We are slowly, but surely, moving our website & blog over to our me.com space, which is why you haven't seen an update to THIS blog since the beginning of the summer!

Here is our new URL:

http://web.me.com/sherylwittig/sherylwittig/Blog/Blog.html 

 (I would make the above a hyperlink, but this lousy Tripod/Lycos blog tool isn't cooperating). 

Posted at 6:34 PM YDT

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Our mosquito season began on June 5 this year, the same day as it did last year.  I [Michael] use the 5th because Becky's birthday is on June 4, and I don't want to discourage people from coming to Becky's birthday party.  In truth the mosquitoes appear in April, and their numbers slowly build through the spring, but for the last two years they haven't really acquired their taste for blood until early June.  I didn't have to start using bug spray until after the party this year.

Until then, our little acre of forest is a paradise.  Our lot straddles the terminal moraine of the Mendenhall Glacier, a pile of sand and small rocks (and a few larger ones as well) left behind when the glacier began retreating from here about four hundred years ago.  There are trees now, hundreds on our property alone,  predominantly spruce and hemlock with some alder and cottonwood (I think) thrown in, several of which are more than a century old.  We have many blueberry bushes below the trees, and a layer of moss that covers over the slight ridgeline our house straddles.  There are two creeks on the property, both of which tend to go almost dry this time of year, and a lovely variety of small plants pushing up all along the banks.  It's all lovely.

Like last year, we hosted Becky's party in our back yard.  Also like last year, we were greeted with warm and sunny weather.  This year's bunch of kids was much more active than last year and were a treat to watch.  They took full advantage of the swings and the woods, running, playing, pretending, investigating, and doing all the other things kids just out of Kindergarten might do.  The kids were busy enough with each other that the adults even had a chance to socialize!  A good time was had by all.

Becky lost her long hair again.  I was keeping up with it during the school year, brushing it out and tying it up every day, but once summer set in I didn't.  Her hair soon became quite an annoyance, and she quickly agreed that she wanted it short if short meant no more tangled hair.  Sheryl was so eager to stop fussing with it she even allowed me to cut it!

We had a wonderfully dry spring with many sunny days and very little rain, allowing me to get much of the foundation insulation done.  The day after Becky's party I dismantled most of the rear deck and began trenching along the north wall.  Most recently I built a small landing for one of our back doors and finished the surround for the crawlspace entry; the next task is to remove the rest of the old deck and complete the below grade work along the north wall, which I hope to have done before my dad gets here in July.

Throughout the dig I have been pleased to find very few rocks and about the easiest digging I have ever done.  This is especially pleasing because I'm not young (48 today) and I really do want my projects to go as easily as possible. Fortunately, our house apparently rests on top glacial deposits rather than on the bedrock our nearby river had to carve through.

Despite their numbers, the mosquitoes have been almost a non-issue.  When I go out in the morning I'll dose myself with a little Off (it smells better to me than their competitors), and even when I'm out for hours, sweating hard from digging, I'm not getting any bites.  The mosquitoes are certainly there, and it's a little unnerving at times when I start to look at how many are flying nearby, but the bug spray does its stuff, allowing me to do mine.

Sheryl is administering a summer camp program for the next two weeks.  My dad gets here when that concludes and we all go to Anchorage together (to visit Sheryl's family and attend her 30th high school reunion), I come back here with my dad to meet my brother and spend some quality time together working on my insulation project, my dad goes home and my brother goes to Anchorage with me, and we all come home.  But wait, there's more!  After that, I fly to Austin for my 30th high school reunion (even though I graduated in Oakland) and to see my mom and my oldest daughter. Then Sheryl will need to get ready for her new teaching assignment.

The rest of the summer will be busy.

Posted at 9:35 AM YDT

Updated: Monday, June 22, 2009 10:11 AM YDT

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Rain?  In Juneau?  An inch of rain fell into the rain gauge on our back fence in the last twenty four hours, the first appreciable rainfall we've had in over two weeks.  It's been a lovely spring.

