The futon has landed

Wow - two posts the same morning. Can you tell I'm excited? More like relieved actually. It went together, went to the bus and actually fit this time. It doesn't bear too close inspection but it looks good in the picture. What the picture doesn't capture is how much room it has freed up. It feels like there is actually an aisle down the middle of the living room now. Time will tell if the mattress will stay in position. The back of the futon stops below the level of the bottom of the windows and the mattress top actually rests against the window ledge. That was deliberate because there is a recess under the windows that the futon now sits back into which is part of the extra space that we have created. I also cut the seat bottom a little shorter than the design. Well - - actually I cut it a lot shorter and then had to lengthen it again after the 1st design flaw showed up.

Now I've got a couple of days work ahead of me to put the shop back in order. It has slowly deteriorated over the course of the project to the point where it is now in complete disarray. And whaddaya know? I just previewed this and figured out where my missing 3/8 ratchet is - that would be it lying on the counter next to the right armrest of the new futon.

Not much more politics and a futon

Its worse that I thought. Turns out Lorne's astute negotiations managed to get the province from zero liability for cleanup to $70 million. Man that was one masterful piece of negotiation - what a genius you are Lorne. I'm sorry I ever doubted your ability. So in exchange for taking on a $70 million cleanup liability and paying Domtar $100 million we the people get a money losing pulp mill complete with a radical union that doesn't want to work. This is after all the same union that pioneered the "wobble" as an alternative to an out and out work stoppage. Don't know what a "wobble" is? That's probably because it started at the P.A. pulp mill and maybe you never worked in a union shop. A "wobble" is where everyone sits on their lunch pail and wobbles. Don't believe me? You think I could actually make that up?

From one disaster to another - I have been rushing to get my newly built futon into the bus. I should have remembered my first rule. I am a carpenter, not a cabinetmaker. Remember the last time I thought I was ready to put it in the bus I discovered that my redesign had created the feature that the seat bottom didn't actually reach to the rail that it was supposed to rest on. So I made just a fine bed but, when you folded it up into a couch, the seat fell on the floor. But Thursday night I was finally ready - the last coat of finish was hard enough to move and assemble. I had the old futon torn apart ready to take out of the bus. Everything was good to go.

We dragged the pieces of the old futon out and carried the frame for the new one in. As I had hoped it fit neatly through the door but then .... oooooooppppppss. It was about 5" too wide to fit between the two cabinets on either end. I can't imagine how I managed to make that critical an error. I distinctly remember measuring that and it would have been dead simple to adjust the drawings for that dimension. Whatever the reason, I clearly didn't make the adjustment. So then everything has to go back out to the shop & I have to come up with a plan for a redesign AGAIN. This one, despite making me almost physically sick at the time, wasn't that big a deal. A couple of strategic cuts with the Skilsaw and some glue put everything back together at the right size (I hope). Along the way I was able to clean up some of the boogie fixes I had done to increase the seat depth so that wasn't all bad. Today we will find out if my fixes have worked.

We need to get the oak futon in the bus so we can move the metal futon that was in the bus to the house. We don't have a double width guest bed presently. Karlos Juan and Adrianna arrive Wednesday & we would like to be able to put them up in the house for the few nights that we are going to be home while they are here. We're going to put the metal futon in the spare bedroom/office so that we have a bed in there that doesn't take up the whole room for the 99% of the time that it isn't being a bed.

There are some CropLife meetings in Saskatoon this coming week so we are going to go to Saskatoon on Tuesday in time for a reception that evening. I can then catch some of the meetings on Wednesday before we pick up the Lopez Diaz Wednesday evening. We'll spend the night there and come home Thursday morning. There's also a "Train2Invest" seminar in Saskatoon Wednesday night. I'm not sure what to make of that outfit - they have been getting really good reviews in Grainews & I have talked to a couple of people who have been through their program who gave it really high marks. It still smells like snake oil to me but we're going to attend their seminar anyway and see what they have to say.

Karla is taking her parents to Waskesiu for the weekend - Marilyn & I will stay home and work to make up for some of the time we will be away the next week. Then we'll leave for Regina on Monday, spend all of Tuesday in Regina and head west on Wednesday morning for the great Banff adventure. Time to go find out why the futon won't fit this time. If it ever does fit I will post a picture of it in its new home. Later. (maybe much later for the photo)

Domtar shares will certainly go up

I have never had much use for Lorne Calvert but yesterday's announcement that the government of Sask. is going to buy the pulp mill that both Weyerhauser & Domtar have concluded is uneconomical just confirms my certainty that the man is a moron. This morning the newscasts are all focussed on whether this will mean new jobs in Prince Albert and what a wonderful thing it is for the P.A. economy. HELLO - has everyone taken leave of their senses? Its about making money. If it doesn't make money it doesn't work. End of story.

This is a pulp and paper mill with a list of problems longer than my arm. They are 1500 miles from tidewater making a product that the world increasingly doesn't want with a labour force that has a history of lacklustre work ethics and underproductivity. What incredible hubris would possess the provincial government to believe that they are wiser than the two largest paper producers in the world. What would possess them to believe that a government run operation could succeed where industry giants had failed?

And what joy must there be in the Domtar boardroom. I can almost hear the discussion now "OK guys - on the one hand we could do a site cleanup - let's say that might cost us 15 or 20 million but its kind of open ended and we could end up on the hook for years to come at the whim of SERM. On the other hand the province will give us $100 million. What should we do?" Gee, I wonder how long that decision took.

