foran_object

ya, ya, here's the list...

1. If you could have any job, without consideration of requirements, experience, or cash flow, what would you be doing?

Well, my job would entail the following four things:

1.) Managing two tree plantations, one of which would be in Ontario, which would include Eastern White Pine, Hybrid Poplar, Black Walnut, Yellow Birch, Black Cherry, Beach, White Oak and Sugar Maple. The other plantation would be in the tropics, and would include a variety of tropical hardwoods, especially Cocobolo.

2.) Managing an orchard of Apple and Pear trees.

3.) Building things. Mostly out of wood, but also maybe metal and concrete. "Things" could range anywhere from chess pieces to houses.

4.) Reading books and listening to jazz in a yurt on top of a mountain.

2. Who is your favourite character on Buffy: The Vampire Slayer? You're allowed to split this up into pre-season 6 and post-season 6 if desired.

I've never watched Buffy: The Vampire Slayer.

3. If you could have lunch with anyone, alive or dead, who would you have lunch with?

Marilyn Monroe

4. What movie which never got made would you most like to see?

I don't know, I have to think about it.

5. What was the last book (fiction only, no reference books) that you read?

Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson, an extremely good sci-fi book, recommended, and lent to me, by You Look Like a Nail.

6. If you could change any one historical incident, only to return to a present changed forever into a horrible mockery of the world you knew, Twilight Zone style, what historical incident would you change?

I've seen enough time travel movies to know that you don't mess with history. No thanks.

7. If you could have a summer home anywhere, where would you want it to be?

I don't know--someplace nice, but I hate travelling, so it would have to be close.

8. You know that episode of Friends where we find out Ross has a card with five names on it? Right. What five names would go on your card? Well, I've never seen a complete episode of Friends, but I think I get the idear..

Lauren Graham, of Gilmore Girls
Marilyn Monroe
Grace Park, who plays Boomer on BSG;
Wonder Woman
Susan Lewis, I stopped watching ER shortly after she left


9. God created the heavens and the earth in six days; on the seventh day He rested. If God hadn't rested on the seventh day what would He have created?

Some nice jazz music. Probably with a saxaphone, or maybe a trumpet. Also, probably some nice ale, to sip while listening to the jazz.

10. If you were able to take vacation anywhere in the world (money, time, etc all not withstanding) where would you go and why?

I'd tour Japanese gardens in Kyoto

11. What is your favourite wood?

Hmmm....good question. It's really a close race between Curly Maple, Cocobolo, and quartersawn clear Sitka Spruce. Also, Apple is a very nice wood too.

Good movies are hard to find

In the last year I've watched way more DVDs than usual. Here are some of my favorites. Links are to imdb:

Last Night
The Shining
It's all Gone Pete Tong
Seven Samurai
The Last Temptation of Christ
The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
V for Vendetta
Human Nature
Battlestar Gallactica (the new TV series)

Twin Peaks (TV)

Saturday to explore Filderstadt on foot:






















Many industrial buildings here have a funky contemporary architecture.















Filderstadt is near Stuttgart, home of Porsche. These are probably recycled pallets.
















Jen recently bought me a small weeping Nootka False Cypress. A beautiful tree that I am very excited about. They are very popular around Filderstadt. It is the larger tree on the left.
















Many of the homes here blend modern elements with amost medieval. Across the street is a funky new age house.
















Typical street within the town of Filderstadt.















The famous Citroën 2CV. This one with extra personality.

















My walk took me down a path that led outside the town, with large cottonwood trees running beside. Beautiful orchards followed, with apfel (apple in german), pear trees and fenced in areas containing berries and other plants that animals presumably like.

Further along, the path led me into a forest. The trees consisted of spruce, beech and oaks. There were some small cleared areas and stumps that indicated that the forest was logged in a very controlled way. I estimated the spruce logs above to be about 75 ft long, the bigger ones being close to two feet diamter, and about 75 years old by the growth rings.















The forest had little undergrowth. I could see much farther through the trees than in Ontario forests I've been in.















Tucked away at the edge of the forest was a little beer garden. I had to point at a beer glass to order, so I have no idea what I got. It tasted very fresh, and it was quite cloudy, indicating to me that it wasn't mass produced. After drinking the large beer I felt very tired. Thinking of the long walk back made me even more tired, but the walk went quickly. I had dinner at the little Italian restaurant for the last time. Today almost made the trip worthwhile. I'm looking forward to going home torrow.

From Filderstadt:

Tomorrow will be my 3rd of 4 work days here in Germany. Unfortunately I seem to in my non-sleeping mode again. I slept about 2 hrs tonight and woke up to noise in the alley beside the hotel. In two hours they'll start serving breakfast. I'm a walking zombie. At least I don't have to drive anywhere this trip. For this course, training has become a recital of long ago decided upon words. I don't need to be awake.

From calls back to Ottawa, it looks like I've found some professional help for my workshop project. All design and construction will halt until my plans are approved or disproved by him. At this point I'm hoping to continue doing all the work myself and with friends, but John will provide expertise which is sorely lacking. Yay!

Here's a pic from the front yard of a house near my hotel:

Influences:

Some images which were early influences in the design of my wood shop. At this point cost and practicality have taken over to the extent that it will likely bear little in resemblence or spirit with these fine buildings.

Sunday September 10: Travel to Germany

While trying to construct my 800 sq foot workshop, it doesn’t help to have to be traveling for work. Fortunately, the trip was uneventful; just lots of time in the plane. I spent a lot of time thinking about the shop construction. No matter how much I think, I can’t resolve many uncertainties. I need a pro.

