The Destruction of a PB&J

Here are a couple of photos of Nathan from this weekend. That sandwich didn't have a chance.

More Basement Progress

We had a crazy busy weekend. I tried to make lots of progress on the basement so that we might have some hope of getting the carpet in this week. I seem unlikely that will happen, but there is still hope.

I was able to finally finish the basement floor by getting it grouted yesterday. We got the louvered doors in on friday. We bought a paint sprayer with the thought that it would make getting the louvered doors painted easier. Ha! I wasted a lot of time trying to adjust the paint flow to get a good spray pattern and was not successful. I ended up using the sprayer to deliver the paint to the door, but used a brish to get it spread out evenly...grumble...Hopefully Kirstin will be able to become one with the sprayer and allow us to paint the doors easily.

Here is a photo of the main basement room as of this morning.


Here is a photo of the finished bathroom floor.

New Years Resolution

So we were sitting around the table at our weekly company meeting early in January. The QOTW (Question of the Week) was "What is your New Years Resolution?". Not having thought through this, when it was my turn, I blurted out that I would run from home to work once a month for the year.

It is 10 miles from our house in Ballard/Crown Hill to Synapse in Madrona.
Here is a map of the route.



Here is the elevation profile of the route. Nothing like a 300' climb at the end of a 10 mile run.


I haven't been 100% successful, but have gotten 5 out of 7 months. I ran in yesterday. I felt pretty slow, but today I feel pretty good. Not too much soreness.
I did it in 1:28. that is an 8 min 48sec per mile average. I think my best time so far is 1:27.
I'd like to get it to 1:20 by the end of the year. We'll see...

Big Johnny on the wind

Kirstin and my sisters and I hiked up to Fish Lake (Lost Horse Creek) in the Bitterroot yesterday to spread the last of my father's ashes. Fish Lake is the first real camping that I ever did when I was a Kid. This is where my dad kindled the fire that is my love of the outdoors.

That is the rest of Dad in the green back pack....

Here is the view from above the lake. There was a nice breeze blowing so we were able to scatter his ashes into the wind.



It was a good day.

Multimedia message

The boys in missoula.

Multimedia message

Multimedia message

Multimedia message

I finally was able to get the tile for the basement bathroom in place.
I still need to grout, but at least the big job is done. I think it came out pretty well. Here are a couple photos.



There is radiant floor heat installed under the tile. That should be nice for the guests.
After the grout is done, we will put up bead board up to mid way up the walls and then comes the fixtures.

Mt Adams Attempt

5 of us from work made an attempt at climbing/skiing Mt. Adams on June 24/25.
Unfortunately I and one other didn't make it. Jed, Chris and Linden got the glory. Dave and I suffered through blister from rental boots on the way up, so we decided to opt out of the summit attempt.
We skiied up to about 8500', camped on a georgeous bivy site, then skiied back down while the oter three skiied to the summit then skiied down.

Here is a photo of the view at sunrise from our camp site.
That's Mt. Hood in the distance


Here is a photo of me skiing down.



It was very dissapointing not summiting. Getting in a bit better shape and some better equipment should slove that for next year.

I would be remiss to not add a few new-ish photos of Nathan.
I can't believe he'll be 2 in August...

This is a photo Kirstin took while they were down in Steam Boat visiting Grandma nad Grandpa Oman.

Who needs pants.

Some Basement Updates

Here is a photo of the tile I did around the Gas insert we had installed.

Next up is the tile for the floor in the new bathroom. Here is a photo of the tiles laid out on the floor. Still to be mortared in place.

I hope to have that done by the end of this weekend.

BP BLOG

What's all this hype about BLOGs anyway?? Lets give it a try.

Life seems to be 110% filled with Nathan and Kirstin, Home projects and Work.

I hope to use this primarily to easily and quickly share photos which I seem to have a hard time updating on our comcast webpage.

https://home.comcast.net/~kirstinbrian/
I haven't updated that for months now.

Later.