It started Thursday evening after soccer. Everyone ran home to clean up – and for some of us (Scott), pack – before hitting the road to Colorado. I didn’t record the start time, but I believe it was getting close to 9… We drove all night, Cody, then Scott, Rick, then me.

The bummer of the rotation is that I was supposed to sleep during those first two shifts but everyone was all excited for the road trip and nobody slept. So round about dawn we crossed into Colorado and I took these pictures of my co-pilots. Princesses.

We rolled into Ft. Collins to kill some time before picking Troy up at the Denver airport, and decided to eat breakfast at Lucile’s. Hell yeah. That put us right by campus so it was time for a stroll down memory lane…

We headed over to the old theatre building and stuck our noses in all our old stomping grounds – or what was left of them. The old black box is a classroom, the improv room is divided and weird, but saddest of all was the mainstage.

I know that space sucked and the audience was uncomfortable and couldn’t see, but that’s where we all served our time… Weird to see just the outline of the old stage, the empty light grid, and the lonely white cyc. Then it was off the airport, grab Troy, and up to Estes for the festival! We checked in, cleaned up, got our tickets and headed to the fairgrounds. Friday is the hot ticket if you actually want to eat or do something popular — much less crowded, but almost everything is up and running.

That night we hit a concert: Brother and Seven Nations. Good show, but we were all hitting a wall, and the venue wasn’t the best and the audience could have been more animated. And the MC for the evening was beyond annoying, almost single-handedly ruining the show. Seriously. Not sure if the group took to Brother as much as me, but I loved them. Super sweet. 7N was pretty right-off-the-CD, nothing new from them but some good banter between songs.

Then home to bed for a quick night’s sleep before the main event: Saturday. Rose early to check out the parade, and got to see my parents! They came up for the day to hang out and check out the festival, and it was great to see them. That’s us just after the rain that morning — you can see the cardboard cozy around my cup to keep my fingers warm. It was damn chilly for a while there…

I think this speaks for itself, and in fact sums up the day rather well. Hell of a good time.

Next morning was another whirlwind, starting with brunch with Scotty’s parents at a super nice lodge. That’s Rick taking in the gorgeous scenery. Hard to remember how much I used to take the mountains for granted, now that I never get to see them. Ah, mountains. Next stop in Berthoud to visit Rick’s family and drop him off. It was great to tour around the place, and they fed us like kings before sending us on our way with a ton of delicious leftovers.

Coming down out of Estes we passed the Devil’s Backbone, one of the first places Karen and I hiked back when we lived in Colorado. Managed to snap a picture out the car window… Finally dropped Troy off to meet his parents – it was an elaborate surprise visit, they thought they were picking up a custom-made DVD cabinet for his brother’s birthday – and we were back on the road.

Official time: 2:30. We hit home at 4:30 (hour lost), and I was asleep by 5:30. Amazingly I believe we all had a pretty normal day the next day, I know I wasn’t firing on all cylinders but was still somehow productive at work. So there you have it! Big fun road trip!

As I start this post, I can hear the nightly fireworks going off from the State Fair – all the way from St. Paul! Whoa. The bad news is I think I’ve heard them every night of the fair so far, which means I’ve been up later than I want for too many nights, now that Karen’s getting up at 5:15 again…

But I’ve been up late working on the basement! Yesterday I hung the remaining pieces of drywall (after figuring out the spacing for the door) and started to mud it. Man, that sucks. I’ve done it before, long ago, but it wasn’t my project – I think it was a garage, or work area – and it didn’t have to be good. This one I want to be good. I’m taking my time, doing 3 or 4 layers in all, but tonight I wanted to just forget about it. It kept "chunking up" on me on certain corners (and it’s almost all corners!!) and I couldn’t figure out why. Ah well. I pressed through it (literally) and got it close enough, I figure I’ll clean it up with a sponge tomorrow morning. That was my day today, and probably for the next two: get up, sponge down the joint compound mistakes, go to work, run errands, come home, and put another layer on. The good news is the flat runs on the walls are looking good, and if anybody’s looking too hard in the corners the room has already failed!

Tonight I needed another project after mudding, so I picked up the hardware for the two doors I’m going to hang and tackled the first one. Yesterday I’d leveled and screwed in the interior pieces of the door frame, and today got the reward for the tedium: it hangs perfectly! No swing at all, it moves wonderfully, and falls right into the latch. Awesome. Only problem (which we’d anticipated, but thought we could work around) is that it doesn’t open all the way around before banging into the main house support beam. Ah well. I anticipated it so much I made sure to get hinges with a removable pin so we could just take the door out if needed. So good progress! My goal is to try to get the mudding done and at least prime the walls and hang the doors before the Chicago kids arrive for the State Fair. We’ll see how that goes…

Oh yeah, and I’ve got a million things fermenting in the basement. Sweeeeeet.

…don’t forget the dog! Much like the Princess and the Pea, drywall inspector Bruno can feel a defect under up to 7 sheets of drywall. Luckily this batch passed muster, and hanging is proceeding — THANKS, mom and dad! It’s looking great!

Friday afternoon I wired the newly-hung recessed lights, but left both circuits – sconces and downlights – just hanging near the final switch box. I finished just in time for Scott and I to go check out the St. Paul Irish Fair with Justin and Juliana, and a good time was had by all. Of course I knew that Saturday was going to be busy cleaning before my parents got to town, so I stayed up late after I got home and finished wiring things into the switch box, as well as installing a motion sensor switch for the laundry room. There’s no switch for that one upstairs and we somehow always manage to leave it on after feeding the dog, doing laundry, messing with homebrew, you name it. The sensor is awesome so far, you just walk in and presto! Light! Then after you leave: presto! Dark!

