Taking the plunge

We finally took the plunge yesterday. It was really expensive, but I think it will be worth it in the long run. After weeks and weeks of trying to decide what the bathroom remodel is going to look like, we went out and bought almost all the stuff yesterday.

Shopping can be a real ordeal for us. It is about 150 miles to Bend, where the nearest major shopping is. So a trip to Bend is an all-day affair and $60-some in gas. So we try not to do it too often. The shopping in Bend is pretty good. There's a Costco, a Target, Home Depot and Lowe's, Cost Plus, Wild Oats, Wal-Mart, Grocery Warehouse, Michael's, Albertson's, all that stuff that we are accustomed to. There's no way to hit all of those in one day, though, so we rush around and try to get as much done as possible. If it doesn't get done on this trip, it's not going to get done for another month. This is why we have lived here for 3 months and have no TV yet. So we have to buy lots of stuff, but we also have to fit it all into the truck. And we usually bring the dog with us, just to complicate the day even more.

You know how when you are working on a little home improvement project, it seems like you have to run to the hardware store about twice a day? There's always some little piece that you forgot, and you can't get any farther along with the project until you have that piece. Or, you hit something unexpected, like a rotten subfloor, and all of a sudden there's a whole new dimension to the project that seemed so simple before. Since we live 70 miles from the nearest hardware store, it would be very impractical to make all those trips. We tried to buy everything in one trip. I spent at least three hours putting together the shopping list for this trip. And once we were at the home store, I think we spent another three hours wandering from aisle to aisle, finally getting almost everything we needed.

Today, we started on the first little project, which is replacing the kitchen sink drain. Well, the part that was supposed to connect to the disposal didn't fit. And the tee that was supposed to connect to the trap didn't fit either. So we are back to the radiator hose system until further notice. Good thing we hadn't chucked it.

Today's second project was to get a little work area organized in the basement. That went much more smoothly. I set up my new sliding compound miter saw and just admired it for awhile. It's probably total overkill for the things we are doing right now, but it is just a thing of beauty. And it works great. I used it to build sawhorses to hold up a little plywood workbench. The saw takes up almost the whole bench, so the effect is somewhat of a shrine for the saw. I put up some nails to hang my other motley tools from, and everything else is still in plastic storage boxes.

Today the basement, tomorrow the bathroom....!

Armed (me) and Fabulous (the movie) (No, not that movie)

The hunting is great in this part of Oregon. The resident price for a deer tag is something like $34. But the non-resident price is about $300. And you have to live in Oregon for 6 months to be considered a resident. So, we did not go deer hunting this year. Besides which, we don't have any equipment, and neither one of us has much shooting practice.

So, we are biding our time and waiting for next year. With a lot of advice from friends and the gun guy at the hardware store, I have bought a rifle that will be good for deer and elk hunting, without having so much recoil that it will knock me flat. It's a Savage Sierra Model 10, and it's caliber is 7mm-08. It's got a scope on it with 3x to 9x magnification. All of this is very new to me, so there are some things that are going to take time to get used to. Apparently the first thing one must do with a new rifle is to sight in the scope- That is, set it up so that the crosshairs are actually aligned with where the bullet goes.

We are lucky to have a shooting range just a few miles from the house. It is pretty primitive, but it has a bench and targets at 25, 50, and 200 yards, so it will do just fine. I heard that it's on private property which has recently changed hands. I don't know if the new owners are OK with having folks pound a bunch of lead into their land, but they haven't put up any no trespassing signs or anything like that. I don't suppose it would go over too well if they did. The range has been in use for at least 20 years.

We went down to the range this weekend to do some target practice and scope in the rifle. Our pal who is a really, really good marksman was kind enough to set it up for me. With everything dialed in, I was able to hit a 6" square from 200 yards. 200 yards!!! I couldn't even see the square without looking through the scope. And at 100 yards, I was within a couple inches of the bullseye. Wow. Just goes to show that with the right tools, anyone can look like an expert.

He told me that elk season starts this week. There might be a few non resident tags left, if I want to put up $300 and take my chances. At this point, though, I think I'm better off shooting at the orange square. I think if I was facing a real live bull elk, I would be too keyed up to get a good shot. Even if he was 200 yards away. Those things are huge!

More wildlife on the plate. I helped another friend of ours butcher his deer, and so he gave us some of the meat. Deer meat has a distinct game flavor, I think I actually like elk better. I had a great time cooking this deer steak, though. Some sort of alchemy happened and it transformed itself into corned beef while it was in the pot. I soaked about two pounds of venison steak in tenderizing salt, then cooked it in the pressure cooker, with wine, sun-dried tomatoes, Montreal seasoning, and a few bay leaves. Bam! Corned beef. I'm writing that recipe down!

