The Long Road

Well I’m trying to get a pic of anyone and everyone who has helped me on deck construction. Grant was down for the weekend a while ago. It was very awesome to see Grant after about two years. Lots of catching up.Of course, asking a house guest to help you build your deck is simply bad form (unless he is your brother in law), but giving him a cold beer and a guitar and getting him to serenade you while you stain boards is totally cool by me! Thanks Grant! Hope to see you again soon.

While we are on the topic of the deck, here is your update. I fastened some deck boards today. Didn’t quite get done as I ran out of screws (I was screwed? - too obvious). Anyway, it was damn hot work! (see post below). I’ll post a pic tomorrow when I get them finished.

While editing a course (Environmental Studies) today I came across this article The Seven-Plus Wonders of Sustainability. It made me smile. We take so many things for granted.

An interesting quote to think about from the article “You only have to spend millions marketing something if its worth is in doubt”.

Michelle

OK, the sun was shining on the thermometer, but still…!

Well, I’ve been getting grief from blog readers about the lack of progress reports. So, yes, there has been a forward move or two.

Jamie came down from PG to help. I dug some holes in anticipation of his arrival. We then promptly cut about 7 feet off the existing deck and poured concrete footings in the holes.

That’s all Jamie had time for, so I pressed on without his awesome help. I got the header put back on the existing deck portion, built and installed the front beam, boxed in the first section and hung the joists.

So seeing as I had this nice frame ready to go, I figured it was time to cover it with something! So I started staining boards. Next step will be installing them as this thing starts to take shape!

The CBC show “Sounds Like Canada” has been running a series recently called The Seven Wonders of Canada. Basically it is a quest for the country to decide what our seven wonders would be. Having not specified natural or man-made wonders, the program has received a mind blowing 18000 emails, over 50 hours of phone messages and even video submissions from Canadians nominating everything from Niagara Falls, to the best milkshake ever, to The Hudson’s Bay Company, to the world’s biggest easter egg or flyrod or hockeystick… to um, Roberto Luongo (though today we were told that Luongo has no chance of being shortlisted!). Anyway, the window for submissions is closed, but you can now vote on the shortlist of 50.

This has been an awesome program to listen to, both in reminding me of some of the true wonders that Canada has to offer, and introducing us to all kinds of things you’d never otherwise know about. It also strikes a patriotic chord too. Feels good.

Click here to see the 50 shortlisted wonders and vote for your top seven!

You can read, listen to or watch some of the submissions here.

Now proud Canadians, seeing as you can’t submit to the site anymore, please leave your ideas as comments to this post…

The Criteria:
1. Essential ‘Canadian-ness’ - historically significant, character filled, valued
2. Originality/uniqueness of the pitch and place
3. Spectacular physical site or amazing human creation
4. Ability to inspire
5. Range within the final seven - diversity of location, type of wonder

Let’s hear what you guys love about Canada and think is wondrous about our great country! I’ll post my thoughts soon.

One thing Mich and I have been planning for a while has been to revamp and expand the deck on the back of the house. Wheels are now in motion. I enjoyed Craig’s chronicles of his summer projects last year on The Engleson Files. So I plan to track our progress on this project in a similar way. Below is Stage One, beginning with the “before” pic.

Before As you can see, the deck area is rather tight!

So we rented this kick ass sod cutter. With it we removed sod from the footprint of the future deck as well as lots more sod to make way for garden spaces. This machine is super cool - it reminds me of some kind of a medieval torture device (though gas powered!)

Here’s what it looked like after cutting out the sod and pulling out the old gravel and landscape cloth that was completely grown through with crab grass. Go figure.

And then we had two trees to deal with. One we chopped down and pulled the stump out of the ground. The second was too beautiful to kill outright so we are attempting the transplant. And yes, I helped Mich pull after taking this shot!

It is tough to transplant a mature tree of this size, especially when it is flowering as it currently is. It may not live, but we’re gonna try our hardest to help it…

About the same time as the tree was moved, a load of gravel arrived. I took out a fence panel, but because of the tight alley access it could only be dumped partly into the yard. So it had to be moved before we could reinstall the fence.

So we laid down some fabric and some gravel and here is what we have so far…

Looks good! Next are 4 foot deep holes for the footings to be poured into.

I’ll update again when that is finished.

Well, I’ve been giving it A LOT of thought, and I think some of my old buddies from China have been getting a pretty hard time from me about the Vancouver Canucks. They have fought back, here and here and here, not to mention a few choice comments right here on our beloved Long Road including a call to shut us down. But Craig and Brownie and Doug and Adrian, I’ve been thinking that maybe, just maybe you guys are right. I think I am getting just a little tickle in my throat that might just be a touch of Canuck fever. In fact, I’m just gonna go right out and say it - you guys have shown me the way. Brownie, no longer do I want to be a “lost soul”. I’m on the bandwagon baby! Go Canucks Go! Oh, that feels good. Like a monkey off my back. I’m in baby, on board, for the long haul, Towel Power forever!

**Updated** Oh, oops, never mind.

Remember when young Ani Skywalker basically joined the dark side of the force cause he thought he could save his love by bringing her back from the dead? Well, I’ve finally found a good reason to join the dark side myself. Mich and I were at a movie a few months ago and a dude actually answered his cell phone during the show, and then yelled into it “Who is this!?” cause he couldn’t hear over the volume of the flick. As you can imagine, people freaked, though it didn’t get ugly.

This is apparently a new PSA to get people to stop being so frickin’ stupid!

… and join the socialists, labor movement, communists, catholics and even Americans (Loyalist Day). Seems like just about everyone uses May 1, or May itself to celebrate their deal. So, get all pagan and dance around a maypole today!

Happy May Day everyone!