May 25, 2007:  It's 3:30am and I just finished work I had to do at midnight.  I want to sleep but the Red Bull is keeping me up.  I want to do an update but my brain won't work because I need sleep.  Nevermind, just fell asleep. 

May 21, 2007:  So here we go again, I promise to do updates and never do.  I guess I should just come clean and say that now that we have been having decent weather I probably won't be doing as many updates, wow, that feels better.  I do promise that when I get the time to do one that it will be good though, lots of pictures and other fun stuff.  So what have we been up to, well, lets see....  Alice came to visit for the weekend and we had a blast.  Friday we had a bunch of friends over for drinks and snacks and even some hot tub later in the night.  Alice got to meet everyone and it wasn't too crazy, we went to bed really late but had a lot of fun.  Saturday we went to the public market, the aquarium and even the Seattle Art Museum.  Sunday we went over to Ballard to check out the Archie Mcphee store and we even grabbed burgers at the famous Dick's Hamburger stand.  On the way back out of Ballard I spotted the Northwestern, our favorite boat from "The Deadliest Catch" on the Discovery Channel.  We cruised down near the docks and grabbed a few pictures near the boats, you can check out all the new pictures under 'Adventures' to the left.  It was a busy week for both of us at work and Chris and I drove down to Bend, OR on Friday for the Pole, Pedal, Paddle race that Piseth signed me up for.  The drive was long but very cool, the weather was perfect and the race was a blast, pictures are posted as always.  I got back early so I could try to stain the deck but the weather didn't work with me so I ended up doing a bunch of yard work instead.  I edged the entire front yard and all the planting beds and picked up a yard of bark mulch to spread.  It rained the whole time but not all that hard, not until I came inside anyway.  This week we're both working, Lisa is finishing up a long stretch of taking extra shifts so we're going to take it easy over the holiday weekend.  We are hoping the weather breaks long enough for us to get the deck stained late Friday and early Saturday so by Sunday and Monday we can enjoy it if the weather is ok.  We also ordered an outdoor fireplace for the deck so hopefully it shows up this week and we get to sit in front of it with a drink over the weekend.  Other than me getting the bikes tuned up this week and hopefully getting out for a couple easy rides there isn't much going on.  I am a little nervous about riding but I'll be taking it easy for a while so I'm sure I'll be fine.  It did feel kind of weird to take it off the hook on the ceiling and put it up on the work stand.  Well, have a great holiday weekend and we'll talk again soon for sure. 

May 6, 2007:  Well, now we're back.  It's been a very insane few weeks around here so I haven't had much time to do an update.  Things should be slowing down now so hopefully I'll be doing more regular updates again.  I have completely forgotten what we've done other than the projects around here in the last few weeks so your going ot have to settle on what happened this week.  Gregg got here in the afternoon on Thursday of last week and we didn't do a whole lot.  We did go to the Boeing Surplus store, which was as cool as it sounds, drill bits by the pound and buckets full of rivet guns, we've never seen anything quite like it.  We got started on the deck early Friday morning.  By the end of the day we had the ledger boards figured out and mounted, the hose plumbing moved and roughed in, the flashing installed and had the framing done for the lower level near the door.  Saturday we had some help from Piseth and Lisa and we got the beams built, all the posts installed and started on some of the main floor joists.  Sunday we finished the floor joists, got the facia boards in, the plumbing finished, and the electrical finished.  Monday we started the decking but didn't get all that far, that ipe is tough stuff to work with.  Just as we were getting started with the actual decking it started raining pretty hard, we were able to string up a big tarp that covered most of the area and allowed us to keep going.  We kept going until the counter sink bit that the sales person assured me would last the whole deck broke right in half.  That kind of put a kink in the works, first thing Tuesday morning we had to drive to Sultan, WA to get another drill bit and also more screws because it was clear that we were going to use up the last of the 1750 bucket we bought.  Of course they didn't have the bit but did have the screws so after making another stop on the way home we had our bit and got back to it.  By the time we had to leave to get Gregg to the airport in time for his late flight we have just a small corner of decking and most of the trim work to finish.  I had to work on Wednesday and when I got home met Piseth to cut the rest of the boards for the area that was left.  They are 18' long so I really can't do it by myself.  We got most of them done that night, through rain and even hail.  I finished up the last few boards the next two nights after work.  Lisa was working all weekend so I planned to get the trimming finished over the weekend.  Saturday I got all the rest of it finished up including the gutters and all the trim work.  We picked up some basic deck furniture and got it all assembled and put out there last night.  Today I cleaned up the garage, put all the tools away and went to the dump to get rid of the pile of junk that had built up beside the house.  Well, Lisa is about to get home so I'm going to call it quits for now.  The newest pictures of the deck can be found under 'House Projects' as always, have a great week. 

May 2, 2007:  Sorry another quick one.  Gregg came, saw the plans, and we conquered the deck.  It was only 5 days of fifteen hours each in row, not bad right?  I updated the pictures and there will be more to come as I finish up some of the details that we didn't have time to take care of.  I'll try to post more soon, enjoy the new pics.