost over, and a new MINI Cooper S convertible waits in the driveway... ready to take its first road trip!

We're Off!

Up at 5:00AM a quick breakfast and the final touches on the closing up of my parent's Arizona place for the summer. Shut off the electricity, water and lock up the last door before hitting the road for the 3 day 1840 mile trek to the likely still snow bound north lands of Minnesota.

Cloudy skies and light traffic at that time of the morning, as we whizzed north in the speedy go-cart like little Mini Cooper.

The little Cooper is a fast car. It likes to drive 80 in 6th gear and has no trouble at all keeping up with the bigger cars in the fast lane on the high speed Interstates.

Just outside of Phoenix we saw a funny sign. Winter driving conditions? What the hell? It’s summer. It was 95 yesterday. This must be a test or a mistake! Onward!

About an hour later as we approached 7000 feet in Flagstaff the sign began to make sense.

There was blowing crystals of snow whipping across the road. No worries we just have a few miles before we turn left onto Interstate 40 east and go down hill from Flagstaff, AZ towards Albuquerque, NM where I’m quite certain there is no snow.

Just a couple of more miles before that left turn. Seems like the snow is getting a bit heavier!

Wow! The Mini does quite well in the snow. Who would have thought that! Did you know that Mini Coopers drive pretty well in a blizzard?

At last 4 or 5 miles west of Flagstaff the wind blown snow lets up and there is clear skies!

The front that was causing the blizzard in Flagstaff sure was windy. Looks like its starting to pick up some dust!

First a blizzard, now a full blown sandstorm this was suppose to be a road trip not an adventure trip!

After stopping in Winslow, AZ for fuel and a bathroom break we learned that the roads in and out off Flagstaff had just been closed. Seems like we made it just in the nick of time.

We did see lots of Motor-homes pulled off to the side of the road waiting out the wind. The little Cooper with it low profile wasn’t really affected that much by the wind.

Well things did eventually start to get better as we moved further east towards Albuquerque,NM. The wind did get a little less violent and now with some ground cover in the fields it’s at least not blowing sand anymore.

Santa Fe was the stop for the night at The Hampton Inn. We checked in around 4:00 with about 560 miles under our belts and 8 1/2 hours of driving. Looks like we thankfully left the snow and sand storms back in Arizona.

However the little car is a mess and has to be cleaned so it’s off to find a car wash to clean up the Cooper before tomorrow's ride. Then of course a stiff happy hour drink.

About a half hour of milling about asking questions and running up and down side streets produced a good old fashion high pressure wash bay where the Cooper got its first bath.

None the worse for wear from the snow and sand after cleaning it up the Cooper looks good as new again. All shinny and sparkly!

Up and on the road at 6:30 again after a free Hampton Inn breakfast the intrepid road trippers zoom north towards the Raton pass and another 7000 foot high Interstate experience.

Fortunately this time there is no snow, and we have a pleasant drive into Southern Colorado. Heading toward Colorado Springs and our old stomping grounds we can see Pikes Peak in the distance.

Ten years ago our home was in beautiful Colorado Springs for a couple of years!

After not having seen the big mountain for some time I had forgotten how beautiful the mountain was against the blue skies when it was capped with snow.

Just for giggles we went up to see our old house in Colorado Springs. This was the view we looked at all the time from that house. Tell me again why we moved back to Minnesota from here?

The longest and most boring road on the planet is the section of Interstate 76 from Denver to Nebraska. Even this boring road was exciting in the MINI Cooper! We did eventually make it to Nebraska along with a few insect friends on the windshield.

The Hampton Inn in North Platte Nebraska is where we washed the bugs off the front of the little Cooper tonight.

Up again at 6:30 and on towards:

Traveling through downtown Omaha around 11:00 in heavy heavy traffic and whack! The Cooper takes a rock to the windshield

Gasp!

Seems like the first ding on a new car is always the worst.

East across Iowa stopping to pee along a gravel road because Iowa has a road sign every 20 feet, but no wayside rests on their Interstates. North at Des Moines and soon we find ourselves in Minnesota. WOW! No Snow!

Three days of driving the New Mini Cooper. 1846 miles and it found its way to Minneapolis. Stay tuned for more MINI Cooper Convertible "ROAD TRIPS"!

The M…. C…..M…. C…..Road trip

2011-04-07T19:26:00.001-07:00

Life with me can be interesting. Sometimes!

So what’s this “The M…. C…..M…. C…..Road trip”

Well it’s really “The Margaret Curry Mini Cooper Road Trip”
It started out as a normal vacation in Arizona. One like we have done many times before. Fly in fly out, two weeks, a little work, lay by the pool, a few hikes, close up the place for the summer… all good.
It was a Tuesday midway through our vacation and we were going to go shopping and look around Scottsdale. Off we went down the 101 to Scottsdale Drive North to go south into Scottsdale.
Oh look a Mini Cooper dealer! (I should tell you we had been looking at Mini Cooper convertibles in Minneapolis,but didn’t find any nice ones. One of Margaret’s dreams is to do a road trip in a Convertible Mini Cooper)
Lets stop and look we have time were on vacation! We walked around the lot and didn’t really see anything interesting and were about to go when a salesman in a golf cart pulled up and said hop on there is a bunch more Minis way out back . I can take you.

He was right way out in the back there must have been a hundred brand new Mini Coopers. We walk down a few rows and look what we found! The most gorgeous black convertible Cooper S you could imagine!

Brown luxury leather interior, Super charged! (that’s what the “S” is for) Sports package.

We talked with the sales guy he made an offer. We told him we could do better in Minneapolis, and asked him if he knew a place for lunch. He recommended a place near by. We left him our phone number and went off to lunch.
Lunch in the garden at "Gordon Birch” in Scottsdale. Great beer, good pizza!

Just as we had gotten into the rental car to move on down the road my phone rang. Our little sales guy had talked to his manager and managed to find another 1000 off the sales price. Imagine that! What do you think Margaret it’s part of your dream?
Short story: That’s me signing papers. All that’s left of Margaret is her hat. She is busy pacing the floor in a cold sweat wondering what she just did!

All shined up and ready to go.

But where to go? This is Arizona? Phone calls,canceled airline tickets, travel vouchers for future trips, refunds for rentals cars, hotel reservations…………… ROAD TRIP!
Back at the Arizona homestead for a few days of cruising with the top down in the Arizona sunshine before taking off. It sure looks good in that car port doesn’t it?

Boy Oh Boy the neighbors are sure talking now! (We told them we sold the park model to pay for it!)
We were going to leave Monday the 11th on an airplane but now we will have to leave a little early for the Margaret Curry Mini Cooper Road trip!

The New (time consuming) Hobby

2011-03-20T11:19:00.001-07:00

It’s certainly been a while since I have written a blog entry. Well there is a reason for that. You see writing in blogs takes a lot of effort and quite a bite of time. It can take several hours to get a blog entry just right and if you have nothing else to do ( a common condition in the middle of a Minnesota winter) then it’s time well spent.
Flash back to late last November just after Thanksgiving: The snow was already everywhere and you couldn’t even get out of the house to go for a walk. The sidewalks and trails were full of snow and it looked like all winter we were going to be stuck inside pacing the floors. I had to find something to do or I’d go nuts!
Then inspirations struck! I had all this time this winter, I’d learn to play a musical instrument!
So with that thought the next Jimi Hendrix, or Carlos Santana was born. After a little research I found myself at the local guitar center looking for a guitar. The research had lead me to believe I should start with a middle of the road acoustics guitar. It seem that really cheap guitars are harder to play. So after a discussion with the sales folk I left the store with A Yamaha S720 all wood acoustic you see on the right, and all the associated accessories required to be a professional guitarist by late summer. It was a several hundred dollars for the whole arrangement, so I wasn’t out much if this didn’t work out.
I worked at his pretty hard practicing an hour a day and sometimes on weekends for 5 or 6 hours. As it turns out I had to revise my estimate of being a professional guitarist by late summer. This guitar playing thing is really hard! Pressing on the strings to obtain the right tones on the fret board takes a lot of pressure and reeks havoc on you fingers. So in the beginning its hard to practice for more than a hour or two.
After two months I had worked my way through the first beginners book on guitar and could peck out Jingle Bells and part of Dueling banjos, but I was having a good time. I was hooked! I was almost a guitar store groupie. The Guitar Center where I bough my guitar has a policy that you can return or upgrade your guitar within 2 months of purchase for any reason. Late in January I took them up on the offer of an upgrade and brought home a very nice carbon fiber “RainSong” acoustic electric guitar.
http://www.rainsong.com/
The “RainSong” can plug into an amplifier and is a fine guitar, but upped the ante on the cost of this little hobby of mine. Along the way I have learned a lot about guitars, and music. Guitars are very different and produce a very different sound. Some music works better on one guitar than another. I have a couple of songs I’m working on that sound good on the acoustic guitar, and if I continue to practice hard maybe in a year the songs will sound the way they are suppose to. Carlos Santana and Jimi Hendrix don’t have to worry for a while.

A patchouli problem!

2011-02-20T13:17:00.001-08:00

If you were alive during the sixties, you most likely know the scent of patchouli, even if you don't know that's what it's called. You probably even have an opinion on it, whether positive or negative. Patchouli was a very popular scent among the counterculture, featured in both perfume oils and incense, often burned to disguise other burning odors.

But did you know patchouli is a plant? The familiar fragrance is derived from a distillation of the leaves of the patchouli plant into an essential oil, which is often used today in modern perfumery. The scent is rich and earthy, combining a floral sweetness - even though it is made from leaves - with a musky scent reminiscent of fresh-turned soil. Some people loathe the scent and say it smells like dirt, while others adore its vivid and powerful fragrance.

Flash back to 20 years ago: (just like those books that jump around in time)

I was on a business trip to the Boston area and I was looking for a gift for my wife Margaret. Walking down the street I walked into a “Custom Mixed Oils” Perfume shop. It was an interesting place. It smelled so good. Ultimately I walked out of the shop with a couple of bottles of interesting smelling oil for Margaret. One of them was patchouli oil.

As it turned out I liked the patchouli oil so much that I ended up wearing it as a cologne instead of Margaret. On and off I would order Oils by mail from the “Custom Mixed Oils Shop “ in Boston always including patchouli. Over the years I found other sources of patchouli oil here and there. Sometimes it was not as good, sometimes it was better.

When we came back from Europe in 2001 while I stumbled upon one of the best smelling patchouli oils I have ever run across. Not only did I like it but it seemed that everyone liked it. I would be walking down the street in a strange city and people would stop me and ask me what was I wearing that smelled so good. Standing in the check out lines in grocery store clerks would ask me. Strange looking leather clad men of questionable sexual orientation would ask me. People at work would ask me.Men or women it didn’t seem to make a difference. In fact it seem like a month wouldn’t go by that someone would comment of that wonderful smell!

So where did I find this wonderful variety of patchouli oil might you ask. Hang on to your seats because your not going to believe this. I found it at the “Como Zoo” gift shop. Hard to believe I know, but for the last 10 years I would visit the Como Zoo gift shop from time to time to resupply my personal stash of patchouli oil.

One of the ladies at the office where I work asked me one day what that wonderful smell was and where I got it. I told here the Como Zoo”. She didn’t believe me. So I brought here a bottle one day. After that now she sneaks to the Como Zoo to resupply her stash!

The smell is so noticeable that it has become my signature. If people at work smell patchouli they assume I’m around somewhere. A while ago Margaret handled the bottle of patchouli oil sitting on the bathroom counter and got some on her hands. She whipped it on her throat and thought nothing more off it. Later at work when she suggested to a co-worker that they could use my office for a meeting because I was not there the coworker replied “ Yes he is! I just smelled him go by!

“Queue the spooky music that portrays impending feelings of Doom”

A few days ago my stash of patchouli oil had run low so it was off to Como Zoo to resupply. To my horror when I got there this time ready to take home several bottles as I usually do THERE WAS NONE! It was gone. Where’s my patchouli oil! I need my patchouli oil!

I sought out the clerk in charge and asked “What happened to the patchouli oil?” she blithely replied “Oh were not stocking that anymore.” I was devastated! What will I do without my special brand of patchouli oil? Will I still be me if I don’t smell like me?

40 days and 40 nights and 40 degrees

2011-01-02T08:54:00.001-08:00

Some time ago, I mean a really long time ago (think Genesis), the big guy upstairs thought the world had become a bad place and he needed to clean it up, so he caused it to rain for 40 days and 40 nights. Now after the wet spell was over and life began anew he promised not to do it again. Well with rain anyway, and clouds are suppose to be a sign of his promise.
Now with the world seemingly getting to be a bad place again, has the old boy got something up his sleeve again? Maybe snow this time since he promised not to use rain? The snow in the month of December has indeed been biblical! It even set a new record for snowfall in the month. Do you suppose we should start building an Ark sized snowmobile?

When you get 20 inches of snow at one time and another 4-8 inches every other day after that for a couple of weeks finding places to put the snow gets to be a problem.

Driving down the street lately is interesting to say the least!

Mostly along the boulevards where the snow plows pushed the snow, the snow is piled higher than you can see over.

If there is a retail parking lot around after they have cleared the lots its really high!

So what’s a person to do? You might as well give up, buy some new snow boots and go out and play in the mountains of white.

This particular pile was from a church parking lot, and those are real 20 or 30 foot tall evergreens.

As you might remember from past adventure blogs we have this thing for climbing to the top high things to look around.

Not a bad view from the top of the icy mountain!

That’s some pile of snow stacked up as high as the tree.

At the base of the piles between trees is a nice spot out of the wind where the local riff raff hangs out.

Okay back to the fire and brimstone again. So if you were the big guy and promised not to use rain to destroy the world, wouldn’t it be a pretty slick way around your promise to make it snow for 40 days and 40 nights then after all the snow is there raise the temperature to 40 degrees and melt it all at once! Lots of irony there Huh? Still keep your promise, and flood the world at the same time. 40 days 40 nights 40 degrees! great play on words. In the next version of the bible that would make a great story!
Well on Dec 30th 2010 after 40 days and 40 nights of snow (well it seemed like it!) it hit 43 degrees in Minneapolis. It didn’t quite flood, but it sure knocked down those piles of snow. Now the piles are half as high, but they are solid ice. I think we will still have piles of ice in June! The glaciers are coming!

Another Piece of History is gone

2010-11-13T09:06:00.001-08:00

In the mid 1990s I used to windsurf a lot. Often I would participate in the annual Milacs Lake crossing. That particular crossing race in September of 1997 turned out to be a windless one and the Saturday morning race was postponed until the next day. Looking for something to do we saw an advertisement for a lake lot for sale on Crow Wing 11. What the heck lets go look!
So we soon found ourselves on what would soon become our lake place on Crow Wing 11

From the shoreline, across the bay we could see the neatest old trestle bridge! This was the first time we saw the Akeley trestle bridge. While it certainly wasn’t the only reason, the view of the trestle bridge was a contributing factor to why we thought the lot was cool and ultimately bought it.

We even walked down the bike trail to see the trestle bridge.

Up close the bridge was high and very cool!

The trestle was built over a hundred years ago so the trains could haul the logs harvested in the nearby forests to the sawmills. Akeley was a booming community in those days. Not so much today.

Over the century the once strong bridge that carried tons of logs over the Crow Wing River has become old and tired and only carried bicycles across the river recently.

One day in the fall of 2010 across the lake we could see a crane working on the trestle.

A exploration trek down the trail reveled that the crane wasn’t repairing the bridge but replacing it. Blasphemy! The cool old trestle bridge that had stood for soon long and made the view across the lake so unique was no more!

