The Beginning

I guess it all starts with a hello, or is it an hello...not really sure grammar's not my strong point. My name is Mike and I have begun a grand journey that's destination is building my own house and living off the land with my Wife. I promised her not to put too much of our own personal lives online, but I wanted to share my experiences.

I've spent the better part of this last year studying different building styles and power options. After much debate and thought I plan on building a Cob house with solar and wind power generation somewhere in Oregon. I'll go into more detail about what cob is and why Oregon in other posts.

My main goal of this blog is to catalog and share my successes and failures so others can learn and share with me. It also will encourage me to continue to tinker with different ideas more frequently, and maybe help keep me on track. So in some ways this blog is as much for you as it is for me.

I guess a bit of background on who I am is in order. I am a Paramedic who has worked in Detroit MI for a little over three years. I just for offered a new job in the Plymouth area that I am quite excited about. I have been with my Wife for around four years and we have been married for two. She really is my inspiration for wanting to improve our lives. One thing most people don't know about EMS is it does not pay that much so we've been scraping by for quite some time, but she's stuck with me so I'm guessing she likes me a bit. I'm a 26 year old male, which means, by default like video games, though somewhat less and less as I am finding that making things is actually more fun, and that is a weird thought for me because I have spent most of my life as a gamer.

I am a minimalist by nature, I moved in with my wife with only a suitcase, a backpack, and a cat. I to this day don't have much more than that. I just don't seem to grow attached to many things, and go through periodic purging of my possessions.

I chose the title of  Modern Odyssey not to try and rip off Homer's work, but because an Odyssey is a journey that is long and wondering that is marked by many changes in fortune, and something tells me that is a good description of things to come. Also Odyssey is a cool word and I like the way it sounds, and always wanted to use it to describe something in my life.

I'll do my best  to try and keep this organized in some kind of fashion, as well as having updates in somewhat regular times. It will be a mix of things I have made, am making, or what I plan on making or doing.

If you're interested in learning a bit more about Cob houses right now you can check out http://www.cobcottage.com/ they have a good number of pictures there.