Miscellaneous Shellfish

A niche that needs filling

2009-09-11T12:07:00.000-07:00

The visitor statistics for this blog indicate that a large number of people who find themselves here actually want to learn about the invention of dog food. When it was invented, who invented it. Apparently somebody totally needs to write a Wikipedia article about that.

There are also quite a few people who come here wanting answers to a question that somehow combines dogs, shellfish, and travel to Canada. You'd be surprised how many people have such a question. Can you take dogs to Canada? Or import shellfish from Canada? Can dogs eat shellfish? In Canada? Are there any Canadian shellfish named after dogs? What role did shellfish played in the invention of Canadian dog food? etc etc

Alas, I know they are all leaving disappointed. I'm sorry people, I cannot help you. And now I realize by writing this post I've simply reinforced Miscellaneous Shellfish as the leading Google contender for these various search terms. So sorry.

I could watch this all day

2009-09-09T14:14:00.000-07:00

Boyfriend with Health Benefits

Thank heavens someone still has a sense of humor on this topic.

One last adventure

2009-09-04T14:52:00.001-07:00

This weekend is many things, including Enrico's birthday today (Happy Birthday!), and Girls Weekend, the annual outing with my two childhood friends who live nearby. It will also be one last camping outing for Eva before we put her up for sale.

Girls Weekend always happens in August or September. We make a weekend of some lovely northwest destination, and this year it will be Victoria (because it's just been way too long since I've been to Canada!). Since the birth of Julie's daughter Sophie, girls weekend now includes her too. We are teaching her The Way of the Girlfriend, and we take that solemn duty very seriously.

So tonight Enrico, Monica, the dogs and I will head out to the Kitsap peninsula, where our household pack will get one more night together in Eva, sleeping under the stars at Julie and Dan's beautiful wooded property. Then The Girls will head off to Victoria, on the ferry via Port Angeles. Enrico plans to hang with the Boys for a while, before finding himself a nice little campsite somewhere with Eva and the dogs.

I've started loading up the van, so the dogs know something's up, and they are So! Very! Excited!

It should all be great fun.

More treasures!

2009-09-03T18:53:00.000-07:00

Enrico is starting to wonder about my sanity, I think. In the throes of a pretty intense consulting project and repeated complaints about how I'm losing my mind from coordinating umpteen contractors and building inspectors and repair people, not to mention the dogs' medication schedule, and we're leaving town again this weekend which will be fun but GOOD LORD I have no more mental capacity for travel planning, wah wah WAAH - In short, while whining about how overwhelmed and fragmented I feel, I persist in buying weird castoff stuff from the Boeing Company.

Is there any urgency to buying this stuff? No. Our storage crunch has been with us for a year, and thus demonstrably doesn't need to be fixed immediately. Boeing will always have more castoffs. So why do I insist on adding one more thing to my list, shoehorning in the time to drive the van down to Boeing and pick up dirty old crap?

It's a mystery.

But tomorrow I'll make second trip down to Boeing to get this wooden storage chest. With a coat of fresh paint and a padlock, it'll be perfect for storing our tools and camp stove and some of our emergency supplies.

My nemesis did not show up online to sabotage my bid this time, so I acquired this little gem for a mere $30!

I've already picked up my Six Wood Boxes (as Lot #2357612 is known), and I stand behind my assessment that they are a find. Beautifully crafted for storing highly delicate and expensive machine tools, the hardware alone is worth a couple hundred bucks.

The three large boxes will be used for storage, but the three little ones are definitely a craft project in the making. I have big plans for them, oh yes I do.

Oh for heaven's sake, this ain't Ebay

2009-09-01T21:05:00.000-07:00

Amidst my flurry of Freecycling unwanted stuff away - yes, the generic Zantac was gone within 12 hours, my friends! - I have, on the other side of the coin, been fixatedly scanning the Boeing Surplus online auctions for an answer to our storage needs.

A couple months ago, we got invited to a housewarming party at the home of a younger, hipper couple. They had purchased these awesome rolling tool containers from Boeing surplus, painted them bright colors, and arranged them around their back deck as storage containers, benches, and raised planter beds. It was a masterpiece of repurposed industrial chic.

I've been looking for, oh, forever for a solution to our outdoor storage needs. We have no garage, no basement, and we tore down our nasty rat-infested shed last summer. I have extensively researched cheap modular sheds, custom-built sheds, eco-friendly modular buildings, custom designed cabinetry for under the carport, storage chests made from recycled plastic, a small add-on off our back door, and adding flooring and a fold-down staircase for our unfinished attic. I have created spreadsheets comparing the cost, cubic footage, and eco-friendliness of each option. The ones I like best are outrageously expensive.

And so, inspired by our younger hipper friends, I wondered if perhaps some Boeing cast-offs could meet my needs. Have you ever visited Boeing surplus? It's pretty well known among local nonprofits as a source of cheap office furniture. But they have all kinds of things. Hydraulic lifts, rolling aircraft stairs, power tools, engine parts, wires and cables, fire hoses, insulation, work tables, bicycles, cafeteria equipment, flame-resistant storage cabinets. There are mysterious gizmos like fluke multimeters and gaussmeters. There are grab-bag items like "a trove of shop tools" or "miscellaneous casters." Not to mention the many full hides of fine Scottish leather.

But most saliently, there are storage carts, cabinets and boxes of all sizes and descriptions.

I rejected the 32-foot long office trailer even though the starting bid was only $500; no way I could pick that up in Eva. I bid on two things, both beaten up but with, I thought, a certain charm. I could envision painting them bright colors. The auction for the first item expired this evening, and with five minutes left I checked to verify that I was still the top bidder, at a whopping $35. Enrico shook his head. I know, I said; as if somebody is sitting out there waiting to pounce with a last-minute bid.

Being neurotic, I refreshed it with 2 minutes to go. Somebody had upped the bid by $5.

Stunned, I nonetheless regained my wits and submitted a new bid. They countered. In the last 90 seconds of the auction, my invisible opponent and I furious lodged 6 more bids. Up, up up it went, $50, $60, $70! But lo! Victory was mine.

Can't you just visualize them repainted bright colors, a masterpiece of repurposed industrial chic? Enrico can't. But I can.

So I still have a bid out on one more item, which is actually a much more practical answer to our storage need. But I'm not going to tell you which one it is, now that I know how cut-throat these auctions are. At five minutes before the deadline I'll be waiting, fingers poised above the keyboard to protect my find.

Before & after

2009-08-30T17:05:00.001-07:00

Freecyclin'

2009-08-30T08:16:00.000-07:00

Our laundry area is more or less back in order now, with a new floor, coat of paint, and shelving. There is still some drywall and trim repair to do here and there, but it's tidy enough. And now that we've painted that end of the kitchen, we'll have to paint the rest. Yesterday was a three-hardware-store-trip day, but we have our washing machine back, and a place to put all the stuff that was dumped all over the house for the past two weeks. And the hellmouth to our crawlspace is once again closed.

So meanwhile, I am trying to get rid of some stuff that we don't need, and my new favorite thing is Freecycle. The Freecycle Network™ is "made up of 4,799 groups with 7,192,000 members across the globe. It's a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It's all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills."

Seattle's group has about 20,000 members. Here's how it works: You post either "Offered" or "Wanted," with a description of the item and your neighborhood. It must be free, the receiver picks it up, and you must make individual arrangements to have your item picked up (not just "it's on the front porch, y'all come and may the first one win!"). Once the deal is done, you post an updated "Taken" or "Received" notice. Volume is probably 50 notices a day, but sent in 2-4 aggregated digests.

I appreciate that people come pick my stuff up, which makes it way easy. But mostly I love the emphasis on redistributing our crap to where it will get used - keeping things out of landfills, reducing the natural resources used to produce new items, helping people live frugally. And it appears that nearly any piece of crap will get used by somebody. Oh the obvious stuff, like futons and dining room tables, baby clothes and moving boxes, bicycles and textbooks - that goes in about ten minutes. But some of the things definitely have more niche appeal: two dozen egg cartons, multiple broken vacuum cleaners, antique fiddle cases, half-used containers of everything from cat litter to over-the-counter pharmaceuticals.

I've unloaded three things so far: an ergonomic exercise ball, The Structure from our recent Canadian trip (even with full disclosure about the tear in the mesh, caused by dog lunging at elk), and the seven planks of discontinued-color marmoleum which we bought and then could not use after all on our kitchen floor. All claimed (by email at least, not picked up) within an hour. The couple of times I've tried to claim something, I've never been the winning non-bidder. Stuff moves fast in the freecycle community.

So I'm getting bolder and planning to list some more esoteric stuff. The unopened bottle of extra-strength Zantac generic that I accidentally bought at Costco. Unused paint. Who knows how much of my crap would be a delightful find to somebody else?

I've heard that the IRS is unsure what to do about this increasing movement towards freecycling and the related practice of time/skill bartering. In theory, there should be tax implications to all this, but how could they ever police it? That kind of tickles me too.

The need for Freedom

2009-08-26T08:45:00.000-07:00

No, this post probably isn't about what you think.

When we got back from our vacation, I was all ready to tear into my various jobs with all the laser-like focus and high-charged enthusiasm of one who had been recharging for a month. Alas, as I have amply documented here, various life dramas arose which, while all completely manageable, turned my life into a herky-jerky existence in which I was constantly erasing things from my calendar and replacing them with "vet" or "contractor" or "take VW in AGAIN." I just could not get into a groove.

Yesterday, at the part-time job that I never talk about here because I can't find a way to do so with the appropriate degree of discretion, the internet actually went out for two hours. Two whole hours! And you know? I think I got more done in those two hours than I have in the whole two weeks that we've been home.

So maybe my heavily interrupted life cannot be entirely blamed for my lack of productivity. Perhaps, just perhaps, I am also my own biggest interrupter, too easily lured by the distractions of the internet. Sure, I've turned off those instantaneous email alerts. But still. Especially now that I have recently and reluctantly joined my friends in Facebook. And for the job-that-shall-not-be-named, I think I may have to break down and learn about this whole Twitter thing. Dangerous interruption territory.

