Tempus Fugit

Bathroom Wiring
Originally uploaded by Big Dadoo.

This afternoon, after church, I was helping Dez and Eric with their house renovations. Today, I was the electrician. We wired up a bathroom ceiling fan, replaced a bunch of wire, re-routes lights to different switches and roughed in the bathroom light fixture and a GFI outlet.

Len, Darlene and Jared were there as well. Len and Jared completed the basement tile removal project and then demolished some storage cabinets at one end of the basement. Darlene had the job that everybody has done some of and hates, removing floor tiles. Ones that really didn’t want to come off at all.

Doing the electrical work with Eric made me thing about doing the wiring at the cottage. I really enjoy electrical work, so it was lots of fun to help out. Next time, I think it’s back to drywallling.

Actually, that would be catch up on reading my personal
emails. More specifically, The daily devotion emails from John Fisher at the
Purpose Driven Life.  Some of the thoughts that challenged me were:

• To be more aware of and think about being eager to do good (1 Peter 3:13).
  looking for opportunities to serve others
• To see my work as worship to God, doing what I was created to do, my very life as a gift from God
• Am I using my uniqueness, the things that God put in me and the experiences I’ve had to benefit others?
• What will we do in Heaven? Sit around or continue to grow and server? If there is a purpose on earth, that there will be an even more significant purpose in Heaven.
• The challenge of many different points of view and diversity while yet being in unity with
  Christ.
• What is worship? The areas of worship that are outside of a church service, and the fact that worship is so much more.
• What is character and how do we get it? (Romans 5:3-4 and it’s not generally a good time at the time)

I shouldn’t get so far behind, this is certainly a lot to consider all at once but I’m glad I spent some quite time this morning to read these devotions and think about what they mean to my life. I’m thankful that John makes these devotions available and that they cause me to stop and think about these things.

Even during this quiet time, life happens, I hear the 3 thumps on the floor above, our family signal to come upstairs and see what’s happening. I have a fair idea what’s happening as I heard some stomach turning sounds from one of the bathrooms a few seconds earlier. Scott’s not feeling too good, perhaps some bad pizza from last night. There’s not too much to be done as generally you just need to ride these things out. I took him a cup of water.

Technorati Tags: family, devotional, purpose, life

Kitchen with some new drywall
Originally uploaded by Big Dadoo.

Today,I send a good portion of the day with Eric and Doug at Eric’s new house doing renovations. He’s only two weeks into the project and major work has taken place. I was the drywall guy today and did the inside of the new front room closet and about half the kitchen. Doug & Eric focused on the plumbing and hooked up the tub drain, connected the shower control, filled in the cuts in the basement floor with concrete where they moved the entire stack and ran a new drain line to re-locate the washer closer to the furnace to create a consolidated utility area.A little drywaller’s confession. As I was working on a small panel that had a light switch on it, I noticed that if I cut the hole for the switch box the way it was, that there would be no where for the switch tabs to rest on the drywall, because the opening would be too big. I then noticed that there were some extra tabs on the box that we didn’t need in this application and that they should be removed first and then everything would be good. Well, after that I went back to a larger panel and noticed that I’d made that mistake there. Also, Eric came along and asked if I’d taped up, the vapor barrier behind that panel, which I’d forgotten to do. So, not being one to leave things messed up, I pried off the panel and set about to make it right. Well, that was a good thing because I’d total overlooked cutting opening for the electrical outlet for the refrigerator! I kind of wondered why the panel didn’t sit quite right when I was screwing it on in that area. Oh well, it’s all better now & drywall is fairly cheap.

So much has happened in such a short time. The first week focused mainly on demolition, taking the entire kitchen and bathroom back to bare studs, and opening several doorways to create a more open concept feel. The place was a real mess! But now you can feel that the corner has been turned as the building and restoring phase has begun in earnest. Fresh drywall really makes you see the progress and that things are on the up swing. Soon there will be paint etc. and then moving it. Yahoo!

