Oh noooooo....

Today's our last day here. Damn. And of course it's clear and beautiful yet again.

To catch up the past couple of days: On Wednesday afternoon, Patrick (Annica's son) took Grant out for an inner-tube ride on his boat and he ended up towing Grant over to Marg & Janne's dock, where we met him with dry clothes. We had a great meal there on a beautiful evening.

Yesterday started out cloudy and a teeny bit cold. Grant went straight to Dave's to complete his painting work and Sooz and I joined Marg on the dock to see her off back to Stockholm.

It cleared up later in the day and Sooz and I puttered around, we discussed extending the deck in front of the house. It's a bit too narrow after we set our dining table and we seem to be edging around a lot. Even an extra 60 or 70 cm would make a difference. I emailed Stefan at X-House and he replied with a couple of photos of another X-House that had a wide stepped deck down to the ground:

We'd like to do something like this but we have more constraints. We like the way the house sets on the rock below, and my favorite part is the cantilevered corner of the deck. I fear filling that space with steps might mess up the house's setting. And we have our favourite pine tree close by, so extending the deck too much would put us right into its branches. On the other hand, having a bigger deck would make moving around much easier and probably safer, too.

Janne came by for dinner and we talked about things we could do; Stefan also gave me some detailed information, so today I'm going to do some measuring and thinking.

Stefan also sent me a link to photos of their new model X-House going up near Arlanda, and I have to say it looks very cool.

Lastly, I talked to Wille to say hi. He's busy as usual up in Leksand, and he is planning to go north "into the mountains" to put up another X-House in September. He'll have to work fast so he doesn't freeze! And in other good news, his son, Eddie, has a contract with the Vancouver Canucks. He leaves this weekend to start with their developmental team, the Manitoba Moose. I'll have to get myself a moose T-Shirt to wear out on the island!