Replaced in a couple of weeks with a much lower new iron structure with a much higher load carrying capacity, but missing any history.
Margaret tried to put the old one back, but couldn't get in the crane.

We can’t see the new bridge from the shoreline anymore its too low. Our view from the shore is no longer the same, but nothing ever stays the same. And that’s probably a good thing.

Closing the lake is always an Adventure

2010-10-10T06:50:00.001-07:00

The final closing of the lake this year is going to take two weekends. One (October 2nd) we were going north to the lake on Saturday morning to mow the lawn and clean the leaves out of the gutters, as well as the final issues that have to happen before it freezes hard. Then the following weekend (October 8th) the coach is going to go south to spend the winter in the big storage shed in Little Falls that it spent last winter in.
Friday night the 1st of October after finishing yoga at the gym we came out and got into the jeep to find the tire pressure alarm blinking brightly in the dash. Along side of the blinking alarm was the pressure reading” 24 PSI in the left front tire. OH OH. That’s not good. It was fine an hour and a half ago on the way to the gym and now’ its 10 PSI low.
There is a Goodyear tire store on the way back to the apartment so we stopped there on the way home. Maybe we can just fill it with air and it will be fine for the trip to the lake tomorrow. (Wishful Thinking!).
At the good year store we filled the tire with air and the helpful attended (Ha Ha) pointed out that the tires needed to be replaced anyway and the front end was out of alignment and should be fixed, but he was quite busy and certainly couldn’t get to it tonight but if I came in early tomorrow and ordered tires he might be able to fit us in later in the day. So after filling the tire we left with an $800 quote for 4 new tires and instruction that we needed to order them tomorrow by 9:00 to get them installed by 5:00. While I knew I needed new tires (there is already 55 thousand on them) I was hoping to get by till November. (Now is not a convenient time to shell out a lot of money).
Early Saturday morning 6:00am we headed down to the garage to load the Jeep and check on the tire. I didn’t need to even check the pressure on the tire to know we weren't going to the lake today. The tire was down to 14PSI barely drivable. Before it was completely flat I drove it down to the Goodyear store, and was going to leave it there and have them put the 4 new tires on it. Maybe we could go to the lake Sunday.
I was at the Goodyear store at 7:00 (when the web site said they opened) but the sign on the door said they weren't open till 7:30. I sat there waiting, watching traffic on the road when I saw across the street a brightly lit open Tires Plus store!
What the heck…. I walked across the street and went in. To my surprise they could have the 4 tires delivered and on with the alignment fixed by 10:00am. BONUS…… they were were going to charge $100 less than the Goodyear store. No thinking required. I got the jeep and dropped it off at the Tires Plus and walked back to the apartment to wait till 10:00am.

At 10:00am just as promised the jeep had 4 new tires and we were on out way to the lake just a few hours late.
The drive to the lake was spectacular the colors were peaking along Hwy 10 to “Up North” and the colors were vivid. The color show continued at the lake!

The sumac was bright red along the lake shore.

The lake was empty and the water was crystal clear.

After mowing and cleaning we even had time to shop in Walker at Reeds for new cloths for Margaret’s trip to Ireland.
Happy hour and then supper in the coach, before early the next morning we backed the coach out of it’s summer parking spot onto the driveway so it would be ready for the trip south next week.

Next weekend we have Friday off.
Next Weekend.
Flash back to last spring when we received in the mail a notice from Newmar and Freightliner that there could be a potential problem with our steering on our Dutchstar. It seems occasionally some bearings failed in the steering gear and it became difficult to steer the huge machine while on the road. (Not a good situation!) So Newmar and Freightliner wanted us to take the coach to an authorized Freightliner dealer for an inspection. This being a bit of a pain to just jaunt over to the nearest dealer we put it off until the time we were going to put the coach away for the winter. So Friday October 8th we have an appointment to visit the Freightliner dealer in St Cloud.
If were are LUCKY it takes 20 minutes to inspect it and we get to go back to Little Falls and store the coach. If we are not lucky it will take 4-5 hours to fix and Saturday we can go back to Little Falls.
This will be interesting to get to Freightliner by 10:00am so there is enough time to fix the coach if necessary we need to leave the lake by 8:00am. To get to the lake by 8:00am we need to leave the apartment by 4:30am. (For those of you not familiar with this time of day it occurs very very early in the morning when it’s very very dark out.)
Up at 4:00am out the door and on the dark roads for the trip north. WOW traffic is great. Imagine that.

Arriving at the lake just as the sun comes up over the eastern shore of Crow Wing 11 Its time to start the coach and hook up the jeep for the return trip to St, Cloud.

I tried an new approach to hook up this time. After backing out on the road I backed the coach back into the driveway again, to hook up the jeep. This worked much better than hooking the jeep up out on the road. (Much Safer!)

Packed up, airbags are aired up and ready to head south for the inspection in the early morning light.

Once on the smooth pavement of Hwy 64 south the coach cruises smoothly and comfortably with no traffic in sight towards it 10:00am appointment (Traffic should always be this good!)

After 6 hours of driving we are now at Freightliner in St Cloud with the right vehicle in our possession.

The coach and jeep waiting in the sandlot next door while we check in.

Are you feeling Lucky!

Why yes sir I am! The steering gear is good! No need to fix it! We are on our way back to Little Falls and the coach’s winter parking spot in the big barn.

Once again the coach is packed a way for the winter and after 9 hours on the road we are back in the apartment feeling melancholy because the summer is over and the cold is coming .

Last of the Summer at the Lake

2010-09-18T05:27:00.001-07:00

This summer has been an absolutely great summer. Just the right temperatures and the right amount of rain. The grass was green, the hammock was out all the time. There was a warm breeze blowing off the lake. Generally you couldn’t have asked for a nicer summer.

There was no new construction projects this summer and the hammock owner spent a lot of time in the hammock!

Beware! shadows always lurk in paradise!
Sitting on the deck late one afternoon a strange smell permeated the normal summer smells of pine needles and flowers. What’s that smell the lady of the house asked?

I don’t know said the hammock owner, but it smells like sewer. I got up and checked the holding tank on the coach. Nothing coming from there. A bit of wandering and inspecting soon narrowed the offensive odor down to the engine bay on the coach. NOT GOOD! What can smell like rotten eggs in there? Further inspection and poking determined that the odor was coming from the batteries. Hydrogen gas was being vented form the engine batteries because they were boiling and very hot! “Yikes”
Quickly I ran to the garage, and got the tool box and pair of gloves and removed the smoking battery.

A check with the volt meter indicated that the chassis batteries were being heavily charged by the Xantrex inverter below and it appeared that one of the batteries could not take it.

Since it was late in the day and everything appeared to be normal now with the boiling battery removed I shut the battery compartment and adjourned the technical foray in electrical systems and headed to happy hour.
Early the next morning just before breakfast the offending odor returned. Since I knew right were to look this time I headed for the battery compartment again and sure enough the second engine battery was now venting hydrogen. Now I’m thinking bigger problems than just a bad battery and I shut down the electrical system.
After breakfast I put on my dress shorts and with my handy volt meter started tracing wires to see what was going on.

Turns out that this large relay circled in red below is constantly engaged connecting the coach and engine battery systems together so as long as the Xantrex converter is running the coach batteries are being charged.

A little more poking and I discovered that I could pull this fuse circled in red below and cause the relay to disengage separating the battery systems. That fixes the immediate problem for now until I can get new engine batteries and determine what the larger picture here is about the connected battery systems and potential over charging.

After packing everything back up leaving the fuse out for now I returned to my hammock to ponder the electrical puzzle and I spent the rest of the weekend between the hammock and the hot tub. (Life is rough)

Next weekend is Labor Day weekend and there will be plenty of time to work on the coach.
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Back in civilization again with access to a high speed internet connection, the research on the electrical problem started in earnest. Electrical schematics and parts descriptions were downloaded, RV repair forums were searched, and a picture and a plan starts to form.
Several owners have seen problems like this on their coaches. Usually the problem is bad or old batteries. If one cell is bad in the battery it cannot take the constant charge rate that is applied when the relay is open.(Which was the case with my batteries).
So first thing is new chassis batteries.
Second several of the long term coach owners that have learned by the school of hard knocks, do not allow the coach and battery systems to be connected constantly as is the design of the system. They leave them disconnected most of the time allowing them to connect only a day or so before they want to start the coach. This allows the chassis batteries to charge enough but doesn't constantly charge them while the coach is plugged into shore power. Chassis and coach batteries are fundamentally different batteries one is quick start the other is deep cycle. Optimum charging patterns for these are different and while they can be connected for short time frames long term connections of the systems could be bad for one set of batteries or the other.
So the plan on Labor Day is install two newly procured chassis batteries to the tune of $250, and monitor the system closely. Long term when connected to shore power on an extended basis disconnect the systems until the chassis batteries need a charge.
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Labor Day 2010
Saturday morning Labor day weekend dawns gloriously over Crow Wing 11, as documented by Margaret below. ( I was sensibly still in my warm bed at this time of the morning)

First thing this weekend is put in the new batteries.

Supporting the old adage that nothing is ever easy my conscious wouldn’t let me put the new batteries in to the old rusted battery tray that was corroding and full of battery acid.
It looks like this battery venting has been going on for a while because on closer inspection of the battery compartment there was some long term corrosions apparent and if left unchecked would destroy the tray in the future. So the whole tray was going to have to come out and be sanded clean and repainted with rust proofing paint.
What was going to be a simple “put in the new batteries”, turned into a day long cleaning, and painting adventure.

All of the inside of the battery bay then the tray components themselves.

Finally the tray is all cleaned and the the painting begins.

Nothing is every easy! On disassembly the big bearings that slide the tray are found to be full of dirt and grim and need to be removed and cleaned before reinstalling them.

A job well done! New chassis batteries, new hold down straps, nice clean well operating battery tray. Much better!

After the work is Happy Hour on the dock for the last time in 2010, because tomorrow the dock and boat lift come out for the winter, and the hot tub and water get drained for the season.

Summer is almost over. That’s always sad, but there is never space for something new until something old moves out of the way. That’s a good thing!

A New Camera

2010-09-12T10:41:00.001-07:00

Guess what? We got a new camera. We REALLY needed a new camera. We only had 5 already. (Doesn't everyone have 5 cameras?)

Ok maybe we didn’t REALLY need a new camera, but It was a really cool camera so what the heck. (and its officially Margaret’s good camera, but she does let me touch it when it isn’t working right)

Welcome the SONY NEX 5 to the household. Now this isn’t just an ordinary camera. So small that you can almost fit it in the palm of your hand, but with big professional quality lenses that takes outstanding pictures. Did I mention the 1040 HD videos that it does as well as the 14 megapixel images, and don’t forget the sweep panorama that it takes automatically. WOW! Why didn’t we have this sooner? Oh it just came out that’s why.

Here you see 3 of the 5 or so cameras we have. The photo below is taken with my Motorola Droid cell phone camera. Only 5 megapixels, so not so great on quality, but handy because it’s always in your pocket.

Here (below) is the new Sony Nex 5 sitting in the palm of my hand (photo taken by the small Sony Cybershot 7 megapixel shown above). The Nex 5 is a 14 megapixel camera big on quality small on size, and capable of taking better photos than my big fancy Olympus SLR the largest camera in the photo above.

The two big boys pictures side by side (below). To date the Olympus has been responsible for most of the high quality pictures we have taken in the last few years.

Here is a photo taken by the Nex 5. Many more pixels higher quality. You may notice in some of the Blog photos lately the higher quality pictures from the Nex 5

Life is rough,and we never get anything new to play with( you should feel bad for us).

Stony Point National Forest Campground

2010-08-14T14:40:00.001-07:00

Our anniversary for us is always used as a chance to go do something special. On our 33rd anniversary we choose to take the coach out for 3 or 4 days and stay at the National Forest campground on the tip of the Onigum peninsula called Stony Point.

Just 14 miles east of Walker, MN located in the Chippewa National forest on the Ojibwa Indian reservation Stony point National Forest Campground is a small campground located right on the shores of Leech Lake.

Located out on a very rock point hence it’s name “Stony Point”, is used as a camping base point for many fisherman venturing out on the 3rd largest lake in Minnesota.

Most of the point has large boulders scattered about on the shoreline making much of the lake hard to access.

With a little effort you can climb over the boulders and wade in the cool water. The water clean, and clear crashing on the rocks along with the the endless views over the huge lake almost makes you think your at the ocean.

To oblige the fisherman and make for a safe place to park the many boats that are used to venture out on the lake there are two harbors. After navigating a small rocky opening to the harbor you can tie your boat up on a national park supplied post and leave it overnight safe from the wind and waves pounding the rocks.

Along with the adjacent boat launch and trailer parking this is a fisherman's paradise.

There are two paved loops to the campground and a restroom shower in the center. Our campsite number 15 was large and open under the shelter of several large maple trees.

Just across the road to the east was the swimming beach and picnic area. A wide area free of rocks with a beautiful sandy beach out as far as you could walk.

The best camping spots in the whole park were along this beach. (If you could put up with the noise during the day) You have a view of the lake across a wide sand beach from sites 12, 14, 16, 18 and are the ones to get if you ever camp here.

Starting at the south side of the park, near the entrance is a 3/4 mile long interpretive trail that leads through the dense forest surrounding the campgrounds.

The trail leads through large areas of dense ferns and other interesting vegetation common in the Chippewa national Forest.

Just off the path near the end we were treated to a beautiful display of interesting mushrooms growing on an old moss covered rotting log.

Close up it looks a bit like the planet Pandora from the movie “Avatar”

Unknown to most people this particular national park requires all campers to celebrate with a happy hour every night around the campfire. Of course being the rule following law abiding citizens that we are we obliged.

Each site has a fire ring and grill that we took advantage of to cook dinner.

After happy hour there was usually a walk around the park looking at the other campers and sites.

Looking back from the the very tip of Stony Point across the mouth of one of the harbors you can see the swimming beach and an occasional sailboat parked for the night sleeping.

I bet they slept well!

A Week at the lake

2010-07-17T11:43:00.001-07:00

This year we planned a week at our lake place over the 4th of July. Arriving Friday before the 4th and leaving the weekend after we had 8 or nine days to hangout on the dock, work on projects and just enjoy the beautiful weather that summer in Minnesota can sometime deliver.
Indeed Minnesota delivered this year the weather was spectacular, sunny and warm daily highs in the mid 80s it was perfect to hang out at the lake. Early in the morning the weather was nice enough that we could sit on the deck and enjoy our breakfast and coffee while watching the deer troop through the yard.

One morning after breakfast we were sitting in the hot tub when a doe and her two fawns still with their spots on walked right by the window.
As it turns out the deer were on the other side of:
“The Great Flower Wars of 2010”
Every year Margaret plants flowers around the yard and they do quit well. However this year with the dear strolling though there daily, and an enormous population of chipmunks scrambling over everything, the flowers suffered.
Not too many people know that chipmunks like to eat violets. When we lived in our condo in Edina we had a chipmunk who we caught more than once in the pot of flowers chowing down on Margaret’s pretty violets. This year with so many chipmunks on our property they have discovered the violets as well.

The real damage is however done by the deer on Margaret’s Hostas in the flower beds.
h
Chewed down to the ground there is little left of the flowers other than this picture in Margaret’s imagination

This year we have no big projects planned as we did last year when we built the Garden house, but there are any number of smaller tasks that have been on our list for a while to get caught up on.
One of these has been Margaret’s goal of having a paddle boat to cruise around in on the lake. So after careful assessment of the paddleboat marketplace Margaret carefully selected a yellow Pelican from Reeds in Walker to ferry her around the lake
The Paddle Boat Arrives!

