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!