Hear Goes Nothing

Max is ready for hunting season.

Had Vince and I been accepted to the Binger Film Lab in Amsterdam I would have had some exciting news but we didn't so I don't.  We knew we were under-qualified the whole time (three weeks) we were filling out the application but thought maybe we'd fulfill some obscure admissions requirement quota for them.  Guess not.  It would have been fun to spend 4 months in Amsterdam rubbing elbows with Spike Lee but what about Max?  We figured he wouldn't have liked flying so we'd have had to take a boat.  And then once in Amsterdam, while he may have enjoyed all the smells, but he wouldn't have enjoyed sitting in an apartment all day just waiting for us to come home.  I want to cry just thinking about it.

Our Christmas cactus has one blossom this year which is one more than it had last year.

Our default location is Vermont (we go north for the winter) where we are attempting to feel productive by doing at least one thing on the house everyday.  Vin's week long cinematography workshop at 'Maine Media'  didn't help our timetable any but whatever.*    We are about 2 task-weeks behind but stay closer to our schedule better than my online Spanish 'A Word A Day' people.  Yesterday's word was zanahoria which means carrot and when they used it in a sentence I'm pretty sure they used it incorrectly...like I would know.

Kitchen lights from Etsy.

Last week Vince installed the lights above the counter which should count for at least a week of projects but I'd never tell him that.  Me? I order things and then figure out where in the neighborhood UPS has dropped them off.   We're going to finish the fireplace as soon as the beam we picked out for the mantle is dry.  The guy at the mill left a message saying it's at 25 and he wants it to be at 10 which doesn't really tell us much since we don't know when it was at any other numbers.


Riding and Dogs:
1.  If I'm really quiet I can get past the two nasty dogs on Center Road without them chasing me.  They've never bitten me or hit my front wheel which surprises me every time.   Today my plan was to try holding my breath until I got even with the 'Save the Lowell Range' sign on their lawn and then sprint.  They'd never know.  Sprawled on the sidewalk with their backs toward me, I sneaked by.  My timing was perfect.  And then I sneezed.

2.  There was no way to tell from the map how many unleashed dogs would be on the new loop I was riding that day.  Near the end of the ride, having outrun a dozen poised and ready-to-pounce mutts, I started to let down my guard.  As I approached the last dirt road crossing, out of the corner of my eye I saw the biggest dog of the day coming up full speed on my left.  He cut right in front of me, just missing my front wheel, and that's when I noticed I'd been chased by a goat.  Swear to God.


Other News.

Aunt Marlene (holding prints from her film camera), Vince, and Uncle Roy at Good Life last Christmas day.

•Dad is already down at 'Good Life' the age qualified/55+ (Vince and I are 55) 'resort community' in Mesa Arizona for the winter.  He told me he got an ipad that's "really more than an ipad" because when the guy in the store talked to it, "it could write what he said in any language".  Sold.

•I'd always wanted to be able to whistle but never could.  A few weeks ago my jaw shifted a bit and now I whistle a little when I talk so be careful for what you wish.

•I don't know what made me think of this but the day we left Metaline Falls I was outside swallowing the last of my tea and with it the grasshopper that had sneaked into my mug...so when I say there are no bugs here, it's not entirely true.

Enough of trying to make 'nothing' interesting.


* I meant to grab my credit card from the wallet (we share one wallet) before he left but didn't so my week was spent seeing how long I could go in the Vermont countryside with no car and no money.

Metaline Falls, Tyler and Greece

Metaline Falls, Washington.

An hour after we rolled down the driveway we were sitting outside on stone steps looking into Canada with no bugs or humidity feasting on a year old can of organic garbanzo beans transformed into hummus with tahini from somewhere in Idaho on 2 day old bread from Montana.  

They told us the rain stopped the day before we pulled in to Metaline Falls.  Our field was tall and green and there was still snow in the mountains.  Vin's stone walkway hadn't moved...like the stone walkways other people make, he told me...and other than a few flies the house was apparently just as we'd left it*.   Two days later friends Bobbi and Eric from Bozeman popped in to share good meals, movies and bike rides and the next day I left for Greece. 

Our Metaline Falls 15 minute clothes dryer

I am soooo spoiled.

We make it a point to support the local economy.  Shown here is Vince with a slingshot from the local health food/ammo store.

Greece.

