Kingfisher Cove

Moving Forward

Weird, disjointed week doing the gazillion-mile-per-hour multi-tasking thing that I will admit: I AM NOT GOOD AT. And I dare challenge the majority of people out there to be honest, because human brains really are not geared for that sort of thing. We lie when we claim that we have it down. Employers want to hear it, but they also want to hear that we’re all Superman. Or Wonder Woman. As the case may be. Roight. In your dreams. I really hate jumping to one thing from another and then another and then back again. Often within an hour, over many hours! Not possible to feel any sense of accomplishment. Or mastery. Something always suffers.

The Harstine roof? Is 99.7% DONE. John figures there is one more day at the most to finish up the trim and roof caps and vent caps, and that’ll be it. Anticipating inspection next week, then insulation and sheetrock. Then siding. And interiors. And…and…and. (It’s never-ending!)

It may well be that we won’t have to demolish the camping trailer and haul it away until spring (if it survives that long). It’s only in the way of grading the final driveway, and we don’t anticipate that being an issue for several more months. The trailer hasn’t been in the way of access for materials or anything thus far, and we’re beyond the most difficult parts of this behemoth undertaking.  (Well, as far as huge loads of materials arriving and having to be loaded down to the site).

SO!! After tomorrow, we are on vacation, baby! Spending the full Labor Day week down there. Ugh, getting there is a challenge with work (for both of us) being extremely demanding, and then trying to think about upcoming meals, dealing with laundry, planning what to take with us, etc. (Switching gears is just as difficult/impossible as all that multi-tasking!)

24 hours from now I have a hunch I’ll be exhausted! (But so happy to have a break from the work-crap!)

Some Food For Thought

Summer 2012 – Summer 2013, roughly the same view:

(click to see it enlarged)

Well…It’s Not Quite Done

Unforeseen tedium snuffed John’s goal to complete the roof this weekend, so he’ll be hoofing it down after work again probably for the next two days. Hopefully no more than that! But, the waterside roof has a number of crazy spots that required a lot of customization. Plus, he needed to roof around the chimney stack for the stove/fireplace.

We were invited for dinner at the neighbors’ last evening and I got a few shots from their driveway and deck.

(Above: As typical, there are weenie dogs in the picture).

(We are happy that our house doesn’t block the neighbors’ view—we’d worried about that, but this [above] was taken from their deck. Not an issue.)

By the way, dinner was scrumptious! Our neighbor Mary cooked a beef pasta dish from Giada De Laurentiis (from Food Network) and it was to die for! Also? Mary’s husband, Dale, gave her THIS for her birthday!

Get a load of those gorgeous Swarovski kingfishers! If I was going to spend that kind of money, though (ha!), I’d have me THIS:

 

Anyway, I also captured a few more pictures today. It was foggy this morning.

(See the boys up there?)

Here (above) is a view from the top of the steps down to the entryway. Eventually we’ll have garage doors! We’ve been discussing/looking. Oh, and siding, too! Eventually! (We’ll focus on the interior insulation and sheetrock first, once the roof is done).

Sure is a whole lotta roof…

And then, on the drive home, the weather was strange. All day it tried to rain, but all we got were sprinkles (thankfully, for the roof work). On the drive, the clouds really darkened and looked very threatening, but the sun was also shining. I actually hung out the truck window and got these:

We never did get rained on, amazingly!

And one more, while I’m at it. Nate texted me a picture of his current ship, the USS Russell, that is now in dry dock. He’s been working long, grueling hours to help get it to this point so it can be overhauled. Quite dramatic!

Wow! The perspective is hard to grasp – that’s a Navy destroyer!

Roof! Roof! Roof!

 

(Click it! See it fill your screen!)

For the most part, the backside is el-done-o. (John’s still working on some trim work, but lookin’ good!) The focus now is the waterside, and it’s coming along. The aim is to have it as close to 99% complete by the end of this weekend so that the insulators can come in and do their thing this coming week.

John (and the boys) have been working on this damned thing for four weeks now. Four grueling, beastly weeks, with hardly a break. John did have to work-work last weekend so no roof-work happened then, but he’s been driving down every day and hitting it with the boys in the afternoons. Except yesterday (Friday). He needed a nap. And it made it possible for us and the critters to all come down together last night without me having to drive separately. (He looked so rested when he got up from yesterday’s nap! Bright blue eyes sparkling and very very tan. Yup, he really needed that nap).

