happy spooky halloween

here i sit
with my pumpkins lit
candy for any
the trick-or-treaters not so many.

two hands, no waiting

[this interface irritates me a lot sometimes, i just had a whole thing written up, i hit shift and up arrow to select the text to change the color, and all my text disappeared. grr!]

it's a sunny day out there and i'm glad i got to spend some time basking in the sun, in the garden, with the cats.

in sadder news, my grandma is in the hospital.

the title of this post comes from a few years back, either myself or one of my friends said it, in response to either of us needing a backrub. it now also refers to me being willing to take on a task that needs doing.

my mom probably remembers well, back in the day when i lived at home and my room was messy, my idea of cleaning it was to put everything in piles. to this day the thrill of piling things lives on. i love making piles. i love organizing things into piles, and then organizing the piles in and of themselves. i like having a place to put a pile of stuff, whether it be a box, a drawer, a closet, a book, a filing cabinet, etc. i like putting things in order; color order, numerical order, alphabetical order, size order, date order.

the funniest thing about all my current piling and ordering is that most of the stuff isn't even mine.

the thing that surprises me a little bit is how busy i've been wanting to be. i moved here with the idea that i would rest, lay around, nap, read, write, do a few things of my own but for the most part just pretend to be a turtle, inside my shell. lay low.

instead i've decided to take on all the chores of the house and yard. i've signed myself up to take apart the bathroom linen closet, wash it with TSP, and repaint it (mostly cause it's a little scuzzy in there and i don't want to put my stuff into a scuzzy closet). also, the gutters have been making a lot of noise when it rains, so i've offered to clean them out.

i've been taking out the trash, the recycling, and the compost - they all have their places and piles. i've helped make dried apples and pears, hot pepper sauce, apple juice, grape juice, 5 batches of pepper jelly - all of which i've never made before but have been very rewarding experiences. i've been organizing shelves of canned goods, cds, tapes, books, magazines, papers, and whatever else i can get my hands on to shelf.

my current projects have included laundry and hanging sheets out to dry on the line (they smell delicious!) and rearranging the clothes in the closets. there is still tons of papers and folders and books and just...things that need to be sorted and dealt with and put away and i probably shouldn't do too much of that cause it's personal stuff and the person whose stuff it is, isn't here.

so instead i'm just putting into piles which can be dealt with when they get home :)

three days have passed

today was lazier than yesterday. yesterday actually turned out to be a very productive day.

after getting up at 5am and going back to sleep around 6am, i proceeded to nap on the couch with a cat behind my knees until 11am. then i got to work. in no particular order, i found some bacon in the fridge and fried it up, then set off the smoke alarm. i assessed the ripeness of some pears in the woodshed and brought in a few to cut and dry them; also brought in some firewood and got the woodstove going. rinsed out the truck box that had been storing apples for apple juice day, and got it situated to dry (at this time it began to rain).

in the kitchen, i emptied out a bunch of cabinets worth of glass mason jars, washed them all, and set them to dry to be put away tomorrow; washed the dehydrator racks that had some leftover fruit bits from the last person who’d used it. also took down all the jars of canned juices and jellies and jams and applesauce and whathaveyou and organized them in a more reasonable manner than they’d been put away. went into the garage and got the trash and recyclables ready to go out to the curb in the evening, and then found all the redeemable cans and bottles falling all over the floor so i picked them up and put them into boxes or bags or whatever else was around.

i went online and emailed some of my friends, especially those that had birthdays yesterday. i organized the cds that were by the cd player, rearranged the books in the bookshelf, dusted a few shelves. went to the grocery store and got some milk and a can of soup for lunch. made a few phone calls. sliced up the pears that i’d deemed ripe enough to dry, and put them in the dehydrator. eventually lay down with the cats to listen to my book on cd and fell asleep on the couch by the woodstove. woke up, let the cats out, went to bed.

today’s activities have been a lot less strenuous, although this morning when i got up from a morning of productive dreaming, i went to the back door to let the cats in and found myself a little dead mouse friend. a gift, i'm sure. now i'm not exactly sure what to do with it so it's still sitting out there on the stoop. i probably seem like an ungrateful person to whomever brought me this fine present.

