This tree stood in the background while I exploited a moment of non-rain to begin trying to diagnose our boat’s engine’s problem. Something is causing it not to idle. I took out and inspected the spark plugs. Turns out Art doesn’t have a spare set – so I’ll shop for them tomorrow.
[daily log: walking, 5km; dogwalking, 4km; c103059072084s]
After a very long winter season, we resumed fishing today. As usual, Arthur gave me basically zero notice of his expectation. His approach has always been “military style”: never announce plans in advance, better to catch those around you unawares with whatever project you have in mind. His idea of advance notice is to say something at bedtime the night before a proposed early departure. Still, I’d more or less expected it – it was bound to happen sooner or later. He has a hard time conceptualizing the idea of “preparing” for going fishing – in his mind, the boat is always ready and nothing could possibly go wrong, it’s just a matter of walking down to it, staring the engines, and pulling away from the dock.
That said, really, it wasn’t much of a fishing trip. It was more of a “shakedown” cruise to see where we stood with boat after such a long period of non-use.
On the positive side: it still floats.
On the negative side, we seem to have some increasingly serious engine issues – the stuttering problem we’ve seen on and off in previous years (and which has never been diagnosed) did NOT return, but we did have issues with the engine not staying running on idle – which is very problematic, because it must be in idle to shift it into gear – and we got the “overheating” alarm several times, essentially randomly. I’m not sure what’s going on, but it may need a visit to the mechanic for service. The problem, of course, with that, is that it’s a quite involved process to get the boat to the mechanic. We may pull it out of the water and try flushing the engine’s cooling, and I might research online on how to adjust the idle on these types of engines (if possible – I think they’re without carburetors, using fuel injection instead).
Another negative – one of the downriggers wasn’t working. An electrical problem, in the source cable – not in the downrigger itself, as it worked fine when plugged in to the other downrigger’s socket. So I’ll have to try to solve this electrical problem. I’ve messed with this issue before (last year? Or was it the year before that?).
We departed the dock at around 8:30. It was overcast but flat. We went to Caldera, a spot which I associate with luck with catching coho early in the season. We got a tiny black bass and tiny rockfish with our one working downrigger, which was reassuring – we know the hooks are working, right? But no coho.
The wind picked up shortly after we started trolling. The forecast was that a big storm with 4- or 5-foot swells on Bucarelli was coming in by this evening, so we decided we’d done enough testing of our systems, and got home again by noon. Arthur was cold. He suffers a lot from feeling cold, these days – it might be one reason why he has much less patience for fishing up here than he used to.
Here’s the boat before launch, anticipating its upcoming short voyage.
ㅁ Yesterday, I made my first window for my many-angled treehouse. Of course it is imperfect. But I put in some glass, applied some putty quite messily, and looked out at blue sea.
– a nonnet.
This tree observed the installation of a table saw in the treehouse.
I borrowed Arthur’s table saw. I told him that I would rather have it in the treehouse, close to my working area. But in fact, that’s not quite accurate. I actually put the table saw in the treehouse because when I use the table saw in Arthur’s shop, he hovers and tries to help, but his hovering is unhelpful and stresses me out – he wants to tell me I’m doing things wrong, he’s always got very particular ways things should be done. By putting the table saw in the treehouse, he’s unlikely to make the long, arduous journey over there just to watch me “doing it wrong.”
[daily log: walking, 6.5km; c115066077084s]
I guess this business of making the treehouse into my “outdoor bedroom” is a kind of instantiation of the “nesting instinct,” right? But given it’s up in a tree, it’s maybe a bit more literal than your average human “nesting” behavior.
I took some pictures of the interior of my treehouse, now borderline habitable.
Here is a tatami mat I’ve owned for several decades but haven’t much used. I put it down on the rough plywood floor to be my “bed” – I’m always a floor-sleeper (Korean/Japanese style), so that’s fine with me. You can see the complex pieces of plastic I’ve put over the window holes – this is temporary until I make actual windows, which is really my next major project, but it’s going to be a slow process I think.
Here’s my screen door on the east side – facing the high-tide line and Arthur’s dock. You can see I put a little railing now at the edge of the balcony. There are two smaller trees poking up through the floor of the balcony, hidden to the left behind the wall.
Here’s the screen door on the west side, where the stairs are.
Here’s my bed after I’ve made it up for sleeping in, and I found some old throw-rugs to put down.
Just now we’re having a very rare Southeast Alaskan thunderstorm. There was a big boom.
July 4th, 2013 was the day I underwent a 9-hour surgery to remove the tumor at the root of my tongue and the lymphs on the left side of my neck. It seems an odd day for a cancer surgery to Americans, but bear in mind I lived in South Korea. It was not a holiday – just a regular day. A Thursday.
I remained in the hospital for the rest of July. And in late August and through September, I underwent radiation (x-ray tomography) to further ensure I was cancer-free, but I like to celebrate July 4th as my cancerversary.
Last night I slept in my treehouse. That was the very first time I’ve done that. I mostly have waited because I have wanted to try for some modicum of bug-freeness. With my two custom-made (somewhat slapdash) screen doors installed, and my third door opening simply blocked off with plywood, I felt that I could hope that at least some portion of the bug inhabited spaces outside would leave me alone. I think some bugs still got in, but not any worse than sleeping in the attic, I don’t think.
I slept fine. The birds seem louder out there. Notably, the traffic on the road has a different “sound” than sitting in the attic with the window open, so the first few times a vehicle went by, I was disoriented as to where they were driving – it sounded like they were coming down the driveway. My position relative to the various nearby steep slopes is somewhat different, and so I guess echos and such things are arranged differently.
I could hear the sea sloshing, and around midnight, there was some wind that was rang my wind-chimes and woke me briefly.
This tree was nearby as a dog smelled a boat and gazed at a distant waterfowl.
I made a proof-of-concept door for my treehouse. Now I need to buy some hinges.
[daily log: walking, 5.5km; dogwalking, 3km; c114072060084s]
This tree saw a cloud grabbing a mountain.
My garden made some small carrots.
[daily log: walking, 7km; dogwalking, 3km; c104064058084s]
This tree did not offer any assistance while I unloaded 160 concrete paving blocks from the trailer.
Anyway, it was good exercise. The blocks are destined to add on to the “patio” I built a few years ago – a path along the south side of the lower part of Arthur’s house. This is the first time where I happened to be at the hardware store at a time when they had these concrete pavers in stock – generally they are “out”.
I had a rather distressing adventure on the way back from the hardware store. I had bought some clear plastic PVC panels to use as roofing/siding on a putative new storage shed I hope to build this summer – this would be to replace the destroyed “storage tent” (AKA “studio”) from last winter. Here is what they look like:
I had put some of the concrete bricks on the panels in the trailer, thinking that would anchor them well enough, but a gust of wind blew about 10 of them out of the trailer as I drove home. It took me a few minutes to realize what had happened, and a few more minutes to get turned around (driving with the trailer, after all). And after I’d turned around, this truck goes zooming by with what very much appeared to be the lost panels panels sticking out of the back of the truck. “Hey!” I called, jumping and waving. But the truck didn’t stop. I went back to where they’d blown out, just to check. No lost PVC panels in sight. I guess that truck had stopped and picked them up.
And no one waiting anywhere along the way with my lost panels. I was feeling a bit disconsolate. I put out to a few people I know that I’d lost the panels (Penny, Jan), and posted a “Lost” notice on facebook (which entailed me logging on to facebook, which always feels like I’m breaking with some strongly held moral stand, though really it’s not).
Finally, around 6 PM, I got a call from a neighbor-down-the-road, who put me in touch with another Port Saint Nick denizen over on the north side, who turned out to have my panels. So tomorrow I’ll rendezvous with that person to get my panels, hopefully. My faith in humanity is restored.
[UPDATE 2022-06-27 for the curious: Yes, I got them back the next morning. I will use them to build a storage shed which has the potential to become an additional greenhouse, i.e. because it has the clear panels for the roof and siding.]
