218

I've been floating just above 219 for the past two weeks, and this morning I dropped down from yesterday's 220 and blew past 219 to 217.8.

It could be that my continued regimen has broken me past my plateau, or maybe it was my second date last night with Shelley. There will be a third date, and she may even lure me onto plane sometime in the almost foreseeable future...think B.A. Baracus from the A-Team.

Last night's date was a walk around Lake Harriett. I timed it so that we could be on the east side of the lake just as the sun was setting. We finished up at Sebastian Joe's for a scoop of ice cream; she had Ginger, and I had Banama. Did I forget anything?

Shelley's birthday is this Saturday. I'd like to plan something for that, so I don't expect that  I will be going to Tess & Ian's this weekend.

Porch... Back in Time

I never posted pictures of the porch construction in process...

These are a couple weeks old already.  The guys finished the project mom's birthday weekend!

We are already enjoying the space, although we haven't screened it in yet.

The guys put the siding back up and I have started to do the framing but have more to do there.  We are going to put pine tongue and groove up on the ceilings.

For nostalgia purposes, here are a few pictures of what it all looked like before (to refresh your memories!):

http://www.visualtour.com/applets/flashviewer2/viewer.asp?t=2458880&sk=50

The Work Farm

With fall fast approaching, we continue to work at the cabin and have made more progress!  We have no more Leinie Red buildings.  We have worked the last few weeks on cleaning, scraping, repairing (some), prepping and painting the shed and the sauna and finally finished them up.  Now everything matches.  I also did some work under the cabin and Dave did a ton (more) of brush clearing.  We have also burned almost all of the rotten wood that was left behind by the last owners (and perhaps the owners before that!).

These look better from this distance than up really close!  I do want to do some Googling to see if we can try to fire up the sauna one of these cooler fall days.  What you may not notice here is that we removed the old wood well house/shack that was in front of the sauna and next to the shed.  We used some of that wood to make repairs on the other two buildings. 

Yes, these two pictures are basically the same.  You can see a bit of the porch here and get a sense for what the place looks like from the water.  We took down the Leinie's sign.  We have probably thrown off many a boater's navigational habits now.  We are still negotiating a location for the sign.  It is in remarkably good shape, considering!  You cannot see it very well here, but we also repurposed the coppola from the roof as a little mini-me house for the well!  Next year we will do a little landscaping around it.  Dave has planted and coaxed grass over most of what was dug up to put the well in.  It is coming along.  The water is low right now.  You can see the sandy beach.

We do not have a lot of projects that we feel we must do yet this fall.  The big one is that we'd like to get the porch screened in and stain the new deck.  We will see how that goes.  We also have some work to do under the cabin to insulate/winterize the plumbing.  And, of course, we will have to figure out what to do with the pontoon and the dock over the winter.  That isn't a big deal. 

Next year we'll probably put a garage up on the upper yard.  It is all coming together!

We get a week off Labor Day weekend.  We are heading to San Francisco to see Mere and relax!  I have business at Visa on Thursday and am really looking forward to seeing Mere's office while I am there!  Dave is flying out on Thursday night and we will hang out, head down to Big Sur with Mere and Tad, and I am going to find a way to treat Dave to a really nice meal somewhere along the way!

Kansas City is next...  Have fun all of you heading down this weekend!  We hope to go down there in late September or October!

Hot Times at Buffalo Wild Wings

I had a date last night with a pretty, smart, quirky, funny woman at Buffalo Wild Wings. We had chicken wings with the Hot sauce, and she was hoping to see my head sweat.

We started out with the electronic trivia, but we were there for the MC'd trivia (much like what Cosgrove does), which started at 10pm. I hope nobody is offended, but we called ourselves Schnuffy Love. We were talking about our Brits trivia team earlier, and when the MC asked for a team name we spaced out and could only think of Schnuffy Love. And in the finest tradition of Schnuffy Love, we were doing well until we bombed in the Music Round.

It was a fun date, and I hope to see Shelley again soon.

I will see the lot of you in Slayton on Thursday. I'm driving down early Thursday morning. I'll probably drive down in jeans and change into my suit at the church...I assume there will be someplace where I can change, even if it is the restroom.

