Building The New Igloo: Busy weekend picking things up and putting them down. Long post.

Friday I went out to Brian's birthday pizza. Mike Kelley was there though, and I gave him the rest of the power center. I have a little bit of space in the carport now.

I got a slightly later start on Saturday than I would have liked, I stayed under the blanket since I forgot to turn my heater back on. I turned it off Friday night when I got home since it was in the 70s inside, and never turned it back on before going to bed. It was chilly inside when I woke up Saturday.

It warmed up pretty nicely though, and turned into a pretty nice cool day. Turns out the watering the ice worked; the way up to shed is completely clear. So I got my chainsaw fired up (something actually just worked for a change...) and started to cut up the tree that fell down, along with the one that fell down last year that I never finished cutting up. I have never tied off a tree to cut it down before, but it seemed to work.

I am a bit out of practice, I pinched the saw more than a couple of times. D'oh!

I got it all chopped up.

I tried to cut everything to 4' lengths, but I am not the most accurate. Despite this picture, about half of them didn't fit in the bucket (which is 4').

I got lucky. I am pretty sure it was a rock that I hit last year since I didn't lift the log off the ground which wrecked the chain last year (and is why the trunk of that tree never got cut up). I had a near miss with a giant nail this year. I have no idea why there was a nail in this tree.

I also finally took the weights out of the back of the truck, since I was about to load it up with wood. I don't think I will need them anymore this year.

Wood.

The ground up there wasn't quite ready for the tractor. It is still really soft up there. I tried to fix it with some gravel, but trying to pack it down made it worse. Oh well.

While I had the saw out, I decided to take down the other trees down by the road as well. One of them was practically spewing liquid as I cut it. It was a maple tree, but I am not sure what kind of maple. It was perfect weather for mapling if it was a sugar maple. I don't know what maple sap tastes like before it is boiled down, but it didn't taste maply. That might be because there was likely bar and chain oil in it though.

I found it odd as I was bringing the saw up to put more gas in it; I have dandelions that have already started growing. I still have snow, but the dandelions have already started to bloom.

Despite cutting down three trees down at the bottom of the hill, there was less wood from it; it was more branches.

I still have a decent load of wood. I will see if Barry wants it.

After they were cut down, my arms were jello. So I took the tractor and tried to dig up the tire that they used as a planter around one of the trees. It won and was a no go.

I probably shouldn't have been driving the tractor around down there. It was muddy.

Really muddy. And now I have ruts. Big ruts.

One of the things missing from my list was removing the driveway markers. I took a bunch of them out to make sure I didn't drop a tree on them, so I went ahead and finished taking them all out.

I also put a couple out by the road. There is still a lot of ongoing construction on Hubbard road, and I don't want the trucks getting any ideas of using my yard to turn around, which they have done many times the last couple of years

My arms were still tired, so I decided to stay on the tractor. After putting stuff away, I decided to go finish smoothing out the lump of gravel down in the parking spot. The spot is now easily large enough for a camper to park in, and is reasonably smooth. Not sure how level, I didn't check.

I was pretty spent at that point, so I called it a night. Sunday was packing day. I started off with a couple of things that I figured I should do before I started more packing. I topped off the battery on my riding mower. It was in pretty good shape. This was the precursor to me starting to move stuff out of the carport.

I also went and pulled all the empties and mostly empties out of the shed. I had more totes in there than I thought.

I only gave up on one due to mice. I tried to dump it out, but it was solid and stuck. I don't think I am going to spend the time or chemicals to try to recover it, not when the tote itself has stress marks all over it already.

I also had one in the carport that was mostly empty. I bought this tote when I noticed that some of the sockets I had in there had started to rust.

Some of the ones that didn't have nests in them but clearly smelled of mice I started to clean. I ran out of Pine-Sol though. I typically only use it when something smelly takes hold in my garbage can and didn't have enough.

Then I packed. I did find a few things that had long been considered lost/gone forever. Like my staple gun. It was stuck in the middle of a pile of paperwork from when I bought the land. No idea how it got there. Now I have a spare I guess, unless someone really needs one. My new one is better; it pivots from the head of the staple gun giving you more leverage, and is easier to use.

When I took a break from packing, I hauled stuff up from the carport to the shed. A lot of it still has places to go since it all came from the shed originally.

I also rearranged the shed a little bit. I have a third wire rack that I can set up in there.

Then I picked things and put them down. A lot. The shed is getting quite full. The ones that didn't look structurally safe to stack I put on one side.

The other totes I felt safe stacking are on the other side. The stuff in the loft is stuff that I don't expect to need right away when I move in to the real house.

You may notice they are only stacked two high, despite there being enough clearance for 3 or 4 in the middle. This is because I have a lot of totes that did this. The two totes on top of the broken one were not heavy.

I put the stuff that I do expect to want soonish after moving in on the wire racks in the corner. They are almost full now.

At that point, I was beat, and it was starting to get dark. The carport looks considerably more empty than it did before the weekend.

The far end of the house looks a lot more empty too now. The shelves and closet are mostly empty at this point.

I have a bunch of totes on the slab ready for cleaning and then more packing, but I have more totes at this point than I do stuff to pack that isn't used. I might do a first pass through the kitchen and bathroom, but have to be wary of what I pack at this point.

On the house front, I still haven't gotten the insurance quotes I was supposed to get on Friday, so I will be poking again today. On the snow front, my yard is mostly clear, just a few small piles from where the snowblower blew it, but even those are largely gone.

The pile by the carport is getting smaller too now. It is crazy to think that just a few weeks ago, this was so tall the snow could no longer slide off the roof.

This area here is taking its sweet time melting. This is where I turn the truck around. I have been having to do three or 5 point turns to turn around since the big storm.

I didn't get any cap work done, but I certainly got a lot done this weekend. I should be able to finish up the preliminary packing during the week; there isn't too much left. It is also warm enough at this point (we aren't supposed to get below freezing for the foreseeable forecast) to start taking down the skirting and stuff as well.

Before the site work:

Build prototype cap/camper
Preliminary packing. Get the excess largely unused stuff out of the house.
Set up the portable garage. ~~Cut down the tree that fell down.~~
Pack up carport. Easily movable lawn equipment should be all that remains after this.
Empty slab. Get the grill, storage bin, clothesline, bug zapper, and other junk off the slab.
Remove skirting.
Replace tires on tiny home trailer
~~Cut down trees at bottom of hill~~
~~Flatten parking spot. Spread the pile of rocks~~.
~~Remove the driveway markers.~~
Determine where to and move carport.
Acquire the missing truck camper pieces