Vacation

When you are kinda sorta retired, is it called a vacation when you travel?  A friend asked me that question and I'm not sure of the answer. But anyway, we've been on a trip for the last three weeks and I'm going to call it a vacation. There are three distinct parts of our trip so I'll post them separately.

Part One - Athens, Greece with our friends Jay and Carol.

We met up with Jay and Carol at a VRBO in Athens on Tuesday, September 3. We spent the next three days touring  Athens and Corinth. In a word, wow! We pretty much liked everything about Athens. We liked the city, the people, the sights and the food. Oh boy, did we ever like the food!

Besides the various historic sites we visited, we had an olive oil tasting (Greece makes the best olive oil.  Just ask a Greek if you don't believe me), we visited a winery and had a tasting there (ended up leaving with 14 bottles of Greek wine) and had an excellent meal at a place in the country you would never find if a local didn't take you there.  We had been told Greeks like to eat meat. They do and so did we.

Now for some pictures...

Temple of Olympian Zeus

Acropolis as seen from Temple of Zeus

Jay and Carol at Temple of Zeus

Panathenaic Stadium has hosted several Olympics. More importantly, the stadium is where the Olympic flame starts on its journey to the nation hosting that year’s athletic contests.  The current structure was restored in the 19th century for the first modern version of the Olympics Games after centuries of disuse. Panathenaic Stadium seats 50,000 spectators and is the largest stadium in the world made entirely of marble.

View of Athens from Mount Lycabettus

View of Athens and Acropolis from Mount Lycabettus

Erechtheum - One of the temples on top of the Acropolis

Parthenon - Most recognized temple on top of the Acropolis

View of Temple of Zeus from Acropolis

Odeon of Herodes Atticus - Music venue that seats 6,000, built at the base
of the Acropolis in 161

Temple of Asklepios - Greek god of health and well-being

Temple of Apollo in Ancient Corinth

That's it for now. Take care.

Brian

Plywood countertops... Gone!

Hi All,
Hope this finds you well. With visits from grandkids, helping neighbors, life in general and the fact it's just plain hot, we haven't made much progress of late. But that's not to say there hasn't been some.

The big news is the plywood countertops in the kitchen are finally history. It's another one of those projects where we didn't really know what we were doing so we spent more time reading, youtube-ing, and discussing approaches than we did actually doing the countertops. Some time ago we decided to do concrete and they are finally in. Some refinement may still come. First was the island bar top that was poured in a form and then flipped over and put in place (with the help of our friend Tony).  The rest were poured in place.

Susan woking on the form for island bar top

The island countertop framed up and the bar top in place

The last and biggest piece poured

We like the look of the chiseled edge and it hides some imperfections

The garden was a bigger success than last year. But there is still room for improvement.

The haul for a couple of days

Our friend and neighbor Stan came across some honey bees that had taken up residence in a water meter in town. Susan has kept bees before and I was interested so we got together some beekeeping stuff and went and got them and upgraded them to a better neighborhood, next to our garden. They only stayed a few days and then moved on. We may well try again in the spring.

That's Brian suited up and gently moving comb and bees 

Over a year ago we bought a 1955 model 600 Ford tractor. I posted pictures of it at the time. Sad to say it just wouldn't cut it. Pun intended. It's neat and it runs well but it just doesn't have the power to mow what we need it to mow. And not having a front end loader and bucket was a shortcoming as well. So we bit the bullet and bought another tractor, one that should last us forever. And it has shade, power steering and a comfortable seat!

2014 New Holland 55HP

I believe that covers it for now. Take care!

Brian

Fishing Tales and Turkeys

Hi All,
Before I get to the headline items, a bit of an update. The fawn that Susan almost stepped on two weeks ago is alive and well. I almost stepped on it a few days ago. It is now big enough and strong enough to run off and it did. Hopefully it'll be back around,  guaranteed to put a smile on your face when you see it.

Last week my daughter and her family visited us from Colorado for a couple of days. We did lots of outdoor stuff, walking in the woods, fishing and riding horses. No fish tale... Both Tyson and Alexander caught the biggest bass I've ever seen from our pond. Unfortunately, neither one of them made it all the way to the boat.  Then there is Amy. She caught a small perch from shore. The boys and I were paddling over in the boat to help out. Before we got there a bass ate the perch and Amy ended up with the biggest fish landed the entire trip.

One of several fish Tyson did get in the boat

One of Alexander's fish. We endedd up with a
mess of crappie which is some excellent eating.

Amy and her bass caught on "live bait"

Thanks to our neighbor and friend Lisa, all the kids got to spend a little saddle time on a horse. Brianna didn't make it for more than 3 or 4 steps before she'd had enough. At two and a half years old, that isn't bad.

Alexander is concentrating pretty hard.

Tyson is wondering why he's on an English saddle.

Had a great time with Amy, Derek and the kids. Miss them already.

So far, fingers crossed, the turkeys are doing ok. We moved them out of the house to their new home in the pasture by the garden. There are three levels of escape / predator prevention so hopefully they will make it.  At this point we're not sure of the sex of either of them. If we have a tom and a hen we'll keep them and let them breed. They are Bourbon Reds so if they survive the holidays we plan on naming them Jackie Daniels and Jim Beam. If they are both the same sex, their names will be Thanksgiving and Christmas.

