Friday, March 31, 2006

Travel Blog: We Are Back

1,769 miles later we have arrived back in Missoula after 5 days of vacation. I am going to just post some pictures for now and tell about them. The first picture didn't turn out as I had wanted and the camera wasn't cooperating very well so the picure doesn't look great... But we are at the first geocache location ever placed. All that is there is a plaque, but there is another geocache nearby. This was one of the highlights of the trip for sure.Here is another picture of the waterfall we hiked to. This gives you a better view of the entire area and what it looks like. We were probably 500 feet away from the falls when I took this picture. They are quite large. The lighthouse is near Seaside, Oregon. This was our first stop before heading North on Highway 101. The picture with the rocks and seagull is looking the other direction at Seaside. These rocks were about a mile away and they were not small at all. It would be a neat place to explore, but you are not allowed to climb on the rocks. The last picture is farther up the coast in Olympic National Park along the coast. That is where all the drift wood was at. The tide was out so we were able to walk along the beach and explore a little. If you get the chance to go to the Olympic Peninsula I wouldn't pass it up. It's a neat place that most poeple don't get to see. It's basically the Northwest corner of the United States and worth seeing. Obviously we were here in the spring when things were slow and there were not many tourists, but that's how we like to travel. Until again

-=Nolan=-

******BONUS PICTURES******

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Travel Blog: Day 3

Well, instead of the travel log I have the travel blog... Laura and I are having a great time on our spring break trip. We are spending tonight in Port Angeles, Washington. Yesterday we hiked to see a large waterfall. We staying in Tigard, Oregon last night and then drove to the coast this morning. We then drove North on highway 101 all day. We did a lot of geocaching and spent some time on the beach as well. We saw the worlds largest Sitka Spruce and drove across the Columbina river at Astoria, Oregon. We also saw where Highway 30 ends in Astoria, Oregon too. We had lunch on the beach by the ocean and Laura found a sand dollar on beach later. We are having a great time and we are excited to continue our trip! We will be home on Thursday and I will probably say a little more about the trip then. For now I will just post some pictures. Enjoy.
The waterfall doesn't look nearly as large as it was. It was nearly 100 feet tall just on the second section of the falls. We were literally down in a hole in the ground!
Here's the largest Sitka Spruce in the United States. What a monster of a tree.
Here we are on the coast. Later we went and saw some tide pools and walked in the water. The water was mighty mighty cold! We didnt' get in past our ankles and we didnt' stay in for more than about 20 seconds! YIKES it was cold!
Finally, here is a picture of the drift wood on the beach. There is A LOT of drift wood! It was a amzing to see it all.

That's all for today. We have a big day ahead of us tomorrow! Until again

-=Nolan=-

Saturday, March 25, 2006

Spring Break

Whelp, spring break has began for Laura, thus spring break has began for me aswell. I didn't get a chance to post at all today - it's Friday night and we have been packing the car for our spring break trip to Portland and Seattle. As if I didn't have enough stuff to do around here, the shirt rack in our closet busted tonight! So I took the doors off and took everything out of the closet, took the shelves down, took the rack out, drilled new holes, reformed the support piece that was bent out of shape (reason for the catastrophy) by pounding it with a hammer for a few minutes, reinstalled the rack, shelves, and put everything back in the closet and put the door back on. I managed to do all that in about an hour. The whole setup is the cheap aluminum shelving that can't hold much more than a couple empty boxes but atleast we have somewhere to put some stuff...

Anyway... I decided I should post tonight so everyone would know I will be gone for a week and might not get a chance to post again until we are back home. I'm gonna have the laptop along, but I have no clue when I will get internet. I know some of you will be lost without me for a week, but remember that I am out taking pictures to share so everyone can enjoy them when I get back!