There have been a lot of hot-hot days up on the roof, which is the “beastly” part of those four weeks. But it really could have been so much worse. While uber-warm, the temperatures never approached the 90s, which it frequently does for at least a few days this time of year, and that would have been ungodly. And, there was only one day in there that it rained enough to keep them off the roof (way too slick and dangerous up there when it’s wet), and that’s unusual around here, too. It’s been a very dry summer. Bouts of rainy days would have delayed this mammoth undertaking significantly. 

Here are a couple more shots I took this morning:

Above, you can see where they’re working on the waterside. And below are a couple of panoramics! (Love my iPhone!) (Click to enlarge to get the full effect!)

 

I’ll venture down later and see if I can get some pics of the waterside progress.

~~~~~

I’m currently reading “The Bone Season” by Samantha Shannon. This book has received a ton of hype because the author is only 21 years old. I believe it’s the publisher who is claiming that this eventual 7-volume series will be “the next Harry Potter” (same publisher as Harry Potter), which is unfortunate because it’s nothing like Harry Potter. It is more along the lines of “The Golden Compass” (“His Dark Materials”) series by Philip Pullman, as far as complexity. It’s not for everyone, but if you like gritty fantasy (like “The Golden Compass” or "The Hunger Games" or "The Passage"), then it will be riveting. And challenging! The world-building is quite complex, and the book includes important charts and a glossary, which actually makes it difficult for an e-reader. I recommend the hardback so it’s easy to refer to those important elements. I’m a little over half-way through it, and I’m completely absorbed. It’s written very well—some might take issue with the rather short-clipped prose, but I feel it’s totally in keeping with the main character’s personality (first person) and the environment she lives in. What an imagination this young author has!

I finished the BBC’s “Broadchurch” 8-episode first season, and it was excellent! What a well-done whodunit! If you’re like me and enjoy binge-watching, go to this link to stream all eight episodes online (for free!)

I'm going to attempt an experiment to see if I can embed my new ringtone for my phone – it's the theme song from "Game of Thrones," which I absolutely love and every time my phone rings, I have an earworm for hours afterward.

 

01 Game of Thrones - TV Show Theme S

~~~~~

Woohoo! It worked! Kind of an ordeal since I had to download a converter and then convert the MP4 to a MP3, then embed it through my blog host (since Live Writer doesn't support embedding audio!) Jeesh. But I did it! Note that the clip is short because it's a ringtone, but isn't that the most haunting and beautiful music? I would have loved playing this piece in band (on my bari sax!) Love them low notes. (And throbbing drums...)

Oh, and you're welcome for the earworm.

 

Random

It’s another week. It seems like every time I blink I’m buying yet another case of dog food. You know, because the previous case is getting down there or has run out. Time is a blur. For instance, I’ve already had my “new” car for eight months. I’ve driven just over 6,000 miles since I’ve had it, and when you divide that by 16 miles of my each-way commute that takes me an hour each way, it means that I’ve been sitting in that car for approximately 375 hours since the day after last Christmas. That’s a lot of wasted hours. Angry hours.

(Of course, in between there were a handful of trips to and from Harstine, but that’s just peanuts).

Anyway, I think I got that math right. I was never good with story problems.

John’s on Week #2 of driving to Harstine after work each day (leaving 2 hours early) to work on the roof. Yesterday he said, “We’re really close to being totally done with the road-side of the house, but we didn’t quite get there.” I’m hoping they did today—there were a lot of little details to wrap up that were difficult and time-consuming. That side of the house has been particularly challenging with so many valleys and tight spaces and weird convergences. Once they’re on the water-side, it should go a lot faster with fewer valleys and lots of large spaces to lay down the long roof panels. They’ll be able to see quick progress. The downside is that it’s also the sunny side and they’re working in the blistering heat of the afternoon. Direct sun. Brutal. It’s not supposed to cloud up this week until Friday, but when it does that, it rains. And you really can’t be up on a wet metal roof.

And then, his Blackberry no longer takes photos. (Who knows why?) So I’m no longer receiving photos from him. Of course. Because it’s been that kind of week. (And it’s only Tuesday night!)

Work? Don’t get me started.

Turned Out Pretty Nice

I fused together a piece of aqua glass with a piece of art glass (clear with white swirls) on top:

Then slumped it in my nifty curvy mold:

I also fused together the same art glass with a piece of purple, and I was disappointed! Sometimes when I combine that art glass with other glass, I get these “zaps” across the surface of the fused piece. There’s no rhyme or reason that I can determine – they fused for the exact same amount of time at the exact same temperatures. Who knows why? ‘Tis the nature of this craft.

