I took the kids to the company picnic yesterday. Thirty-thousand geeks, 3 days in July, 1 farm nestled in the foothills of the Cascade mountains: Big fun.
The afternoon started off with motorcycle daredevils on a twenty foot ramp.
The sky grew dark, but no daredevils were lost.
The children were impressed.
In boot-camp, they said the smoking lamp was lit and it meant you could have a cigarette whenever you wanted to light up. The first time I heard it, I wanted to know where this lamp was. I wanted to keep my eye on it. On the way to the park, I told the kids that if they ate a good lunch, the soda lamp was lit for the rest of the afternoon. Both their eyes got big as cans of pop. Neither asked to see the actual lamp.
The fort project took just under a year to complete, but it’s finally done, and I’m happy with the results. The kids are pleased. Holly is pleased. Dad is exhausted!
Kidding. After all, I took a year to finish.
Here is a guided tour:
Inside, looking toward the front porch, with escape hatch.
Looking up the hatch.
The main entrance.
Looking down the rope ladder.
The view from the hammock.
The long climb.
All I can say is I must have wanted one of these when I was a kid. Otherwise, why would I have spent some much time and energy building it?
I have been meaning to get a current picture of the progress on the fort. I got it to about 95% complete late last summer, and then somehow never got around to the rest. As soon as we get some sunny weather, I’m going to attach the rail around the front porch. Note the gable roof, rope ladder, mail box and street address. You can’t really see it, but there is a hatch on the far right of the porch, where the rope hangs.
The kids use my old wood ladder because the rope ladder is difficult to climb. Somehow they’ve managed to move chairs and a table up there. Holly doesn’t like the two-tone roof roll, but I think it gives the place a real down home feel. I still can’t believe I was able to pull this together. You never know what you can do until you try.
If you look close, you can see the neighbor’s tree fort down the block. Keeping up with the Jones ain’t easy.
I know he’s just a dog, but for some reason I expect more from him. Saturday was busy for me, but I thought I would give him a quick walk around the park before going into work. I was listening to an NPR podcast on my wife’s Ipod when I looked down and he was rolling in the dirt. He’s just trying to mask his sent so he can sneak up on squirrels, but it makes me crazy. A 20 minute walk turned into a big clean up chore and he had to stay in the house the rest of the day so he didn’t catch cold. Pissed me off, but I’m not getting rid of him.
I was egging my nephew to bend this poor duck over as far as he could, so I could capture just the right angle. Next thing I know, there was this big industrial SPRONG sound and the poor duck fell over dead.
I let Alex take all the heat for this, but it was partly my fault.