i put a bunch of the clean jars away and realized that some of the ones i thought were clean are not clean, or are not dry. so i have to rewash / continue to wait for them to dry until i can finish up that job. the pears need to be checked around 3-4pm to see how they’re doing in the dehydrator. also on task is more dusting and putting some kind of wood oil on the furniture to make it look nice, as well as organizing my clothes and putting them away, and then figuring out what to do with my room and all my things.

a few observations:

bike riding around town is very easy. i probably should ride more often, since i'm basically spending my days in the house and not playing rugby or hiking and working every day is going to catch up with me soon, i just know it.

last night when i went to the grocery store, i found it without difficulty, and it isn't that far away. so convenient!

the cats love being outside. i love watching them hang out and protect the garden. however they also seem to enjoy sitting inside, by the fire, on my lap, or just generally lounging about.

i never thought of myself as either a cat or a dog person; when i was young we had a dog named missy and i thought she was pretty great. she passed away when i was 13 and we never had another pet at my family's house. when i lived in NY, the year after i graduated college, the house i lived in had 4 people (including me), a cat, and a puppy. the cat was aloof and spent most of her time either in the guy's bedroom or in her mom's room. she didn't seem to have time for me. maybe i didn't like her cause she used her claws and tried to bite me while playing. and the puppy basically belonged to the 4th roommate who was very busy with classes and didn't hang around much. all in all i haven't had pets since i was 13, so it's an interesting adventure having these 2 cats taking so kindly to me. i really like them, too.

i haven't been too busy...

i haven't done much here yet except garden work and laying around sleeping (maybe that's not exactly true).

the day i arrived (saturday) the whole day was spent doing the neighborhood apple juice making party - which sounds kind of lame (and a lot of people gave me a hard time about hurrying to get to oregon friday because i should have been enjoying the state and camping and hiking and...), but it was a big operation.

• 2 people grinding the apples (1 feeding them, 1 pushing them through)
• 2-4 people cutting the rotten parts out of the bruised/buggy apples
• 1-3 people loading the pulp, pressing the juice, and tipping the press (i took to this process after i cut myself cutting out the bad apple parts)
• 1-2 people catching the juice that came out of the press into bottles and capping them and putting them with the others.

in all i think we made about 80 gallons of juice and i don't know how much, but probably over a ton of apples were processed. literally.

for the next 2 days my hands were stained black from the oxidized juice bits i got all over my hands from hand pressing the apple pulp initially to get it into the press, where we used a hydraulic jack to quickly press the juice out of the pulp. the hardest part was getting the wooden circular piece of wood out of the round-ish press after i'd squashed it in there so well with the jack. it took some work and a few people, but eventually (like all things) we got good at it once we were about done.

sunday i picked a bunch of hot peppers (serranos and habaneros). spent some time sitting on the bench in the back yard, looking at the garden, with the cat sitting on my lap. i also explored the backyard a little bit; the woodshed, the compost heap, the grape vines, the garden, the rock garden, etc. picked some flowers for the table.

monday i picked a bunch of grapes (2 5-gallon buckets full of white and purple and some white seedless for eating). i also unpacked my car and brougnt all my stuff in. now i just need to figure out where to put it.

monday night we made grape juice (around 1 gallon of white and 1.5 gallons of purple) and hot sauce (with the serranos, habaneros, and some carrot juice, lime juice, onion, garlic, and some other stuff i can't remember right now).

but i haven't been busy...much...

this american life...moves again

just 3 days after my birthday, i packed up what i had of my worldly belongings into my car and cartop carrier, and headed out of ely.

