End of January 2013

We returned from Dallas on Friday afternoon.  I attended the Annual Winter ASHRAE (American Society of Heating Refrigeration Air-conditioning Engineers) meeting because I needed Continuing Education credits to keep my Professional Engineering and Certified Energy Manager licenses.  Not sure why I feel that need to keep my licenses up to date as I am mostly retired at this point… but this will be the last time I renew them.

Carol and I drove the Mustang to Dallas, two days there and two days for the return trip.  Stopped in Cheyenne and had lunch with Jan Schroll, an old friend of Carol's.  After lunch we met with a kitchen designer at Schroll’s Cabinets.  They do very nice work.  After that we headed for Denver and shopped at two Architectural Salvage yards, both fun places, and selected a lamp for the powder room and some door hardware... with some cleaning up it will be spectacular.

 

Both of the Architectural Salvage places had a selection of Arts and Crafts fireplace surrounds.  We had thought about a very chic modern concrete fireplace surround but after we saw these old surrounds we began to rethink the fireplace.  No decisions yet.

The Mustang is a good traveling car, rides and handles well.  We enjoyed our drive, putting in lots of hours a day behind the wheel.  The ASHRAE meeting is always good, lots of cutting edge energy conservation in HVAC and building design and research.   I attended about 6 hours of seminars each day for three days and the Laboratory Ventilation Committee Meeting on Tuesday afternoon.  Carol did some snooping around the area and found some cool places to spend the evenings.  One night we had brews at the World of Beer; I had a flight of 6 Texas microbrews and a Delerium Tremens for my second beer... I was in heaven.  One night we met Michael Smith, a former judo student at the Mockingbird Taproom... it was great catching up.  Had another new beer.  The weather was warm, mostly shirt weather for this old Norweign, rained a couple afternoons, but I was at meetings.  We stopped off in Norman, Oklahoma and spent the evening listening to Scott Strandburg play some orignal music at the Deli, a bar in Norman.  Both Carol and I enjoyed the music and the witty banter he provided between songs.

Four days of sitting in the car and another four days sitting in meetings is WAY too much sitting for me.  I was so sore yesterday that I could hardly move, it took about two hours of yoga, judo, karate, aikido, jodo, kendo movement to get my glutes loosened up to the point that I could move without pain.  Normally I stretch during the day when I am working.  I have incorporated much of the movement that I learned from 40 years of martial arts study into my daily movement, stretching as I go.  When muscles tighten up, at times I am forced to do some pure martial arts exercises, much of it handled by training with a martial arts weapon, a simple wooden staff called a "jo".

Today I shoveled snow for about two hours and then fired up the chainsaw and chunked some trees that Verl, a neighbor, and I cut down a few weeks ago.  Altogether we cut down 38 trees infected with the mountain pine beetle.  To kill the beetle it is necessary to cut up the tree into 24" lengths or less, as I plan to burn these in the fireplace I am cutting them to about 16".  I cut down three big trees on the rock directly to the south of the new master bedroom suite, one, to allow the sun to shine thru and two, to keep them from falling on the house once it is completed.  The cutting was getting pretty slow because the chain was getting dull so I postponed cutting down one last tree until I get the chain sharpened.  I got a nice sweat going and now feel in good health once again.  Health thru movement!!!

Prior to leaving for Dallas...
The sheetrock is completed.  Scott Snyder did a very nice job texturing the walls, it looks like old fashioned plaster... just what I wanted.

Carol and I completed priming all the new sheetrock, painted the sheetrock ceilings and painted the walls in the greatroom and sunroom a warm brown color.

My neighbor Mark came over on Tuesday and helped install the radiant heating system in the mudroom hallway. 


















The electrical service panel is nearly complete.

Luke was here too; working on the trim in the great room.

So that does it until next time.


So be sure to have a most excellent New Year.

Vern