So at least at home, I think I need to resort to a little program that I downloaded several months ago, when I was trying to put in some focused effort on my book project and discovered that Writing is Hard. Freedom for Mac allows you to disable Internet access for a set a period of time. Once you activate Freedom, and tell it how many minutes of Freedom you would like, the only way to get the Internet back is to reboot your computer. Which is doable, of course, but is enough of a barrier to pretty much eliminate the urge to cheat. Once Freedom is activated, it does not even allow you to open Freedom again until your Freedom time is up.

Sad, I know, that intelligent and hardworking people should have to resort to this kind of externally imposed willpower. It's easy to find numerous testimonials professing that Freedom has saved someone's personal, professional or creative lives. "To say that it's changed my life is an understatement!" "I would never have finished my [book, album, article for prestigious publication] without Freedom."

Much as I love it, this is what the Internet has done to us. We've had to invent our own Internet Mom who can force us to turn that damn thing off and finish your homework.

My latest mantra

2009-08-24T08:48:00.000-07:00

A quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, courtesy of a recent guest preacher at church. It's taped to my bathroom mirror because man, I really need to read it every evening and morning.

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."

If anyone knows the specific source of this quote, I'd love to know it.

Stupid parasites

2009-08-21T11:44:00.001-07:00

Nelly's gut is rife with a parasite that doesn't normally affect healthy adult dogs. So no, the vet said, we shouldn't have to worry about Toby getting sick too.

Ha! Within four hours, that assessment was proven oh so wrong. We spent all night letting Toby out. He was one uncomfortable puppy.

So after a second trip to the vet, our kitchen resembles a pharmacy:

And I am once again home-bound for the day. With neither dog able to go more than 2 hours without a bathroom break, and two dogs...well, you do the math. Until the meds kick in, somebody is always poopin' around here.

Unfortunately, this particular parasite never leaves their system. It's a nasty little single-cell bugger, and if I understand correctly, it gets inside the cells that line the intestines and literally causes them to explode. My poor dogs' intestines are being dynamited from within. It's often present in dogs, but usually only makes them sick if some other illness or stress weakens their system. Their bodies need to learn how to keep it under control on their own, once the meds help fight back this onslaught, and for the rest of their lives, we'll have to pay attention to the health of their digestive flora and immune systems. So in a weird way, it's good news to have Toby sick too, because that indicates an unusually virulent form of the bug, not an undetected immune system problem in Nelly, which would have been more worrisome. Silver linings!

We also got a chuckle out of the chart notes from Nelly's ER visit. The emergency vets are awesome, but you can tell they're working fast, and this leads to the occasional unintentional humor in the chart notes:

Pertinent History: Nelly presented for evaluation after having diarrhea for the past 2 days. She had multiple episodes of diarrhea in the house today. She traveled to Canada for a month of camping recently. The other dog in the house is not having diarrhea. Nelly is otherwise an apparently healthy cat.

Who knew! She's been a cat all along. It sure explains a few things.

Sometimes, three is NOT a magic number

2009-08-20T17:49:00.000-07:00

Today I got home from work to find that Nelly had [warning: discomfiting material] splattered the house with explosive diarrhea. We know it was Nelly because she'd had some symptoms yesterday. This morning I left the house with a nagging feeling that she might be sicker than we thought, but I just couldn't bring myself to up-end yet another day of work for a personal emergency. There was the whole water heater thing. I was scheduled to take Eva in for service today (an amusing anecdote on THAT follows), after blowing off the garage twice at the last minute already: once because I had to drain my leaking water heater, and then a few days later when I just completely spaced it. I couldn't face making a last-minute cancellation call to them AGAIN, because I hate looking like a ditz. I know, pride goeth before a fall (or in this case, before a house full of poo).

Anyhoo, that turned out to be a poor choice.

So Enrico has bundled her off to the emergency vet, which is clear across town, and most likely a three-hour excursion, minimum. He immediately volunteered to do it, because by the time he got home I had, as he put it, done the worst task (namely, the cleaning of poo - our hardwoods will never be the same). So it seemed only fair. And I have to say, karmically speaking, he kind of owes me on this one, after that one time that I had to take Nelly to the emergency vet in the dead of night while he was out of town, oh, and, let's not forget THAT OTHER time when I again had to take BOTH dogs to the emergency vet while he was out of town, on the same day our car broke down and the house across the street burned in a massive middle-of-the-night conflagration. You see the trend here?

The other trend? Is the whole trouble-comes-in-threes thing. There was the aforementioned veterinary emergency/car trouble/arson day. And then a couple years ago there was the broken finger/car accident/house burglary combo. So my question is: Does the water heater/van repair/veterinary emergency count as three? Because the van repair wasn't really an emergency, it was pretty much expected. The price tag was much higher than anticipated, so maybe that counts; but it's not entirely clear, and now I'm on edge, waiting for the third shoe to drop.

I'm sure Nelly is fine, by the way, in case you are fretting about her. She probably has giardia or something. Dogs eat stupid shit; sometimes they get sick. It's only a big deal because they are (relatively) small and dehydrate quickly. I'm just glad it didn't happen while we were on the road.

Speaking of which (I know, this is too long and rather rambling, and I should probably break this out into two separate entries, or perhaps just shut up, but such is my state of mind at the moment), I did indeed take Eva in for a check-up today. As expected, she needed an oil change, air filters (engine and internal) and replacement of pretty much all her fluids. That wasn't a surprise, though just as everyone has warned us, it's crazy expensive to do anything to a Volkswagen. The special fairy-dust VW transmission fluid? Literally costs seven times as much as any other kind of transmission fluid. And they have to do this whole elaborate thing to change it. So it costs $350 fracking dollars. But since the transmission is kinda important, and we know it's a weak spot on this model, we gritted our teeth and told them to go ahead and do the work.

An hour later, the shop called me back.

"We just got your van up on the lift," he said, "and the underside is completely caked with, like, an inch of mud. The wheel wells, struts, underside, everything. Totally coated."

"That doesn't surprise me at all," I said calmly. "Like I explained, we spent a lot of time on gravel roads."

"Seriously, it's totally encased in mud. I'm surprised you didn't have any alignment problems. Where exactly did you go, anyway?"

I explained where we went. He thought that sounded cool. He expounded a bit more on the unbelievable extent of the mud.

"So, can you clean it off?"

"Well, yeah, we have a power washer that can do the job. But we think it's going to take about an hour, so we're going to have to charge you for labor."

"That's fine, I understand."

This was followed by a bit more of [Dude! the mud, THE MUD!], and when I hung up the phone, I cracked up. I envisioned every single mechanic in the shop - and this was a large place, not the two-man hole-in-the-wall we took it to before; Volkswagon Guru Man was on vacation - anyway, I envisioned every guy in the shop standing underneath the lift, gazing up in awe at Eva's belly. You ever seen that much mud? Not me. No way, me neither. Man, that's the most mud I have frickin' EVER seen underneath a car.

When I picked her her, I asked if this impression was correct, that this was indeed The Muddiest Vehicle they had collectively ever seen. The guy chuckled, and didn't really answer. But then he leaned forward conspiratorially, and said in hushed tones, "You ought to see the guy who did the work. He is filthy."

So I guess I made up for the fact that I blew them off twice, by providing them with a tale that they can relate for years to their spellbound children and grandchildren. The mud, THE MUD!

What I want to hear from the president

2009-08-19T07:54:00.000-07:00

Today I'm supposed to be on a "conference call" on health care reform with the President - and tens of thousands of other people. I have opinions on many of the details of health care reform, of course, having worked in that field for many years. The current state of the debate makes me inexpressibly depressed. But here's what I yearn to hear.

"More than sixty years ago, Americans decided that people have the right, after 50 years of labor, to lay down our work; and to do so with dignity and some measure of security. In making that commitment to ourselves and each other, we lessened the human suffering and nagging fears that haunted our forebears: the fear of ending our days in destitution; the prospect of unending labor beyond the time when bodies can endure it; the economic need for women to bear as many children as possible to ensure caretakers during old age.

"And thus, we created the concept of retirement. Certainly the systems we established along with it are not perfect; they must be adapted as times change, and are on shaky ground right now, requiring our attention. Moreover the promise of retirement does not absolve us from the duty to contribute our own part to that security, to save and plan and take responsibility for our circumstances. But the underlying promise, that of the right to lay down one's burden in old age with dignity and peace of mind, is now enshrined in our culture, and we are better for it.

"We have before us the opportunity to make a similar leap, a collective covenant of equally momentous import. We can create a life for our children and grandchildren that is free of many of the fears that haunt us: fear that our illnesses and injuries will go untreated; knowledge that we live ever on the edge disaster, should our health coverage disappear due to unemployment, illness, divorce, widowhood; dread of the next unexpected jump in our health care premiums, and the associated painful financial choices; terror that we will be bankrupted and become a burden to our families simply because we got sick.

"We have the opportunity to create the concept of health care as a right - not without our own responsibilities and duties, to share the cost, to care for our bodies, to plan for our future and take responsibility for our circumstances. But a right nonetheless, and one enjoyed already by people around the world. We can walk away from the fear and instead embrace the idea that people should be cared for when they require it, with dignity and some measure of security. We, and the generations that follow us, will be better for it."

Why isn't this what the debate is about?

Rejoice!

2009-08-17T15:13:00.001-07:00

...for the subfloor does not need replacing. So says the contractor, who's a former roommate of a friend, so I have a high degree of trust in his assessment, especially since it means no business for him. "You really don't want to open that up," he said, "because the minute you do, dollar bills will start flying out." Hehe. He did recommend some ways to reinforce it before we lay new flooring, because three whole layers of the plywood came up in that nasty hot-water stew that was brewing down there.

And...admire! Our tankless heater is in. It is SO COOL. Here it is, with dogs included for scale.
The heater, as you can see, sits outside, where it can produce constant hot water, though not instant hot water since it has to travel from the heater to the various plumbing fixtures. They were very particular about explaining that to me, since apparently many people confuse "continuous" with "instantaneous," and are disappointed to learn the difference. The water is heated by gas, though like our furnace it requires an electric switch, so it can't make hot water during an electrical outage. In this sense there's a drawback relative to the tank model, which still holds a certain amount of hot water even with the electricity out. However, apparently you can run this thing for a limited time off a large battery, like the backup power supplies for computers. So if we really wanted to prepare for disaster - we could buy one of those. Along with a year of freeze-dried meals, and enough ammo to fend off the zombie army.

Inside the house is a little control panel and thermostat:

And, here is the scariness that is The Place Formerly Known as the Water Heater. Eventually, this will be a lovely and handy storage area. Right now, it's a freak show. The three holes in the floor probably saved our bacon, because they allowed much of the leaking water to drain into the crawl space. Right now, they are an inviting portal for the rat army, which frankly concerns me much more than the zombies. Hopefully it will dry out by the weekend so we can close it up.

The home repair roller-coaster

2009-08-14T08:20:00.000-07:00

Ready or not, we are entering one of those phases of home repair/improvement. Which seems like the vibe of the times; several people we know have been preparing to sell their homes, and doing zillions of projects.

The water heater leak may require repair to the subflooring. The tankless water heater means we've freed up space in the kitchen which, once it's dried out and repaired, can become much-needed storage space. Plus we'll pull up the adjoining washer and dryer, and check/repair/replace that flooring as well. (I finally have a reason to install some marmoleum!)

So this will be the impetus to do the myriad other cosmetic fixes in the kitchen that have been waiting for critical motivational mass: Patch the drywall above the dishwasher from the re-plumb job (5 years ago), touch up the drywall and paint the trim from the window/door replacement (2 years ago), and repaint the whole damn thing.

I will just say, what lurked beneath the leaking water heater was the most disgusting thing I've seen in my years as a homeowner. It wasn't anything interesting; just 60 years of linoleum and plywood, stewed into a gelatinous, reeking oodge by the hot water. Even after I'd cleaned it up yesterday, I felt so dirty that I spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning the house. We hadn't yet put away all the stuff from the big trip, and then the heater episode caused more items to be displaced, so the house was just cluttered with crap, from end to end. If things get too cluttered I simply cease to function properly until it's brought under some kind of control. Cousin Flora likes things tidy.

Meanwhile, the arson house property across the street is looking quite tidy! They've cleared it, leveled it, and have dug holes for the new foundations. I'm very curious to see what these houses will look like.

How do normal people manage?

2009-08-13T11:56:00.001-07:00

I am largely self-employed, and work out of our home three days per week. So when things happen, like the hot water heater leaks and needs to be replaced, I usually take care of it. I call contractors, meet contractors to get estimates, arrange to be at home while work is being done. I spend two hours draining the hot water tank because holy crap, water is bubbling up through the hardwood floor in the next room, so apparently this can't really wait a few days after all. That sort of thing.

And every time this happens, I think - What do families do when all the adults work outside the home? How do you take care of these kinds of things without a household member who can spend the day at home on no notice, ripping up four layers of soggy linoleum and writing breathtakingly large checks to contractors? Or taking the pet to the vet, or the car to the mechanic, or whatever? It's a marvel to me, really.

Woke up this morning...

2009-08-12T07:42:00.001-07:00

...and heard the sweet, sweet sound of bulldozing. The arson house across the street is being torn down.

The demolition guy told me it will be down in an hour, and completely gone by end of day. Then they'll start pouring foundations for the new houses.

Ironically, I have two contractors coming to bid on the water heater job later today, and since our house is slightly quirky to find, I gave them both the same advice - "We're right across from a burned-out arson hulk. You can't miss it."

Ah well. After two years and three months, I will not miss it AT ALL.

Back to work and life

2009-08-11T07:25:00.001-07:00

Yesterday we went back to work. So far, so good. It appears we still know how.

Meanwhile our hot water heater seems to have sprung a small leak, so I'm back in the deep end of the pool of life - dealing with contractors. Oh, we could just run to the hardware store and buy another tank, and it would be cheaper and quicker; but I'd like to take the opportunity to go tankless. That takes a bit more work. It's eligible for an energy efficiency tax credit, though, so at last we may be able to take advantage of the stimulus!

I can tie myself up in knots trying to understand the environmental angle on this one. Switching to tankless probably means switching from (our current) electric to gas; so because our electricity is produced "clean" out here in terms of CO2, we would be increasing our carbon emissions rather than decreasing them, which seems bad. But we'd be using a lot less energy overall, since water tanks spend a lot of energy heating the water while it's just sitting around. And Enrico makes compelling though slightly confusing (to me) arguments that in the big scheme of things, we'd still be helping by switching to the tankless, even if it's burning gas.

So we'll see what I learn. Last of the estimates come tomorrow.

Photo themes

2009-08-07T10:11:00.000-07:00

Yes, we are home! Some end-of-trip reflections may follow...But for now, between unpacking, we've been labeling photos while we still remember what they all are (a pretty complete album is now up on Flickr). I've noticed a couple of themes. For example, Enrico has become quite the accomplished wildflower photographer:

Or for example, there is the series Toby under a picnic bench.

Or Studies in Napping.

Endings and ironies

2009-08-05T18:30:00.001-07:00

It's ironic that after driving nearly as close to the Arctic Circle as we could by road, we ended our trip in the warmest place in all of Canada. It's also ironic that on our last night we found ourselves in circumstances seemingly without lodging; after visiting the most famous national parks on a holiday weekend, only now did we have to consider simply parking in a field for the night. And, having spent weeks visiting the places of my great-great-grandmother Sarah's life, it's ironic that we ended up being pulled, almost against our will, to a place that was never even on our itinerary, but is in fact the place where Sarah died.

But once again, I get ahead of myself. I know I posted already since Yellowknife, but now that I have real bandwidth and time, I think I'll revisit some of that territory with some photos while bringing things up to date.

We left Yellowknife, and made two ferry crossings, back across the Mackenzie and then across the Liard River. These are not the big, fancy ferries of Washington state, but little and nimble boats that cut across the current and deposit you on unceremoniously on dirt roads where buffalo roam.

En route from Yellowknife to Fort Simpson, we stopped at a beautiful park called Sambaa Deh Falls.

Then, at last, we made it to Fort Simpson! Where so much of the family story happened! We sat on the spot where my great-grandmother and great-great-grandparents looked out for many years on the Mackenzie River. The original fort isn't there any more, but the site is marked. Everyone except me took a dip in the river. We also saw the Anglican church, St. David's, which started as a mission at the old trading fort.

But it turns out that you can't see the Camsell Mountains from the road, and the town of Fort Simpson is small and fine but not very scenic, and the mosquitoes were brutal on the dogs. Fort Simpson is on an island, but one of the channels around the island has been filled in to build a road; this created a big marsh which is a virtual mosquito factory. Even the The Structure couldn't keep them out.

So, we left a little earlier than planned. From there, we went to Fort Liard. Sarah and Julian lived at Liard for several years, and four of their children were born there. On that route we went from the relatively flat but impressively vast forests, to rolling hills with the peaks of the Nahanni Mountains in the distance. On the way, we visited another lovely but bug-filled park called Blackstone.

On we went to the BC border. After driving on a really sucky gravel road - and believe me, we covered our share of gravel roads on this trip - we crossed the northern border in to BC. The hills were rolling and beautiful, with mountains in the distance. Check out the pavement!

Eventually, we got on the Alaska-Yukon highway, and drove to Fort Nelson in BC. My great-great-uncle Philip once wrote about a dogsled trip from Fort Liard to Fort Nelson at Christmas in the 1890s. Our trip was just like that! Only our dogs were passengers rather than beasts of burden. And it was summer instead of winter. And, we weren't living on moose lard.

It was a confusing time - we were heading east in order to hook up with the Rocky Mountains, which at that point were actually to our West. We seemed to change time zones several times a day. Just when I got used to hills again, we found ourselves in the absolute flat of Alberta, at a surprisingly wonderful park called Saskatoon Island, where the Trumpeter Swans live.

Then we headed back into the Rockies. We'd cut short our time up north by four days, so we figured we'd spend that in the mountains. First we stayed a night in Grande Cache, near the Willmore Wilderness area to the north of Jasper. On our way into Jasper we stopped at a pretty little provincial park, William Spitzer, with a lovely lake.

Then we spent four nights at a campground right near the town of Jasper, and did several lovely hikes, including Mt. Edith Cavell.

Some of the rivers are glacier-fed and therefore silty; others are stream-fed and clear. When the two come together, it makes a great two-toned effect - as seen here where the Athabasca and Maligne join forces. You can see the grey Athabasca further back, flowing with the clear-blue Maligne.

The wild flowers were out in force, and Enrico took many fine photos of them. We also saw elk and mountain goats up close and personal.

Then we started down the Icefields Parkway, the road from Jasper to Lake Louise. That was a great day. We had a beautiful waterfall hike in the morning, and then about halfway down the road you get to the Columbia Icefields. This is a massive sheet of ice that sits in a big bowl between high peaks; and it feeds multiple glaciers, sliding their toes down the mountains. Hordes of people visit there, and take snow busses onto the ever-retreating Athabasca Glacier. Despite the crowds, it's quite a sight, and we hiked to a high ridge across the valley to get a view of the ice.

That night we stayed at a simple but lovely campground, also facing the ice fields from across the
valley. The heat broke at last with a night of thunderstorms, and the next morning Eva registered 44 degrees F as we made an early walk without the crowds up to Athabasca glacier, amidst swirling fog. Markers show just how far the glacier has retreated over the years. We stopped at the year I first visited the glacier, as a teenager in 1982, and also the year my dad was born.

It was clear the clouds were here to stay, according to the forecast. So instead of stopping for a couple of days in Yoho National Park, we kept going as far as Glacier National Park, with a stop at some more fabulous waterfalls and lakes.

Glacier, a lesser-known park, is not actually in the Rockies, but in the Columbia Mountains - the source of the Columbia River is there. The peaks are steep, and it rained on and off all evening. Toby took up his new favorite place under the picnic table - "I'm going to have to build him one of those when we get home," Enrico cracked - while Nelly retreated to her cave to sleep off all those alpine hikes.

From here we decided to head south, through the Okanagan. We've never visited the Okanagan - a dry interior region that continues into Washington as the Okanogan - which is the "fruit basket" and wine-producing region of Canada due to its warmth. A woman at the Glacier campground suggested a place to stay - "But you do realize," she added, "that everything west of here is on fire, right?"

We had certainly noticed the smoke, but lacking in news, we hadn't heard about the extent of the fires. We started south through the Okanogan valley, which is actually very Mediterranean in a way. Dry hills, surrounding long blue lakes. Canadians come here from all over in order to get overly hot, and then cool themselves off in the water. Wineries abound. I don't have any good pictures, though, because the whole thing is draped in grey smoke.

We made a stop in Penticton, which happens to be where my great-great-grandmother spent her final years, living with her eldest son Ned who did quite well for himself as one of the early orchardists in this area. I spent a little time at the local museum. It's so different here from either Winnipeg or Fort Simpson - I wonder what Sarah must have thought of this place, so warm and dry.

Then we drove nearly to the US border to the town of Osoyoos, to the campground run by the Okanagan Band right on a lake. Osoyoos has the highest average temperature in all of Canada. It's basically a resort town - and by the time we got there at 4 in the afternoon, there was not a campsite or hotel room to be had. So we were faced with either heading into the States that night - into the most sparsely populated part of Washington - or just parking Eva somewhere for the night. But we learned there was one pet-friendly room left at a Super 8 back in...Penticton. Fate really wanted me to end the trip where Sarah ended her days. Weird, but there it was.

It's a bit anticlimactic. We envisioned one last night sleeping in Eva, on a lovely lake where the dogs could have a good long swim to wash the dust out of their fur. But it's all good. Tomorrow, we head home.

Back in the Rockies

2009-08-01T15:28:00.000-07:00

I only have half an hour until the Jasper Public Library closes, so I'm posting a bunch of photos to Flickr and will give a quick update here. (I know - life is so busy!).

Let's see, where did I post last? Ah yes, Grande Cache, Alberta, home of the Canadian Death Race. We did a lovely hike there, to the meeting of two big rivers, and the next morning set out early for Jasper National Park. It's a holiday weekend in Canada (and speaking of which, why don't we have a long weekend in August in the US?). So the park is very, very, VERY full. But we secured a decent campground with a little crick running through the back.

We're all happy to be back in the mountains. The dogs are happy. Yesterday an elk wandered right by, I mean like five or six feet away. I stood with Nelly, murmuring calming things to her, and her whole body thrummed with a kind of hum, but she didn't bark or growl. She might just have enough sense to know that a 600 pound animal deserves some respect. Toby, on the other hand, yowled and barked and pulled. Those of you who know him know he's more of bark-first-think-later kind of guy. The elk turned her big, dark eyes at us, and went on grazing. We had a similar encounter with mountain goats today.

It's very hot here, hitting 30 each day, so keeping the dogs cool is a big part of our routine. We try to get up in the morning and do a 2-3 hour hike early to beat the heat and the crowds. Then we picnic somewhere nice. We run a couple errands in town - which almost always includes ice - and then retreat back to the campsite for a group siesta. In the late afternoon, there is another outing focused on getting the dogs a swim. Jasper park runs along the Athabasca River valley, so there are lots of places to swim. Lots of nice lakes as well. Then it's a leisurely dinner and early bedtime.

We're here until Monday, and then we'll wind our way down the Rockies along the Icefields Parkway and through Yoho National Park again; then home by Saturday as planned.

South of the 60th!

2009-07-29T16:26:00.000-07:00

The wireless signal at our campsite is probably too weak to upload photos, but for now I'll do a quick update, and my guess is there's a stronger signal near the campground office.

We are in Grande Cache, Alberta, a tiny town (despite its name) on the northern approach to the Canadian Rockies just off the Alaska-Yukon Highway. It's the only town on a ~300k road between...well, between two places in Alberta. You'll just have to look it up.

We cut short our time in the Northwest Territories due to the bugs. We left Yellowknife and spent a night at gorgeous Sambaa Deh Falls territorial park, which boasts two spectacular sets of waterfalls. The bugs there weren't too terribly bad, although there was a new and unwelcome development in the form of these mean black hornets that kept stinging Toby; but The Structure served us pretty well, and we had a nice evening there after a long and dusty drive. Then we went to Fort Simpson. At last! the family homeland. The Mackenzie River is beautiful, we saw the place where the old HBC fort sat, but the mosquitos were unreal.

So, having toured the town and taken the requisite photos, the next day we booked out all the way to Fort Nelson, BC. Let's just say that the van has a few more squeaks, and our fillings are a little looser. The last part, from Fort Liard to the BC border - was a crap road.

But then we were in BC! Whose motto is Super, Natural British Columbia, but we agreed that at that particular border crossing, they could settle for British Columbia: We have pavement!

Fort Nelson is the point where the Liard Highway joins the Alaska-Yukon Highway. We stayed at a commercial campground which can only nominally be considered a "camping" experience. One of those places packed cheek-by-jowel with campers, no space or privacy, and this one was kinda dirty to boot. There are people living there temporarily, and people who make RV'ing a lifestyle, and people like us who have no other option. But it was ok - I thought of it as one of the stops on the old Silk Road, or a pilgrimmage route of yore; everyone plodding along this great road has to stop at the same place.

From there we did another long day and crossed back into Alberta. Though the southern NWT and northern BC were filled with long, rolling hills and breathtaking vistas, we suddenly found ourselves back on the flat Alberta prairie - and at an absolutely delightful lakeside provincial park, Saskatoon Island, which has nesting trumpeter swans.

And today, we did a short drive into the foothills of the Rockies, getting to Grande Cache early enough for a hike and some laundry.

It's hot as heck here, though I hear that's true everywhere in the West right now. It's a challenge to keep the dogs cool. But we're doing great. We're so happy to be back in a place where we can just open up the van and breathe the free air, no matter how hot, without having to fortify ourselves constantly against the bugs. We're only spending one night here, though we could spend many more hiking in the wilderness area that borders Jasper to the north; however, this funky little town hosts some kind of running event called the Canadian Death Race (?!?) which starts tomorrow, so there's no room in the inn. On we go to Jasper.

And so we'll spend a couple extra days in the Rockies - or maybe visit the Okanagan wine country. We'll see.

Photos later, I promise. Enrico sends his regards to all!

Heading to the land without pavement

2009-07-24T20:33:00.000-07:00

We've spent two and a half days in Yellowknife, which reminds me of Alaska mixed with northern California coastal hippie, with both Old West and postmodern industrial chic thrown in. Colorful houses and houseboats, log cabins, modern buildings emphasizing the local minerals and industrial history of the area.

I spent an afternoon in the NWT archives, which had some interesting photos but nothing earth-shattering to add to my research. We mostly took turns exploring the town - one of us running errands while the other stayed with the dogs. It's been too sunny and warm to leave them in the van. Plus for the first time since we got to the far north, the long daylight has started playing with my mind. Five hours of darkness is just not enough for a good night's sleep, making the afternoon siesta that much more important. Yellowknife seems to have a couple of intriguing restaurants, and it's a shame we had to miss them; but that's a tradeoff for traveling with the dogs, who have been excellent and plucky company.

Speaking of plucky, Eva finally got her oil change, though her Volkwagen-ness flummoxed the fine gentlemen at Canadian Tire somewhat. They didn't have her air filter in stock; and, even if they had, they couldn't figure out where the hell it would go. That's VW for you, superior German engineering that nobody else can understand.

We bought some books, and also invested $65 in something we're calling The Structure: a stand-alone mesh tent-like thing with a nylon top that we can use at our campsite instead of that hanging mesh, which was made to hang over a bed and already showed signs of wear. Besides, it requires appropriately placed trees.

All four of us did have a snack at the Wildcat Cafe, one of the oldest buildings in Yellowknife (1937):

And we also had a lovely walk along the lake to the Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly, which is very striking:

One of the things I love about this town is the languages on the signs. I don't know what half of them are - Slavey, certainly, and probably Inuvialut; Gwitch'in? Chipewyan? Cree? It's not just anywhere in Canada that French is the fifth language on the sign.

Tomorrow we shake the Yellowknife dust off our shoes; it will be one of our longest days of driving, covering 300 of the 400 miles to Fort Simpson. We'll go back past the bison and across the Mackenzie River ferry, and shortly after that the road will be gravel for the next week or so - until we cross the border back into British Columbia.

Nelly will be happy about this, we think. Every time we leave the hotel, she makes a beeline for Eva. Clearly, we'd be better off sleeping in the van out in the parking lot than in this terrible hotel room with all the space and the carpeting and the air conditioning. Duh.

So it'll be a couple of days until we post again. So long Yellowknife - you've been great!

Flags of the many First Nations of the NWT line the walkway to the Heritage Center
Full set of photos on Flickr.

From Yellowknife, Part II

2009-07-23T09:35:00.001-07:00

Yesterday we did the drive from Lady Evelyn Falls to Yellowknife. I'm getting confused in my mind about miles or kilometers, but I think it was about 200 miles. At first it was the same landscape we'd been in for days: forest, with interspersed marsh. This isn't exactly pretty or dull country, it's just impressive, and wild; an immense expanse of forest, with smallish trees (due to climate I think), mixed evergreens and aspen. We've wondered how people found their way around such a vast expanse of similar-looking terrain. Other than following rivers, there seem to be absolutely no landmarks.

Just shy of Fort Providence, we reached the great Mackenzie River at last: The one that collects the waters from all these other rivers, and delivers them to the Arctic. This was the first of several ferry crossings that we'll need to make. In winter, you just drive across the frozen rivers; in summer, it's ferries. As experienced ferry-goers, we were impressed with the skill required to navigate across such strong side current. At this particular spot, they are building a bridge, so the navigational obstacle course also includes the future bridge pilings.

As soon as you cross the river, you are passing along 50 miles of bison preserve. Right off the ferry was a sizable herd, young calf nestled incongruously beneath stacks of bridge construction materials. The Wood Buffalo visitors' center had stark warnings posted about bison: "Vistors have been gored by bison. When charging, they can run three times faster than you. Do not provoke them. "

Having spent time in Yellowstone, the bison experience is not new to Enrico and me; we know that despite their docile appearance from the car, they are not to be messed with. We also know that when the bison decide to cross the road, you wait. If the bison decide to lay down in the road for an hour-long siesta, you park the car and wait for an hour. They are bigger than you. But when this fella took up the face-off position down in the road, Enrico and I each began humming that gunslinger showdown tune. Do-dee-do-dee-dooo....wah-wah-waaaah.
He looked like he was all but pawing the ground and readying the charge, though that almost certainly wasn't true. We put the car in park and waited. A stare-down, however, is one of the brashest statements in canine language, and the dogs were wild. They would have come out through the windshield if they could've. We pondered whether there was any sensible fear in their reaction, or if it was all bad-assed bluster. In any event, the dogs have generally barked and growled at bison, at least if they're moving. We saw lots of them on this stretch of road.

As we swung around the north side of Great Slave Lake, the landscape began to change. George commented to us that "most of the country is sitting on one big slab of rock, and the rest of it is just bobbing on water." The big slab of rock, of course, is the great Canadian Sheild, a sheet of hard rock that runs from the Great Lakes to the Arctic, literally covering half of Canada. Here, now we see it popping up in rounded mounds and jagged ledges, pink and burnt brown. I havent' gotten a good shot of it yet in sunlight, but the pink is very striking.

There's even a slab of it built into the wall of our hotel. It has been underneath us all this time, but suddenly we see it everywhere. There's also a lot more water. Yellowknife sits on Great Slave, but most of the city center - the Legislative Assembly, museum, city hall - sit on smaller Frame Lake. Walk paths abound in Yellowknife around the many lakes.
Prince of Wales Heritage Center on Frame Lake:
Yellowknife's first schoolhouse:

But before arriving in Yellowknife, we crossed a bridge at Rae across Frank Channel. My great-great uncle Frank perished here in 1922, with his 2-year-old daughter, when their dogsled broke through the ice. The story goes that he could have been rescued but wouldn't let go of his little girl, and they couldn't pull him out by one arm; and when the RCMP finally retrieved the bodies, they were still locked in that frozen embrace. And so, Frank Channel got its name.

Weather is overcast here, which is good for us as sun makes it impossible to leave the dogs in the van; trees aren't tall enough here for any real shade. Yesterday as I was making the laundry and car-wash run, however, it was hot and sunny, and I snubbed my nose at the bugs and wore shorts and a tank top. Bugs aren't too bad in the city, and it felt so liberating to feel the air and the sun on my skin, to be out of the layers of clothing and mesh that have kept me sweatily bug-protected for days now.

Anyway, we're doing some business here; today we are trying to get Eva for her spa treatment (aka oil & lube); we washed a mountain of mud off her yesterday at the car wash. I plan to spend some time at the museum and archives. I have an overwhelming craving for a burger from A&W. Exciting stuff.

Another long update: The bugs, the bugs!

2009-07-22T17:58:00.000-07:00

We're in Yellowknife, back in a hotel again. Quite the little metropolis, Yellowknife. We've already done laundry and we're treating Eva to a spa treatment - car wash, oil change, tire inflation, the whole deal. She's been a trooper. By the way, my cell phone doesn't work after all. And I've been able to receive but not send email. So if you're trying to reach us - send email, and we'll find a way to get back in touch.

Bugs, bison and bears. That about sums it up.

Wood Buffalo National Park straddles the Northwest Territories and Alberta, and so we left Hay River for a 170-mile drive, half of which was dirt road, destined for the town of Fort Smith, just shy of Alberta. There are just miles and miles and MILES of forest up here. We saw bison (of course), and an adorable family of black bears (a mama with two young cubs), and a lot of sandhill cranes.

The town of Fort Smith is at yet another historically significant river town, a major portage around three impressive and deadly sets of rapids: Pelican Rapids, named for the birds who nest there in huge numbers; Mountain Rapids, named for its steep portage; and Rapids of the Drowned, which is probably self-explanatory.

Despite being 170 miles down a dirt road, Fort Smith has 2500 people. It has a nice feel to it, with long riverside walkways, an historic Anglican church, and a modern Catholic cathedral. We stayed at Queen Elizabeth Territorial Park, just outside town. The NWT territorial parks, so far as we can tell, are a wonder. Spacious and open, with tidy blue buildings and showers that are clean, hot – and free! And yet we’ve had them virtually to ourselves so far.

This may be partly due to the afore-mentioned Record Year for Bugs. Enormous horse flies, small black flies, and mosquitoes abound. In Hay River I rigged up a set of screens for the van’s side doors, using my McGiver-like skills to redeploy a baby stroller mosquito net, a roll of packing tape, and two small bungies. We have mosquito netting we can hang over the picnic table, with the aid of well-placed trees and a lot of rope.

However, the first place we really needed to use our mosquito headnets was at Pine Lake, further into the Alberta portion of Wood Buffalo Park. Instantly upon leaving the car, we were covered in mosquitoes. I mean covered, like a sheet of brown on our pants and shirts and the dogs’ fur. The head net kept them mostly off my face, but the buzzing sound was overwhelming. The dogs were hell-bent on a swim in the lake, which they got:

But by then I was virtually in a panic attack from the sensation of being SWARMED. It was a darned pretty lake, but we didn't end up spending much time there.

In fact, though we’ve seen a lot of sights – beautiful waterfalls, river gorges, salt plains left behind from an inland sea trapped here tens of millions of years ago –

it’s often a quick trip in and out of the car. The campgrounds aren’t bad, but many of the sights are near water, which means bugs. Oddly enough, for the sheer volume of mosquitoes, I have relatively few bites. The dogs certainly attract the bugs, but don’t seem overly disturbed by them, although one of Nelly’s eyes has been swollen from bites. Toby likes to climb under the picnic table inside the mesh, but Nelly prefers to lounge outside and breath freely. We have some all-natural spray that we use on them, which seems to help. The weather has been hot, unseasonably hot, which is all the more uncomfortable since we then have to wear long sleeves and pants for the bugs.

Often we nap during the peak of afternoon heat and subsequent thunderstorm, which brings welcome cool.

So after a couple days in Wood Buffalo, we did the long drive to Yellowknife, with an overnight stop at Lady Evelyn Falls (again, beautiful waterfall, charming campground).

The drive to Yellowknife involved a ferry across the Mackenzie River, and one of our longest stretches of town-less road, and a lot more bison. We wondered how the dogs would respond to bison. They view deer and elk as potential prey, but are unfazed by horses after years of sharing hiking trails with them. It turns out - they are very excited at the sight of bison. Very, very excited. But I'll write more about that later. As always - a few more photos here.

Long Canada update: Edmonton to Hay River

2009-07-18T19:43:00.000-07:00

We're in Hay River, NWT, where the bugs are thick as anything. We've apparently picked a very bad year for bugs, on account of how wet it's been. Tonight we're in a hotel, again. We'll pimp our ride to offer a bit more bug protection, and head to Wood Buffalo National Park tomorrow. But I'm skipping ahead. Long entry follows.

Our second day in Edmonton we went with Gwen to historic Fort Edmonton. It’s not the original fort, but a reconstruction, and it’s not even in the original location; but over time the city has moved a variety of historic buildings there, and grouped them by era, so that now there is an amazing amount of Edmonton history at one large park. In addition to the reconstructed fur trade fort, there are “streets” devoted to the years 1885, 1905 and 1920, complete with living history demonstrations and shops stocked with an impressive number of period items. Plus, we had ice cream.

We left in the afternoon for the town of Athabasca instead of staying another night in the city; it was a fine hotel, but expensive, and we were ready for the wide open air and our little metal box again. Athabasca, formerly Athabasca Landing, is about 90 miles north of Edmonton at the southern-most point in a southern dip in the Athabasca river. By the 1880s it had become a major jumping-off point for river transit to the Mackenzie and Peace River districts. The old ox cart trail from Edmonton can still be seen in some places, just as wagon ruts from the Oregon trail can still be seen in spots across the US west.

The drive up was wide open and flat. At Athabasca, we walked the historic riverfront and ran a few errands. I know that my great-great grandparents and my great-grandmother stood at this spot many times, waiting to board a steamship north.

We found the two campgrounds full. Undaunted, we drove 20k up the road to a county park – only to find the campground there dreary, and more importantly, lacking any source of portable water. So in the end, we wound up at a hotel after all, in a smoking room since that’s where many hotels allow dogs.

We hit the road early the next day and drove to the town of Peace River. This longer route took us along the southern shore of the Lesser Slave Lake (again – nothing to do with Slaves but with the Slavey people). We stopped for a hike and a visit to the Boreal Center for Bird Conservation. Huge, huge numbers of migratory birds spend the summers in the boreal forests of Canada. For some species, 90 percent of all of the birds are in this part of the planet for the summer. The entire coast of Lesser Slave wake is throbbing with the sight and sound of birds.

This area was still surprisingly full of people; it’s a big recreational area. Nonetheless we began increasingly to have a sense of being up here. Way north, and we’re nowhere near as north as we aim to go. Amazingly, after leaving the Slave Lake area the landscape turned once again to farms. We’re at, like, the latitude of Finland. Who are these people, farming up here? For miles and miles, there are yellow fields of canola as far as the eye can see. Along with the occasional oil derrick.

We got early to the town of Peace River, chastened by our experience in Athabasca and determined to get a camp site. The campground, run by the local Lions Club, is one of those quirky private campgrounds with lots of character. It was busy, but we had a nice spot at the edge with a view of the woods and the river. Many people at the campgrounds and hotels seem to be work crews, driving imposing, mud-splattered trucks and SUVs with mysterious mechanical equipment in back.

The Peace River is another giant of the Canadian river system, running from the Rockies eastward. The descent into the town of Peace River is a stunning surprise, dropping down from those endless yellow canola fields in a wide and lush series of hills to the wide river below. It was hot – really hot – so we had a lazy afternoon, walking the riverfront trail a bit and stocking up on provisions.

At night the hot weather turned into a crashing thunder storm, lights flashing and rain hammering on our little metal box. Morning found us socked in by fog, which dissipated as soon as we climbed out of the river valley. Then we did this for 300 miles:

Rolling landscape with no real landmarks, and mixed forest of coniferous trees and aspen and poplar, with increasing marshland. Gradually the farms became less frequent - small farms carved out of the forest rather than clumps of forest carved out of the farms. Enrico said that it reminded him of Maine. (Except, he said dryly, that you could drop the whole state of Maine up here, and never find it again.) Along the way were French Metis communities with charming names, and first nation lands with a familiar air of economic hardship.

Then, there were no more farms, and at last we crossed the 60th parallel! We visited beautiful Louise Falls, where we tried to camp, but long story short we ended up in the town of Hay River, setting foot at last on the enormous Great Slave Lake.

It's hard to describe this place. The closest we've seen are the remote towns of Alaska, lots of untamed nature mixed with rusting junk just left where it is. And swarms of enormous black flies. The person at the visitor's center told us to buy extra wiper fluid, because the flies are so thick at Fort Providence that we'll likely use up all our fluid just wiping them off the windshield. I am not making that up.

It's good to see all these places. We're hoping for dry weather tomorrow as we head out to Wood Buffalo Park.

Canada update #3

2009-07-16T07:02:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we put the seat back up in the van and went with Gwen out to Elk Island National Park, a bit of the original prairie/woodland ecosystem that's been preserved. It's also home to two large herds of bison - plains bison and wood bison - but we didn't see much of them in the middle of the day. Abundant signs of them, in the form of tracks and enormous buffalo turds everywhere; but only a few bison from a long distance. Which, since we had the dogs, was just fine.

We had a picnic lunch:

Enrico had his picture taken near a horst of espens:

One the way back into town we stopped to visit a potter friend of Gwen's, and he gave us a tour of his studio and his clay-making setup. We had dinner at Gwen's, and it's been a lovely visit.

Today the plan is to visit Fort Edmonton, and then instead of staying another night in the hotel we're thinking of setting out north, either to the town of Athabasca - formerly Athabasca Landing, whence the steamboats set out for the Mackenzie District back in the day - or Whitecourt. Athabasca takes us a bit out of our way, Whitecourt is the direct route. Either way it's two full days of driving after that to get to the Northwest Territories, with a stop in Peace River. Not sure when the next post will be since we'll be on the road.

Photos on Flickr.

Canadian Update #2

2009-07-15T06:58:00.000-07:00

First of all, before I forget, here is a slightly more user-friendly way to access our Canadian photos on Flickr.

We are in Edmonton, freshly laundered and showered in a Motel 8 in the midst of a mega-commercial strip on the south end of town. It was sensory overload, coming to this busy place, but after two days of muddy camping, the laundry was much appreciated. And I think all of us appreciated having a little more personal space. Except perhaps Toby, who thinks living heaped together in a well-cushioned six-by-twelve box is exactly what the wolf god intended for us.

Yesterday we drove from Lake Louise to Edmonton, with a stop to visit Margaret and George, distant cousins who were born and lived, until their retirement, in the Northwest Territories. Margaret's mother was Inuit and her father - like my grandfather, his first cousin - was of mixed European and native descent, but self-identified solely as white. George's father was an Englishman turned fur trapper and professional cook, while his mother's people were what he calls "town Indians," sent to Anglican or Catholic missions schools where they were prohibited from speaking their native Slavey, they ended up with a mix of English, French and Slavey, none spoken fluently. While Margaret self-identifies as Inuit, George refers to himself jokingly as "Heinz 57 - lots of ingredients and a little bit of spice."

Thus Margaret and George are true natives of the far North, in many different ways, descended from the oldest families of that region and having lived through the greatest changes that have come to it. My aunt in Edmonton introduced me to them a couple of years ago when I became interested in this thread of the family history, and they are the loveliest people and most gracious hosts you'd ever meet. Enrico was happy to meet them at last, and we enjoyed a long lunch at their house over many fascinating stories - they remember life in the North before electricity or running water, before the NWT government moved from Ottowa to Yellowknife; and the US Army's arrival during World War II to build an oil pipeline from Norman Wells as protection against Japanese invasion of the US West. They also offered a wealth of advice on what to do when we get north.

Then on across the big, big prairies of Alberta, which has the same Big Sky effect as Montana to the south. We're meeting up with my aunt today to visit a national park that preserves a bit of the original ecosystem of this area, as well as herds of pure wood and plains bison. We might also visit a winery - no grapes up here, just fruit wines. So - pictures to follow.

Canadian Report #1

2009-07-13T13:41:00.000-07:00

Today, my birthday, it is rainy, and we’re spending the day in the town of Banff, doing town stuff, after two glorious days of hiking in the Canadian Rockies. So far, so good.

The first day’s drive was from Seattle to Kamloops, BC – about 325 miles. I wouldn’t say the Canadian customs agent grilled us, exactly, but he did imply a degree of skepticism about our story. Perhaps this would not have been so had I been entering Canada as a Canadian, but alas, I lack a current Canadian passport. What do you do for a living that you’re able to take a month off work? It doesn’t look like you’ve packed very much, for a month. Oh, we assure you, there’s plenty underneath that bench. Do you know anyone in Canada that you’ll be visiting or staying with? At that point I ‘fessed up to being Canadian and having actual family that we’d be visiting, and that seemed to be the end of that.

After a good seven hours on the road, we spent the first night at beautiful Paul Lake provincial park about 10 miles north of Kamloops – slightly out of our way, but worth it. Our evening was marred only by a fight between the dogs, something that hasn’t happened in several years. But the circumstances were predictable - they were off-kilter from the complete disruption to routine, overtired from the fun of it all, and we’d just put their dinner bowls down when the ranger came to collect the camping fee. One dog went to greet the ranger, the other took that opportunity to go after the food bowl, and… fight ensues, to the consternation of the ranger. For the first time in their long lives the fight resulted in an actual injury, a gash on Nelly’s face below her eye. But as always seems to happen, the dogs are over it all well before the humans, and Nelly heals well. She's a tough old bird.

Onward, then, through spectacular central British Columbia, crossing the mighty Columbia River twice, with a short stop at the iconic Last Spike monument to the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railroad at Craigellachie – I like to think my Granddad would have appreciated that, career railroadman that he was – and up, up, up into the Rockies to Banff National Park, where we’re camping four nights at Lake Louise.

Lake Louise is a mystery wrapped in a cliché wrapped in a hyperbole. The language used to describe this mammoth green alpine lake would seem gushing if weren’t entirely deserved.

We’ve spent two days hiking amidst lakes and mountains and glaciers (glaciers!), and the freakishly loud whistle of the ever-present marmots. We saw a black bear while backtracking to Yoho National Park in BC, home to the famous Burgess Shale trove of fossils. Discovered exactly 100 years ago, this find demonstrated the mind-bending array of bizarre life that came into being during the so-called Pre-Cambrian Explosion.

The dogs have done two days of 6-7 mile hikes, which is pretty impressive given that they are basically 80 years old, in people terms. They’ve been happy troopers, yearning after rodents, swimming in icy waters, and rolling on snowfields; and they’re exhausted, especially Nelly. We go out early, beat the crowds, and then there is napping.

We’re staying in a lovely campground in the park near Lake Louise, surrounded by an electrified fence to keep people and bears apart. What is it like living in a VW van, you might ask? Well, we travel with the bed folded down, covered tightly with a bedsheet. In front of the bed on the floor, we have a sizeable dog bed, and a little space by the sliding door that serves as a foyer of sorts for shoes and leashes. On top of the bed, besides Nelly and Toby, we keep sleeping bags, pillows, and a large duffel bag with all our clothes. We also have a cooler that plugs into a 12-volt outlet in the car. Hanging behind the driver’s seat is a basket with Handy Stuff – sunscreen, poop bags, dog treats, etc. Hanging being the passenger seat is a special garbage satchel. In a side compartment, we keep a tarp to protect the bed from wet dogs, and mosquito netting of sufficient size to basically cover the van at night (though we haven’t needed it yet). In the two seatback pockets are file holders with guide books, maps, directions and confirmation notices.

Because we need to sleep on the bed, we keep everything else underneath: an airtight bin with 45 quarts of dog food; a smaller bin with people food; a 2-burner Coleman stove, and propane; dishes, stored in an oblong bucket (for washing); a bin of first aid and pharmaceutical supplies; toiletries and towels; a large shoe/boot bin; a tote bag full of books; extra oil and coolant for Eva; and a bin full of miscellaneous necessities of life on the road with dogs: matches, bungee cords, ziplock bags, laundry detergent, a whisk broom, lint brush, dog brush, clothes line, trash bags, lantern, and so forth. A place for everything, and everything in its place: that is the key to sanity.

At night we shift the duffel bag and cooler to the front seat of the van, and pack everything away (despite the electrified fence, food must be stored securely). We drop the curtains and spread out the sleeping bags. Hats are hung on one headrest, jackets and leashes on the other. Nelly sleeps on the dog bed on the floor, and Toby sleeps with us. Despite the contours of the folded-down car seat, the bed is surprisingly comfortable. Though we did stop at the Bay today to buy a couple extra pillows.

Tomorrow we drive to Edmonton, with a stop in Cochrane to visit my distant cousin Margaret and her husband George. In Edmonton we’ll spend three whole nights in a hotel!

More photos at Flickr (see right).

And away, we go!

2009-07-09T08:46:00.000-07:00

Our modern-day York boat is nearly loaded and the dogs are beside themselves with excitement.

Forecast calls for cold rain in the mountains, and tornadoes on the prairie. Today's destination: Kamloops, BC.

Final preparations

2009-07-08T07:31:00.000-07:00

Ugh, still so much to do with one day to go. It's like when you move, and you've got all the big stuff done, and you're down to trash bags filled with random assortments of leftover stuff, clothes hangers and an orphaned sock and a set of pliers all thrown together. We're down to the random assortment of tasks.

But we're very excited! Unfortunately, the weather forecast for Banff is cool and rainy. It would be a drag to not actually see the Rockies.

FAQs

2009-07-01T07:20:00.000-07:00

Here's an effort to respond to the most common questions we have fielded about our upcoming trip - listed roughly in decreasing order of frequency.

Yellowknife...that's in, um...the Yukon? No, but you're close. It's the capital of the Northwest Territories, immediately east of the Yukon. So from west to east, you have: Alaska, the Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut. (I realize that expecting Americans to know Canadian capitals is like expecting a Canadian to know the capital of, say, Kansas.)

Seriously, the Great Slave Lake? Why would it be named after slaves? It's not. That's a mutation of the local Slavey peoples and languages, more accurately called the Dene-tha, part of the greater Na-Dene language group that includes native peoples of northern Canada, much of the US and Canadian Pacific coasts, as well as the Navajo.

How cold will it be up there? The average temperatures are roughly the same for all the places we're visiting, from the Rockies to Edmonton to the NWT: average high around 70, average low from 45 to 50 at night.

Just how remote are these places? The NWT is slightly smaller than Alaska, or about two thirds the size of Mexico, with roughly 40,000 people. Plus below that is the very sparsely populated portion of British Columbia and Alberta which never even appears in your atlas. Some of the towns we're stopping at in the NWT are described, with great precision, as having populations of 182, 90 and 69 in the travel guide. The roads are pretty much all packed gravel. That said, those of us in the West know that in sparsely populated areas, a small town boxes above its weight. A place like Yellowknife - a capital city with 15,000 people - will have robust public and commercial services because it's still the main population center, no matter how small. Even the 90-person town has "a range of services including gas stations, restaurants, accommodations, a grocery store and a native crafts gift shop."

How long will the days be up there? Is it land of midnight sun? Today, the sun rose in Fort Simpson at 4:27 am and will set at 11:50 pm. By the time we get there, sunrise will be around 5:30 am and sunset around 11 pm. Bear in mind that at those high latitudes, you gain or lose five to eight minutes of daylight each day, because of the huge swings between winter and summer. So in a two-week stay, the length of the days changes by nearly an hour.

What if the dogs get sick? Well, yeah, they are old. And even though we hope this will be fun for them, even good stress is a stressor. In the NWT, the only veterinary hospital is in Yellowknife. So we hope they don't get sick of course, and it would be stressful if they do - but we're sure that vets up there know a thing or two about dogs. Our own vets have said that there are actually fewer parasites to worry about up there, because they can't survive the winters. There is one particularly nasty form of tapeworm that they would only get from eating raw bison or caribou meat. So...no gnawing on bison carcasses. Check.

Will you stay in touch while traveling? Once we get far north, we'll have cell phone service in Yellowknife and Hay River, but not outside those areas. There are wireless cafes and such, and we're taking the laptop with every intention of checking email and posting some stories and pictures where we can.

I hear they have huge mosquitoes up there. Yes, we hear that too. Having read many first-person accounts dating back to the 1850s, I am struck by how consistently they all mention the bugs, and with the same horror mixed with wonder; people actually died from mosquito exposure. We have insect repellent and mosquito netting, and the nice lady at the NWT visitors' bureau basically said: Yes, they're bad, but not as bad as people make it sound. So we'll see.

You're going for a month? Did you quit your jobs or something? Nope. We're just taking vacation and some leave without pay, which employers seem happy to give at the moment...

Got other burning questions? Post below!

Introducing Sparky & Eva

2009-06-30T17:57:00.001-07:00

Back in November, we traded in our beloved Subaru for a little red Prius. We named her Sparky, and she gets 50 miles to the gallon. Here she is in her native habitat:

Not content with our low-CO2 lifestyle, we decided to go on this crazy Canadian road trip, and began looking for a temporary vehicle that could provide us not only with transportation, but with lodging as well. Many of you know the saga that ensued, which involved renting a huge RV, contemplating the purchase of a small, 20-year-old Winnebago, realizing that I have an alarmingly stunted sense of spacial awareness and no business driving anything as large as an RV - and then buying a used Volkswagen Eurovan.

Now that we own a VW van, it feels like we've been admitted to a cult-like secret society. Because man, people love their VWs. We would have loved to buy one of the pop-top camper versions, but people hold onto them forever. For 30 grand, you can get one with 150,000 miles.

So instead, we found the simpler version, with a fold-out bed, a fold-up table, and curtains. It has surprisingly low mileage (65,000) and a clean bill of health from the preferred mechanic of the local VW Secret Society, who seems suspiciously chill if you know what I mean, but dude, the man knows his VWs.

Her name is Eva, and here she is on our recent test run to Oregon. Please excuse my finger in this otherwise lovely shot of Mt. Hood:

The trip to Bend was about seven hours each way, ample time to let the dogs check out their new ride:

Yes, we really plan to live in that thing with two 60-pound dogs, for a month. Believe it or not, that's a queen-sized bed in there.

Most supplies will be stored underneath. We've spent the past few weeks pimping our ride, and we're almost good to go. We've got a cooler that runs on the 12-volt (aka cigarette lighter) plug, a spiffy new 2-burner Coleman stove, and an adapter for charging the laptop. This weekend we hope to get one of those iPod adapter thingies for the car stereo. We'll bathe the dogs, pack the passports, and then head off into the sunset with 45 quarts of dog food in tow.

Starting at the beginning

2009-06-25T19:19:00.000-07:00

Two weeks from today, our entire pack - two humans and two canines - will head north for a month-long Canadian adventure in a 2001 Volkswagen van. Our northernmost destination is Yellowknife: capital of the Northwest Territories, 350 miles north of Juneau, and 300 miles shy of the Arctic Circle. Total expected mileage: just over 4,000.

(You can click on the map to make it bigger)

En route, we will spend time in Banff National Park in the magnificent Canadian Rockies, camping along the banks of famous Lake Louise. Then we'll head to Edmonton for a couple days' visit with my aunt.

We plan to spend ten days in the Northwest Territories, where we can dip our toes in North America's deepest lake (the Great Slave Lake) and Canada's longest river (the mighty Mackenzie). It's big, big country up there.

We'll visit the world's second-largest national park (Wood Buffalo National Park), home to one of the largest buffalo herds in the world and the only remaining nesting area for the endangered whooping crane. We'll also see Fort Simpson, my great-grandmother's childhood home, and the Camsell mountain range named for her family.

On the way back, our plans are flexible, but we're hoping to take the less-beaten path (!) down the Alaska-Yukon Highway, possibly cutting back for a shot at Jasper National Park and the chance to meander along the spine of the Rockies on the Icefields Parkway.

That's the plan, anyway.

Not dead!

2009-06-18T08:12:00.000-07:00

I know, last you heard from me, there was still a possibility that John McCain would be President of the United States. It's been a while. I haven't been terribly inspired.

Plus, I took a partial break from consulting work to put some concerted effort into my book-writing project, The Canadian Saga, based on my family history. I read dozens of books related to the history of Canada, the native peoples of western Canada, and the Hudson's Bay Company. I made mid-winter journeys to the frozen homelands of my people, where I visited archives and saw really enormous snow sculptures. I diagrammed elaborate timelines of events on my white board. I discovered that sitting down and writing fiction is fracking hard. So for a while, all my writing energy was absorbed elsewhere.

I also became an aunt! Which is also way cool, and some of my time has been absorbed visiting my adorable new niece and, of course, her parents. Since it's not my place to blog about her, or her family's joys and travails in the throes of new parenthood, or to post pictures of her - that takes another big part of my life off the table.

BUT - Enrico and I (and our two geriatric dogs) are soon to embark on a month-long road trip to the far north, land of my family tale. And travel, my friends, has always generated ample fodder for us here at Miscellaneous Shellfish. We've bought a used VW van, and it should be a hoot. So I figure I'll re-activate the old blog as a way of keeping up with family while we're on the road. Stay tuned, if you care to.

My experience BaRACKing the vote

2008-10-30T07:42:00.000-07:00

I know my month-long absence means nobody will be reading this, but - I'm back, nonetheless.

Gentle Reader, trust me when I say you've been better for my absence, because I have been pathologically obsessed with the election and the polls. It's not pretty, though I know I'm not alone. The other night we had dinner with my friend Megan, and at one point I heard myself saying "I feel so much better after talking to you because you're WAY crazier than I am."

In the past few days I attempted to channel my anxiety into something other than obscene amounts of cable news-watching and internet poll-checking, by knocking on doors for the Obama campaign. These folks are crazy-organized, let me tell you. You get your list of people, with their polling place and ballot type, and a map. You get literature and talking points and a phone number to call for anyone whose absentee ballot went missing, or who has a problem with their voter registration. So off I went.

Both times, I was assigned to some hard-knock parts of my neighborhood. These were some of the lowest-income areas of a low-income part of town. And it says something in Seattle when you can spend four hours knocking on doors, and only talk to one white person. I also only talked to two undecided people, and no McCain voters. So really I spent my time making sure people knew how to vote. And boy, was that satisfying.

I encountered a number of people who had questions about where to vote, or who hadn't received their absentee ballot, so I was (hopefully) able to help them actually vote. I met so many first-time voters, including many recently naturalized citizens. They were so excited, some of them invited me in so they could run through what they needed to do and make sure they understood. I met a family of east African women, all voting for the first time, who proudly reported that they'd already mailed in their ballots, and then they erupted into a happy kind of dance, cheering "Obama, Obama, Obama!"

At one point I caught a woman who was heading to her car, and she looked wary when I approached her. I explained my purpose, and she affirmed that everyone in her house knew what to do and that they were all voting Obama/Gregoire. As I walked away, she pulled up next alongside me in her car. "You know, I'm from Africa," she said, "and recently I was back home for a visit. And in Africa, they are all watching us. The world is watching what we do in this election. It is terribly important, because our choice will affect the whole world."

I don't know what it would be like to do get-out-the-vote work in Georgia, or Indiana. Maybe different, maybe not. But here, it was so inspiring. Not only to see all these people inspired to vote, excited about casting their first vote, determined to vote for change. But even just to get deeper into this neighborhood that I've called home for nearly 15 years, to walk down a block that intimidates me a little bit because I stand out so much, and to meet these people who are my neighbors, so different from me and from each other in many ways, but all holding firm to the belief that our vote can make a difference to the world.

A PS re: Obama and Africa - a relevant Doonsbury...

So scary, yet I can't stop looking

2008-09-30T18:25:00.000-07:00

I'm sure everyone's seen Tina Fey's wickedly good impersonation of Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric, but...It took me a while to realize that for the scariest part - the answer about the bailout - Fey was simply quoting Palin, nearly verbatim.

The skit:
http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/couric-palin-open/704042/

Ok, so she did add the part about the dollar value meals. Which was pretty funny. Here's the text of the original interview:

"But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the -- oh, it's got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track.

"So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, um, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we've got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is part of that."*

*From the Seattle PI.