[daily log: walking, 7km; dogwalking, 3km; c110058061084s]
This tree is more of an ambitious shrub: it’s a rhododendron bush that arrived in the mail yesterday. I planted it in a planter bucket in the greenhouse, for now. I’d like to have a rhododendron on my lot – I know it’s possible, since many other people have lots of rhododendrons planted. We shall see. I’m batting less than 500 on trees and shrubs in general.
[daily log: walking, 7km; retailing, 8.5hr; c096064061084s]
This tree is living on the edge.
My garden yielded a small carrot. It tasted pretty good though.
[daily log: walking, 2km; c107065058084s]
This tree had been presumed dead – for the last 6 months. It arrived from the live tree order service I use with only one leaf, which it promptly lost. So I left it in its bucket with its equally dead peers, lined up in a “failed tree” graveyard on the western side of the greenhouse. And this morning, I noticed this dead tree had put out two leaves. Interesting!
[daily log: walking, 5km; retailing, 7hr; c106058062085s]
This tree was blocking a treehouse’s view.
[daily log: walking, 4km; dogwalking 3km; c100060062084s]
This tree saw the framing-in of the west wall of the treehouse.
Now… I still need some more 3/8″ plywood for covering the framed-in walls, and I then need to engineer some doors – the door-openings are of course non-standard sizes (and likely not even square), so the doors will have to be custom-made. This will push my wood-working skills past any previous benchmark, if it proves successful.
[daily log: walking, 6.5km; dogwalking, 3km; c113068075084s]
I voted today: a vote-by-mail jungle primary, for the at-large Congressional seat vacated by the death of Don Young, Alaska’s Representative since the Early Paleolithic. There are forty-eight candidates. But the choices are best summarized by the names at the top of the two columns on the ballot.
Apparently Santa Claus is a real guy’s legal name – he lives in North Pole (a suburb of Fairbanks) and serves on the city council there.
This tree saw the final installation and activation of electricity for lot 73.
I reparked and plugged in the RV, and turned on a little heater inside it, and watched the meter record my first 2 watts.
[daily log: walking, 7.5km; dogwalking, 3km; c109066073084s]
This tree is growing next to a big ol’ rock.
The store is beginning its move into the new location (across the shopping plaza, about 40 meters). I spent a lot of time carrying very heavy and awkward boxes of our stock of spare picture glass. I became tired.
[daily log: walking, 8km; retailing, 6hr; c117064061084s]
This tree (there beyond the doorway, I guess) was there as I finished framing-in the east wall of my tree house. There was a severe dearth of right angles involved.
[daily log: walking, 4km; dogwalking, 3km; c107061069085s]
This tree (these three trees) is (are) dead – they are three exotic trees I tried to grow, but I was unwise and let them experience a hard frost last month.
I have other exotic trees that are less dead, including a coast redwood, a dawn redwood, an oak, a flowering cherry, and two douglas fir.
[daily log: walking, 3km; dogwalking, 3km; c108059060084s]
This tree had a notch cut in it 10 days ago, but only today did I complete my project to end its life.
I cut some of it into rounds for future burning.
I also went and planted some leeks in my greenhouse garden. Last time I planted leeks they didn’t do that well, but I had some seeds so I decided to try. So far the only thing growing well this year is some carrots.
[daily log: walking, 8km; dogwalking, 4km; c115057066084s]
ㅁ The garden lay, ungrowing (damp, brown earth); it was a dearth of sprouting and a surfeit of waiting.
– an englyn penfyr.
This tree (which sticks up through the floor of my treehouse) was there when I installed a new worktable in my treehouse, which I made with some scrap lumber and a used pallet which I acquired from my place of employment.
[daily log: walking, 7.5km; dogwalking, 3.5km]
ㅁ I had bought a maple tree seedling. It arrived in the mail last year. I got it a pot with dirt. Last fall it seemed okay. But winter was hard. It is sproutless: no new leaves, no green, dead.
– a nonnet.
Here is a miscellany of my recent work at the matting and framing shop, without much commentary. Included is a work of my own, a bit of throwaway art that I had crafted in a spare moment and given to my coworker Jan, and she insisted that I frame it.
This picture includes a huge project of 32 separate posters, mounted on mat board but not framed or matted. It took me 4 working days to complete this.