my trip here was kind of wacky. i left around 9:18am according to my clock, which i had already changed back to pacific time since i didn't need to worry about wendover time anymore (i previously had the clock set to mountain time zone, from a previous trip where being on time in that time zone was important). i drove up 93 toward wells and past the spruce mountain turnoff (about 2 hours), got gas for the car, continued west on i-80 to winnemucca (2.5 hours), got gas for the car again, drove northwest up to lakeview OR (about 4.5 hours), got gas for the car yet again, then headed up toward the east side of crater lake on hwy 97, which would have led me to a cutoff toward i-5 (hwy 58), and about 4.5 hours after leaving lakeview i would have been here. in this time i also met up with some kind of cattle drive coming down the road right toward me, with people driving their trucks all crazy trying to get the cattle off the road and some lady jumped out of her truck excitedly yelling and waving her arms for the cows to "mooooove over!".

except not quite to the cutoff, or even any other major road out of there, there was some kind of hold up on the road. i mean traffic was stopped on my side, and there were NO cars coming down the other side.

i called a few people, trying to get someone who had some info, and eventually found out there was a 20 minute to 2 hour delay on this road. the oregon dept of transportation said it might not clear for another 2-3 hours. at this point i think it was already 8-9pm, and i didn't want to sit there for another 2-3 hours, and then drive another 2-3 hours. and there was no where to pull off either, and the shoulder was questionable because you know how sometimes people think they're more important than everyone else and zip down the shoulder to try to beat traffic? (maybe that doesn't happen in anywhere else) anyway i didn't want to get smacked into by some wiseguy thinking he was more important than everyone else, flying down the shoulder.

so, after sitting there for almost an hour, i turned around and headed back south, to find some other road i could cut across on. The one i chose led me right by crater lake, which would have been great if it was light out. i sped down the road, up a pretty tall hill/mountain and then coasted down trying to save gas. at this point i could have cut north on this other smaller road (227), but the issue now was gas. in oregon, they pump your gas for you, so you can't just pull up to a station in the middle of the night, swipe your card, and then fill up. the station has to be open and someone has to be there in order to get gas. so i didn't think i could just roll into some tiny town and expect there to be someone to fill my tank at midnight. so i drove all the way to a town called medford, which is on i-5, about 210 miles south of where i needed to be, and it was around midnight at this point.

i found an open gas station, and a taco bell (it's been YEARS since i had taco bell!!), and continued. apparently it was supposed to take me 4 hours from medford to here, but due to my tactical driving skills and caffeinated state of being, i made it in around 3.25 hours, which put me here around 3:36am. so i like to think the trip took me 18 hours and 18 minutes. that's a lot of driving for one person, in one day! more than i've ever done before. my legs were all cramped and i was tired at that point, but it was good to be done with driving. i'd driven to oregon before and it had taken less time, but this time the hours passed quickly, and i was surprised at how far i'd gotten so fast, that is until i got stuck in late night 'traffic'.

oh i almost forgot, while on my long drive, i listened to cold mountain (which was abridged, but i enjoyed it - i'd seen the movie but forgotten some parts) and the pleasure of my company by steve martin, which was pretty funny, especially since it was read by the author (i recommend it, as well as shopgirl, also by steve martin [yes, the actor/comedian guy]). i tried listening to tony hillerman's the blessing way, but the author was reading so fast, and i was tired, and there were so many characters and names i couldn't keep them straight, so i put in a music cd to stay awake instead.

and i made it!

happy birthday to me

the last year and a half has been kind of nutty, what with all the hair changes (donated to locks of love twice) and the moving around (namely just leaving davis and moving to ely). but i find myself here in nevada, on the cusp of moving to oregon, and even with short hair, this seems like something good.

my tradition is to stay up until the hour i was born, so i've got an hour and 16 minutes to go. hope i make it!

i needed this today

god grant me the serenity
to accept the things i cannot change
the courage to change the things i can
and the wisdom to know the difference.

i had a mentally strenuous day. sometimes it takes a lot just to get through. i am not perfect and i make mistakes. but i hope in the long run and in the big picture, i'm good enough.