With that I leave you for a week. Until again

-=Nolan=-

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Keeping Busy

I didn't get a chance to post yesterday because I managed to keep myself busy for most of the day. After listening to my morning talk radio out of Kearney, Nebraska I went outside to enjoy the beautiful weather. I decided it was time to change the oil in the car so I got started on that. I don't really enjoy changing the oil in the Subaru though. There is a protective plate that covers the bottom of the car and I had to remove that to get to the drain and filter...the real difficult part was getting under the car. I don't have any ramps to put the car up on so I have to crawl under the car as it is just parked in the driveway. The great thing about my truck is that it sits a little higher off the ground so it is easy to crawl under, but the Subaru has about 14 inches of ground clearance. I will be happy to have my truck back so I can change the oil in it as well.

After changing the oil and checking out the car I was a bit of a mess so I came inside and got cleaned up and grabbed some lunch. While I was eatting I was looking through jobs around Missoula and found two computer tech jobs which I applied for. Hopefully I hear something from them soon.

When Laura got home she brought news that there is an Ultimate Frisbee League in Missoula. A guy in Laura's lab plays in the league and Laura told him that I like to play so he told her where I could sign up. It's a little different than I am used to, but there are teams and then there are people like me who don't have a team but want to play also...so they hold a draft. So I am going to be drafted to play on an Ultimate Frisbee Team. The Missoula organization is part of the Ultimate Players Association so I should have a lot of fun. If you want to learn more about it you can go to the Ultimate Players Association webpage and read more.

To finish the blog off for today I am going to share a picture. NOW, you might have seen this picture but keep in mind that it is FAKE! I read about it today at Spaceweather.com. Here's the information they posted: Have you seen this picture? Lots of people are finding it in their email boxes, purporting to be the sun and moon seen from the North Pole. Don't believe it. In the fake photo, the moon appears fantastically larger than the sun. Fact: the angular diameter of the moon never exceeds the diameter of the sun by more than 6%. This is true even at the North Pole.

That does it for today. Until again

-=Nolan=-

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Spring Has Sprung!

Yes, spring is here for those of us who live on the top half of the world! Some places don't really indicate that spring is here though. Places in Nebraska have 1-2 FEET of snow from the storm that blew through this past weekend. Here in Montana we recieved about a quarter inch of snow overnight and it has all melted now.

Laura arrived home on Sunday night safe and sound! I was a little worried the roads would be a problem for her to make it home, but she said they were clear the entire way and I was happy to hear that. Yesterday we went hiking in the mountains. We climbed to the top of Mt. Sentinal - a mountain we have already climbed, but we approached it from a different angle this time. We found several geocaches on the hike also. We hiked somewhere around 7 miles on the day and felt like we got a good workout in. Somehow, somewhere, we lost the trail and we were hiking along without any trail - we figured out where we were, but wondered how we manage to get off the trail and out in the middle of nowhere. Near the top of the mountain there was a little squirrel that I managed to snap a few photos of. The squirrel wasn't too worried about us as I walked around taking pictures, but as soon as I took a step in it's direction it was gone!

In other news I have had a terrible trip to Wal-Mart last night. Usually I pick up a few jugs of apple juice to drink for a few weeks. I always get the cheap stuff because frankly I just like it better. Last night when I went to get a few jugs to take along for our trip to Oregon and Washington they were all gone... No, they weren't just out of the apple juice, they don't have it any longer! The replaced the apple juice with Sam's Choice brand and upped the price $0.56! WHY?! WHY?! I ended up buying some Tang and mixing it up into a pitcher, but it's just not the same as my wonderful jug of apple juice... How I will go on I do not know, but I will find a way...

Until again

-=Nolan=-

Friday, March 17, 2006

A Happy St. Patrick's Day To You!

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone. My blog has it's green on, so don't be a pinchin' it!!! Things are looking rather nice around here today. The sun is shining and the temperature looks to be warm as well.

Yesterday I went to the river with our neighbor. The dog likes to swim in the river so we threw sticks and she would go get them. We had a bit of a scare when she got caught in a strong current and kept trying to swim against it. She eventually got out of the current when we threw a stick across the river. The major problem was we were are a spot where two rivers join and the two currents were too swift for her to swim straight back to us. We found some more gentle waters and she had a great time fetching sticks. You can see from the picture she likes to pick up sticks which are the same size as here and tend to strain her neck! What a funny dog!

