A Short But Productive Visit

Brooks drove up yesterday to pick up a golf ball net to protect the front of a customer's house as well as to work on our fence. He brought dinner with him, some beautiful sea scallops, mussels and clams. He did the scallops in a delicious citrus sauce and served them just the way I like them, barely cooked with a little cracked salt and pepper! The mussels and clams he did in a curry sauce and they too were delicious. Brooks is an excellent cook and could work as a chef!

This morning Norma's lawn guy arrived at nine sharp and the two of them started measuring, digging and hauling the remaining two old fence panels into place. They set the posts and cemented them in. He put the panels on the only two sections of fairly level ground and filled the gaps between them with wire deer fence. Eventually he will fill the gaps with custom built fence panels designed to go up steep slopes. In the meantime the deer fence will keep the wildlife at bay.

He also brought a very nice gift from him and LindaLee, an Apple TV box so we can watch Netflix. I know very little about this technology but got a short lesson from Brooks. The box will go south with us for use when and where we have WIFI in a park, it uses too much bandwidth to use on our Internet sticks, specially in Mexico where we have a hard limit of 3 GB per month. A full movie evidently uses about one GB.

Anyway, Thank you very much Brooks for the visit, dinner, the Apple TV Box and all the work on the fence! We are very lucky!

Here are the two panels and the new shed. The pile of rocks is riprap placed after the landslide. It will become Norma's new rock garden.

Brooks and Beau hard at work!

Gourmet quality scallops

And seafood!

Update On The Update

Shed is done except for paint. Photos later.

Brooks drove up last night to pick up some netting he had made to hang in front of a house on a golf course and will spend a few hours doing fence repairs before he heads home later today. We will be re-using two of the undamaged fence sections that were knocked down by the landslide. Nice to have a talented son!  Beau (Norma's lawn guy and helper) is coming over to help with the muscle work. I will drive to the netting place to pick up the net while they work. It is about a half hour north of here. Photos soon. Busy, busy!

Update

First - It is RAINING! This is very welcome because the fire situation was getting very serious. There was a smoke haze over everything and people were developing breathing problems. It also means I can take a day or two off from my three or four hour a day job of building the garden shed.

We had a visit from our friend Les yesterday. He has moved from Mexico for a while and is back living in Nanaimo where he is preparing for a 60 day cruise and then a lengthy visit to New Zealand and England. He will be gone for several months.

He was in Campbell River for a tennis tournament so he came a day early to visit with us. We went for a feed of fish and chips at Dick's on the dock. It was delicious as usual. This morning Les got up for his tennis and it was raining! He headed off for the courts and if they decide to play in spite of the rain he will stop by later for a shower before he heads home. It is always fun to catch up with Les. He lives an interesting/complicated life!

Here are the garden shed photos! First the old smoke house foundation and my new cantilevered base. The corners will be supported with 4X4 pressure treated posts (from Brooks' burn pile).

Back wall up.

All walls finished, door framed and siding (reclaimed cedar fence boards) on three walls.

Inside details

I have to put siding on the front, install the door (salvaged from the old shed) and build the roof. By using salvaged material from the old fence, I have managed to keep costs down to $165. I bought two bundles of shingles but I think one will do so I can return the second one and get almost $40 back.

Life is Good!

Smoke On The Water

Taken down the driveway at 8:30 this morning:

Smoke on the water and on everything else! BC is suffering one of the worst fire seasons in our history. We are supposed to be up in the 90's but the smoke is reflecting the sunlight away keeping it rather cool down here on the ground. There is a yellow haze everywhere.

Here is a NASA photo of the southwest coast of BC showing the smoke from the multitude of fires. It shows Vancouver Island. We are in Campbell River, just above the heavy smoke. Victoria is right where the smoke is heaviest. Seattle is on the mainland at the bottom of the photo. There are 178 fires burning in BC right now and the air quality index in Vancouver is 10+ or Very High Risk. A Vancouver radio station reports that, "It smells like someone is barbecuing in the studio."

To All Our American Friends

Have A Happy Independence Day!

A Little Work

It was not unbearably hot yesterday so we tackled one of my jobs with the help of Beau, Norma's lawn guy. The old garden tool shed at the back of the house got knocked off it's foundation and destroyed by last winter's landslide. It was still sort of standing and sort of keeping things dry but it was falling apart and had to go. The old wire deer fence used it as a corner support so it had to move as well.

First the fence. We took the temporary section that we had put in when we got home out. We then pounded in four steel posts and ran new wire fencing between them, connecting to the old fence where it came down the hill. This fence needs a professional touch which it will get when Brooks gets up for a visit.

Now it was time to tear down the old shed. Beau went at it with a hammer and pry bar while Norma insisted on standing too close and getting a large bruise on her arm for her troubles.

Here is the foundation that I have to work with. It was always much too small for a garden tool shed but then it's original use was a smoke house. My intention is to cantilever the walls out one to one and a half feet on either side, leaving room for wide shelves on one side and vertical storage on the other. The foundation is 3' X 3.5' and the finished product will be about 5.5' X 3.5'. It will be about 7' high and will have a peak roof. Now to go out and buy some 2X4's.

Canada Day

Happy Canada Day, eh! We are close to the water but it is still far too hot to do much outside. Norma planned to be out in the garden by 7:00 AM but we both slept until almost 9:00. She did an hour or so before she got chased in by the heat.

I ripped some cedar boards salvaged from the old fence and made a couple of trellis' for the rose bushes and some stakes for the garden but that was it for me as well.

There is activity in town today. Helicopters have been roaring back and forth along the beach as someone is selling sightseeing tours from town. Ships are sounding their horns and our two pair of nesting eagles are spending their day off teaching their young ones how to fish. Always fun to watch.

Our deer made a very quick incursion yesterday. Norma was out with the car and as she turned into the driveway coming home she startled two deer who were studying the gate. One took off into the neighbour's yard and the other somehow got in between two wire strands in the gate. Norma beeped the horn to get my attention and I yelled at her to open the gate and block the deer's way back around the house. I went around the house in the opposite direction and between us we convinced the deer to go back down the driveway. I don't know when she had the chance but on her way by she ate Norma's brand new white rose bush! I added more stainless steel wire strands to the gate and added some ties so there is no way they can get in that way again. No Way!

Morning In The Garden

Norma's Peeing Boy is keeping watch.

SCOTUS Decision in The US

I am SO happy for all LGBT people in the US. Today's decision by SCOTUS is truly landmark. They can now legally marry in all 50 States and have their marriage recognized. One more step to equality. I have tears in my eyes today!

Today will go down in history as a day similar to the Roe v. Wade decision.

I am without words, not a common occurrence for me.

Add this to the other momentous decision on the ACA or "Obamacare" and it has been a historic week! 

Me, checking the news this morning!

Linux Revisited

I had trouble with my little Asus Windows XP Netbook over the winter when it refused to charge. I did without it till I got home where I had a spare charger and cable. It is working fine now, well fine as it can with a no longer supported Windows XP system. Yes, I know it would keep on working for years more but I wanted to play with Linux Mint.

I downloaded the latest Mint 17.1 Cinnamon and loaded it onto an 4 GB thumb drive. It is the "Live" version and will run off the thumb drive. It is better than loading it onto a DVD as it will save files and allow changes while I play with it. I set the BIOS to boot from a USB device and it loaded,

So far, so good. Everything seems to work. I tried to install it onto the hard drive both ways, as a dual boot system and by replacing Windows, Neither way worked. I got hit with errors both times. This will take some more study.

But not this weekend as we are having company, Some old friends are coming up for the weekend! Life is Good!