Getting Supplies:

On February 25, I drove down the hill to The Home Depot near Palm Springs. This a long van to begin with and I had removed the bucket seats and flattened the bench seat to maximize the space. Still, it took two trips to bring everything back: 4 windows; 1 door; 7 sheets of plywood and 7 more of T1-11 wall paneling; 46 2x4s, 2x6s & 2x8s from 8 to 12 feet; 14 1x's; 4 bundles of Burnt Sienna roofing; and enough hardware to tie all of that stuff together. These pictures show you much of that.
As the job progressed, I would make many trips to the Joshua Tree Hardware, Yucca Valley's Barr Lumber and Walmart for additional supplies including pipe, concrete and more T1-11 panelling, also one more trip down the hill to Home Depot on April 1 to get more lumber, 2 gallons of Behr Water Proofing stain, drip edging, and 2 more bundles of Burnt Sienna.

However, it would prove to be a good two weeks before I could begin the job, but that is a good thing; it allowed the still greenish and wet wood time to dry, which happens quickly in this dry air. I stacked it with even separation to maximize that process.

One reason I had difficulty getting to the job was that, as mentioned above, I had to spend so much time in town using the library computer to handle business and my own machine to battle the barrage of driveway pics. The latter suddenly ceased when Eileen unplugged the camera.
Eileen Returns:


On Sunday the 26th, Ron & Lauren hosted a going away party for Eileen where we ate good food and played cards and one or two pictures came out okay this time.

On Wednesday the 29th, I put Eileen and Molly on the plane out of 'LAX'. Actually, I didn't get anywhere near a plane. I unloaded Eileen and the luggage including Molly in her cage at the curb, went to get a cart and returned to find them entirely gone. As I searched desparately for any sign of them through the big open doors, I tried to stall the cop that was trying to write me up as I tried to explain that I really had lost a wife, dog and luggage, and wasn't sure what to do about it. He convinced me to leave. I drove to the parking tower, parked and raced back, not really having any idea where to look, and I suddenly found her. As I had gone for the cart, an airline conductor had looked at her ticket and wisked Molly and the luggage away. They directed Eileen to a long line waiting to be inspected for bombs and such, and that is where I found her.

About then, another conductor (I don't know what they are really called) came down the line glancing at tickets. She pulled Eileen out of line and wisked her away again, with me standing there waving totally confused and just a little concerned. As it turned out, they took her straight to her plane and put her on it, just ahead of the closing doors. I thought we were fairly early, but I guess not early enough. That is typical for LAX and why I repeatedly ask her to use another airport, but her agent insists that it has to be LAX because of the dog. I almost always leave LAX and LA-at-large with the feeling that I have just barely escaped with my life.

Eileen returned my calls when she arrived home. She and Molly had taken a limo down from Logan and the guy had given her a good price. However, she arrived to find the furnace blowing its gaskets again. Scudder & Taylor came immediately and replaced this third furnace of the same make with a brand new one of a different make. Where the old ones would tend to develop strange behaviors in time, like bellowing steam up through the chimney where there should be none, this one has run flawlessly; as smooth, soundless and dry as can be ever since. The old ones needed flushing almost daily of dark iron sediment; the new maybe once a month, and then it still runs almost clear (the pipes are iron). I have nothing but praise for Scudder & Taylor; it was not their fault, but they took full responsability and moved quickly, at no charge. I suspect that the manufacturer, who has discontinued that furnace, was covering the costs.

Now that all occured as a snow storm was developing, but Eileen couldn't have gone anywhere anyhow because both vehicles were dead.


Creating Space:
I spent the next three months building a shed, replacing the existing "tent", called that because the 8 x 8 x 7 frame used to be covered with a tarp and in 2002 it was half of our living quarters; a tent of sorts. The new "shed" includes a private dormer and a private urinal. The latter is the best part; no more going out behind the rocks. It runs down under the rock border to a 6 foot perforated pvc pipe about a foot below the wash surface surrounded by a frame of 2x4s covered in stapled folds of roofing paper to hold back the soil. Ideally it should have been laid into a bed of gravel for proper leeching, but with usage being so minimal I couldn't see bringing in a truck of stone just for that - though I could use some stone in the lower driveway. Perhaps one day.