no more 3x5s

thanks john mayer -

today skies are painted colors of a cowboy cliche'
and strange how clouds that look like mountains in the sky
are next to mountains anyway

didn't have a camera by my side this time
hoping i would see the world through both my eyes
maybe i will tell you all about it when i'm in the mood
to lose my way
but let me say

you should have seen that sunrise with your own eyes
it brought me back to life
you'll be with me next time i go outside
no more 3x5's

i guess you had to be there, i guess you had to be with me
today i finally overcame tryin' to fit the world inside a picture frame
maybe i will tell you all about it when i'm in the mood
to lose my way
but let me say

you should have seen that sunrise with your own eyes
it brought me back to life you'll be with me next time i go outside
no more 3x5's, just no more 3x5's
- john mayer '3x5'
-----------------

well no, i didn't give up on my camera at all, but i didn't have it with me this time, and today would have been the day to have it. the weather was pretty much perfect all day, alternating between cool enough for a long sleeve shirt, and sunny enough to get a sunburn on my face. we worked a 12 hour day which was enough to tire everyone out, but it felt good getting so much done in a day. then as we were driving home, the sun was setting and there were brilliant colors of pink and yellow and distant clouds and the setting sun made the mountains that surround us glow.

then as we got back to the main road, it was dusk and a deer ran out in front of our truck. which was scary enough, but then further down the road i thought i saw more so i slowed down, and it turned out to be a small group of ELK!! i've never seen elk, so yet another animal to add to my life list along with porcupines, marmots, and bears. the male had a very large set of antlers which was enough to make kelly yell out to him, "let me know where you leave them so i can collect them later!" anyway we were sitting in the middle of highway 50 watching these large beautiful animals cross the road and move off into the wooded area. what was interesting to me was the way they move, it's so much more graceful than the movements of deer. almost like the greyhounds of the large mammal world. wow.

--------------------

another couple songs that came on the radio that really struck me today, since we really only get the country station of course these are country songs, but hey...

i said hello i think i'm broken
and though i was only jokin'
it took me by surprise when you agreed
i was tryin' to be clever
for the life of me i never
would have guessed
how far the simple truth would lead
you knew all my lines
you knew all my tricks
you knew how to heal that pain
no medicine can fix

and i bless the day i met you
and i thank god that he let you
lay beside me for a moment that lives on
and the good news is i'm better
for the time we spent together
and the bad news is you're gone

lookin' back it's still surprisin'
i was sinking you were rising
with a look you caught me in mid-air
now i know god has his reasons
but sometimes it's hard to see them
when i awake and find that you're not there
you found hope in hopeless
your made crazy sane
you became the missing link
that helped me break my chains

and i bless the day i met you
and i thank god that he let you
lay beside me for a moment that lives on
and the good news is i'm better
for the time we spent together
and the bad news is you're gone
the bad news is you're gone
- diamond rio, 'you're gone'

i've packed a cooler and a change of clothes
let's jump and see how far it goes
you got my heart and your daddy's boat
we got all night to make it float
we could sit on the shore, we could just be friends
or we could jump in

whole world could change in a minute
just one kiss could stop this spinning
we could think it through
but i don't want to, if you don't want to
we could keep things just the same
leave here the way we came, with nothing to lose
but i don't want to, if you don't want to

i got your ring around my neck
and a couple of nights i don't regret
you got a dream of a degree
and a shirt that smells like me
yeah we both got dreams, we could chase alone
or we could make our own

never waste another day
wonderin' what you threw away
holdin me, holdin you
i don't want to, if you don't want to
we could keep things just the same
leave here the way we came, with nothing to lose
but i don't want to, but you don't want to
but i want you
- sugarland 'want to'

just thinking deep thoughts

you only live once
and most opportunities
only present themselves once
take time to notice these moments
because they pass by all too quickly
and disappear unnoticed
if you let them

it is better to have loved and lost then to never have loved at all. that's a quote from someone famous, i think.

looking back over my photos, i think of how lucky i've been to have experienced so many interesting places. and thankful, ever so thankful i've had my camera with me.

today we went out dilligently to do our jobs. except it was raining and didn't stop raining till mid afternoon. we left the fieldsite, freezing and shivering and basically just wet, after a short 4 hour work day. the rain that was supposed to pass did not, and left us wondering why we even got out of bed at all.