A incredibly powerful 2 ~~horsepower~~ people powered drive train has us skipping over the water in no time.

The crew of the Yellow Pelican hard at work:

How the crew gets paid after piloting the Yellow Pelican around the lake.

One of the beautiful summer days at the lake was spent on the roof of the coach. Every year you have to climb on the roof and inspect, clean and re-caulk the roof to keep it in good shape.

This year during this process I decided to repair the damaged air conditioner covers. When we bought the coach one of the covers was damaged by an apparent run in with a tree limb from the pervious owner. He tried to fix it but did a half ass job. He started to fiberglass the cracks and holes but never finished.

So after a trip to the hardware store in Walker to procure a fiberglass repair kit I’m out in front of the garage with the fiberglass resins and cloth bringing the old damaged covers back to life.

Once the holes and cracks are re-fiberglassed from the inside and hardened they need to be sanded smooth on the outside.

Then repainted so they now look like new instead of old and cracked

Another project that I had been putting off was taking apart the Fantastic Fans in the coach and cleaning them. The previous owner had neglected the fans because they have to be disassembled to clean. So early one morning I pulled them apart and cleaned them till they shined like new. (I can see why they never cleaned them before it was a bitch to do!)

After cleaning the fan and then Scott afterwards, we were off to Brainerd to sightsee and have lunch. We stopped in Pequot Lakes for lunch and a beer and Margaret had the best seat in the house.

“There is no rest for the wicked” they say and that must be the reason I find myself working all the time. Next on the list of projects was to repair the stuck awning over the door on the coach. It worked when we brought the coach home but stopped going out shortly after that.

It turns out after struggling with it for a couple of hours that water had leaked into the case around the motor and filled it up causing the lower motor bearing to rust. After pulling it apart and cleaning and greasing it, then drilling a hole in the plastic case for the water to drain in future, it functions again as intended

No vacation at the lake is complete without a water skiing trip around the lake in the sunshine, and here you see Margaret zipping handily around behind the boat enjoying the ride. (How did Scott get this picture if he was driving the boat?)

Afterwards celebrating the trip around the lake.

Even Margaret had some projects to take care of.

The payoff for a days hard work at the lake!

Back to the topic of no rest for the wicked. Because we have a well at the lake we seldom use the 12 volt pump on the coach. Testing all the systems on the coach this week revealed that the pump wasn’t working. So being the best & cheapest plumber that I know of I was the elected individual to repair the problem. Pulling the pump out of water bay of the coach and disassembling it to discover what was wrong was the order of the day.
Nothing really appeared to be wrong so after cleaning, reassembling and reinstalling the pump I was surprised to find it in perfect operating order. Whoa… am I good or what! I can fix things and I don’t even know what I did.

Over the years we have acquired a couple of ceramic dwarves that hang around our yard in the summer. Well to my surprise they appear to have been mating. Out of the blue another ceramic dwarf appeared on a rock near the deck one morning. (I’ll have to investigate birth control methods for dwarves)

One of the traditions of summer at the lake is the hammock. What you might not have known is how dangerous a hammock can be. Here you see demonstrated by a trained hammock professional how to enter or exit the hammock properly.

Here is the trained hammock professional’s response to my assistance or lack there of ,with the hammock (sorry I was busy taking a picture)

Summer at the lake is mostly about relaxing on the porch or the dock and enjoying the the day!

Pano from the Porch

Meet the Great Sump-man!

2010-06-21T19:01:00.001-07:00

If you have read some of my past blogs you are likely to be familiar with the Great Stumpman! If not check him out here. Today let me introduce you to a close relative of the Great Stump man, the Great Sumpman!

The Great Stumpman cuts down trees, the Great Sumpman does plumbing and installs Sump Pumps. Sump pumps you say! What do you need sumps pumps for? Well earlier this year just after the spring snow melt the old homestead was inundated with melt water and due to a sump pump malfunction the water managed to get to an unreasonable high level of 3- 4 inches in a furnished basement. So a little after the fact and the mess is cleaned up it is necessary to refurbish the sump and pump to forestall the high water event from occurring again. This will require some messy concrete removal and digging a rather large hole in the basement floor. Oh and by the way there is water below the floor because of recent rains so the hole is going to be full of mud!

But first a simple plumbing job to warm up with before the heavy duty mess start on Saturday morning. The resident house maiden of the old homestead has been whining that the only outside faucet in the old homestead is located in the garage and requires her to drag hose all over the place whenever she wants to water here Tomato plants. So a simple outdoor faucet will be plumbed into the back wall of the house connecting to the existing plumbing under the kitchen sink.

The hole is drilled though the outside wall

The Great Sumpman works on the copper plumbing for the outside faucet, along side the new sump that has to be installed in the floor in the morning. That’s a mighty big sump and it will require a mighty big hole!

Pay attention this is how you solder copper pipe:

Get the pipe very clean with sandpaper, apply lots of flux, and heat the pipe and connector until the solder melts when touching the pipe, Then and only then melt a lot of solder into the connection.

Final touches to the outside faucet.

The resident house maiden inspects the final results, and it meets with her approval.

With the warm up job out of the way, and Friday night happy hour done, Saturday morning rolls around too soon and its time to remove the old sump and pump to get ready for the new one. Below in the cramped space under the stairs you see the old sump hole with the sump removed. The blue circle is the outline of the new sump, and the larger blue square is where we are going to cut the cement with a diamond cement blade for removal. The large square hole will allow us to dig a much larger hole for the sump.

After a 20 minute session with the cement saw and what passes for a cement sandstorm in the small enclosed stairwell, the Great Sumpman withdraws for breath of fresh air. (note from the editor: the Great Sumpman’s hair is not nearly as gray as it looks here)

The completed square cutout in the cement with the enlarged hole ready for the new sump. Gotta love that mud!

The new sump is in place, back filled with dirt and filling with water. We are now ready to place the new sump pump into the new sump and plumb it in place.

The house maiden and, cleaning crew inspect the work

Finally the total disaster is over and the cleaning crew moves into make the place respectable again.

After lunch, and the mess is cleaned up the final plumbing takes place and the new Ace hardware sump is dropped into the hole with the backflow valve attached. The final pieces of INCH 1/2 plastic pipe are welded into place and the cover bolted down along with the final wiring to run the pump is put into place. All that is left is to mix up a bag of cement and replace the cement floor around the new sump installation.

The Great Sumpman is making the final touches to the cement

What does the future have in store for the Great Sumpman?

Memorial Day Weekend 2010

2010-06-06T13:25:00.001-07:00

At last after the long winter the first holiday weekend of summer is upon us. It’s Memorial day weekend. The first long weekend at the lake.
The official reason for the Memorial holiday commemorating our fallen war heroes is certainly a valid reason for a a holiday, but I think that deep down inside everyone thinks that the true celebration of Memorial day is the first days of summer!
Of course this means that Hwy 10 north to the Lake Country of Minnesota will be a parking lot on Friday night and even worse on Monday night on the way back into the metro area. With a little planning like leaving at noon on Friday to go north, and waiting until after 5:00PM on Monday to return we can avoid the bulk of the craziness and stay sane.
Now most of you think that having a place on the lake up north must be all fun and games, and indeed there is times that it is, but to enjoy those few minutes of fun and games usually requires days of work. This weekend being one of the first of the season a lot of work has to be done. The boat has to go in the hot tub has to be filled, and with all the rain the lawn is going to be a hayfield.
Upon arrival the first thing on the list of accomplishments is to get the hayfield mowed. This year we have a new tool for that, a shiny new Snapper.

About an hour of riding and an hour of trimming accomplishes the lawn work and its time to fill the hot tub with water for the season. Usually it takes a couple of days for the water to heat up to 100 degrees but after filling the tub with water filtered from the lake this year and turning it on the temperature reading of the water was already 69 degrees. Wow thats warm water for the lake at this time of year! So now were are going to be able to enjoy the hot tub Saturday, a day earlier rather than having to wait till Sunday for it to heat up.
The Beauty

& the Beast

Just like every year the real owners of the property make their presence known and come out to make sure we don’t destroy their yard.

They love sitting on the rocks in front of the Garden Shed and unless you push them off with a broom they usually won’t move.

Saturday was beautiful. Almost 90 degrees and sunny the day was a picture book of summertime fun. Boats on the lake, a warm breeze, the smell of pine trees in the air makes even the work of keeping up the lake place fun.
Sunday turns out to be a little cooler and overcast, but a great day to get the boat ready and put into the water for the summer. Charging the battery, pulling it out of the garage, checking that everything works on the boat before trailering it over to the landing for first time this year is the task for the morning. Every thing starts out good until I try to raise the motor up. OH OH, tilt and trim is not working correctly! If I press the trim button repeatedly 3 out of 10 times it will raise. This is not good.
Taking the engine apart and digging into the electronics reveled a failing relay. There is an hour of wasted time! I’ll have to get a replacement part, but it works good enough that I can at least put the boat in the water today.
Grabbing Margaret we take the boat over to the landing and launch it. Margaret then took the car back to the garage while I drove the boat across the lake. No problems on the drive across the lake, so now all I have to do is crank the boat up onto the boatlift. Cranking away the boat raises out of the water steadily. Almost to the top when there is a huge “BOOM” & “SPLASH”. The cable that pulls up the lift arm snapped! What a day! Now what?
A trip to Fleet and Farm in Park Rapids wastes another 2 hours, but procures a cable that will work to fix the now collapsed lift.

With the boat tied to the side of the dock the handsome gentleman in the wet suit labors diligently to raise the lift arm and tie it place so the cable can be rethreaded through the pulley systems on the lift.

Once the lift arm is back up and tied the threading begins.

Looks like its going to be long enough!

The final total was 1 hour wasted on the motor 3 hours on the lift to get the boat on its lift for the summer.
The rest of the weekend was enjoyable and without difficulties proving to be a great opening for the summer!

Back in New York again

2010-05-31T18:26:00.001-07:00

It seems like life runs in cycles. Been there done that, do it again. I use to spend a lot of time in New York many years ago, then for a long period of time I was never in New York. Mind you I’m not complaining about missing New York or that I haven’t been there much lately. I really don’t much care for New York. It’s big dirty, crowded, and very expensive! But it seems that fate doesn't care whether or not I like New York. Stuff keeps happening there that I have to attend. So I find myself back in the “Big Apple” for the second time in a couple of months. (see here for the last time) This time to attend a leading edge technical conference on the newest startup companies.

I flew out Sunday night because the conference started 8:00 Monday morning. Usually the conference recommends a hotel and this was no exception. Parts of the conference was held at the “Standard Hotel” a trendy remolded boutique hotel in the meatpacking district. (YAH I KNOW! the meatpacking district???, but I’m not defining cool here the New Yorkers are)

“The Standard”

It must be hip and cool because they spell their name upside-down on all their literature.

Monday morning I walked down to the meeting place through parts of SOHO and “The West Village” A glimpse in the window of a real-estate agent told me that I could have one of these fine 800 Sq foot apartment around here for a mere $1,200,000 and a monthly association fee of $1,500. (What a bargain!) Tell me again why people live here?

Most of the conference was held in a now abandon Merrill Lynch office building just north of the financial district. (The door below with the vertical green banners)

Inside there was three days of the latest new companies showing their stuff on stage competing for 1st prize and showing off for dozens of Venture Capital Organizations.

Did I mention New York was expensive. The hotel room was $450 a night. What do you get for $450 dollars? Well a small room, approximately 8’ by 20’ 160 sq feet with one window. A small desk and a big flat screen TV on the wall.

The bathroom had a window with a view of the bed.

Trendy black tile and European fixture, but no room to move.

If you stood at the lone window and looked north toward Times Square in the distance you could see this view of satellite dishes and water towers on the rooftops.

Looking down at the street.

On the other side of the building by the elevators you could look out and see the greenway they called the “Highway” which was an old abandon raised railroad trestle that they have converted into a park. I guess in New York you have to take things were you can get them!

The view of the “Highway” and my hotel from the walkway on the “Highway”

I’m sure that there are many good reasons to live in New York, but I can't for the life of me think of one! It is interesting though to see how some people live.

The Coach gets out for Summer

2010-05-19T18:12:00.001-07:00

If you don’t remember last fall the sad sad sight of the beautiful coach getting put in the shed as the winter approached you can review here. As it always happens the winter ends (eventually) the summer begins and the coach gets to come back out of the shed.
We took off work early morning on a Friday to pick up the coach and when we arrived a little after 8:00 at Hilmerson RV we could see the coach waiting patiently for us deep in the shed. (I had called ahead.)

The people from Hilmerson were going to drive it out of the shed, but when they tried to start it the batteries were low so they had to put the charger on it for 10 minutes or so. You know how men and machines are so it took 3 or 4 people standing around to get the battery charged.

With all that manly brain power working on the battery problem it was only a few minutes and the coach fired right up. The Hilmerson guy then drove it over to the propane filling station where we topped of the propane tanks for the summer
Then it was time to hook up the Jeep to the Blue OX tow bar for the trip north to Brainerd where we had an appointment to have new tires put on the coach

Before getting on Hwy 371 North we stopped to fill the diesel tank on the coach. It was a bit of a tight squeeze and Margaret was on the edge of her seat as we slipped between the pumps , but there was a foot or so to spare and soon the wallet was much lighter and the fuel tank was filled.

Lets see $3.09 a gallon for diesel and100 gallon tank……….
The ride to Brainerd was a little less than an hour, and the coach cruised along at 60 MPH easily in the stream of opening fishing weekend traffic towards the lakes of Northern Minnesota. The tire place was just off Business 371 and after unhooking the jeep in the street next door we pulled the coach into the parking lot in front of one of the bays to get the tires changed.

After a bit of difficulty getting the fancy stainless hub caps off the tires were soon on the floor in the shop getting new Michelin 275/70R/22.5 XR2 “energy efficient tires” on.

Now you would think that in this day and age there would be big fancy shiny machines with gages and pressure settings and shinny fittings to change these big ass tires, but no meet the machine Fred.

I took about 2 hours to change the tires then it was time to settle up for the tires and the price of the diesel looks like a bargain now. Lets see $485 a tire plus installation. How many tires are on a diesel pusher again? Well at least you only have to put tires on the coach once ever 6 or seven years or so.
Finally it was time to get the jeep hooked up again for the final journey to the lake. (I sure am getting good at this hooking up the jeep thing)

The weather was beautiful and the sun was shinning brightly when we pulled into the Lake Lot with the coach. Everything looked great after the winter. No animals had chewed the shrubs, no trees had died over the winter. Things were looking good. Jockying the coach into its parking spot only took a couple of minutes, then we hooked up the electricity and water. Whoops! Water is squirting out of the pump house everywhere! Houston we have a problem! The winter wasn’t quite so kind as we had hoped. Apparently there was a little water leftover in the pipes and of course when they froze the copper burst.

So the wallet gets hits for another $60 worth of plumbing parts during a trip to Walker Ace hardware. 3 hours of work later around 7:00PM that night we sat down for happy hour.
The Coach is out for the summer!

Moving is fun, really it is?

2010-04-30T09:01:00.001-07:00

Have you ever moved? I mean the place you live. Moving it from one place to another. How many times have you moved? I sat down the other day and figured out how many times we have moved.

Since Margaret and I have been married we have moved 16 times in 33 years, but who’s counting.

