January 13, 2007

id I tell you guys what I asked for and received for my Christmas present? I got plywood. Well technically I got plywood money, which I picked up on Thursday. So my dog boxes are underway and we hope to have them done on Monday.

Top Picture: This is the very bottom of the boxes, it will be flipped over

Middle Picture:  A little further along. This will be a mobile kennel for 8 dogs, 2-3 sleds and all the rest of the equipment and camping gear.

Bottom Picture: I spent most of my day tracing and cutting out the dog paw doors (for breathing holes for the dogs) and running for hardware and lunch.

When I went out to get the hardware for it, hinges and door locks, I still was debating what colour to paint it. Usually I know right off the bat and I do not stew about colours for weeks. (The bathroom paint doesn't count, I know what colour I want it, just can't find that colour yet)... I was looking through the hardware section and they only had 7 silver hinges, not 8. 8 was the magic number required. I looked, I inquired. No 8th hinge. Then my eyes picked up the colour black.

Funny how people get tunnel vision. All this time I had been looking for silver and silver is all I saw without knowing it. Then I saw the black hinges and the black door fasteners. So, my dog boxes will be 100% white with black hardware and the pawprints on the door will look black.

We are getting to build it inside the semi-truck shoppe and my boyfriends father is helping me build it. He says he is not a good carpenter, but he has built 2 houses, so I figure he qualifies. Thus far I think he is doing an excellent job. We did have to tip it upright for when the logging trucks came in, so there was enough room and the dogbox was safety out of the way. We cannot continue our work until Monday now.

The trucks are quite amazing to look at this time of year. Well for me they are anyway. The trucks are 82 feet long and they are out in -30C weather all day long and go about 400 miles a day, bringing bug-kill trees in to salvage the wood and help prevent forest fires. The snow and ice on the frames of the trucks are as hard as glass poured onto the metal and are several inches thick. You cannot even dent it with a screwdriver. (I had to wait an hour for my boyfriend to show up so I could give him a ride home and I had done all the sandpapering on my boxes that I could reach, so I found a screwdriver and started poking at the ice like a little kid.*S*).

Each weekend they bring a truck in to thaw out and see what the ice is preventing from leaking, but the line is really broke, ect. I found out though, that the truck that gets brought in has to stay in for 2 days. The first day to thaw and the second day to dry out, or they will freeze up worse than before they were even brought in.