Four Part Harmony

Well, here we are. Our brand new shiny website. What do you think? Pretty fancy eh? There’ll be lots of changes around here I’m sure, and I’m guessing most of the site probably doesn’t even work yet…

But as always, we’ve been busy, and I’ve got a lot of pictures backlogged so the show must go on.

Earlier this month, my pal Gabe was kind enough to invite me to take a trip down to Eugene to see the Oregon Ducks football team play Arizona State. I wasn’t really aware at the time, but it was a big game…tickets were going for hundreds of dollars on craigslist and everyone apparently wanted to be there. Gabe’s wife Maya had to work, and I guess I was just lucky (sorry Maya!) . We left town after breakfast, and were cracking beers in the parking lot by 11:00.

It was fun.

At some point during the day, Gabe convinced me that I should let him set up and host this new blog for us, which I thought was a great idea. Gabe’s a certified internet master…he was hosting websites out of his closet when I met him in Eugene in 1996. I don’t think I even had an email address back then.

Here’s the one photo I have of Gabe that wasn’t taken 10 years ago. Grilling up some potatoes at halftime.

This past week Don and Mary were here. As always, we had a great visit. The weather was decent, if not entirely cooperative. This picture was taken at Bar Carlo, a new breakfast/lunch cafe right around the corner from our house.

With the weather being kind of wet and cool, we ended up pursuing mostly indoor projects. However, we did have a clear afternoon and had enough time to put together a pretty nice extension for the chicken fence using stuff we had lying around. No more escaping chickens! They are much happier, as we can just open the coop for them in the morning and they can come and go as they please.

Don also helped me get a handle on sharpening planes and scrapers, and helped me with some brainstorming for my guitar project. We bought a Stanley plane that needed a lot of work, and we spent quite a few hours sharpening it (it’s still not quite done yet, but it’s very close). This photo shows it after finishing with 150-grit. You can almost make out the camera’s reflection. According to Don you’re supposed to be able to count your whiskers in it. Yikes! That’s a lot of sanding.

One really great project that Don undertook was to re-upholster our dining room chairs. This turned out to be a massive undertaking. There were at least three layers of old fabric on each of the chairs, and the webbing was pretty well stretched out. There were hundreds of little tacks that had to be removed. I don’t believe that he had any prior experience with such a project, but that certainly didn’t stop him from doing a really great job.

And here’s the finished product. They look really nice.

Looks like this post will need to be continued…