Winter Wonderland in March

So a month later again and more on the weather.. last Thursday and Friday it snowed here. That’s unusual.. it hasn’t done that since 1992, not this much snow. And this Thursday it started again, and has been snowing or hailing or sleeting since then.

Yesterday driving home it was coming down in huge (half dollar size) flakes..it was really beautiful. I didn’t have my camera then, but later I did.

Standing on our porch looking toward the driveway:

Then looking toward the house from the top of the driveway:

And then the sun came back!

And things are starting to dry up a bit. The road is holding its own for now, but here are a couple of pictures, which really don’t do it justice:

China Creek Road-Blue Slide Creek Road front slide 2006

The road is now only half that width, this was taken in the beginning of the storms.

Over the side into the creek a river of mud. This is still moving slowly.

In a brief break ( a few hours) of the rains last month, I boxed up my computer and brought it out to our house. Finally… no more trying to commute to town to work. The road being what it was last month was really the deciding factor. I needed to have access.

I am working on several of my sites right now,
and also a new Flickr account. This will be an ongoing project as I want to move many of the photos I have on my other sites to this account. [ related post ]

Tuesday I have appointments in Eureka, and so we will make the day of it there. It’s been a long time since we went up, and I know we won’t get all the way through our lists.

I have an appointment later in month for the ‘trigger thumb’ problems I am having. The right thumb really hurts in the night and morning. Must get it fixed. Mousing isn’t really good for it and neither is typing. Also have an appointment with and ENT guy because my tonsils and throat are just plain messed up.

Doing the Blockbuster online thing.. it’s ok, their site is very very slow on this dial up. But it’s the only way to get movies now. I hope to get satellite tv and internet this summer and maybe then I will cancel the BB thing.

Been trading a lot of live Bruce Cockburn shows at BC_Live lately. Finally being able to use the computer whenever I want has made that possible. If you are a Bruce fan, go check it out.

Getting anywhere from here…

Well in case you don’t know, southern Humboldt and most of northern California were hit with a series of very heavy rain and wind storms starting mid-December. After a week of rain we were all like, “Wow the rivers and creeks are really running high, it’s so cool to see water finally.”

A week later, there was no way to get here or out of here..every main-major road was blocked by some kind of slide, slip-out or flood. The Confusion Hill slide is still moving and road closures south on 101 are constant. The bluffs between Garberville and Redway keep dropping muck and rocks on the road there so that road is also closed half the time… still 3 weeks later.

That doesn’t even cover the roads we all live on, many of them are still sliding, including the one we live on. It has a major slide behind us, and a slide and a slip-out between us and the county paved road. So far it has remained passable, although very narrow with a 300 foot drop to the creek on the slip-out side. We keep the truck on the county road side and my 4 Runner here at the house. That way if it totally goes, at least we can shuttle supplies in and out.

Others have had it far worse, several homes have been pushed off their foundations. Some of the roads are so bad that people are shuttling 2 or 3 times and sometimes walking across long stretches of slides. It is hard hauling food, laundry and propane tanks that way.

In the midst of the major storm Redway and surrounding area had no grid power for days, some places for a week. Garberville lost its water pump so the town was asked to use sparingly. You never knew just when or if the roads leading in or out town would go… so keeping gas and food supplies up is now my mind set, don’t let anything get low, go into town only when it isn’t raining, as the ground is so far beyond saturated that any rain now is run off and damaging already unstable hillsides.

One very bright light in all this was our beloved Estelle Fennell, at KMUD who kept us updated hourly for days. You can also check out some of the weather related pictures at the MUD, just go to their picture gallery.

As for us, we had wood and were warm, we had water, we had off the grid solar power (only had to generator charge the batteries 4x so far this winter!), we only had a couple of leaks in our storage shed. We were lucky. We are still shuttling our cars and it’s a hassle, but hopefully our road will get shored up good enough to make it through the winter, with a major fix when the rains have stopped (I hope).

More to come later, as I play catch up with the blog, and start considering new blogging software so I can turn comments back on and not be spammed to death.

Flickr

Playing with new Flickr account

Playing with a new Flickr account. Took about 50 photos of mushrooms near our home. More are coming when I get this account set up the way I want it.

One thing will be to set up the Flickr template for ‘blog this’ to fit this here blog style/code a bit better.

What I intend to do, is post a lot of photos at Flickr, just post one here, and save bandwidth here.

Time will tell how it all works, but so far is smooth and seems like it could be a lot of fun!

This is a test.

[this didn’t transfer over very well and i haven’t used flickr in ages, will have to re do for WP]

Giving Thanks

I wanted to take a moment to ‘not bitch’ or complain about my life.
It seems every where on the planet people are being hammered. It’s getting mighty cold in Pakistan where 1000s are homeless after the earthquake. The whole gulf coast is flattened by Katrina and Wilma and 1000s of families there have lost everything as well. Between the floods and now snow and record cold on the east coast with the cost of heating oil rising, how are many to live? I have read about $500 a month heating bills alone. There are many people doing without… heat, light, food, meds….many with out a home at all.

I try to help in my small ways… send food here, donate clothes, send money..but it is not even a drop in the bucket of wealth… meanwhile the talking heads report that ‘black friday’ shopping was good and up and that more people where using their credit cards…geez, and the stock market almost hit 11.

So with all that, my little world is just wonderful. Yes the gas prices effect us too, and the cost of food and everything else that finally makes its way to the north coast is way overpriced. We won’t be doing any Christmas shopping or buying of anything that isn’t necessary..no frills this year.

