welcome back kotter

i'm sitting at the computer, wearing a t-shirt, long sleeve shirt, jacket, winter hat, sweat pants, socks, and wool slippers, and my hands are a bit chilly. there is a fire going in the wood stove and when i'm done here i'll go warm myself. i can look out the window and it's another cloudy day in oregon, with varying amounts of sunlight mixed with rain showers. the yard is peaceful and the cats keep me company. the days are relaxing.

have been basically hibernating from blogging the past month or so. just haven't had too much to say. i returned to oregon on feb 1st and have already attended 2 weekly contra dances and one contra dance camp weekend. i've had burritos, which i had been craving the whole time i was in CT. i've been to the grocery store, gone for short bike rides, and spend a good amount of time napping, doing puzzles of various sorts, hanging with the cats, checking the mail, and surfing the web. the next month will be a bit chaotic, but fun.

in a week i will travel to yakutat alaska to run a friend's aunt's bed and breakfast. i have never run a bed and breakfast, nor have i prepared breakfast for more than say, one or two people at a time. i wonder if i have to learn how to cook eggs over easy? there will be new challenges every day. and, from the sound of it, lots of snow. i'm so eager to have some snow. winter hit the northeast about a day after i left, and oregon has just been rainy since i got back. although i hear it's snowing on the pass and maybe we'll go cross country skiing this weekend.

by mid march, i will have returned from alaska and will be on a plane to peru to celebrate my friend kurt's wedding to his fiancee maria. i have never been to peru, and thus have to get a bunch of travel information as well as immunizations.

all this travel you're probably thinking - don't you have to work to have money to do these things? i have saved up a little and have been fortunate in other ways, and when i get back i suppose i'll have to start doing something related to work. which means my free time could be coming to an end which means i should hop to and get my stuff set up in my office and unpack! i haven't yet unpacked from moving my stuff from ely/reno to here. just unpacked whatever i needed which was some clothes.

so much to do.

dancing has been a priority in this year of the pig. i spent many many hours dancing while on the east coast, at my favorite dance halls, the guiding star grange in greenfield massachusetts and the west hartford town hall in west hartford connecticut. i think about those dances and i miss the people there very much. they were basically my adopted family while i was home with grandma, since my real family doesn't seem to be much for doing activities together. although that's not exactly true, my dad and i did go hiking a few times. grandma and i talked and did exercises and played cards and watched movies. on the whole though, i feel my family doesn't take any joy in anything having to do with me. especially going out of their way for me. *shrug*

hey guess what. it just started hailing. i mean, there's a lot of hail. it's a hail storm. small hail. but hail nonetheless! it's bouncing all over the place...ok it stopped.

movies

since my home in oregon has no TV, i've been catching up on watching some movies on DVD while here in CT. here's the most recent batch:

the da vinci code - never read the book, and probably won't. the movie was good and an interesting concept, but didn't really make me feel like i needed to run out and read the book right away.

the life of david gale - the story was an interesting one and it reflected how much he knew about what he was doing and how he didn't want to stop it. a seemingly hard decision.

x-men 3 - the last stand - definitely a disappointment after having seen x-men 1 and 2.

step up - the dancing in this movie was awesome. i *wish* i could dance like that. i should probably watch it again sometime and try to pick up some sweet dance moves. or else i could just watch napoleon dynamite again :)

the constant gardener - i am not sure i completely understood the story, probably should have watched it again just to clarify a few things.

friends with money - everyone has problems whether they have money or not. duh.

little miss sunshine - many people told me this movie was funny, and some said it was horrible. had to see it for myself. laughed out loud many many times. what do you think? life isn't as serious as we think it is.

cinderella man - the director made me feel like i was a part of the cast. i felt everything they wanted me to feel. and i didn't know until the end what james braddock would decide to do.

