Cup collection

November 9, 2012

Some things I semi-collect: Local and interesting cups/glasses:

Some local-history and regional-interest beers. Grain Belt is a local favorite, Hamm’s and Schmidt’s are good local-brewing-history related although the beers themselves may be a bit meh. Keweenaw Brewing has an excellent selection of historically-themed beer from Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula mining area, Alaskan Amber is brewed in Juneau, and Kronenbourg is a favorite among French catacomb-goers. The Cheese Cave glass showed up at a thrift shop, and I got a whole slew of the Captain Morgan glasses at a garage sale.

A few from Psycho Suzi’s (I liked the old one better), and elsewhere.

Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by saveitforparts

Fencing

October 30, 2012

I’ve taken up fencing!
No, not this kind:

This kind!

 

Oddly enough, the yard looks bigger somehow with the fence around it. Maybe the solid border defining the edge of the yard is somehow more “real” than when looking out over the street was? Now I just need nerf autoturrets on each corner to track passersby menacingly…

The cemetery across the street looks very seasonal as well:

Leave a Comment » | Projects | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by saveitforparts

Ceiling Boats

July 9, 2012

Got the kayaks up out of the way!

The garage now has as more cleats and pulleys than some sailboats, especially when the stupid green kayak is heavy enough to require double blocks on both ends.

1 Comment | Projects | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by saveitforparts

More house updates

May 7, 2012

A few new photos from the house:


Living room


Closeups of the living room display cases, with some of the junk I’ve collected over the years (beachcombed, dug up, garage sales, etc).


Custom cat architecture. For finicky darn cat who’s scared of the basement.


Less messy basement!


Way less messy garage with room to park, work on boat(s), etc!


My fire “ring” is more of a fire square.


Wobbler plays with Alaskan action figures… Hootchies (fishing lures).


2 Comments | Projects | Permalink
Posted by saveitforparts

More critters!

April 27, 2012

Even more old photos of critters from back in Alaska!

Megan posted about this on Facebook a while back, it’s a Bald Eagle that we found swimming in the ocean near the bay. We assumed it went after a fish a little too large to carry, and wasn’t able to lift off again. Our dad offered it a pole to grab, which it did, and then it started sliding towards him as he lifted the pole up! It ended up perched on the rail of the boat for a while as we went closer to shore, then it tried to fly, splashed back into the water, and was last seen doing the Eagle-stroke towards the beach.

Speaking of critters on the boat, here’s Mandy the cat, who grew up on board Dad’s fishing boat Imperial. She ended up with an un-cat-like acceptance of water, and would occasionally jump in and swim to shore. She survived over 20 years of being an outdoor cat in the woods, attempting to eat/fight pretty much every type of local wildlife (She was once dropped into the water while trying to cling to an angry seagull, and on another occasion Dad caught her trying to sneak up on an eagle). She’s in the lower left of the last picture, waiting for the humans to finish showing off and feed her some salmon noms.

Our neighbor Harvey once had a pet deer that would come inside and sleep by the fire. It even figured out how to open doors. This was a bit before my time, the photos are from my Dad.

 

Another one of Dad’s photos, spot the brown bear standing on a rock! (Hint, he’s over towards the right). The bear swam out to sea for some reason, maybe to look for food. This is at Cape Spencer lighthouse at the end of a small island chain, so he had already swum quite a way from the mainland: http://www.lighthousefriends.com/light.asp?ID=829

And here’s what happens when bears get into a cabin… these were the bear version of teenage delinquents, two juveniles who got kicked out early when their mother had another cub. Someone may have fed them garbage, teaching them that humans have tasty food. Then they learned how to break down doors and find more food in cabins. They spent a summer eating all the sugar, canned food, and beer they could find in local buildings (rumor has it they preferred Miller and wouldn’t touch Bud).

