Busy Busy

This year has flown by. For the first 3/4 of the year, I was on a project that relentlessly kicked my butt. It's the first time in my career that I've clocked 90 hour weeks. I'm sure you've noticed that blogging frequency took a nose-dive through the summer. Our social life has done the same: NO trips to the beach, NO visits to nudist venues (except for Turtle Lake, which was a working vacation), NO public lands freehiking or nude geocaching, NO trip to preview "Act Naturally" and meet some of the cast and crew, and NO nude parties.

Although the project ended and I'm on a much better one now, the work shifted to all those things I was neglecting. We contracted a neighbor to re-roof our house, which happened in August. While that was still going on, we broke ground to build a much-needed pole building ourselves. My family has been very generous in helping with that -- the only real progress happened on the weekends, most of which they were here for. Both the roof and the new pole building look very nice!

When the snow flies (any day now), I'm declaring ourselves as "settled in". There are no more critical projects that need to be done. (The roof was leaking -- I knew it would need attention the first year. And the attached garage is just big enough for two cars. We need way more than that in the garage.) Since the "needed" projects are out of the way, I can turn my attention to the projects I "want" to work on.

My biggest "want" was to get the hot tub working. We managed to squeeze in time during the summer to pour a cement pad for it, and lay patio blocks around it. I bought all the "guts" for it and have them assembled in the basement. However, there is no electricity run for it. So there is no reason to install the guts. I'm holding off on buying a good cover (~$300) until I know it works. We wrapped it up good with tarps and a wooden "roof" so it'll survive the winter.

I've been slowly working some other projects as well. I've been writing up a "Future Resort Redux", which spins in a completely different direction than the previous series. It's good stuff! I've also collected another year of Burning Man photos, which hopefully show a trend. (Three years now, so I should be able to derive some metrics from it.) Most recently, I initiated building my own PC-based arcade machine -- a project I've been wanting to do for years but didn't have the room for. Hopefully by Spring we'll have a classic-looking arcade cabinet to finish off a nice rec room. Maybe we'll host a party or two when the weather gets warm!