After we got back I had my truck towed to the repair shop. Turns out the powertrain control module was bad - that was my final conclusion as we towed it into town. That is about the last thing I wanted to be bad - it will cost $300 just for the part! OUCH! However, following the tow truck was rather sad but on the bright side, my truck looks darn good. Seldom do I get to see the truck go down the street, so this was an interesting view to say the least. I guess I have saved money by not driving it around too much and saving gasoline so all that saving has made up for the repair costs. If I knew to to replace the part I would have, but my repair manual doesn't cover that information so I was up a creek without a paddle. Oh well, atleast my baby still is pretty! Here's a picture the day I bought it, just to prove it is the most beautiful truck in the world.

That's the news around here.

Until again

-=Nolan=-

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Life Without My Wife

It's been two days now that I have been without anyone else around, namely Laura. While she is out discovering the wonders of Idaho with her school group I have been here in Missoula. There really isn't much for me to say currently. I did find a cool site that is dedicated to shoe laces and cool ways to tie your shoes. If you want to check it out go >>HERE<<.

Yesterday I did setup my own personal wireless network. I have been running about 4-5 computers on a wired network, but the wireless option with the laptop is just to convenient. Laura has the laptop with her right now so I can't test that until she gets back.

I am going to share a photo from a trip that Laura and I took last summer over the 4th of July to Cody, Wyoming. We went North of town to Dead Indian Pass and climbed up to the top of the mountain. It really wasn't anything too difficult, it was just a little steep, but we walked straight up the side. The mountain in the background is Heart Mountain which is also just North of Cody. Heart Mountain is interesting because to top of the mountain is actually older than the underlying rock. In other words, the mountain formed and then the top of the mountain arrived. No one is exactly sure how it happened, but some guesses are from the Yellowstone volcano eruption - meaning the top of the mountain exploded out of Yellowstone and landed here. Boy, that would have been a rough landing! Other speculations are that there was a mountain range near this mountain when it was forming and it had a landslide that placed the older rocks on top of the forming mountain.

Until again

-=Nolan=-

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Nolan & The Muppets

Take a look at this. I took a short quiz to find out what muppet I was most like and here was my result:

You Are Gonzo the Great

"Is something burning in here? Oh, it's just me."
You're a total nutball who will do anything for attention.
The first to take a dare, you'll pull almost any stunt.
You're one weird looking creature, but your chickens don't mind!


Well, I guess I always knew I was a little odd and I could always relate to Gonzo, so I guess there is no surprise for me.

Laura left for her trip this morning. I dropped her off at the school and she joined some students for the drive to Idaho. I have been passing my time by fixing random things around the house and pretending like something is being done. The repair man arrived early today and took a look at the refriderator/freezer and hopefully that has been fixed. Otherwise my day has been pretty slow and I feel a little lost actually. Usually I can stoper around for most of my day until Laura gets home, but an entire week is really gonna be a challenge. You never know what will happen in that time, but odds are things won't change much! HA! Fortunatly for me, American Idol is two hours long tonight and I can stare at the television to pass my evening.

I am having trouble getting a picture to post today, so my appologies for no pictures today.

Until again

-=Nolan=-

Monday, March 13, 2006

Case Of The Mondays

Thanks for nothing Hamilton Beach!.. Let me catch you up no the last 48 hours of life at the Little's household.... Ok, Saturday must have been erased from my memory because I can't remember what happened then so lets just skip right to Sunday. So the day starts out nice. The truck is still broken, but I am dealing with that. Laura and I watched some of the extras that are on The Lord of the Rings extended edition DVD. The NASCAR race was on tv so I watched some of that also... Pretty typical day to say the least. About halfway through the race I was fighting off an overwhelming urge to take a nap so I suggested we get out and do some geocaching. We have one particular cache which we have failed to find time and time again. Well yesterday didn't prove to be any better. We searched for 15 minutes before raising our hands into the air and cursing the geocaching gods for their hatred of XC_Tracker.

