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Catch-up day

Saturday, October 3rd, 2009

It is a rare day of steady, hard rain here. It’s supposed to rain all weekend…very rare for Oct., we hear (except for in 1983, when Tucson got 7 inches of rain in a couple hours and it took out the freeway). While the weather quashed our plans to spend the day in Bisbee, it has given me a chance to catch up on some work and to do some writing and video editing.

It has been a busy week here. In addition to having Brad’s mom visiting, we are taking care of 6 horses, 2 burros, 2 cows, and 4 dogs for our neighbors. Whew!

Oh yeah, and the main house slab was poured on Friday.

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Pouring the slab
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color-sm

This is the color.

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They dump it in the mixer, bag and all.

And here are the final results (well, not exactly final, but for today:):

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Foundations and a battery house

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

There were a few hiccups getting through the inspections for the foundations, however; things got worked out and we made our first pour today. We poured all the foundations for the main house and we did everything for the battery house. I took quite a lot of pictures… unfortunately, I was completely out of sync with my camera and 80 percent of the pictures were of my feet. What little there are you can see below. I also made a video of cement drying-sounds exciting! It was a dry run for when we pour the main house.

If you wonder about the Styrofoam around the perimeter, it’s there to turn the floor into thermal mass. It does get cold here and the Styrofoam separates the floor from the cold ground. Our windows are designed to warm the floors and the adobe walls in the winter and radiate the heat back in the night.

Just starting out

Just starting out

The cement truck

The cement truck

Scoot and company

Scott and company

Foundations poured, waiting for the slab

Foundations poured, waiting for the slab

Starting the battery house

Starting the battery house

Finished

Finished

That big loop of rebar is to chain down our generator. The pipes are for water and electricity to the houses.

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Love the room layout!

Friday, September 18th, 2009

Putting up the interior walls in Tumbleweed has been great. Not only do I really like the work, but the rooms are looking great! I was worried that as we put up walls, the rooms would look small.  (You know, like how when you see an empty house, everything looks spacious, but then you put furniture in and it suddenly seems claustrophobic.) These rooms really look fantastic. It’s fun to think about where things like cabinets and furniture will go. And it actually seems like it might happen in a foreseeable timeframe now.

Here’s how it’s looking.

Rush hour traffic

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

Playing with my new HD camera (for work, of course)….

Cactus blooms

Sunday, April 26th, 2009

This weekend, we saw another bunch of unopened cactus blooms in the front yard. They seemed just about to go, and Brad got his camera set up in time to capture it. Quite beautiful. (More photos below the movie.)

Before the bloom

Brad setting up (pre-bloom)

Brad checking the results (post-bloom)

Movie time – Road maintenance, ranch style

Monday, February 23rd, 2009

Movieland

Sunday, February 8th, 2009

Karen is not the only one making movies here in Portal. I’ve started up again on my time-lapse movies. This one uses the koi pond as a reflecting device for the clouds as well as for its koi.

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Koi Pond with Clouds
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It’s stormy here today and I have a camera setup facing toward Horseshoe Canyon. I’m keeping an eye out for rain, but so far so good. It’s windy as heck. I have the tripod kind of wrapped into some fencing to prevent it from flying off.

I’ve gotten better at looking at the clouds and evaluating their movie potential. It takes some patience to see the clouds move and to determine their direction. Today it’s too cold for much of that; I tried, but you can’t really shiver and watch clouds at the same time. I basically pointed the camera in a nice direction and got back into the house.

The world is so much different with digital cameras. I shoot all kinds of movies that never amount to anything and the only cost is batteries. Even those are rechargeable.

There are a couple variation of this time-lapse on youtube.

Movietime – Driving in to the ranch

Saturday, November 22nd, 2008

(If you have a slow connection, pause the video for a minute or so to let it buffer so it will play smoothly.)