The Exodus Is Here

Well, the time has come. Phase One still needs a few final touches to be fully ready to live in, but for efficiency's sake, we're moving things over just as fast as we can. The Shack feels cluttered, yet empty in its current limbo state. My room is pretty much down to the bare essentials... the majority of my clothes have even found their way over to the new place (I had to go in there to find a belt this morning!).

Life is pretty nuts right now, starting school at the same time as moving and all. However, it's also very exciting. I can hardly wait to sleep in my new room (which looks pretty great - I picked decent colours if I do say so myself).

So far the only mishap has been caused by me. As I was carrying a "Joy of Origami" puzzle that has been in a frame and up in our various houses for a long time, I tripped on one of the many tricky spots around here. I fell forward, with the frame landing directly on the top corner of our temporary staircase leading into the new house. The puzzle, remarkably, was unharmed (as was I). The frame was not so lucky - it broke in a fantastic crash/shattering that I sort of wished had been captured on video.

Other than that, things just keep on being ferried over. I have already dealt with our stereo system and TV - those two things are being combined as a space saving measure, which I think could turn out pretty well. My next duty is the precise reason I chose to write this entry at this moment. I will be dismantling our computer system... probably making this the last ever blog entry from the Shack. Updates will continue for awhile re. Shack destruction, continuing construction, etc. However, "My Life In The Shack" will soon become a pretty invalid title.

Amazing.

Point Form Update!

WOW I don't write on this blog a lot... here's a quick sum of what's going on, and the timeline for moving. I'm tired.

-All drywall that needs to be done right now is done (boarded, not finished except in certain areas).

-The toilet upstairs flushes. Therefore we have water.

-A bunch of light fixtures, etc. have been purchased.

-Phase One is completely insulated now (unfinished upstairs areas included)

-Dad cut his head on an electrical box today and I got freaked out by his trail of blood.

-Water/sewer/gas/electrical to the Shack is getting cut off around Sept. 13th, so we'll be out of here by then, therefore Phase One will be livable!

-I have picked the colours for my room. Darkish blue and beige... technically called "Provence" and "Haze".

-Dad is estimating September 17th for Shack destruction.

-Onward and upward!

Sorry for minimalist description and all, things are getting pretty crazy around here and I only just remembered the blog... it's far too close to bedtime to write a full entry! Perhaps more details soon.

The Shack Begins Self-Destruct Mode

This has been quite a week. Dad and I have been working approximately 10-12 hours a day insulating phase one - blowing massive amounts of shredded paper also known as "cellulose" into the walls and ceilings. My job was to cut open large bags of this stuff and feed it into a machine called a "hopper", which would then send the stuff via fan through a 100 ft. hose, on the other end of which was Dad, guiding the stuff to where it needed to go. After doing this, he usually looked something like a sheep or an abominable snowman, and I was fairly dusty myself.

However, the insulation saga was not the most stereotypical/hilarious Shack story this week. The crowning moment for me was yesterday afternoon; Dad discovered a leaky ceiling. It was raining at the time, pretty hard, but this leak was not due to rain. This was on the first floor... something was causing water to drip out of the false ceiling in the "sleep in closet" onto my parent's bed, of all places! Dad and I agreed that the only way to get to the root of the problem was to rip out [part of] the ceiling. So, without hesitation, that's what we did.

-Dad fixes things.-

It didn't take us too long to find the problem; a cheap, plastic, and leaking joint in a copper water supply pipe. Being a "straight up copper" fanatic, Dad immediately replaced this faulty joint. Now the only problem is the way the ceiling looks in there - although the design has been updated to a piece of plywood. I found this whole experience rather amusing, it's almost as if the Shack knows of its imminent destruction.

Happy Birthday Mom!

It's been quite a day at the Shack. It started when I woke up at 6:30 AM. It gets more bizzare - I was in the shop! That was expected though. I slept there last night due to the unbearable heat in the upstairs of the Shack.

