All posts by warren

We are Broke

Family

Well, it’s not so much that we are broke…more like Isaac.  And, really, Isaac isn’t so much broke as his collar bone is broken.  He plays on the middle school soccer team and the game last weekend was pretty rough.  During one play, the other team was breaking away with the ball, headed for our goal.  Isaac got on an intercept path and beat the other player to the ball and cleared it.  The other player, however, was close by and got tangled up with Isaac.  Both of them went down, head over heels and did a great couple of rolls. It was pretty awesome, really.  Isaac said he got up and thought he was just a little stiff from the fall.  He did a throw-in and heard bones grinding and that’s when the pain hit him.

He made it to the sideline and the coaches looked at him.  They called us down and a doctor friend who was there looked at it and said we should head to the hospital.  When we looked at it, it was clear something wasn’t right.  His shoulder just didn’t look quite right.  His one side was a little caved in and definitely not straight.

The broken collarbone

We had x-rays at the hospital and the doctor confirmed that Isaac’s collarbone was broken.  I think it is pretty obvious in the picture.  Let’s play, “Spot the broken bone”…ready class?  Do you see it?  Click the image to enlarge and see if you can see it.

We followed up with a bone doctor and they told us to keep it in a sling and it should be fine in 6 weeks with full strength and movement returning in 8 weeks.  We pretty quickly discovered that a broken collarbone makes many things really tough.  Isaac can’t really carry his books very well.  Getting help with books isn’t too bad.  He also has trouble with buttons and zippers.  Button and zipper help is not really an option though so we have been sending him to school in gym shorts and warm up pants.  You catch my drift I think.

So, we got some pretty snapshots of the boy’s internals and closed out of soccer season for the year.  He really enjoys soccer, so this was not an ideal end to the season but I think he is pretty happy to wear gym shorts all of the time.

The Eastern time zone

Thoughts

When Emily and I lived in Nashville, we used to go to bed at 10:00.  We were on Central time so prime-time TV started at 7 and the news came on at 10pm.  It seemed natural, you know…turn on the news, ignore it…brush your teeth…then off to bed.  I don’t know about you, but I am asleep before my head even hits the pillow.  So, in Nashville, we were asleep by 10:30 and we got up at 5:30.

Here in WV, things are a little different.  We still ignore the news when we bother to turn it on and we still brush our teeth, but it seems like the only consistent thing in our nighttime routine is the fact that we don’t go to bed until 11:30.  We still get up early at 5:45 so I have no other option but to blame our lack of sleep on the Eastern time zone.

I know that getting six and a quarter hours of sleep isn’t really ideal.  It may shorten our lives a bit even.  The only way I see to handle it is to leave the Eastern time zone or to start paying attention to the news.  I am not sure that I like the taste of either option so I will just have to live on the edge in the Eastern time zone.  EDT/EST baby!

Product placements

Cabin, Family, Fun, Land, Nature, WV, , , ,

My parents and brother and sister-in-law came into town this weekend to watch the kids play soccer and to help us work some on the deluxe shed.  We pretty much finished up the sub-floor before the visit so my goal for this weekend was to get some walls built…and that we did!

As we always do, we loaded up the van with the generator and all of our tools, drove to our place and unload them once again (I can’t wait to be able to leave some stuff up there!)  I didn’t notice it at the time but in looking over the pics, many of which my Mom took, I noticed that we were like a product placement extravaganza!  See how many different brand name/logo shots you see in these pics…it is like we were setting it up!

 

 

 

Anyhow, my brother brought a propane framing nailer and it was amazing!  I have never used such a beast before, but basically, it is a cordless nail-driving machine.  With a regular hammer, it takes, I don’t know, 5 seconds to drive a nail, another few to get the next nail and set it, etc  Each nail and swing of a hammer takes a lot of energy so things go slower with each nail one drives.  This nailer drives maybe 5 nails a second and I never got tired.  Incredible!

So, we discovered another crazy thing as we all worked away.  It looks like a cow must have gotten loose in the neighborhood.  The prints were from a hooved animal but they were far too big to be a deer.  It looked more along the lines of what I expect an elk print would be, size-wise but I don’t think there are any elk around here.

