Tag Archives: shed

Last weekend of May

What I've Been Up To, , ,

Another weekend has come and gone. Wouldn’t it be nice if they were all 3 days long?

We pitched in with some of our neighbours and helped clean up our community hall property on Saturday morning. We raked and dragged limbs and sticks and other dead wood out of the tree line, and from down by the lake. A neighbour had a dump truck and backhoe there to make the job easier. Jeff and both have rake bruises on our inner thumbs now. Crazy! We met a few more neighbours too. Got to pet a cute 8 week old pupster too. He was a little fluffy white dog who is going to grow up to be a big sheep protecting dog (one of our neighbours is about to get a few sheep). We heard tales of a recent 18″ trout catch in the lake too!

Most of the rest of the weekend was relatively low key. I didn’t sleep enough last week, because I was up late with computer repairs and monitoring of forest fires in northern Ontario for ForestTalk.com, so I made sure to get a nap each day to catch up :-)

We took a drive into town on Saturday night and found a big dark ominous cloud hanging over town. The guy who works at the convenience store is such a funny man. I told him about the storm blowing in and he decided it would be fine if it picked up the store and blew it somewhere warm because he was bundled in his coat and freezing. (he’s not from this country). I have such fun bantering with this guy when I stop at his store. This time he told me he wouldn’t take debit so I told him it must be free then because I refused to pay with cash money. So he decided I could have whatever I wanted for free, and then passed me the debit keypad. Last time I was there he told me they worked him too hard and too many hours and they wouldn’t even let him catch a nap there. Then he told me he lived across the street under the trees. It was all he could afford. (I hope he was kidding). Anyway, the wind kicked up and the clouds were drastically dark, but nothing happened. It followed us home but still didn’t rain. I get really excited at the chance of a storm, but I know people around here can get terrified of them because they happen so rarely here (the thunder and lightning kind I mean).

I see a couple of tropical storms have already tickled the east coast – way down in South Carolina and Florida. That means the tropical storm season is about to begin! Don’t worry, I’ll keep you posted if one comes up our way!

Yesterday morning Jeff got the rest of the first coat done on the shed while I was cleaning inside the house. Now he says he hates the colour, so I’m not sure what colour coat #2 is going to be!

I was so excited to finally watch an Indy 500 race yesterday. And in HD! Unfortunately Jeff and I both nodded off in the last 50 laps but I woke up right after the winner crossed the finish line. I was rooting for the Canadian. He finished in 6th with another Canadian in 12th.

What else can I tell ya….

Oh yeah, last night Jeff had a hankering for meatloaf, so we took a Sunday evening drive over to the Irving Big Stop in Auld’s Cove to have a truck stop dinner. Jeff’s meatloaf hankering when right out the window when he saw a plate of fish and chips walk by while we were perusing the menus. He went for the fish and I went for the special – a roast turkey dinner with fries and dressing and cranberries and vegetables. I wouldn’t touch the peas and carrots mixture though – you know I really really hate peas. And if you cook carrots with peas they are contaminated with pea flavour too. Yuck. Guess they are for the composter now.

We have a frost warning for tonight for low lying areas. Here’s hoping that living on the side of a valley means the frost won’t hit our vegetables. The best part of this cold night is there were ZERO blackflies out so I got some weeding done and Jeff helped weed too! Thanks handsome!

Amazing long 2-4, except for one dead power supply

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Epic 2-4 long weekend!

We’ve had GORGEOUS weather.

Here are our accomplishments:

  • I was a judge at the Lion’s club multi-district Speakout event.
  • We went out in the boat and caught 4 fish.  3 were baby perch, the size of large lures.  We tossed them back.  Then Jeff had a bigger pull on his line and it was a sucker! He tossed it back too. That was the first sucker fish I saw here. Or actually anywhere. Except for in the magazine I was just reading about them.
  • I gained freckles and the very faint start of my 2012 tan.
  • We had a fire and watched the stars and drank cold beer.
  • I fed most of the blackflies with my blood.
  • Jeff is smoking ribs today in his smoker. Probably enough ribs for most of the neighbourhood, but we’re not sharing :-) It smells AMAZINGGGGGG!
  • We got 3 sides of the shed painted with a nice cedar shade stain, but surprisingly ran out of stain.  Who knew it would take 2 full cans and we wouldn’t even finish the first coat?
  • Jeff braved the hungry black flies and cut the grass.  We’ve been discussing buying a ride-on mower, but the price may be a little prohibitive.  That and we don’t have a massive lawn.  Jeff can do it in an hour, but it takes me probably 90 minutes.  We may go for a self-propelled instead so we don’t have to bend over and push this old one so hard.
  • I tried the new Coors Light Iced T – at first I loved it. It tastes like light beer with a strong ice tea after taste. Then I thought I’d rather just have the beer without the iced tea taste.  I bet it’s refreshing on a hot summer day. I’d drink it again.