The blow by blow details:

We started out at 706 south 8th Street in St James after we married.

From there we moved to 521 Webster Ave in North Mankato and my first real job, where we spent several years.

(1)

We sold the house and moved to an apartment on

Lee Blvd on the hill in North Mankato while we built an earth shelter home.

(2)

Even before it was complete we moved into 916 Belvista Drive on the hill side in North Mankato where we spent a few years.

(3)

We then sold and moved to an apartment on Teton Blvd in Mankato for a few months (this didn’t work so well)

(4)

So we then moved back to the same apartment on Lee Blvd for another stay of a year.

(5)

From the apartment we bought a house on Ivanhoe Court. We remodeled this house totally.

(6)

While we lived at Ivanhoe we undertook the building of a Lake House on Lake Jefferson which we moved part of our life to.

(7)

Then we sold Ivanhoe, and moved our city life to the same apartments again on Lee Blvd in North Mankato for the third time.

(8)

Then our city life moved to a beautiful townhouse we purchased on Pleasantview Drive.

(9)

Then just to make a mess of everything we sold it all and moved internationally to Weegbree 11 Best, Netherlands for a 3 year overseas stay in Holland.

(10)

Returning to the USA we moved to an apartment called the Ridge on Rockrimmin Blvd in Colorado Springs for a few months.

(11)

Then we bought a beautiful patio home on Twinberry Point with a view of Pikes Peak for 13 months. (we should have stayed there!)

(12)

We then moved back to Minneapolis and the Durham Apartments in Edina on the 13th floor for 8 months or so.

(13)

Until we bought a condo on 7400 Edinborough Way where we lived for almost 7 years (unbelievable! what happened).

(14)

With the Great real-estate crash of 2007 we sold our beautiful condo just in time to avoid the big losses and moved to a rented condo near 50th and France in Edina for a year and a half.

(15)

Then on to the most recent move of 3121 West 69th street just north of the Durham and not far from our old condo and our current home today. Much better than the last place!

(16)

But moving rates right up there

with taxes and death!

But eventually it gets downs to a few things:

Then it’s all done and you lock up for the last time and head out.

Many trips with the jeep and a U-haul rental trailer for a day eventually gets us a view from the fourth floor, and a brand new never lived in 1 bedroom apartment with an outside deck.

Of course then you have to assemble everything back the way it was.

Then its all back together and you can relax……..

All decorated and ready to celebrate!

Ready to live our life again...

Until the next move!

There really is a Fairy God Mother!

2010-04-03T19:39:00.001-07:00

Haven’t you wished when you had a nasty project to do that you could go to bed at night and when you woke up in the morning your Fairy God Mother had magically appeared in the night while you slept and finished the nasty project? Come on now we have all wished that!

Well guess what. There really is a Fairy God Mothers and I have proof! There was this nasty project that had to be completed featuring the re-plastering, painting, and trimming the shed door. (see photo)

I heard this loud noise late in the evening and I snuck down to the shed and managed to catch the Fairy God Mother in action with my camera! The Fairy God Mother is not much to look at and she sure looks surprised, but look at that magic at work!

After the God Mother disappeared in a puff of smoke and a string of profanities there was nothing left of the nasty project!

OH! The Fairy God Mother did leave a note:

Business in New York

2010-03-14T07:02:00.001-07:00

Recently I find myself working with a group of companies that I spent loads of time with 20 years ago. The focus of this new endeavor is about the future of technology, such as mobile devices and communications platforms that people are so swiftly adopting.

This group of companies does business primarily with the Fortune 500 set of companies. Many of the Fortune 500 companies are headquartered in New York city and so I find myself back in the “Big Apple” again.

We (my new Boss and I) flew into the Newark airport late one evening, and after only a few wrong turns arrived at a suburban motel near the east coast factory just south of the big city.

(OH.. before I forget: these photos are all taken with a new mobile device I recently picked up as part of a research project for this new job. It actually takes reasonable photos for a phone)

The next morning I dressed up with a tie. (I haven't worn a tie in years!) and headed out to the train station to catch the morning commuter train to the heart of the city. We were going to visit HBO, and McGraw Hill to present some new technology ideas.

The train ride was an hour and we arrived at Penn Station and walked out onto the city streets.

It was a beautiful day in the city almost 60 degrees with the sun shining brightly. Well… as much as the sun can shine in the concrete canyons between the huge buildings.

We walked about a mile or so in the city between the two stops, passing through Times Square along the way.

While the business purpose of our visit was presenting new ideas to folks that only marginally understood them the day was interesting, and as my new boss says:

“You have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince!”

Noisy Neighbors!

2010-02-27T07:37:00.001-08:00

Tuesday afternoon just down the block from our apartment around 2:00 pm a crew pushing pipe under the street struck a natural gas line on the corner of 50th and Arden. They quickly notified the police and the surrounding area was evacuated just in time, as around 4:00 pm the house on the corner of the street exploded in a ball of flames leaving nothing but a gapping hole in the ground.

Margaret was at work in Arden Hills and I was in Mankato. So we weren’t immediately aware of the disaster.

Apparently the punctured gas line had leaked into the sewer line and backed up in the house.

these first photos courtesy of FOX 9 News linked story here:

http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/dpp/news/minnesota/edina-house-explosion-feb-23-2010

We walked down a day or so later and looked closely at the mess. There is virtually nothing left standing and the house next door was severely damaged as well. We took a few pictures of the devastation.

The Gas company trucks are still monkeying around in the sewers trying to flush the remaining gas out.

The house next door

Miraculously no one was hurt. Even the little dog that was home in the house at the time of the explosion escaped without injury somehow.

One day you have a million dollar home in Edina the next day:

Life is like that!

Time for new Specs

2010-02-21T15:33:00.001-08:00

Its been about three years since I’ve had the prescription in my glasses changed. Its about time to venture into the eye doctors again to see how time has affected my vision.

Since I have vision coverage in our health insurance plan I have to go to a provider that accepts our type of insurance. Now it just so happens that the closest provider of our plan is located in the Galleria Mall in Edina.

If you not familiar with the Galleria it an upscale trendy place that people with too much money usually frequent. That means that this place is fairly expensive, but because the coverage I have provides a substantial discount the final out of pocket to me will be reasonable.

An appointment was scheduled for one night after work and we cruised on down to the Galleria. After all the poking and prodding, air puffs in the eyes, and the back and forth of “ Is image A clearer or image B” the verdict was rendered.

No problems with the eyes, but the reading glasses need to be stronger and the distance vision is not what it used to be. A new set of progressive lens bifocals are in order. The prescription was rendered and we ventured out into the frame gallery to find a new set of frames to house the new lenses.

They say that fashion repeats itself every 20 or 30 years or so, and eye glass frames are no exception to that rule. The most popular frames today and also the most expensive ones, I remember my grandfather wearing 40 years ago.

While I’m getting old and I’m as nostalgic as the next guy I can’t see myself wearing glasses that make me look like my grandfather. I guess if your young enough that you don’t remember people wearing these 40 years ago it works.

So not the nostalgia route. I don’t want round again. I do like the frameless ones. Wait! here is a cool pair of frames that the marketing advertises that they will make me, Better Looking,” “Cooler,” Taller,”a Better Lover,” and that “Women will not be able to keep there hands off me” as well as “Guarantee me a Raise.”

How can I not go with these frames!

Well women…. can you keep you hands off me?

Another brush with the Law!

2010-02-14T06:40:00.001-08:00

I don’t know why, but we still check our mail box. There is never anything good in there. All of our business is now done online and the only thing we ever find in the mailbox is junk mail or bad news.

Day after day we perform this ritual of checking the mailbox on the way in from work. Occasionally its empty (that’s a good thing). More often than not it full of total garbage that needs to be dumped into the trash as soon as we get to the apartment. Once in a while its bad news! Remember: I’ve been pardoned.

Well it seems that everyone gets their “Brush with the Law”, because the bad news in the mail box this time was a Jury Summons for my “Favorite Deaf Irish Woman”

I can just see this now! Can you imagine what would happen with Margaret on a jury!!!!!

Reading a little further there appears to be hope yet. One of the questions on the summons is: Do you have any disabilities that would keep you from serving on a jury? Check this box “ X” and include a letter stating what your disability is.

Ok write the letter and fill out the questionnaire and send the summons back to the bureaucracy to be processed, and wait……………………………………………

Eventually a few weeks later as the wheels of justice grind slowly……….

She has been released! But just in case the deafness is only a temporary situation the District Court reserves the right to call her to serve again!

Lesson learned!

Don’t check your mailbox!

Nothing

2010-01-29T12:37:00.001-08:00

It’s the middle of winter. Life is boring and we are not doing anything other than going to work and occasionally going to yoga.

We did have a recent spell of weather where humans could actually survive outside for more than a few minutes. It was almost 40 degrees for a couple of days. But alas we are back in the deep freeze again with zero and below temps.

I spend a lot of time on the computer… (you guessed that huh?)

I read many Blogs: financial, travel, computer, futuristic, etc. Many of these folks make money from their writing. It seems that when that occurs these folks that write have to do so every day, or their readers go away and then their money goes away as well.

So in order to write something every day they start to make up stuff. Sometime boring stuff! Sometimes everyday life kind of stuff! Sometimes they even let you deep into their minds and their deepest darkest secrets.

I don’t get paid for writing. I write when I have something interesting going on. Which I haven’t had for a while. I could tell you about everyday stuff, but that would be truly boring and a waste everyone's time.

I could open up my mind and let you in on the deepest darkest secrets in there, but then you would be truly scared of me and never read my blog again!

So I guess your just going to have to wait until I have something interesting going on for a good Blog entry.

A January Weekend

2010-01-10T09:46:00.001-08:00

It’s winter in Minnesota! Not the wimpy winters that Minnesota has had the last few years, but real winters just like when I grew up. There are piles of snow everywhere. In some of the smaller communities with smaller snow removal budgets they are piling snow in the middle of the streets between lanes of traffic rather than haul the snow away.

Of course with all the snow on the ground comes the COLD deep freeze. The last few weeks have struggled to see an occasional high above zero, and nightly lows in the 20 to 30 below zeros.

A person forgets year to year how cold 20 below zero actually is. If you forgot or have never experienced it let me refresh your memory! It’s kind of hard to breath! You get an ice cream headache just running out to your car. You can throw a hot cup of coffee out the car window and it never hits the ground because it evaporates in mid air, and you certainly do not want to put your tongue on that tasty looking frosty metal pole!

After a few weeks of being holed up inside unable to go out you start to go a little crazy. Cabin fever sets in and going to the gym and yoga can only do so much. After a while you have to find a way to get out of the apartment and do something or you can lose it.

If you remember last year when it got cold we did a sanity outing to the Como Zoo green houses. On our last trip to the Minnesota Zoo I noticed that there was an IMAX theater on the property there, that showed a variety of movies. We have visited the IMAX at the Minnesota Science museum several times and it was always entertaining so maybe this would be a good winter diversion?

A quick check of the WEB site show that the new Movie “Avatar” was playing at the IMAX at the Minnesota Zoo. The bad news it was $15 a ticket to attend. Outrageous! but what’s your sanity worth? I purchased 2 tickets online for the 2:00PM showing on Saturday. That would give us time to go to yoga in the morning and have a quick lunch before dashing off the the Zoo in Apple valley. ( the site of my bogus parking ticket)

Arriving at the IMAX theater with previously purchased tickets in hand the line was still very long to enter the movie. What have I gotten us into? I don’t stand in line for anything! This had better be good! I hadn’t noticed when I bought the tickets but this was going to be a 3D version of the movie and we were going to have to wear glasses to watch it. THIS HAD BETTER BE GOOD!

After standing in line for 1/2 hour we finally filed in to the theater. The theater it is not exactly like the IMAX at the Science Museum but it seems like a good theater. The screen is not curved like Other IMAXs I have seen, however the screen was 6 Stories tall.

The screen was huge!

This screening was sold out so everyone had to pack into the center while the rest of the people flowed in the doors. The theater quickly filled up and there we all were sitting with our cute little glasses on waiting for the movie to start.

I’m not sure if it was the IMAX experience, the movie, or the 3D aspect of the film, but WOW!

Double WOW WOW!

Its been along time if ever that I have ever seen anything like this! The movie plot was good the, the scenery was literally out of this world. The special effect were truly amazing! The best I’ve ever seen. Normally I never think what I have to pay for something is worth what I have to shell out, but I had no complaints with the $30 this cost Margaret and I for an afternoons entertainment.

Avatar has my recommendations especially in 3D on an IMAX screen!

The Big Christmas Storm

2009-12-25T06:36:00.001-08:00

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house
Not a creature was stirring not even a mouse ……..
Even the mice wouldn’t go out anymore! You see the National weather service has been predicting the worst storm since the Halloween blizzard of 91.
A giant low pressure system was destined to sit in Iowa and pump moisture from the Gulf of Mexico into the winter air over Minnesota for days on end with a prediction of up to 20 plus inches of snow in total.

The endless babble about the weather started on Tuesday morning several days before the approaching storm. It’s been snowing off and on for most of December and there is already no lack of snow on the ground and roads. After several years of warm temperatures and little or no snow, this year appears is going to be a good old fashion Minnesota winter.
I was so counting on that whole global warming thing to solve this Minnesota winter problem, but I think I’m going to have find another solution.
For those of you who have been fortunate enough to have forgotten how this whole snow and blizzard thing works let me refresh your memory!
Remember when you had to dig your vehicle out of the snow banks?
Remember those last minute runs to the grocery store for those supplies just in case you can’t get out because of the storm?

But there is good things about snow storms. The big heavy snows usually requires warmer temperatures, and this one is no exception. Christmas Eve on the street in the snow its 27 degrees.

Either the snow or the holiday has reduced the traffic on an otherwise bumper to bumper car filled 50th street. The theater is open for Christmas eve!

A walk around the downtown 50th and France area reveals Margaret’s favorite store in the snow. “ Live Laugh Love”

As always whenever there is a snow storm you find little kids out playing in the snow piles!

Improvised Explosive Devices (IED’s) in Minnesota!

2009-12-12T10:53:00.001-08:00

I know its hard to believe but just the other day an improvised explosive device went off in the Wendy’s in Arden hills! I thought we were safe from terrorist here in the heartland.

It was one of those days where Margaret and I went out for lunch together while we were both in the office in Arden Hills. We have a small selection of fast food restaurants around the area. There is a Subway that we often frequent, a new Mexican place in the same strip mall, an Arby’s, and down the road a ways, a Wendy's.

This day we went to the Wendy’s. The food is not that great but its a big open air restaurant with large windows that let in the sunshine (on the rare Minnesota days that the sun shines). If you have never been to a Wendy’s it is one of the few fast food places that you can get a baked potato a healthier alternative to the normal French fries.

Along with the baked potato you can get butter, and sour cream. That is what Margaret ordered along with a chicken sandwich. After we collected our food and sat down to enjoy the feast Margaret started to apply the condiments to her potato. That’s when the improvised explosive device went off!

I suspect most IEDs (improvised explosive devices) are made of fuel oil & fertilizer, old artillery shells or plastic explosives, but this one was made of sour cream. You see when Margaret started to open the sour cream packet to apply to her potato it exploded in her hand. I don’t mean a little pop, and it runs onto the table, but a high powered stream of white sour cream jetting into the air several feet. Fortunately for me it didn’t go in my direction. Unfortunately for Margaret that high speed stream of sour cream was aimed right at her glasses and hair.

