The trips to and from the cottage at Nordegg seem like a blur. I have been very busy out there with all sorts of small projects, and also been relaxing a little in between. The girls have been living out at Nordegg most of the time, ever since the virus pandemic broke out. I've had to stay in the city and work full time, but have headed out to the cottage every weekend. For most of the past three months this routine has been repeated, with me heading out after work on Friday. I spend the weekend with the girls at the cottage, usually working on a bunch of odds and ends, and then rush back to the city on Sunday evening to prepare for the upcoming work week. I've kind of lost track of time and can't differentiate one weekend from the last.
This past weekend Hailey and I were out there, and the other girls, for a change, stayed in the city. We got dumped on with a heavy thunderstorm that dropped about 3/4 of an inch of rain in less than an hour, on Saturday evening. This was part of the same system that hit the City of Calgary with heavy rain and hail. That resulted in some localized flooding and severe hail damage so I guess we got off easy.
Some of the other stuff that has kept me busy in recent weeks is as follows. We've been accumulating a bunch of new furniture. I bought some bed frames so that we can get our mattresses off the floor. I also brought out an old mates bed for the girls bedroom. Margarit bought an antique dresser at a shop in Rocky Mountain House and we picked that up last weekend. I also bought some rustic barstools online, but they were damaged in shipping and I've ordered replacements. Also bought a chaise lounge for Margarit, and an antique mannequin. Set up some storage shelves down in the basement too.
We have a bunch of signs that I've been putting up. Some are rustic and humorous and have been installed inside, and others I have mounted outside on our gate.
I'm going to build some headboards for the beds. These will be in the same style as the bunk bed that I built for the girls bedroom from peeled logs. I recently cut down a couple of pine trees, but not before I dropped one of them on my foot. Not sure if I cracked a bone or just bruised it but it was pretty swollen and purple for quite a while. Seems mostly recovered now that a couple weeks have passed. This past weekend I found a couple of crooked trees that I cut and peeled to be used on these headboards.
I bought myself a set of cheap golf clubs in the hope that I can play a few rounds at the nine hole course in town. Haven't had a chance to do that yet as mostly it has been too wet. But, I did get out with my fly rod once and headed over to a nearby stocked trout pond. Only fished for about 15 minutes and managed to catch a couple of pan-sized rainbow trout.
I've also been doing a bunch of yard work. Cut up and hauled away a bunch of construction waste and leftover lumber from the cottage construction. And, I've spent a couple afternoons splitting firewood. Still have lots of cut logs to split and this will be an ongoing job for the next year or two. At some point I'd like to build a woodshed to store some of it and keep it dry. I've been spreading some gravel into some of the low spots around the yard and Margarit spent a lot of time planting 75 pine seedlings that we bought. We have another batch of them coming later in July.
I have a few little electrical jobs remaining to be looked after. My friend Rob is coming out for a visit later in June and he's going to look after this for me. He is an electrician by trade and did most of the wiring for me a couple of years ago. I've been buying a few supplies and doing a little of the rough in work in advance of his visit. We are putting an RV receptacle in the garage so if guests visit with an RV they can plug in. We are also putting a switch upstairs for the hot water heater in the basement. There is still a high level alarm for the septic tank that needs to be hooked up. And I've decided to put in the plumbing and electrical so that we can add a washer and dryer downstairs at some point in the future. That will be handy once I retire next year and hopefully spend longer blocks of time out there.
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