Park Model aka Tiny Home

 Here's Tiny (my name for it) as it pulled up to our lot yesterday at 4:30.  It came from Indiana.

Starting to back on to our lot, had to move our mailbox.

The guy on the left, one of the Wide Load car drivers, is directing the truck driver.  We had the exact area marked with string, stakes and flags.

Big rig!

In place!  The setup crew comes Wednesday, will deflate the tires, remove the tongue, build skirting, entry deck and roof, do utility hookups.  Will take about 8 days.  Meanwhile, I'm putting together the bedframe, chairs, table, etc.  Trish is cleaning, picking storage shelf areas, doing all the domestic stuff.

We like it: bright and airy.  Quiet.  Will do another blog when we're in and have it furnished.  We're off to Minnesota on the 16th for the 30th family reunion, should be done by then.

My Complex

 

The sign reads MIKE DELANEY Pickleball Complex  At Dick Samp Park.  The picture includes the LHC mayor, city manager, city council members, parks and rec manager, chief of police and me.  It's the City's thank you for my donated $ to build the last 4 courts.  

The City planned to have 16 courts, 12 of which were completed.  City management said there'd be no more funding for the final four courts for some time.  

I wanted to see all courts completed while I was still able to play.  So, I met with the City and told them I'd fund the last four.  It cost a lot more than anticipated, but I went ahead and ponied up the $.  

The big sign and my name on the entire complex was a nice surprise, and the sound of people whooping when they hit a great shot and groaning when they miss an easy one is music to my ears.  Love the game and the numerous friends I've made playing it.

Dutch Pour

Dutch Pour is an advanced acrylic pour technique.  First, flood the canvas with a base coat of paint, any color you like.  Second, pour 2 or more different colors in a wavy stripe across the canvas.  Third, use a hair dryer to blow the color around.  Sounds easy, right?  It's not.

My first attempt was a disaster.  Took a critical look, thought yuck, wiped the canvas clean.  The second attempt was better, kept it - for now.  I like the third one, definitely a keeper.  Depending on personal taste, some may say it's beautiful, others: "It looks like dog barf". 

Why is it called a Dutch Pour you ask?  I wondered, too.  Turns out, the woman who came up with the idea is Dutch, like the Dutch Masters - who would surely sneer at a Dutch Pour.  Unlike Master Van Gogh however, she didn't sacrifice an ear to her art.  I'm guessing V G was smoking some really good shit, not the cigars named after him and his fellow artists of the Dutch persuasion.

Maybe I should come up with an Irish Pour.  Drink a Guinness Stout.  Rinse the bottle and fill with several shades of green paint.  Pour it onto the canvas.  Drink another Stout.

States and Provinces

Our long-haul RV trips are over.  Now, it will be mostly short trips that require just one day to reach our destination.   And the number of days on site will rarely be more than three.

In our 12 years of RV touring, we've hit 38 states in the US, 2 in Mexico and 11 Canadian provinces.  We managed to miss most of the southeastern states - but didn't miss them much.  The deep south doesn't appeal to us.

Our furthest south stop was San Felipe, in Baja California; don't recall why we went there, it being a small seaside village with little to offer tourists.  Across the Sea of Cortez, aka the Gulf of Mexico, is Puerto Penasco (Rocky Point), a much larger city with lots to see and do.  We went there several times with RVing friends.  The picture below was taken there.

Our Alaska trip was the longest, 15,000+ miles, augmented by an en route stop in MN to attend the family reunion.  Furthest north stop was Fox, Alaska, 10 miles north of Fairbanks.  Had dinner there at the Silver Gulch Saloon, the northernmost brewpub in the US.  

2nd longest tour was to the Canadian Maritimes, the highlight of which was Nova Scotia.  The seaside boardwalk, shown below, is awesome.

I could ramble on indefinitely but why bother?  

The bulk of my 773 blog posts over the last 12 years offer travel details.

Reflection Swipe Triptych

 2-3 years ago, I painted my first acrylic reflection swipe triptych.  Trish liked it, asked me to do one for our summer digs in NE WA state.  "Okay", said I.  They're fun to do, quick and easy - except for selecting the best color combinations, spent a couple hours doing that.

Decided to go with all-metallic backgrounds this time: gold, silver, copper.

The copper is my fave, love the look of copper!

Rub a Dub Dub

 Rub-a-dub-dub,

Three men in a tub,
And who do you think they be?
The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker,
And all of them out to sea.

There weren't 3 men in our tub.  At that time, circa 1950, it was just 2 small boys, my brother Gerry and me.  We were too young to know any trades, and definitely too young to be out to sea.

It was a fold-up rubber tub, like the one below except black.

This was before we had running water and electricity. 

Water was hand-pumped out of the cistern.

Then, heated on the kitchen wood stove.

We got baths on Saturdays, had to be clean for church on Sundays, you know.  Later, older, laboring on the farm, too tired to bathe Saturday night, no time to bathe Sunday morning.  

Then, came the en route to church spit-bath, our mom spitting on a tissue, wiping our faces, saying, "You could grow potatoes behind your ears!"  Oh yeah, those were the days! 

Are any of you readers old enough to have had a similar experience?

Fish Sticks

 A couple decades back, while living in Columbia City, OR, I made a couple of wooden objets d'art for charity silent auctions.  A woman who lived nearby held annual benefits for a good cause, damned if I can remember what it was now.  

The event included a catered gourmet meal, live music, silent and voice auctions.  The first year, I made a bent wood trellis out of small, green sapling branches.  The second year, I made the thing below, called it Fish Sticks.  I named a few of the fish, including the one second from the bottom.  Can you guess the name*?

I had fun with the project, so I made another 'school' of fish for myself.  They now reside on the pot shelf in our kitchen.  For sure, you can name one of them.  

*Cardshark.  The dorsal fin is a hand of cards, kinda hard to see in the small picture.