Yesterday, Sunday, we made it out to Home Depot for some lumber, and construction started in earnest on the basement wall. After much clever fussing with the location of the door into the new "storage room," my dad and I thought we had it solved so the door could swing all the way open to keep the corridor look of the pillars. Perfect. It took my mom all of about 2 seconds to point out it was moot anyway because of the adjustment corner we had just finished building in the wall! Ah well. It’s still the best solution for the space, just not what we thought we were getting.

With luck we’ll borrow Scott’s truck (other Scott ;) tomorrow to grab some drywall, a door and some hardware, although I imagine with all the family coming into town shortly it will just sit in the basement until after the North Shore retreat. Fine with me, the point is it’s getting done slowly but surely!

Bonus pic: Helpy McHelperson makes sure the lumber doesn’t go anywhere before we need it.

Well, finally. When Karen left I was full of plans for huge projects: I’m gonna paint the cupboards! I’m gonna cut down that stupid tree/bush in the backyard! I’m gonna put shelves in the office! I’m gonna redo the lighting in the whole house!!! … instead, I’ve been walking the dog a lot, dealing with stuff at work, and trying to singlehandedly cook and eat an amount of vegetables that makes the detox diet seem easy!

Until yesterday, that is, when I kicked off the long-anticipated Basement Project. First, some photos of what I’m going for, structurally:

Probably a bit hard to envision, but essentially instead of splitting the basement down the middle on that beam, I’m going to build a wall about three feet back. This leaves approximately 1/3 for storage, 2/3 for hanging out.

The pillars look great in the new space, and will look even better with … sconces!

I’d been planning all along to put recessed lights down there, but I’ve lately been worried that those would light the floor well and some of the walls, but reinforce the "cave" effect by leaving the ceiling dark. Sconces should spill up onto the ceiling a bit more and open things up.

The PITA part of installing sconces is pulling the electrical wire to them, since they’re on the wall. There’s some drywall patching in my future, but since there’s a board right there it’s really the only way to make the corner from the ceiling to the wall. I have to get some little metal shims to cover the wire before I close it back up, just so I don’t stick a nail in it when I put the crown molding up.

You can see the pulling process in action. Next I came in between the joists above with my fishing tape, found the end through the corner hole, and tied the cable to it. Twice I was too optimistic about the pressure and lost the cable by not taping it… Oops. Finally pulled the cable back out into the open channel where everything will be wired.

One down, three to go! Actually, by this morning, they’re all down and wired and I hooked them up to a dimmer just to see the effect. So. Cool. I can’t wait to get the downlights in place tonight or tomorrow and then finish the wiring so I can get started on the wall. The last big piece to solve: one door into the storage near the stairs, or two (one near and one far)? Bruno just loves running laps through the basement, I’m afraid the wall might be a big disappointment to him. With two doors he could still have a nice racetrack, but it would cost more and probably look less cool. (No, he doesn’t own the house, and no, he’s not the boss of me.)

http://gopher.mnstatefair.org/foodfinder/ Launch the food finder, pick "new" and start dreaming of wild rice pronto pups, deep-fried beer-battered bratwurst, and more. Damn the meat-eating splendor of it all. Guess Karen and I will just be stuck eating batter-dipped, deep-fried chocolate chip cookies served on-a-stick. Ah, crap, I just got drool all over my keyboard. Again.

So… We planted cucumbers way back when, and sure enough they grew and we got lots of cukes. Then our CSA veggie share started sending cukes our way. With Karen out of town and a million pounds of other veggies to get through, what’s a guy to do? Make pickles!

Once again, the internets saved the day. I had a vague idea of how this might work – is it just cucumbers and vinegar? – but no real definite plan. The first thing I found out was how to tell if your cucumbers are good for pickling or if they’re too ripe, and unfortunately most of ours were well over-ripe. Also probably not the best variety for pickling. But there were still plenty of cukes in good shape, including the CSA ones, so I got to cutting and soaking the slices in a salt water brine for most of the day.

Then this evening I cut up 2 onions and peeled a million cloves of garlic. Using my homebrewing know-how I skipped the pre-boiling of the jars and lids, and after a thorough cleaning just threw them into a sanitizing solution for a bit. Put the garlic and onions on the bottom along with rounded tablespoon of the "pickling spices" from our local co-op, and started shoving cucumber slices in the jars! I had read that for a crisper pickle you can heat to 180 and hold it for longer rather than boiling, so that’s what’s happening as I type.

As soon as I started hearing pings and creaks from the jars, I knew I had trouble on my hands – all the directions mention some magical device for removing the piping-hot jars from the water, and I of course had procured no such device. Hmm. But hey! I deal with piping-hot liquids all the time in the form of unfermented beer! I have heat-safe tubing! I’ll just siphon off the water from the pot and carry the whole thing downstairs gently to cool. Awesome.

So, a big adventure. I know how Karen loves her pickles, with any luck these won’t be terrible – I may crack a jar in a week to see how they’re doing, but everything I read said they’ll be much better in a few weeks to months. Maybe a little pickle party on the North Shore in a few weeks! (if she makes it… fingers crossed.)

Also a few projects in the "development" stage for the house – mostly lighting, and mostly around the basement. I’ll post more once there’s more to post!

PS – Bruno misses you, Karen.