Back From A Long Weekend

It’s about time I made a blog update.  I’ve been out at the cabin for the last few days (since last Thursday night) and quite frankly, it’s kind of nice to be home to rest.  I had intended to blog a bit out there but just didn’t have time.  (I did, however, manage to keep up with a lot of the blogs in my reader).  What was I doing out there?

Well, I started Friday morning by getting out early to continue caulking our place and getting it ready to paint.  In case you don’t recall, we have a family cabin that we all built a few years ago directly across the street from where we are building our cabin.  That makes it nice for us.  We can go up and be comfortable in the family cabin and then work on ours.  Now that my dad has passed away, I try to keep up on the maintenance on the family cabin so that my mom doesn’t feel overwhelmed with the upkeep.  So, between doing the maintenance on her place and building our place, I find I’m always pretty busy out there.  Anyway, back to what I was saying.  On Friday I got out early and did a bunch of caulking until I ran out of caulk.  After that, my wife, daughter and I headed in to “town” to get some groceries for the weekend.  I was amazed how busy it was getting out there.  A town that is normally fairly “gray haired” was hopping with tons of families etc.  Apparently we weren’t the only ones that got out there early for the memorial day weekend.  Once we got back from shopping I did a little bit more wiring on the cabin and then we just took it easy that evening.

Saturday was where the hard work started.  We have a ton of dirt piled up on our lot because we had to dig it out for the foundation.  I have been planning on renting a backhoe to move the dirt but got a burst of energy and decided to start moving the dirt by wheelbarrow.  I have no idea how much dirt I moved, but I can tell you it was a lot.  I was at it non-stop for about 4-5 hours.  I decided that I could use the exercise and was looking forward to being nice and tired and sore the next day.  I definitely succeeded at that.  (When you are an office sissy like me, I think it’s natural to want to do some hard labor now and then to make sure you still can)  I woke up the next morning feeling like I got hit by a train.  I decided that the best way to feel better was to stretch a bit and then go right back at it.  After breakfast, I headed out again and did another 4 hours on Sunday.  I think that’s probably the hardest I’ve worked in at least 10 years.  I think about 5 or 6 people must have come by and thought out loud how much easier it would be with a bobcat or backhoe.  I just smiled, nodded in agreement and then said, “But I wouldn’t be getting all this cheap exercise”.  After this weekend, I think I’ve decided to save the $500 and just do the rest by hand as well.  I’m probably about halfway done and I know I’m in better shape for it.  It just goes to show that being cheap can be good for you in so many ways.  :)

After all the manual labor on Sunday, we got together with some of the neighbors out there and had a big barbeque.  It was definitely a great time and is one of the big reasons why we love it out there.  The people around us are great and the area is just beautiful.  Oh, I forgot to mention that we went out to an indian casino on Saturday night, gambled (aka: gave away) $20 and then went to an all you can eat buffet.  I think my wife got more than her money’s worth with all the fresh crab and seafood she ate.  God, I love a good buffet.  Having eaten 3 times as much as I should have Saturday night probably played in to the desire to go back out and do a bunch of hard work on Sunday too.  :)