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do you ever just sit around making weird noises with your mouth because you can? i just caught myself doing that.

finally, the lyrics to the birthday song that everyone sings at contra dances on the east coast.

we wish you a happy birthday
a joyous and celebrated birthday
to our dear *enter name here*
may he/she have a long long life.

the second time you sing it in a round and my newest goal is to sing a harmony part.

this weekend mike is coming to visit me from oregon for the second time in 2 weeks. i guess he likes me. anyway we're going dancing in greenfield on friday and peterborough on saturday. i can't wait, it's going to be so much fun!! better start sleeping now so i won't be tired!

ok time to get grandma to do her exercises. hope all is well with everyone out there in blog world!

peace love and turtles

and the walking man walks

the new year has begun, and with that my father and i have already taken 3 nature walks together.

the sand pit
nearby our home there are actually 2 sandpits; one for actual sand "mining" and the other for more recreational uses like dirtbikes. it's about 2 miles from my house to the recreational one, so we headed over to see if there was anything going on. on the way we pass by the transfer station, the place where the town puts all the leaves from streetside leaf collection, some corn and tobacoo fields, a little bit of woods, and a stream. and it appears some people had a nice bonfire to ring in the new year! also shown are my first sunset photos of 2007.







soapstone mountain
dad, mike, and i went to soapstone just to have a look around on a gorgeous 60 degree day. i didn't take many photos but the sky looked particularly interesting (no surprise there!)



east hartford / hartford river walk
i'd never been walking along the CT river in hartford, and my dad had to drop off some papers for a new job in east hartford, so we did that and then found a park where we began our hike on the east side of the river. we then proceeded over the founders bridge, checked out constitution plaza, walked south to the charter oak bridge, and back north to the car. the blue onion building is colt firearms, where my dad had his second job out of college. the next historic looking building is the travelers tower.

happy new year!

i spent new years eve dancing. what were YOU doing?

too much text

people are turned off by text in blogs. but i have no photos to post at this time. *shrug*

oh yeah but i did watch mission impossible 3 and must love dogs last night. next up: the da vinci code!

least flattering photo of the year

my dad claims to have gotten rid of all the crappy coats in the house, so i was given this old lab coat to use for the annual cutting of the christmas tree. it's not that good of a photo, however.

in other news - contra dancing!

i went to greenfield MA last night for my second consecutive week of dancing there, and i learned that the third saturday dance in greenfield is the least well attended. and people there knew that. but i didn't know that since it was only my second dance. i had been asked the previous week to go to a dance in lenox, but i was a slacker and didn't look up where it was or how to get there and didn't take any steps towards figuring that stuff out. plus i figured, greenfield was a great dance last week, it would be great every week! i was only wrong in the sense that there weren't as many people. the dance was still pretty great. just a lot smaller.

last night people told me that dancers usually go to other dances on third saturdays, including walpole. no one mentioned walpole to me before! hmmph!

well anyway the dance turned out to be great aside from one dancer who for the life of him could just not get it together. usually, as mentioned in my contra dance post, people can get it within a few minutes. it is generally not complicated and involves repeating the same moves over and over with the same partner, and neighbors that change with every full cycle of the dance. but this man could just not get it. i ended up next to him several times and even took him as my partner one time, and i felt bad that i just couldn't help him get it right.

i danced with many fine dancers throughout the night, though, and had a ton of fun swirling around, getting dizzy, and smiling/laughing like crazy. the thing about dancing is that if i have a really good dance with someone, i end up feeling a lot closer to that person once the dance is over. in greenfield, this feeling has generally been mutual and a hug at the end of a dance is a super nice way to say "thank you for a nice dance." and lord knows i can use as many hugs as possible these days!

next week i'm probably heading back to greenfield to give it another shot. there are other dances around but, after one real dud in granby CT, i'm hesitant to try a new dance where i don't know what the crowd will be like. and the granby dance wasn't a total dud, it was just not contra which was what i had gone for. we had a good english country dance nonetheless.

well dad just said "dinner" so it's off to taco night for me. toodles for now, fellow bloggers!

what the heck *is* contra dancing?

it was never really described to me, either. the first time i tried it was college. a bunch of people who lived at pine lake told me there was going to be a contra dance some weekend, and i hitched a ride to see what it was all about. i think i also knew the keyboard player in the band that would be playing that weekend - he was my supervisor at work. anyway i got there and people were milling about. the caller said find a partner and make long lines up and down the hall. the rest is history.

a few things i remember from that dance include gypsying for the first time with this guy named dan, learning where to put my foot to swing properly and in the most fun manner, and the caller saying that some part of contra, or just dancing in general, was to do in a vertical position what you wanted to do in a horizontal position. whoa!

i think most people hear the word "dance" and think "i can't do it" or "i'll look stupid doing it" or "i don't know how and probably couldn't learn". the truth of the matter is that contra dancing is the kind of thing where if you can walk, you can do it. of course it helps if you have *some* rhythm, or some sense of being able to count to 8, but other than that, it is very simple.