Have you every tried to wipe sour cream out of you hair with a napkin in a Wendy’s restaurant? Take it from me its not a pretty sight and it doesn't work so well. But it sure is humorous. After a quick trip to the restroom the heroine of our story Margaret retuned uninjured by the IED and finished her lunch!

Watch out for IED’s they show up in the strangers of places!

Strange things about Memories

2009-12-06T10:57:00.001-08:00

Have you every noticed that sometimes old memories pop up out of nowhere? I don’t mean memories from last week or last month, but from 40 or 50 years ago. Memories from when you were a child. Usually these are pleasant memories and nice to revisit having had long ago forgotten about them.

Some months ago rather than properly manage individuals that were abusing some company rules about break time and duration the company Margaret works for implemented a company wide rule that you could no longer leave the property during break.

Now that in itself isn’t a big deal, because how far can you go on a 15 minute break, but Margaret and a few others me included use to take that 15 minute break and walk around the industrial park that out company's building is located in. With the new rule that would no longer be possible.

Since people are endlessly resourceful some started walking in the parking lot, others Margaret and I started walking around the building. Its a big building and directly behind it is a railroad tracks.

The path around the building is not particularly nice. Its not even OK. It kind of dirty and you have to climb a steep trail to get around the back, Then you have to walk along on the railroad tracks to keep out of the mud. For the most part along the tracks there is a fair amount of garbage. At one end of the building there is a small muddy pond often with a few ducks in it.

In spite of all that for some strange reason its a pleasant walk! Why is that?

I think I might have an answers! In some small part the company tried to take something away and a way was found to continue the walks while sort of following the new rules. But I think that the real reason might be how those really old memories might get evoked. You see the trail around the building on the railroad tracks smells slightly of creosote. All railroad tracks do. That smell of creosote dredges up times and memories from long ago when walking and playing along the railroad tracks in the summertime with friends were fun. So even today that smell of creosote seems to make things pleasant.

So now from time to time you find us, on nice days playing again on the railroad tracks.

Grizzly Bears are Really Big!

2009-11-19T17:25:00.001-08:00

Last Sunday a late weekend in November we slept late. When we woke up the sun was shinning in the bedroom windows, as I rolled over and looked out the window there was a HUGH GRIZZLY BEAR looking through the window!

OH WAIT! That window was at the Minnesota Zoo a little later in the day at the new Kamchatka Peninsula’s Grizzly Coast display.( I’m getting old and a little forgetful). You see after breakfast and a little milling around we went down to the zoo to see the bears.

There were three Grizzlies in a realistic recreation of the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia where the bears hang out. You could stand in a window and watch them swimming in a pool of Salmon. (I think the bear was looking for a salmon to play with.)

You can see them below the water as they hunt for the salmon swimming back an forth with just their ears out of the water. During the time we watched he didn’t catch one, but I suspect that I wouldn’t want to be that salmon he was looking for.

There are three bears in the enclosure. Here one of the bears is scratching his back on the dead tree.

After the bears we moved on to the Siberian Leopards. They were incredibly beautiful creatures, but not willing to pose for a picture, so we will just have to settle for a picture of his tail.

The zoo has a couple of Tigers as well. Here you can see Margaret in the cage posing with the tigers.

Just across the walkway was a more animated version of the Tigers.

Brave Margret with the wolves!

She wouldn’t pet this one though!

As we walked around the zoo we saw sharks, monkeys…

red pandas, and sea creatures……

But here you see the most dangerous creature in the entire zoo having ice cream!

I’ve Been Pardoned!

2009-11-09T17:32:00.001-08:00

The governor came through! It was a close thing. It was down to the last minute and then the call came thought. “You’ve been pardoned!”

The celebration was immediate! We stopped on the way home from work at the Granite City brewery for dinner and some micro brew beer.

(Forgive the quality of the pictures they were taken with the camera on my phone. Convicts are not allowed to carry real cameras)

OH Sorry: I forgot you missed the part where I became a convicted criminal didn’t you!

Flash back to Saturday Morning November 7th:

Nothing special was happening this weekend and Saturday was a beautiful day so after an early lunch at 11:00am we headed out to the lakes to hike around the trails in the last remnants of nice weather. After the hike and a trip to REI to get Margaret some “Life is Good” socks we returned to the apartment later in the afternoon to relax for the evening.

On the way up to the apartment we stopped at the mailbox to check the mail. A strange letter was in the mailbox. A plain white window envelope with a bright yellow sheet showing through the window, with a return address of “ District Court” Oh Shit! I thought I've be called to jury duty.

After getting into the apartment we opened the envelope and it wasn’t a jury summons at all it was a” Failure to Appear” notice from the Dakota County Court.

In short it says you have failed to appear in court on your appointed date and have failed to pay the fine you received for parking illegally on September 24th at 510AM in the morning at some obscure intersection in Apple Valley, MN Dakota County.

What!! I haven’t been in Apple valley in years and the only place I was at 5:10 AM on that Thursday morning was in bed! I didn’t get this ticket. There was a phone number to call in case of any questions. I called the number but of course it was Saturday and there was nothing but an answering machine. Please call between the hours of 8:00AM to 5:00pm Monday through Friday.

I started packing! I’ll leave the country they'll never catch me! I can cross over into Canada and make my way to Europe and live there. I was ready to retire anyway.

Well it is only a parking ticket, and the fine is only $35 maybe I should wait until Monday and call to see what is going on before I flee the country.

Monday morning at 8:30 I called the number on the yellow sheet. After a brief conversation with a rather rude public employee of the Dakota County District court I got the name of the issuing agency and called the Apple Valley Police Department. There I spoke to a helpful young lady and explained that I couldn’t have received this ticket because I have never been in the lovely city of Apple Valley. She gave me the details of the ticket and explained that it would have to be waived by the issuing officer. Unfortunately he was on vacation until the 18th of November. She said she would have another officer look into it and get back to me.

Great! this is starting to look like a convenient way to extort money from me. I may have to move to Europe after all because there is no way I’m going to pay this. These people are never going to call me back!

At 4:00 as we were walking to the car when my cell phone rang. It was the young lady from the Apple Valley police department. She explained that there had been a clerical mistake and the wrong license number was keyed into a computer. She would send a letter to the District court to correct the erroneous citation.

The governor called I have been pardoned! I won’t have to move to Europe anymore. Oh and I get to celebrate at the Granite City Brewery on the way home.

The Photographer

2009-11-08T23:24:00.001-08:00

Over the years we have had a number of nice cameras. I have always had a higher end 35 mm with different lenses, sometime a bit complicated to run, and I have always considered my self a bit of a photographer. Margaret has always had a smaller more convenient point and shoot. When digital cameras came out we had some of the first ones available. As an R&D engineer in the technology field that’s really part of my job to be current on all that stuff, It pays the bills as they say.

We take pictures of images we like to see and sometime share them with others through our web site.

Margaret gets up early in the morning usually before I do. Its been that way for years. If we are at the lake in the summer she often will go outside and snap pictures of the sunrise coming up over the east end of the lake. In the evening often during happy hours we will sit in the sunshine, and Margaret will snap pictures of the sunsets.

We have a special folder on her computer just for those pictures “Sunrises and Sunsets".

On one particular Saturday morning late in the summer she captured this image while up early in the morning out wandering the lake shore. The fog was heavy and the sun was peaking through and shining on the neighbor kid’s bouncing float toy. (We have shown it on the blog before)

The photo was recently picked to be one of the images on the 2010 yearly calendar produced by the company we work for.

Congratulation to the photographer in our family Margaret!

I can at least consol myself with the fact that she used my camera to take the picture.

The Coach Gets stored for the Winter

2009-10-18T09:21:00.001-07:00

Last year we left the coach sit out in the weather. It spent the winter on the lake lot. We visited it about once a month to check on it and it seemed to do fine for most of the winter. As spring approached in the February, March time frame some cracking occurred in the dark brown decals on the sides of the coach. It appeared to be the result of the rapid change in temperatures that occurred as it warmed up.

This year we decided that we would store the coach in a covered shed for the winter. We checked around a number of possible location and finally arrived at an RV storage lot in Little Falls. They have a very large metal building that while unheated it would keep snow ,and sunlight away from the coach. The building will also work to moderate extreme temperature changes.

The storage season runs from Oct 15th to May 15th and costs $17 per linear foot for the RV. We made an appointment to deliver the coach on Saturday morning October 17th for the season. To get there by noon on Saturday we would have to stay over night at the lake, and take off by 10:00am Saturday morning to get there by noon.

We arrived at the lake around 6:00 on Friday night after taking off a little early from work. Since the coach was parked in the driveway awaiting its departure, we parked in front of the garage and hooked the coach up to electricity and opened it up for the night.

Sitting in the driveway is not quite level but a few boards under the jacks solved the problem.

After some final close up tasks (cover the hot tub with a tarp) for the lake we settled down to a dinner of rotisserie chicken, French bread and wine in the coach.

Saturday morning dawned cold and foggy. It was about 30 degrees with a frost of ice on many of the trees and decks. Let’s hope the roads are clear at 10:00 when we take off!

After breakfast we wandered around the lot for a tour. You couldn’t see the lake at all for the fog!

Down along the shore you can get an idea how thick the fog was.

You can barely see the neighbor’s dock. It seems like its a little late to still have your dock in, but there are still several of them out there. If a freak storm occurs these folks could be in trouble.

About 8:00 I started get the coach ready to move for the winter. Since this will be the first time we have ever towed the Jeep behind the coach I wanted to be sure of a few things and allow plenty of time for the first hook up. Once the coach was out on the drive way in front of the garage I hooked up the Blue OX tow bar to the coach for the first time.

The coach is now ready to put it out on the road and hook up the Jeep.

The jeep is almost ready to be towed, only the lights need to be hooked up with the coiled blue cable.

Finally we are ready to head off down the road in the fog towing the jeep.

After stopping to check everything in Akeley we head off down highway 64 for the hour and half ride to Little Falls.

At 10:00 a few miles south of Akeley the fog is still thick with no signs of letting up. Other than being able to see the jeep in the rear view camera you cannot tell that it is even there. The coach doesn't even notice the jeep when braking.

At last just before Motley around 11:00 the fog starts to lift.

As we pull onto Hwy 10 and the four lane it actually starts to look like a nice day.

Around 11:30 we pull into the dealer lot for our storage appointment. While I go inside to arrange the parking Margaret documents our rig with her little camera.

We unhooked the jeep ,and stored the tow bar for the winter in the storage bay. Then we swept out the coach and unpacked the last of the things before locking it up. Here is the coaches winter home for this year.

Lets hope that this is its last trip to the storage shed!

To shorten winter, borrow some money due in spring. ~W.J. Vogel

Business in New Orleans

2009-10-10T08:45:00.001-07:00

This week I was on a business trip with several other people from our company to a Specialty Graphics (SGIA) show. It’s held once a year and this year Its in New Orleans. We will spend only two days there, but because its had to get convenient flights in and out of New Orleans we will have to fly in the day before and leave the day after.

Arriving in New Orleans and stepping out of the airport was a bit of a weather shock. New Orleans was experiencing a record heat wave and It was 93 degrees as we stood in line at the cab stand.

The heat wasn’t as bad as the humidity.The humidity must have been close to 100% .It was oppressive. The slightest movement of your body caused you to break out in a sweat.

I checked in at the Embassy Suites. My room was on the tenth floor and had a view of the Mississippi river Bridge and the convention center a couple of blocks away.

The next morning the air was so thick with moisture that you could almost drink it as I walked to the convention center.

Inside the convention center was comfortably cool and you could see sheets of condensing water running down the glass windows that contacted the humid air.

We saw quite a few interesting things at the show. A new type of printing device now prints images directly on fabric and will enable all sorts of new products to be sold.

Late in the afternoon I started back towards the hotel room. It was just starting to sprinkle rain drops as I walked along the route back to the hotel. About halfway back the skies opened up and it poured down rain. Now at the time I was standing under one of the many porches on the street in New Orleans so I wasn’t wet yet.

I waited for 15 or 20 minutes for the rain to let up , but it didn’t seen like it was going to quit any time soon so I decided that I would make a break for the hotel it was only 2 blocks away. If I run, I rationalized I can get there without getting too wet.

As it turns out it really doesn't matter how fast you run in a down pour. When I arrived at the hotel about 10 seconds later I might as well have gone swimming in my clothing.

I dripped my way through the lobby and up to my room where I changed clothing and snapped this picture from the dry safety of my balcony.

As it always does other than one notable exception with Noah and the whole Ark thing it stopped raining and the sun started to come out.

Standing on my room balcony I snapped a series of photos and stitched them together in the partial panorama of the historic warehouse district of New Orleans after the rain.

I had a business dinner that evening at 7:00 and walked from my hotel down towards Canal street to the restaurant where we were meeting. It was a nice walk with a few interesting scenes along the way.

I guess this is ART!

Typical New Orleans architecture

A Pano of a park along the way

The following night we had another business dinner but this time my walk to the restaurant took me along the River walk.

Part of the Riverwalk from my balcony

The other end of the Riverwalk

Here is pano stitched together from several photos of the Mississippi river as it flows into the Gulf of Mexico under the River bridge.

The riverwalk.

We had dinner at the corner of Fulton street on the Gordon Bierch patio.

I arrived at the New Orleans airport for my flight home at 10:00AM the next morning for a 11:00 flight.

At about 10:30 a sign went up that we would be weather delayed until 11:30. 10 minutes later the delay moved to 1:30PM. OH OH. I’m never going to make my connecting flight in Memphis. A line about 2 1/2 miles long immediately formed at the counter. (We are in trouble now!)

I grabbed my cell phone and immediately call the travel agent I use. She checked out all the flights and for the most part they were booked or wanted a thousand dollars. She was able to reserve a seat on the 6:00PM flight that evening in case the worst happened.

I then got in the 2 1/2 mile long line at the counter and slowly shuffled my way towards the counter with the rest of the prisoners. When I got to the counter the agent informed me that I was not going to make my connection in Memphis and that all other flights were sold out.

I politely asked him to check for my reservation on the 6:00 flight. Indeed I was booked on the 6:00PM flight. I was going to get out of here yet today!

It was 30 miles and a $60 cab ride back to town so I was stuck the rest of the day. I hung out in the airport had lunch and vegged out until 6:00PM. At 5:30 I boarded the plane. It looks like I was going to get out of New Orleans until the pilot came on the intercom and stated that thunderstorms were moving into the airport and he was shutting the engines down and was waiting until they passed, duration unknown! ( OH CRAP!). I got on the phone and called Margaret to inform here that I was on hold again and potentially sentenced to life in Louisiana. I would call again or send an email when I had further news.

People were up and milling about the airplane 15 minutes later when the pilot came on the intercom and urgently requested everyone be seated there was a small clearing and he was taxiing out to the runway. There was a chance we could get out!

We moved down the taxiway in the dark rain approaching the runway. I could see the lights stretching out along the runway as he made the turn. At this point planes usually stop, but he didn't even slow down as the plane straightened out onto the runway he powered up the jets and we were blasting down the runway in the rain on our way finally to Minneapolis!

The Weekend and Lyndale Park

2009-10-03T17:21:00.001-07:00

With our Lake lot mostly closed up for the year, Margaret and I are forced to wander the streets like homeless vagrants looking for entertainment on the weekends now. This weekend looks to be a beautiful weekend so Saturday we headed over to our old stand by lake “Lake Harriet” where we joined the people already walking around the lake for an hour long trip in the sunshine.

