10/5-7/04 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

It was another beautiful drive over. It was 60 degrees when I arrived at 12:30. After moving in, I sanded the logs and window frames between Grid B and D. The varnishing is now finished for the dining room and I love the way it looks. Especially the short logs between the windows. Those that are so big that they stick out beyond the window frame have some of the cross section exposed. I had sanded those down super smooth and then chamfered the edges. Now that they are varnished I think they look spectacular - just like I was hoping they would. It looks better and better in there with each new coat of varnish.

Before I went in for the night, I went up into the woods, dug out about 10 more feet of creek bed, and unrolled about 20 more feet of copper pipe into the creek. I can't unroll any more pipe until I reroute the hose. Since the pipe is going a different route than the hose went, the hose is looping around trees above where it needs to go.

On Wednesday I slept in until after 8:00. My back hurt pretty much all night and was pretty stiff in the morning. It relaxed quite a bit after I did my back exercises.

It rained lightly off and on during the day, but I was working inside so it didn't bother me. I planed, scraped, gouged, and sanded the bottom of the Grid D3 PSL and the short logs behind it. Those were the last short logs behind a column that I had to do. I was very glad to be done with them because they are by far the most time-consuming to do. It is very awkward to try to get tools behind the column and work with them up against the window frames on either side. I also did the vertical and bottom parts of the window frame between Grid D and E. I forgot to do the top. Several times during the day when I went outside, I fed a flock of five jays.

On Thursday morning, I varnished all the prepared surfaces and stood and admired how they looked. Then I went back into the woods and re-routed the hose so that it follows the final route of the water pipe. From now on, as I unroll the copper pipe I'll simply roll up the hose and it won't keep getting hung up like it did before. The flock of five jays found me in the woods so I fed them up there as I worked. When I got back and had closed up the building I saw a dead Ruffed Grouse lying on the upper roadway. There was no blood and it seemed evident that the bird had flown into one of the windows and broke its neck. I felt pretty bad about it but there doesn't seem to be much I can do to prevent it from happening again.

I left for home at 1:30. A couple miles before I got home, the transmission on the pickup started acting up. I hope it isn't anything too serious.