A Soup and Movie Day

***********************************************
Not much to look at, but you can get the sense of it.
Two inches of snow in the first hour and still falling.
Visibility around 150 feet. The snow is very crunchy.

My camera somehow got set an hour ahead. Now when
the time stamp says 08:30 it's actually 07:30. I haven't
been able to make it change back and stay that way.

I'll take pictures every hour or so today and post a few on my blog.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So here we are at noon of the same day and the 

temperature is rising into the 50's. The snow is turning 

rapidly to slush. If it keeps on like this, by sundown 4WD

will be required just to get to the gate!

                                And the visibility is about a mile.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

I stuck a  tape measure in the snow and it was 

only 2 1/2 inches. Oh well!

  

 

                              
                                ***************************************************

Freezing With Snow Flurries

**************************************************

About noon there were a few light snow flurries and the
temperature fell below freezing. I know this because the 
pan of dog's water froze over almost as I was looking at 
it!

I knew it was brisk and there had been a solid cloud cover 
for over two hours before, but I was not uncomfortably 
cold at all.

After looking at the porch thermometer on the shack, I
decided to honor my promise to come in from the cold. So 
I put my tools and glue away, gave the dogs two biscuits 
each and grabbed my camera.

Today I installed one more stud, making it ten feet of wall 
so far, put on eight feet of upper wall plate, and added two 
more braces to ensure that the wall remains plumb and 
square. Right now it is perfectly so.

One of the braces I added today is the second diagonal 
brace that extends past the end of the stud assembly, and 
the second brace added today is the 2x4 that goes from 
the porch post to the doubled stud. I put it up there so I 
wouldn't trip over it. It will remain in place until I install 
one of the second floor support beams along the same line.  

  

This weather today was not specifically forecast. It seems 
to have just developed. Tomorrow is supposed to be bad. 
That remains to be seen too.

I'm going to check the weather in Belen and Los Lunas 
now, and if it's OK I'm going to get more lumber. I want 
to make sure I have material on hand to build with when 
the weather permits.

Please DO NOT WORRY about me. I am being careful, 
and for some reason, my hands, knees and feet are not 
bothering me
at all. I would have expected my arthritis to be acting up 
in the cold, but actually I feel better. 
************************************************

Windy and Cold, With a Short Wall

The blue skies this morning ushered in a cold wind that 
lasted until just after noon.

I had already stacked the lumber I needed to cut and I 
had planned my moves.

Even at 40 degrees with a lighter wind I was pretty 
comfortable in just a hoodie, gloves, and my thermal 
underwear.

The weather is not supposed to be bad tomorrow, but if it 
is I'll go get more lumber in the morning.



Looking at this sky you can almost smell the crisp clean air.

 

The rise and run of the stairs dictated that the second 
floor be no higher than 9 feet 3 inches, rather than the 10 
feet I had originally intended.

The top edge of the horizontal 2x6 in these pictures is at 
the level of the top of the second deck floor joists. 

I almost always like to include at least one picture of the
deck and the front of my little green shack. It won't look 
like this much longer.

**************************************************

Blue Sky at the Ranch

The weather in town and out here are remarkably different. 
The snow had only just stopped when Tim and I left the 
coffee shop, went to the post office, (only junk mail today) 
and then to Gustin's Hardware to buy several bales of
hay for the horses, and then headed out to our place.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Ten miles west of Mountainair we began to be able to see 
more than 50 miles across the Rio Grande valley to the 
snowy mountains, and beautiful blue sky.

The first and the last of these pictures are only an hour and 
seven minutes apart. We still have some cloud cover which 
is slowing the drying of the deck, but I expect to be able to 
do some work outside maybe as early as noon.

My next trip to Home Depot I'm going to buy a squeegee 
to enable me to just push the water off the deck rather 
than using a broom or waiting for it to evaporate.

In the meantime I am experimenting with the formatting 
of my emails (shorter sentence lines) to see if I can create 
text that can be copied directly into my "BLOGGER" 
editor without needing to be re-adjusted before publishing.

I've pretty much given up on using the "WINDOWS LIVE 
WRITER" program that I used yesterday to write the High 
Boondocks Home blog mostly because of the way it handles 
(read that,"mishandles") pictures and other graphics.

Tentatively I'll be working on actual wall structure today, 
so I hope to have a picture or two worth sending.

 

There is supposed to be another even bigger storm coming 
in on Friday, but I really don't anticipate getting snowed in. 
The big Dodge is very happy in 4WD and handles the mud 
and snow easily.  Not that we have seen anything really 
serious yet.

****************************************************************************
   

Snow and Paint

Just a few pictures of the weather and the work.

Despite the interesting way the weather started the 
day, by 1:00pm it was dry enough to do a lot of 
painting. The sun came out at 3:00pm, with a small 
breeze, at 40 degrees, the paint dried so fast I could 
hardly believe it.

The last picture is of the can of paint we want. I was wrong  
about the brand as you can see from the label. And wrong 
also about the color. It's just RED, not Barn Red. It goes
on over the stain very nicely.

A Working Visit To The Ranch

The place is exactly as I left it in November; no weather damage and no animal damage (four legged or two legged).

There’s some snow still hanging around in the shady spots from last weeks storm, but very little mud.

 

 

I decided to start work on the west wall while I’m here, just to see how the new addition will integrate with the existing structure.

The walls will be 2x6, 10 feet tall.  These pictures show the first stud in place and 20 feet of 2x6 sill plate installed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Russell was really glad to see me and spent the day lounging on the deck.

I’ll post some more when I get a section of wall standing up.

******************************************************

LOOKOUT, AMATEUR BLOGGER AT WORK

Sorry about the "LETTERS (3)" screw up. 

In reading the intro for Windows Live Writer, I guess I got the impression that it was "drag and drop", text and pictures, but that was an invalid assumption on my part, so "LETTERS (3)" will stay down for a couple of days until I can find and reload (via the BLOGGER website) all the pictures.

In the mean time, Bryan took this picture of Sharon and I at Christmas that I liked enough to share. 

            *************************************************************

Country Kitchen Cabinets and My Dovey Horse

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Letters From The Boondocks (Chapter 2)

I’ve made a chronological change in format to place the oldest letter at the bottom, so that in the future, the last letter in the previous chapter will properly precede the oldest letter in the current chapter.

*********************************************************

Decks with stain:

David to Sharon, Wed, Jun 10, 2009, 6:06 PM
Dearest Wife,
 
Even with the rain I had enough dry time to apply two coats of stain to the back deck and to do half of the front one.



Tomorrow I'll finish the front and one more coat for each deck.
Then I'll start preparing the top of the back edge of the shack roof to support the rafters that will form the breeze-way roof. The first part is simply to add a layer of 3/4 inch plywood at a slight angle (for drainage) to the back one foot (low north side) of the shack roof for the breeze-way rafters to attach to. Then I paint and seal that strip of plywood to prevent any leakage. It's an all day job.
 
Tim got all his stuff moved over to his new place south of us. He used our tractor front loader and the help of his friend Jerry to move his heavy tools across the road, and then he brought the tractor home. He is able to handle the IH tractor with a precision that I am only just now beginning to understand. I have a lot of practicing to do.
 
The contractor, Albert Chavez, finally showed up at 6:30PM. He did keep me informed of his progress all day long though. We had a very good meeting and he promised his bid by email no later than noon on Friday, June 12th.
 
The horses and all three dogs hung around over here from before noon until 7:45PM (about 15 minutes ago). Then like at a signal they headed home to Tim's place at a very fast walk.
Love You
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Deck with Step installed

David to Sharon, Mon, Jun 8, 2009, 5:24 PM

Dearest Wife,
Some more deck pictures for you. The way I positioned, and dug in, and concreted the support posts makes
the deck look like it's floating just off the ground, but as you might suspect it is very rigid and it's guaranteed   not to blow away.
 


Tomorrow I'll apply the first protective Redwood stain coating to both the back and front decks and get ready to roof over the deck area. I'm pretty sure you will like how it's going to look.
At the same time I have been building the barn in my head, and I am pretty sure I have a foundation scheme that will be both inexpensive and easy; except for the guys I'll hire to dig the holes!!!
More pictures tomorrow.
Love you

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A nice sunset

David to Sharon, Fri, Jun 5, 2009, 6:41 PM

Some good sunset pictures taken from our south-east corner. I call the last one, “Tranquility”.
Wish you were here to enjoy the wonderful weather.
Love you, Wife

 

----------------------------------------------------------

Deck and Trusses

David to Sharon, Fri, Jun 5, 2009, 10:59 AM

Here's a few pictures of the deck and our trusses. Both look pretty good.
Love you




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The NW corner of the fence is complete


David to Sharon, Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 3:44 PM

Hi Sweet Wife,
Just a couple of pictures to show the last of the fence,

and to illustrate what a Cholla (pronounced Choy-Ya) Cactus looks like.
We have around a hundred of them. The one pictured is in the Green Shack circle drive.



(Note: This one later deteriorated to the point I had to remove it, but another one nearby flourished and produced beautiful purple flowers.)

Richard "Hogan" Falk  and I spent over two hours walking his and our properties looking at the various kinds of trees and the different grasses, and talking about how we can improve the growth of both. He has beautified his place considerably by taking out the underbrush around his Juniper and Pine trees and pruning them up to about six feet above the ground, so they look like umbrellas. They provide shade for the animals, and at the same time deny hiding places for the rattle snakes. That will be a good project for you: learning how to use a chainsaw, and catching rattlesnakes for the pot!! ;)
 
Tomorrow Hogan starts fixing and replacing the fence along FR-422 all the way down to the arroyo. South of the arroyo he will just tighten the fence wire and re-tie it to the posts. (Note: That plan later changed when we decided, because of erosion and the need to keep the range bulls out, to move and replace with all new posts and wire the entire east fence line along Forest Road-422 from the Cibola National Forest entry cattle guard down to Tim’s southeast corner; about half a mile).
 
Tomorrow also I'll start looking into finding the best barn for the money. I am still leaning toward a large “pole barn” that I can build myself.
Love you, Wife
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Computer Repair Done Here


David to Sharon, date Mon, Jun 1, 2009, 8:16 PM
Dearest Wife,
I fixed and restored to Like-New a computer last night,  in a little over 4 hours. It was six years old and was thoroughly full of errors, viruses and spyware crap, and had almost no space left on the C:\ drive. I thought at first it would be a waste of time, and that it would have to be formatted and reloaded (the owner needed her data, but had no backup, and the system disk was long gone. Not many options there.)  Little by little, in “Safe Mode”, using mostly free utility software I had burned to a CD, and Linux (in RAM), I cleaned out the junk files, and deleted a ton of obsolete programs, finally getting enough head room to defrag the boot drive, then defragged and repaired the registry. When I left at about 10:30pm, it was working like new, and she was a happy camper! Oh yeah, it was a win 98 SE desktop, just like we had at NET 10 when I was going to school.
You have only been gone a few days
and I miss you already.
Love you
************************************************************