Author: Marjorie Carlson

A pretty boring renovation: when we moved in, the downspout nearest the front door (white, on left in this pic) fed into the black hose you see toward the right of the pic, which wraps fully halfway around the house and empties into the back yard. It’s kinda ugly.

The hose got clogged with fall leaves, so water started gushing out right next to the house, causing a water leak in the basement. So it was a good time to just replace the whole stupid hose setup with actual pipes into the storm drain system. It took two guys all day to bust up the concrete and dig up the yard, and now you can barely tell they did it. Yay!

I guess I never thought too much about what’s UNDER a house’s foundation. The answer here turns out to be: lots of gravel.

We got this cut back to put in plumbing for a bathroom in the future master bedroom. He also cut the footers in the spots where we’re adding some doorways in load-bearing walls:

If our house collapses tonight, you’ll know why. 😨

Uh … graves together?

Today’s kids have it so rough …

OOPS! I thought I posted this in Iceland, but Justin pointed out it was still in drafts. So here you go:

Around 15 years ago, an ancient Icelandic long house was unearthed in central Reykjavik. The ancientest long house, in fact.

I think Iceland may be the first place I’ve visited that knows precisely when it was first settled by humans: 871 AD. And one wall of this settlement is dated at 871 ± 2. Soooooo, pretty ancient.

They have now built a museum AROUND the archaeological site.

This spindle whorl has “Vilborg owns me” carved it in Viking runes. The museum points out this was NOT a normal thing to transcribe. I think Vilborg had just had enough of damn spindle whorl thieves.

Neato map showing how long ago homo sapiens settled each piece of the globe. Iceland is darn recent. There was no one here at all till 871.

Curling up in a Viking burial. Pretty cramped, but hey, at least I’d have my horses with me in the afterlife.