southeast alaska is a very rainy place

but very green too, as luck would have it. and having been getting dusty in the desert all summer, i was very happy to be taking this weeklong vacation, nevermind that i added a state to my life list! (now i think there's only 11 states left i have yet to visit: AL, AR, HI, KS, LA, MI, MS, NM, OK, TN, WA)

anyway, the week in alaska went something like this.

friday - got up around 6 or 7am in ely. drove to salt lake city. flew to seattle. flew to ketchikan. flew to juneau. arrived in juneau around 1030pm alaska time zone, met our friends paul and susan.

saturday - went to mendenhall glacier visitor center, then to the racquet club for lunch (good sandwich), then hiked the muskeg behind paul and susan's house

sunday - it poured all day. so i stayed in my pajamas and drank tea and took naps.

monday - hiked mt roberts, great day for hiking, no rain, sunny, a few scattered clouds for effect, great view

tuesday - hiked the west trail of the mendenhall glacier. rained ALL DAY. very soggy, but very fun. we followed a trail marked solely with flagging tape and found a shortcut down to the glacier. it was an amazing color of blue. on the way back i saw a black bear, which ran away as i was approaching, and 2 porcupines were sitting in a tree. at first i thought they were some kind of witches broom or mistletoe in the tree, then realized they were moving. their faces were so cute.

wednesday - drove to the shrine of st terese and walked the labryrinth, then to eagle beach and the "end of the road" in this part of alaska. literally, there isn't any more road that leads out of there. saw another porcupine, some immature bald eagles as well as one adult, and then a marmot that looked like a weasel.

thursday - took the ferry from juneau to haines to skagway. was raining in the morning but as we pushed north the skies cleared up and it was a lovely day. on the way back down to juneau it began raining again. at night we attended an english country dance lesson and dance, which turned out to be great fun.

friday - lazy day, slept in, checked out downtown juneau, hung out at the red dog saloon, bought some postcards and fudge, then took the bus back to douglas where we met paul and susan and some of their friends for dinner at the island pub. we had thin crust pizza as well as some crackers with smoked salmon spread. delicious!

saturday - woke up at 430am and met my plane at the airport at 6am. flew to seattle. flew to salt lake city. drove back to ely. nice sunset.

books on tape (and cd) saved me

as mentioned in my previous post, i traveled long and far to drop ted off, go to a wedding, pick ted up, and get back to ely. in all my driving, thankfully, i had books on tape. they helped me get through the almost endless hours of driving virtually painlessly.

it was sheer brilliance how ted and i ended up at the library the day before the 5-turned-6 day adventure began. we were walking around, he was looking for poetry by robert frost or some other guy i can't remember right now, and i wandered by the books on tape after checking my email and thought - what a great idea! so, here's what we checked out:

ted's choices:
to build a fire - jack london
lewis and clark: the journey of the corps of discovery - ken burns
sick puppy - carl hiaasen

kristen's choices:
maybe (or maybe not) - robert fulghum
all i really needed to know i learned in kindergarten - robert fulghum
don't know much about history - kenneth c. davis
the heart of a woman - maya angelou
memoirs of a geisha - arthur golden
the postman always rings twice - james m. cain

ted also got road kill by kinky friedman, but the tape didn't play because it was broken. bummer.

of all the books listed above that i did actually listen to...

• the postman always rings twice was the most like a trashy romance novel (and i didn't get to listen to all of it since we got home before it was over), but it was read by stanley tucci who i really like
• to build a fire was the shortest and had the saddest ending
• the two robert fulghum books were short but somewhat inspiring
• i enjoyed the heart of a woman and memoirs of a geisha the most
• lewis and clark was more enlightening than don't know much about history, since i knew nothing about lewis and clark before that, and the book was quite thorough. i did learn a few things in the don't know much about history book, which i can review on my own since i own the paperback book. it's just difficult for me to absorb so much information so quickly about so many different things.
• sick puppy was second in length to lewis and clark, and the story had a few weird twists and turns but was very well read.

