July 11-13 -- more rain, more mortar

We are certainly in the rainy season -- when I was talking to Dave Lowry and mentioned the rain he said that they had not lost any work days to rain south of here. Many of the systems that hit us come across the top of the great lakes or come up from the southwest so those would have missed Muskoka just 100 miles south. Oh well -- I'm making progress "down below" as a result.

The outlook for the next 4 days calls for three days of rain. We'll see.

Down Below -- is almost completely orange now. I have two small strips left to do today and then I'm finished with Ditra until I get tiles laid. I may be finished with Ditra until September which is when I'll probably be tackling the games room. I cannot imagine me getting to it before then.

I also installed the exhaust for the range hood. I created my own problem with this one -- after installation I turned on the burners and ran the fan to test. Well, the caulking started to run ... what a mess. That took as much time to cleanup as the installation.

More bad news on the tile delivery yesterday -- I won't have them until Tuesday the 17th, which gives me 10 days or so until people start arriving. It's actually worse than that since we cannot have traffic on the tiles until about two days after they are grouted. I almost need 4 days after the tiles are laid. Six days to get from Toronto to here ... unbelievable.

Kylie has been having a good time with her friend Lauren. Sandy took them into Port Loring on Wednesday -- to the market; Trash & Treasures, Genevieves ... and then lunch somewhere. They hung out all day, talking, computer, helping Sandy in the barn etc. It's like they've been friends forever. Yesterday Lauren was tied up a lot of the day visiting relatives and then came over for the evening. She goes home today for a soccer tournament and will be back up -- perhaps sometime next week -- the schedule seems fluid.

The plan for today -- finish Ditra, drywall mud bedroom closet (fix a problem that I have with one corner), create shower threshold in bathroom.

I partially installed the closet organizer on my side of the master bedroom closet when Sandy brought it back from Sudbury on Tuesday. It's really just two uprights with three fixed shelves for structural support and lots of pre-drilled holes for extra shelves and hang bars. Prior to that I had to take down the 8' shelf and hang bar that I installed last year. I still have more work to do -- cut the upper shelf, baseboards etc. -- probably 3-4 hours work. If it looks like I'll get a break in the rain I can take out the saw and get some of that done in the next couple of days.

Jason is busy working on his place, prepping the one room to convert it into a laundry room / bathroom and extending his loft. That involves removing ceiling and wallboard, re-routing wires etc. When he removed one section of wallboard he found the car speaker still installed in the wall from when we were kids. He had a bedroom with bunks and we had a car radio and car battery (we didn't have electricity then). I used to sleep at his place a lot -- he stayed with us when my parents were on vacation and vice-versa.

Not only did we not have electricity, there was no road or telephone. We came in by boat. Using the car battery was against my father's better judgement ... he figured that the radio would run down the battery ... and he was right. When we realized that the battery was starting to run down we drove down to the landing with the boat and the battery, put it back into the car and drove down the road two miles expecting that driving 4 miles would charge the battery again !!?? We turned the car around and it stalled. It wouldn't start because the battery was run down -- oh boy, were we going to get into trouble.

We ran back to the landing -- carrying the car battery, took the boat back to the cottage, got the keys for the Volkswagon (we had two cars at the landing during vacation), boated back to the landing, borrowed the car battery from the Beech's car (a neighbour), drove back to the Chrysler with the Volkswagon and the battery, started the Chrysler, drove both back, reinstalled the Beech's car battery ... boated back to the cottage and confessed our sins. The Beechs, Davies and Thompsons were all together at our cottage that evening. I seem to recall my father working our butts off with chores the next day -- and we were really hurting from running two miles with a car battery between us. Believe it or not, back then you could open the hoods of most cars from the front even if the car was locked. Today you'd be missing car parts if you could access the engine compartment.

That was just one of our escapades ...

Sandy has been working on the pickets etc. for the stairs. Kylie has sanded the loose rust etc. off the boathouse door -- it's going to get a facelift if we get a break from the rain.

You know, when I started writing this blog the sky was just starting to get light and it looked like we might get some sun. The clouds have now moved in and I just checked the Doppler Radar -- rain is headed our way. Par for the course. Very strange weather this year.

Wildlife -- Canada Geese -- we've seen them flying overhead of course and I have seen then down by the dam, but yesterday a pair of Canada Geese and two goslings hung around the cove for the longest time. As long as people were outside, or Abby, they stayed out in the water, but once we were inside they came into the cove and walked up on the beach. With only two goslings -- and they're large at this point but not flying yet -- the rest of the brood must have been eaten by predators, likely large fish if they're spending their time on the water.

... time for breakfast.