Very cool photos on the spiral theme.

Spiral pictures – Spiral photo gallery

Technorati Tags: spiral, photography

I flew in to Vancouver this morning for some professional development and a western regional team meeting for work and I’m having a great time. Vancouver is my favorite Canadian city and any time here is a good time. After the meetings the team was out for dinner and then I headed back to the hotel.

This trip I’m staying at the Delta Vancouver Suites, and to date this is the best ever hotel that I’ve stayed and and I’d highly recommend it to anyone. The service and experience has been exceptional. Upon arrival I pulled up in front of one of the hotel doors in what seemed to be a loading zone on the street. I was just going to run in and register, drop off the bag and head on out to the office. As I’m checking in they asked if I had a car and where it was. When I told them, one of the staff offered to take it around the block and into the hotel valet holding area as where I left it, I was likely to get a ticket. Checking was quick and with a cookie to boot! The room is fabulous. A corner suite with floor to ceiling glass, a new and modern decor, and a great view of the downtown skyline.

When I return from dinner later that day, there is a personalized welcome note on the work table with my name printed on the envelope and the note in side. A small fruit plate has also shown up with an apple, two large strawberries and some grapes. A few moments after I enter the room the phone rings. It’s the hotel staff welcoming me to the hotel and ensuring that everything is OK. A nice touch except for the spook feeling that came with know the call was triggered by me using my access card to enter the room. This was no random call, Big Brother is watching.

I head out for a walk down Robson to pick up a Starbucks drink, (Tazo chai latte, extra hot) and on the way I stop to watch a scene being shot for a movie and wild and crazy crowd of mainly scantily clad young girls in what seem to be Halloween themed costumes waiting to get into some club. Talk about night life.

Great city, great hotel. Now if they’d only stop hosing you $9.95 a day for Internet access. Oh yeah, wireless would be nice too.

I’ve just noticed that Writely has been renamed and further incorporated into the Google camp and is now Google Docs. I think I could get used to living in Google, between Gmail, Docs, Spreadsheets, Calendar and Groups life is looking pretty complete. While I use Picassa on the desktop, I’m not yet a big enough fan of the web album to switch my 1,000+ flickr photo’s over any time soon. But, then again, Picasa is free. Hmmm.

On a side not, I’ve written this in Google Docs and posted to my blog. The spell checker however thinks “Google” in not spelled correctly. Perhaps a dictionary update is in order.

As yet another note, the Doc title doesn’t make the trip as the post title and Doc tags, don’t yet catagorize the post either. I guess this is one of the “beta” things. I had to touch up this post with my tried & true Performancing for Firefox.

Dock Shot #2
Originally uploaded by Big Dadoo.

This photo says it all. The leaves are turning and falling. It’s the Thanksgiving weekend and we’re at the lake to close up for the season.

The weather is very nice on Saturday, hitting 21C with a light overcast. After a couple of cups of coffee on the dock, we’re having breakfast with Scott & Mandi who are down for the weekend with Shirley & I. After breakfast we head back down to the dock to deal with the two new floating docks. In the end we decide to put the good one, the one that got renovated, in between to docks and leave the other one tied up parallel to the dock, pretty much where it’s spent the summer. Only time will tell if this was a good way to store them for the winter. They are just too heavy to get on shore.

With the boat & dock work completed, we take the rest of the day off and head into town. Scott & Mandi do a little shopping and Shirley & I take a walk on the Tunnel Island trails. We rendezvous back at Ho-Jos for some Kenora Mist’s. After a great steak dinner, we play Tile Rummy and Mandi & I clean up.

Sunday it’s all about putting the cottage to bed for the winter. Scott & I handle the outside chores and Mandi & Shirley pack up the kitchen & clean the cottage. By 1:15, we’re done and heading home. It was quite windy all last night and into the day. Thankfully, there was no rain we were sheltered from the west wind.

Farewell to Kenora was celebrated by a stop at the Chip Truck and the Dairy Queen. It was a great summer at the lake.