And it's been a busy spring too.   Even before the ground thawed I [Michael] was out on the east wall of the house, digging down to the foot of the foundation and out.  We're enclosing the crawl space and installing "wing" insulation in accordance with the latest advice from the cold-climate construction people, as a part of the overall insulation project on the house.  Before the summer is out we plan to completely wrap the house inside of four inches of foam from the footer up to the ceiling, and seal up the attic above the bedrooms while adding more insulation up there.

The work is going well.  The digging so far isn't hard at all, compared to my last endeavor at our previous house (where every foot met with many large rocks).  The original plan was to rent a backhoe to save time, but once I started digging I just kept going, and it was soon apparent that the expense wouldn't be worth the limited time I would save.  The trench pictured here took two afternoons to complete.

And this first trench is already filled back in!  The insulation package and drainage system went in without any hitches.  The only unanticipated delay came with the discovery of a nest of finch eggs outside a bedroom window, which meant delaying the insulation on the upper part of the wall for a few more weeks.  No matter: I moved on to the lower south wall and dug another long trench in a very few hours, then put in a part of that insulation before the weather began to change.

To say that I am happy with the progress so far would be fair enough.  Actually I am quite pleased with the whole affair, and especially tickled to be cruising through this kind of work at the rate my 47 year old (48 next month) body is allowing.  Stiff?  Sore?  Nope!  Even my back has stopped giving me trouble!

The ground work along the east wall was especially gratifying because of the weather.  This was the only wall with a drip line (no rain gutter).  No rain meant no time dealing with tarps, and no struggling to keep water out of the trench.  Dry weather also made each shovel of dirt that much lighter.

And in two more weeks Sheryl will be out of school, and I can devote even more time into the project.  Lots to do, but if the work so far is any indication, it won't be so much that I don't get it all done.

Other events...

Sheryl will be transferring jobs and schools next year.  She's been teaching the extended learning program (and music for a while) at Riverbend Elementary since before we met.  Today she was formally offered (and accepted) the split post of music teacher/librarian at Auke Bay Elementary.  She's looking forward to the change, especially since this is the school Becky is and Michael will be attending.

We got most of our firewood for next winter yesterday, months ahead of when we stocked up last summer.  My neighbor, the same one who gave me half his wood last year in exchange for splitting the rounds he harvested from several trees he had cut, needed the OTHER half moved to get equipment in to landscape part of his back yard!  I volunteered to help him out, and even gave him a little money for the wood.  So for four hours yesterday I moved about a cord and a half of wood four times (once into the trailer, then from trailer to wheelbarrow, wheelbarrow to shed floor, and finally from the floor onto the stack).

And we're finding time to work on the sailboat too, scraping and cleaning, cleaning and scraping.  In truth, the boat is seaworthy now, but we want it to look good too.  We're also hopeful that we may be able to get a nearly new outboard for it from another neighbor of ours...

This would be the neighbor who had something of a feud with the previous owner of our house.  The story I heard was that my neighbor wanted a place to park a boat one year and there was space in the corner of our property.  Once upon a time that corner was the end of the road and there was a turnaround (it's a through road now), and there was disagreement whether the easement for the turnaround still existed (it doesn't).  There were some hard feelings between them.  The first week we owned this house I went over and introduced myself, told my neighbor that I had no plans for the space and he was welcome to use it if he needed it, and that I would let him know if that ever became a problem.  He's never parked anything there, but we've been on good terms from the outset.  We talk regularly.  He came over when the sailboat appeared in our driveway and we got to talking, and he told me about his outboard: a little loud and more vibration than he wanted on his skiff, but probably just right for my needs.

Seems that getting and staying on good terms with the neighbors has benefits.

Posted at 11:03 PM YDT

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We have a sailboat!