The bottom left “blob” was from the lighting, but see those little specks of lines/dots across the surface? Damn! It doesn’t look purple here (it’s a dark purple!)

There it looks more purple! I’ll probably still slump it in the mold and see if doing that dissipates that zapping appearance. Grrr.

~~~~~

Update: Well…the zaps didn’t disappear like I hoped they would (but pretty much figured they wouldn’t since it’s been that kind of week). And it’s very bizarre how this thing looks in different light. Purple chameleon. Zapped.

Meh.

Ahhhhhh, Saturday! And I Did Some Glass!

It’s been ages. In fact, when I ventured into the “glass studio” today (AKA Nate’s old bedroom), it felt unfamiliar! John had gotten me a really nice Epson electronic label-maker for my birthday and I spent some time making labels for some of my storage containers for various glass supplies. Very cool! I still have more to do, but I made a good start. It’ll be so nice to see at a glance what’s in what! Starting to think in terms of organization for my “real” glass studio at Harstine. Things really need to be organized or else I flounder—and it doesn’t take long for everything to get out of control. I am *not* the queen of organization, so I have to really work at it.

I was in the mood to make something, but I wasn’t sure what. I decided to make some more of these in different colors and styles to place on my Artfire site:

I’ve got one in the kiln now on the first firing (to fuse) and then tomorrow I’ll slump it in this great mold that I really love. This is the first weekend at home in quite a while that I’ve had the time (plus gumption) to “play.” I have two to do – the one in the kiln is aqua transparent glass with an art glass on top. The other one will be purple!

~~~~~

John is working at his job at Da Airplane Company this weekend and actually coming home afterward to NAP. It’s definitely helped with his sweet demeanor to get some REST. He still has his “beard,” though. I have a hunch it’ll be short-lived. Friday was a bit of a bust for him roofing-wise, because the PUD finally came out and made the electrical connection to the transformer. Which means: TA DA! We now have power to the house! That’s quite a milestone when you think about it. (Remember that godawful trench that carried the conduit and other utilities?) John could even bring in some utility lighting to plug in and do interior stuff in the evenings, if he needed to. (Actually, the house is quite dim on cloudy days right now since it’s basically all closed in). His shop is especially dark since there are no windows in there, except for a small one in the door. So, dealing with the PUD, manually changing over the wiring to the new box and making sure there is power to BOTH the house and the trailer, and then having to backfill the trench that the boys had done a few weeks ago (from the power pole to the transformer) took a lot of time Friday. John figures there are probably 3 or 4 more days left before the roof is complete (based on him going down in the afternoon and working on it with the boys again next week).

He’s gonna keep those boys for a lot of the interior work that’s coming up – tiling, painting, flooring (aside from carpeting, which we’ll have carpet installers do—only in the bedrooms). There are a whole lot more elephants to eat after the roof is done, and John will be doing most of it! It’ll get especially nuts for him once the insulation and sheetrock guys are out of there.

