Construction outside my window

Well folks - here is the view from my window on Friday, Feb 8. The city of KTN did a survey of the dock at the water front and found that a lot of the wooden pilings holding up the boardwalk were rotten. Pilings are like REALLY long telephone poles that the top "deck" or boardwalk rest on. So for the next couple months a crew will be replacing the bad ones.

What his means is they need to pull out the spikes holding the boardwalk boards in - they are like railroad spikes so they are big and tough to remove. Then a person uses a chain saw to cut out chunks of boardwalk. Then the crane pulls out the rotten piling and picks up one of the steel pipes piled up at the water's edge. They place the new steel piling where the wooden one was, then when all the steel pilings are set they will fill them with cement.

The entire process gets pretty noisy - the chainsaw running, the pounding as they try to remove the spikes, and the MOST NOISY part - the driving of the piles. To get those super long piles driven deep into the ground they use a machine that sits on top of the pipe, then pounds on the pipe. It is a rhythmic booming sound that you can hear all over downtown. And since our building is right in front of the construction, we can feel the banging with each hit of the pile. Then when the pile is almost in place it is vibrated to finish. Yesterday I felt like I was sitting in a massage chair during the pile vibrating process!

At work we are getting our marketing projects wrapped up so we can send stuff to the printer. We put tickets on sale for our Misty Fjords boat tour and I have been getting steady phone orders for that. And the most time consuming thing is hiring. We are looking to hire about 40 folks and we have about half confirmed at this time. Our company tries to get all hiring completed and locked in by the end of February. This gives us the opportunity to work on getting ready for the tour season and focus on our customer's needs. One thing that slows down our process is people who do not follow the instructions on our website. Our policy is that we need a completed application - not just a resume. Some people just send in a cover letter and resume but no application. If we have time we may contact the person to tell them they need to also submit an application - but if we are busy we just put the app in an "incomplete application" pile. Bummer but true. No matter how much it may not make sense to you, always follow the application instructions!

You can see from the photo that we are having a lovely sunny day today. When I got up it was about 10 degrees and now - at 10:45am it is up to a balmy 22 degrees. Yesterday we had quick little bizzards that dropped about 8" of snow. Luckily I have a four wheel drive jeep with studded snow tires so I have had no trouble getting around. But for KTN this has been a lot of snow. Since we usually only get rain and ice in the winter many people don't invest in winter tires. So there has been a lot of slipping & sliding around town.



On a personal note I have some errands to run in the next couple days - this afternoon I am getting my hair cut. I go to one of the nicer "day spas" here in town and a ladies haircut costs about $28 +tip. My husband goes to a barber and spends $18 +tip. We also participate in a organic food co-op program. Every other week we get a "small box" of produce at about $35. The food is organic fruits & veggies shipped up on Alaska Airlines from a place called "Full Circle Farms". Produce is pretty expensive to buy up here anyway - we can pay up to $4 a pound for tomatoes and I have seen one small Hass avocado at $2.50 each. So for the cost of the produce box it is worth it. Plus we often get things like mangos & fresh limes & herbs which we may not get here in the regular store. And I need to get gas this weekend - regular gas is at about $3.50 a gallon. Luckily we don't have far to drive so a full tank will last about two weeks.



Oh - and this weekend at our civic center is the homebuilders trade show. All weekend you can go and check out home trends, special technology for our rainforest climate, new ideas for remodeling, etc. The entry is $2 at the door and proceeds go to the KTN council on cancer. I bet I will see a lot of my neighbors up there this weekend!



Thanks for everyone who has sent me messages about my blog. Please send me questions - I will be happy to tell you what I know. Happy weekend!