This job earned me a $20 cash tip from a pleased customer.
This was an ancient and damaged jigsaw puzzle bound on the back with duct tape. I tried to make it look nice.
From the above, one of these pictures for the City of Craig is more notable: the city celebrates its 100th birthday this year.
This tree glowered back at the clouds.
I did work in my greenhouse today. I rearranged a lot of dirt, removed a lot of winter-killed plant matter, and planted small beds of lettuce, radishes and green onions. The sun came out briefly, and since it’s now making it over the ridge to the south, the greenhouse felt its warmth and warmed up just a little bit.
[daily log: walking, 2km]
This tree is a palm tree – in seed form. It’s a cold-resistant and shade-resistant variety of palm from China, and they have survived in England and Vancouver Island, so it has a chance of surviving here. So I’m going to try to germinate it and plant it. Because Rockpit needs a palm tree.
[daily log: walking, 3km; dogwalking, 3km]
This tree was along a long and winding road.
I left the Gift Shop early, today, because we had an appointment with an electrician out here at the house.
This was perhaps (hopefully) the concluding chapter in our saga of the weird brown outs. After looking over our system, and trying some things out, and despite our being able to reproduce the described problem, the electrician decided that we had a corroded main breaker (in the box on the utility pole). I found this plausible, as when he flipped the breaker switch one time, it made ominous buzzing noises, and he said he saw it arcing. Which was kind of scary – the electrician jumped back in alarm at that.
So he installed a new breaker. We’re running the heat pump, no problem, the rest of the afternoon and evening. Meanwhile I set out with the chainsaw to replenish our much-reduced firewood supply – since we’ve been heating the house more with the wood stove these past weeks (due to the heat pump not running).
Here is a picture of the old, corroded main breaker that the electrician removed.
[daily log: walking, 3km; retailing, 3hr; chainsawing, 1hr]
Living on the south side of the inlet means we live on the north side of a mountain. And in the winter, at this latitude, that means direct sunlight doesn’t reach us for about 3 1/2 months each year, as the sun is too low in the south to reach over the top of the mountain – we are in its shadow all day.
So I have always meant to try to record the days when the sun reaches over the mountain for the first time, in spring (and likewise, when it disappears in the fall). The problem is that we also live in a very, very overcast part of the world. So we never know quite what day it is. But it’s close to today: today, we had quite chilly but clear weather, for a change of pace.
So the sun peeked between two trees on the mountain’s ridge, and struck through my south-facing window next to my desk. For about 5 minutes.
“Oh,” I said to myself. “A sunbeam. What’s this?” I took a picture.
Meanwhile, we are still waiting to hear back from the electricians about having them come visit to diagnose our weird electrical problem (I think I blogged this before, but if not, the TLDR is: we experience “brown outs” when we pull high levels of current, e.g. the heating system).
I checked in with them this morning, but they are quite busy, as is to be expected, being the only licensed electrical contractors based on the island, as far as I’ve been able to figure out. “Maybe later this week,” the woman reassured me, quite pleasant but clearly clueless as to what their actual schedule might be. Island Time.
I last posted one of these “Frame shop journal” entries about 3 months ago.
Certainly it’s not the case that I haven’t been making frames. Perhaps I got so busy that I simply stopped consistently recording my work. The month of December probably saw me assembling on the order of 50-75 frames – I don’t know the exact number. This was the Christmas rush, combined with the community panic over the possibility that the Gift Shop (and therefore the framing and matting shop it includes) would be shutting down permanently.
But then with January 1st rolling around, the Gift Shop was rescued by new owners, Chad and Kristin. They are slowly implementing lots of changes to the business, but fully intend to retain the matting and framing aspect, and thus, for now, I continue with job security in my relatively low-stress, very part-time position.
As I said, I’ve stopped recording every single frame I’ve done. But setting aside the Christmas insanity, here are a bunch of shots of recent work, from January and the first half of February. In no particular order and with minimal commentary.
This last framing is much more significant to me personally than any other I’ve done. Can anyone guess why?
Maybe if I start posting more regularly, I’ll manage to include more examples of my work.
