Jim's BIG Machine

Yesterday was a fantastico day, an exhausting day and a bummer of a day. Let me explain...In front of our house there is an archway with stained shingles. When we built our house six years ago the wood siding was prepainted but our painter said we should add another coat of stain once it was put on the house. We did this but did not restain the archway. SO...seven years later the archway shingles have started to turn grayish-black. To hire someone to restain it would cost a FORTUNE so my enterprising husband called around and found a lift machine that resembles something from a moon expedition that he could rent to do the project himself.

Doesn't it look like a carnival ride?

It took Jim TEN hours to paint that little archway which turned out to be NOT SO LITTLE. He kept having to add more and more stain to the individual shingles because they soaked up the stain at an alarming rate.

The best part of the project were the neighbors' stares. One woman actually stopped her car and looked. As if a homeowner could actually do a project of this magnitude himself! But that's my husband--AMAZING!

Meanwhile...Katie and I ventured up to Devil's Lake to do us some heavy rock climbing. I seriously don't know why these trails are open to the general public. They're steep and dangerous and well...exhausting.

The trails look like this!

We came home to Jim finishing up the painting job and started to warm up the veggie whole grain pasta dish we made yesterday in the microwave but the micro started to vibrate and made a horrible groaning sound. I pushed the off button. Nothing happened. I opened the door. Nothing happened. Finally I reached up into the overhead cabinet and pulled the plug. Finally the micro came to a stop and I declared it BROKEN. Geeessshhh one more thing to replace! Katie and I stared at the microwavable bowl of pasta and for a moment actually wondered how we were going to heat up our dinner. Then I told her--in the olden days we warmed things up in a pot on the stove. She actually asked--you can do that!