Tag Archives: homestead

Fall is in the air …

School is starting here, Russel hasn’t lined up all his jobs yet, (teaching Aikido to kids in the local schools) but we know they are there for him. Hurricane Katrina is barreling through the south.

This past month went by in a blur. I made it to Reggae, but only Friday for Michael Franti and Sat late afternoon for Prezident Brown. Why? Well I woke up Sat morning with vertigo! Never had it before and don’t want to again, very nauseated, light headed, couldn’t walk.. just awful. It let up enough for me to go down a bit on Sat, but I came right home and didn’t go on Sunday at all. For a $150 ticket, that’s not much fun time.

We did get the floor painted, 3 coats and Russel wanted to do 2 more, but I said no! It will do for now. I brought in and cleaned a lot of the flea market furniture, dressers, kitchen hutch, bar and stools, and got them in place. Then unpacked all that was packed out and put most of that away, still have some to do. But the painted floor really helps the house feel bigger and cleaner and brighter.

Russel split and stacked about 4 cords of wood..we borrowed a log splitter and hired a high schooler (that would be Issac) to help 2 days. So with what we had, we have about 2 years worth of wood unless the winter is really cold.

The hot hot weather has finally broke to mid 80s and looks like that will be the trend this week, nights are getting into the 40s so it cools way down.

Kaya had to go to vet this morning for annual and a worming (yuck), she handles it pretty well.

I nixed Dish .. what a hassle it was just trying to get an installation, imagine what would happen if we needed service? Seeings how we will be keeping the town house office for at least several more months, I can just tape off TV like I did last year, the new fall schedule will start soon.

Good news is that finally G4 has brought back LEO Laporte and CALL FOR HELP!! for all us in the US. I am taping that too, as it’s on here at 8am.

Ok, gotta run..more later 🙂

Finally.. a bit of time

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It’s been a long time since the last post – Sorry! We’ve been just so very busy.
The trip to visit family in Michigan (lawns and lawnmowers was a constant theme) was a good one.

Dad and Sue are good and everyone seems to be doing well.

We had a family gathering picnic at a quiet little lake:

We caught the fireworks:

It was very pleasant weather the first week or so, had a full on thunder and lighting storm which helped keep the temps down, then of course the last several days were 95 degrees with a 85% humidity!!! How can anyone live like that? Wiped me out totally.

The flight home was a bit strained, perhaps I will talk about that at a later time.

And when we got back to California, it had been in the 100s for a week and basically still is (2 weeks later). We have been working at the house as much as we can. I have half of the kitchen/dining/living room plywood sub floor wood filled in the nail holes and seams, I have bought the (ugh) oil based paint with polyurethane in it to paint it. So I need to finish the wood filling, sand, vac, and then paint..on a day that doesn’t get over 90 degrees! (This is a long hard job and have working at it for weeks.)

Any way, once it is painted, it is a washable surface! and I can start moving in the flea market furniture I bought last month and finding homes for things..and start the moving out of the ‘town-house-office’ scenario.

I have also spent a few hours trying to decipher both DirecTV and DishTV services, and Starband and DirecTWay… geez what a mess, but I think I will go with Dish for TV and use my current ISP on the funky phone lines at the house for awhile. If internet is too painfully slow I will look into one of the Satellite ISP’s then.

Me and Russel at the Fair parade in Michigan:

Yesterday was our 10th anniversary (15 years together).. we spent the day in Eureka to get out of the heat and shopped and ate and saw a great movie: Batman Returns.. check this one out, I liked it better than any of the past Batman movies, it was just full of great acting and story line.

And now, it’s getting ready to Reggae on the River time… next Thursday – Sunday.

I think we will go out to the house tonight and stay there until Sunday, next week will be full of Reggae and trips in and out the land, so this week end I hope to make great progress on my projects and Russel has been cutting and splitting wood for next season, and has lots more to do. Once I am at the land I never want to come into town. Once we have some entertainment like Dish TV and my computer there, well coming to town will be errand day and laundry and shopping and that’s about it.

Gotta go jump in Linda’s pool..it’s over 95 in the house in town right now.

Leavin’ on a jet plane

Baby Bear

Last weekend late at night Russel heard a sound coming from the garden fence, using a big Mag Light he spotted a baby bear! I was so jealous that I wasn’t there to see it too… well look who strolled through our yard on Thursday:

We haven’t seen Mama Bear yet, but she must be close by. These were taken through the window, so they are not as clear as I had hoped.