We haven't gotten satellite TV yet. And we might not. If we got the package that has the channels that I want (DIY) it would be $80-some a month. I'd feel like having the TV on all the time, just to get our money's worth. We haven't gotten our new TV yet, either. We promised ourselves a new TV and justified it by saying that there are no movie theatres, no nightclubs, no sports teams, no restaurants, and no other forms of entertainment within 70 miles of here. But we are finding that the old TV is usually gathering dust in the corner, so we haven't gotten serious about the new one yet.

We have been watching movies now and then. I find it hard to commit to sitting in one place for that long, so not too many. We finally got around to watching Party Monster the other night. It was better than I expected it to be, which is not saying much. You'd think that a movie about a bunch of drug-addled New York club-hoppers would be fast-paced and exciting, but it was mostly just depressing. The whole thing was kind of icky, actually. We had to watch it, though, since the main character of the movie is Michael Alig. I knew his sister in college, and I met him once, too. How often does someone make a movie about a murderer whom you have met? They cast Macauley Culkin as him, which I though was perfect. Who better to play an insecure, self-important, domineering queen? He was just 'fabulous'. It's funny, people think of movies as escapism from their daily lives. When the movie was over, we stepped outside into the cold air and watched a deer munching on the neighbor's lawn, looked at full moon, and reflected on how lucky we are to be here, away from all of that stuff.

The air here has been thick and smoky for a couple of days. It's burn season. The morning that I started writing this entry, there were some big controlled burns taking place. This is a photo of the sunrise over the mountains, taken from our backyard.

Book Larnin'

All those years of architecture school and ten years of working in architecture have taught me absolutely nothing about residential construction. I stand corrected, over and over again.

To begin with, the dry stacked CMU that comprises my basement isn't just dry-stacked. It is a SYSTEM. It is a fiberglass-reinforced surface-bonded CMU system. At the time the house addition was built, it was the latest greatest thing. They even say that if it is properly reinforced, it is actually stronger than a comparable conventional CMU wall. So, cool. I will stop worrying about my basement caving in. Except for the fact that there's lots of areas that don't have any parge coat on them at all. I suppose we should finish that.

I have been further humbled by the white plastic irrigation-looking plumbing. I had no idea this is legal, but it is, as long as it is chlorinated PVC (CPVC) not plain old unchlorinated PVC. Also, the hot water supply pipe is supposed to be rated for hot water. All these things are easily readable on the pipe itself. Chlorine + Poly Vinyl Chloride = What? Sounds like a recipe for dioxin to me, but what do I know?

In our last rainstorm, I hooked up some rather flimsy downspout roll-outs. They served their purpose. After I got them arranged to drain a few feet away from the house, the water stopped seeping into the basement. The permanent solution will involve more effort and money, but this is good enough till we figure it out.

The next mystery that I will rail about is why the kitchen floor feels like it's made of jello. I have looked into the crawl space but haven't explored it yet. It appears that the joists may be resting on stacked lumber. Some person has apparently been trying to excavate the crawl space into a full basement, for reasons unknown. There's even a couple of light fixtures installed in there. I think that I don't want to know why... or what I will find down there...

An addition:
There are some things in this house that are truly half-assed. The dishwasher, disposal, and sink drain are all connected to one another with lengths of radiator hose. And though I don't really see the point in dishwasher air gaps, that is missing too. Ah, what to remodel first??

Flora and Fauna (mostly Fauna)

Friday was my birthday. I'm 33 now. For my birthday, we had planned to drive to Boise and go see Danzig. That plan sort of fell apart, so we decided to go soak at Lehman, a local hot springs resort. On the drive up there, we watched for wildlife but saw none. Except, I think I saw a wild boar through the trees. The air at the resort was cold and a little breezy, and the water was hot and perfectly satisfying. We soaked in the large warm pool and the smaller hot pool, just basking in the warmth. I can't wait to go back.

Later on Friday, we had some closer encounters with wildlife. In the town of Ukiah, there were three young does posed like lawn sculpture in a yard. How startling when they actually moved! We should have taken that as an omen...

There is a herd of about 20 antelope (properly called pronghorn) that I have often seen at the entrance of the J Dot Ranch, which is between Monument and John Day. We didn't see them on Friday, but we did see another group about 15 miles farther north. It always seems like a lucky day to me when I get to see antelope. Maybe because they are so elusive. They are exactly the same color as the grass, so you can look right at them and not realize that you are seeing them.