Alright, here are some photos. If you want to hear about my power supply woes, stay tuned after the photos.

Mandatory annual self portrait in the boat

Mandatory annual self portrait in the boat

This is the life

This is the life

My first fish in 2012

My first fish in 2012

2 loons

I love this!

We caught 3 of these little perch

sucker!

Sucker!

Such a calm night.

My boat captain

First coat going on

Oh come on! Don't take my picture!

Kansas City sloppy ribs (my fav!)

Lonestar dry ribs

The Power Supply Situation

Unfortunately computer problems will always plague me, especially on long weekends and holidays. My big new desktop computer powerhouse was on when we went fishing yesterday, but it was off when we got home. Uh-oh. I think the power supply is shot because I can’t get a single LED on it, or inside it, to fire up. I changed the cords and tried a different wall outlet, but it is dead. So I was up late last night researching power supplies and ordered a new one. This one was a Seasonic and only had a year warranty, which is up in January. The new one I ordered is a Corsair and has a SEVEN year warranty. That is impressive!

So I’ve rigged up my little 13″ laptop to one of my big 24″ monitors. It is working, but the resolution is so big I feel like I should sit across the room. It’ll allow me to do basic things for a few days, but I’m going to be dying for it to be shipped, and delivered! Then I’ll have to rewire everything with the new power cords I guess. I’ve never had to replace a power supply before.

But I suspect I know why it died.

My UPS died a few weeks ago. That is UPS for uninterruptible power supply. It’s a box you plug of your most important electronics into and it keeps the power clean and steady to your electronics, and allows them to power down gently when the power goes out, rather than a hard off.

As I read more about UPS’s, I discovered that the one I used was okay, but not for high quality power supplies (of the active PFC (power factor correction) variety) like I have in my big desktop computer. I was supposed to be using a more expensive UPS that outputs a pure sine wave of power and the one I had was outputting a simulated sine wave.

So power supply will be replaced first.  The UPS I require is pricey.  APC does have a buy back program and they’ll take my old one and recycle it with a discount for the new one, so I might go that route.

So, bottom line, the webcam showing the view from my window will be offline until my computer is fixed later this week.

(and if a new power supply doesn’t fix the problem, then I’ll be kinda miserable.)

The shed is getting walls!!

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We drove over to a sawmill near Truro this morning to pick up some rough sawn lumber for our shed.

walls for the shed

walls for the shed

walls for the shed

walls for the shed

walls for the shed

Jeff has decided to do the board and batten look. Today he did half of the boards. Battens will go on later.

walls for the shed

walls for the shed

walls for the shed

walls for the shed

walls for the shed

walls for the shed

walls for the shed

I’m been forcing myself to stay awake since before supper. Jeff caved and went for a nap… 2 hours ago!

We both have wind burns. It was a chilly one, but sunny today. I think I carried too much lumber, sherpa-style, up to the shed. It didn’t hurt at the time, but now my back and shoulder are stiff. Gotta get that back in shape for gardening season!

The shed has a roof!

What I've Been Up To,

Jeff worked during almost all of our sunlit hours yesterday on the shed. And I was his right-hand handy assistant. My job was to anticipate his next move so I could have the right screws, wood, or roof metal ready for him. Or move the ladder. And every couple of hours I had to run a dead drill battery into the basement to switch it the one on the charger.

The roof was up before dark last night, and today Jeff was back on the job adding more of the wall braces between the studs, and he tarped the wall off to block the wind.

Jeff still hasn’t decided for sure what siding he wants to use, so I’m not sure when the wall will be done. We’d also like to put a window or two in the walls for light.

Here are some shots from this afternoon:

the shed has a roof

the shed has a roof

the shed has a roof

the shed has a roof

the shed has a roof

the shed has a roof

Shed Progress…. halted by snow

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Here are a few pictures of the shed last Sunday:

And this is why no shed building occurred this weekend:

We’ve got at least 8 inches, and it is still snowing. It’s right around zero outside, so the snow is really wet and heavy.

Monty loves it though!

Jeff plowed while I shovelled the heavy snow off the deck.

Birds don’t seem to mind it either, as long as I keep the sunflower seeds coming. We’ve had 9 mourning doves, big fat ones, sitting in the front birch tree, and two red squirrels scavenging underneath the feeder. A few mornings ago, there were two partridge in the front tree when I was heading out to work!

Here are a few more of Monty:

More pictures of today’s shed construction progress

What I've Been Up To, ,

Brrrrr. I’m cold and chilled, and ridiculously sore for not doing much other than fetching, carrying, and holding things while Jeff builds our shed.

The shed now has a front and back wall, a few roof trusses, some hurricane ties, and some cross bracing. Tomorrow we might get the roof tin on. We have a lead on some used windows that we plan to check out, and maybe use in the side walls.

Here are more pictures from today:

shed construction

shed construction

shed construction

shed construction

shed construction

shed construction

shed construction

shed construction