Friday, April 21, 2017

Teeny, Tiny House: Firewood Shed

One infuriating thing about having neighbors, even when they are 1 acre away is that they can do things to their home, property, or land that can adversely affect your house or lifestyle. In our case, our fairly new next door neighbor decided to clear his land of almost all vegetation. Cutting down trees, clearing underbrush and chopping down bushes. Hubs and I prefer a more natural approach to our land. In Oregon, there is no sense in fighting nature, it will grow as it wishes so best just to enjoy it. Our neighbor has decided on the more hair-pulling approach and good luck to him. The downfall for us is that now we see his house, we see his cars, we see his shed, we just see him and the point of living outside of town is not hear or see each other, if possible. Hubs came up with an inventive solution. Build a firewood shed (which we desperately needed anyway) in the line of sight of his house so that we can block the view. In the future, maybe we can plant some additional foliage behind the shed to further create a barrier between them and us.

The frame of the shed went up around Valentine's Day.
It has been terribly rainy (more so than usual) so Hubs has had to work on it slowly on weekends where there is little or no rain which took until April to achieve.
Do you see our neighbor's shed?? Why? I mean just...why live on land if you are just going to chop it all down?

The old shed that is an eye sore, and frankly probably should be condemned, will be coming down this summer. It is ugly, it is home to a host of animals and insects and it makes pulling the Challenger out of the garage a headache. We cannot wait for it to be gone!

 I took this picture today, notice how beautiful and sunny it is! The flowers are finally blooming, the grass is that insane green color and the trees are getting leaves. I love spring so much!
The shed trim isn't completed yet and we still need to paint the exterior but having a place to store and season the firewood will ensure that we don't have another winter of wet, unusable wood.
The shed should hold about 5 cords of wood which is more than we should need in one winter.

You know what the most amazing thing to me is? Hubs build this out of his brain using a picture. No plans, no schematics, no dimensions, just *poof* out of his brain. Plus, he had no help (not even from me), built the whole thing with his own two hands. I am terribly impressed.

This photo was taken as if you were driving up the driveway. Can you imagine how wonderful the yard will look without that disgusting shed? I can't wait! 

Sunday, April 2, 2017

Game of Thrones In Concert (includes video)

For my birthday, which passed back in March, my sister bought me two tickets to the Game of Thrones concert at the Moda Center here in Portland. I knew it was coming to town and wanted to attend it with my girlfriend Brandi but Hubs kept telling me to hold off buying tickets. I started to quickly suspect that he had something up his sleeve but was very much surprised to find that it was my sister who had splurged on tickets.

On the night of the event, Brandi and I went out to dinner, wearing our finest GoT geeky apparel; her in a shirt which said "That's what I do, I drink and I know things" (which is even funnier because she owns a wine business) and I in my Hound helm shirt. We arrived at the Moda Center right on time, found a parking space ridiculously close to the venue, found our seats astoundingly fast and even indulged in some beverages before the show.

The show itself was incredible! Hubs and I had attended Star Wars in Concert back before moving to Oregon but they have really upped their game in the past 6+ years. This was an entirely new experience which included several stages, lights, video and even fire. There was a live orchestra and choir which performed the music from the show, conducted by the composer himself Ramin Djawadi. I cannot say enough amazing things about this experience! If you ever have an opportunity to attend something similar, I highly recommend it. One downside to the Moda Center is that they did not have a space where they could set up costumes and props from the show for public viewing like in other cities. That would have just been icing on the cake to have been able to see those as well.



Battle of the Bastards