Weekend before last had at least a foot of snow on the ground. Colin scraped snow off the solar panels so they could take advantage of the brilliant sunshine.

The Klickitat River valley last weekend.

A most boring photo

Hard to think of anything more boring than a photo of a shower curtain, but it's actually a bit more exciting than that, because behind that curtain lies running hot water. So, very boring photo, but it represents a great step forward (running hot water also means the radiant floor heating system is operational).

United Nations of Ikea

Sorry, no photos, but how crazy is this: We bought our cabinets from Ikea, so of course every part comes in a different box, resulting in probably 50 or more boxes. As I was assembling things, I started paying attention to the manufacturing origin of each box. Here's what I noticed:

• Cabinet carcasses - USA
• Cabinet doors - Hungary
• Cabinet hardware - Austria
• Sink and faucet - Hungary
• Cabinet feet - India
• Pull out drawer unit - China
• Wall hanger rails for cabinets - Lithuania

And of course, everything designed in Sweden. I probably missed a couple of boxes, so there might have even been other countries. Pretty amazing job of sourcing components from around the world.

Despite a couple of hiccups assembling the cabinets, I've got to say Ikea has really designed some very clever systems for assembling them. They actually make it pretty difficult to assemble things incorrectly.