moves include holding hands in a circle of 4, walking forward or backward, turning around either alone or with one other person, walking past people, and balancing (which is actually just stepping toward the person and stepping back). skills like knowing your left from your right are handy. higher level skills include twirling, weaving, do-si-dos, and swinging. however these higher level skills can be learned the night of the dance.

the nice thing about contra is that they tell you everything you need to know, and they tell it to you multiple times throughout the dance. and everybody at the dance is, for the most part, doing the exact same moves during the dance, so you're surrounded by people who are all doing virtually the same thing as you, who can guide if you if you start to get lost or confused. even dancers who have been dancing for awhile get confused sometimes - especially after a good swing!

another fine part of this dance is that you can switch partners every dance. this means that if you encounter someone you would like to dance with sometime during one dance, you can ask them to dance the next - and it's perfectly fine for men to ask women and women to ask men, or women to ask women and men to ask men...you get the idea. of course you don't have to switch partners if you don't think you can, but part of the fun of it is learning new moves from other people so you can try them out with your favorite partner...

for me contra dancing has just re-entered my life. i learned how to do it back in college, and then sort of lost track of it until now. i go just about every weekend, and it definitely is good for me all around, including therapudically and emotionally. it is a time when i can forget about things that are bothering me and just smile. the dancing is so fun for me that i spend most of the time smiling so large i can't even contain it. i wonder if people think - "why is that girl smiling so big?" but usually, my smile can crack even the most stoic, focused dancers. and once i get someone smiling, they loosen up and become a lot more fun to dance with. even the women, with whom i have to gypsy or chain or turn by the right or left, usually end their dance with me smiling. it is a great feeling.

not only that but once you get the hang of it, contra dancing is an all out athletic event. sure, you can walk through the moves and get from a to b and back again, but for some of us, it's about getting a workout in. generally a dance lasts for 3 hours, and people i dance with go through anywhere from 2-5 shirts in a given evening. including me!

one of the other facets that makes the dances so fun and interesting is the outfits that people wear to the dance. ususally people try to wear some wild shirt, including hawaiian style shirts or tie dyes, and many people, including men, wear twirly skirts, ranging in length from floor length to mid-thigh. when you're wearing the skirt, you don't realize the effect it's having on the other dancers in the room, but from my own personal experience, people really take notice of the dancers with the showiest outfits.

so stop wimping out and saying "i'm too tired" or "i don't know how." get off your couches and get out there! you don't even need to bring a partner! the people at contra dances are very helpful and very kind to the newest or the most experienced dancers. it's a community that most people don't even know about, but i've found they're some of the nicest and most fun people i've ever met!

here's a listing of dances in your area: www.thedancegypsy.com

bring back the teeter totter!

i got together with my friend brian today.

we met while at iowa state university - i was working there for the summer and he was working on his masters degree in aerospace engineering or something smart like that. we both lived in the dorms and in the evenings would spend time eating dinner together - usually a frozen totinos pizza - and working on jigsaw puzzles in the lounge while the asian student intently watched judge judy.

one thing brian and i noticed on the ISU campus, was this sign posted by a bridge over a stream that showed a picture of two children on a see saw (or teeter totter as we like to call them.) the sign might have even said caution. we wondered if the sign was supposed to suggest that teeter totters were in the stream, if we should look for them in the stream or maybe under the bridge, or if something larger was going on.

since then we've had this fascination with teeter totters and finding them. and you know what? they're a disappearing breed! which makes me think that's why we were being warned about them running down that stream on campus. they're running away! in total, brian and i have lived in about 10 different states over the past 6 years - CT, IA, NE, MD, VA, NC, MN, CA, NV, OR - and have noticed a significant trend in the decline of teeter totters.

brian moved to connecticut this year and i hadn't been back to visit my family until just now. brian had been on a mission, and this past friday we were finally able to fully complete the task. he had found a teeter totter at a park in milford, and we were going to see if it really was as fun and/or as dangerous as it would seem.

it was a total blast! oh my gosh, we laughed so much. i couldn't stop myself. i was literally like a small child on an amusement park ride. every time i went up in the air, i just laughed out loud. we tried doing some bmx type moves which turned out to be an even bigger source of amusement than just going up and down and flying off the seat each time.

after all that fun, we headed back to brian's to have a totinos.

anyway, i urge all you park people who are taking down the teeter totters, for reasons like kids get hurt on them or something like that...please! leave them! they're so much fun and bring so much joy, even to big kids like me.

i don't want to, if you don't want to

i am holding out on switching to blogger beta for as long as possible.

the internet keeps dumping me so i can't get anything good posted. it's annoying.

i only get online about once a week.

i went to a dance in greenfield mass last night and it was amazing, just what i had been waiting for. lots of people and lots of good dancers although it seems i only danced with about 5 people in a rotation of sorts. but a few of them were crazy/great!

i watched shopgirl yesterday afternoon. it was good, but not as good as the actual book.

i watched memoirs of a geisha last night. it was good. but not as good as the book on cd.

there's a trend here, and the central idea takes me back to something i figured out a long time ago: watch the movie first.

in other news grandma is getting more steady on her feet but she's still afraid of falling all the time. she also told me today that she thinks she would have been better off just staying in NJ. yeah, right. alone? i doubt it.

saw grandpa this week and we had chicken wings and shoestring potatoes. they were delicious. i love both of those foods. i love grandpa too.

now i will go write my christmas cards. i have everything labeled and stickered, and the letter is just about complete - just have to print it on the fancy stationary. then i have to write in the cards, and put the letter in there, put a stamp on there, and there you go mr. mailman!

no photos this time, but that's because i didn't take any this week. *shrug*

hugs all around!

what's happening on my visit to CT

i haven't spent much time online due to the fact that my brother usually has the modem, and i'm generally busy trying to entertain my grandma, or rather get her ready for something or another - the bath lady comes tuesday and thursday at 9am, the physical therapist comes tuesdays and fridays around 10, and the visiting nurse comes sometime on friday. did i mention she has a hair appointment on thursdays as well? sometimes other doctors appointments at irregular intervals. getting grandma up and ready is not a quick job. it takes about an hour or more for her to go from pajamas to ready to leave the house. i won't bore you with all the details of her preparations.

anyhow, when i'm not doing that, i've been able to get out and do a few fun things. here are the highlights:

nov 23 - well, it was thanksgiving. we went to my aunt's house and visited with the local family members. and ate turkey!

nov 24 - contra dance at west hartford town hall, music by wild asparagus! i attended a dance camp in eugene oregon a few weeks before this dance, so when i saw the group they recognized me but didn't know from where till i told them. of course they recognized my contagious smile. i also spoke with the ukelele/piano player who grew up in the same town as my dad's family and some of my cousins. and she knew them! small world. this dance probably had over 100 people in attendance and was very very fun.

nov 25 - went to see casino royale with my dad and brother. the movie was my dad's choice, but our tradition is to go see a movie either on thanksgiving day or the day after. in this case it turned out to be 2 days later, and the theater was crowded but not packed. the movie was actually pretty good.

nov 26 - went hiking with dad in the early part of the day. the weather was great for hiking and the hike was a familiar local one for us. here's a few photos:

nov 26 - at night i attended a contra dance at the powder mill barn. this dance had about 20 people in attendance, and was one of the smaller contra dances i've ever been to. the crowd was good though, and most of the people there knew how to dance, so it didn't matter that the crowd was small; it meant i got to dance with the good dancers many times!

nov 27 - hung out with zachary, my childhood friend. we played some pool, cruised the mall, went to barnes and noble, and then hung out talking at mcdonalds for awhile (zack really wanted a large orange drink). (no i don't usually hang out at mcdonalds.)

nov 29 - hung out with sandi, a good friend of mine since junior high. we went to one of those places where you pick a ceramic piece to paint, then paint it however you want, and then they put it in the kiln and glaze it for you and you pick it up in a few days. then we went to dinner at this place called stellas. i think the last time i ate there was 16 years ago. pretty good though.

dec 1 - contra dance at south church in granby. this dance had only 9 people at it's peak, and generally no more than 6 or 7 at max. it's hard to do contra with only 3-4 couples, so the caller had to get creative and do some more traditional english dances. at least that's what i think they were. i didn't go with a partner (i haven't had one since i came home) so i ended up dancing with the caller of the dance, who turned out to be the best dancer there anyway.

dec 3 - hung out with susan, a friend from high school who was integral in helping me plan our 10 year high school reunion. she has 2 daughters now; one of them is just over 2, and the other one is about 2 weeks old! both the kids are SO cute and pretty good, and i got to hold the little one for a little while which was actually a great arm workout.

