I wanted to post, to the best of my recollection, the events that occurred between June 26th and July 5th.
( You've seen the photos, now read the drama )

I will post a complete recap of our building vacation, but in the meantime I wanted to share pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/13073825@N07/

Also, lerg posted many great photos on his flickr page too: http://www.flickr.com/photos/akalat/

I've seen this posting on a few friends' LJs. Thought I would pop it on here. I won't be around much after this week as we are going up to Asheville to build the Tumbleweed Tiny House. Thought I would see what people write before go so I feel super good about myself:

There's been an accident, and my memory's been wiped. I have no recollection of who I am. Tell me about myself. What do you know about me? What kind of person am I? What are my likes and dislikes? How did we meet and how long have we known each other? Is there one thing in particular that stands out about me? Tell me who I am.


Post this in your own LJ to see what people say about you

I just wanted to stop by and post the link to flickr for more photos.

This weekend, on Saturday we took the two 16 foot 4x4s up the hill to the build site. I was going to help Matt carry them but he said it was just easier if he did it himself. I followed him to make sure we didn't have any problems. That didn't take as long as I expected it to. Then we took the dremmel tool up and measured the bolts and brackets and cut off any excess bolt. The bolt can't touch the wood, so we had to trim them a bit since setting them in concrete isn't an exact science. once we did that, we could put down the brackets and level with washers. We didn't have the right ratchet so we had to go to the brand new Lowes in Weaverville. We got as much done as we could. Just as we were finishing up, it started to rain. A little thunderstorm directly over Mt. Matt, but the skies were blue all around. We waited until it seemed mostly done and took our showers and then went to Lowes. We got a few things and then went to dinner in Asheville. (Thirsty Monk for Steak Frites...YUM). We came back and watched some of John Adams, which is really good by the way.

The next morning we woke to more rain. We knew we couldn't do much and checked Weather.com for the hour by hour forecast and it didn't appear it would stop until about 11. We did the only thing we could think to do...we went out for breakfast. When we got back we went back up to the clearing to level and do the temporary braces for the 4X4s. We got the brackets tightened down and it looks really good. We didn't have time to cut the 4x6s that make up the posts, so that will be among the first jobs for next week.

I also sprayed the heck out of the poison ivy with Round Up. I will kill that stuff!

That brings us to next week. We leave on Friday for our week long building extravaganza. Different friends are coming to help over different parts of the week. I am so looking forward to it!

Check out the latest photos.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/13073825@N07/

Tomorrow, Among the Oak and Ash release their self titled debut album. Go buy it. It will be on iTunes and Amazon.

I have been a fan of Josh Joplin for many years. I am so excited about this project.

Go buy it. You have no excuse!

This is just a quick post to share the pics from the last two trips. We finished the last concrete pier on Saturday. Even though we mixed the concrete by hand, it was MUCH easier than doing all 7 of the other ones.

We also did a lot of work on the land itself. I didn't get pictures of that. Matt did a lot of weed-whacking. I opened up armageddon on the poison ivy and then made a nice wood pile for the fire pit. For the first time all year, I feel ready to host people. That is a very good thing, since people are showing up in two weeks!

Here are the photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/13073825@N07/

So, we last left our heroine watching oneandonlymatt cart 30 bags of concrete up the logging trail to our Tumbleweed Clearing. Well, after that we made some lunch (we had brought steaks and brussel sprouts for dinner on Saturday but decided to go out instead, so I made them for lunch instead). It was just the fuel we needed. We took ourselves back up to the clearing and started mixing and pouring concrete. It took a couple tries to really get our stride, but we did. We had to find a relatively flat spot for the mixer (harder than it sounds) so Matt had to carry each 80lbs bag of concrete from where he had dumped them to where we had the mixer - about 10 feet or so. By the end of the night we calculated that he had lifted and carried 2400lbs. I was in charge of water - one gallon per bag and we mixed two bags at a time. Then we would fill a bucket and take it to the sonotube and pour it in. Since each sonotube was a different size, the number of bucketfuls differed drastically. Despite our best efforts, we did run into a time issue. We had worked all afternoon and the sun was starting to go down. We really wanted to finish it all, but we had to leave one tube unfinished. We did get the anchor bolts set in the remaining 7 tubes. Next visit, we will have to mix some concrete by hand and finish that last tube, but we figure we can make that happen.

So by this time it was dark and we had to get the ATV back up to the clearing and cart everything back down. We made two trips of stuff essential to return to the barn and covered everything else with tarps. Then we packed up our things and our car and started home. We didn't leave Marshall NC until 11pm Sunday night. My original plan was to sleep in the car and sleep when we got home and go to work at my usual time, but at 1am I realized that wasn't happening. I left a message and said I would be in later in the morning. I hate doing that sort of thing, but I never do it so everything was fine. Matt was really tired at that point so I took over the drive at Tallulah Falls in Georgia and finished the drive all the way home.

