Sunday, March 14, 2010

Random weather and other woes

Freaky spring weather - one day the Low is 20 below and the next it's 20 above, some days there's only a 10 degree difference between High and Low and other days it's almost 40, some days it snows, other days it melts, and it's almost always windy. It's not officially Breakup since we haven't had any sustained melt yet, but I don't think it's too far off.  It's a little tough on the body to handle 40 degree shifts in temps from day to day, you're either freezing or roasting as you try to adjust.

We're both still battling the crud. Don't know whether this is the same cold that won't go away, several colds back to back, or if I picked up something entirely different in Fairbanks. I think this latest iteration is probably something new from Fairbanks since it's messing up my guts something horrible and making me really really tired all the time. The weather isn't helping either, I'm sure. Needless to say, G's been doing most of the firewood scavenging because everytime I go out to help I wind up in bed again. Frustrating!!! Doubt we'll get the rest of the trail cleared by next Sunday like we were hoping. Ultra-frustrating!!!

Also, it appears that Sonja didn't make it out of that run off the road entirely unscathed... we seem to have a slow leak in rear tire, which is now almost flat. Can't tell if it's a puncture of some sort, or if I just lost the seal when I plowed into the snow bank. Oh well, we'll have to run the compressor to fill it up and pray it doesn't need to be replaced immediately... which would mean another trip into Fairbanks if the tire holds out that long, because the tire and rim weight too much to take it on the mail plane into the city (ooops!). We do have replacement tires, but I don't think anyone in Manley has a way to get it on the rim... and I really don't want to mess with unmounting and mounting tires without the proper equipment since that can be really dangerous. We'll just have to do what we have to do. Luckily we're not in any desperate need for transportation at the moment.

I got 90% finished with the building plans and then realized I forgot something that is going to change the whole model. ARG!!!!  But at least I'm getting lots of practice using SketchUp, so redrafts aren't taking as long as they were before. And can I just say that building stairs is a major PITA!! Not just modeling stairs, but actually figuring out how to get a usable staircase to fit in your tiny house, within the major framing, and still be marginally close to code-compliant. We don't actually need to be code compliant, but I don't want to be falling down my stairs and breaking my a$$ all the time either... that's one of the reasons I'm trying to put stairs in instead of the typical loft ladder. I'm such an uncoordinated spaz that stairs and ladders can be very dangerous creations.  Ahhhh, the joys of doing everything yourself!  But at least I got all my engineering math done, so all I have to do is move the pieces around until every fits and is stable.

3 comments:

Urbancowgrrl said...

Yuck! Sorry to hear you caught the crud. I was thinking the other day how you guys won't be getting sick much because you're so isolated (as opposed to me in the city) but I was sadly wrong it sounds like.

Our teeny little city house couldn't accommodate regular stairs so we put in an oak spiral staircase and it's pretty cool - not creepy like those rickety old black iron ones from when I was a kid. Don't know what kind of tools you'd need for carving the support poles and railing though. Ours was hand-made but not by me so not sure how the guy did it.

wannabe1 said...

Ditto on "human are funny, stay warm and get well!!

Jeremy and Jenny said...

Get well ya'll! Sending some healing energy your way:)