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in the summer of '03 the szuplats purchased property
on 12 vacation lane.
found here will be details of ...
written mostly by erica and photographed a lot by ben,
however like most things in life there are exceptions....
for instance ben wrote that last useless sentence.
TIME!? SPACE??
Visitors to the site are slipping away... We scurry
to update the site... We realise there is not a lot of housework
to show... We travel back in time space and stay up too late pondering
string theory, the universe, and other dimensions...
first we reel you in, think black holes here, this
is actual work and it was done a long time ago. picture 1 is rather
obvious. in pic 2, ben hooks up the stove to the wall thermostat!
Magic!
ben had a bday and got to celebrate the first TRUE
sox victory in (ahem) a bazillion years! don't you still get the
chills watching the footage of the big wins!?!?
fall flew in full fashion at punkin nite, replete with
corn husks (like we live on a real farm and everything)
dogger continues to be cute as ever and "tons
of fun"
can you believe she got ANOTHER bath!? her first with
indoor plumbing...
she also got a cute new bandanna...
ben built and set up his darkroom! WHAT a PROJECT!
ben contructed walls, a light trap, shelves, and made his basement
room light tight all in the week surrounding thanksgiving! We
made a trip to the real big city and purchased some more supplies
and he now has a working darkroom!
view from the outside of the darkroom
Dec 27, 2004
we got a REAL snowstorm! approx. 17"!!!!
ben and dogger go out exploring!
this is actually the corner of vacation lane and john
parker road. can you spot the vacation lane sign? most of the
snow was pretty light, but it started out as a wet rain/snow,
so at the bottom of all this snow was some heavy icy stuff. fortunately,
we never lost power, although thousands of people on the Cape
did. It was difficult to drive up our street though as so many
branches were weighted down and hanging arched over the road.
what with no gutters n all, we got our first icicles...
they were tall!
Stay tuned, we hope to continue our house work ...
Although, this was originally billed as a home building thing
and although we do lots of polyurethaning and staining occasionally,
we are more on the decorating/finishing aspect these days.
in fact, we are just approaching 6 mos. in our new
home and we already have to repair some damage to a screen on
our porch. we have some purps in mind... of the four legged kind...
(not ours)
Jan. 6 2005 it was snowing, and everything was
covered with snow when we woke up this morning...it has since
turned all to rain. we have been adding coziness to our home...
we have been hanging some simple blinds. apparently
they don't keep anyone from peering in, but they lessen the dark
hole of the windows at night.
we have been doing small but useful things like making
places for towels to hang...
and adding more warmth for the winter in the way of
lighting
and some throw rugs
we got this trunk at the Mill Store when we first moved
in and erica stained it up in the fall. the next painting/staining
project is the coat rack from the Mill Store
among many great home building gifts- thank you everyone
for your continued support (sound like those old bartles and james
guys!)- we received these three stools that are the correct height
for our bar! no more using mismatched too-short stools!
Jan. 17
martin luther king jr day brings us more snow (our
third fall this year?) this time only about 4 inches. it is rather
cold at 30 degrees. visible in above pic is the thermometer we
hung up to monitor conditions! we've discovered that the dog loves
making snowangels (er, snowdogs?) in the snow so it is
another banner day for her.
about 48 hrs ago, we organized the downstairs closet.
theres no 'before' pic but you can just imagine all of
these things (minus wooden boxes and plus two milk crates) all
piled on the floor and you will get the idea. we discovered some
missing items and other items we had simply thrown together in
one big box such as this dart holder. we are actually hoping for
an honest to goddness blizzard because we have so many things
to entertain us here at the house there's really no excuse for
us ever to leave it.
in the last 24 hrs, ben hung up the holder for the
cues/sticks.
over 192 hrs ago, chris walked through our doors and
visited.
As early as Thursday and Friday, we were being warned
of a huge storm approaching. Saturday afternoon, Ben and i went
to the local food market to get some milk and various sundries
& see the excitement. The place was mobbed and people were
chatting about how the major supermarkets were out of shopping
carriages! on Jan. 22, it started snowing around four oclock.
It didn't stop for over 24 hours. At the top of this page you
can compare and contrast! One side of our house had a snow drift
that that was at least four feet high, and the other was almost
at dirt level (this was good because we did not become those you
are reading about in the papers who got poisoned because their
heating system vents were blocked with snow.)
One average, we got somewhere between 2-3 feet of snow
all around. Winds were reportedly anywhere between 60-80 mph and
took a screen off on of our windows. 
(the
dogger tries to get back on the porch from her new bathRoom facilities.
Ben had to go out first thing sunday morning and shovel her a
cavern to go in!)
We never lost power and stayed cozied up on the inside,
reading books, watching Netflix (we were lucky enough to have
3 on hand at the start of the storm!) baking goodies and playing
video games online. This view is from the porch doors looking
out towards the power lines in the east. The small stick near
the top left is the top of the hammock stand pole at bout 5 ft
high. Of course, you should be able to see the edge of the porch,
but the snow is level with the porch and higher. On sun. Jan.
23, I got a ride over to seacoast and around town in the blizzard
to check on family and friend's homes. Ben shoveled the driveway
all the hours I was away.
Mon Jan. 24 Pete came over with the snowblower
and widened and expanded upon what Ben had shoveled. We were already
hearing reports that we could get more snow later in the week.
Pete had been snowblowing all day and we went to seacoast and
dug out there as well. Reports were coming in over getting another
snowfall this week.
Tues. Jan. 25 A day without shoveling is like
a day without breathing.
By Wed. Jan. 26 It's snowing again in the morning.
Reports predict 4-8 inches by the time it departs. Our
next door neighbor, who works for a landcaping company & has
been snowplowing all week, told Ben that he had worked 44 hours
in the past three days. They were out of salt, out of sand, and
it was late that night before we finally saw a plow actively going
on our street. It was like witnessing a rescue operation! Ben
and I had been shuttling around in the truck for fear that once
his car went down the hill, it would not make it back up again.
Jan. 27 We have not seen mail nor trash trucks
all week. School and the Town of Falmouth have been closed all
week.
STAY TUNED for more photosof the blizzard of 2005
Click away To
get to More Pics at Page 15
bens first attempt at inserting a counter.....provided
by http://www.digits.com/