this weeks plans include picking up my ceramic piece at the studio, hanging out with anyone who wants to hang out with me, spending time with grandma, working on my christmas cards (and helping gram work on hers), rolling coins from everyone's collections around the house, and hopefully watching a few movies and sleeping in! hooray!

oh yeah i forgot, since my folks got netflix i've been watching whatever movies they get. here's the list of what i've seen so far (i know i saw another movie or two, but i simply can't remember right now):

the usual suspects
stand by me (first time i've ever seen this one)
pearl harbor (the new-ish one)
the matrix
the pianist (first time i've ever seen this one)

that's all for now, maybe if i get the modem later in the week i'll write more...

taking care of grandma

i now know for sure why my mom is so tired. for the last 3 days, i've been in charge of "watching" my grandma, from 9am until 9pm everyday. you would think this wouldn't be that hard. but when i had to do it i realized how exhausting it could be.

first of all, you don't get to sleep in when you have to be in charge of grandma. you have to get up at 830 - now, i'm not saying oh my god that's so early, but my body still seems to think it's on west coast time, so that's 530am for me. then i have to check in with the girls who stayed with grandma all night to see if anything interesting happened overnight, if she took her medicine, if she's had breakfast, etc. then it's off to the kitchen to get her the rest of breakfast she might not have eaten yet, along with applesauce that has some potassium crushed up in it since the pills are too big.

my grandma has numerous health problems but she is not incapable of getting up and moving around. she attributes her lack of movement to the fact that she is afraid of falling. yes she has fallen before but this fear drives her. she's also afraid of the dark. i'm not kidding.

anyway after breakfast it's blood tests and other medications, and then she usually falls asleep in her chair while i ran around doing stuff in the house. until noon. then it's time to wake her up to take some medicine, and give her lunch. have to make sure the lunch has some meat, cheese, crackers, fruit, vegetable, milk...and i have to make sure not to give her too much, but to give her enough so she's full.

the afternoon can be full of adventures. this weekend was especially good because on friday my brother came downstairs from his room and we played cards with grandma till dinner time. on saturday, her usual afternoon companion made a visit to the house, also to play cards. so for the afternoons, mostly what i had to get her to do was get up, go wash up in the bathroom, get dressed, and maybe do some foot exercises before the parties began.

then it was off to the kitchen again to make dinner; friday i made tacos which turned out to be bad since she can't really tear the tortillas with her teeth, however she did eat all the insides including beef, cheese, tomatoes, onions, guacamole, and a little mild salsa. saturday we ordered chinese, and sunday we had leftovers.

after dinner, and more medications, if i haven't been able to get her to do her physical therapy beforehand, we get down to business and do the exercises the therapist has left for us. i have to say gram's been doing great with the exercises lately. most of the moves are very simple for someone with good use of their legs and feet. for her, they're more challenging because she doesn't feel her feet sometimes, or she doesn't trust them, or she just doesn't balance well and remember, she's afraid of falling all the time. i try to convince her that i am here and i will not let her fall; she's convinced she will fall and knock me over. if rugby girls have to come running to get me down, i don't think grandma will be so successful as she thinks.

anyway after dinner and exercises, then there's more downtime. sometimes, like during the week, she'll watch jeapordy and wheel of fortune. on the weekends i have to come up with some other plan. usually i can find some movie on that we can watch together, and we do some foot exercises while we're doing that.

when the girl who comes to stay with gram overnight arrives around 9pm, i check her blood sugar again and get the evening medications ready, as well as the next day's pills and overnight juice and snack.

for anyone who read all that, congratulations, you made it to the end of the post. me, personally, i'm exhausted. but i know my folks had a nice getaway from the house for the weekend. they went up to cape cod to just relax for a few days and it seems they had a nice vacation. my dad showed me the pictures; they had great weather.

tomorrow it's supposed to snow. i can't wait.

i sleep, i eat, i play with the cats

on top of that, i check the mail and go online.

regular schedule? don't need one.

some ideas from the past week:

you know your feet are cold when even warm water brings tingles to your toes

you know you live somewhere moist when your towel never dries between showers.

i might not be very good with knives and cutting things, but i'm still learning.

sometimes it just rains and rains and rains.

i don't generally read the paper but was intrigued by it to see election results today.

i chased a deer out of the backyard around 230pm.

it's better to nap with a cat around.

even when you have tons of free time, it's still hard to get motivated to do what you need to do.

i wanted to upload some photos but this dialup is too slow. and i'm too lazy at this point in the day to go to the library for some high speed connection. *sigh*

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!