A Wonderful Weekend

I was off this weekend, and weekends are my time to see my friends & family.  So it was time for some Quality Time with the Urchin.  Yeah, I know, I was just with her for a whole day – a whole day of moving during which moving occurred.   Fun in its own way but not quality fun,eh ?

So Friday afternoon & evening I got the routine housework done, you know the laundry, dishes et all.  Then I finished getting the 10 gal aquarium stand ready for the Urchin’s 10 gal. aquarium.  I’d already cleaned it, wire brushed all the loose paint & rust off & primed it with flat black rust inhibitor paint.  So I finished the painting with a 2nd coat of flat black paint and proceeded to cut the pine board I had into a shelf for it.  To do that I had to cut the boards to fit, which was easy & then rip one of them lengthwise, which was not.  Crosscut saws do not do the job of a rip saw anywhere as nicely as a true rip saw can.  But in the end the boards were cut & then painted flat black to match the frame.

It was more work than I thought it would be but it came out really nice so it was time well spent.

Saturday I headed to the Urchin’s with the stand, her mail & a Blu-Ray of Cutthroat Island as a present.  We wandered around Clifton, checked out several of the stores, read most of the Historic Village signs & generally had way more fun than the gray skies & damp chill would have forecast.  When it started to spit a bit of rain, we headed back to her place & watched Tangled, which is very funny, as well as Matrix, which is cool but a bit confusing.  The day ended with a steamer dinner at a crab house that was just plain awesome tasty.

Sunday afternoon was house & yard time.  I put the utility trailer back in the far side yard, no easy task given its weight, and cleaned up the winter debris in the front & side yards.  I cut the ropes & got the steel rings needed to pitch my camp fly in poor weather mode & set the fly up that way for cleaning.

I also cut down some spare 2x2 poles to 4 ft. lengths & painted them.  Once I drill & insert shortened gutter nails into one end of each pole I’ll have a short set of poles for the fly shown above.  This will allow me 3 pitching heights for either side for a total of 6 ways to setup the fly.  Whatever the weather, I can change the fly pitch to best deal with it.  I also cut the ropes so the center poles can be staked down on their own but I haven’t gotten the steel rings or wood rope adjusters made for these yet.  The center pole is oak wall rod, the stuff that’s used for wall mounted stair handrails, & the uprights are 2x3s.  The wall rod allows for a flat surface to flat surface bearing area where the ridge pole bears on the uprights.

All in all a very very satisfying 3 days.