The dormer will serve as a place to nap at noon so Eileen can have the trailer, and also as a single guest bedroom. It includes a window so that I can lay there and look up into the hill. I still need to add some steps that can be folded out of the way. On my return, I plan to put a twin sized mattress up there. They sell plastic wrapped rebuilt mattresses at a thrift shop in Yucca for $99. That is what we have been sleeping on in the trailer since January 2003 and it has been perfectly comfortable. We will also need some bedding, another portable heater and perhaps a new chemical toilet from Walmart. When I return late December, I plan to remove everything from the house trailer and do some serious work in there. I will live in the dormer while I do that.

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The base is 8' by 8' because Ron said that the building inspector won't bother checking anything that small. I have since learned that it could have gone to 8' by 12', so I will blame Ron about that forever after. Of course I could have checked, but I took the man at his word; something I will have to challenge from here on out. In point of fact, I would have had to move the box trailer and its mounts ahead 4 feet and cut off a section of the deck, neither of which I was inclined to do, but I won't bring that up (and Ron will never read this far).

I purchased the plans online at StorageShed-Plans.com for $12. They left out some dimensions that would have been helpful, like the height, but those plans were a good start. I used them as a guide while I sketched my own plans with the door and windows in different positions, a dormer projecting from the roof, and the open end of a utility trailer coming through one wall. Yes, really; look at the pictures. I also anchored the shed to concrete footings (columns down to bedrock) instead of skids or blocks.

Now I am again going to let the pictures tell the rest of the story. You can click on those within this section but I also plan to do a full step by step photographic series on construction of the shed after this journal is done. If it happens to collide with next year's journal, then it may never happen. I am also negotiating the development of a web site for a new client. If she accepts my bid, then I may need to drop everything, just to get the bulk of her site done before I head West. We will see. You can check back from time to time, though I will probably send an email when and if it is done.

Time Is Relative:
On March 11, I awoke to snow, an inch or so, and I took some pictures of its beauty, planning my route ahead to minimize the number of foot prints that could dominate and distract from the impact of pictures like this; that is, walking way out and around so that I would come in behind each shot. The snow in our valley was gone by noon, though not in the mountain range. It snowed again that night.

I had been having a real problem determening the actual time of these and other shots. I could tell that their recorded times were off but I did not know exactly how much until it dawned on me to find a picture with a clock in it. Every digital picture includes hidden specifications about the shot. They call this the Exif specifications. If you open up the Properties of an image on a Windows PC you will first see 3 date-time entries: "Created" is when it was transferred from the camera or another computer to the current computer; "Accessed" would be now; "Modified" should be when the picture was taken or last modified. Then a click on the Summary tab will give you Size, Resolution, Date Picture Taken, Shutter Speed, F-Stop, camara Make & Model, and a ton of other specs, depending on the camera. If you move your mouse across a thumbnail image without clicking, some of that info will pop up, including the "Date Picture Taken".

On pictures of clocks, the "Date Picture Taken" proved to be 3 hours after the true California time, but accurate on pictures taken back East (where I had originally set the time). So that explains it: I had forgotten to change the time in the camera when I arrived in California. Duh! However what continued to baffle me was that the "Date Picture Taken" did not always agree with the "Modified" time; sometimes it did. I absolutely never modify the original photo; I make a duplicate, modify and rename it. Logically, those two times should always agree. Then it began to come to me that the "Date Picture Taken" was probably adjusting for daylight saving time, while the "Modified" time was not. Odd.

I researched this. To begin with, DST was Ben Franklin's idea. He was a genius and I greatly admire his amazing accomplishments, but this one was a mistake. Well, it is a mistake; I can't speak for how it was back then. That will be partially rectified in 2007 when the DST in the USA will extend another 4 weeks to span from the 2nd Sunday in March to the 1st Sunday in November. However, in 2006 we are talking about April 1 to October 28. Some photos of clocks taken during that period show the "Modified" time an hour behind the "Date Picture Taken", while on others the two times agree. So I am at a loss. I now know that I can rely on the "Date Picture Taken" in the pop up and in the Summary, after subtracting 3 hours on these shots, and that is all I need.



Copyright © 2006, Van Blakeman