In our rush to get things finished up, we forgot to cover the last sonotube. And I also discovered that my camera didn't make it back to Atlanta with me. That meant, it must not have made it off the mountain. I emailed our neighbors who are very gracious to us and asked if they would help us out and cover the tube and find the camera. Both of these things have been accomplished. That means no pictures until after the 14th of June, but I think you can all handle the anticipation.

We will have a post and pier foundation in time to start the build over the week of 4th of July. Hooray!

oneandonlymatt and I are up at Mt. Matt working on the foundation for the house. We have been very pleased with our progress and are planning to stay as late as we need to tonight to get all the cement done. (Hooray for good weather!)

We got here on Friday night and went straight to bed. On saturday we got up intending to do everything but realized there was only so much we could do. So, we made really good progress. We got all the tools up to the tumbleweed clearing. We measured all the sonotubes so we could cut them. We did that with a water level which is my new favorite tool. I enjoyed water leveling as much as I enjoy creating flow charts. You may not know that about me, but I love making flow charts. Then we cut all the tubes. Crazy thing about the human brain. When you look at them they don't look even remotely even but sure enough they are level. Crazy optical illusion. Once we got all those set up and leveled we back filled the holes to brace the sonotubes. And that ended up taking most of the day. We had originally brought food to make but we decided that it would be way too late to start pouring concrete since we really couldn't stop once we started, so we went in to Asheville. We went to Hannah Flannagans and had a couple of beers and some yummy food. When we got back to Mt. Matt we fell right to sleep.

This morning, we got up pretty early and went back up to the clearing. We set up the batter boards and tied up the strings to make sure we have everything level and square. Right now, Matt is taking the concrete up to the clearing three bags at a time on the ATV. It is working very well, but there is little I can do for this process, so here I am. Once he is done with that we will eat some lunch and then it is concrete mixing time. Matt did already deliver the water and cement mixer up there as well. We decided since the weather is so perfect for it, we would stay and do this work as late as we had to. That may make for a long and miserable day at work for me tomorrow, but I'll work it out. It is all worth it to have the Tumbleweed house!

I have taken some photos and will take more. I'll be sure to pop those up on flickr when we get home.

So, back to building. This weekend we were joined by our faithful friend Chad who really loves helping us with our project. And the goal for this weekend was digging the holes for the concrete piers and then pouring those piers. Well, the weather conspired against us and we were only able to dig the holes, but I still call that a success. It was a lot of hard work. We weren't able to stay late today because it rained pretty much all day and rain and concrete don't really mix. Well, they mix all right but not the way we would prefer.

Check out the new pics on flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/13073825@N07/

We were, as you may imagine, up in Asheville again this weekend. We did a lot of work. I don't have any pictures this time around, but I promise there will be many more to come.

( click here if you would like to read a recap of our building project )
Thanks for coming along with me on this crazy journey!

I loved it! I really loved it.
( spoilery info here )

I've just had two days in a row of drastically different entertainment. So here is what I have to say about them. There will be spoilers, so don't click if you don't want to know.

( X-Men Origins: Wolverine )

( Movin' Out )

I can't believe she is 8 years old! It doesn't seem like we've had her for nearly that long!

oneandonlymatt and I went back up to Mt. Matt this weekend to keep working. The project focus for this weekend was marking out the area for the foundation.

We got up to the land on Friday night after work, which put us there around 11pm. We set up camp and then watched the final episode of BBC's Robin Hood, Series 2. It was probably the worst written and acted episode of all of them, and that is really saying a lot because none of them were really good. I have no idea why, but I was really invested in that story. I feel like such a dork.

We slept until 10am on Saturday. When we got up, we had a quick breakfast and started to work. We loaded up the ATV with steaks and string and all the tools one would need to get the foundation area set up. Matt drove up to the Tumbleweed Clearing and I headed up the new northwest passage that we cleared. We spent some time planning but apparently took a little too long and broke for lunch before we got much done. When we got back to work, we were on the clock as we had made dinner plans with our North Carolina Neighbors. This led to some arguing, which didn't help our case for time but we finally decided to stop for the day after getting the front wall area and the two sides pretty much strung and leveled.

As it turned out, it was a good thing we stopped then. We went back down to the barn and took our showers and started to get ready when a sudden downpour started. We waited until it was over when we walked down to our neighbor's house. The four of us went into West Asheville to a Latin Cuisine restaurant called Tomato Kitchen. We sat out on their patio which was gorgeous. The food was fantastic and, of course, the company and conversation were great.