Germany is nice, but I’m exhausted. I found some dinner and figured out where I have to go tomorrow. Now to vegetate in my hotel room, and hopefully get some sleep. Usually with time zone changes I can’t sleep, even when I’m exhausted. On my last oversees trip I only slept about 10 hours in 6 days!

Oh, ya, and they're still not letting people bring liquids and gels on the plane. This caused me a bit of stress. I had to sucumb to a thorough inspection of my insulin and diabeties supplies. I don't like it when people I don't know touch things that I poke beneath my skin. I don't trust you any more than you trust me buddy.

Apparantly this guy doesn't like airport security much either. I'm surprised he got off so easy.

Saturday September 9: Things are at a stand-still

Frank was kind enough to haul out the remaining lumber today. We couldn’t start on the formwork however because I have to resolve the footing issue. I found these, and they appear a lot more sturdy that the Rona and Home Depot offerings. I’ve contacted the manufacturer and I might choose to order them.

http://www.sqfoot.com/

Problem is they are expensive, to the tune of 25$ each. I need professional help. If I unnecessarily spend money, I might as well get it professionally built. Somebody help me!!!

Friday September 8: An easy day goes bad

Today was supposed to be devoted to obtaining the concrete tubes (sonotubes), the plastic footing bases, and the various lumber to brace the tubes for the pour.

Turns out that the only footing bases Rona and Home Depot carry are so flimsy I can’t imagine them holding up under the stress of an 8” wide by 6’ high tube of wet concrete on top. These things might be fine for a deck, which is what they are mostly used for, but not for a building.

Frank B. was kind enough to offer the use of his truck to carry the materials home. Eric N. says I’d have no luck at all if it wasn’t for bad luck. Just as Frank arrives the sky opens and the fiercest rain storm I’ve seen in years comes down. Bernie and Ann's tree split and did substantial damage to their deck. The concrete tubes are made of cardboard, and seem to me to be flimsy enough as it is. Even thought they are coated with a bit of wax, I didn’t feel that traveling 40 KM in the rain was going to be good for them.

We ended up bringing them home in my car, in two trips. Jen had to sit at Rona because we couldn’t fit her into the car with the tubes. Again my luck hit. Traffic lights were out, and the traffic was so bad it took hours. Big thanks to Jen for her patience, tolerance and understanding. Not traits she exhibits on a day to day basis, but she brings them out when it really counts. I love you dear!

Thursday September 7: The excavator cometh

My original plan had been to rent a CAT 416 backhoe from Battlefield equipment and drive it myself to perform the following tasks:

- Dig out ~20 tree stumps of varying size
- Push top soil and organic material off the surface (~140 ft x 20 ft area)
- Dig trench for hydro line (150 ft x 1 ft wide x 3 ft deep)
- Remove stumps from the workshop footprint, and grade the soil
- Dig 20, 5 ft deep holes for the concrete piers that the building will rest on

My best guess was that this was going to take about two days. Battlefield wanted 2 x 330$ + 250 delivery + possible extra insurance charges because they would consider me to be somewhat of a high risk renter. Overall 1000+ dollars.

I decided to explore other options and called Tackaberry, a local aggregates and excavation company. They came out and recommended bringing a “highhoe” which is an excavator quite a bit bigger than a backhoe. The highhoe is 100$/hr vs. 70$/hr for the backhoe, both including operator. The highhoe can do trenching, excavation, etc much faster, usually resulting in a lesser price.

With a professional operator, and a bigger machine, the thinking was a single day should be plenty, and would cost about the same as me renting, with less risk. Highhoe we go.

Well, the day was quite stressful. Things go very fast with a machine this big, and good communication with the operator is key. Since I have pretty much zero experience with this type of work there were some mistakes. First, my plan was to forget about the hydro trench because the bigger machine was going to dig a really big trench which was going to require much more hydro sand fill, which is expensive stuff, also, there was the issue of needing to backfill part of the trench so that the trucks could bring in the gravel for the road and for the building. It ended up that we dug part of it, and that had me scrambling driving frantically to the local building supply store to get the electrical conduit and get it glued up in the trench so that we could backfill. All this time Bill the operator was essentially performing whatever he thought needed to be done.

The real problem came about from the fact that the big excavator has a 4 ft wide bucket. I had originally hoped to scoop out holes about 3 ft square with the backhoe. Bill recommended that the bigger machine would be better off digging big trenches instead. This was a last minute decision. When deciding to go with the highhoe instead of the backhoe, I had never considered the bigger bucket. I thought about it quickly, and didn’t see any problem. The excavation however is gigantic. Totally unnecessary for a building like I am putting up. This excavation is more suited to a house.

I freaked out (quietly). I even considered asking them to fill in the hole. I made some quick calls for advice. Big thanks to Scott J. for getting me some advice from his brother in law, John, who is a skilled contractor. The hole stayed and will be fine. Only this is that I spent more money than necessary digging it, and that it will cost about 1000$ more than I planned to backfill. More material, plus I’ll probably need to bring machinery back in. 8000 cubic feet of fill isn’t going to get put back in with a shovel.

Oh well, all in all, things have moved forward, and it’s not a disaster. I have come to the sad realization however, that I really do need professional help. Not for the actual labour, but for the expertise. Researching, thinking, and carefully planning don’t make up for actual experience.

Wednesday September 6: Clearing Brush

I’m finally ramping up for the workshop construction. The last week has involved a lot of long physical work cutting and clearing brush. Labour day was a day of labour. Today I worked from first light until dark. Tomorrow the excavator and the aggregate come.

Thanks to Burto for producing most of the site plan, part of which is below. Burto is a talented architect working for Douglas Cardinal. Burto is preparing to start up is own company, Chiasm Design Group.