Sarah, Linda and me.  Best friends from high school.  When we were 40 we decided that every 10 years we would take a trip together.  When we were 50 we decided we'd better make it every year.  This year we decided to go to Greece.  Partly because of Mamma Mia and partly because Linda's sister Nancy lives there.  While looking into flying from Vermont I noticed that if I flew from Spokane, Washington I could meet up with Sarah and Linda in Denver since that was their first stop after departing from Boise.  Then, we could all fly together Denver/Toronto/Athens.  So.  After paying a little more for a ticket from Spokane, Vin, Max and I drove to Washington a month earlier than we had planned. 

Yada yada....you know how fun it is when you get off a plane and there is someone waiting for you?  My plane landed in Denver.  I had butterflies.  Linda and Sarah would be there and I knew they wouldn't care that they would be making fools of themselves when they saw me.  But I deplaned to a quiet group of airport maintenance workers instead of a couple of ex-cheerleaders screaming and jumping up and down.

'I'll bet they're hiding', I thought, as I scanned the boarding area for a cowboy hat (Linda's trademark).  They weren't there.  My phone rang.  It was Vince.  Sarah had called him.  They'd missed their flight from Boise.  The name on someone's ticket didn't match the name on someone's passport! (insert sinking feeling)  Orbitz told them they would have to buy a new ticket in order to continue.  So what I wondered was, if they did decide to pay $3000 for another ticket, when could they get on another flight?  (more sinking feeling)  Now what?  Are they still going to Greece?  Should I continue east or fly back to Spokane and bag the whole thing?  I was only going because they were going. **  I had a half hour to decide but how could I decide with no information.  I got in line and kept moving forward toward the gate agent until I was standing face to face with her and no one behind me.  The phone rang again.  It was Linda.  She'd been talking to Air Canada and....click (that is, if cell phones made click sounds....) I lost the connection.  I tried to phone her back...'no service available'..."what the..."  That can't be, I was just talking.   Seeing that I had an exit row and an aisle seat, I decided to go to Toronto. 

Toronto.

I had two and a half hours until my Athens flight.  A seemingly luxurious amount to time.  During that time I talked to Linda and Sarah close to a million times.  Soon two and a half hours was 15 minutes.  Still no conclusion.  Deja vu.  In line, I moved toward the gate agent.  I knew I didn't want to go to Greece alone...but they might still go.  And they might not.  I could still fly back to Spokane....the phone rang.  They got re-booked and in TWO DAYS! they would be in Athens through Munich.  TWO DAYS!  I decided to head back to Spokane.  Walking toward the person behind the counter that takes care of things like that, I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask, 

"Can you rebook me on the same flight as my girlfriends?" (paraphrased!) 

and in less than an hour I had a ticket on a flight to Munich where I'd be sitting across from Sarah.  In two days we'd all be getting off a plane together in Athens.

Even though olive oil sits on cafe' tables in Greece like ketchup sits on tables here and the food is fresh and simple, I found Greece too hot and busy for me to really enjoy.  Dah?  It waaaas July.  

(neither did I like that it sounded as if people were always yelling at each other when they spoke or that 'no' meant 'yes').

    

But there were some good parts...  

• upgrading to first class (+$12) on ferries to a couple of islands (Naxos and Santorini)*** and playing rummy based on childhood memories.

• seeing the Parthenon and the Acropolis from a bicycle (a 3 hour bike tour with a guide that was leading us places that had to be off limits to bicycles and would have taken 2 days to walk).

• watching fishermen come in off their boats and cook octopus over wood fires.
• hiking on ancient stone paved trails on Naxos.

• communicating with smiles, waves and hugs while I helped an local 80 year old woman wring out and hang her laundry because her arm hurt

• being with Linda, Sarah and Sarah's sister Ruth

Sorry, no pictures from Greece on this post.  Can you believe I didn't even bring a camera? 

*When the plumber came to winterize the Metaline Falls house last October he did everything on Vince's list (and follow-up email) except #2.

2. put glycol in the concrete floor radiant heating system.  

I don't want to spend much time on this one but what it means is that the system froze, the pipes IN THE CONCRETE FLOOR burst and how do you find and fix leaks IN A CONCRETE FLOOR?

**Tyler tornado. 

The day before I left for Greece my brother Dale called to tell me they'd had a couple of storms back home in Tyler, Minnesota.  He said they were OK but one of the silos blew over.  Plus the hog house was gone.  So was a hay shed.  He said the silo landed on one of the tractors which was good because it could have landed on the pick-up and he was sitting in the pick-up.  He said he tried to get from the pick-up to the house (where my sister-in-law Brenda was in the basement wondering where Dale was) a couple of times but every time he opened the pick-up door to run to the house a hunk of metal roofing went flying through the air.  So tragic.  Even though I would have been of no help whatsoever, I felt like I should be going there instead of going to Greece. 

The hog house used to be somewhere around here.

Tractor with silo on it

Tractor and silo parts

This is not a sculpture garden.   It's the hog house roof having almost made it over to Uncle Mik and Aunt Leona's farm.

Another 'not a sculpture garden' view

***You know when you see pictures of Greece (a huge clump of brilliant white buildings covering an almost vertical mountain and sitting above ocean?), it's usually Santorini and it really does look like that.

A Bathtub With Eggplant Legs

Today I reached a new high (or new low...I can think of it either way). I did almost nothing and actually felt OK about it.  Besides riding my bike and making organic whole wheat chapatis and curried chick peas....I really don't remember much except everything was comfortably fun.  I remember something about visitors, packing up some shelves to return and sorting the recycling.  Stretching my frozen shoulder a couple times, icing my knee and falling asleep during a movie.  I went to Ione (10 miles south of Metaline Falls) but I can't remember why.  Ione has a bank but that's not why I went.  I remember noticing a guy reading on the bench outside 'Mountain Chicks', the secondhand store, and thinking "Reading a book outside.  What  a nice way to spend the morning".  Leaving 'Mountain Chicks', (without a plug for the bathtub which is not the reason I went to Ione) the reader on the bench was still engrossed in his book which I noticed was a TV Guide. 

Vi

I remember taking a shower AND a bath outside in the bathroom that Vin just finished and could pass as a museum installation.  Vin wasn't that into the idea but made it for me anyway so I feel obligated to use it every chance I get.  He even plumbed it...cold AND hot.  Just like an inside bathroom only outside.  Other than when I helped move the tub a couple of times and gathering a few interesting stones from the side of the road, he did the whole thing himself in 95 degree weather.  A craigslist vintage tub with eggplant colored legs.  Leftover local walkway stone and plumbing hardware.  A salvaged steel post, not originally intended to hold a showerhead, from Ryan the welder.  My shower coincided with the magic hour and sun drenching our field in a intense golden light.  My bath coincided with an outside noise from inside the house which turned out to be the dryer*.    A sock plug kept the 110 degree water at an embarrassingly high level and once Vin turned off the dryer I enjoyed soaking surrounded by 50 degree air and shampoo bubbles.   The moon wasn't full, but it was big. 

My online obsession today was the movie "Lovers in a Dangerous Time" by a couple of local filmmakers just over the pass in Creston BC.  "Just like Vin and me"  I thought.  "Comrades".  Forty-five minutes into my search (I was really obsessed) I connected information that revealed the keynote speaker from a Final Cut (editing software for movie people) conference Vin and I recently attended in Boston (we're geeks) was the young female director's father.  Do you have to know somebody? : (

* dryer , noun

1. an appliance to be used only in case of emergencies

used in a sentence:

It's 1 am and the bedding I washed this afternoon is still wet.  I think I should use the dryer.

Photos top to bottom:

1. In the beginning.

2. Near the beginning. Tub with eggplant legs that you can't see.

3. Vin mounting shower on salvaged steel post.

4.Vin with an un-tanned torso.

5. Dad and Vince.  Dad grew up with an outside bathroom.

6. Outside bathroom in progress.

7. Kathy approaching tub with a sock wondering if it will work for a plug.

Little House in a Nutshell

Other than the outdoor/garden bathtub and shower, the house is pretty much done.   I say 'pretty much' because also on the 'to do' list without a line through it is the water filtration system but that's boring and not nearly as important as an outdoor bathtub.  

A year ago only hay, elk and eagles lived in our field.   When we decided to join them, we promised to be good neighbors.

...and yes I know...

1. we already had a house so building another one wasn't a very 'green' thing to do. 

2. that any structure we would build would be more intrusive than building nothing.

Anyway.  Playing with designs was overwhelming but easy because it was noncommittal.   Deciding on a final design caused more stupidly self-inflicted stress than I could have ever imagined.    Putting a house on a site is such a one-shot-deal.  

Now.  Did we leave a scar?  Since a scar is in the eyes of the beholder, (ask someone that thinks Mt Rushmore is beautiful) you decide.

We now have a perfect little house 

• that has a 2:12 pitched roof to match the slope of the hillside it shares

• where we can go outside from every room

• that is 966 square feet

• where we use every room every day

• made from mostly local materials (stone, concrete, lumber and subs)

• made from natural materials that blend in with the site...

and that's what we wanted.

We did Energy Star whenever we could:

• Summit Stainless Steel Counter Depth Bottom-Mount Refrigerator 

• White Rogers programmable thermostats

• Eagle window and doors double glazed, tempered Low-E 

• Insulation Master high density closed cell spray foam (5" in the walls for r35 and 7" in the ceiling for r49) 

• Emerson ceiling fans 

• Air King range hood - 30" Stainless Steel  

• Asko clothes washer 

• Asko clothes dryer 

pictures top to bottom:

Looking west at the master bedroom (left), entry (center),  and kitchen (right).  I LOVE THIS PHOTO.  Mt Linton is in the background and supposedly houses mountain goats that I've never seen.

Looking northeast at the office (left), bathroom (center), and master bedroom (right under the pergola) Crap, I fogot...the pergola's not done either.

Looking east (with the mountain goats behind me) at the living room and covered deck (left) and office (right). 

Looking north from the office into Britsh Columbia.

Looking at Vin thinking the ladder is right under him.

More.

A record 10 'Avatar' enthusiasts* and lasagna lovers watched 'Blue Crush' last night at our weekly dinner and a movie night and pretty much maxed out our theater (living room).  Even our overflow area (hallway) was full but thanks to Kim who always brings her own chair and the new 150 pound tree stump-end table, everyone had a place to sit


If our house was a meal we would be about half way through dessert. 
1. The main level concrete floor has 2 coats of clear finish on it and is a masterpiece that no one in the lasagna group noticed so maybe is doesn't look as incredible as I think it does.
2. Vin hung chains from the gutters.  His intent was to divert rainwater while looking chic (we saw it in a magazine).  So far they only work part of the time which is when it is not raining and they are just looking chic.

3. I love our sliding barn door-y bathroom door mounted on inline skate bearings and am hoping that someday I won't even hear Vince mumbling that he'd rather have an in-swing door every time he slides it shut.  The bedroom doors are in-swing and chic because of the strip magnet (like a shower door) that sucks and holds them shut.   The closet doors are still pretend.

My Kitchen.
9 feet 2 inches is a perfect sized kitchen for someone who doesn't want a microwave or coffee maker.

Visitors:
Tim (of MikWright fame) and Boyd (of having a 40th birthday party that lasted a whole week fame) showed up one day after school.  Flying first class from Charlotte, they found martinis and acupuncture in Nelson.  Hiking trails and Gilbert Grape in Metaline Falls. 

Our friend Eric came to visit. He's in the truck...the one with the cap.  We started following each other in Massachusetts.  Now he's in Bozeman, except for last week when he was in Metaline Falls.


* at the last minute we decided  that Avatar was too long.

Meet Our Movie

Brian (lead male) is bringing his new girlfriend Kathy to meet his family for Christmas dinner in rural Minnesota. Brian's family (age range from 5 to 75) expects him to bring the old familiar girlfriend they love and consider part of the family. When Brian enters with someone new, they don't know how to react. The story resolves when Kathy saves the life of one of the Uncles in a quirky, comedic scene and is welcomed into the family.

Loosely based on a true story, "You're Not Cindy" is an autobiographical comedy/drama of a Christmas when my college boyfriend surprised his family with me and I received a used, non-working clock radio in a shoe box as an impromptu gift from his confused parents weakly faking that they had expected me.

Without boring you with specifics, certain things need to be done before our movie hit the big screen.
1. Write a screenplay.
2. Find professional actors that would act for free
3. Find a location that looked like a Minnesota farmhouse, seated 16 for a Christmas dinner, wouldn't mind 35 strangers making themselves at home and was easily accessible for actors and crew from Canada and the US.*
4. Prepare a couple turkey dinners for 16 including pickled herring and several Jellos with Cool-whip.
5. Choose and wrap Christmas gifts for a big bunch of people in February.
6. Find and inspect hotel rooms for cast and crew.
7. Coordinate catering.
8. Find Christmas outfits for everyone.
9. Find a dog the day before the shoot since that is when we found out that our Canadian dog didn't have a rabies shot.
yada yada yada
Real movies have a lot of other people do this stuff but as usual it was just the two of us.

A series of lucky coincidences led us to the Lovitt Restaurant in Colville, Washington with an exterior that looked exactly like a Minnesota farmhouse if you didn't really know what a Minnesota farmhouse looked like. The Lovitt Restaurant, as you might guess by the name IS a restaurant, so inside it looked like a restaurant which would be fine if we had written a screenplay about a family that was having dinner at a restaurant but they weren't....they we at Aunt Marge and Uncle Joe's farmhouse for Christmas. Spokane cousins, that I only talk to when I need something (mostly kidding), earned a healthy spot in our credits with a collection of Christmas decorations that sang, snowed, kicked, swiveled and blinked. Then, between local secondhand, rent-to-own and furniture stores we managed to find a couch, loveseat and comfy recliner around town. Coffee and end tables, refrigerator, stove, a couple afghans and a TV that we could have on in the background throughout the day (is anyone else familiar with this family gathering phenomenon?)

Stuff I'd never really thought about...
If you want to shoot 'actor A' close-up from the front saying her lines and then 'actor B's' face reacting to 'actor A' when she's talking...it's at least two different set ups/takes....lights, mics, camera...everything. Then if you want to get a shot of 'actor C' overhearing and reacting to 'actor A and B', it's also and other set up/take. And, if actors A, B and C don't do their lines and reactions exactly the same every time, the takes can't be edited together smoothly which means that not all takes are good and you have to keep shooting until you get something good. You get the idea. When i realized that all of the gifts in a gift opening scene have to be wrapped up over and over exactly the same for each take, it was too late to make reservations for Costa Rica and spend the winter on the beach. A dinner table scene is similar. Let's use jello as an example. It gets passed around. Everyone takes some and puts it on their plates. Cut. Now let shoot it the other side. Easy for you to say. Now we need another untouched jello and clean plates.
And this is why we ran out of time.

Film Festival.
The venue (OK...so it was the school cafeteria) was sold out (if you can consider a free event 'sold-out') for our world premier. The standing room only crowd of movie buffs and surprised students looking for dinner, enjoyed the evening of 9 student films and 50 cent cookies that cost me 75.*
The audience laughed everywhere they were supposed to and then some. We held a question and answer session after the films and someone asked if our Christmas dinner scene was a real family dinner and if everyone knew each other. I guess that could be interpreted as a compliment? The event was followed by a party at our Nelson house until 2:30 and included international guests from as far away as Metaline Falls, Washington.


*For the event I bought some sweet breads and then went back and picked out 10 cookies at the Kootenay Coop Bakery.
"Would you like two more cookies?" the cashier asked.
"No thanks, I'm good", I responded.
"OK. That's 7-50".
I handed her a crisp purple 10 dollar bill.
"Thank you. If you would have gotten 2 more it would have been a dozen for 4-75." she said handing me my change.

If you think this post has a lot going on...you should have been at the Lovitt during the shoot.

The first photo is of the Lovitt before we did our magic.

Where Is The Camera? (part 1)

The buzz was "Pizza and Nelson Brewing Company organic beer in cans at Kathy and Vince's Wednesday night". The whole class came. A film-maker party. Like Hollywood. At 1 am we said good-bye to everyone except Rob who never left. Whether the full house was because it was OUR party or because we had free pizza and beer...I'll never know.

The public screening is Friday. Paul, Clay and Rob did the posters. I don't feel all that represented by our poster with the naked woman (covered in lycra only after protest) draped in film, toting a camera made to look like a machine-gun and announcing the event with a heavy metal/horror film font, but what the heck.

Figuring it would be easy to hang a few posters around town on the way home from school, I grabbed a handful. Not easy. Everywhere a poster could be hung, a poster was already hung....all current. While standing in front of a coffeehouse bulletin board a foot thick, I was approached by a musician who told me the best thing to do was to come back at 1:30 am...that way I could take some of the posters down from the night before and hang mine....a suggestion I chose to ignore.

The last time I mentioned the film we were preparing to shoot the car scene.

Take 1.
We were about to be the first car scene shot in Ione, Washington. The car was secured on the flat bed which was about to be pulled by Leon, the fella that put in our septic system, and his huge diesel truck. Vin wore a harness that was secured to the bed of the truck so well that if he would have fallen off he would have been dragged for miles. The tripod and camera weren't going anywhere. Our actors had driven down from Canada. ACTION. Ever notice how much a huge diesel engine vibrates at 20 miles an hour??? You'd notice if you were trying to film two people having a conversation in the car it was pulling while standing on it's flatbed. Well. That didn't work. We did, however, manage to get the boom shots and luckily Vince forgot he'd ever mentioned the shots from the airplane.

Take 2.
One week later.
Vince built a camera platform. Called a 'hostess tray' in the industry, it mounts to either side of the car and shoots through the window. If you want to spend 1500 dollars you can buy one or if you're Vince, you can build one out of scraps for about 20. The actors were mic'd. Everyone had a walkie talkie so we're synced for 'ACTION'. I hung holiday-looking garlands throughout the town so the audience would know it's Christmas even though it wasn't and even though the garlands didn't show up in any of the shots. Vin mounted an inverter to the car engine so we could run lights (held by huge suction cups suctioned to the hood) off of the car battery. Joel, our lead male, drove and did his lines as if there were no bright lights shining in his face and he could see just fine. Cut. Good take.

Where Is The Camera? (part 2)

Are you tired of camera scene pictures yet?

House.
Life is so much easier with a place to hang our coats when we walk in. I think I mentioned that we needed a coat rack, that Max, Vince and I headed down the railroad tracks to find some spikes and that Max didn't find any but Vince and I came back with 17 between the two of us. Today at Ryan's machine shop, Vin sand-blasted and shortened the spikes at a 10 degree angle while Ryan welded them to the metal plate he'd just cut and drilled. My job was to hold off the guy with the broken cultivator emergency for 15 minutes until they were done.

With the front door open, the house is 966 square feet plus 58 acres.

Exciting News.
Energy Star credits for the washer/dryer and the refrigerator just showed up on our electric bill.

Just A Quick Pop In

Almost everyday I promise myself that I'm going to post and entry in my blog so you can see that I'm not very good at keeping promises when they're to myself.

School and Canada.
Six hours of "After Effects" (a complicated (for me) software program) yesterday and now when I make a movie where I'll need to have a car fly through a glass window on the 50th floor of a skyscraper, I'll know how to do it. It's the very same class in which I created a skeleton that danced the Macarena.

I got an 'A!' on my last editing test. You may think I'm punctuating the 'A' in order to emphasize it but I'm not. This is not an 'A' or an 'A-' but an A exclamation point. Just another cute little Canadian quirk.

Every week I look forward to going up to Nelson and look just as forward to coming back down to Metaline Falls. All year Vin and I been whispering in the car while sitting in the customs queue without even realizing it. I guess we both felt like somehow the customs people could hear us in the car if we spoke at a normal volume. Going through customs I'm always a teeny bit nervous. I'm sure I look guilty. I know I always feel guilty.

One easy swipe of my BC Health card and the receptionist sat looking at all of my Canadian medical records. Then, when no one was checking in, she swept the floor until an examination room was free and she could set it up for me. As students we get BC Health for about 100 dollars a month. I wish I was sick so I could use it. Thursday I had a physical. I was 3 minutes late. Two minutes later, the doctor came out to get me and apologized for making me wait.

House and home.
Interior doors. We decided on what we wanted so the hard part is done. You'll think it's weird, but we had some sheets of corrugated metal left from the siding that we're going to transform into doors. How will that look? Beats me but I'll know in about a week.

We now have a cute little Asko washer and dryer, showers, bookcases, dining chairs and wooden steps. The washer and dryer are energy star, the bookshelves and steps are local wood from Steve Kiss..neighbor, logger and talent from Vin's first film. The chairs are from Sundance Catalog (sorry).

Our Saturday movie night ('Benny and Joon'...filmed in Spokane in 1993) had a record 7 movie loving lasagna eaters in attendance. Both the lasagna and the movie were delicious. Must sees: 'Benny and Joon', 'Bart Got A Room' and 'Gilbert Grape', my recent new favorites.

The elk are back. Back from where? They didn't fly south because I know I would have noticed since they travel in groups of 15 to 50. Guess it's their little secret and I'd know if they wanted me to know.

Notice, in the last photo, how the wood from the outside looks like it continues to the inside (where we need some coat hooks*). Very Chic.

Warning. If you think that after 25 years of sleeping in a king sized bed, you can go back to a queen...you'd be wrong.

*Max, Vin and I found 17 railroad spikes, soon to be coat hooks, on a walk from our house yesterday.

Eggs, A Table And Siding

It was so so so easy to write a car scene into our film. Such a perfect opening sequence. Easy. Now, how would someone film something like that? Where is the camera person? On the hood of the car? And how would you hear the people inside talking when the camera person is on the hood of the car? I wonder if you could use mirrors for something somehow? Well. Looks like we're renting a flatbed truck and putting a car on it, tethering the camera person (Vince) somewhere in front of the car. and having the driver (Kathy) drive the flatbed truck with the car on it back and forth over the same 1000 yard section of road over and over again, shooting with different exposures and angles. The actors will be mic'd. Then, the camera person will get into the driver seat and shoot the passenger while she is saying her lines with the person you think is in the driver's seat, but is actually sitting in the back seat saying his lines and then the actors switch and Vin films the driver from the passenger seat, while the flatbed truck driver is driving back and forth along the same 1000 yards of road. When that's done, Vince will get into the cherry picker that is positioned over the road and the car will drive back and forth under it while Vin is shooting. THEN there are the shots from the airplane that I'm secretly hoping we don't have time for. Vince thinks the car scene will end up being the easiest scene to shoot. I don't like the sound of that.

Today was big. The stove (isn't it just the cutest little stove?) that was sitting in the middle of the kitchen NOT hooked up for a month is now sitting in the middle of the kitchen hooked up, which is much better and as soon as Vince figures out how to reconnect the wire he accidently cut through behind the stove, we can move it into place. The inaugural homemade pizza was delicious although it was tough deciding where to eat it....in the living room while watching a movie? or at the not-done but usable new table (not blurry in real life) while sitting on the new chairs that came today? I decided to eat one piece at the table on a new chair and another piece on the couch in front of the movie. Oh, before I forget....never get white upholstered furniture, (as if you didn't already know that) unless you only wear pajamas.*

Ryan Kiss, one of the 200 people in Metaline Falls, made our table frame. His dad Steve milled the two 18 inch cedar planks that rest on top from a tree that was leaning on a house in town. We still have to finish the top but in the meantime we can use it as another horizontal surface for piling stuff. Ryan also made the kitchen sink base, kitchen shelf tower, entry bench and as soon as he's done painting the John Deere skidder with a de-limber and boom grapple for which we were somehow bumped, he's going to make us some bookcases.

We have movie night at our house every Saturday night. We've only had one so far. In attendance was Joe (my 30 year friend that harvested the porch beam) and his wife Trish who brought us eggs from their chickens that are so pretty I don't want to eat them. And Chris who brought a Harvey Wallbanger cake and a pile of 30 year old photos documenting him, Joe and me planting trees in a clear cut. Thirty years ago Chris and I traveled together (felt our way around) in New Zealand for months and we laughed everyday all day.

I could check and see if I already told you about our home theater but since I can walk faster than our internet, I'll just assume I have. (8 speaker surround...sound familiar?) Anyway. It doesn't matter where you are in the house, the screen will be too close and the sound will be too loud. I say we should have bought a smaller screen. Vince says we should have built a bigger house.

We're getting exercise again. Yaaayyy. It all started about 2 weeks ago. All we had to do is decide that being 8 pm and 20 degrees wasn't a good enough reason to be inside at home like everyone else. We bought our $272 dollar season pass (like the 700 other season pass holders at Nelson Nordic) and 3 oz. headlamps that are as bright as a car headlight and last for 4 hours on the medium setting. My season pass picture looks like a little old lady and Vince's looks like a thug. The night loop is flat and lit. Part of the area outside the lit loop is open enough that most of the time we can ski under the moon and stars without our lights. We're both satisfied with around an hour. We did a 1 lap ~4 minute race last Thursday. 2-up starts. Vin and I started together. I jumped the gun on purpose. Entry fee was a donation so we asked if they wanted money or ski wax since we brought a million years worth of wax with us. They said they'd rather have wax. Later we saw the poster for the race that said it was a fund-raiser for Haiti?

Look. Siding. I know you're thinking...."how will they keep it from rusting?". We're not the only building in Metaline Falls covered in rusted corrugated metal but I'm pretty sure we're the only one's that think it looks cool.


*in our defense, the white upholstery was the only choice we had so we're not crazy.