Yukon Wedding

Holy crap I need to update. I have all the windows in now and a stained floor. The stained floor which I hated the minute I saw it all done, but it's growing on me. Perhaps because I couldn't be bothered to have one more job! I think I'll paint over it. Eventually. And I'm slowly moving in furniture. Wow, I realize now that I don't have very much. Or, at the very least, I need to find some of my stuff. As one friend said the other day "Stacie, you need to get some furniture!!" as he walked into the HUGE (ha!) empty-ish cabin. I kind of like the huge open space... so do the dogs!

Anyways, I've also made a discovery today. The best day of the year to do laundry in town is HALLOWEEN! No one is here. Amazing. Now I have my plans for next Halloween. And now I have some time to get a'bloggin!

Now I have time to mention Sean and Heather's wonderful wedding! My mom has been asking for pictures (even tho she hasn't met them yet, haha), and I'm sure Heather's family and friends would like to see some as well. Apparently, for whatever reason - some are avid readers of this blog (hi Heather's mom & dad!).



Here's the band getting ready for the ceremony. This was held at Kathleen Lake in beautiful Haines Junction, Oct. 13.

The amazing view of Kathleen Lake.

Hey, who let in the Yahoos?!?! (just kidding Dave, Heather and Martin)

Here comes the wedding party! Sorry about cutting off Heather's head. I never claimed to be a crack photographer. I do have a better one, but Heather warned me I better not show any bad pictures of her (of which there are none!), so I'm playing it safe.






The ceremony

The other side of the ceremony as I sneak around and from this angle it looks like I'm lying on the sand.

Sean giving his vows. Man, for someone who claims to never cry at weddings, I was a blubbering mess. Damn you emotions!!!!

Ok, here is the lovely bride whupping it up. Heather can only whup it up so much, she is over 7 months pregnant... with twins!! We are all very excited about these wee ones, even more excited that we get to visit, give them loud obnoxious toys (when they are toddlers) and lots of sugar, and then leave the madness to the happy parents! :)

No seriously, everyone is pretty excited and happy for them. They are both super people and make an even better couple. For those of you who don't know, they live in a semi-small cabin (being added to as I type!) with no running water or power. Even worse, no internet.

The happy, yet stunned couple. (Heather now claims she doesn't remember much of the wedding)

Now you can't beat a band that has a washtub bass!!

The wedding party, not sure I could have gotten that any darker if I tried.

That crazy Scottish lass, otherwise known as Laura. This is the 50th picture of her, she finally stopped GOOFING around. Silly lass.

Sean, Heather and the ring-bearers. These two were freakin' adorable (the kids, that is. Well, Sean and Heather aren't too shabby themselves.... that hat can't be beat).

All in all, a great time! It was good to meet the families of these two friends and I'd like to give a shout-out to Heather's mom and dad who follow this blog. Seems they are almost as crazy as their daughter, ha, just kidding. No one is in her league (spoken from someone just as crazy). And I'd also like to send some get well vibes to another blog reader from Ontario - Jordy(sp?) (and owner who's name I can't remember...), the cutest terrier ever (I saw the photo at Heather's!) who is recovering from surgery. Hope you're feeling better! :)

I have tent fever

It is time to get the heck out of the tent! I am losing my mind in the tiny, dusty, cold space. If it was my tent, I would get great satisfaction out of setting the freakin' thing on fire and dancing around it till it burned to the ground. However, I don't think Sean would be very pleased if I burned the thing to the ground. He might not lend me anything again, and I've got his generator now so I'd better be careful... :)

Anyways, the tent is nice. But not for winter living in the Yukon - when it hit -16C on Sunday night I was feeling the draft in the tent more than ever!




So! We got the floors on this week. It is SO NICE to walk normally and not balance on floor joists. I had moved upstairs to insulate after this so I was once again balancing precariously, only now from a pretty decent height. Ray came up to help with something and *just about* took a header downstairs. He had forgotten there was no floor under him! Apparently, he got too comfortable walking normally downstairs. So I sent him back to window duty.


And this is what happened. Ok, not his fault technically, just a result of a long day of working and not thinking too much on both our parts. A MAJOR bummer!!! My big window... wahhhh....

Hey, on the bright side, I found out ALL these windows are triple-paned!! The guy who sold them thought they were double. What a nice surprise. Too bad I had to find out the hard way.



On the "not-so-bright-side" - it's gonna cost about $700-1000 to replace.... :(



Anyways, the cabin now has all the windows in -minus the broken one and the one I measured wrong so the window box is bigger than the window. So I have to get 2 new windows now. Still, not a TOTAL disaster...









Insulation is in half the roof -hope to finish it off by Friday, painting by the weekend. And yes Susan - I'm painting BEFORE I move in. Much easier that way. Although I think I'm going with a coloured stain.





Insulation! Once we closed up the windows and insulated half the loft, it all of a sudden got.... warm!






















The view out the loft window, by the bed, er, future bed.






I think I will never get sick of this view - this is out the loft towards the meadow.






These guys kill me. Jack and Harris were watching us, while doing their two-headed dog trick! Freaks.




















The night time cabin shot. Lights!

Holy crap I'm sore

Well, we're making progress as you can see! The tin is on and the floor is now insulated. Next up - insulate the roof, install windows/door and put on the flooring. We're making a big push in the next 2 days towards this goal and I hope I'll have the stove (and me) in by next weekend.


This smile was temporary - 9 hours later my whole body was aching. As you can see, you kind of have to ballerina-walk along the floor joists and once the wood was in, falling in between the joists was not an option!


Very precarious...


However, I did fall in twice when the insulation was in. Whupps!! My coordination was severely lacking by the end of the day. I also lost a hammer under the cabin and closed the floor in over top of it. This construction thing is hard... :)


I felt like I should be strapping on the rubber gloves here!


My choice of flooring for now is this $47(!!!) PER SHEET of tongue and groove plywood. It is quite lovely in that it is sanded on one side. We were very careful and picked the best sheets, stacked them carefully and covered them up. Then pulled this one out and it had smears of dirt on it. Aghhhhhh!

Oh well, who am I kidding? Smears of dirt are not uncommon around me.

Still working hard, man this is a tricky screw.

Moon out the window-less window!

The roof is on!

I have a roof! I have a roof!!!!

See? See? There it is. Ok, so it's the ugly side but it's a roof nonetheless. It was totally dark out so I have no outside pictures of the lovely tin. Yet.


Here's Will climbing the rafters and finishing off the framing of the roof.


Ray is trying to understand the complexities of vapour barrier. Or his stapler. Not sure which.


I'm looking down excited that I'm in the loft, but a little nervous about having NO FLOOR under me.


Yep, that's a long painful drop.


One more of the loft.

This weekend is going to be full-on insulating and vapour barrier-ing. I hope to get to the floor too, but I'm thinking that's quite ambitious of me. Gerry has a few small things to do, but for the most part, it's now my turn. The stove pipe is installed through the roof, so we just need a few windows (one of which I sized wrong so I have to get a new window or do something inventive), some insulation, flooring and I should be good to go. Indoors very soon! :)

The dogs still exist amongst all this cabin stuff, really...

The gang has been completely WIRED lately, bouncing around and FULL of energy. Could be the cool weather, could be the lack of training lately. But! Something had to be done above and beyond our daily fetch-fest. So we got out for some training on Sunday.

This group had their first run of the season. This includes Gracie and George, two who could care less if they run in harness, but they did run their fluffy little butts off the whole way.

Jack and Harris - two leaders who I swear TRY very hard to stay tangled the whole run! Harris has a real knack for turning around and looking at me when confused. Which was a lot this day.


Lucy: let's go already! Mmmm... fish burp...


George: oh gawd, we're doing this again this year?!?!


Gracie: what can I kill along the way?!?!


The new drop chain. Random trees/posts work well.




After a few very tricky moments and a gazillion tangles, we emerge from the trees! I was SO happy to be on the driveway! Holy crap these trails are rough.


Heading back to the yard. Hey, there's 3/4 of a cabin there!!

The next group acted like the superstar veterans. Rupert had one of his great days in lead. Ripper I am now convinced HATES having no obvious trail. We passed over a driveway and he tried to run up it to the highway. Apparently that is a more appealing "trail" to him than the vehicle-less ditch!

We did however have a fun and steep creek crossing. It was warmish, so the dogs loved the cold creek water.



They loved it so much they didn't want to leave.


Loki was switched into lead here since Ripper was driving me nuts and he takes great joy in bounding alllll over the place when there is not much of a trail to follow. I think I'll try Ivy in lead next.


Running at the bottom of the meadow. This is the first full day of blue sky in the last 2 months I think.

And as I was unhooking these guys, Ivy seemed to have disappeared. The rest were all doing the usual running around and sniffing and peeing on stuff after the run, but where was Ivy...


On the couch!!! Brat. Good to see my hard-working dogs know they deserve a little couch time after a gruelling 3km run... ;)

And it's official! I am more than ready to move into the cabin! It was -10C last night and I quickly found out that I really don't like the wall tent in -10C. I pretty much had the stove going full blast non-stop all night, waking up every 2hrs or so to stoke it more. Oh to be insulated from the cold...

Roof goes up today! Yipppeeeee!! :)

Cabin update #57

Now that I've moved north/west of town, commuting is real fun in that I drive INTO the sunrise on the way in and INTO the sunset on the way home! I know, in a couple weeks, the sun won't be out during my commute much, but man it's still blinds me.

However, it sure was pretty on the way home yesterday.


Blurry, but this captures the brightness of it. Glad I was a bit late coming home and it was behind the clouds a bit.

Although I should not complain - after all the rain and snow, it is great just to see the sun!

The cabin continues to make progress. It helps to have a builder who is a musher and has extra incentive to finish ASAP so he can get out and train his dogs, prep for races, get his money, etc, etc...

Yesterday they got the gable ends up - nice to see how tall this sucker is gonna be! They also framed the loft floor and the main floor.


The loft, from the um, "living room" :)


Let's change the setting on the camera so we can actually see the cabin in the dimming light...

So, all it needs is windows, a door, a roof, insulation, flooring, and tons more finishing stuff. I should be in by early 2008! Haha, just kidding mom... (by the way - your indoor toilet will be in the corner - a bucket over a hole in the ground!)

Gerry will finish framing the roof and putting on the tin. Then it's MY turn to take over and pretend I know what I'm doing. I pretty much get to insulate everything, and put the windows and flooring in. If anyone has tips on any of this, feel free to share! I'm kind of thinking it's going to be difficult to get that one window in on the other side of the loft (it's 3ftx5ft), but I shall try to improvise and try not to drop the window.


And of course, the hounds snuck out of their pen to see what I was up to. They'd been beside this thing for weeks wondering what all the fuss was about! They like it, they really like it. Ok, so they'd also like a stack of wooden pallets since they're not too picky. But I suspect once the place is done I'll have a hard time kicking them out!