Squamloonland

Well I’m glad I’ve at least found one use for this domain. I’m seven for seven on twelve of twelves for 2008.

12 of 12’s origins are of course attributable to one Chad Darnell. My main motivator for doing it, however, is my affiliation with the PodCacher community.

I must admit at the outset that, distracted and involved, I took many fewer photographs than usual on this day. Lucky for me, I did get more than twelve!

The SquamDogs’ morning constitutional… in the front yard, where I’ve been spending my days of late. (This 12 of 12 is going to be more like an episode of This Old House.)

Gracie-Lu’s smacking her lips, and Denny’s wondering why the heck I’m pausing on the way back in to get their breakfast.

Speaking of breakfast, I make a point of taking the time to have it on the porch all summer long. It being the weekend, I had the pleasure of P’s company rather than the laptop.

So this is the main workbench in my garage workshop.

And this is the bench on the other side of the room. Yup—that’s a wine cooler/water bottle chiller down there.

For the past few weeks I’ve been putting on these boots every day.

What’s the odd pillow you ask? It was a sort of party favor from my lungectomy 15 or so years ago. (I had a carcinoid tumor, not related to smoking, and Dr. Winterbauer at Virginia Mason Clinic in Seattle removed a third of my right lung. It was a great experience—I highly recommend it.)

This is where I’ve been spending my days. I decided that it would be fun to take over the project that K started for us (see last month’s 12 of 12), and added a few tiers. While I’ve become quite the handyman over the past decade, this is the first real structure I’ve built. Hopefully next month’s installment will include a finished product.

I spent a good long time today removing that rock from the ground to make room to move one of the footings I’d poured into the wrong spot.

So the plan is to replace the door and the light. This will be a railed platform with stairs down to the deck. Oh, I guess I have built a structure on my own before—the stairs in the second slide.

You wouldn’t know from looking at it that I painted that cedar siding two summers ago.

Here’s a view of the front of the house. The driveway (the luge) goes off the right center part of the picture.

I’ll be ripping down the trellis and the old stairs to the old deck (which ran along the house). Hopefully we can save the hummingbird vine and train it out onto a pergola.

So every 12th, when I’m using the facilities, I think about how such a routine part of the day is seldom documented, in 12 of 12s or anywhere. That’s the cool candle P gave me many years ago, along with my cryptic crossword book, my contact lens stuff, and the all-important end-of-the-workday glass of wine.

All three meals happened in the same spot today, though I forgot to snap a pic of lunch (tuna melts). P just pointed out to me that I took a picture of a green bean on my steak.

I’d thought earlier that it was a decorative scallion.

We have all kinds of wildlife in our back yard—bears, moose, foxes, ermines, fishers, coy dogs, deer, porcupines, skunks, raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks… and Gracie’s ever ready to let us know when any of them get close.

So, all in all, a day at home with my project. The only thing I really neglected to include was my couple of trips to the hardware store.

Sorry to disappoint. ;^)