The reason that I woke up at 6:30 (deliberately) was the fact that Dad wanted to start work at 7 in order to get stuff done before the heat of the day. On a sidenote, the plumbers went to work while we were on vacation, we passed an inspection, and things are moving along like clockwork! Because of this, generally spirits are good in spite of the very hot weather we've been having. But I digress.

Today is a special day. This is because it is my mother's birthday. Therefore, today's workday began with something unusual. Dad and I went into the shop, and he dug around on some shelves until he found a couple old cans of spray paint. I was very confused as to what this had to do with Mom's birthday, but then he let me in on his scheme. He told me that I was to create a "happy birthday" design on the mesh that we have been tacking up on the studs for insulation purposes. This would be at no cost to the overall look of the completed project, seeing as there will be a layer of drywall on top of it in the end. So, before doing anything building-related, I set to work, relying on my experience as a graffiti artist. Well, relying on the fact that I know generally how to use spray paint. It turned out pretty well; there was even a candle with stripes on it! Mom came in around 9:15 or so, and was very amused and appreciative.

- Mom stands by her "birthday card" -

I did some actual work today too... the first huge task (and hugest of the day) was "processing" an insulation delivery. That means that 3 palettes plus a huge pile not on a palette of cellulose insulation bales were dumped on our parking space. It was my job to haul all the bales off the palettes (the other pile could stay where it was), and re-stack them in the yard. The bales weighed about 25 pounds each. Drawing on the experience with "relatively light" drywall, I was expecting them to start feeling very heavy by the end. That didn't happen so much, except when I was lifting above my head to get them onto the top of the stacks. The worst enemy I had was the heat... some of the yard was shaded, but I had to go out into full sunlight to get a new bale. I took fairly frequent cool-down breaks in the shop - thank goodness one building around here is well insulated! In the end, I got all the palettes moved before noon, and I had managed to create impressively high stacks. By some miracle, not one bale has fallen so far.

- The piles of insulation have surpassed me in height. -

After lunch, we took a very long break to avoid the heat some more. I actually ended up going to spend some time with a friend who had an accessible trampoline and garden hose - quite a way to cool down! Upon my return to the Shack I was assisting Dad in getting more mesh up for the insulation and stapling it to the studs. We have to do this because the type of insulation we're using is actually blown into walls using a large machine/hose. The mesh is so that, ideally, the insulation stays in the walls! My other main job this evening was to cover both my ridiculously high insulation piles, and the pile that I didn't have to move, with tarps and plastic so that there could be no potential rain damage. Winnipeg has an ever-present "chance of showers" these days, and usually some thunderstorm watches. It was a difficult task to take on my own. It ended up involving, among other things, getting lost underneath the infamous 1500 sq. ft. tarp (aka "the beast") and falling off of a dirt pile, becoming sandwiched between a large mound of dirt and a large pile of insulation. Eventually though, both piles were covered, and the work did not go to waste at all - it began to rain even as I was still putting bricks on top to secure the tarps!

That's it for today, I think... once again happy birthday to my mother.

Essentially, Shack life rolls on well amidst the heat. So well that sometimes the thought gets in my head that in a matter of weeks, there may be no more Shack life... very strange.

The Inspector And Me

So as with any legitimate house-building project these days, inspectors need to inspect things. This we were ready for. Or at least thought we were. The day the inspector was to come, Dad had to go run some errands. He said, "When he comes, just let him in, tell him to phone me if he needs to." I figured it sounded simple enough.

The inspector pulled up in his truck sometime around 1 in the afternoon. I said to him as he got out, "are you the inspector?" His reply was, "Is that bad?" I told him that it wasn't, and showed him into Phase One. This seemed all right to me. But then he started asking me various questions about the house, questions that I wasn't fully confident in answering. I did my best on them, but I felt like a relative idiot. At one point I said, "These things would make a lot more sense if you discussed them with my dad." He seemed to agree, but then continued asking me questions, and I started thinking that I had essentially just told him I know nothing, but he was continuing to try and get information from me.

Eventually, he left, saying he'd phone my dad in the morning because he wasn't sure on some things. I decided that was best. I'd briefly thought of suggesting he stick around until Dad got home, but that proved to be about an hour later, and I was glad I hadn't!

The next day, he came by again. As he got out of the truck, I said, "My dad is here today. You can speak to somebody who knows what he's talking about."

That story is pretty indicative of how Shack life has turned out these last couple days. We have some things that need fixing, so the building is going slightly slower than we anticipated. However, that works out well for me because now I am able to volunteer another week at camp.

In other exciting news, Dad and I experienced a great field trip to Morden to learn about cellulose insulation. We first toured the plant where this stuff is made. It's quite simple, really, a whole bunch of newspapers are shredded into an unrecognizable mass, then this stuff called "boric acid" is added, which is completely environmentally friendly, plus it's a fire retardant and rodents hate it. Bonus. We then traveled to a house being built (still in Morden) to see how exactly this stuff is put into walls. Basically, a mesh is stapled onto the studs, and this stuff is blown in through a large hose that's kind of like a reverse vacuum cleaner. A very educational trip indeed, which also yielded an impromptu lunch with local friends! We get to do this insulation thing ourselves once the things that need a second look have had that very second look.

The Shackblog is going to be down for another couple of weeks, due to my being at camp then going out west for a family reunion. So essentially, there will be no interruption to my sporadic posting!

It's Slightly Bothersome to Keep Digging Things if They Just Keep Getting Filled In Again...

But that's the way it goes, I guess! Yes, it has been awhile since I last wrote about the Shack. Have I been dead? Well, no. But death aside, the house project continues to take steps towards completion. Several of those steps taken lately have involved Raya and/or me digging... a lot! Just today I completed a 2-foot deep by several feet long by less than a foot wide trench from Phase One to the shop that now serves as a place for the electrical conduit. That trench has been in the works for quite some time now, and I hardly got to bask in the glory of its completion at all before we laid the conduit and I started filling it up again. Cruel world.

On the plus side, this trench-digging provided inspiration for creativity late last month. Not being sure where to put the mud we were digging out, and the mud forming into round shapes quite nicely, Raya and I eventually decided that we would create a mudman! This was a lot like the average snowman, except you get dirty instead of cold while making it. And it's fairly small. Below is a picture of us proudly showing off our creation.

Besides the promise of electricity, water has begun flowing in the new world as well! A couple of days ago, Dad called me out to help test/flush out the pipes for the bathtub in the future rental suite. There are not yet normal fixtures on these pipes, so the water was gushing out fairly freely, and I was attempting to contain it using a large bucket. Essentially, I think that experience counts as the first shower taken in the new house.

Otherwise, life just rolls on... when the weather gets as hot as it has been over the last couple days I sometimes reminisce fondly of the days when we lived in a house with lots of insulation and a nice basement. But of course, I must remember we are on an adventure. Good times.

I Dug a Pit

After a nice journey to Iowa for a few days, Dad and I got back this Wednesday evening. The next day, I jumped right into work - literally. I finally continued the work on the sump pit that I started in the crawlspace awhile ago. It was nasty, unappealing work. I was digging below the waterline, therefore I was standing in water about ankle-deep in a waist-deep hole, and my boots were removing more ground than the shovel. However, after two solid chunks of work (one on Thursday, and one on Friday), I managed to make the hole big enough for what Dad needs to do with it - which is put a giant holding tank in it. I came out very muddy - I even managed to get dirt on my face somehow! Oh well, it's all in the name of progress.

In other news, the unappealing smell in the Dank continues to get worse as the weather gets wetter. Thank goodness we shouldn't have to deal with that much longer (fingers crossed!).

The Continuing Story of the Shack

What a life... I woke up from a half-hour nap yesterday afternoon to my dad saying, "Hey Jonas, want to come help move a bathtub?" Only at the Shack.

Of course, I did go help move the bathtub, and then a whole bunch of pipes.

The next morning, as I'm eating breakfast, Dad walks by the kitchen counter carrying a toilet bowl (new, in a box). On his next trip by he's got a toilet tank with him! This, of course, can only mean one thing: Phase One is arriving at the plumbing stage.

