Wind, changes and starting the addition

We have been talking about doing an addition to make a better dining room and family room once we got the kitchen remodeled. It has been a slow process but as of November 22 I think we are underway as the footings are now poured. The summer was spent removing shrubs and early fall I spent digging out the foundation extension. I had to go down more than four feet to get to the original ground. After hand digging the side walls I rented a small excavator and Nic helped me one Saturday to move a lot of dirt and pull out some big roots of shrubs that had been in this area for the long wall. Then we waited until we could get arrangements for the footings and foundation. It is finally going forward as you can see here.

 In the mean time we have made other changes such as the TV room in the basement (Gaven's old bedroom). Cindy refurnished the old kitchen cabinets and we installed them downstairs to replace an open wood shelf that had all the toys on it plus the TV. The final step was to replace the carpet which was the original carpet we had in the family room when we built the house 28 years ago. We had just moved it to the basement and pieced it together. Now the room has its own new carpet.

One other event was the evening of November 21st. We had one of those big canyon winds all night long. Maddie got rear ended on the freeway on her way home that night because the traffic was so slow. It took down a tree in the front and in the morning we could not find our garbage cans. I ended up finding them in the ditch across the street.

 

Greg's Conference to Indianapolis

This last week Greg had a historic preservation conference in Indianapolis during the Halloween time. It was a good conference and Ogden High received a national award for the restoration work done on it. That was not the reason I was at the conference but it was a bonus.

I arrived at my hotel, the Crown Plaza which is a restored train terminal turned into a hotel. There is still an active railroad track to the side of the building so you do hear trains go by. On the 2nd and 3rd floors they even have some of the rooms along the outside in converted rail cars. 

 To the south of the hotel is the home of the Colt football team.It looms over the hotel because it is so big

 

The red brick building to the side of the hotel is the Union Station which was one of the first in the country. It has beautiful stain glass at the ends and in the ceiling and this is where the conference was held. 

That evening I went over to the Indiana Pacers field house while they had a game going on. You could walk into the main lobby without a ticket and could watch the game on a video board and could look into the stadium, though you could not see the floor. It was a very interesting building.

 
 The first day I did some tours of historic areas and we talked with people who live in the areas. We also went to Butler University and to the Hinckle Field House. We were greeted by Butler's mascot.

 It was built in the 1920's and originally seated 15,000 people. (It now seats 11,000.) It is where the Indiana state basketball tournaments were held and the site of the movie "Hoosiers". The building is on the National Register of Historic Places and they told us about the restoration work they did on the building.

I even got to shoot some baskets. They wanted me to play for the team after my shooting but I told them I had other commitments.

We went to some other areas around the city and I took some pictures of the beautiful stain glass work in them.

 





The day was overcast with low clouds and I took this picture in the evening from the War Memorial which is n the center of downtown to show how low the clouds were. 

   











Did I mention they like sports and especially basketball? I came across this statue for John Wooden who was from Indiana along Georgia street which connects the basketball arena with the convention center.

The next day it rained all day and in the evening they had strong winds so they postponed Halloween. Good thing I had indoor classes all day. Friday was a bike tour of the city and various sites. They have a great downtown bike trail. It was partly sunny which made it better than the day before.

We went out to some neighborhoods and then finished at the Monument Circle where we learned about its construction. It is 12 feet shorter than the statue of Liberty. Down one street from the circle is the State capitol building. 

It

From there we went over to Market Place and had lunch.

The afternoon I went along the canal that connects to the White River which runs through town and saw how they did development along this canal.

The evening was the award ceremony in the Scottish Rite Cathedral. It is the tall grey building on the left side in the picture. It was amazing inside. North of the Monument Circle are several monuments and a big green space which is interesting.

 

That evening on the way back to the hotel there was one building on the circle that had lights in the window celebrating the season.

It was time to go home back to my loving Cindy that I missed for the week. On the way home I took these two pictures. One of the Grand Canyon as we flew over it and the other of the Bingham Canyon mine.