But in a few hours I will be back at home, in the hills, with wood heat (wood cut from our land), our solar panels, even in a cloudy day, making enough juice to keep the lights and dvd player on. I have a solid structure around me, I won’t be cold or live in the dark, we can eat a lot of rice, pasta, and beans. We can conserve the amount of propane we use (refrigerator, camp cook stove, water heater), and the amount of driving we do. We are doing well compared to many on the planet and for that I am very thankful.

The more independent we (as a planet) become of the ‘oil’ industry the better. It is a hard thing to do for sure and we (us) are not there yet either, but we are working toward that goal. And we are working toward a goal of more self reliance, it is hard work, but the feeling of security it brings far out weighs the work.

Now, if only I can turn off the ‘I want’ ‘I need’, ohhh ‘I really want that’.
And focus on the big picture of our little lives, then maybe when the shit really flies we will be in a position to help others who have not prepared as well.
And we still have a long way to go. More on that later.

I love my life. I am a fortunate being. I am thankful and grateful.

Many blessing to who ever you are that come here and read my ramblings.

CockburnProject Update

Even with the limited amount of time I have here, I did manage to update the Cockburn Project last week. Bruce is on a solo tour promoting his latest cd, Speechless which is an instrumental.

I missed the one show I could have maybe gotten too, last weekend in San Fransisco. It’s just so damn far down there and Russel had no time and ….. well any way I am truly bummed as the reports from both the Humans list and BC-Live have been wonderful.
I hope he comes this way again in the summer, like maybe he will do the Kate Wolf Festival this year??

What else is new? Not much. Same old same old. I am starting to take things from the town/office house to the land on each trip.. small steps. My computer is acting a bit ‘different’ lately and so I hope to take the CPU into the guys who built it for a tune-up before I haul it all out to the house. So that won’t happen for a month of so any way.

Russel finally installed a real gate (we had had a very heavy chain gate) on the bottom of the driveway. This will be so much easier coming and going now, not having to deal with heavy, wet, muddy, rusty chain… yipee!!

Still having pressure pump/switch/bladder tank problems. Now R thinks that we need to replace the bladder tank as it isn’t working as it should. We’ll see.

We are getting a bit of rain, not nearly as much as we should this time of year, and it is also warmer than usual. I sure hope the rains come here.

And at least, for those in California who may read this… Arnold was defeated!!!

Busy Busy Busy ..

Very little time at the town house with my computer and often that time is very tired time. I am starting to miss my more tech-self, I am yearning to learn new software programs like maybe redo my CreationsDreams.net site in www.drupal.org? I need to redo this blog as well and am debating with myself just which way to go.

Many of my web-friends are using pmachinePro, now that it is free, many have also gone to EE, www.expressionengine.com, which is not free. WP, www.wordpress.org, is very popular, but some how I don’t think I will go that way. [many years later and I did!]
Gallery 2 is now out, I started using Gallery 1 on my little EyeSee gallery, but never took it where I wanted it to go. I think I may turn this blog in to more of a photo gallery with commentary, don’t really know yet. Feels like I want to redo all my sites though, just need to start the process.

It would be good to feel passionate about this web stuff again, after the last years lull and focus on homesteading and home development, there’s less heaving lifting with web development 🙂

I just uninstalled an old Norton AntiVirus from the old W98 machine. I installed AVG Anti-virus and right now I am downloading the large virus definitions file. Then when my newer XP machine comes to the land with me, we will still be able to use the W98 for internet here in town. We haven’t connected with that machine for close to 2 years cuz of no protection.

I have had right hand thumb problems ever since I wood filled the plywood sub floor before we painted. It’s as if the extendor ligament is stretched to the limit (at night laying down trying to sleep, and really bad in the morning), I have to use my other hand to get it moving and then it is a bit stiff all day and sort of ‘popping’ out of its track, or so it seems. I started going to a chiropractor, knowing full well that I needed a full adjustment as it has been years since the last one, So she did all that and most felt better, but the thumb thing isn’t getting better, and its my typing / mouse thumb … yikes!

So Monday I go see a PT who every one raves about, and hopefully he will be able to tell me if this is fixable, or arthritis starting (oh I hope not!) This has been the other reason I haven’t spent the time I should at the computer this summer.

Once the moving of machines start, I will probably be ‘offline’ for a while. I pray our phone lines at the land aren’t as slow as many folks say. Just doesn’t seem like we can take on satellite internet just yet. I have been looking for an alternative to DirecWay, found Wild Blue, but they have no installers locally at all, and price seems to be the same. So what surfing I do will even be slower than here in town on dial up (44kbps). Guess I will add to the list of wants, needs, desires!! (along with Tivo, a pda, home theater surround sound, ipod or other mp3 player, good stereo speakers ……).

Oh, and yes, the house isn’t even near ‘done’ and there is no landscaping, outbuildings need to be created, water system needs major work.. and on and on it goes.

For my birthday though, this year, we bought a cd player for my new (10 year old) 4 Runner… a very nice Alpine which plays mp3s and wma files, and is set up to receive ipod or satellite radio. So it can grow with me. I was really getting tired of listening to old cassettes, although I found some keepers that I want to burn to cd, just need to find a cassette player and get the cords so I can transfer to this machine and clean up and burn.

Painted ‘Teresa’s Tan’ subfloor:

Many rounds of wood:

Some of the cords:

Faun, from the pregnant doe, Doey, who lives close by:

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 🙂

On My Beat

Living in the hills of southern Humboldt