We returned home a little unhappy but healthy. We soon discovered that our freezer was staying a warm 45 degrees and our frozen foods weren't exactly frozen anylonger. So we chose to make smoothies with the strawberries that were thawing. Laura put them in the blender and shortly-there-after the blender stopped working. Turns out the blade assembly had locked up. Well good thing we just got the blender for our wedding 9 months ago - it's under 2 year warranty. So this morning Laura calls Hamilton Beach and they proclaim "oh, we don't cover warranty on the blade assmebly because that is a common problem." Good thing it's under warranty then huh??? So I issue this statement: Consumer Beware!

So that's the great news around the house today. To counter the unhappy feelings I attempted to create a 'myspace' profile which has turned out to be more hassle than I care to deal with. You can check out my profile by going to http://www.myspace.com/ruNolan. I have added a song to my profile so everyone can enjoy the goodness which it brings!

Now for a picture. I took this from SpaceWeather.com - did you know there is going to be a penumbral eclipse tomorrow evening? The following was taken from the same website. "A penumbral eclipse involves only the pale fringe of Earth's shadow while a total eclipse happens in the shadow's dark red core. Maximum eclipse occurs between 6:18 p.m. and 7:18 p.m. EST on March 14th (14/2318 UT and 15/0018 UT). Observers in Europe, Africa and eastern parts of North America are favored; the eclipse will not be visible from California and other western US states."

That's all for today. Until again

-=Nolan=-

Friday, March 10, 2006

Adding A Map

Yesterday I added a map to my blog. It's on the right hand side at the bottom. It shows where people are from that visit my blog. Kind of a neat idea and should be fun to see where everyone is at. I guess I am just crazy about maps.

Laura and I are starting to study up for a spring break trip. As it stands now we have a wedding in Idaho on the first saturday of break. Then we are thinking that we might continue on to Portland, Oregon and visit the spot of the first geocache ever placed. We thought that would be a neat spot to add to our places we have been. Then we plan to drive up the coast on 101 around the Olympic Peninsula and be in Seattle. Those are our rough plans right now and we are still doing some thinking about it. We want to visit Mt. Saint Helens but we are concerned that the snow might not give us much to see, so perhaps we will try to make it back another time.

That's all I have to share today. I am gonna pass on pictures for today and get them ready for next week. We don't have much planned for the weekend so who knows what will be happening. Until again

-=Nolan=-

Thursday, March 09, 2006

World On Fire

My friend Nick sent a link to me yesterday to the Sarah McLaclan - World On Fire site. If you havn't seen it you are doing yourself an injustice. It's a very powerful video and I am glad to have watched it. Nick has updated his website as well and you go can get to it from my links section. He did a very nice job putting a website together and I am excited to see it develope further.

Yesterday I mentioned Laura and I were going to do some shopping. We went to the local mall and browsed and looked at all sorts of items from clothing to plasma televisions. Maybe some of the browsing was just for fun, but I like to know something about everything (even if I am never going to buy some of the stuff)... We ended up at Gart Sports and bought some soccer shin guards that were on clearence. We are joining an intermural soccer team at the college so we needed some. We are also hoping that our ultimate frisbee team made it into the league for the season so we can participate in that also.


Other than that exciting information there is little news to share so lets get to the photos already! I am skipping ahead a little and putting the first floor on instead of showing every wall being put together. You can see the beams are being measured to see where they need to go and we had the entire family over to the 'new house' for a picnic and help get everything started. On the final photo you can see dad's acrobatic abilities. When we put the beams on the walls we had to have someone walk along the 2x4 and set them out on the end. If you can imaging walking about 30 feet along a 4 inch wide board and being about 10 feet high from the basement floor and then carry a 100 pound beam and place it on the wall. Then you have to get back without falling... Now that is what I call a good time. Dad and I usually walked the walls and we never fell, so thankfully there was little injury involved.