The last few days have been all about bathtubs, showers, etc. Which to buy? Where to put them? Where to make them drain since apparently the floor joists are all exactly where Dad wanted to put the drains! Oh no! An exciting development from today was the news that we can apparently afford a fancy steam-shower type thing for the upstairs bathroom. I'm sure this will do wonders for our health, or something.

In other news, the Dank remains dank. The Shack remains on the brink of imploding. The Shack Nights tally is ever increasing. The only difference is it seems that all these things may be gone within a few months... what a weird thought.

Mid-May Update

This is a seemingly momentous occasion... the first blog entry from the new non-Shack!

All right, we haven't moved in or anything. I'm just sitting on some scaffolding with a laptop, enjoying a wonderful, warm evening. I could get used to this being a deck... too bad it's only temporary.

What the scaffolding is for - that is decidedly un-temporary - is the large windows that were put in today! We've probably gotten very far since my last entry. Ironically, now that things have started changing rapidly, I find I don't have much time or energy for writing. As it stands, much of the interior framing of phase one is finished - I could give you a house tour right now. You would just have to imagine things like finished walls, flooring, ceilings, doors, etcetera. Those are just details anyway. There is also, as promised, a hole in the ceiling of the main floor, leading into the second floor. A ladder may become a semi-permanent fixture in the middle of our living space when we move in so that I may access my room... it'll be kind of a warehouse feel. The reason the hole had to be cut so soon was so that we could transport both windows and drywall upstairs.

Indeed, much of the focus of the last couple of days has been drywall. We had a delivery of it come in this Wednesday - three huge piles of drywall, a hundred and some sheets in total. It was the job of the indentured servants (Raya and me) to carry all this into the house, and to pass much of it up through the hole in the ceiling to Dad's awaiting hands on the second floor. Though it is annoying work, it is pretty repetitive, and because of this, we became quite adept at both hauling and lifting drywall - important life skills! A particularly good memory in this process was when Raya became slightly over-zealous, and managed to rip a pretty large chunk off the corner of a sheet. I was amused, and after I teased her about it for awhile, Raya was not.

Another noteworthy episode has been our continuing battle with mother nature. There have been some robins around, that seem to think a house full of studs is an absolutely ideal place to build a nest. To be fair, it really is, but it is not ideal for us to be rooming with robins. So, almost every day, Dad destroys their nest-progress, and the next day, it is almost always back, and sometimes even further along. You've got to admire their resilience.

The way the new house has taken shape so quickly is pretty incredible... almost every time I come home there's something new to see. For a few days I didn't go up to the second floor, and when I did today I was surprised to find the framing for a whole bunch of rooms, including a very large closet in the master bedroom - I guess building for yourself can have its perks!

Rain Does Not Stop Us!

I had an interesting experience the other day: I walked out of the door of a room before I had ever walked in. If that's not a sure sign of interior framing, this definitely is: we've been doing interior framing! It's quite exciting, walls have been going up on the inside of the house, and we're beginning to be able to see where rooms will be, and what the spaces will look like. Now that we've lost Paul (he's all right, it's just that he's no longer working for us), I've gotta step it up a bit. For the last couple days I have been doing some work that, while not glamorous, is pretty important. I've been stuffing insulation into cracks (in metal studs/window frames on our very fancy and possibly fireproof east wall). This ensures that the area around the windows won't get cold. Or hot. So like I said, quite important.

In the next couple weeks, aside from doing whatever else Dad tells me to, I will be working on expanding the sump pit in the crawlspace! Hmm...digging in the dark and mud, in a space in which I cannot even stand up...another top-notch job for the lackey! Oh well, it's how I pay my debts.

More Upward Progress, and a Tarp Adventure

Dad said to me a few days ago, "If you had told me that we'd get this house entirely framed, sheathed, and shingled before there was even a drop of rain, I would've said you were a dreamer."

