Drywall Drama

I hope you can see the image of the latest Lamont flier, that was included in every paper around here. They are hosting a drywall course and I am teaching it. I just said "I have put up drywall before" to the adult learning coordinator and next thing I know I am instructing a drywall course. I am actually really happy about it, because I did not realize how little I knew about it. I got a whole wack of drywalling tools from that bar that paid me with the "$7000 worth of tools", that were really worth about $500. I didn't even know what a lot of the stuff was, but drywallers at the jobs I am doing have had simpathy on me and explianed stuff too me. The more they explain, the more I know it will be hard cramming into the single 6-8 hour day, I am not even sure how long my class is.
I have been flat out, doing the electrical for this church renovation for a local investor. I have been working on that 4-5 days a week for 10-12 hours a day on the church. Then I do Forex classes on Tuesday and Wednesday nights for 2 hours. Thursday nights and Saterdays I have my Masters class at NAIT. Sunday and any other time I can find I have been constructing a super insulated office basically in the back of the barn, with an old double pane church window, that was replaced in the church with a much bigger picture window. I have had no time for anything like the blog, so it has suffered, sorry all. I took on an apprentice and we finnished the wiring in the church last night. Another week the drywallers think they will be finnished the awesome 12' ceiling church, and I will come back to put plugs and switches in. By then I should have my office done and painted, and have a nice quiet place to study for my masters and trade the forex. The office was started well before we took on a room mate, but it is extra important now. Yes we are helping out an 18 year old, who's mom kicked him out, for no real reason besides, 'he is 18 he should be independant now'. He wasn't going to be able to finnish school, having to pay rent somewhere, and find transportation, blah, blah, blah. So he stays in the spare room, and takes tremendous presure off me by chopping all the wood for the fire, and he helps out cleaning, washing dishes and stuff. Wile we try and motivate him to do his school work.
That is all the latest.
PS I think you can double click on the flier and expand it out to see full screen.

Warmer weather

We have a black tin chimney that goes up the top side of the house, a foot away from the house. When the fire goes out at night it attracts condensation and frost on the chimney. Then when we light it it melts rather quickly, and washes off some of its sooty, rusty goodness, falls to the ground and has been forming this big black reverse icicle. The picture doesn't do it any justice, this is a 4' tall icicle.
They say cars don't need to be plugged in above -20. Today was at least one degree above -20, and my truck fired right up on gasoline, didn't seem to be flooding itself, and pushing plumes of black smoke like it was. This happens every winter. Wile I had a job I had the Suzuki for back up, as it always started. But I have nowhere I need to be, and it helped a buddy out to sell suzi the suzuki to him so he could get to work. He then wrote it off in less than a week, driving too fast in poor visibility conditions.

This is a picture from our couch, where we spend most of our time. You can see cosmo enjoying the heat of the main fire place. It is shocking how much less wood we burn when it warms up just 10-15 degrees or so.


There has been requests for better pictures of jack. I have another dark picture, I took for kijjiji. I have a lot of stuff I took from the local bar as payment for my electrical services, when it became apparent they were not going to come up with cash, and there was already $250k worth of leans on the $80k building. One of the items was this wine cooler, I am putting it online for $90, half price of new. If any relatives want it I can do alot better than that, posibly even delivered.
Malcolm

Electrical truck

I found the picture I took months ago, before all the snow, of my truck boxes and drawers that I made. This is wile the trailer was in the back yard , but you can see Michelle's car, the house, and the front yard from another angle.
We've had about enough of the cold weather. The day after I sold my car, something in the truck throttle body injection froze up, and it only runs excessively rich, wile its cold. It runs so rich the gas is making its way down the cylinders and into the oil. Once its warm it wont run, and it has no oil presure, as the oil is so diluted. It does still run on propane, if I change the oil and get some propane. Keeping the house warm involves a full wheel barrow load of wood every day. I think we are ready to head south to Mexico for next winter. We are talking about even selling everything, house included, and not returning to Alberta but rather Victoria or Toronto, maybe a little of both.

Frogger

We bought some new (to us) games for the old Atari, on Ebay, over the last few weeks. My thumb has been getting soar hitting the button on the standard joystick. I sacrificed a broken joystick to swap its cord with an old IBM joystick, and it worked really well, but I still got a soar trigger finger. So as soon as my $0.99 joystick from ebay comes I will use that wire to hook up to the fancy vibrating x-box 360 controller, that I found at the dump. I don't have a pic for this post, so how about an Atari game instead?

Frogger made by Neave Games

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