I finished my fraught disassembly of my storage tent today. The morning was actually slightly sunny and nice, but by 1 PM it was quite windy and starting to rain.
I got the storage tent canvas parts spread out and weighted by rocks, and draped a simple 20′ x 40′ tarp over the “stuff” that had been inside the storage tent. This includes firewood, recyclables (because recycling isn’t currently done on the island, but I daydream it might one day be done again, as it used to be), some construction materials (boards and plywood and plastic pipe), some unused collapsed boxes and other various containers.
With the wind whipping into a frenzy, I threw a bunch of rocks and stuff on top of the tarp and hoped for the best.
The storage tent has consumed a lot of my labor over the past 3 years. I think it will be retired, now – too many of its structural pieces are bent or broken by the giant load of snow in December.
I continue the dogwalking habit. She has good days and bad days in terms of behavior. This morning was a very bad day – somewhat stressful. I generally let her off her leash for a while, when near our house. Mostly she runs around in circles and explores but always within earshot. This morning, though, she went chasing some waterfowl down the beach and completely disappeared.
I wandered and called her name for 30 minutes, then went back to our house, reported the situation to Arthur, called Mike and Penny to let them know their dog had disappeared, and went off along the road calling the dog’s name and hoping she’d hear me and come to me.
Meanwhile, she showed up at our house right after I’d left again – so Arthur, knowing the dog was “lost,” let her in. But instead of keeping her at our house until I came back, he decided to deliver the dog to Mike and Penny’s. So off they went, though I think honestly the dog would have found her way home without Art’s escort. Of course Art didn’t think to contact me that he’d found the dog. So I’m walking along the beach and the road eastbound, calling for the dog and stressing out. Art is walking west, with the dog, without a care in the world, and he and the dog arrive at Mike and Penny’s and Mike gets the dog back on the leash.
I guess I would have preferred to know what was going on, as I spent another 30 minutes walking up and down the road, calling the dog’s name. But eventually Penny came driving along and found me, to let me know the dog was found.
Here is a picture of the dogless beach.
Meanwhile, I have been watching these videos about a guy building an open-source dog robot. He provides an immense amount of detail. It’s all very interesting. In the specific video below, the 7th in the series, he is refining the dog’s walking style.
I took the dog on a walk this morning – first in a week, as the road has been so icy and slippery I haven’t felt inspired to attempt it. The dog was pleased to take a long walk, and was on best behavior. I suspect that’s just coincidence – I don’t think she really thinks things through at that level, being a fairly impulsive beast.
Here are some pictures of the dog – walking.
She pulled hard on her leash till I let her off it.
She found a deer-carcass skeleton – but she didn’t get carried away with it, as dogs sometimes do with disgusting dead things.
She stood still for a brief moment for the camera. Not usual.
Meanwhile, here is a handy way to solve hard problems, as attributed to the famous physicist, Richard Feynman.
The Feynman Algorithm. “The steps are as follows: Write down the problem. Think real hard. Write down the solution. Easy!”
My coworker Jan, at the gift shop, likes to order various exotic herbal medicines and supplements, often from Asia. She ordered something from Korea not that long ago – I don’t know what it was (some kind of mushroom extract?). But when she got her product delivered, it included this note from the vendor.
To Buyer, Thank you so much for your purchase!!!!! I hope you had a pleasant transaction as much as I enjoyed:-) You are such a beautiful, gorgeous, perfect, incredible, fabulous, fantastic, the one-of-a-kind, mind-boggling, and Excellent buyer!!! Even though we are oceans apart, I feel it's my honour to have a chance to get to know you through Amazon.com. That's why I love having transactions on Amazon.com I will try to meet your needs by providing better service and products. I will pray for your lucky,if you leave a good feedback on Amazon.com. I wish that you are in good health and fortune with your family. Hope to deal with you again. Thank you. Have a wonderful day!!! Have a great day!!!! Many thanks and Kind regards, Kevin Kim
This made me nostalgic for my Korean students’ inimitable English style. This could have been written by one of them, easily. So much hyperbole!!!! So many exclamation points!!!!!!!!!
