NWOutdoorGrrl

A month or so ago, Nick and I noticed that a few boards on our deck were disintegrating. Dry rot. Uh-ho. A quick investigation showed that it only affected six boards, so we did our best to keep people from falling through the increasingly large hole in our deck until we had the time to replace the wood.

Getting them out wasn’t all that hard – a jig saw and hammer did the trick. We had a circus-style near miss, however, when Keith … oh, whoops! I promised not to tell.

The next step was cutting the boards to length and banging the tongue into the groove.

Getting the first board in was quite a trick. It didn’t want to seat properly, so I grabbed a block of wood and hammer to convince the board to go where I wanted it to. The most convincing thing I did, though, was hammer the knuckle on my left index finger. Yeow!

I covered up my rapidly forming bruise with a band aid right away, so I really don’t know how bad it is. Bending it feels bad; ice feels good. If it’s particularly gruesome, I’ll post a picture later.

In the mean time, we had a hole to cover. Measure twice; cut once!

A few screws to hold everything in place and a bit of oil to keep the rain away, and ta-da!

With any luck, the boards will get that weathered grey color sooner rather than later.

OMG! This almost makes me want to foster another batch of kittens.

You thought this was going to be a lovely tribute to Steve Jobs. Sorry to disappoint. I have a lot of memories associated with the products that his company created (the first thing I ever had to really save my allowance for and do extra chores to earn was a Macintosh computer), but this post is really about something much more immediate – the official end of summer. Oh sure, some might go by the calendar, but not me. Summer officially stops when the snow starts falling at Paradise:

Other passes have already had some snow. Witness this picture taken at the hairpin below Liberty Bell in Highway 20 at the end of September. But it’s a mere intellectual oddity that snow might fall in our state while it’s still summer.

Good bye shorts. Good bye cute sun dresses. Hello sweaters, scarves, hats, and hot chocolate!

I’m admittedly a very difficult restaurant customer. I almost never order something exactly as it comes on the menu, and I frequently make bizarre and difficult requests. I’m grateful, though, that most kitchens will bend over backwards to make me happy. And if I’m ever frustrated by not quite getting what I want, I just need to remember that in some places it can be hard to order a simple side of toast: