POOF...a roof

It all started way back in August and then we waited for 10 degree weather to finish it like we usually do.

ROOF RECAP
Looking up from my chair by the wood-stove I see,

• 4" x 12" structurally rated local doug fir beams on 4' centers
covered by
• 2" x 6" local ponderosa pine 'v' groove decking

and if I had x-ray vision, I would be able to see

• 5/8" plywood glued and screwed
covered by a
• 2" x 8" local spruce framework on 16" centers
with 6 " of high density foam in between yielding a whooping R45
and then
• 5/8" plywood
wait, we're not done until after the
• ice and water shield
and finally, weighing in at 2000 pounds...20 gauge
• 7/8 x 2" cold rolled corrugated steel

So. It's not just a roof...it a ROOF

Make sure you notice BC's Lone Mountain in the background (actually BC shares it with Vin and me).
Our sweet little summer house (tent) is sits demurely in one of the photos too.

House, School, Nelson etc.

House.

Without looking, I'm guessing it's about 80 degrees in the house right now. Guess I was wrong in thinking that burning softwood wouldn't work. Regardless of being covered in a mid-summer sweat, I'm sitting a foot from our new wood-stove (it's a Scan 60 if that means anything) at an angle from which I can fully admire our new metal sculpture of a stairway. The whole house is like one big art installation. I'm not sure I would try to build a house in an unfamiliar location ("What do you mean the nearest concrete contractor is 75 miles away?") while going to school in a different country ever again. A good thing is that the to-do list that pretty much filled a notebook this summer fits on a post it note these days. (wow. those are some blurry photos)

You know how to make a really big room seem like a really small room? Fill it with slip-covered Pottery Barn furniture. A room that was big enough to have thrown a frisbee with Max yesterday (if Max would ever catch a frisbee) is, today, a room for just sitting.


School.

I finally did finish transcribing the dialog for my 5 minute documentary. Forty-one single spaced pages of 12 pt type. 19,834 words and beating Vince, the distant second place finisher over 11,000 words. Piece of Cake, my finished film, probably won't be a Netflix choice anytime soon but I should be be an inspiration to anyone facing a problem they consider unsolvable. I've retained (at least to date) the skills to make a film (with credits that 'roll' at the end like a real movie) and I don't think I've ever been prouder of myself. But even with that, I'm not sure I'm proud enough of myself to go through the process again. It's a good thing that movie making isn't my passion because it certainly isn't my calling.

I hated taking the tests but found that as long as I take the test within 5 minutes of walking into the room, don't talk to anyone, don't let anyone talk to me and avoid all eye contact, that I can get the information sitting on top of my brain onto the paper before it leaks out onto the floor.

With the semester over, I can honestly say that out of the 10 classmates (ages 17-53) I had, not one of them drove my crazy. Seems like there would have been at least one that I wished would never show up for class but there wasn't. No one used Bounce, no one hogged all of the professor's attention, no one thrived on hearing themselves talk, and I was able to ignore the occasional gum smacking.


Nelson.

In mid-November I discovered a utility van parked between two parking meters on Nelson's main street that cut their own organic potatoes and fried them in their very own separate fryer with organic sunflower oil. It drove up everyday at around 11:00 a.m. and pulled away about 7 p.m. The name on the side of the van was 'Bite'. What a cool name. Bright gold, really hot and shimmering with grease (of course they were greasy...they are french fries), twice a day I waited "That will be 8 minutes," for my fries to show up at the van window. Then horrors, the other day when I went to get a picture for you and a large fries for me...they were gone.

Two days later I was moping around hungry when I discovered, tucked away in a teeny little alley, Au Soleil Levant, a teeny little French bakery that makes bread I can eat. Given the choice I'd probably rather have french fries but warm bread works too.


Canada.

It was 1 degree tonight in Canada and one second later we were crossing into the US where it was 34.

Eleven dollars for a tube of extra blue hard wax (SINCE WHEN??) but on the other hand we get Canadian health insurance for 50 dollars a month and Apex, the ski area 10 minutes up and outside of Nelson, has had 3 feet of snow and grooming since mid-November. Plus actually I just realized that even at 11 dollars a tube that I can still ski for around 35 cents a day.

Live and Learn

No one told me that one of the most important steps in shooting documentary was transcribing. Or if someone did, it was when I wasn't listening. It may not sound like a big deal to you but I have to listen to and write down EVERY word with the time...to the nearest one-hundreth of a second...that it was spoken I have about 5 hours of shooting for my 5 minute documentary and my fingers look the times of a garden cultivator. Ironically, accidently forgetting to turn the sound on during a one hour shooting session was a disaster that ended up making my day.

I never paid much attention to Skype until our cell phone bill finally found us up here in Nelson. We knew it wasn't going to be pretty but were still surprised to see that the last two months were 690 dollars. Our favorite call was the 24 dollar casual chat the Vin and I had to each other from one classroom to another (in the same building). Who knew? (don't you hate that saying?)

Canada.
Benjamin Moore paint chip colors are in French. Rainforest dew is vert stuart. Pale avocado is avocat pale.
Yesterday it was pretty cold....1 degree in the Peace.
Remember I told you about the Cocoa-nut lounge? We showed up to another standing-room-only crowd...this time on a Tuesday....groovin' to an electric guitar artist yelling a combination of opera and rock.

Wednesday was classmate Alan's birthday. He turned 25 so the whole class (except Naomi who's only 17 and has a grandmother my age) went out to a karaoke bar where Vin and I belted out 'I've got you Babe' to a crowd that didn't know that Cher had ever been married.

House.
We've had electricity, plumbing and 4-6" (R30-R45) of high density closed cell foam insulation for ages but since they didn't lend themselves to compelling photography or storytelling I've had a hard time working them into my news.

The insulation people? Perfect.
The electric people? Perfect. Two brothers dba Brother's Electric. One of the brothers, Darin, went to college somewhere in Ohio because it had the strongest Ninja 'team' in the country.
The plumber? Apologized after hollering F*** You and hanging up on Vin because he asked when the boiler was going to be installed.

Max loves hiking on larch needles, a silent, western version of New England's fall leaves.

The Beam Team again

Movies.
Just finished writing a 1000 word Feminist interpretation of 'Silence Of The Lambs' and the part I enjoyed most about the process was emailing it off, finished, to the professor. For the most part I enjoy movies as entertainment and not for the layers of supposed hidden meanings that I can never find.

Yesterday we watched Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) and I'm proud to say that thanks to finally a movie with dialogue I stayed awake through MOST of it. Ian the professor said it was 'quite possibly the greatest movie ever made' which made me think that I definately missed something during the screening even though I stayed awake.
Please note that I've easily stayed wide awake for American Graffiti half dozen times.

I just finished shooting another film. it is a pretend interview of myself with my new pretend cookbook of recipe's using food that has gone bad. (not leftovers ....gone bad) I think it's really funny but it's too long. It ended up being 9 minutes and it was supposed to be 2. Just like the old days, was up until 5 am one morning working on it and it was actually good to have a reason to have to be up until then.

I was thinking that If I was making a movie that had the Vince character (see the dirty Vince photo to the left) in it I'd want Juaquin Phoenix to play him. Juaquin is retired (I can't believe I know that) but I doubt if it would've ever happened anyway only because Vince would never want anyone else playing him.

House.
Two cords of firewood (which won't be maple or cherry or ash)* are showing up tomorrow so I wanted to show you our deck before it got covered up. Vin and Brett built the deck (which included mixing the concrete for the piers and looked like a lot of work to me). Then Joe, one of my favorite friends (FF) of almost 30 years cut down one of our trees (like the ponytail, Joe cut it for FREE....maybe it has something to do with cutting) and we put it on the deck to look like it was propping up one of the corners of the roof. The deck is a rectangle and if you looked at it from an airplane it would look like you had this big rectangle and slid it under the house at an angle. It's pretty dramatic as far a decks go. I THINK I like it but then again maybe that angle-drama has something to do with the headaches I've been having lately.

* I think I'm a firewood snob.

Grades.
Some mid-term test grades are in.
Screen-writing____A-
Editing_____A
Cinematography........ Trick questions. I'm not counting it.

Nelson.
Cocoa-nut Lounge. Funky, late night coffeehouse open until midnight 6 nights a week. That gem of a discovery gets us closer to our perfect-place checklist. Our maiden visit (a Sunday night) had us joining a standing-room-only crowd to listen to local poetry that I didn't realize was poetry until the third reader stepped off the rug that functioned as a stage. I'm at an even lower level with poetry than I am with movies.

The Beam Team again (again) interesting if you like beams and decks

More decks and beams and summer.

Hair For Sale

Last Friday, I donated my hair. I think that may have even counted as doing something for someone beside myself??
Nelson's 'Locks of Love' festival was on Saturday and they were looking for ponytails that were at least 8" long. I'd been wanting to find a good home for mine and finally found a salon that was hip to the 'walk-in' concept.

"if I just cut off your pony-tail, it's free," she told me.
I wanted a reason to pay her, "Well I need my bangs cut too."
"Bangs are free."
"What else is free?"
"There are mints on the counter."
That's some business model.
I had decided to grow my hair in order to donate it and decided at about 4" that I wouldn't be doing it again. Life is too short. IF I took the time to brush it, it would take half an hour which is a really significant part of my day.....so I just didn't bother. Living in a tent and having a sensitive scalp were good reasons to ignore it. One day I had it washed, combed and braided at 'Chris Cuts' in Metaling Falls. She yanked for about 55 minutes, which wasn't fun for either of us, but I walked out with a braid that lasted over 2 weeks. I tried to schedule another painful braid but Chris wouldn't return my calls.

School.
Guess who finished their screenwriting exam first yesterday? It was close between Rob and me but I edged him out mostly because he wasn't racing and I was closer to the professor's desk. The editing mid-term was today. I got creamed. FInished last by 2 seconds. Guess editing is not my event.

This film program is going to make a man out of me. I just finished my first day of shooting and I feel like I just finished the Hawaii Ironman. The learning curve I was so proud of is leveling out. I'm worried that it may even be upside down. Vince was theoretically my assistant although an observer would have been sure it was the other way around. Thankfully his learning curve is as steep as ever. Anyway. I now have 4 hours of footage ending with a 3 tiered organic polka dotted birthday cake. "I'll find my story in the editing bay" as they say in the business.

I fell asleep during the Film Studies lecture again this week. Front row. Lights on. I fought it as long as I could but in the end my head was bobbing as helplessly as last week.

More.
We got the sweetest little refrigerator today. I'll look better without the protective blue plastic.

Max has diarrhea :(

Is Plaster Faster?

I should be working on my movie treatment (sounds like a joke doesn't it??) but instead I feel like writing about today....a day in our simple retired life. We're in Metaline Falls. The morning was mostly clean up. A normal retired thing to do. Then, we picked up color boards from the plaster guy***. We met him half way, an hour drive and close by western standards as they say. Gary, the closest (only) plaster guy we could find, showed up with his little dog wearing a football jersey that said QUARTER BARK (the dog, not Gary) with a #! between the QUARTER and the BARK. We could tell that Max was jealous of Quarter Bark #1 because he could be carried around. We treated Max to a walk on the way home at some waterfall...he wasn't impressed...in-fact he vomited.

Back home, 31 degrees and feeling like it was about time for something semi-epic, we convinced ourselves there was enough daylight to ride up Hall Mountain (elev. 6400') We rode to the trailhead and hiked to the treeless peak through meadows with clumps of softwoods and rock outcroppings to a 360 degree view of Washington, Canada and Idaho. The late afternoon angle of the sun tinted everything a rich gold. So far so good albeit a little colder on the way down than the way up. Normally I would have looked forward to the all downhill bike ride but as I suspected my summer weight Yoko gloves weren't even close to warm enough. (UNDERSTATEMENT!) Four hours and a movie later, I can type and feed myself again but that's about as interesting as I can make frozen fingers.

Metaline Falls.
Movie. "Nine". It was neither about an aging Bo Derek nor a musical with Penelope Cruz (not sure where I got that idea) but it was animated...and pretty good. I'm glad we went because then there were six of us in the theater.

House. The tent came down and we moved into a corner of the master bedroom this weekend. The photos make us look cold and uncomfortable but our word for cold and uncomfortable is 'cozy'. Will waking up with a coating of sheet-rock dust in my mouth cause any long term damage?

Back to the movie treatment. I've been struggling with ways to decrease my school work-load and finally got up the nerve to request an audit for Film Studies. I picked up the hot pink 'switch to audit' form at the office one day when there was actually someone in there and filled it out. I started to hand the hot pink sheet to Ian, the professor. "Did you enjoy the assignment?" he asked, all excited. I ended up using the back of the audit form for notes on Nanook of the North.

***plaster.
Plaster is good.
1. We don't have to paint because the plaster is tinted with our colors
2. We don't have to tile because the shower will be waterproof plaster
3. We don't have to trim the windows because our window perimeters will be plaster

Plaster is bad.
1. We have to pick the colors we'll have FOREVER, NOW. Would that make you nervous? It makes me nervous.

Canada Is Complicated.

The other day I was half way down the street with my 2 dollar cup of coffee when I realized I'd just tipped the coffee kid 8 dollars. I can't seem to get into the habit of NOT dropping my coffee change into the tip jar just like I can't get used to a two dollar coin. I sort of waited until he was looking before I dropped the change in the jar so at least he knows the big tip was from me.

Is $3.50 Canadian a lot for a little can of olives? I figure when I need olives it sort of doesn't matter so maybe I'd rather not know and as long as there is no tip involved I'm probably OK.

Celcius. I can't get used to 30 degrees being really hot. One of these days I'll take two uninterrupted minutes and just focus on comprehending the celcius-fahrenheit conversion that I knew so well in grade school.

Get this...Canadian Thanksgiving is October 13!

School.
The other day at lunch a precocious 20 year old classmate asked me what it was like being in the same program as my spouse. Without thinking I said it was great. Later I thought about how Vince always has to ask me what the assignment is, borrows my handouts because he can't find his (I don't think he really looks) and then puts them back in the wrong place. I'm thinking of saying there isn't an assignment sometime....you know, teach him a lesson. Of course I'd never do that but am I awful for even thinking it?

Actually being in school together is pretty fun. We need each other for Seinfeld references (our classmates were in junior high during that era) and sharing wizened cynical comments and observations.

Other.
Exercise=about an hour a day. We ride up steep steep steep hills (middle ring even for Vince) to the abandoned railroad bed where we dodge unleashed dogs without even minding. No one would ever think of using a leash and no one would ever think of minding. I don't think anyone has a temper. To have a temper would be embarrassing because I don't think Canadians would know how to react. There would be no back and forth like we're used to.
p.s.. I mean that as a compliment

Nelson has a ton of hardwoods so anyone that feels sorry for us missing the fall in New England....shouldn't. Think of it as Vermont with bigger mountains and no tempers.

Metaline Falls.
We're gone for a couple of days, we come home and our house has been take over by blue birds. I'm glad the house is being used while we're gone.

One Big Door

Pick one.

1. Since summer in Metaline Falls is only two months long we would never need a 16 foot folding window-wall opening up to our outside deck.

OR

2. Since summer in Metaline Falls is only two months long we needed a 16 foot folding window-wall opening up to our outside deck.


If you picked #1.....you don't know us very well.


School.
Yesterday we had a Cinematography quiz. I won the 'setting up and leveling the camera and tripod' race which wasn't all that hard to do since it wasn't actually a race. I like racing against people that aren't racing.

More Stuff I Didn't Know I Didn't Know

I'm not sure whether to blame the long night on the hot flashes or the gas but I hope Cinematography is interesting enough to keep me wide awake for 6 hours again today.

They don't fool around here....yesterday we watched our edited versions of the screenplay we shot last week. I can't believe I was actually able to piece together a movie with software that was unfamiliar to me a few days ago and it was no worse than anyone else's. In fact, I accidently sequenced a couple of clips that were worthy of a pat-on-the-back. The movie had a gripping premise....a man stalking a woman through the school that turned out to be the husband trying to surprise the wife for their anniversary. The husband followed the wife into the classroom where, not knowing who he was, she grabbed a stapler and stapled him in the chest. You want to see some bad acting???

Speaking of acting...I thought I was going to have to pretend to be interested during three hours of 'lighting'. How could they come up with three hours of information that I didn't already have...on lighting? The endorphins didn't kick in, but did you know that you can make the same person sitting in the same chair in the same room look wrinkled or cranky or sinister or young? Hollywood. It's all lighting.

Tomorrow....silent movies from the 20's...better get a good night's sleep.

Ceiling Is Believing

One of these days I'll have you up to date on the little house in Metaline Falls.

Vince and Brett replaced our ceiling of blue sky with local 2 x 6 tongue and grove ponderosa pine. It feels good since that's our finished ceiling. I could tell they were having a good time putting it up because they were talking and singing with fake Scottish accents.

And just in case you think that all I do is walk around taking pictures, I helped put the felt on the part of the house where a ladder wasn't needed so that's done too.

Did I say windows? They're in too. Eagle brand milled aluminum (like the inside of a soda can) exterior and clear PRE-FINISHED!!!! (what a great idea) pine interior. It was love at first sight. It's fun to go in and out. Solid, like a vault. Ka-chung. Several of the windows are awnings. We ordered them because we liked the way they looked, not expecting any sort of performance, so when the airflow blew over Vin's half full coffee cup we were psyched. Where we don't have awnings, we have push-out casements. No cranks. They push out manually with a solid, old-fashioned European action (my words). Very chic.