When we got back to the barn, we were pretty tired and we decided just to go right to bed and wake up early. We got up about quarter after 7 and started out the morning by putting together the trailer for the ATV. We got that most of the way finished and went back up to the Tumbleweed Clearing to get some more parts of the foundation area set up. We got one line of stakes set up for the concrete piers.

At 11am we had the car packed up and were ready to head back. We needed to make a stop at the Neighbors' place because a tree had fallen across the road. The Element could get under it no problem, but it will become a problem. Matt and John tried to pull the tree down with John's truck, but that idea didn't quite work out. We finally decided that we would just call in a professional next week to get it take care of.

Now we are home. Matt went to the Bruce Springsteen concert tonight.

I uploaded a couple of photos on flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/13073825@N07/

Why would I want to go the extra mile? If I go an extra mile, I am going to be one whole mile past where I really need to be. That is pretty significant. If I am trying to go home and I go an extra mile, I end up at Publix. I like Publix and all, but it doesn't have my cat or my bed in it. Going the extra mile just seems like a lot of unecessary travel, especially when you've never actually reached your intented goal. How is that better?

I was on my way home last night when I turned down the final leg of my trip. Halfway down the road, the road was closed. I turned around in the cul de sac like everyone else. A Range Rover behind me decided this whole event was apparently my fault and started to drive very aggressively and he zipped around me at the stop light blocking my ability to turn left to where I wanted to go. I turned right and headed in a big circle to get home. I called oneandonlymatt and told him I was trying to get home. He said our power was out. It had been out when he got home at 5. It was 6:15 when I called. When I finally did arrive home, Matt was putting the important contents of the freezer/refrigerator in a cooler.

Figuring there wasn't much else to do besides wait for the power to come back on, we went about our normal Monday night - sushi and grocery shopping. Neither Fuji Hana nor Publix were experiencing power outages. We didn't have much to get, nor did we have the space to store it with the power being out, so it didn't take long.

We got home, put everything away and then got ready to settle in. We got out the flash lights, put on our warmest PJs and decided to watch two DVDs in bed on Matt's laptop. We watched the final episode of "Stephen Fry in America" (Thanks, radiantbaby - we liked it a lot) and then another episode of BBC's "Robin Hood". By then, it was 10pm and the power still wasn't on. The automated system at the power company had said it would be on around 8:30, but those systems are hardly ever truthful. So, I set the alarm on my cell phone and went to sleep. Piglet was under the covers keeping herself warm and by consequence she was keeping me nice and warm too.

I dreamed that the power went back on, but when I woke up in the middle of the night it hadn't. At 4am, the power did go back on. Then I dreamed that because of the power outage I didn't wake up until 8:30 and was clearly late for work. But that didn't actually happen either.

The Tumbleweed Tiny House blog has a post about a guy in British Columbia who just built a Tarleton. This is the model we are building in North Carolina this summer. It is so cool to look at all his photos. oneandonlymatt said it even answered a lot of his questions about the construction.

http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/build-it-yourself/wills-tarleton/

We got an absolute ton of work done yesterday. onandonlymatt, our friend Chad and I went up to Mt. Matt on Friday night and set up camp. We got up early on Saturday and Matt and Chad went into Asheville to rent a DR Brush Mower from a rental place. They brought it back and got right to work. They cleared the entire meadow behind the barn. It looks soooo good. Then the mower broke (the battery died and the guy at the rental place just told them to jump it when they called him to tell him it was dead). We borrowed jumper cables from our neighbors and used the battery pack that we use for our power up there to jump it. It worked and they took it up to the Tumbleweed Clearing to get that prepped for building. They wanted to do two more spots (the lower clearing and the ridge) to make camping areas but since they had to deal with the battery they ran out of time. But we are very happy with the progress that did happen. And we can clear the other two spots with our chainsaw and weed-eater, it will just take a little more time. Then we came home last night instead of staying in Marshall. Today, Matt and I are not doing much of anything.

Enough babbling from me. I'll let the photos do the talking. I took a million of them and they are now on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/13073825@N07/

1) Sending me your resume more than once in one day does not help me find you a job any faster. If you send it once and I am unable to respond within the first hour, please don't send it again...and again...and again.

2) I don't just have an unlimited number of available jobs that I can place you in. Our clients request certain skill sets and either you qualify for the job or you don't. Arguing with me does not make you qualified for a job you are not qualified for.

3) If you are applying for a "receptionist" position, make sure your resume doesn't say your objective is to get a job in "accounting", "real estate" or anything else that isn't "receptionist".

4) If you are currently making $0.00 an hour and I offer you a project for a few days making $10.00 an hour, why do you say no and tell me it is because it doesn't pay enough. I completely understand if you just have other things going on, but to say it is because of the pay makes no sense to me. Never has, never will.