In addition to getting a lot of work done, we got to goof around together which was nice too.  We talked about a little bit of everything and nothing is better than working on a common goal!    We also got to see, once again, just how beautiful our WV mountains really are.  The leaves are coming along nicely and will probably be at their peak next weekend.  I couldn’t take a picture that did it justice but it’s just amazing!

See all of the progress on the cabin

We are Falling

Nature, Thoughts, WV

We were cruising along pretty well with the summer bit.  The sun was hot and the leaves were green.  Each morning we could pretty much count on wearing short sleeves and shorts.  We were in Summer until Friday.  Rains came and wind came and Isaac had a soccer game.  The temperature got down to somewhere in the 40s and that’s about how many inches of rain we got too…40.  Not really of course.  Isaac ended up being ball-boy for the second game after the game he played.  He was soaked through to the bone after the second hour in the rain wearing only his uniform.  Emily and I were only slightly better.  I was shivering like a 5th grade boy at a Sadie Hawkins dance.

Well, all of that is to say the Fall is here.  Some parts of Fall suit me well.   I love the colors and cider and finishing up the garden.  I hate cold and all things cold related though.

 

I thought it was probably good for my own mental well-being to find some pics of the awesome things of Fall…you know, so I don’t drink my sorrows away in a vat of apple cider (which by the way, is almost ready to be made!).

I have been collecting pics of our travels out to the bee farm and some of them really feel like Fall to me (minus the cold and misery).  I am not sure what makes them feel like Fall.  Anyone else have things that just seem like Fall?

We were floored

Cabin, Family,

Well, we were almost floored anyhow.  We worked very hard Saturday and Sunday on the cabin and made great progress.  We almost got the sub-floor done in fact.  There were a lot of joists to finish and then we put blocking between the boards to spread loads and add strength and stability.  It took a long time doing all of the cutting and measuring and so on but Emily, a friend and I had a good rhythm worked out.  My favorite part was the magic that Emily worked with a power saw.  She cut off boards and sort of earned her man-card.

 

My buddy working...or napping?

Isaac also jumped in and did a little of everything.  He nailed joist hangers, screwed in lag bolts and did about anything we needed.  Of course, he did find opportunities to hide now and then but we all needed breaks…some more than others.

Break time

Emily’s grandparents came out on Sunday afternoon and helped.  Emily’s grandfather is taller than Emily so he was able to do some of the high nailing from the ground that Emily couldn’t do.  That allowed me to keep working from atop the decking-in-progress.

I love this pic...the posts and piers and beams and stuff all look pretty cool I think

Emily's grandfather surveying our work

 

Subfloor - not screwed down yet but at least out of the trailer!

We have great neighbors on the hill too so Abigail took some time to play with the kids that are from the next field over.  They roamed around and found mushrooms and sticks and bugs and had a great time.

The one little girl said, “Don’t worry about us…there will be teenagers there too.”  Of course, that had quite the opposite effect on me but it all ended up good.  And most importantly, Abigail got to ride a horse which made her day.

The cabin doesn’t look quite as small as it did when we were pacing out the dimensions on the ground.  I am finally starting to see it come together a little and we are so excited to get the first wall framed and up!  With any luck, we will start on walls this coming weekend!

See all of the progress on the cabin

Tanlines and stuff

Cabin

Emily and I worked a bunch more on Tuesday (yes, still in the rain) and made great progress on the cabin.  I like the DIY part of this project for sure, but sometimes, it’s good to remember why inside jobs aren’t always so bad.  Anyhow, we started off in the rain but the sun came out sometime in the afternoon and pretty well cooked my head.  You see, I decided to forego the hat in an attempt to even out a tan line I got over the weekend:

Baseball hat tanline

Imagine, if you will, a bald guy wearing a baseball hat in the sun.  Most of his head is protected from the sun but the baseball hat, by design, has an opening at the back.  Said opening provides no protection from the sun.  Yeah, it looks pretty stupid and now I have a sunburn on top of the still-obvious hat-tan-line.

