Silent Snow, Secret Snow

Piling up and piling up.  Never heavy, but never stopping.

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Boatwise, all the heavy sanding is done(!), so now on to the fun parts—trim, reinforcements, rub-strake, seats, breasthooks, decoration. At this point I am certain that the boat will float and not leak. What I don’t know is if it will float level and row straight.

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Carnivore

Tour of a few of the new luxurious apartments in Tony’s redeveloping Grand Avenue Mall.

This is one of the common rooms.

This is one of the common rooms.

Then Abby and Tony, and Katy and Will took us out to dinner at Carnivore, perhaps the best restaurant in Milwaukee. That was delicious.

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Big news coming out of KWiL Publishing, too. Looks like a bestseller is in the making. Front page article in the Journal-Sentinel today. Article is HERE.

February 15

Forty degree drop over just a few hours last night. So, what was yesterday’s runoff is today’s ice floe. Creepers again required.

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Slow and methodical on little boat production. This is the tedious time—endless sanding, and then 12 to 24 hour waits between applications, for epoxy to set up. Theoretically, once the boat is finished and painted, there should be no sign of the fiberglass tape at the edges and corners.

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Valentine #43

That’s a lot of Valentines, but overall worth the postage.  To celebrate we went out to lunch at Natalie’s Parkview cafe in Milton—deluxe bbq sandwich and deluxe tuna melt. And, this evening, looking forward to watching a bit of the news, then our current series on faming in the 17th century, and then an hour or two of reading. Hard to beat that for romantic, IMHO.

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Walking today was a remembered pleasure. Some sun, little wind, temperatures above freezing, and NO creepers. Tripping the light fantastic.

New Piece of Fitness Equipment...

 ...the snow shovel. A little snow last night, and a forecast of more to come. Many places still not down through the ice to bare pavement.

Report out from ACE predicting record high water in Lakes Superior and Lake Erie. Michigan/Huron could be pretty high, too.

Photo by Joe (this weekend)

Photo by Joe (this weekend)

And conditions are worse on Manitoulin. Operation “Deer Save” is in effect—deep, hard-crusted snow.

Day Pretty Much Cancelled

Too much freezing precipitation.  

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At least half an inch of ice on everything that hasn’t been scraped, chipped, salted, and shoveled. We were planning on attending a science fair, but that got iced out along with almost everything else.

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Glass and epoxy done on the interior. Next comes sanding and perhaps a little fairing. Then, over she goes, and the exterior gets the treatment.

Foggy Day In W. Town

But Pax was in his element.  When things are melting, more smells are wafting, and Pax got a lot of exercise bounding into, through, and, to some degree, under, diminishing drifts. He was in hunting mode.

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Meanwhile, the rest of us worked on projects.

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The spot-welds have been smoothed, the dust vacuumed, everything wiped down with vinegar, and strips of glass tape have been cut to appropriate lengths—all in prep for glassing all the many seams.

Above Freezing...

...and melting a little, too. 

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Raked a lot of heavy snow off the roof.

Low light—sorry about the blur

Low light—sorry about the blur

Then down to Erik and Robin’s lovely home in Algonquin for Chris’s retirement party. Fun conversation and great Erik-cooked food. And I came home with a bag of Trina’s home-made baguettes.

Vortexed

Step outside without  hat, coat, mittens…and almost instant pain. How is the wildlife surviving? How is the semi-wildlife (aka kids) surviving indoors? And what about people who have to work outdoors?

Minus 27 this morning, but rising—all the way up to negative 6 by sunset. Enough of this.

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Spot welding now on the dinghy, using epoxy paste. Once this sets up, the zip ties can be removed and then all the seams done right with fiberglass tape.

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