Until again

-=Nolan=-

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Radio Free Colorado Goes Bye-Bye

Say it ain't so!? Has Radio Free Colorado died a silent death? This was a good internet station to listen to and now I a forced to listen to a lot of junk. Well super. I guess I will be removing the link from my page. I hope this is just a bad dream...

Well the truck has been put on the back burner until I can figure out what I want to do about fixing it. I will probably end up taking it to a repair shop if I determine the problem to be more than I can handle. I am starting to get into areas which require information obtained through computers and none of my computers do that. New vehicles are nice because they are much better designed, but the computers in them really can cause a problem for DIY (Do It Yourself) people such as I.

This morning I did some computer networking and found out how to connect multiple network switches. I have a rounter for my computers, but I also had a workgroup switch to figure out how to use. So I had wires strung out everywhere and computers running for most of the morning as I taught myself how to network larger areas. I also relearned how to use crossover cable. Something I learned in highschool in CISCO networking, but it has been over five years since I have even looked at the stuff. You can see my computer here with the router and switch located on the right had side. The internet comes into the modem (not pictured) then goes to the router. From the router it usually goes out to the other computers but I rewired everything so the router then sent the signal to the switch to send internet to the other computers. I think I finally got it figured out and I can give the switch back to my dad for him to use. I had borrowed it at Christmas to bring back to Montana and use, basically to see if I could figure out exactly how it worked. I still don't have a clear idea but perhaps I can atleast understand it now.

Laura and I have an afternoon planned to go out on the town and find some bargins so we should have a good afternoon and evening ahead of ourselves. I will update you on our deals tomororw. Until again

-=Nolan=-

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Picture This

I think there is an echo..? Things are slow around here. Due to the lack of news I am gonna share some photos for everyone to enjoy.

The first two photos are actual photographs - no special effects or photoshop, nothing like that. The first photo was taken in Norway on March 6th by Geir Øye. The light display only lasted about ten minutes, but it was long enough to snap this photo.

The second photo was taken in Missouri a few weeks ago by another photographyer. The double rainbow is quite a sight. There is always a second rainbow when you see one, however the light particles may not be reflecting enough to see the second one. I really like the tree in between the rainbows and the sky looks like a great storm has just passed by as well. Hopefully we will have a few storms here in Montana that I can get out and see some great sights as well, but I know we won't see the giant thunderheads that I have seen in Nebraska in the late afternoon. Those are truely a sight to see.

A few more pictures of the house now. You can see the block in the basement is finished and Rylan and I are working on the baseplates that go around the basement. We had to chip away the wood to allow the bolts to be fully secured to the baseplate. We spent a few hours going around the top of the basement, sitting on the wall with a hammer and wood chisel, to prepare for the wood framing. By the end of the day we had our first wall built and standing. We were all impressed with how well we had put it together and stood it up. As you can see, it is a rather large wall and we didn't exactly have the strongest crew to assemble the wall and stand it up. You can see it's rather dark and we had a storm approaching, so we finished up the wall, put away the tools and headed home. The next morning we arrived at the house to find more than two inches of water sitting in the basement. We used a pump and had the water pumped in a few hours, but the water slows things down. Not to mention the amount of mud we had to deal with. Mud had proven to be a very bad deal for me. During the construction of the wall, I was attempting to 'jump' down into the basement and I slipped because of the mud on my shoes and I landed on a jagged edge of a footing. My leg recieved a rather brutal scar and it still graces my lovely leg as a souvenir from the house.

That should do it for today. I will be parked infront of the computer for most of the day. Laura has taken the car to school and my truck is still slumbering in the garage. I guess I will get back to scanning the final pictures of the house! Until again

-=Nolan=-

Monday, March 06, 2006

Wrong Answer

DOH! Well, after getting the ignition coil and installing it the truck has denied me the satisfaction of starting. I guess that was a way to narrow down the trouble but I sure would have liked to see it start. Some more tests this afternoon should help out, but they get frustrating when I can't figure anything out. I am getting a good lesson on vehicles though, so that has been a positive to all this.

Yesterday Laura and I took a drive to East Missoula to see a friend and on our way back we took the road around Mount Sentinal. It was a lot of fun to see the road covered in snow and have no other cars around. We did pass a few vehicles, but the road is about 1.5 lanes wide and reminds me of a narrow mountain road. Laura snapped a few pictures as we ventured up the mountain. The road is actually shown as a highway to East Missoula, but trust me, you won't be seeing highway speeds and there are no guardrails along the side - therefore it's a long fall over the edge. I thought we might see some wildlife with the snow covering everything, but the most wildlife I saw was the local cross-country ski junkies who were hitting the trails on a sunny afternoon. We both had a good time on the drive. I think we both wanted a little escape from the concrete jungle we have been staring at since we arrive back in Missoula after the new year. We both were looking forward to some hiking, running and geocaching this weekend, but the snowfall on Friday night and Saturday morning really put a stop on those plans. I am not sure the total snowfall we recieved, but we had very wet and heavy snow and it was nearly 6 inches deep.

I think the pictures Laura took are very nice. The road here is usually just dirt, but we had snow on the road and it made for a neat look. The sun was warming the trees and the snow was falling from the trees during our entire drive. It is about 10-11 miles to drive around the mountain, but we always enjoy the drive and it is a quick escape from the hustle and noise of the city.

Until again

-=Nolan=-

Friday, March 03, 2006

A New Look

Well, it's not excatly a new look. In fact, there isn't much of a difference at all. I have changed the weather information on the right sidebar. You now see a car driving down the road - this is in hopes that my truck will soon be running again. I also added an icon which shows the sunrise/sunset, moonrise/moonset, and the phase of the moon. You can see the phase of the moon on the left side of the icon. Today it is waxing cresent - or in otherwords the moon isn't to half moon yet, it is the shape of a cresent and waxing means that the moon is moving towards being full. That's rather simple terms, but easy enough to understand I think.

As far as the truck goes, I think I have discovered the root of my trouble. It's this guy right here! This is the ignition coil and after doing a ohm test on it yesterday it showed that the resistance was too low and that I had an open circuit. My next step is to find a parts dealer that won't cost my small forture I have left in the bank account. Like I said though, I THINK this is my trouble, I am not 100% positive, but here's hoping. If it's not I guess I will be in the garage figuring out what the next issue could be.

Other than working on some job applications I have been working on the truck or looking for jobs. Therefore my blog has really become somewhat of a newsletter instead of a blog. However, hopefully things will be picking up again once the truck is fixed and I will have some more interesting things to talk about.

As promised, here is the remainder of the pictures of basement being finished. The first one is of Rylan, Grandpa Denny, and I. Dad and Grandpa Paul are on the right side pouring another load into the wheel barrel. We had to cart the cement across the basement because the truck couldn't get around to the back of the house due to the amount of space and mud from the rain the night before. So here we are trying to work the cement back toward the truck. You can click on the picture to see it larger.

And our favorite part of pouring cement is always running the board across it to smooth it out. Rylan and I work on the cement to get it consistent all the way across. After seeing this picture, I remember now that we did six pours instead of five like I said yesterday.


Once we had finished the floor we were able to finish the final part of the basement wall and put in the window that we would soon be using as our primary enterance into the house until we were able to get the first floor platform built. It was great to have the basement done and be able to get to work with the framing work. You can see from the next picture that dad was happy to have a break and look at the progress we had completed over the past few months. I think we were all happy to see the block walls completed and get started on framing up the house so it would actually look like something more than a big hole in the ground. Even though the block laying was a lot of fun, I can't wait to show off some more pictures of the framing of the house and all the great times we had with that. If things are slow next week then you can guarentee to see some more photos of the first wall we built and the basement being put together.

That's all I have for today. Laura and I hope to do some geocaching this weekend. We havn't been out to geocache in a few weeks and I think we are both looking forward to some nice weather and geocaching to get us out on the trials and parks. Have a great weekend.

