A long day of shopping

Yesterday Bec and I went into town to do some shopping for the ranch. We used the F550 that is normally used for hauling horses, because there was no registration for the normal shopping run vehicle. That was fine except that if you turn the heater on that vaporized coolant comes in the vents and suffocates you. So we drove off with the windows down and cold air blowing out of the vents trying to make sure that the windshield didn't fog up. This wouldn't be so bad except that the temperature was only 8 degrees outside. We had a ton of stops and ended up the day shopping in the grocery store hauling around 4 carts (buggies to you southerners) filled to the brim with groceries. That was the first time i've ever spent more than $600 at the grocery store. It was a long day, but I'm glad that Bec was there to keep me company.

Kris' Arts and Crafts Time

I feel a little silly sometimes, because I get paid to do arts and crafts. I get to make fun little projects and I feel like I should be showing the projects to my teacher or something. Adam, who I work with is building a door for the ranch house here at Lost Valley, told Rick, our mutual boss that I knew how to do stained glass.... I did a teeny little project under the supervision of my brother a couple years ago, and it turned out all right. Rick said to go ahead and buy what I needed to do the project. So a few dollars later, I have a complete setup to create stained glass windows with little to no experience!!! The project went great until i tried to hold the piece I made into the door to see how it looked. I dropped it and the project's quality rapidly went down hill. After an hour of patching, you can hardly see the cracked piece. It ended up being a good learning experience and it looks decent enough that we have the go ahead to do the main doors of the front lodge. I had fun with it, and was able to salvage my mistake.

two years running...

Another snow storm came in this weekend, and we haven't seen the ground in weeks. I don't ever remember a winter like this. To me colorado has always had plenty of snow, but this year it keeps coming and doesn't meet between storms. I don't mind too much though. It's been my job to plow the seven miles of dirt road leading to the ranch whenever a storm comes through, and I've really been enjoying it. One of the best parts about it is taking Bec with me. The last time I took her I told her we'd be back by 8am. I was planning on just taking a quick pass to clear the road. However, the wind had been blowing pretty hard all night. The road was pretty well covered in dense heavy snow. I got the truck stuck and took about 45 minutes to dig myself out. Anyway, I didn't get bec back to the ranch until about 10:30. When all was said and done, the road wasn't clear to drive until about 6:30 pm. It was a crazy day.

The snow this weekend wasn't so bad though. It just gave me a good excuse to work in the wood shop on my coffee table. If you know anything about it, you know I've been talking about it for about two years now. I'm using all traditional joinery and because I don't have lots of power tools, I am doing it the slow way, with chisels and handsaws. I have really enjoyed it though. after two years, its really starting to look like the finished product. I'm guessing I still have about 15-20 hours of work remaining. So....its getting close...when you consider its taken me over two years to get this far.