We noticed as we rounded the east side of the lake that the Rose Gardens in Lyndale park were still in full bloom and we thought that the garden may be a good destinations for Sundays outing.

The rest of the day we did some chores got some groceries and made a trip to the library.

Late Sunday morning we packed a picnic lunch and headed out towards Lyndale park. The weather was not quit as nice as Saturdays sunshine, but it was warm and the rain was holding off as we wandered around the park looking for a good place for our picnic lunch.

We found a nice spot and set up our chairs and had a nice lunch.

After lunch the weather was looking a little better while we wandered around the park enjoying the fountains and flowers

Part of Lyndale park is the Rose garden.

This is a fenced in area about a block square filled with rows and rows of Roses. Red ones, White ones, orange and every color imaginable.

We strolled up and down the roses enjoying the colors and the smells.

Stop and smell the roses.

A bouquet for anyone?

The honey bees certainly think this is a great area to hang out in.

Across the street from the Rose garden is the Peace gardens.

We crossed the street to the Peace Garden where I tried to feel the peace, but no luck.

Margaret did find a nice spot to relax though.

Is she at peace yet? I hope so.

All in all it was a fun day in a beautiful park just a couple miles from our apartment.

Closing up the Lake

2009-09-21T17:46:00.001-07:00

The last days at the lake are always a sad time. Of course you can still go to the lake after it gets cold, but it’s not the same, so year after year the last days are always the days that you shut the water off so it doesn't freeze.
That time varies every year, but after Sept 15th you need to watch carefully that the nightly temperatures this far north don’t fall below freezing. So this weekend the water gets shutoff and we close everything up. We will be back one more time in October to move the coach to its winter storage facility, and maybe once or twice over the winter to check on everything, but for all practical purposes lake season in Minnesota is over for the year for us.
The weekend cooperated fantastically and the temperatures during the day were in the 70-80 degree range and the trees were starting to change color.
Saturday started out with a trip to Walker Marine Max to get oil, and an oil filter for the boat motor. It was time to change the oil in the boat's outboard motor and store it for the winter. We also stopped at the local coffee shop in Walker for a cup of coffee and a scone.
After the coffee we walked over to the new hotel “Chase on the Lake” and wandered around inside with our coffee making our own personal tour. Its a real nice place and would be worth staying in at some time. http://www.chaseonthelake.com
Back at the lake lot later in the morning I changed the oil in the boat motor and disconnected the battery finalizing the storage of the boat for the winter.
After lunch I pulled the Jeep up behind the coach and finished wiring the lights for towing the jeep.

The wiring for the lights went fast and the rest of the day was a lay about day and ended with a grilled salmon dinner and the final hot tub for the year.

Margaret was up early the next morning and managed to capture a beautiful image of the sunrise and the neighbor fishing in the early morning light.

Sunday was all about draining the water out of all the systems for the winter. Early that morning we started with the hot tub, connecting a hose and draining the water out into the hillside.

Once drained it all had to be scrubbed and every drop of water siphoned out of all the jets so it doesn't freeze and burst a pipe.
After that the water had to be drained from the coach plumbing, underground water pipes, and well housing and be replaced with antifreeze. It was closing in on 3:00PM when all the water was out of all the systems. With all the water systems shutdown, we moved the coach out on the drive way so it would be easy to drive it out in a couple of weeks on it final trip to the winter storage area in Little Falls.

With everything locked up, closed up, and winterized Margaret celebrated with a glass of wine on the lonely deck before we headed back to the city.

“One year closes out, but another waits in the wings for it’s chance to start”

Labor Day 2009

2009-09-16T17:15:00.001-07:00

I have been bad lately about getting posts out on time.

Some of it is that its the end of the summer and I’m enjoying every last minute of the beautiful weather, and I can’t seem to find time to sit down and get a blog entry written.

We took the Friday before Labor Day weekend off and that gave us a 4 day weekend at the lake to get some jobs done, as well as get a head start on the end of year tasks. It takes about 4 full days to close up the lake for the year so it usually has to be done over a couple of weekends.

Traffic wasn’t too bad on the way to the lake, mostly because it was Thursday night and the holiday weekend doesn't really start until Friday night. The weather man has forecast one of the most beautiful weekends of the summer.

Friday morning was breakfast out. Usually once a year we go have breakfast at a restaurant in the little village of Dorset. Dorset is an interesting city. It’s only a couple of blocks long and has mostly restaurants and bars. The mayor of Dorset is elected every year by drawing names in a raffle. The restaurant we have breakfast at is not much to look at, but it has great food especially breakfast.

After breakfast it was off to Park Rapids to pick up some food and a few parts for the chores this weekend.

The first half of this weekend is all about things that need to be done on the coach. The first thing on the list was to change the oil in the massive Cat 350 engine that powers the coach. After checking what it cost to have a service place change the oil (roughly $300) I decided to do it myself. ( no brainer there) Oil, filter and grease cost $125

The engine takes five gallons of oil and and a very large oil filter. Other than the volume of oil it is much like changing the oil in a normal car.

After the oil was changed it was time to wash the beast! You really can’t understand how big a 38ft coach is until you have to wash it!

It took almost 2 hours just to pressure wash the fiberglass roof. While I was cleaning the outside Margaret worked on cleaning the inside.

Once the roof was cleaned I moved onto the sidewalls with a long handled washing brush.

It took all afternoon, but the coach sure looked nice ,shiny and clean when it was done.

The Mystery of Trashed Deck

When we woke up Saturday morning the deck was littered with tree branched and broken acorn shells form the oak tree that overhangs our deck. From time to time we have seen this and attributed it to a squirrel in the tree, but we have never seen so much before.

To be continued:

Saturday was the day that I was going to install the tow bar in the jeep.

Tow Bar for the coach

I had checked a couple of places and gotten quotes to install a tow bar and base plate on the coach and jeep and both places I checked said about $1,700-$2,000 without a brake system. It looks like I can buy the parts on the internet for about $1,200 so I planned on doing it myself and pocketing the extra money.

After doing the research on tow bars, it appears that most people think that Blue OX is one of the best products out there, so we purchased a Blue OX Acclaim 10,000lb tow bar and a base plate for our 2008 Jeep Liberty. We purchased them on the internet and paid a fair price for the tow bar and base plate. They arrived promptly and had good installation instructions. The instruction indicated that an experienced installer could do it in 4 hours. I have read blogs of people that have done it themselves and they indicated that it is a full day job, so I set aside the whole day for the job.

The job is really 2 parts. First putting on the base plate, then wiring the taillights. First thing in the morning I pulled the jeep into the garage at the lake and started removing the bumper shroud according to the instructions. It was a bit of a task but nothing terrible and soon the bumper shroud was out on the lawn and we were ready to install the new Blue Ox base plate.

Here is the base plate ready to go onto the frame.

Bolted down tight with “Loctite Red” to hold the bolts in place, the base plate is now installed.

Now the bumper shroud just need to go back on for a completed base plate job.

After two tries ( The first time I forgot an important part.) the jeep is whole again, and true to the advertising from Blue Ox you can not even tell it is on unless you look really close.

It took about 3 hours to put the base plate on, so right after lunch it was on to getting the tail lights hooked up. At first this seems like it should be a fairly simple task, but as it turns out finding a safe path to run the wiring harness from the front of the jeep to that back was a big job on our 2008 Liberty. It ended up taking several hours just to pull the wire through the convoluted path and wire wrap it tightly to the frame.

Finally as the afternoon was about over the job was complete, with only a few swear words and a couple of scraped knuckles.

A celebration ensued with wine and a barbequed steak dinner on the deck of the Garden House.

After dinner the party adjourned to the hot tub for a much deserved relaxing soak after a hard days work crawling under the vehicles.

The Mystery of Trashed Deck ……Continued

Somewhere around midnight I woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep.

Since it was such a nice weekend it was still quit warm out. The moon was shining brightly and I decided to step outside to see if I could get any moonlight pictures. Margaret’s solar lights were shinning brightly and looked beautiful, but I couldn't get the pictures to come out. On the way back to the coach I heard acorns being dropped on the deck! The mysterious squirrel bandit was at work! I though to myself maybe if I shined a light up in the tree I could see him. Sure enough! I shined a small flashlight up into the tree and I could see a pair of beady yellow squirrel eyes reflected in the light looking back at me! So holding the light in one hand and Margaret’s little camera in the other I was able to document the existence of the vicious little criminal!

Hold on! A moment latter another set of beady yellow eyes appeared!

There is two of them up there throwing acorn refuse down on our deck!

Wait a minute! a few seconds later another set of eyes appears. There is at least three of them!

The mystery is solved! Now we know how we get so much junk on our deck! There is an entire “herd of squirrels” living and feeding in our oak tree discarding their leftovers on our deck and yard!

Sunday morning

With the coach cleaned, the rest of the weekend was for starting to close up the lake for the winter. This is always a sad time. However with the warm sunshine and 80 degree temperatures it made for a pleasant task down on the lakeshore cleaning the boat and getting the boatlift ready to remove from the water.

Getting the lift out by myself requires taking the canvas and the aluminum ribs off the top before floating it to shore with a couple of large plastic jugs tied to the feet for floatation. Once it’s up to the shoreline a couple of strategically places ramps allows me to pull it up onto the bank for the winter.

With the boatlift now out of the water the poor boat has to sit tied to the dock overnight.

That is exactly where we had happy hour Sunday night. We plunked down into the boat lounging in the front seats of the boat in the sunshine tied to the dock, while Margaret tryed to avoid having here picture taken!

After supper we took the boat for a last cruise around the lake. There is a campground on the lake we live on and of course the campground is always interesting to cruise past on the holidays.

A couple of campers were on the raft at the beach doing back flips into the still wonderfully warm lake waters.

as I said there is always something interesting going on at the campground. This contraption is a homemade jury rigged hot tub! They have a child’s pool that they have pumped water into out of the lake and they are heating the water in a 55 gallon drum with a propane burner. (It looks like it may be a turkey cooker) Campers are endlessly inventive!

With the wonderfully warm weather it seemed like we should take a swim while we were out in the lake.

After the boat ride the with the sun setting in the west the moon was shinning right over top of the campgrounds.

This is why we hang out at the lake in the summer!

We ended our last summer evening at the lake with a “Margaret built fire” made out of white birch! (Fire tended by the Stumpman!)

Monday morning while I was taking the dock out and putting it away in for the winter an Eagle landed in the tall pine trees along our lakeshore. He sat there a while and I watched him for a minute or two. When I went back to moving the dock he took off leaving behind a tail feather floating down from the treetops in the breeze. I went over to the base of the tree and sure enough I found the eagle feather in the brush. I saved the feather and it now has a place of honor in the Garden House.

The rest of the morning we wrapped up a few of the other chores that had to get done for the winter closing of the lake.

The afternoon we spent lounging around in the sunshine.

Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability. ~Sam Keen

The Birthday Weekend

2009-09-02T17:23:00.001-07:00

It was my birthday at the end of August. I'm another year older. How does that make me feel?

Not really any different…….. It seems like that if the birthday doesn't have an special significance like

16 : you get your drivers license

21: you get to drink liquor

62: you can collect Soc sec

What’s the point? Nothings any different.

Now that doesn't mean you shouldn’t celebrate and take advantage of the fact that its your birthday. That’s what I did! My parents came to town with a birthday cake and we had made plans to go to the Horse races.

But first I had to do some work. My mother was looking for a new camera, and I got to provide consulting service in the purchase of the new device.

Off we go to Best Buy to review the new cameras. We are looking for a camera similar to Margaret’s with a sliding front closure, and that means it will likely be a SONY to meet those requirements. We managed to find a Cool 12 megapixel SONY camera that meets the needs along with a case and a new memory chip to hold all the pictures. Then its back to the apartment to charge the batteries in the new camera and of course test it it out.

What do you think? Does it take good pictures? That certain is a clear picture of that bottle of Fat Tire!

At the Race track we had lunch and beer on the deck while the new camera makes its debut and performs admirably.

Pictures at the races from the new camera:

Photos by Mom and the new camera: Oh and more Beer!

Looks to me like the new camera does a pretty good job!

After lunch the races started at 1:30 and we were in our seats in the grandstand for post time. I was ready to bet big on the ponies this time with it being my birthday and all. Going all out I set aside $5.00 for the 8 horse races that were going to run today( I’m truly a big spender when it comes to gambling) as you can see!

The first race was up and I bet on the horse called Irish Rose. A lot of thought went into the pick. Margaret's from Ireland the horse was called Irish Rose … this must be a sign…… Right?

Guess what I won who knew!

Now I’m up almost 10 dollars! I can almost retire now!

The next few races didn’t pan out quite so well as the first race and I ended up the day with $6.50 up $1.50 Not what you would call a huge win but, not bad for a relaxing day in the sun watching the horses!

I’m now considering quitting my day job to earn my living betting on the horses!

Summer Lunch in the Park

2009-08-21T06:20:00.001-07:00

Often on a summer day for lunch when both Margaret and I are working in Arden Hills you will find us at a small park on the north shore of Lake Johanna with a sandwich. Tony Schmidt regional park is not large, but situated on a small urban lake its a great place to spend and hour on a nice summer day.

While I was unable to get a picture there is a white (albino) squirrel that hangs out by our picnic tables and from time to time he shows up for a handout. (The squirrel prefers Subway sandwiches)

From the picnic tables at the boat landing you get a nice view of the Lake, and on hot summer days there is always a cool breeze blowing across the lake.

The park follows the Lake shore around with a nice walking path that leads from the boat landing to the swimming beach a little further down

Usually after our sandwich we will take a walk along the lake.

On warm days there is always a crowd at the beach enjoying the sunshine and sand.

But then of course just as we are really starting to enjoy ourselves we have to go back to the office (bummer!)

GNC Project Final weeks

2009-08-18T18:08:00.001-07:00

Its been a couple of weeks since I’ve posted anything about the GNC (Garden House).

A couple of those weekends we stayed in the city so we didn’t go up north to the lake. The last time we went up to the lake I was working on the building and some other things, but the pace has slowed down considerably. Mostly there are little things left, and while they have to be finished they really are not obvious to see by looking at a picture.

Some of the little things I worked on two weekends ago are: The deck required more screws. When I put down the deck boards I didn’t put in all the screws so I could go faster. Well now all the screws are in and its ready for a Minnesota winter. Caulking and bits of staining and 2nd coats occupied some of the time as well. I was going over all the staining twice, and making sure that everything was sealed and caulked to keep out moisture and insects.

The garage was a mess from the building process. As we worked on the garden house we just piled stuff in the garage. Part of our weekend was cleaning up the garage so it was livable again. Sorting out the lumber scraps that are left and getting them in a pile to burn. Margaret will have a good fire burning in the next couple of weeks.

One thing we discovered is that the hot tub is really high. Poor Margaret’s legs are short and she can’t step over the tub wall from the floor, so we will have to make a step. Here you see me building a small step from some of the scrap wood so Margaret doesn't fall getting in or out of the tub.

Here is the step finished and sanded, but not yet stained as we check out the function and height of the step next to the tub. The first try was a little unstable. I had to widen the feet, but all is well now.

After solving the stability problem stain is now applied and the step matches the tub and the building.

Saturday ended with happy hour down on the dock. A quick picture snapped one handed by me results in a strange smile from Margaret.

With the pressure off and the building mostly complete a few otherwise ignored and put off jobs usually accomplished in the summer were taken care of between details on the garden shed. Such as disposing of the dead trees here and there in the woods on our property.