Blows my mind that it’s already past mid-August. (As an aside, this has been the most amazing, sunny, mostly dry, warm-but-not-beastly summer that we’ve had since the dawning of time). However, I’m sure John would view it differently from up there on that hot metal roof… Thing is, the alternative would’ve been rain—no inbetween—and that would have been worse because of the danger, and it would have taken even longer to eat that elephant.

~~~~~

Yesterday at work was strange because Seattle’s Hempfest festival began, which is at the waterfront park directly across the street from our office. PLUS, the main access to the park is the pedestrian bridge that runs right alongside our office building, so it was a people-watching day! Tie-dye, dredlocks, tats, body piercings, huge ancient Army-issue backpacks, Pit Bulls on leashes, rainbow-color hair – you name it. Quite the parade!

Case in point:

It’s a hella big deal:

And now that pot is legal in Washington, I got a kick out of how the Seattle police handled the festival (they’ve always turned their eyes away from the pot-smoking, mostly because pot-smokers tend to be a laid-back crowd). But this year they handed out little bags of Doritos! With this sticker on them!

Snort!

It’s Thursday. Tomorrow’s Friday. YAY!

It’s been a surreal week. I don’t really know how else to describe it.

So…John’s been abiding by his plan. In a way, it kind of worries me. I mean, he is going 150 mph, up at 4 AM to head to his demanding job; then driving to Harstine at 11:30 AM to work on the roof with his young helpers until the light dims, arriving home between 9-10 PM. 75 miles exactly, each way. No nap, which he has been accustomed to daily for over 30 years. Then heading straight to bed. Leaving the ibuprofen bottle on the counter uncapped and the cupboard door hanging open. He hasn’t shaved since mid- last week. (He hasn’t completely explained what’s up with that). I had him pegged, though. Last night I said, “I’ll bet during your work-morning you are counting the hours/minutes until you can hop in your truck and drive down to Harstine. And that you actually look forward to it, despite the painful, physical labor.” Vigorous nod. “You’ve got that exactly right.”

There is something a little obsessive about all of this.

It continues to be a slog, partly because the weather hasn’t been cooperating very well. High humidity, drizzly rain, and therefore a slick roof (at least where the metal is – the tar paper part isn’t, but it’s becoming more and more scarce). He sent me these pics this evening:

 

He will look back at this and shudder/shake his head/feel a sense of accomplishment like no other/hate the roof/love the roof/know every. single. square. inch. detail. of. that. fucking. roof.

He’s looking forward to sending detail photos to the company that he bought the roofing material from, because they treated him quite condescendingly when he opted to NOT have them do the installation (which would have cost an additional $40,000). He knows that his workmanship is top-notch and that their workmanship for that money wouldn’t have come anywhere CLOSE to the workmanship that he and his boys have been doing. I think his goal is to “shame” them. (And yet, they probably won’t care. After all, slap-dash is the name of the game in business…)

I love how he treats these two 17-year-old boys. He has truly mentored them, and in turn, they have felt comfortable taking their new knowledge and confidence to higher levels. They are cutting the metal, bending the metal, installing the metal, right alongside John. They have listened to John’s lectures on safety, and when he says, “Slow down!” while they’re up on that roof, they listen. And they obviously respect him. They take breaks together and chat, and they even admire John’s iPod music taste. One of the boys said, “Wow, all my dad likes is the old-fashioned stuff.” John said, “Like what?” “Elton John.” (Snort!) John could be their grandfather.

He just gave them a raise, too. When you appreciate the work somebody does for you, let ‘em know they are “worth” while.

(Too bad society tends to not look at things that way).

~~~~~

Surreal week for me, in a way, too. I have a proposal due a week from tomorrow. The engineer project manager down in our Portland office hasn’t provided me with any information. Has not answered any of the questions for me to even begin the proposal.  The RFP came out two weeks ago and since then I’ve been asking every day for the information I need to go forward. Crickets.

Oh, except for the most condescending, rude email response that I’ve ever received from anybody, EVER:

“I don’t care what you do, Tonya, since you seem to think that you are the project manager.”

It was actually worse than that (worky details that would make your eyes glaze over), and what was bizarre was that he CC’d high level managers when he sent it. Like, he felt entitled to his disrespectful, over-the-top condescending attitude and “Looky here, good-ol’-boys, I ain’t takin’ no shit off some ADMIN marketing WOMAN.”

Word about this somehow got into our legal counsel’s hands – hmm… (no, not by me! Likely one of the CC’d managers…who do tend to RESPECT me).

Could be interesting.

And in other news, my forehead is flattening from all the banging on my desk having to deal with Chucklehead. MY GOD, WHY ARE THERE SO MANY IDIOTS IN HIGH-PAYING POSITIONS?

Roof Origami

Who knew that installing a metal roof required origami skills?

They don’t come cut and bent and folded like that! (Holy schmoly).

There was one more picture from yesterday I wanted to post. I took this from our neighbors’ driveway and you can clearly see the “weenie walk!” It will have two or three steps down to the ground at the end (with rails, of course!):

The reason that there is no sheathing on the corner (where you can see the wall studs) is because it’ll make it WAY easier for the sheetrockers to haul in the sheetrock from that side. (Who knew there was so much constant thinking ahead?) John’s quite irritated with the framers. There are a number of punchlist items from the inspector that they haven’t returned to take care of. No finish, no pay.

~~~~~

So here’s the plan. John went back to work today and chatted with his boss, and for this entire week John will leave work 2 hours early (which for him means 11:30 a.m.) and head directly down to Harstine to work on the roof until around 8:00 or so (when the light starts to dim). Then he’ll drive home and go to bed. Then rise at 4:00 a.m. (as usual) and go to work…and then head back down to Harstine at 11:30. And then again. And again. He has to work (at Boeing) this weekend, though, for his manager rotation.

My word. I’m exhausted just thinking about it. He’s accustomed to his afternoon naps, so he’ll be dragging this week. Big time.

His two 17-year-old helpers will be there with him, and that’s good. He gave up on the other 20-somethings. (“Pretty much a box of rocks.”) I met the 20-somethings’ parents this weekend who stopped by to see the progress, along with their three dachshunds (the so-called “experienced” roofer guy who showed up just one day and, um, really wasn’t experienced), plus his wife who filled my ears with TMI—and the “box of rocks” analogy was quite clear-cut from the gene pool…

“…and Grandma, dontcha know, after 12 kids she just decided NO MORE, she says ‘I hate sex anyway’…CHLOE! CANNON! QUIT PULLLING ON THE GODDAMNED LEASH OR I’LL CHOKE YOU UNTIL YOU DIE! …and then my son, Jason, who worked out here on the roof this week, gets this girl preggers when they’re both 16…GODDAMMIT, CLEO, YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE MY DOG, QUIT WHININ’ FOR THAT LOSER YOU LITTLE BITCH! …but I’m so excited because my daughter is expecting in October and I love babies and I’d have another in a heartbeat if I could…CANNON, QUIT HUMPIN’ THAT WIENER DOG! …and you know, my mother hated me, wanted to give me away after six kids with five different fathers…”

It took me a while to recover from that unexpected visit.

Speaking of which, we had another unexpected visit. An older man and his wife (she was dressed in head scarves and stood back toward the road) stopped by and it turned out they and their huge East Indian family were renting the place a couple of lots down from us for the weekend. I went out to greet them and the man pointed down toward the house and he said, “What is that?” I blinked and paused for a few seconds, trying to get my head wrapped around what he was asking. I said, “Well, it’s a house and we plan to retire there in a couple of years.” He said, “Oh! It’s a house! It looks so huge – I thought it was a lodge or a community center or something!” He’d seen it from the beach and wondered. It’s true that it looks really big. (And it is bigger than it probably should be, although 2,800 sf looks very sprawling when it’s spread across one floor. Plus the ceilings are high so it feels big inside, too). But yeah, it does look rather like a lodge. Or as John says, a tribal casino!

~~~~~

Eeep! I lied! I have a couple more photos. I actually made it down to the beach (it was beastly hot/muggy down there!) and took some pics. And Peanut posing.

 

Also? We’ve got GRAPES! They still have a ways to go before they’re ripe, but man-oh-man are there ever a lot of ‘em!

Da Roof!

I said to John, “By the time you’ve finished eating this elephant one bite at a time, you’ll be an expert.” Wow, what a huge, gnarly elephant it is! But the “bites” are starting to accumulate:

(Can you see the “roof rats” in the pic above? Click to embiggen).

Below is a panorama I took with my iPhone. I didn’t even know you could do that! It turned out pretty cool, I think:

This is John’s table he created out on the main deck so he can cut and bend the metal panels without having to stoop or be on his knees (anymore than he already has to when he’s up on the roof):

Here’s his table in action! (He was showing me how he bends the metal, which takes a lot more effort than the beer-can-gage metal we watched on YouTube).

While a few of the “sexy” areas are done (or close to it), there is so much left to do. It certainly is not just a matter of slapping on panels. So much cutting and bending and trimming and fitting and hauling up ladders and time-sucking tedium. But now that John and the boys have developed some tricks and processes and have learned a gazillion little/big details to streamline everything, John has to go back to work on Monday. There is at least another week’s work left to do, and the insulation-then-sheetrock can’t happen until the roof is done-o.

He’s going to check the pulse at work and see if he can take some time off this week to head back down and get ‘r done. He still has plenty of vacation time in the bucket. (And his boss knew that John would be off a lot this summer).

~~~~~

Update: Since I *just now* discovered the panorama feature on my iPhone, I’ve been experimenting with it. It’s really slick! This is what it looks like (right now) when you pull into our driveway here at Harstine. It won’t be too long now (within the next couple of months) that we’ll need to demolish the camping trailer and haul it out in pieces, along with the deck and the anti-white-trash screen) to make way for the real driveway. *Sob* We haven’t decided yet what we’ll do with the grape plant. It is absolutely loaded with grapes this year! It’s been a very happy summer for grapes!

Do be sure to click to enlarge this one!