Last Day of Break

Well that went awfully fast.  I can’t believe Christmas break is already over.  Today I pretty much laid around the house watching Sawyer with Erin.  The Vikings game was on in the background which was really a waste of my time.  After the boy took off Erin was driving her Dad to Virginia I got my winter gear on and shoveled off Jim’s roof.  He was planning on doing it tomorrow, and since I had the time I figured I’d take care of it for him.  He does most of the driveway plowing so I hope it evens out a bit.

I also put in for a BWCAW permit today.  The lottery for the 2011 canoeing season has opened and will close on the 15th.  We put in for the Nina Moose entry point hoping to get into Lady Boot bay on Lac La Croix for some fishing.  We hear its pretty amazing there.

We are also planning on a Quetico trip this summer as well.  This will be my first trip into the Canadian version of the BWCA.  After doing some research on the web it looks like their permitting system is shut down right now for a revamp.  We’ll apply for the Canadian permits when they open back up for business.

Its back to school tomorrow.  Its crazy how fast the first half of the year has gone.

Let the new year begin

2010 was a great year with lots of fun and lots of work.  I’ve been working very hard on getting my masters in educational technology.  In 2010 I completed 27 credits, 9 in the spring semester, 9 in the summer session, and 9 in the fall semester.  I’ve only two classes left and will finish the program this summer.  Erin and I have some exciting news, and it doesn’t involve a baby.    In the last month of the year we officially purchased our home on lake Vermilion.  We love living on the lake and enjoy getting out in all the seasons Northern Minnesota has to offer.  School (work) is going well.  I am teamed up with a guy named Steve who works for a technology company based in Duluth.  He comes up to Virginia twice a week and we hammer out the tickets created by our staff k-12.

We’ve had a nice amount of snow this year so far.  I’ve only been out skiing once though.    I am hoping to ski at least three times a week in the coming months.  I may have blogged about this already, but I’m not sure.  Jesse and I built a sauna this summer.  We’ve been using it quite a bit and I’m really excited to use it after skiing this year.

Well.  I hope to blog more often in 2011.  We’ll see how that goes.

New pipe

We installed a new stove pipe today. We were able to install it so any creosote that drips down the pipe will go back into the stove and get burned back up. The new pipe is nice and shiny black. I’m looking forward to a nice fire once things cool off a little more.

Fall

Fall has been going by pretty quickly here on the lake.  Work has been very busy.  We are working with a company out of Duluth that will help with our schools computer network.  They are great to work with and very knowledgeable.  Steve is my main point of contact for the company.  He has been spending quite a bit of time at our building helping the year get started.  We are hoping that things begin t slow down for us, at least in the realm of hardware failure and poorly images computers.

At home Erin and I have been enjoying our time on the lake.  Weekend boat rides dubbed the “Apple Cider Tour” are taken frequently.  We have been using the suana on almost a daily basis.  It is so nice to come home from work and relax in the sauna.  We are still jumping in the lake to cool off from time to time, but those swims sure are getting shorter and shorter.  We’ll see if I am crazy enough to jump in this winter.

Here is glimpse of what our neck of the woods looks like this time of year.

Wheezer

The last few nights Erin and i have heard a wheezing sound outside our house.  At first Erin thought it was me, but we were able to narrow it down to a sound coming from the woods by our house.  Erin thought there was something big and dangerous in the woods that would devour me whole and wouldn’t let me go investigate.  So last night when we heard the sound again I armed myself with some bug spray, a headlamp with spotlight mode, a camera, and a tripod.  This is the resulting image of the scary animal.

iPad

I’ve been lucky enough to play with an iPad over the last few days. It was one of 6 purchased by the school. I think it could really be an amazing tool in an educational setting. I’m actually posting from one right now. I am using Apple’s keyboard dock to type this and really prefer using the keyboard dock compared to typing with the virtual keyboard provided within the os. One interesting note using wordpress as a blogging platform is that the iPad wouldn’t type into the post area. I could type in the title of the post, but not the body. I found a work around to this problem by just typing into the html mode instead of the visual mode.

I’ve really enjoyed using the iPad finding it great for consuming information. I didn’t have it long enough to truly enjoy books on the device, but I can imagine it’d be great on trips.

Back Home

Its nice to be home after a week in Fairbanks.  I had a nice time working for the Alaska State Wide Mentor Project.  They are a great staff and fun to work with.  Even though the work was fun, its nice to be home hanging out with Erin again.  We got the “big boat” in on Sunday after I broke myself out of a 15 hour slumber.  Jesse, April, and Sawyer came out and we all (Jim included) went for a little boat ride.  It sure is nice to have the boat in this early in the year.  I hear we should be seeing temps in the 70s in the next couple of days.  Sounds like we should take a boat ride after school.

Huck

Huck Fin and the story of the runaway dock.

Hiking on the North Shore

Erin and I took a great little get-a-way trip to the North Shore (Lake Superior) over our Easter break.  We took off right after school and headed to our favorite hotel perched on a ledge overlooking Lake Superior.  The hotel is aptly named “The Cliff Dweller”.  We stayed there last winter when we took a trip up to Canada which you may remember from a previous blog post.  On this trip we stopped in Duluth to eat at the Olive Garden.  Erin had some delicious seafood pasta with clams, scallops, shrimp, and her favorite mushrooms.  I personally feel the mushrooms ruined the dish.  Anyway we made it to the hotel in time for bed.  We awoke to a beautiful sunny day with the great blue body of water just outside our balcony.  We debated weather we should go back up to Canada to check out the falls in the spring time, or spend the day hiking on the various trials along Lake Superior.  We chose the latter of the two and had a great day.  We ended up doing about 4 hikes with a stop for lunch in Grand Marais.  Here are a few photos from our excursion.

Curling Stone POV

Curling Stone POV from Bill Bryson III on Vimeo.