Once upon a time, I [Michael] owned a small sailboat.  It was a 19' Cape Dory Typhoon, seaworthy and simple, and for several years I took it out in all kinds of weather, plying the waters around Juneau.  I liked the boat for many reasons: a fixed keel (retractable keel hardware needs extra care in salt water and retractables aren't as suited to heavy-weather sailing), shallow draft (a 30" draft meant that I could see the bottom before the boat could touch it), low freeboard (the height of the deck above waterline, low freeboard means less wind resistance and an easier climb back on in case of falling off), and simple rigging (to make single-handed sailing practical).

I especially liked the CD (Cape Dory) for its seaworthiness and handling. The design was such that the only way to sink it would have been to puncture the hull, an unlikely event unless I piled into rocks, in which case the water would be shallow enough to jump ship.  The handling was stellar, with sails easy to manipulate and balanced to allow for hands-free sailing (so I could lash the rudder in place and go work on the bow if need be while the sailboat proceeded on course, or if I just wanted to sit back and watch the scenery). It was a wonderful little boat, especially in rough weather when all the power boats (and other saiboats too) retreated to shore and I had the water all to myself.

But the old sailboat had its limitations.  Mostly, it was small and could only sleep two.  It also lacked a trailer, so the boat had to be based permanently in the water (sea plants had no trouble with this, which made the boat sail slower) and I couldn't take it to the other launching areas around town. 

When I went into the MAT program a decade ago I thought I would probably leave Juneau afterward, so I reluctantly sold the Cape Dory.  Even before I sold it, I already knew what I would be looking for in my next sailboat.  For the last ten years I have been waiting.

It was with some surprise that I saw the ad in the newspaper on Wednesday last week.  I called right away and was the first respondent, and that afternoon when Sheryl got home we all got in the car and drove downtown to look at it (I waited until Sheryl got home despite my eagerness to check it out).  A cursory inspection was all I needed.  This was the boat I had contemplated a decade before.

Ironically, the Alberg 22 was designed by the same man who designed the Cape Dory, Carl Alberg.  I didn't know this when we bought it, but it made perfect sense in hindsight.  The 22 and the CD are very close cousins, sharing many of the same design features (and it was partly this similarity that made the boat such an easy sell).  The 22 is a better boat for us, with berths for four, a small galley and sink, a toilet (port-a-potty), and a trailer.  The 22 is also a decade newer than the old CD, a fact reflected in updated rigging details and a few other niceties.  The draft is a little deeper (37"), but still very shallow for a sailboat, and quite practical for our waters.

I was originally going to offer less than the $4000 asking price but didn't.  Sheryl pointed out on the drive down that with the price as low as it was, if we offered less and the seller wanted to "think it over" somebody else was likely to offer more and we'd be out of luck.  Her logic was pretty sound: six other people called on the boat that same day, and at least four the day after that.

So we bought the boat on Wednesday afternoon.  On Thursday I towed it home.  My weekend was mostly spent cleaning the inside (the boat belonged to a woman but was her ex-husband's idea, so it had been mostly unattended for the last seven years, taking up space in her yard while the biodegradeable portion of its contents slowly rotted).  As luck would have it, the inside cleaned up very nicely and was stocked with [mostly salvageable] spare hardware and safety equipment.

And that may be about all we do with the sailboat for a while.  While a sailboat has been on my "short list" for some time, I did not anticipate actually buying one for another couple of years.  But of course, we had to buy it: in a small community like ours, finding the thing you want at a good price is very uncommon, and when such things present themselves it's best to buy them, ready or not.  Failing that, the only other option would have been to buy a boat out of Seattle and sail or barge it here, which had been our plan until this boat came along.

This doesn't really change our plans.  This summer the house is still the priority, getting the weatherization/insulation completed.  We may put the sailboat in the water to check it out (a boat is an excellent platform for watching fireworks on July 4, for instance), but any real sailing will have to wait until next year.

And now that we have a sailboat,we can start thinking about all the real sailing we want to do!

Posted at 10:58 AM YDT

Updated: Friday, May 8, 2009 9:43 PM YDT

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