The really frightening aspect of this is that the Sask public is probably stupid enough to put this moron back into office because he has "saved the pulp mill". I guess the people truly do get the government they deserve.

Sunday - change of plans

Marilyn's workshop got shortened dramatically. Only 3 people showed up for the session yesterday & one of them wasn't coming back today. So there was no workshop today.

Jorgito & I spent yesterday alone - I worked on a CFBAS file - he slept. Today was pretty laid back for everyone. We stayed in P.A. because I need to go to Maymont (b/n North Battleford & Saskatoon) on Monday to take some pictures for the CAAR training that I am developing.

Its definitely turning into fall now - the leaves in the campground are starting to turn yellow. I just checked a forecast on Accuweather and they are calling for 2" of snow accumulating overnight Tuesday. We could do without that but I guess it is inevitable. Getting away to Mexico at the end of November looks better (and more important) every day.

The bus is infested with mice. Not the gray, running around kind. More the fluorescent coloured fuzzy with a felt tail kind. Marilyn buys them in packages of 5 at the grocery store. George loses them. He has 20 hidden in the house somewhere. He has 3 hidden in the bus. The other two he drowns regularly. He is obsessed with water. He loves to perch on the top of a toilet bowl and dabble his paws in the water. If he is really thirsty he will drink but otherwise he likes to dip his paws in his water and then lick them off. And he really likes holding his mice underwater until they are thoroughly dead and then dragging them around the bus sopping wet.

Running back to P.A.

I see that this doesn't always work quite the way it was intended to - this is the 2nd time around for this post. I'm not sure it is like wine. It may not improve with age.

We are moved back to P.A. now. Here is the Datastorm map that keeps track of where our dish is located. Of course if you are reading this some time after this weekend then that map may not be accurate anymore but it will be interesting to see what it shows so I will leave that link in anyway.

Last night Marilyn cooked supper for our hosts. After supper we had a bit of a visit with Murray and Jill's daughter Alison who had just arrived home from Kananaskis. She is getting ready to go to university in San Bernardino, leaving at the end of next week with Murray to drive down there. We said our goodbyes last night because they all had to either go to work, go to school or sleep in this morning.

I had a morning meeting with Adelle Buettner who owns the business that provides contract administration to I.D.E.A. That is the group that has hired me to be their executive director. We ended up having lunch with Blaine Canitz who was their previous exec dir. Then I headed back out to the farm to get hooked up for the move to P.A.

The satellite setup took a little longer this time but it was nothing to do with the satellite. It turns out that the network cable that I reused to connect the modem to the router inside the bus wasn't such a bargain. I eventually gave up trying to make it work, went into P.A. and bought a new cable. Then I had to feed it through all the same tight spots that I had orignally fed the used cable through but everything is working just fine now. I've got some more renovating to do inside the bar to accomodate the router and the network cables. Right now we have a spaghetti bowl of cables across the floor and that isn't going to continue.

Marilyn is taking a course on screenwriting. She is at a lecture tonight and has workshops all weekend. I have lots of work to do, plenty of books to read, a cat to keep me company and a well stocked fridge so I think I will do OK. If we hadn't just been out to Shellbrook I would be going out there and I may still go there on Sunday for a little while.

On Monday I have to go over to Maymont to take some pictures for the CAAR training project I am working on. Then we will move back home whenever it works for Marilyn. If she needs to be on campus we will just stay here. If not, we'll go back to Nipawin for a while. We have to be in Saskatoon a week from this Wednesday to pick up Carlos Juan and Adrianna. I need to spend a few days at home between now and then in order to finish off the futon so that we can get the one that is in here now out and moved into the house. That way we will have a second double bed in the house as well as a guest bed in the bus.

Now - I'll try posting this again but I won't be closing this browser window until I am dead certain that this has posted.

An afternoon on the river

We spent a wonderful afternoon on the river in Saskatoon with Blaine, Jackie and their son Aaron. Marilyn lets us know she is finished her run when she does her signature "Rocky" finish. Sometimes she also has a rocky start but that is another matter altogether. Karla had a great afternoon on both the wakeboard and her skis. Here she is finishing up her wakeboard run in front of the Bessborough Hotel.

The famous Saskatoon River Landing area is in the background of this photo as well as two of the bridges that the Bridge City is named for.

Supper with RJ & Josh

Sept 1
Karla met the long lost Josh for coffee this afternoon. RJ came for lunch at the bus. He and I hung out for the afternoon, watched Murray & Thomas combine for a while and then met Marilyn, Karla & Josh for supper at Red Lobster. Josh seems OK - pretty smitten with Karla.

I spent a bunch of the past 2 days getting Marilyn's computer to work in its new environment. She doesn't need a whole lot of computing horsepower - she uses Word a lot and needs to be online reliably. Yesterday it all came together and she can now get into SIAST's remote desktop system which a good friend of ours assured us would be impossible with this satellite connection.

So far the only thing I have found that the satellite won't do reliably is stream audio. That's no big surprise I guess but it sure would have been nice to have CBC in Mexico. We can get radio feeds off the ExpressVu box so we won't be completely cut off from Canadian news but it would have been great to get our choice of audio feeds from across the country.