Well...dreams do come true! Dad and our friend Paul have been working tirelessly the last couple weeks, and to show for it, we have a pretty complete shell (the exterior is framed, the interior still needs, well, walls) that is covered in brand-name building wrapping material, and has a roof on it - fully shingled! It has been quite a sight to see for me, and anyone who happens to be passing by our property and stops and stares for a little while! We've toyed with the idea of putting up a large sign with plans, etc. Perhaps Mr. Harper will also lend us an "Economic Action Plan" sign that they give out so freely?

But I digress...all of this did happen before any rain fell at all, which is incredible. However, anyone living in Winnipeg knows that yesterday, the rain did begin to fall. Pretty hard. This caused another fun episode in our Shack-lives, and guess what? The 1500 square foot tarp has returned (click here and find the segment on June 15/09 to recount the tarp's first appearance)! This time, we had to put a lot more effort into spreading out the tarp, because Dad wanted to do it vertically, to cover up the east wall of the house-shell so that there would be no water damage to some kind of special drywall he was legally required to put on there. So there we were, in the rain, for about an hour and a half, up and down ladders, sticking our heads/arms out of windows trying to get a better angle on things, lifting this massive beast of a tarp up with a 16-foot long 2 x 4, etc. By the end of this debacle, we had one tarp covering the entire east wall of our new house. I was again reminded of just how giant a tarp that is, it looks even bigger vertically. We were also thoroughly soaked, muddy, and cold to the point where even an excessively hot shower barely felt warm. But it was another experience unique to this Shack lifestyle. At one point, I suggested that we should have taken that tarp and draped it over the entire Shack, much like a shroud. I have no idea what sort of benefit that would provide, but it would certainly be amusing.

A House Going Up...Completely Undetected!

Hey, remember me? I'm that guy who writes about the Shack. Have I written anything since going to Europe? No! This is because I'm in a musical that has eaten my life and have rarely been around. However, I have the day off today, so I thought I'd give a quick update.

As the title suggests, a house has indeed been going up around here! "Completely undetected" refers to a couple different things - one being the fact that I haven't been documenting it terribly well, the other being the fact that *ahem* we totally have our final building permits already! Anyway, Dad and friends have been working hard with this great weather we've been having the past while, and a lot has gotten done. I remember one morning in particular, waking up and going downstairs for breakfast, finding Dad talking to a window and door guy in the dining room, and looking outside to see several old guys with trucks and equipment milling about, and of course, our friend Paul working away. It's good that this kind of thing feels normal to me... I've been raised well.

Last night I set foot in my new house for the first time... well, the shell of my new house. It's quite an enjoyable experience. You can see the shape of the first floor now, and the second floor is currently much like a very nice deck. My room has a great view - too bad there'll be walls soon. Speaking of my room, Dad has been asking me lately how comfortable I am with climbing through a 14-inch hole in order to access my bedroom for a couple months. My reaction? "Sounds like fun!" I may also be blessed with access to an exterior ladder from time to time. This is all due to the fact that there will be no permanent staircase between the first two levels of phase one, seeing as the first level will eventually become a rental suite.

That's the last few weeks in the Shack, in a nutshell. Here's a couple illustrations in case you are wondering what things are looking like, but don't have time to walk by our property and stop and stare like many people do:

Dad wondering what to do with a wall that's on the ground.

How the situation currently looks from the front.

From the Ground Up...

That's right, there's now an "up" to be added to the ground! Where I last left off a couple weeks ago, all we had to show was a big hole in the ground and some concrete piles. Well, we have much more now! In addition to a sweet drainage trench I dug one Saturday morning, we now have Logix forms that have been going up like nobody's business, with some help from a church friend that knows what he's doing. It's quite exciting to see some visual progress - there is even a space that is clearly going to be a back door one day. We're getting some more concrete poured today, and Dad is very excited about getting water and sewer lines soon (in my opinion the new foundation is soon going to be as good as the entire Shack!).

I have also decided that Dad loves the new project much more than he loves me, because I am embarking on an amazing trip to Europe today... and he has decided to stay here with the concrete while Mom takes me to the airport. At least one parent loves their child.

Another sweet development in the Shack is the recording studio that I have set up in the Dank. The fussball room has proven very versatile - I now have an old computer set up down there with a microphone, and am using it to record various ditties (especially "Songs of the Body" for biology class). Dad thinks I'm going to miss the Shack because of all I can do in it. I say a nice house is a worthwhile trade.

That will be all for another stretch, as I am making a great escape from the Shack and heading off to France and Spain for spring break. I'm pretty psyched to see all the new developments upon my return. I will leave you, now, with a photo showing some of the progress on the new foundation:

Happy Easter!

Bicentennial

As Dad continues to toil away in the incredibly mucky hole in the ground, further preparing it for a house, my personal Shack journey reached another milestone last night. As many of you know, I have a "Shack nights" tally on my sloped ceiling above my bed. Last night it hit the number 200! It was very exciting and heartwarming and all, and then I went to sleep.

We Have Piles!

No, not hemorrhoids! You people are so twisted!

I'm talking about concrete piles, that have been planted very deep in the ground, and that we intend to put a house on in the near future. They came in just yesterday.

Unfortunately I was not present for the installation of these piles, but Dad did manage to take a few photos, and I have had the pleasure of living in an incredibly muddy environment for the past couple days. I guess it's all in the name of progress. I just have to keep finding new ways to get into the Shack with minimal muddiness.

And now, I would like to display Dad's awesome photography-with-a-3.2mp-camera talents (I'm not making fun of him...maybe. In all seriousness they turned out pretty well):

A Changing Landscape... Again

After an extended period of excessive ordinance, finally something has come about worth writing down! The story is as follows:

I had been walking home from a musical rehearsal at school. I turned the final corner before my block, and made the last few steps of the journey totally oblivious as to what I was about to see. I approached the Shack, and prepared to open the gate to enter the yard. It was then that I realized, there was a total lack of gate, and a good chunk of fence had been flattened to the ground.

I knew that this had been coming, I just wasn't entirely sure when. The purpose of this new not-fence is to create space for large machinery to enter our yard and get down to business on the concrete piles Dad has already ordered, creating the foundation for phase one of our prospective new non-shack (also known as a house). Evidently today was the day that this needed to be done, and Dad certainly did it, although the idea was to remove the section of fence entirely. This proved difficult as it is still frozen into the ground. All in due time, I suppose.

This has indeed changed the landscape of our property fairly drastically. Obviously, there is a chunk of fence missing in the front. Since we can't very well let our dog out in a yard that is incompletely fenced, Dad has (a few weeks ago already actually, he was thinking ahead) created a small barricaded area in the backyard for Bruce to go out and take care of his business in. This is a pretty crude setup, bringing into use things such as plywood and snow shovels. Another fence that this has made unnecessary is the incredibly attractive (now mostly defunct) temporary fence made out of that fluorescent orange chain-linkesque plastic found only on the classiest of construction sites. Yes, the hole is now fully accessible, convenient seeing as according to Dad we should be getting our piles soon.

And you are now up-to-date on our building process. I may attempt to put some pictures up within the next couple of days so that you may fully understand what I am describing. For now, I am enjoying the fact that we are moving forward, edging closer and closer to having a new residence on the same property (that still sounds funny to me sometimes).

UPDATE:
Here is a photo of what the property currently looks like (March 2, 2010):

Jungle Shack

Life has been relatively slow, Shack-wise, these last few weeks. Dad went to Vancouver and came back, Raya's been in and out on weekends, and things are relatively normal. However, one excellent improvement has been made to my room in the last couple days. I was at home sick, and very bored, yesterday, so I decided to have fun with my ceiling. This involved creating a hole in it, such that I could stick a coat-hanger in there. After I had done that, I thought, "what now?". The answer was to root through one of my larger boxes until I found a big stuffed snake that I kept for some reason. I then twisted the snake around the coat-hanger, and voila! There is now a snake hanging from my ceiling, greeting visitors as they enter, and keeping me company... is that sad? Oh well. I enjoyed it. I've got to take full advantage of this freedom while I can. And this way, my room has a little more of a jungle theme. That's obviously a plus.

Snow IN The Shack

All of Winnipeg was slammed by a blizzard this morning, but I'm sure (or at least I hope) that most homes didn't have snow inside of them. However, being the exceptional home it is, the Shack did. Not very much, but just enough to make you stop and wonder "how soon can we get out of this place?"

Because we don't have a storm door, the high winds and relentless snow created a small pile of the white fluffy stuff just inside our side door. Fortunately our furnace is good enough to keep us relatively warm, even though the house can't keep snow out, apparently. However, the exception this morning was my bedroom, which was very chilly when I woke up, and has been all day. Part of the problem is the fact that I keep my door closed, but if I don't, Bruce [the dog] gets in there and causes shenanigans. Another factor is the fact that I have two outside walls, and my room faces north, which is the direction the wind is coming from. Oh well, that's the Shack for ya!

Holy Shack! What have we done??

Today was a relatively normal day free of thinking about the past. Well, it was that until about 8:20 PM when I logged into Facebook and noticed that a good friend of mine had tagged me in a photo. I was not actually in this photo, but she wanted me to see it. It was a picture she had taken of the Shack a very long time ago - long before we owned the place, or even had designs on owning it, I'll bet. I was floored by the sudden realization of just how much has changed around here. Take a look:

If you can believe it, this is what the property looked like long ago, under the previous owners I suppose. Note the archway, the logical sidewalk, the porch still being there, the not-a-really-big-hole-in-the-ground, the large shrubbery and intact fence, the little windmill thing, the large wooden wheel, the actual grass...even if the season had never changed, the complexion of the property has been altered drastically, and permanently. This photo will look even more distant once there is no longer a Shack at all, but instead a brand new house (or perhaps non-Shack?).

This will conclude my reminiscing for the day. Every so often I just have to look back, and realize that even though the house is still just a hole in the ground right now, there has still been an amazing amount of progress made so far. And to think this all started with Dad's crazy dreaming.

In Memory of the Creepy Bathroom Light

Shack life has been relatively quiet since the water pipe fiasco of New Year's Day. The foundation is yet to implode (entirely), and Dad hasn't been coming up with a whole lot if innovative home solutions these last couple weeks. We did, however, hit a spot of bother today.

The much-talked about Creepy Bathroom always had an independently controlled light bulb to illuminate the situation for its occupant. This light bulb was controlled by a pull-string that hung down just beyond the door. In recent days, it has taken more and more effort to get the light to turn on and off. Clearly the strain was becoming unbearable, because when the string was pulled today in an effort to turn the light off, not only did the light go off, but so did the string! This has caused Dad to be doing a bit of work in there today - we may no longer have the light be independent, but just always on if the kitchen light is on. Oh well, I guess we won't be saving the planet.

Happy New Year from the Water Pipes

Who knew that the Shack would provide us with an adventure so quickly in 2010? We were certainly caught off-guard by some frozen water pipes this morning.

It was a fairly lazy start to the day. I ate my breakfast around 10:30 or so. Upon finishing my bowl of frosted flakes, I casually strolled over to the sink with the intentions of rinsing the bowl out so that it could be later placed in the dishwasher. I reached out and turned the handle that would normally cause cold water to come out of the kitchen sink faucet. That did not happen, however. What happened was, well, nothing. I turned both the hot and cold handles a couple of times, and when noting continued to happen, I called out to Mom and Dad, who were still in bed, "Is there a reason that the kitchen sink shouldn't be working?"

Naturally, these words caused a bit of a stir, and Mom quickly jumped out of bed to test the faucet herself - I guess she didn't believe me. She confirmed that it was indeed not working. We then tested the sink in the creepy bathroom... it was working fine, as had been the water in the upstairs bathroom not so long ago. Clearly it was a problem very local to the kitchen, and Dad slumped out of his bed, put on a very manly knitted sweater-vest, and strode down into the dank armed with a blow dryer and a flashlight to check it out.

Fortunately there was not much excitement beyond this. No explosions of pipes, or anything else. Dad found the problem, fixed it with the blow dryer, and the kitchen sink is running smoothly once more. This may not bode well for a quiet new year in the Shack, but it may for some interesting writing. All the better for me and my blog!