We do live in the wilderness, it truly is a nature preserve 🙂

Living in the hills

It seems this has become a monthly blog of mostly pictures. I hope to some time soon update my gallery, EyeSee with more of them.

Not any real ‘news’ just juggling ‘town office’ and land home, trying to keep both stocked and clean in itself is a struggle.

We have started the process of putting in our solar-battery array-generator power system. Will have the first onsite consultation within a couple of weeks.

Here’s who’s been visiting lately:

All of these were taken through windows, so some contrasting and levels were used. I can’t seem to get a good picture of the raven pair — they are just to flightly, but I keep trying. There are about 3 more deer in this herd, who weren’t present. But there are always shots that got away…

Firefox!

Finally loaded Firefox to check a site I am working up for Russel’s Aikido school,(yes the same school and site that I have done 4 versions of now!)

And it rocks!! I do believe it will replace IE6 for me and hopefully I can convert Russel when he is on this machine too.

I haven’t decided yet whether to use Eudora or Thunderbird for email, but xp’s outlook express has gotta go. My in box is full of spam daily.

It’s been fun and a bit of a mind bender to be coding again, new stuff, if i don’t keep my head in it I will forget everything i knew, and it all changes and grows so fast that everything I knew will be worthless soon!!

So working on the homestead is still the priority, and there’s always so much to do when you are living in an unfinished house (1000 sq ft) with little infrastructure to build upon..but it is coming along and by the summer will be a much different space. I promise pictures when there is something to photo about!

Happy New Year to You!

Haven’t been in town much, hence no updates to this blog. Until the power system at the land house…now my home .. happens, I won’t be here very much. And we hope for that in this coming year, sooner I hope.

We had lots of hail and weather this week and more coming, snow at our house that’s only at 1320 feet! We also had a small roof leak due to sloppy work by our builder, good thing I haven’t seen him today or I would really get on his case. We were out in that said weather wind storm hail rain, Russel on a 16′ ladder, un-damming a valley that filled with debris due to a flange for a vent cutting into the valley..it backed up and leaked.

Funny thing too, I was putting away towels in bathroom and looked up at the bare light bulb and it was dripping with water! Not good.
But it is fixed. And we couldn’t of done it without the mighty ‘Tim Allen of HomeImprovement’ flashlight…10 million candle power…me holding the light on the roof valley so Russel could see to work…quite the sight really.

Any way.. just a hit and run here at the little town house rental that was home to us for 14 years …it is fading into a place only to come to when we have too. Although all of our stuff is still here, nothing really got moved to the land yet. But it is no longer filled with the cozy life force we had. Time will tell if we will be able to afford to keep it for an office after we do move out of it .. and that won’t be at least until spring or summer.

To any one who comes here, wishing you peace, health, and prosperity in the coming year.

It is Fall

Well, I am spending more and more time at my house in the hills. This little town house has has just become a stop over place, with the exception of my computer and refrigerator and maybe more than one tv station, I don’t miss it.

We brought, Kaya, our cat who we love, out last week. I feel she feels a captive as we won’t let her out of the house until we know she won’t run off and try to come back to town. She is handling it all very well, I could do with out the litterbox. Although I found a recyled newspaper litter that works great.

I have some ‘buggy’ pictures, but no time to work them up to post here or at my gallery, maybe next time in town.

Getting a good solar/battery power system together for the computer and lights and all is a high priority, I hope we can swing that this year. I really want to take my new computer out there with me, I may never come to town again!

I am turning off ‘comments’ on this blog for now 🙁
Spammers!! I am not here (in town) enough (like every day) to update MTBlacklist, and keep the spammers away. Last weekend I had 50 or so to deal with. (I know that isn’t much compared to many bloggers, but it took computer time that I would of rather used in other ways.) Any way if any one wants to ‘talk to me’ feel free to email me, I am sure you can figure that out!

That’s it for now, gotta go pack up all the laundry and food and ice and stuff and head out. Out to the sunny high top of the ridge wind blowing through the trees silence except for the birds and ravens ..we have a flock of wild pigeons!

On My Beat

Living in the hills of southern Humboldt