 

2 Comments | Animals, Funter Bay History | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by saveitforparts

New Garage Roof! (And random stuff)

April 13, 2012

The garage at my new house had a big rotten area in the front of the roof. It’s a flat roof, so the rot just got worse over time, with the roof settling in that area and forming a pond, letting even more water through. The pond was so big you could see it on satellite photos of the property 😛

So, here’s what I did about it:

Original roof appearance:

What the decking looked like under the tar (wet!)

What the joists looked like, note that one of them has crumbled completely into dust:

So after removing all the rotten wood I could find, the first step was new joists:

Then some new plywood:

Then some actual roofers who know how to do tar and gravel!

And finally I have my very own gravel patch! There might even be some agates up there…

In my spare (ha!) time, I’ve been working on setting up the house network, office, and server room. Priorities, you know 😛

When I got it, the server rack looked like surplus from a ’70s-themed porn website. Giggidy!

Server rack now;

Leave a Comment » | Projects | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by saveitforparts

Weaseling their way in.

March 29, 2012

Here’s the first part of what may be multiple posts on “Animals that got in the house”.

This is a pair of Least Weasels (Or Ermine in the winter when they turn white). They hung out around the house for a few weeks one spring/summer, and were quite fearless towards humans and pets (the dog tried to chase them, but the cat ignored them). They would come up to people and take food from your hand, and occasionally got inside the house despite our attempts to keep them out (they fit through tiny holes and crevices. One night we were eating dinner and heard two thumps, the weasels had squeezed through a crack above a shelf and fallen out on the floor). Eventually they must have moved on to hassle someone else, but we occasionally got their relatives showing up in the entry mudroom sniffing after dogfood or bones.

  

      

Another weasel in his winter Ermine coat trying to cart off one of the dog’s bones larger than himself!

(Link goes to my Flickr page)

Leave a Comment » | Animals | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by saveitforparts

Scanning the Photo Albums

March 28, 2012

Over Winter break I went through a bunch of old photo albums at my parents’ house and copied some of the interesting ones. I’ll probably be posting them off and on as I organize them into themes (current possible themes include “Animals that got inside the house”, “Homemade Boats”, and “Things you don’t normally see swimming”).

Here are a few to start off. These are from my childhood, like late 80s and early-mid 90s.

The house at Funter Bay on a snowy day. Normally winter was just wet, and snow didn’t tend to last very long.

Refuelling the property via landing craft. This is also how people got things like vehicles and large generators delivered.

The mail box at Funter Bay. Mail came once a week via seaplane when I was growing up.

Early efforts at boat building. I think the foam block on top was the lifeboat… Megan wisely went with the inflatable torpedo thing.

A small sailboat that our Dad made from an old rowboat. I seem to remember it worked pretty well downwind.

School day at the kitchen table.

Southeast Alaska: Sometimes your front yard floats away.

1 Comment | Funter Bay History | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by saveitforparts

Just got the police report back…

March 7, 2012

Ha, no wonder they didn’t look too hard… this is straight from the Minneapolis PD’s description of my car after it was recovered, not anything that I told them 😛

(It still mostly runs by the way, and the next person to try and steal it will get a “surprise” 🙂 )

Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by saveitforparts

I bought a little box.

March 1, 2012

I just bought this little 1950s house in St. Paul. It’s on a huge triple lot and was apparently built of cement all the way up. The original builders started with the basement only, and lived there until the city made them put a ground floor on it. Supposedly this type of house is known for being fairly bomb-proof: “1950’s – a solid concrete “Atom bomb proof” flat roof Hialeah home”

Here’s a quick shot of the kitchen:

The garage is huge, about as big as the ground floor of the house. Depending on how you park, it’s about a 4+ car with an extra storage room and lots of workbenches. It used to be insulated and heated, but the stove is gone and the roof is rotten, so that will be the first project:

Eventually the garage will probably look something like this:

The neighborhood seems pretty quiet:

Leave a Comment » | Projects | Permalink
Posted by saveitforparts

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »