Brrrrrrrr

We woke this morning to a foot of new snow and zero degree temperatures. Just the same, Jasper seems to think he is in heaven. This is his standard look after having tried to dig up snow balls or to play in the output of the snow blower. At the end of an outdoor session, I literally have to scrape the ice out of his fur.

Life is slow

Not a whole lot going on right now. Most of the ski resorts have opened, but the snow is pretty sad, so we haven't gone yet. This Monday night and Tuesday should bring our first big storm of the year.

This is just a pretty sunset as seen from our deck. We don't get the normal gorgeous sunsets because the sun just drops behind the mountains, long before it really sets. We do tend to get a bit of pretty light, but it only lasts about 5-10 minutes.



The framing continues. This view from up on the mountain behind us gives a better view of the shape of the house and the unfortunate gap in the middle, still waiting for trusses.

Go roof, go!

Now that we are back in Park City, I can get some pictures from different angles. This gives you a bit better view of the how the house is shaping up. The odd thing is the middle of the house, which is currently missing walls and a roof. We are waiting on some big decorative trusses that will support that section of roof. Until we get those, the goal is to get as much house under roof as possible, as fast as possible.

So far, it is looking like we hoped.



Here is what happens when the house isn't under roof. This was about 8" of snow. The next day the framers got to spend quite a bit of time shoveling everything out.

A little roof, a little snow

Progress, but we are clearly losing the race.

More days, more house

Upstairs looks floored in. Roof starts next week. Yeah!

The house

The house continues. Kind of hard to tell from here, but all the walls for the lower level are framed and the flooring for the main level is done. Now the walls are starting to go up. The next step is the roof structure.

Nuclear Fishin

Andy Overly put together another great fishing plan, but it almost came apart. We were heading to Cape Hatteras, planning to do some little fishing on Friday, then out for deep sea fishing on Saturday. As time to start came near, the weather forecast for Saturday started calling for rough seas, first 8-11 feet, then 9-12, and eventually 12-15 feet. They cancelled the trip. Andy got on the phone and found that we could craft together a trip for Friday, but half our crew couldn't get there. Still, I headed down Thursday afternoon to see what we could do.




This is Andy and Fredrick on the bridge over Oregon Inlet. We went out fishing Thursday night, hoping for Striper.



I was lucky enough to get to use the glow-in-the-dark lure. It was responsible for my catch of tasty fish.



On Friday, three of us ended up going out on a deep sea boat with two guys from Sanford and a guy from Canada. They were all very nice and we were INCREDIBLY lucky with the weather. The rain held off and we had 2-3 foot seas. This is Fredrick hauling in our fourth tuna of the day.



Joe caught two tuna before reeling in this nice dolphin. Most restaurants sell this as mahi-mahi.



My third and final tuna was my largest.



The final catch was 13 yellowfin tuna, one dolphin, and one more tiny dolphin that should probably have gotten tossed back in. Grand total: 442 pounds of fish and very nice weather. It started raining right about the time the boat docked.

A big thanks to Andy for putting the trip together and providing us with a gorgeous house to stay in!

The pet we keep outside

This appears to have been a big year for spiders in our area. If they make the mistake of being on one of our porches, I suck them up with the shop vac. This one was just too interesting (and huge). I left him out on the front porch to catch squirrels and crows.

Watching some football

Things have been pretty busy and I have been slack about putting things on the blog. Bad Steve!

This weekend we went to the NC State football game against Wake Forest. Wake had a 2 point lead with a minute to go. State had the ball and was driving down the field. We were about 10 yards outside of field goal range when a pass floated high and was intercepted. Quite the bummer. It was looking like the third week in a row for NC State to beat a top 25 team in the last quarter with a big comeback.

This is my wife Julie with two of our neighbors, Alex and Judy. It was a gorgeous day to be outside!

Snow already?

We got home from our vacation to Yellowstone on Sept 15th. It was raining a bit and cool. As evening came, this wall of clouds came rolling in, blocking out any hopes of seeing the mountains, which are only about a mile away.



We wake in the morning to this view. We had about 3 inches of snow to start with. During the day another inch or two fell.



Of course, this creates all sorts of interesting problems for construction. They had just put down the insulating bubble foil that goes under the radiant heat. Great! It insulates the snow from the ground and then traps the water as the snow melts. Timing is everything!



Sunday morning we awaken to a gorgeous view. Seems too much like winter though.



Skiing anyone?