Introduction

Hello. My name is Jonas Cornelsen. However, if you prefer Josh Cornelson, that's just as well, since that's my Blogspot username. No matter, I'm not here to tell you my name, I'm here to tell the continuing story of what I call the Shack.

We did not always live in the Shack. There was a time, not so long ago, when we lived in a brand new beautiful house that we had built ourselves. We lived there quite happily for almost four years. Here begins the story of the Shack. My father has always been a dreamer, and it appears he is very good at that, because his dreams often come true. The most recent realized vision is the reason you are reading this. One day Dad told me he had made an offer on a house. I didn't think much of it at the time. Dad had made a habit of offering to buy houses. His bids were rarely successful, but I thought even if they were it wasn't as if we'd immediately be moving and building another new house or something. When the purchase was indeed a success, and a few interesting plans were made, I was proved dead wrong.

We took possession of the new house on December 1st, 2008. I got to have a look through it that very same day. I discovered for myself a foundation which was damaged beyond repair, an attached porch with a ceiling so bowed I did not feel safe standing underneath it, a basement whose unappealing atmostphere was magnified by a strong odor, and a power of other things that shocked me. When I spoke to Dad about it, I said something along the lines of, "You can barely even call that a house. It's more of a shack." The nickname stuck, thus the house is now referred to as the Shack. Another thing I said, and made very clear, was that I did not want to move into the shack. Naturally, it was decided that we would be moving into the Shack.

This may not be quite as crazy as it sounds. That is to say, the Shack is not actually going to be our permanent residence. Because the Shack sits very far to one side of a wide property, whilst we are living in it we plan to begin constructing a new house beside it. Once the new house is at least livable, we will move into there, tear down the Shack, and add a bit more onto the new house (build where the Shack used to be). To generate the means to undertake this project we had to sell our other house, which is why we must now live in the Shack instead of building from the comfort of the old place. So this may not be as crazy as I originally made it sound. Sometimes I think it may be crazier.

A new house isn't all that's going up on this property. We've already begun, and gotten quite far in, the process of building a workshop for my Dad's home business (casketmaking...another dream. Check out http://thevillagecasketmaker.com/). Many memories have already been created, along with a concrete pad and some walls. I'll sum up what's been going on there in a later entry of this blog.

That's the situation, in a nutshell. Of course, with such a strange situation comes many entertaining stories, and that's what this "Shack blog" is all about. I welcome your comments, as I am writing for your (the reader's) benefit. I sincerely hope you enjoy it. If not, perhaps you'll enjoy the novel "The Shack" by William Young. I wouldn't know, I haven't read it.