Bridgit's Nighthawk is finished. She paddled it over a week ago and since they we have lowered the seat a little more than an inch. Abe and I played around in it this afternoon.
Anna's Combi 14' 9″ is in really good shape now. The wood has been replaced, and is the oil is drying. She is leaving for WA on Tuesday, so we need to get the boat ready.
I was able to find ash in the right lengths to make gunwales; the wood was only $45, and thats enough to do two canoes. Anna's father had bought the same board from the same guy earlier in the day, so we only ripped and milled one down. Today we are going to start the restoration of a Nighthawk 2 and a Combi 14'9″. I will take many picts and will have them up soon.
I will be taking the keep the dates to the post office tomorrow, so I have been spending some time getting our wedding site updated and looking pretty. It's on the same CMS that this site is on, making life easy. Alos there is now a photo gallery.
We had a great trip. It was shorted then expected, but we still had fun.It was hot and sunny as we drove to Chicago. It was great to get out of the car and walk around the lake-shore art fair with Shea and Nancy, followed by a wonderful dinner. The next morning Nancy, Bridgit, and I went to Lucky Platter and had some wonderful breakfast. We left Evanston around noon.
We took a few wrong turns and ended up taking the back way to Madison, WI. We got to Rutabaga about 3pm and spent some time there looking at everything. We tested out the Blackhawk Nighthawk 13 that we came to get. It was a little worse for wear, but just needed some love. We spent some time looking at paddles and each picked out a Turtle Paddle. Flipper was great and helped us out. As we were checking out we finally got ahold of the people near Duluth who had the Blackhawk Ariel we were also planning on buying. They didn't have it anymore. So off we went to Oshkosh.
We had a wonderful time with Mick, Shelly, and Ethan. Mick made us stuffed eggplant. The next morning we got the tour of Oshkosh. There is some cool stuff there. We then headed to Manitowoc to get on the ferry to Ludington.
The ferry was pretty fun. I excitement wore off pretty quick, but it was way better than driving.
So I finished Prodigal Summer this week. It was really good. There are three stories that all take place in rural N. Carolina farm country. The book was a cool blend of character, biology, and the outdoors.
Thanks to Dan and Bets for the Book.
So it has been a while since I have posted anything. Sweeney Todd has been keeping me busy. We didn't get quite as many as I had hoped for, but the second week should be better.
Yesterday I got on the scale and what did it tell me? It read 197. For those who are not familiar with the agreement: If I get under 200 pounds Bridgit, my vegetarian fiancee, will cast off her anti-meat days. So as agreed I made her a BLT.
Today Apple announced that they are planning on selling Intel based Macintosh computers. This is a shock to some, but expected by others. There have been rumors of this for many years. It is somewhat known that Apple has had x86 versions of OSX in house, and Apple provides a x86 version of Darwin, the core OS. In the past week there have been many reports that the switch was coming today at the WWDC conference. Looks like they were right. The transition is supposed to start in one year and take one year to move all Apple hardware over to Intel chips.
This is a big deal for Mac fans. PowerPC based Apple computers have had a hard time for years explaining that the x86 is a sub-standard platform. Now everything will have to change.
Software companies will have to compile all their applications for both chip-sets, and Apple plans to support the PPC through emulation similar to the classic environment. This is all crazy.
So I got confirmed as a Catholic on Wednesday, it only took something like 15 years. To celebrate Holly, Bridgit, and I went canoeing and then had dinner at the Dam Site Inn in Hell Michigan. For those of you who don't know my Mother was raised in Hell so it's a place I am familiar with. Then we went and looked at the old Bell Road Bridge.
So I have been running MacOSX 10.4 (aka Tiger) for about a week now. It seems pretty nice. It even seems to be faster on my computer than 10.3. Dashboard is pretty cool. My dual 450Mhz is pretty long in the tooth. It will be five years old in August. I never thought that a computer would last me this long. When I get a job I think I will look at a 20″ iMac.