Phutu...or is it?

7/29/2003 I can't believe how busy I have been lately. Dory and I went on a week long vacation to do some hiking in Lassen National Park and just relax. We stayed all but one night in various bed and breakfast inns. I liked the first one that we stayed in, I had one of the best breakfasts that I have had in a long time; the lady made a french toast casserole which was fantastic. The second b&b was really more like an inn, lots of rooms and less personal service...the breakfast was good but not great...then for the last two nights we stayed in a creepy old "Red Castle" victorian that made me feel like I was in some old lady's house who was never around. The food reinforced that notion as it was quite strange, reminding me of what my grandmother used to eat when I was a kid.

The hiking that we did was really cool. I had been wanting to go for some hikes in high mountain areas since that's where trees grow naturally into the unusual shapes that bonsai enthusiasts try to imitate. I took a bunch of photos as you can see to the left...although I think that I find all this a lot more interesting than most of the people that read this will. Still, it's my website so people will just have to suffer through it. I took along a book called "Conifers of California" by Ronald M. Lanner for reference and spent some time examining the different needle configurations and ways in which cones are produced and positioned for maximum seed distribution. I was really excited about one of the hikes because I found a grove of Western (also called Sierra) Junipers, which are very slow-growing, magnificent trees. According to the conifer book they are not found in the area I was in...I might have to write to the author and let him know that I found some there.

So now I'm back and trying to get the back of my house reconstructed after all the tearing out that I have done. My brother has been here helping me and we are making good progress, but as ususal I am making everything harder by doing things in unusual ways. As I think I mentioned previously, I got all the lumber from a tree recycling yard in Oakland. That would have been all fine if not for the fact that the lumber is rough...meaning that a 2x4 is really full dimension not the standard 1 1/2" x 3 1/2"...which sounds good....the catch is that the surface of the boards is too rough to use; so I had to get a thickness planer and run all the lumber through it...which took us the better part of yesterday and a little time this morning. In addition to that, since it is not the highest quality lumber, most of the boards are not completely straight, which means that I have to cut them into shorter lengths to get them to fit next to each other closer. Also, when I was doing the framing of the support structure of the deck I didn't get all the joists lined up correctly so now I have to custom measure all the pieces to fit instead of just running them off at standard lengths. It's all in a weeks work for the amateur carpenter.

7/19/2003
7/8/2003
7/1/2003
6/3/2003
5/29/2003
4/22/2003
3/18/2003
2/27/2003
2/18/2003
2/15/2003
1/31/2003
1/21/2003
12/18/2002

Hmm, still long....still getting longer, must find time to fix back issues!!!

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