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.

Coloring My World

Even though I don't really mind sleeping on the floor and doing dishes in the bathroom, the other day we got to thinking that it might be fun to finish something in the house other than the home theater and multi-room stereo system.  Since the mudroom is small and it's use clearly defined, we decided it was a good place to start.  Have you ever played that game where everyone takes off their shoes and makes a big pile out of them in the middle of the room?  Someone says 'GO', everyone runs to the pile and the first person to find their shoes and put them on is the winner?  Our mudroom reminded me of that game.  Anyway.   We'd virtuously saved some of the 100-something year old lumber* from the house's original kitchen and turned it into a really heavy shelving unit using ski boots to determine the space between the shelves.   We got a ceiling light with a metal cage around the bulb so we shouldn't break anymore light bulbs with our skis and I painted the walls the same happy happy blue that my friend Tina used to paint her kitchen.  I was positive that the blue was the perfect color for that space until I saw our neighbor Nancy's yellow mudroom but then after a few days I decided again that the blue was perfect.  I don't know why I obsess so about paint colors when it's not that hard paint over a color that looks way different on a whole wall than it did on a little chip.

More on painting.

So you have the unfinished baseboard nailed to the wall.  It needs priming and two coats of paint.   But the wall is already painted and the floor is finished which means you can't let the paint can't get anywhere but on the baseboard because if you get it on the painted wall you have to paint that part of the wall again and when you do that you you'll likely get wall paint on the baseboard that will then have to be painted over again.  Then, if you get paint on the floor, you can't paint over it because the floor isn't painted.  The paint just soaks in and looks ugly.  Ceiling painting problems are similar to baseboard painting problems except everything is overhead with a ladder which adds to the normal discomfort that goes along with just plain painting. 

We got a price to paint the ceilings and baseboards in the Vermont house.  The price was 3 times what we thought it would be and 5 times what we wanted it to be. 

Stalemate. 

It took a couple days and several attempts to get rogue paint glops off of the concrete floor for us to decide that having someone paint the baseboards and ceilings was worth almost any amount of money.

Ceiling and baseboard painters

Holiday News:

• Vin an I did our Christmas the other night.  A pile of priority mail envelopes holding surprises were arranged around the bottom of a bulbed coat tree that served as our balsam fir.  I made a pizza and wore a skirt that kind of hid the watermelon that used to be my knee when it wasn't riding up the front of my tights with static electricity.   Halfway through the ceremony, Vince surprised me with 'LOST, season 3' and then I surprised him 'LOST, season 3.

Our Christmas coat rack.  For at least 20 years, my high school (long-time!!) friend Linda has given me one of these hand-blown glass ornaments from Sun Valley at Christmas.  Actually, she forgot this year.  "Linda! Where's my ornament?"

• Since we hadn't seen our O'Connell niece and nephew for the holidays, Vin and I recently drove to Boston to treat them to a special post holiday-time dinner.  I found a Zagat's 5-star vegetarian eatery that sounded incredible.   It ended up not only being vegetarian....but vegan.  And not only vegan...but raw.   Vin ordered pizza and was surprised when it came with a...somehow dried because it couldn't be baked and still be considered raw...cracker crust.  My sister-in-law asked to have her portobello soup heated up a bit and they couldn't/wouldn't because raw-law states that nothing can be over 102 degrees.  Luckily a banana-chocolate shake (make that 2) fit all the 'raw' rules and supplemented our 15 year old meat-eating snowboarder nephew's raw-vegan sushi.  If we'd been raw diners I'm sure we would have given the place 5 stars but we're not raw diners.

The whole house looked like this.  I kind of liked it.

White can look OK too.  (Vince's tilework)

Messy house.  Pretty colors.

I'm not a blue person so I don't know how this happened.

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.

Follow The Yellow Stone Walk

Two days after we rented a flatbed truck pulling a trailer and picked up a pallet of local stone in Canada (I know it's Canadian... but only 25 miles away....so I decided it was OK to call it local), we had a walkway.  

It connects our perfect little shed with the fir walkway to the front door and inches us closer to completing our western oasis. 

Vince said it was for my birthday. I said thank you but it didn't count.

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.

It's all GOOD LIFE

The sign on the door read "We will be closed for Christmas this Friday, Dec. 25" and that's when I realized that we wouldn't be sending out cards on time again this year. I knew Christmas was coming up pretty soon but I thought I had another week. If we were going to visit Dad in Arizona for Christmas, I'd better make a few phone calls. The only two seats USAirways had available were first class on Christmas day. I bought them Christmas Eve.

Merry Christmas.

Dad's 'house' sits among 1,200 other houses that look exactly like his. Each 300 square foot unit rests five feet from the its neighbor. The name of the resort is 'Good LIfe'. It was sixty degrees and sunny. The locals were freezing in their parkas but I was hot. For 2 !/2 days we hiked in the desert, walked Rocky (Dad's dog), played computer card games, walked Rocky, watched TV, and walked Rocky. Shopping was everywhere. I'm supposed to hate shopping but after being able to get my Mac fixed 5 minutes from Good LIfe, I've had to re-think my dogma. I know I'd probably get sick of having everything I need a short bike ride away but after 6 months in Metaline Falls and the nearest 2 x 4 being 60 miles down the road, maybe not.

The morning we flew back to Washington, I was sitting in one of the resort hot tubs. The residents taking the water aerobics class in the pool next to me were bouncing up and down while singing 'I've Been Working On The Railroad' and 'Let Me Call You Sweetheart.' It was 'Let Me Call You Sweetheart' that was looping in my head like a nightmare the rest of the day.


Holiday Photos...
DC Auto and Secondhand, Metaline Falls' newest retailer, offered gift wrapping for the holidays.

The lone Christmas wreath spanning the town's Main Street broke in half around Thanksgiving and never got fixed.

Elves in lieu of a manger scene.

Rest assured that Max has a good home when we can't bring him with us. He lives with Drew and Katie when we're in school etc. He still likes us better, we think?

Vince loves the scarf (so do I) I got from my brother Dale's family...(Brenda, Tashauna and Dale).


Non-photo news...
Vin just finished installing the home theatre system. Seven speaker surround with a Panasonic pt-ae4000 HD projector (whatever) and a 120 inch screen. It doubles as a stereo...with really good sound. Glen Gould's piano and humming is in here with us right now. OK, with that all done, maybe we'll hook up the water.

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.