The turkeys' new home. For my family, yes, it is built on the
Coleman trailer my dad bought back in the 70's.

Getting used to the idea of being outside

In the next post I'll tell you about the Guineas we have acquired and include some pictures.

That's all for now.
Take care.
Brian

Third Time Is A Charm. We hope!

Hi All!
Well... We're going to give the Turkeys one more try. The poultry netting we are using to keep the birds confined had openings that were a bit too big. Turkeys are more long and narrow where chickens are more short and fat. Several times when we were around their pen the turkeys would get out and come visit us. We figured after living in the house for six weeks they were imprinted on us and only got out because they saw us. Evidently not so. After a couple of days they were nowhere to be found.

Not ones to give up easily we bought two more. They're just now three weeks old so we're back to having birds in the house again. Learning from our previous mistakes we have a plan to keep them   in the pen once they move outside.

Yesterday Susan was working by the garden and just about stepped on this critter...

We talked to a friend that said momma will come back at dusk and dawn to feed it and in a couple of days they'll move on. Checked on it this morning and it's still doing fine.

My brother and sister-in-law gave us this sign.
We finally got it up along our driveway.

That's all for now.

Take care.
Brian

Finally!

Hi All!
It may seem that we haven't been doing much on the house for the last couple of months. Truth is we've been working on the same thing for what seems like an eternity. We had this grand plan for the master bathroom floor that has been difficult to make happen, to say the least. The vision was to have a stream (complete with fish) running through the bathroom and into the shower. The rest of the floor is flagstone, as you've seen in previous posts. That was easy.

First I'll show the pictures of the finished product and then I'll explain what went into it.

After watching countless videos on YouTube and asking everyone we could think to ask via email and in person we were told it just wasn't going to work. But we just couldn't let it go. Two main problems, the clear epoxy that looks like water in the stream was going to a) try to run down the drain when we poured it and would be b) very slippery when wet.

After multiple attempts with multiple tactics we solved the problem with the epoxy running down the drain by putting a collar around the drain and pouring the epoxy right up to it level with the flagstone. In order for the shower to drain properly the floor has to slope. Hence the problem with the epoxy running down the drain.  A sawzall (recipricating saw) and belt sander removed all the excess epoxy and created a slope down to the drain.  Fortunately a thin coat of fresh epoxy fills in all the sanding marks and makes the epoxy clear again.

Slippery? Oh baby was it slippery. One shower told us it was a major medical expense waiting to happen. Early on in the project our stone mason had suggested some grit that is made for mixing in floor sealers to make floors less slippery. We had tried it a couple of different ways in some tests we did. It always made the epoxy cloudy to the point we lost the effect of water in a stream.  We had to come up with something so we tried again. One teaspoon of grit in 100 ml of epoxy ended up being just right when applied with a paint brush. The epoxy was still clear enough to appear as water and there was enough texture so as not to feel as though you were taking a shower on an ice skating rink. Actually it feels very safe.

Now we can get back to other house projects that will hopefully move much faster than the bathroom floor did.

An update on livestock. Chickens are doing fine. We get between 3 and 5 eggs a day. Of our two turkeys, only one made it. We really wanted more than one, so we bought two more at about the same age as the lone survivor. We set about making a shelter / roost for the turkeys and put them in a fenced enclosure right next to the chickens.

The Turkey's new home

Set up in the pasture next to the chickens

We moved the turkeys out to their new home on Sunday. Monday morning we went to check on them, no turkeys. I cannot believe that some varmint got all three of them the first night. And the netting around them is electrified!  Seems they got lonely and jumped the fence. The were over with the chickens. We let them stay there until today when we combined their yards into one. Who knows who will roost where tonight.

Thats all for now.
Take care.

Brian

Taking a break

Hi all!
The last few weeks we've taken a break to do some butchering, camping, fishing, racing and visiting. While in Austin we visited Brian's grandson Alec and then went on to Mason to visit friends there. Here are a few pictures...

You know you live in the country when your neighbor brings you
a feral hog in a trap by tractor. He's in the freezer now

We added a couple of turkey chicks to our flock

Brian as a flag marshal at the MotoGP event at Circuit of the Americas
in Austin

Ranch Road 152 outside Mason, Texas. Bluebonnets and open range cattle.
There are cattle guards in the highway

Ready for Easter. And we didn't even have to color them!

That's all for now.
Take care.
Brian

The Dogwoods are in bloom

Hi All,
Just a few pictures so you can see what has been going on around here lately.  Over the last couple of weeks we've cleared some hiking trails through the woods. On Sunday we walked one and marked with surveyor's tape close to a dozen dogwood trees. As far as the house goes we've been working on the floors. Just about done with the bathroom. Stay tuned!

The dogwoods are in bloom!

We put a nesting box up for some Wood Ducks we've had around. 

Hard to make out the small stick coming out the top of the aluminum foil, it's
a Pawnee Pecan grafted to the trunk of a Hickory tree. We learned to graft in our
Master Gardeners class last week.

That's it for now.
Take care.
Brian