The Westlake Pirates

Well actually, no... not quite. But it was a year ago today that we had the original boat surveyed and discovered that it wasn't up to snuff for the asking price. It's still afloat, mind you (and finally sold for quite a bit less to an older couple who had been doing quite a bit of rehab work every weekend until the weather got crappy...), but in the end we still made out much better that we would have.

The website itself turned a year old on Saturday, and next Sunday (April 2) marks a year since we put a deposit down on the new boat. Amazing how time flies when you're busy repairing thirty year old woodwork. Imagine if we'd bought a hundred year old house! (Well, the pirate theme would've been a bit weird in that case, but ignore that.)

Stay tuned, as year two promises to fulfill everything that year one hinted at.

...assuming the weather gets warm and sunny, of course.

Posted by Steve at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I promise we haven't been entirely slacking, despite the lack of recent updates to the site. (If you've been reading the Weather Blog, you'd know I've at least been trying to keep that page up-to-date.) Spring has sprung, and there's big plans for the boat this year, since hopefully we won't have much maintenance work to do other than a good scrubbing of the decks to wash off a year's worth of algae and grit.

Kristin has been plotting for how to turn the upper deck into an exciting Martha Stewart-approved resort, plush with plants, lights, and comfy chairs. I'm sure she'll have more on most of that later. On the plant side of things, though, we wanted to get an early start this year. The tomatoes last year were nice and all, but they really didn't produce like I was hoping they would, so this time around we're going a more floral and herbal route. Over the past few weeks we've picked up probably a dozen different types of seeds, from morning glory to poppies to sunflowers to cilantro. We've started them inside in Dixie cups, and they're at the point now that we're out of counter space and they need more sun, so on Tuesday, we bought a greenhouse at Fred Meyer, and I proceeded to assemble it in the light drizzle yesterday, so we could move everyone outside but keep them somewhat protected from the elements.

Continue reading "Green grows the house" »

Posted by Steve at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's spring!

Okay, so really this is just that usual late-winter tease that we get (and if you notice, the flowers are actually inside because it was below freezing for a few nights in a row two weeks ago), but now the sun has been shining (mostly) and the temperatures have warmed back up and spring is in the air!

Continue reading "Hello, we are tiny daffodils" »

Posted by Steve at 1:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)