A mixed up post

Peanut got possibly his last xmas present Monday Night. We made him close his eyes. Then brought out a  big box with a big remote control truck in it. Then he opened his eyes and was excited to see it

and once we told him he had to wait till we were home to open it he decided to play in the box/peanuts.

The above stuff probably belonged on yesterday’s post but I’m not feeling like keeping things in order today so I’ll make up the order as I go. I did split wood first thing after work. I have had a big pile in the side drive from Tony’s farm and last night seemed cold and dry enough to do some work on splitting it up. It sure was, the wood split great and in 1 hour I had done some serious damage. I am used to the wood at my house being terrible to split but this stuff was great even the biggest logs took a few hits then exploded into great firewood. It is a little wet and would be much better to burn next year but we will likely need it sooner. I only split for an hour before deciding it was getting dark and I should head in. Once Peanut was in bed I headed back out to haul it to the back yard and stack it. My pile started out like this.

I hauled several loads until Heath wanted to go to the gym and then it looked like this.

I got up early this morning and it looked like this

So I brought back the last of the wood from the front and re stacked it all till it looked like this.

My wood racks don’t sit in the dirt well as the ground gets wet and then the legs sink and make it tipsy. It seems to work much better sitting on concrete blocks.

I had a little time to work on the basement before Peanut went to bed and it was too loud. I made some adjustments to the boards at the tops of the walls that Jon and I put up.

But mostly I worked on the wall with the air vent. Here is a before shot.

The 2×4 going up and down needs to come out and the wall needs to go all the up to the joists so I have something to nail drywall to.

Jon and I put together this L shaped board and put it up in the corner where the ceiling drywall and wall drywall will meet. We had to put up several cross boards to attach it to.

Then I added a board along the top of the existing wall for strength and cut out a bunch of little boards that would connect it to the L making the wall all one piece.

In this picture you can see the board I added below the vent and on the right side 2 of the little boards I cut out to join everything.

I put it all together with no nails or screws to make sure it all fit

and it looked good. Then I took it down to dril screw holes ahead of time and cut more of the vent back so it will be flush with the drywall when it goes up.

I did a tiny bit of wiring (putting things in boxes and adding U nails to hold cables in place) and then called it a night before putting all the screws in the boards in the wall.

So while I was splitting wood Heath got started on dinner. We had a can of salmon and a recipe on the back for salmon burgers. Basically you mix the salmon meat with some stuff then bread it and fry it in a skillet. Heath got all the ingredients together then opened the can and dumped out…

Something jsut like this but with more skin. We were expecting something like a can of tuna but pink and we found something that looked like they caught a salmon and shoved a can into the side of it. There were lots of rib and spine bones and skin and after a few minutes of trying to separate the meat out we decided Berry would be dining on fish and we would have the chicken.

So Heath quickly mixed some canned chicken (all white MEAT) with the ingredients and added salsa and Mexican spices and cranked out some tasty quesadillas. I steamed up some cabbage and broccoli and opened some peaches. It turned out to be a great dinner and Peanut was really glad to have it instead.

During this I got some meat browned and opened a bunch of cans of beans and stuff and we mixed up a big crock pot full of chili then stuck it in the fridge for tonight.
It’s going to be cold, so a big fire w/ hot dogs and chili is coming…

It seems like I’m missing something else from last night but hard to tell. Heath and Peanut did get crickets for the lizard and a bunch of goldfish for the fish and I watched some awesome carnage.