By the time we got to the J Dot ranch, the sunset was lighting up the sky. The sunsets here are just incredible. We were closely watching the orange and blue patterns of light and shadow on the clouds, and maybe not so closely watching the road. We came upon a group of about 12 deer, some on each side of the road. We slowed down quite a bit to watch them. I guess we assumed that deer have enough sense not to jump right out in front of your vehicle. Well, we were wrong. One little doe was bounding away from the road, then abruptly changed directions and launched herself right into the grille of our truck. I yelped, Gavin stomped on the brakes, but there was no way to stop in time. We heard and felt the thump-thump-crunch as she went under the bumper. We stopped the truck to check out the damages. At first we didn't see any damage to the truck, so we walked back to check out the doe. She had collapsed on the far shoulder of the road, with one badly mangled leg and an obvious head wound. We are pretty sure that she gasped her last breath just as we walked up to her. At least she didn't have to suffer for long. We walked back to the truck and checked out the front again. Well, no dents in the bumper, but the finally notice that the big plastic grille is pretty well broken. Fortunately the radiator is intact and the grille sections popped back into place with only a hairline to show where they broke. They say that out here it's not "if" you hit a deer, it's "when" you hit a deer. So, this was our first. It seems like we got off pretty easy. We drove the rest of the way home a little more slowly and carefully. I cried a little, thinking of the little doe's big brown eyes, and what a senseless waste of life it was, for her to die on the side of the road for no reason. I think I would feel better if it was legal to take home roadkill, so at least we could make use of her, instead of leaving her at the side of the road. I suppose she is going to be food for the coyotes and the vultures.

After we got back home, we went to a friend's house for dinner. We dodged at least four more deer on the way to their house- less than half a mile. Dinner was barbequed venison ribs and bacon-wrapped venison steaks. It was delicious, but I could hardly eat it. The guys checked out Gavin's truck. All agreed that we had gotten off easy. The suggestion was made that we should have chucked her into the back of the truck for a late-night clandestine butchering. They traded stories about poaching and evading (or not) the long arm of Fish & Game.

Most people here think of deer as something between a nuisance and a convenience. There's so many of them, they eat people's gardens, they eat the alfalfa, and they are always jumping out in front of cars. They draw the arrogant city-boy hunters out here, who trespass on private property, cut locks, leave gates open, and endanger residents and their livestock. On the other hand, those hunters bring a fair amount of dough into the local economy, and deer are pretty good eating. Not as good as elk, but just about everyone can get a license to hunt deer; there's only so many elk tags to go around.

There's more animals out here than people, by a lot. We are currently overrun with cats... We have our two indoor cats, two more indoor kittens, the outdoor cat who came with the place, and about four other cats who steal his food. One of them is a mama cat with four kittens. There is also a big orange tiger cat, and a gray manx. There's a lot of manx cats here. The ranch up the road breeds and sells manxes. Perhaps the feral ones here are their rejects, since they all seem to have some manx-related defects. They're staying outside!

An addition to this entry: My dog just woke me up at 5:00 am, barking his head off, because someone or something is in the yard. At first I didn't see anything, then I could make out a vague black blocky shape. COW! The dog was eager to chase, so I let him out. Big mistake, he just barked the cow back farther onto our property. Sigh. I got out the million-candlepower flashlight, and headed out the back door. But wait, there's more. It's actually seven "cows". Let me revise my terminology. Seven head of cattle.
[A digression:
This happened before, about a month ago. Except they were in our neighbor's yard, happily munching on the greenest lawn in town. We had no idea what to do, so we phoned her and woke her up. At 3 am. I don't think she was pleased with us. The next day, I ran into one of the local ranchers, and asked him if he thought the wanderers were his. He asked me if I'd seen their ear tags. Well, no.]
I headed out with my big flashlight, to see if I can see their tags and maybe scare them off. It looks like exactly the same group who were here last month. I can see solid yellow tags on all but one cow and her calf. The cow looks completely wild, with her shaggy coat and little horns. Is she baring her teeth at me? Her calf is a little guy, but still too big for me to push out of the yard... There's no scaring them off unless I go right up to them. They have found ungrazed land and they're determined to graze it. And the dog won't bark at them anymore. I suppose if they are not visible from our windows, they are out of his territory or something... If they're still here in a few hours I'll ask around and see if I can find out whose they are.

More about animals- We have been trying to spot more variety in wildlife, but mostly just see deer and kangaroo rats. The variety comes in the roadkill. So far we have seen roadkill red fox, coyote, raccoon, opossum, jackrabbit, bunny, and porcupine, as well as deer and household pets. The porcupine definitely makes a dramatic roadkill, quills side up. Looking at him reminded me of Indian crafted porcupine quill baskets. I was almost tempted to go back and harvest his quills for some such adventure. But we were on the way to a vet appointment, and I don't usually carry pliers and tin-snips in the car with me.