Over the course of all of this work, I have developed a few tanlines, some of which are pretty interesting…

Boot tanlines...or hobbit feet

 

My arm and neck tanlines…pretty typical I guess

 

Well, enough about tanlines. We did get the main beams for the cabin in place and we started laying the floor joists.  There is still a lot to be done to get everything braced and hooked together of course.  I am using 2×8 boards for the joists and they are slightly cantileved over the big beams attached to the 6×6 upright posts.  I plan to add bracing to support the overhang as the weight of the house really gets transmitted down the walls to the outer edge of the cabin.

The beams are in! The beams are in!

Emily is a kick-butt worker and the real reason this thing will be done right! I would definitely not call her a helper as she is every bit as capable as I am on building. She has a brain for this sort of thing too. Of course, part of working together is the brawling we seem to do to make our points, but I guess that’s part of the “fun”.  We hardly ever fight except when we work on stuff like this. Funny, isn’t it? Is anyone else that way?

Anyhow, this weekend we will be at it again!  I expect we’ll get the floor down and get our bracing done properly.  As weight build on the platform, it will become important so now is the time!

See all of the progress on the cabin

And there was mud

Cabin, Land, Tinkering, ,

We went back out to the place today to work more on the cabin.  It rained…all day.  Since time off is limited, we pressed on and stirred up all of that mud that we made from the pier excavations.  Holy cow all of that mud was heavy!  This entire building process is exercise for sure and we definitely got our share today.  After awhile, we joked that we needed to scrape the mud off of our shoes so that we would have room for more mud.

 

We put a tent over the areas we worked and it wasn’t so bad I guess.  We made a lot of progress.  I won’t say much as the pictures show a lot of what we got done.  There is still a ton of cross-bracing to be done but we ran out of wood and, more importantly, nails.  We will be heading back tomorrow for more of the same minus the running out of nails part.

 

See all of the progress on the cabin

Building our cabin

Cabin, Land, Tinkering, WV, , , ,

We like going up to our land to hang out and enjoy mother nature on the weekends.  If you ask the kids, of course, all we do up there is slave away moving piles of dirt.  Emily and I finally decided to show the kids what it meant to move piles of dirt so we broke ground last weekend on a building to house a toilet.  That’s all that really matters to the kids – a bathroom.  Well, that and air conditioning.  Anyhow, as all ground-breaking parties go, it was more symbolic than anything.  The real work began on Thursday evening.  A buddy of mine came with us and we have abused him all weekend…you know, strong back, weak mind.  So, we mixed somewhere around 4500 pounds of concrete and filled 9 12-inch tubes (that’s just to brag, it isn’t meant to really have any real meaning to you, dear friends) on which to build this place.

 

This saves lives but also shortens lives. Post hole digging is faster and easier with this auger but it beat me to death!
Isaac hiding from work in one of our holes. We are building a post-and-pier foundation.

 

Post and pier foundation

Emily and I are building a house, really.  It will have more than a toilet.  Emily calls it our “deluxe shed” as it will be more of a small cabin than a house.   I have been fascinated by the small house movement (see Tumbleweed Houses for example) for a while now.  The idea is put forth as an alternative to the trend of increasingly larger houses over the last 30+ years.  I don’t care what size house people live in but the small house philosophy suits me.  In a way then, we are sort of participating in the small house movement…except it is going to be our second house.  I think that must somehow be against the point of the small house philosophy.  Still, we really like the idea of simplifying and someday, the first house will be sold and we will fit the bill.

It needs skin and lots of details, but this is the cabin we are planning to build

We are off from work Friday, Monday and Tuesday so we are plowing forward for 5 days straight to see how far we can get on this place.  I have been working on plans in Google Sketchup (you gotta learn to use this program).  My model is pretty rough but it allows me to know exactly how many boards I need and how everything needs to go together.  It will be around 400 sq ft and have one of the coolest views anywhere.

The view from the cabin spot

Emily took some pics today and they are just incredible.  Anyhow, I will keep posting as we make progress on this place.  Anyone else out there have a strong back and a weak mind?  Have I got a job for you!

See all of the progress on the cabin

My braces are off!!

Adventure, Thoughts,

A little over 2 years ago, my foray into the world of braces and oral pain began.  I am here to tell you that yesterday, my braces were removed.  I didn’t have braces in the traditional sense because I was fitted with Invisalign aligners.  Part of that process, though, involved the installation of tons of knobs and buttons and bumps on my teeth so the aligners could grab onto something.  So, I had knobs and bumps and stuff removed yesterday and my teeth are straight!

 

Growing up as a boy with a brother who liked to fight (it was mutual), my teeth were a wreck.  I had chips and dings in my teeth, both top and bottom.  After grinding all of the extra stuff off of my teeth, they ground my teeth too.  I no longer have chipped or uneven teeth!  Although those chips were hard won, I am happy to be free from their unhappy appearance.  I have to tell you though, it was a lot more fun getting those chips than having them ground away.  Holy cow was that awful!

Before Invisalign

 

After Invisalign…cheesy grin at no extra charge

 

So, I was fitted for retainers and now I will spend 4 months wearing them 24/7.  If all goes well with that, I will wear them only at night after that period.  I am pretty pleased with how all of this went down.  I would do it again if I had to go back in time.  What I wouldn’t do, however, is use Invisalign.  I would get the regular old fashioned braces and be done with it. Mainly, I like the cool colored rubber bands.  Actually, either way you can see stuff in your mouth.  Invisalign aligners are not invisible and I needed to wear rubber bands anyhow in order to move my teeth and bite around.  With the bands, Invisalign aligners are a ton more work every time you eat or drink anything besides water.  No thanks.  Hopefully I will never know though.

 

Solar Powered Electric Fence

Awesome, Bees, Land, Nature, Technology, , ,

Part of moving the bees to our place in the country is so they can be out of town and away from people.  Of course, getting away from people means getting them closer to good old mother nature herself.  For anyone who has read Winnie the Pooh, you know that bears like honey when they get a rumbly in their tummies.

Bears don't read very well...

Not much will really stop a hungry bear, but the official recommendation is to enclose all “country bees” in an electric fence.  When a bear attacks a hive, the bees always come out in great number to ward off the attack.  Bear fur is typically too thick to present a problem.  The only sensitive place on a bear is apparently their nose/mouth area.  While my electric fence is a little more “juiced” than a bee sting, most folks agree that a bear has to learn about the fence with their mouth or nose.  I’ll talk more about that another time, but it makes sense that an electric fence properly set up should deter all the Poohs out there.

So, you may be wondering how solar power can deliver enough juice to make a bear even notice it was there.  It turns out that the people who make electric fence controllers make a version that runs on DC (i.e. deep cycle batteries, not house current which is AC).  The controller I bought is designed to power up to 25 miles of fence.  All told, I have maybe 1000 feet of wire strung on a few poles, so the charger will deliver a good shot when it fires.  I won’t bore you with the calculations about the capacity of the battery but it is roughly the size of a car battery just for perspective (a car’s starter battery would not work here though…this application needs a long continuous  draw on the battery rather than the quick hit when you start a car)

The battery, fence controller, and charge controller

The instructions show that the fence will run for 2 weeks on a fully charged battery of the proper specs but I do not want to have to worry about whether the battery is still charged if I don’t make it out there for a few weeks.  Instead, I bought a solar panel and a charge controller to keep the battery full.

See? It's pointed south

I pointed my solar panel south and angled it to the optimal angle to get direct sun.  Output wires from the panel go into the charge controller which regulates the power going into the battery.  The charge controller makes sure the power is the proper voltage and that the battery does not get over or under charged. The charge controller also has a “load” connection so I connected the fence controller to that connection and we’re off and running!  All of the charging/controlling/shocky-shocky stuff is inside a beehive surrounded by my other beehives as a sort of a theft deterrent.

Oh, by the way, without thinking I tried to use a regular household switch at the gate to turn the power on and off.  Of course, the fence controller pushes somewhere around 10,000 volts which didn’t even slow down for the switch rated for household current of 110 volts.  If you want a switch, make sure you get one rated properly…same with any wire you may need to use (I only used fencing wire which handles the charge nicely)

So, I hope some of that makes sense.  So far it is alive and well.  Let me know if you want more details…