Videos

On one of our volunteer days, we had a pair of communications students come out and shoot some video at our site. You can check it out here. The girl doing the talking is actually from Des Moines and did her undergrad at ISU. Of course that initially caused me to kick her off the site, but then she told me that she would go to Iowa City on the weekends and liked it better there, so was allowed to stay. Anyway, I make two appearances (i.e. the star of the video) Just don't blink cuz you might miss it.

This next one I found utterly disturbing.

Lots-o-snow

So, apparently it snows here in Colorado. Got about 6 inches or so the other day and have another 2-4 coming tonight and tomorrow. That's just down here in Boulder, couple feet of the white stuff up in the mountains. Would have made for a good opportunity to go play up there, but those plans got called off following a rough day at the gym playing basketball. Managed to pull a hamstring, sprain an ankle and turn my left knee and hand into an interesting shade of purple. I remember the hit that caused the knee, but really have no idea about the hand. Nothing too serious, just the kind of things that make the idea of learning to snowboard/fall down repeatedly learning to snowboard not sound so good. Probably should also learn to stop after the first injury instead of trying to break some sort of record.

At work we are running out of indoor things to do, so will either be out in the cold or slowing down quite a bit. Either way, have another week and a half before the affiliate shuts down for Christmas and will be heading back to Iowa where I'm sure the weather is nicer this time of year...

Last couple of weeks

Just the slab, walls off to the left on the platform we made


First floor walls up


Where things stand now. Notice the scaffold on the right. I will spend the next several weeks taking down and putting all of it back up again for the siding, then repeating the process when we paint...fun


And of course, baby Ella

So, the last couple of weeks have been pretty eventful. At work, the house went from the slab to having the roof framed and sheathed in about two and a half weeks. I'm still convinced we could have done it in not much more time by doing an impromptu blitz build of our own given that we have around 100 volunteer groups on our wait list, but oh well. About half-way done with window installation and have all the siding set to be delivered on Tuesday. Will still be outside a good chunk of this winter putting all of that on. Am putting together a slide show of the building going up. Have been taking pictures every so often from the same spot across the street. Have it on power point, will try to figure out a good way to include it on here.

Outside of work, went and saw Bob Schneider down in Denver a couple weeks ago. Great show, played every song you could ever want to hear and some I hadn't heard before. Had our first snowfall down here last week, a good 5 inches to wake up to. Though that didn't compare to the 21 inches the night before of my new niece Ella Elisabeth. Good segway huh? Speaking of which, bout got run over by 4 guys rolling around on some segway scooters through downtown a couple weeks ago. And an even better tangent...Back to Ella. Not sure anyone reading this doesn't have all the details already, but if so, 8 lbs, 21 inches, born 1:34 am last Tuesday. Will get to see her when I head back for Christmas.

Other random thoughts. Next session of indoor sand volleyball starts this week, so can close my eyes and feel like its summer again. Only downside is that they like to have the end of the season tournament on Saturdays, doesn't fit so well with my Habitat build schedule. Christmas wish list: this kind of money: when I ran into the segway scooters was going to check out a new townhome that our mechanical contractor is working on to see how they used air to air heat exchangers that we are thinking about using. Long story short, this 3 story townhome a block from my place is being sold for 1.4 million...to someone who won't even live in it. Apparently they have a daughter that is starting at CU and they wanted to have a place to stay when they come to visit her. I am pretty sure I will never live in that kind of financial world.

E-Town show

Went and saw a taping of the show E-Town tonight. It is a nationally syndicated music show based out of the Boulder Theater 5 blocks from my new place. Had some pretty good performances from Matt Nathanson and Ian Ball of the band Gomez . Had the other option of going down to Evergreen to see Hello Dave and The Nadas, but figured they come around more frequently and wanted to finally go to one of the e-town tapings. Gotta like being so close to so much good music.

On another note, both foundations are now poured and we can start putting up walls on Building E. Unfortunately, by "we" I mean a framing company, as it has been decided that we need to speed up the process due to previously mentioned delays. I am not in favor of nor too happy with this decision, but it was beyond my pay grade, so what can you do. Just a little frustrating to not be allowed to do what you were hired to do in the first place...

More pics

Post-tension cables and radon mitigation ready to go


Japhy and cakes hanging out on roommate Jill's bed


I like this dog


All our walls on site cocooned up, waiting to go on the foundation


what you don't want to have happen during an excavation: old piece of the gas line...

