The tortoises have been living together for a week now. They are not getting along to bad so far. Emma followed Virgil all over when we first put them both together. She even buried herself right next to him the first night. It was very cute. Now Virgil follows her around. I think he has taken  quite a liking  to her if you know what I mean. We weren't sure if Emma was a girl or not but over the last week Virgil has turned into a complete idiot. Emma must be a girl. As promised here are some pictures of the finished Turtle house. It took me a while to think of how to mount the light so that it would look like it belonged there. I think it turned out pretty good.

During our Christmas break I have been building a new house for our two Hermans tortoises. Virgil, our first tortoise, is out growing the habitat that I built for him last Christmas. He is almost to big to get around some parts of his enclosure. This past November we got another baby Hermans. So far that one has been a different box for the recommended quarantine of any new addition to the group. This new house is definitely an upgrade from the prototype . I guess it is about 20 percent bigger with two ramps an a built in light holder. Move in day is tomorrow but for now I only have pictures of the skeleton. The finished product is way cool. More pictures will be coming soon.

I hope everyones Christmas was better than ours. I had it all planned out. The day before christmas we went looking for building materials to build the next bigger tortoise enclosure. We also spent quite a while looking at doors and windows and such for the new house. Anyway I finally settled on some wood at Home Depot. I needed 12 inch wide boards this time because the little tort is almost big enough to clime out in a few places now. Since nothing is open on Christmas day anyway I had planned to spend all day working on it. Everything started out ok while I was using the two four foot boards. Once I got to the eight foot board though everything went downhill. First of all my ability to cut wood that is that wide is severely diminished by some of the tools I currently have. I can generally over come this obstacle and achieve the results I want though. the big problem really is that you just can't buy strait wood from Home Depot. I bought the straightest one I could find but when I...

I get new woodworking magazines and tool catalogs in the mail all the time. I will look through each page and pick out what I want. Oh the things I could do and build with them. A tool for everything. Projects would be so much simpler to build. I would be so happy…and then I wake up from that obvious dream and wipe the drool from my chin. I can’t buy anything new, there’s no room for any of that stuff in the garage. Every square inch of wall space is already used up and only 1 car fits. I am really a very patient person but I can barely wait until the new house is built and I can move into my new 600 sq. ft. shop. It will be a space only for tools and project making that I get to design. There won’t be anything cute or foofy out there, only guy stuff. I may just sleep out there.

It's finally done! Well actually it was done two days ago, but I am just now getting around to putting the pictures on here. I think it came out really well. There are some things that I wish that I had done differently but for the first one it's OK. The dirt in the bottom is supposed to be better for him than the bark pieces he had before. It will give him the bigger range of temperature that he needs. Virgil really likes it. He ran all around when we first put him in there. It only took about five minutes for him to figure out the ramp. He sleeps in his little hut that is on the top and comes down to eat or get a drink of water. He was used to eating greens from the grocery store so he was a bit stubborn at first about eating his weeds. Those weeds are actually a special blend on seeds that are specifically for a tortoise like him. The broad leaf one are apparently the best. He tends to trample them until he gets something he likes.

I spent a few hours yesterday and most of today in the garage building a new turtle habitat. Virgil, our baby Hermans tortoise, has been living in shallow 10 gallon aquarium since we got him in early November. He really needs more room than that to roam around. Jen found an interesting two level enclosure that someone had built special for their turtle and looked fairly easy to build. I have the main construction finished and sanded. Tomorrow we will pick out some stain that will look good on it. After the stain and several coats of polyurethane for moisture proofing I will finish all of the fine details. There are some tree branches that someone gave us to make Charley a play gym, but we never did. The idea is to cut them into small pieces and then split them in half. Once they are split I can use them to make the railings for the upper level and the ramp. The ramp will also be paved with the sticks and some others will be placed around the inside to make it feel more like outside for...

I did my first wood working project in quite a while. One of the guys at work who does a lot of fishing and diving asked me if I could make him a new shaft for his spear gun. He gave me a piece of Teak that he found floating in the ocean. The wood was a little bowed so we couldn't make it quite as long as he wanted. It only took me about and hour and a half to make two of them. I really need to get a few more tools. Anything new will have to wait until the new house is built. There is just no room for anything else in the garage. It felt good to get the tool out again. Not much gets done out there during the summer because of the heat. Only recently has the weather been cool enough to really do anything outside. Now there is so much that needs to be done to get the house ready to sell that will probably be most of what I do this winter. I'm glad I like doing house projects otherwise I'd be really miserable.