Of course dead trees require the “Great Stumpman”

Normally I would edit the movies so you don’t see all the miss queued stuff and trash, but the end of the previous video has a bit of a story. You see the world famous videographer that was taking the video of the tree cutting wasn’t paying a lot of attention to where the tree was going to fall and all the action at the end was the videographer (Margaret) running to get out of the way before the tree falls on her. My she sure can move fast when she wants to..

Back on the topic of the pressure is off, and taking care of details here and there leaves time for… Well lets just say all the time lately hasn’t been spent on working.

The Next Weekend

One of the things we learned making the room for the hot tub was that it is really nice having windows looking out over the woods in the back of the Garden House. So after a brief discussion over the week while in the city at work, we decided to put one more window in the back of the original shed before calling the project done.

During the week I procured a few supplies from Menards and we arrived a the lake this weekend with the parts we need to put in a new window in the back corner of the Garden House.

Friday night after arriving in 90 degree weather I pulled the inside panels off the wall where the window was going to go to see if there was any issues such as wiring to deal with.

It looks like everything will be good. I just need a few pieces of wood from the lumber company in Park Rapids in the morning and we are good to go. No drive to Bemidji on Saturday morning to Home Depot will be required.

Saturday morning after a few 2x4’s were acquired locally the roughed in frame it is ready to go.

Now we only need to cut the half log siding and sheeting on the outside for the window to fit into.

Margaret the world famous videographer braves the flying sawdust, the noise and the danger to record for history the opening of the window into the garden house.

The roughed in opening is now ready for the window,

The finished window a couple of hours later with trim and accompanying stained glass hanging.

That still leaves another piece of stained glass to hang in the sliding door of the hot tub room. So up it goes. It seems like it has found a permanent home.

On one of my trips to the lumber company a few weeks ago I bought a couple of solar garden lights for Margaret as a present. Well that turns out to be a mistake because now Margaret has discovered solar lighting in a big way!

Solar lights are now popping up all over our lot, like mushrooms growing after a spring rain!

There here in the garden now!

On both sides of the deck, out front by the driveway, and in front of the Garden House

For a few hours after sundown you can wander around our yard and its almost like downtown

An update on our problems with paddle boats crashing on the rocks! I’m happy to report that since Margaret placed the light house on our waterfront we have not had a single water craft crash! (Come to think about it we didn't before either.)

Enjoy your Summer they are such sweet things!

Visitors for the Weekend

2009-07-27T08:50:00.000-07:00

We have Friday off this weekend again. That’s getting to be a lot of Fridays off this summer. That’s OK though. I guess it comes with getting older.

I don’t think I related to you the story of the dented refrigerator from the last time we hauled it up to the lake. Margaret has always wanted a small refrigerator in the shed. Now that we have pretty much turned it into a Garden House it seemed like we should have that refrigerator. We found a nice one with a big freezer compartment for ice at the Menards store in Minneapolis so we purchased it. It was in a nice box and sat in the garage at the condo for a week or so until we loaded it in the jeep and hauled it to the lake. Upon getting it unboxed at the lake we found a nice big dent in the front door. Not good! Now it has to get hauled al the way back to the Menards store to be replaced.

So this weekend the replaced refrigerator makes it journey to the lake to find a home under the counter in the new Garden Shed where it can vend ice and beer for drinks and parties in the hot tub.

We also have visitors coming to the lake this weekend. Its my fathers birthday and usually once a year they make the trip to the lake. This seems like a good weekend to come. We can celebrate his birthday and they can see the new Garden Shed and hot tub.

Friday morning I stained the inside roof of Margaret’s new farmers porch before my parents arrived and then cleaned up. They arrived around noon and we sat on the deck and had lunch.

Since I wasn’t going to work too hard while they were here it seemed like it might be a good idea to put the new basement refrigerator and freezer in the coach. The new sliding basement tray had arrived and was waiting to be installed in the storage compartment. All it needed was a few bolts and spacers to install and then be wired into the 120 and 12 volt electrical systems. This shouldn’t be too much trouble and can be done from the deck while everyone sits around this afternoon.

The project starts with the big tool chest of sockets and wrenches. You have to be careful to open it right side up or all the sockets will get dumped on the ground when you open it, just like in the picture below.

Of course no project is complete without a trip to town for additional parts. This project is no exception and the bolts required to fasten the slide to the floor are no where to be found in the garage so off we go to the Ace Hardware Store in Walker for parts.

My mother managed to make a spectacular deal on a closeout set of Crocks for $4 at the hardware store. Here she is modeling her new purchase. I’m sure she will be the fashion queen in here neighborhood with these new shoes. Hey there 4 bucks what did you expect!

We managed to get the refrigerator slide in the coach and after a few drinks managed to retire to the hot tub for a soak and a continuation of happy hour!

So the big question is: Are they wearing swimming suits in the hot tub? This is a pretty wild crowd you know!

Hot tub parties are tiring

I did manage to get some work done on Saturday too. I did some electrical work in the shed and after the visitors returned from an emergency trip to Bemidji to repair a flaky cell phone we put up the eve troughs and had lunch.

In the afternoon my mother who is a big supporter of the Indians in Minnesota made her obligatory trip to Northern Lights Casio (just down the road) and donated so the poor Indians can have a better life.

Lately it seems we have been having problems with paddleboats, canoes and small water craft crashing on the rocky shore line of our lakefront. So Margaret solved the problem with a new light house to warn the boaters of impending danger!

The weather was nice for the weekend and the visit, the Indians were happy they got their contribution, and a good time was had by all.

The GNC project now the “Garden Shed” part 6

2009-07-20T17:47:00.001-07:00

Thursday night 7:30PM we are at the lake again and are in a bit off a rush to fix the pump down at the lake, so we can use lake water to fill the hot tub instead of well water. The well water contains a lot of iron and tends to turn the water rust colored. We have to get the hot tub filled tonight, because it will take 24 hours to heat it up to usable temperatures and it sure would be nice to have it Friday night. We got the pump and filter working and we had a glass of wine while we waited for the tub to fill.

Another early Friday morning in July brings us to Home Depot in Bemidji for the umpteenth time this summer. The good new is I think that this is the last time to bring a trailer full of building material from Bemidji. You see the major building has been completed on the Great Northern Casita, now the “Garden House”.

The last part of the building on the Garden House is the “Farmers Porch” over the deck. The plan is a couple more 11 hour days working from 7:00 until 6:00 and it should be mostly done. Well all but some part time monkeying around a few hours here and there. The original shed still needs to be re-stained, and there is still some caulking and bits and pieces left.

The first part of the porch is to plant the poles in the ground that go through the deck. I had to remove a few deck boards ( I never did screwed them down completely.) then I could use a post hole digger to dig holes that the posts set in.

Once all the posts are in, deck boards put back and the header is placed across the post we now have a frame to set the roof on.

Putting a roof on anything takes a couple of hours to get the angles right on the roof ,then cut a master pattern board for the rafters. Once you have the master pattern, the first couple of rafters up and squared with the building, (squaring them is the hard part) you can fly. It doesn't take long after that. So by the end of Friday night at 6:00PM this is what it looked like.

The recently filled hot tub managed to make it to 100 degrees by 6:00pm just as we knocked off for the night . It sure felt good after working hard all day.

Saturday morning required a trip to the building center at Park Rapids, because they stock Hunters Green aluminum drip edge and fascia covering.

Once we had the drip edge, shingling can start. Back on the roof by 9:00 (After tea of course. No civilized husband of an Irish woman can miss tea!) shingling goes fast with an air gun and by noon the shingles are almost on.

At 6:00PM we knocked off for the day with everything but the staining of the ceiling inside the porch done.

Sunday morning was for staining. I masked off the deck put down cardboard and stained all the posts and beams. When that was done there was a couple of hours before lunch so I replaced the old screen door with a new one and stained that as well.

The view from the deck

After lunch we did some everyday projects around the lot and then it was time for the….

Big Hot tub party!

After the party sitting on lawn out front I did another panorama.

Work Hard and Play Hard!

Lake Minnetonka Regional Park

2009-07-13T08:46:00.001-07:00

We stayed in the city this weekend. Mostly because we have another long weekend coming up this Friday, so we have a short week coming. Margaret also had a work event she attended on Saturday. More on the GNC now the Garden House coming next week.

Most of Saturday I messed around creating Virtual Reality Panoramas. What's a VR Panorama you say?

Long story: here

Short story: It is many photographs magically stitched together to create an image bigger than the camera is capable of taking. The final image in my last post was a panorama created from multiple camera images while standing on the end of the dock at the lake.

There is really about 15 pictures that make up this image. They are stitched together with a special program. You can see some issues in this image if you look closely there is a ghost image of the dock next to the dock on the right hand side. This is created by misalignment in the original images called Parralex error. There is a special device that corrects for this, and I didn't have it when I snapped the photos from the dock.

It is possible to create a simulated 3 dimensional circle of these images. The trick is to take enough pictures and to get them to stitch together properly. It takes a special attachment to a tripod to get the images to be close enough and properly aligned to work well and avoid the Parallex error above. I bought one of those attachments Saturday and played with it all afternoon. I did a couple of practice tries and had fairly good results.

Sunday around 11:00AM we went to Minnetonka regional park for a picnic and a hike. I also put together this Panorama of the very interesting pool area they have at the park.

Instructions for use:

Pressing the shift button will zoom you in.

Pressing the ctrl button will zoom you out.

Clicking on the left mouse button while dragging on the image will cause the image to move in the direction of the mouse movement. Up Down, Right, and Left

You also have to have Flash running on you computer. Most people do, but if it doesn't appear to work you can get flash installed by clicking on the word here

Its almost like being there!

Let me know though comments what you thing about the Panoramas.

P.S. If you zoom in on the picnic table that is back near the trees you can see Margaret sleeping on the bench of the table.

GNC Project Part 5

2009-07-09T12:38:00.001-07:00

The 4th of July falls on a Saturday this year so our official holiday was the Friday before. We took an additional 2 days of vacation to go along with Friday so we have Wednesday through Sunday at the Lake this weekend. with all that time off the GNC project should be moving along nicely.

We arrived at the lake Tuesday evening after work and opened everything up. We have had a lot of rain up north and the grass was long , and the trees and brush are green and thick this year.

Wednesday morning started on top of the ladder staining all the wood in the soon to be hot tub room with two thick coats of waterproofing stain. This will keep the moisture from the hot tub from rotting the wood.

After that the final install of the Stain Glass windows in the back wall. By 11:00 everything was completed inside except closing in the front wall. (The hot tub has to slide through there.)

Now the big question is how are we going to move the 600 pound hot tub from the garage to the new room?

A gang of Chinese laborers you say?, Magic and levitation? 6 strong men? all wrong. We are going to do this like real men! Well at least the real “geeky men” I know. Science and horsepower are the answer!

Archimedes said ”Give me a lever and I will move the world! “

Scott says “ Give me a Jeep and a set of inclined planks and I’ll move a hot tub!”

The first thing is to set the planks (above) and raise the tub on blocks (below)

Then we construct a sled from scrap materials laying around from the building construction.

The sled is then placed under the raised tub and strapped tight with tie downs. A harness is fashioned out of spare rope laying around that belongs to the “Great Stump Man”

Nothing to it!

Once the tub was in place we could hook up the special GFCI electrical circuit and wiring required to power the hot tub. While I worked on the wiring Margaret filled the tub with water to test for leaks. (We don’t want to close the room in on a leaky tub do we?)

The tub survived the leak test, and all the pumps and heater work correctly. We don’t have a filter for the tub yet so we had to drain the water. We now have a tested and functioning hot tub in the room. Once we get the filter we are ready for a party!

With the tub completed its now time to close in the front wall with the sliding door, and finish up the many details remaining.

By the time Sunday rolled around things were looking pretty good. The front is completed, the deck is skirted , grass is planted again, and the electrical is all complete.

Other than a couple of details on the hot tub room all that remains is the farmers porch over the deck and to stain the old part of the shed to match.

We did find time to water ski and enjoying the beautiful weather at the lake also.

Oh and the Casita has a new name! With all the stained glass and views of the woods Margaret has renamed the Great Northern Casita to.......

“ The Garden House”.

“Summer In Minnesota is short but spectacular. Enjoy it”

The GNC project part 4

2009-06-27T07:49:00.001-07:00

Originally this weekend was reserved to take the coach to have the refrigerator repaired under a Dometic recall. Apparently on a rare instance the refrigerator in the coach was know to catch fire when a boiler tube cracked, so there is now a fix for that and our coach was included.

We were then going to take the coach to Stony Point on Leech Lake for the rest of a long weekend, but with the GNC project on our plate we thought we would be better off spending the time getting that done than laying around and relaxing. I guess there is truly no rest for the wicked.

First thing Friday morning we had to get the coach out of it parking spot at the lake and on the road.

Its a little over an hours drive to the repair facility and that passes quickly and we were there.

The repair is only a 45 minute job so while we browsed around all the new RVs they fixed the refrigerator and we were back on the road towards the lake again.

Margaret worries about details sometime, but after the coach is repaired and back on the road it appears that the “Fear is Gone” as she kicks back and enjoys the ride.

In no time the coach is back in its spot, lunch is finished and we are on our way to the lumber company for shingles to finish the GNC.

Back to the Lake an hour later and I’m up on the roof to make the GNC water tight. If you look closely you can see the shingles don’t quite match. Unfortunately GAF the manufacturer of our shingles on the shed doesn't make that exact color anymore and we had to make due with the closest thing there was.

Typically shingling take a while, but the roof is small and with the nailing gun I have the roof shingled by the end of the day. That's good because I hate shingling!

Early the next day we made a supply run to Bemidji’s Home Depot & Walmart there to get windows and other materials vital to the building process such as beer, wine and food. Once we were back it was time to start on the framing for the windows that were going into the GNC.

Framing always goes fast and soon its starting to look like the building it’s suppose to be.

The Walmart stop earlier in the day provided a great dinner, Margaret’s tendency to be a firebug along with the scrape wood from the building provided a great fire.

The next morning I started building windows for the peak of the shed and putting in the windows we had purchased for the side walls while Margaret stained. While not yet ready for prime time things are starting to come together on the inside

The next time we work on the GNC will be the 4th of July weekend and that should put us really close to complete

The June River of Ice

2009-06-23T17:58:00.001-07:00

We had a four day weekend coming up this weekend. Thursday night through Monday night we were going to the Lake. We left work at 4:00PM heading up Hwy 10 towards Northern Minnesota. We had a sandwich in the car and the radio on as we headed north. The radio mentioned that there may be thunderstorms near the Royalton and Rice area, but there was no tornado warnings so we headed onward.

As we looked forward on Hwy 10 it was growing dark, but it didn’t really look like it was raining. As we approached Rice it became clear why it didn't look like it was raining. Rain usually leave a streaky pattern in the sky when you look, unless of course its raining so hard that its a virtual wall of water, then there is no streaks in the sky.

Traffic slowed to a stop as people tried to see in the wall of water.

All at once the water turned to ice. It was hailing like I’d never seen before.

We made our way to the side of the road and a gas station in Rice just off Hwy 10. where I though we could get underneath the gas station canopy.

There were already plenty of cars sheltering under the canopy, but I managed to get half under the canopy in the front. Water was pouring down the parking lot carrying “A River of Ice”. In June!

Other than a couple of almost unnoticeable dings on the hood we survived without any damage. With another life adventure under our belts we moved on to the lake and the rest of the weekend.