220

Finally! It's taken me two weeks to lose just one pound. During that two weeks I've been bouncing between 221 and 224, despite a significant uptick in my exercise.

• I am parking even further from my building at work. Round trip is now about 15 mins at over 3.5 mph.
• Caribou has a shop in the building right next to my new parking ramp. Round trip is almost 15 mins. I make the trip at least twice.
• I take the stairs whenever I can, with the exception of walking all the way up to the 14th floor where I work. Even though I can do it without stopping for a breath, I'm simply sweating too much for the office.
• Weekend walking time and distance has almost doubled to a total of 4+ miles, either in a single walk or spread out over both days.

You'd think that would have scored me a bigger payday than one lousy pound, though the clothes have been looser during the past two weeks. I even had to resurrect an old belt  that I abandoned a year ago because I grew beyond the last hole...and my new belt is now too large for me.

Caribou has a new breakfast menu as of this morning. One notable addition, and which I had this morning, is a sausage, egg, & cheese biscuit. It's the real deal...the barista even made a point of telling me doesn't skimp on the calories, unlike all of their other breakfast items with their egg whites, chicken sausage, and turkey bacon.

I  don't have a calorie count on the new sausage, egg, & cheese biscuit, but it is probably around 525 calories, which puts it on par with the Burger King equivalent. It tastes about the same as Burger King's, too.

What do people think of the Paul Ryan pick?

I'm not sure myself.  Needless to say, this election just got a lot more interesting/polarizing.

A New Roof Over Our Heads!

We just learned that my contractor is starting our roofing project today!  He will be building a roof over the old deck.  To refresh your memories, here is my cad drawing of the deal (Visio, actually).  The shaded area below is the new deck that we built a couple weeks ago.  The screened in portion is the old deck.  We have replaced rotten floor boards and taken the railing down in preparation for the new roof.  For Chad and Tara, the floorplan here is pretty close, actually.  There is a narrow stairway that leads up from the door to a loft area above.  In the loft area is another bedroom and a large sitting area that overlooks the lower level. 

The screened in porch will be about 10'x17' and the new deck is about the same size (10'x16.5').  The entry porch area to the left is about 5' wide.

The builder was going to start today (I assume this is still true!), and be done by Friday.  Dave and I are heading up on Thursday night or Friday and Dave's mom is coming down on Friday afternoon to meet us.  On Saturday morning Ellie (Dave's mom) and I will drive to Portage, WI, for the newest Ostrowski's baby shower (Dave's nephew Jake's first born-to-be).  I am not sure what Dave will do at the cabin but I am sure he will miss us!  Maybe he will get the porch screened in?!  Ha!

August... Summer waning

We rode our bikes up to the cabin and back this weekend.  The trip was 90 miles up (on Friday) but only 84 miles back today (Sunday).  It was a very manageable trip (about 7 hours, with a couple breaks).  In between the rides we fished, painted the outhouse, re-stained the deck chairs, mowed the lawn, cleared brush and had a roaring bonfire.  A very nice weekend...

Dave doesn't look that happy here, but he is.

That is an 18" Walleye!  I was skunked this weekend.  There's a first time for everything.  But it was sad!  The walleye was good eating though!  Thank you Dave!  (I did cook it up though!)

I realize that you all probably never focused on the biffy, but it was red before.  Here is the new and improved biffy!  I still need to replace the roof, but it is now matching the "big house!"

Here you can see my fine walkway too!  That was a project from a prior weekend.

We hope to have our new roof and the new roof over the old deck built next weekend.  We built the new deck the weekend before last and added the steps last weekend.  It is all starting to come along.  I doubt it will ever be done!  That is ok with me!

We had a beautiful sunset last night.  We also had a roaring (read, "almost dangerous") bonfire last night.  Very nice!  It was a cooler weekend but perfect for working!

We watched a storm come in.  We need the rain but it missed us last night.

We really look forward to having Chad and the gang up soon!  And every/anyone else!

221

I was 221 this morning. OK, it was 221.2 but I was eager to report something with 221 in it.

Where in the world is Tess today, or more importantly, for Happy Hour?

I've got a hot date tomorrow, and maybe a different hot date on Sunday. I don't know how hot they really are, but any date will be hotter than anything I've had in a year and a half.