Until again


-=Nolan=-

Thursday, March 02, 2006

A Nice Slow Day

We have had a beautiful day here. It was near 50 today and sunny. Something we were not anticipating on seeing for awhile longer. Today I have spent most of my day attempting to fix my truck so I have very little news to share from Montana. I have continued to narrow down the problems that could be causing the truck to not start, and now I am starting to get into areas of the ignition system that I don't happen to know much about.

So I am gonna get right to the pictures today.

There is a lot of pvc pipe to lay before you even pour the floor of the basement. We had to dig a lot of dirt to get everything where we wanted it. The hardest part was digging the dirt out from under the footings. I have to say though, there is something about digging holes with a shovel that is very satisfying. Maybe it is just me, you know I have such a fasination with moving dirt - but something about digging the soil and creating something new is very relaxing and fulfilling. Plus a little work always makes a person happy when the results are what they want.

Here is another good picture of the garage. Look at how much dirt we had to move into the garage just to get it to the level we wanted. Note that the blocks on the left side of the garage are three blocks high from the the footings.

The last photo of the day shows the beginning of the pouring of the basement. You can see we had all the pipe layed under the ground and the sand on top of it. We poured the basement in five different segments just so it would be a little easier to handle and work with.

That's all I have for today. I've been a little busy with the pickup and trying to learn everything about it that I can so my brain is a little overloaded with information. Sorry if things seem scattered and I am randomly jumping around, but think how my head is dealing with this!
Until again

-=Nolan=-

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Ready?! MARCH!

Welcome to March everyone. Are we sure it's March though? Look at these temperatures from yesterday in FEBRUARY!For this time of year that is mighty warm, but then again that is mighty nice too. We were only forcasted to reach the low 50's yesterday, but you can see the 60 is right on top of us. 60's here isn't like 60 degress in Nebraska though. I still had to have a coat - the humidity isn't nearly the same. At 90 degrees here I can have jeans and a t-shirt and be comfortable. In Nebraska if the temperature hits 85 and you have jeans on then you are going to find yourself quite warm in no time!

I am slowly narrowing down my troubles with the truck. The trouble now is I am going to be putting a lot of work into it because I have to get to the spark plugs, and those will take quite a lot of work to get to. I plan on spending most of the daylight today being outside and working on whatever I can get done. As you can imagine, that makes any news for the blog rather slow...

Laura is enjoying her lab work. She had some great results yesterday from her work, and was excited to tell me about what she had found. As usual I just nod to act as though I understand what she is telling me, but very seldom do I have a clue what she is talking about...

As promised, here are some more photo's from the basement work. The first one is a good comparison to yesterdays picture. You can see the walls are up and the block around the garage is nearly finished.

Skipping forward a few weeks, we had nearly all the walls in the basement up and complete. We had filled the cores and we were were preparing for piping. We wanted to pack down the dirt in the basement - all the rain had really causes a lot of dirt to loosen up and mud spots to form. I took my car into the basement and drove it back and forth for about 30 minutes to pack everything down. I also took it down into the basement just to say that I had drove around in the basement. What a good time that is. To top it off, the car got stuck in a mud hole that was about a foot deep! YIKES! I managed to push in out and keep driving around for awhile though....but how many of you can say that you got your car stuck in your basement when you were driving around?? Exactly - or as I might say "A-zack-aly!"

Tune in tomorrow to see the pipes being installed and some of the floor being poured by none other than my family... So far the only thing we havn't done with the house is dig the hole - that would have been quite a good time though, I wish we would have done that because I really like driving the tractor around and moving dirt... Laura can verify that too - one time in Hays, KS we were there for a track meet, but I sat over by a construction site and watched the tractor move dirt for awhile. I think that might be my calling - but there really isn't much soil or dirt here in the mountains - a lot of rocks and such - makes for slow dirt moving techniques. Have a great day! Until again

-=Nolan=-