The GNC Project Part 3

2009-06-18T12:04:00.001-07:00

The deck is fixed in front of the old shed, the hot tub is safe in the garage now its time to put up a building for the hot tub. We took Friday off this week June 13th to have a long weekend to knock out a chunk of the “New Hot Tub Room” OK its not really just a hot tub room its an addition to the Great Northern Casita. Just to give you a before, here is the shed after it was completed years ago.

Here is the hand drawn paper vision for the new Great Northern Casita

Looks like we have a ways to go so lets get started. Here we are ready to roll Friday morning at 7:00 AM leaving for the Bemidji Home Depot.

After an hour in Home Depot gathering stuff.

With the ride home and a cup of tea completed we are ready to start digging and lay the foundation timbers.

As we progressed it rained a little on and off so up went the tarp to keep the water out of the working area.

As the new Gazebo addition raised up so did the tarp to protect from the sporadic rains showers

As the room progressed a strange man walked up from the lake. His boat was stalled and would not start down near the dock. He asked to borrow some tools. I gave him the tools and he spent a half hour or so working on the boat before he declared it a lost cause and gave up. I offered to tow him back to the dock, and he happily accepted. So I took a break and took the boat off the lift for the trip across the lake.

Back from the towing episode we had lunch and continued working on the building. We finished Friday night around 6:00PM with the post and beams up without a roof and ready to head back to Home Depot on Saturday morning for more materials.

This load of materials provided the wood for the roof and Saturday morning the roof started to rise up slowly.

Shortly after starting the roof our neighbor John showed up and his boat would not start and he needed a tow to the boat landing. So off I go for the second time in two days to tow a boat to the landing.

Working on the ladder makes thing slow down considerably and it took most of Saturday to finish the frame of the building. At 6:00PM Saturday evening the building frame topped out.

Steak and baked potatoes ( and lots of wine) were the fare for dinner Saturday night to celebrate the hard work.

Sunday morning at 8:00 the neighbors were thrilled as we were back out there hammering nails into the roof.

Since we weren't going to get it shingled today we decided to quit around noon and take a break, so I went all out to get it ready for shingles.

Its now ready for shingles next week and we are cleaned up and taking a break. Notice the Fat Tire in the hand of the guy leaning on the post.

Margaret moved in the chairs and we are setup to enjoy the new Gazebo for a while.

Next week shingles, walls, and windows.

The GNC Project Part 2

2009-06-16T09:05:00.001-07:00

Off and on over the last several years Margaret has talked about getting a hot tub again and placing it at the lake. She has visions of a gazebo in the open spot just to the west of our shed. For one reason or another, we really never pursued this dream. I think mostly because we would have to build another outbuilding on the property and that might not look good, or there would be two small buildings then. Lately as we decided that we were going to spend more time at the lake in the future during the summer, this hot tub gazebo started to sound like a good idea.

In the past all of our hot tubs have been new purchases, and they all were purchased from the same dealer in Mankato.

Our Other Tubs

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This time with the economic conditions as terrible as they have been it seemed like there might be some opportunities to get a good buy in the used hot tub market. Over the last few months I have been scouring the Craigslist.com listings for used hot tubs. It seems like there are plenty of them for sale for one reason or another. The problem with most of them is that they are very large and usually 3-5 years old and aren’t in very good shape.

I did finally see one that looked like it might work, and called the seller to arrange a trip to view. The tub was on the way up to the lake so we stopped on a Friday night. They wanted $1000 for a 5 year old wooden tub. Upon inspection it didn’t appeared to be worth more than a couple of hundred dollars and it had no insulation at all. Not a good deal. Onward to other tubs or may be we should consider a new one?Weeks later I’m still looking at Craigslist and an interesting ad appears. “For Sale never used Bull Frog Hot Tub”. A call to the phone number reveals that a bankrupt spa dealer had given a warehouse full of hot tubs to a gentleman in payment for some debts. He had 5 of them and was asking 2,500 dollars a piece. A little internet research indicates that these are really nice hot tubs that retail for over $5,000. This might be interesting!

That night we went to look at the tubs in a warehouse in Brooklyn Park. The tub was a little larger than we had hoped for, but it was indeed brand new, never used and in original factory condition. Unfortunately no warranty was available without the dealer. This is starting to seem like a reasonable deal. Even if there is some yet to be determined equipment issues a $5,000 tub for half price I can afford to repair a few things myself. We offered him $2,300 and he accepted. Now if I can find a way to move this it looks like we have a hot tub!

The tub is large enough 6’ by 7’ that it will not fit on our trailer, so I’m going to have to find another trailer to move it. Google tells me that Broadway rental in Brooklyn Park rents trailers and a double wide snowmobile trailer goes for 32 dollars a day. A bargain! We are in business.

The morning of Tuesday June 9th Margaret and I are sitting outside Broadway rental at 7:00AM in the morning waiting for the gates to open and pick up the trailer. We have to be at the warehouse to pick up the tub at 7:30 just 3 miles down the road.

7:30 at the warehouse a crew picks up the tub and deposits it on the trailer!

We pull the trailer and tub to the side of the parking lot to secure it properly for the long ride to the North Woods. This is the part Margaret is worried about. She is petrified that we have a $2,000 tub on a trailer and are planning on driving up Hwy 10 at 65 miles and hour for 3 hours.

Strapped down and all ready to go. All we have to do is get up north and get it off the trailer in one piece. (Margaret is really worried about the one piece part.)

Just like I planned! No problems. We are now backing the tub down into our driveway somehow managing to survive unscathed the treacherous hwy 10 traffic to the north woods.

So far so good, now we just have to get a 600 pound hot tub off the trailer and into the garage.

A piece of cake! Right Margaret. How’s that fear doing now?

No water yet, but this is going to be good!

The only thing left is a place to put the tub! Let’s build something fun!

The GNC project Part 1

2009-06-11T13:44:00.001-07:00

A year an a half ago I made the terrible mistake of trying a new deck stain on the deck in front of our shed. The stuff was awful and made a mess out of the deck. It was going to have to be fixed. I prolonged the agony and didn’t do anything about it last summer, but this summer it was going to have to be corrected.

Three choices existed.

1.) I could buy new decking, an expensive option, because the old deck boards are still quite serviceable, just stained an ugly color.

2.) I could sand the surface of the deck down to good wood. Having done this once before its not pretty and I prefer not to do it again.

3.) If lucky I can unscrew the deck boards and flip them over because the bottom isn’t stained. ( We will try this option first)

Success with screw gun. The boards all came off relatively undamaged, and in good shape.

Notice the nice hole under the corner of the shed that Margaret’s pet Wood Chuck dug. That will have to filled and fixed so he can’t get back under there.

Now while I’m at it we are going to modify the original deck just a little bit! The ramp on the end has to go and the deck needs to run one level all along the front of the shed.

A quick trip to town for a few additional boards to complete the structure.

Things are shaping up!

Almost complete

We just need to put a skirt around the deck so the hairy critter that’s digging under our shed can’t get in there anymore .

No construction project is ever complete around here without a special rock for Margaret having to be moved 3 times.

The base of the completed deck with varmint control skirt in place!

Take your victories no matter how small!

The GNC Project

2009-06-11T12:20:00.001-07:00

Time for definitions here I think.

You might think that GNC is General Nutrition Company and you see them in every Mall between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, but you’d be wrong!

The GNC project really stands for the “Great Northern Casita”

Now you’re asking what is a Casita?

Webster's Dictionary tells us that a casita is:

ca⋅si⋅ta

/kəˈsitə; Sp. kɑˈsitɑ/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [kuh-see-tuh; Sp. kah-see-tah] Show IPA

–noun, plural -tas /-təz; Sp. -tɑs/ Show Spelled

1.
a small crude dwelling forming part of a shantytown inhabited by Mexican laborers in the southwestern U.S.

2.
a luxurious bungalow serving as private guest accommodations at a resort hotel, esp. in the southwestern U.S. or Mexico.

Origin:
1920–25; < AmerSp, Sp, equiv. to cas(a) house, home (< L) + -ita dim. suffix

If you look up images of casitas in Google you’ll come up with:

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If you had a nice motor home, and beautiful spot to park it on in the summer time, that was much like a private campground, with full hookups, a garage, storage, private dock, boat, and boatlift, that would be real living wouldn’t it? So far the only thing missing from this dream would be a Casita with a pool, a bar and a relaxing deck to enjoy the summer month on overlooking the lake.

A vision of that missing casita might be something like this:

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Funny how this vision seriously resembles the shed we have at out lake place!

But our shed has a deck that is badly in need of repair, and there is certainly no porch over our deck or an enclosed hot tub on one side of our shed.

The Great!! Stump Man vs The Dangerous Tree

2009-06-01T12:00:00.001-07:00

This last weekend in May the plan was to take the trailer down to St James (the old home town) loaded with the desk that was being downsized from our apartment. While we were there a large tree that overhangs the old family home needed to be trimmed so it doesn't fall on the house, or the neighbors house.

We arrived at 7:00pm Friday night in the driveway with the trailer full of desk parts. It wasn’t long before the parts were reassembled in the newly remodeled front bedroom.

That put the old paperboard desk out of a job and on the street hoping for a new home.

The next morning was time to do battle with the dangerous tree that was threatening the safety of the old homestead.

Time to call the Great!! Stumpman! and his trusty sidekicks Neil and Margaret.

Here is the Great!! Stumpman at 8:00am in the morning getting ready to do battle with the dangerous tree. (the battle can’t start until 9:00am because we don’t want to disturb the neighbors too early in the morning)

The Stumpman flies high into the dark and dangerous foliage with the help of his trusty ladder, inspecting what and where to cut before starting the chainsaw.

A quick inspection revels that there are three main branches that need to be taken down to render the tree harmless for the surrounding buildings. The first branch the smallest of the three can simply be cut and fall to the ground. The other two branch threaten the houses and will require a rope to be tied to them and pulled away from the houses as they are cut so not fall on the buildings.

The Great!! Stumpman uses a thin piece of nylon cord thrown out too the end of the branch where it is lowered down to the ground. Then a thick heavy piece of towing rope is attached to it and hauled up into the tree using the thin cord and looped around the branch to be pulled then tied off.

The first sidekick Neil agrees that we are now ready to start the serious cutting work.

A couple of small branches fall to the ground clearing the way to get at the bigger ones.

The first of the 3 large branches is on the ground safely, just barely brushing the roof on it way to the ground. Stumpman breathes a sigh of relief. One down and two to go.

The heavy pulling rope is in place for the next big branch.

A break in the action as a neighbor approaches.

Before we attack the next big branch we load up most of the cut down branches into the trailer and truck for transport to the compost pile on the north side of town.

The unloading of the trimmed debris at the compost heap goes quickly and we make our way back eager to do battle with the large branch hanging over the house.

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The fair maiden of the story appears concerned and fretful, not sure whether to be more worried about the safety of the tree trimming crew or whether the tree has been trimmed crooked.

All ready to go! the truck is hooked up to the rope and the Great!! Stumpman climbs the ladder as the crew looks on.

Two cuts are required to bring the limb down safely. One wedge cut to the front of the branch the direction you want it to fall, and then the final back cut. The truck has to pull the branch away from the house just as the last part of the final back cut is completed.

A couple of small detail also need to be attended to, like the branch not falling on the Stumpman or the truck or the plucky sidekick driving the truck doesn't hit the neighbors house with the truck.

Another dangerous branch is on the ground and hauled to the compost pile!

Two down and one to go.

One last branch that needs to be pull away from the house as it is cut. Same drill again don't kill the Stumpman and this time the truck drive has to avoid hitting another tree.

All is well. All the braches are safely at the compost heap.

Before and after pictures of the tree from the front:

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From the back: No more overhanging the house.

As the sun sinks in the west, the Great!! Stumpman and his trusty sidekicks attack happy hour and a roast before flying off into the sunset for another adventure.

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Video: by Margaret

Dinner, Happy Hour and worrying: by Mom

Three small Pine trees

2009-05-25T14:39:00.001-07:00

Memorial weekend is three day weekend and the beginning of summer for most folks in Minnesota. We took an additional day off and made it a 4 day weekend leaving the cities on Thursday night early before traffic so we would be at the lake Friday morning. Of course we had a load of stuff in the jeep headed for the north woods. ( Margaret likes to carry stuff!)

So the first thing Friday morning after a trip to town for miscellaneous supplies (read “supplies” as: Out of Beer!) Margaret’s out in the yard planting her flowers for the year.

While I supervise from the deck with the newly purchased supplies. Oh! and check out my new socks they were a bargain! 2 dollars! Margaret loves my new socks!

Speaking of footwear I also got some cool new red thingies for 4 dollars and this orange shirt free from an avid reader of our blogs. I’m a regular bargain hunter! They almost match by orange shirt! Besides being thrifty I’m color coordinated. Who knew?

After consuming the supplies it was time to get the boat out of winter hibernation and put it in the water for the year. I suspected that the battery might be dead, but after charging it for a couple of hours while I cleaned the boat it started right up!

After hooking the boat to the new jeep for the first time and grabbing Margaret for the ride to the boat launch I snapped a picture of the Rig. Nice! its color coordinated too!

Putting this boat in the water is easy. Margaret drove the jeep back to the lot and I took the boat for the short trip across the lake to boat lift I put in last weekend.

Now if I can just get the canopy on the lift we will be in great shape for the summer.

Last weekend when we put in the dock and lift the humming birds were buzzing around looking for food. Unfortunately I had forgotten hummingbird food so I couldn’t put up the feeder. So on one of our supply runs to Walker this weekend we stopped in the Ace hardware store where they sell humming bird food to get some, but they were sold out. Not to be deterred I read the label on the Baltimore Oriole food box label and low and behold its made of sucrose dextrose! (sugar for the chemically disinclined) This will work!

So that explains why our humming bird feeder is orange. But guess what? the Hummers don’t care! They like orange sucrose dextrose just as well as red sucrose dextrose. (See the little bird sitting on the feeder slurping away!)

After that menu change for the hummers its off to move one of the water spigots to the big post in the yard.

The next morning when I got up as I was stumbling to the breakfast table I looked out the from coach window to see this bird on the branch outside the window. A little out of focus, I haven’t had my coffee yet, but cool!) Its a Baltimore Oriole.

You suppose this has anything to do with the orange Baltimore Oriole food in the Hummers feeder? Well now I’ll have to go back to town to get a Baltimore Oriole feeder!

Here you see the Orange sucrose dextrose being carefully transferred to the appropriate Bird feeding hardware that the orange color requires. While we ere getting the Baltimore Oriole feeder we found the right colored Humming bird feed as well. Not that those greedy little hummers cared about the color!

Now we have both a humming bird feeder and a Baltimore Oriole feeder. Lets just hope we don’t have 2 squirrel feeders.

My that was a lot of work. Time to rest in the sunbeam and plan our next adventure!

After an exhausting hour of planning I came up with a good idea! Lets have happy hour! We made big plans we moved the lawn chairs out into the sun made drinks and invited the neighbors for snacks!

Snacks with the neighbors is kind of a one way conversation and they don’t stay around long so we decided to have dinner. Steaks and bake potatoes.

The next morning Margaret promised me she would be happy if I would just moved 1 little pine tree for her. Knowing how these things work I wanted to know how long she would be happy for if I moved only 1 small pine tree? She didn’t tell me so I figure 7 years sounds like a good amount of time for 1 small pine tree.

So I moved 3 small pine trees just to be sure she would be happy. Now Margaret has to be happy for 21 consecutives years. I figure I’ve gotten it covered!

She didn’t say anything about happiness and cleaning the gutters.

So if three small pine trees doesn't cover it I guess she will just have to be……