New place, cruddy day

So, finally found a new place to live. Just a block off of Pearl St, which is the main downtown street here in Boulder. Now live within walking distance of downtown, grocery stores, ymca, target, work and most importantly the newly renovated REI store. Living with two girls and two dogs. The dogs are both labs and a lot of fun. Roommates are cool too, but the key here is I get to play with the dogs:)

Now for the cruddy day part. Good news is that the plumbing is done and that the foundation guys were out setting up forms today. The radon mitigation system that I was in charge of putting together also needed to be installed today. And then I got sick this morning and had to go home. Did the best I could to show the rest of the team what needed to be done, but didn't want to subject them to the next round of vomiting, so had to go. Feeling better though after sleeping through the afternoon. Also, as I'm sure some of you have heard, the computers crashed for the world series ticket sales, so still going to try to get some when they go on sale again tomorrow. Highly doubt I will get them, but that would be a lot of fun. I just missed out on the last time the Avalanche won the Stanley Cup, so will be nice to be around all the excitement.

Other than that, things are well, we will have the foundation for building E poured this week and hopefully start laying out walls next week. Had our first snow fall down here in town, it didn't stick, but it did up in the foothills, so starting to get the wintery scene going.

Pics for Pa

Upon discovering the New Belgium Brewery was closed on the day I was there...


Hard at work on top of the pile while the volunteers took care of the nailing.


What 5 homes look like.

Memory stick reader thing is working better, so was able to get some pics up. Still looking for a new place to live at the moment. Doing so cheaply in Boulder is not an easy task, but I guess there are places worse off, so I can't really complain. Went to a Damien Rice concert this past Monday, that was pretty good.

We have ran out of time at the armory, but still don't have the foundation in due to continuing issues with contractors, so am in the process of building a platform on site to store the walls until that gets taken care of, going to attempt to move them all over a couple blocks to the site throughout this week.

Found another new musician: http://www.myspace.com/joshritter
Like the last two songs on there at least if you want to check it out. Get a lot of good music coming through here in Boulder. Have some smaller venues that get some good artists that are on the up and coming phase.

Oh and the reasoning behind the first picture, went up to Fort Collins for a sustainable living fair last weekend with Mike, Abigail, and little Robby. Some good stuff, but it was a two day event and most of the stuff I was interested in took place on the other day, oh well.

Volleyball

So just finished up my volleyball league at the indoor sand courts. Had the end of the season "tournament" last night, with a somewhat questionable format. Top 8 teams in the league got split into two groups that played a pool format, one game against the other three teams in your pool. Top two from each pool advance. That part is fine, but then after that, it didn't become a playoff format, just another 1 game pool play. As it played out, we won all three in our first pool, then went 2-1 in the second pool. The team we lost to won all three of their's so got 1st place and we got second. We beat them in the first pool, however, so were 1-1 against them on the night, but the order of the wins decided who was 1st. Not that it's a big deal, 1st got a $30 gift certificate there and 2nd got $20, huge prizes...but would like to play an actual 3 game match to decide that stuff. Playing a lot better and getting some big hits, so I guess all is good.

Success, sort of

Lots of hail

Professional guy who "turned" the caber everyone else couldn't get
Yeah! we have a foundation. Too bad this one is going to sit there until next spring and the one we have the full permits to work on, the plumber is being dumb about things

Couldn't find a new cable for my camera, but did find a USB adapter for the memory card, so in a round about way, can get pics off my camera. Doesn't like some of the pictures though for some reason, so refused to copy them.

Highlands festival...

So, still no camera cable, try to pick that up tomorrow so can add pictures. Went up to Estes Park to a Scottish/Irish Highlands festival that I guess is world famous. Lots of people. Saw some guys do the caber toss, but the one they were trying to flip over I guess was too much and none of the guys succeeded when we were there. Just saw the amateurs though, the world championship professional types do it tomorrow. One of them came on and flipped it a couple times for the ESPN cameras and made it look pretty easy, which I'm guessing it is, just a big stick after all.

Attempted to find some seats for the jousting competition, which led to the heartwarming/reassurance about the goodness of humanity moment of the day. Single grandstand overlooking the rodeo circle where they have the joust. As noted above, lots o people, which meant there were no seats, though the friends I was with (including my Scottish boss in his kilt) walked around trying to find a spot, then gave up and headed for the exit. Upon reaching the exit came across a bit of a jam of people trying to get in and us trying to get out just as the joust started. I have never been the central focus of so much hatred in my life. People began to scream at us to get out of the way, in spite of the fact that at the moment there was no place for us to go. Topped by one lady standing up, giving me a look like I had just kicked her dog, and yelling that she had been waiting in her seat an hour and a half to watch the event, which immediately brings two questions to mind, do you have nothing better to do than wait 90 minutes for a joust? and if this is the culminating point of your life couldn't you pick a better seat than one that would obviously be blocked by anyone walking on the walkway(intended, coincidentally, as a place for people to walk from one place to another)? When the path finally cleared, we made our exit with a smile and a "have a nice day", though my voice tone may have given away the sincerity of that statement.

Other than that, currently listening to some acoustic instrumental guy at the coffee shop and the hawks are up 28-0 on syracuse, so today is good

The latest...

So we built some more walls today...unfortunately our plumber is the latest contractor to give us the run around, refusing to do any work because they claim to be waiting for the excavator to put in the water meter pits, even though everyone we've talked to says they don't have to wait, can just stub out there stuff outside the building and then the excavators will connect everything up. Sorry for the non-construction folks out there that that made no sense to. Point being, we are being delayed once again...grr...

On a brighter note, went to see Rocco Deluca last night, pretty good show. Kind of makes me think of a mix between Damien Rice(going to see in two weeks) and Ben Harper, definitely a good thing. Check out a couple of his songs on his myspace page if you want... http://www.myspace.com/roccodeluca
Plenty of good music out here.

Been playing a lot of volleyball since I got out here, sometimes 4-5 times a week. Mostly open nets, but am on a Thursday night indoor sand league at an old warehouse on the way down to Denver. Playing a lot better with so much practice, now only hit the ball into the net half the time...

Hmm...there is probably more stuff, but the coffee shop is closing and kicking me out along with my internet connection, so more later

Crazy weather, bad day...

So, today here in Boulder we had some interesting weather...High was around 90 degrees, which led to the usual afternoon thunderstorm, and the, I hope unusual, 30 minute hailstorm. It was 90 degrees today and now there are spots with 6 inches of hail still piled up. The bad day part is that apparently really hot car interiors plus suddenly freezing windshields tends to lead to cracking, in my case a nice 12 inch crack. I took pictures of it all, but at the moment I seem to have lost my USB cable for my camera, so the bad day continues. On the bright side we built some more walls today and we didn't have as many volunteers, so I got to do more of the work myself instead of just having to supervise. Oh, and I crushed Mike Heaton in disc golf the other day when he was out here, but then we both lost a disc, so I guess that wasn't good either. Oh and feel free to comment on here ya all, it provides emotional reassurance that I'm not just talking to myself when I write these things, which would be depressing in a way. That's all I got.

Fun toys to play with...

So thanks to the folks at sunbelt rentals, I have now been certified to operate a number of forklifts seen above. Also included a picture of an event that caused some forklift operators whole life to flash before their eyes...

Spider pig...

For those interested, if not my favorite, at least the most memorable part of the Simpson's movie...

Spider pig

Finally building...sort of

Future site

Excavation begins

Our affiliate finally got the land purchase squared away with the city, so after a year break, can start building again. Big thanks to the National Guard for letting us use their armory to build and store our walls until our foundation is in. As of today, the excavation and compaction is complete and the foundation should be going in later this week. We are putting in a five unit building this year, followed by a four unit one starting next spring across the street. We are trying to get these homes LEED certified (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) a new national standard for green building. All sorts of new fun options, tankless water heaters, 92% efficient furnace, solar tubes to light interior hallways, dual flush toilets, and lots and lots of caulking and insulation. Stay tuned for further updates on the house...

Trip up Grays and Torreys

On top of Grays, looking over at TorreysA couple of goats on Grays

A couple weeks ago hiked a pair of 14ers with a couple of the AmeriCorps folks(Laura and Julia) that just finished up their year with Habitat and wanted to do some hiking before they left town. I must say the 9,000 ft elevation gain from here in Boulder to the top did not agree with my not yet fully acclimated lung capacity, so while there were frequent "breather breaks", it was a great time. Even got to see some mountain goats. Had a bit of an adventure getting to the trailhead over the "4 wheel drive/high clearance recommended" road in Julia's car(I'm sorry I ever doubted you mystique), but were able to climb both and be back down before the afternoon storms hit. That's 4 down, 50 more to go...

Hello!

So if Mike Heaton can figure out how to put together a blog, anyone can do it right? Just wanted to put together an easy way to keep all of you updated on what I am up to out here in the beautiful state of Colorado. Have recently purchased both a new laptop (hmm...they have the internet on computers these days) and a digital camera, figure I should put them to use...