if anyone has read any worthy books or listened to any worthy books on tape recently and would like to recommend them, please do! i have a bunch of books to read in my current reading queue, but i'm always looking for good books to read in case i run out one day :)

the last 2.5 weeks - cRaZy!!

last week at the seven mile control plot, we did our first set of 8 days of working, 6 days off. except we only worked 7 days and 5 days off. it was a long 7 days, and by the end of the week just about everyone had been stung by yellow jackets, except kelly and travis and maybe steven. me and ted were lucky enough to get stung twice, which was really special, maybe nathan did too. anyway, i'm the kind of person that swells up a lot when i get stung, so it was super painful and i was afraid that i was going to have an allergic reaction. for some reason, especially since we were SO far from civilization and no one really had a bee kit or any benadryl, i was very nervous i was going to swell up and die out there. no one else seemed very concerned. and as it turns out, i didn't die.

we got back tuesday night, and wednesday i spent the day getting ready for the next trip - to oregon for boomer's wedding! but first, at 130am thursday morning i drove ted up to wendover to catch his bus to wisconsin. it occured to me as we were getting ready that, hmm, i wonder if wendover is in pacific time or mountain time zone. ted says, "it's in nevada," which made *me* think it was pacific time.

WRONG.

so we get to wendover at 330am by my watch, but when we go into the pilot travel center to ask where the bus picks people up, they say it came 1/2 hour ago and that it's 20 of 5am right now. i say, "what, it's 330, not 430" but i look at their clock and it says 430 and i look at my cell phone and it says 430 and i think, huh, guess wendover *is* in mountain time zone. so now the issue is that ted will be stranded in wendover until 1pm, at which point he'll make it to wisconsin at the exact moment he needs to return. so i say, "what time does the bus leave salt lake city?" he says "715" so i say, "alright, let's go." and off we drive to salt lake city.

with only a little confusion we get there around 630 and he hasn't missed the bus leaving salt lake yet, so we're in luck. i hang out until 715 and make sure he gets on the bus safely and then proceed back to my car (which i didn't park at a 45 degree angle like i was supposed to in the area that i parked in) and found my way out of salt lake city, just in time for rush hour. luckily i was leaving town so no big deal. i arrived at the bonneville salt flats, just outside of wendover utah around 10am. i was exhausted. checked out the rest area, tried to sleep in the car but it was just too hot. so after about 20 minutes of trying i decided, forget it, and continued down the road.

passed through winnemucca, up to denio junction and sheldon national wildlife refuge, and then into oregon, lakeview, and onto klamath falls.

went to crater lake on saturday morning before the wedding. i'd never been there but it was a beautiful day. there was snow on the road on the way up there and the rim drive was closed (bummer) but did see the lodge and the lake itself, which was beautiful.

found the way to the wedding in fort klamath without much trouble, with some mediocre directions from the girl at the local store. i'm glad no one was checking invitations, since i was basically crashing the wedding due to not getting an invitation because i didn't have an address for her to send it to. oh, the wedding is an old rugby teammate and good friend of mine. her name is steph, but we all call her boomer. the wedding was held at her fiance jeff's ranch, and the ceremony was held in the horse pasture. it was BEAUTIFUL. so lucky too since it was cold and blustery the day before.

anyway made it back through southeast oregon and into nevada, and ended up missing a day of work, and picked up ted monday night at midnight at the bus station in wendover. and then drove back to ely, with only one bunny casualty. rest in peace, jack or jackette, whichever you were. sorry :(

this week it was back to work, only it snowed on our plot the second day we were there. there was coyote calling and elk bugling and nathan's tent finally collapsed in the snow and we all decided we couldn't do plant ID under a few inches of snow so we said goodbye to nathan for the rest of the field season and headed our separate ways, but not before having a snowball fight!

this weekend and all next week, i'm off to juneau alaska, which i'm pretty pumped for. more pictures forthcoming.

peace love and turtles!! write me if you feel like it; i, of course, always look forward to hearing from everyone!!