More on our first direct blow from the economy's collapse

2008-09-26T07:56:00.000-07:00

Apparently the FDIC took over the bank, and literally auctioned it off to the highest bidder. The newspaper this morning has some helpful updates on what our that means to us - regular, everyday depositors, mortgage-holders, and shareholders. I paraphrase...

Depositor: Your new bank is JPMorgan Chase. Your money is safe. Please do not panic.

Borrower: Your new lender is JPMorgan Chase. Please continue to make payments as usual.

Stockholder: JPMorgan Chase bought WaMu from the FDIC, not from its shareholders. You will receive nothing.

So that pretty much sums it up for us.

They also have a few words for the employees:

Employee: Your new employer is JPMorgan Chase, who sent you an email last night asking you to please come to work this morning. Branch employees are probably pretty safe, because there is so little overlap between the banks' branches. Headquarters employees (about 3,500 people) are probably screwed, eventually.

And, a new twist on the real estate slide: WaMu is also downtown Seattle's largest tenant, with about 1.6 million square feet of office space. Fire sale on office space!

Where's George Bailey when you need him?

2008-09-25T18:26:00.000-07:00

In other news, my bank collapsed today.

"The largest bank seizure in American history!" It's so exciting to be a part of history, isn't it?

Of course, I've been working on getting our money out of there. I have new bank accounts all ready to go, and we're going the credit union route this time - I'm done with greedy, adrenaline-junky executives who take crazy risks with your money and then pocket a bagillion dollars on the way out.

I initiated fund transfers on Monday, but they haven't gone through, yet. I guess they've been a little overwhelmed, what with me and my fellow WaMu customers withdrawing $17 billion, or 9 percent of the bank's assets, in the last ten days. So I guess I'll just have to have faith in the good old FDIC. And, it appears, JPMorgan, who just bought my checking and savings accounts at bargain-basement prices. I have no idea who owns my mortgage.

We're also shareholders in our bank - which used to be a fine, venerable institution, and a solid investment - and that's a TOTAL loss. But we've known that for a long time.

Strange times, indeed.

Vote Obama. Please, for the love of whatever deity you worship. Stop the madness.

Locavorism update

2008-09-24T07:19:00.000-07:00

One of the things I was doing while not blogging of late, in addition to taking vacations and re-starting the book, was the continued pursued of locavorism. Many aspects of this way of life have now become habit - the farmer's market, bread-baking, using honey instead of sugar. The juice and the milk that we buy has the added benefit of coming in returnable glass bottles (the old deposit system), which adds the satisfaction of reducing our waste. I know, glass is recyclable, but the world can only absorb so much recycled glass.

One thing that didn't go so smoothly was my quest for canning tomatoes. Because we had The Summer That Wasn't here in the Northwest, the tomato crop was rather sad, and in particular, there was a near-complete absence of canning varieties. That would be the meaty ones, the Romas and San Marzanos and such.

I had in my head that I would attempt to put up some of the foods that would not otherwise be available in winter, rather than import them from California or Mexico. I canned 12 pints of cherries and four quarts of peaches. I roasted and froze five pounds of peppers, blanched and froze a couple pound of green beans. I purchased, and have stored in neat glass storage jars, two quarts each of dry kidney, red, black and garbanzo beans.

But the tomatoes proved elusive. Week after week I would ask around at the farmer's market, even visiting other markets. People had a few canners here and there, but not enough to make it worth the effort. Twice I received an absolute promise that they'd be there the next week, at another market...only to be disappointed.

Finally I saw a box of decent-sized Romas at one stand in the U District. I bought their whole stock - 20 pounds, at a 10 percent discount. I brought them home and cleaned them, skinned them (after a quick dip in boiling water), and then hot-packed and canned them in quart jars.

How many quarts do you get from 20 pounds of raw tomatoes? Ten. I might have canned more the next weekend if I could've found them, but alas. Nothing but slicers and cherries to be had. And yellow tomatoes, which aren't acidic enough to can safely.

One interesting thing about the locavore experiment is thinking about what really is better for the environment. So: growing summer produce year-round using greenhouses and irrigation, and then trucking it all over the country, uses an unsustainable amount of energy and water. Fine. What was required to produce my ten quarts of canned tomatoes?

I bought them from a local organic farmer. Good. They cost me $55 - that's $5.50 per quart, just to start. Then there's the cost of the jars, which I'm not really counting because they're reusable, though the flat part of the two-piece lid can't be re-used for canning purposes. So add a few cents for that. Then there was the lemon juice needed to ensure a safe level of acidity (tomatoes being right on the PH bubble, in terms of being inhospitable to botulism). And then lots of boiling water: the initial boil to loosen the skin, the boiling water to fill up the jars, and enough to fill a 20-quart canning kettle. Lastly, there's the electricity to run the stove, bringing the kettle to boil and keeping it there through two 45-minute rounds of canning. Theoretically you could throw in the value of my time, about four hours total for the canning process, but we'll ignore that since I don't have a billable rate for canning.

Conservatively, we're talking $6 to $7 per quart of tomatoes.

That's not totally outrageous, but it's not cheap either. It probably still produced fewer carbon emissions than the fresh tomatoes shipped up from Mexico in the middle of winter. (Though to some extent that turns on the electricity that powers my stove, which happens to come from greener wind and hydro sources in this neck of the woods...still more complexity.) So, I'm doing better eating these than eating fresh this winter. But how do my canners compare to other canned tomatoes I might buy, industrially canned and shipped in bulk from ... somewhere?

Well, I don't know where exactly the store-bought canned tomatoes come from. If it were Oregon or California, that might still be a better deal than home-canning, carbon-wise, but maybe not Florida.

I have ten empty quart jars left, and would consider doing some more canning before the season ends but I'm not sure I have the time. I'm out of town the next two weekends. And I'm only really committed to it for things that I legitimately can't get fresh and local in winter. The best fruit for canning right now is pears, and we'll be able to get Washington-grown pears that are cold-stored all winter.

If anybody out there has 20 more pounds of San Marzano tomatoes, though, let me know.

Updates and possible adventures

2008-09-22T14:52:00.000-07:00

Wow, nearly a month since I last blogged.

I like to think that I've stopped blogging because (in addition to taking lots of great vacations this summer) I finally started writing the long-awaited Saga of the Canadian North. The one that Moxie and I have outlined, researched, even travelled to three different far-flung Canadian cities to research, courtesy of various archives and distant relatives. But now I've actually started writing. And I like to think that I am using up my writing energy there, rather than procrastinating it away on blogging.

The book is painful. At every, single, sentence, I am confronted with questions. It's 1859 in what will eventually become Winnipeg, Manitoba. My protagonist is 10 years old. What does she eat for breakfast? How does she address her mother? What does she buy at the store? How high is the river running?

At the same time, our story is following real facts wherever we have them, which just goes to show that truth really is stranger than fiction. Even as I struggle with a dearth of knowledge about the details of everyday life, I am paralyzed by an embarrassment of historical riches. Floods. Political intrigue. The first steamboat. An honest-to-gosh plague of locusts, for heaven's sake. I could not possibly make that up.

I know the exact plot of land that my ancestors lived on in 1859. I can see it on a map. I can find out how high the floodwaters of 1826 and 1852 rose on that exact plot of land. I know the names of their neighbors, their clergy, their teachers. I know how many oxen and horses they reported to the census-takers. I know the location of the general store, the post office, and the saloon.

So my goal is to crank this story out, and take a couple more research trips next year, ideally one to Winnipeg in February or March (god help me), and one to the Northwest Territories next summer.

Enrico really wants to go along to the far north. He is proposing a month-long driving trip, with the dogs. To a place 1,500 miles due north of here. A place with 35,000 people spread over an area two-thirds the size of Mexico. Where you have to carry your next tank of gas with you. Where the only animal hospital - should our geriatric dogs require one - is in Yellowknife, a good 250 miles away from the places I really need to visit. Where the town has only two restaurants, but six air charter companies. Where the largest surviving herd of wild bison in North America roams. And bears - lots of bears.

In other words, it would take some planning.

But we're considering it. What the heck, you only live once, and if Enrico wants to see the Great Slave Lake and the mighty Mackenzie River - see it he shall!

Let's just pause, shall we?

2008-08-28T07:38:00.000-07:00

I have been dipping my toe in and out of the Democratic convention, half hoping that my sense of inspiration and hope would get re-ignited, half fearing the relentless gravity of that dreary, myopic, politics-as-usual that drained the primary of all its sunlight.

I listen to NPR and read the speech post-mortems on Slate, mostly on the XX Factor, where for months I've followed the most intelligent debate I could find on the Clinton and Obama candidacies, and all the hopes and angst and bitterness that they engendered.

This morning the post-mortems were all about Bill Clinton's speech, without a single mention of one of the momentous events in US history: Yesterday, one of the two major political parties named a non-white person as their candidate for president.

Oh, the actual roll call vote was buried early in the day's schedule, thanks to lingering nervousness about how the die-hard Hillary supporters would behave. And the traditional absence of the presumptive nominee himself always detracts from the drama of the moment, in my opinion. But still, it was a moment that literally made me weep. I'm not sure I really believed that I, born less than a year after the Voting Rights Act gave black people a meaningful right to vote in this country, would ever see a black man at the top of the ticket.

Sure, seeing a woman at the top of the ticket would have been just as momentous, and I am just as hopeful about that too. I refuse to be unhappy about having to choose between two kinds of momentous.

When we were in France in April, once someone realized they had an American who could converse in French, it was as if they couldn't resist the opportunity to ask: Really, you actually might elect a black man? I could see them rock on their heels a bit, rethinking all the exasperated thoughts they had about us. They want to like Americans, they really do; they find us endearing and strangely, naively kind as a people, yet also so selfish and short-sighted. We share an historical legacy with the French, birthing Western representative democracy through our twin revolutions. But they have been despairing about us lately. This unexpected twist in our election process made them feel genuinely hopeful, for their strange old friends, and for the world.

It really does give me hope, that we might be that kind of a country after all. It's a nice feeling. Not nearly as nice as it'll be if it actually happens.

Floating along

2008-08-21T18:01:00.000-07:00

In general, when I get so far behind that I don't know where to start, I respond by procrastinating even further. I cannot face the deficit of shoulda-done's piling up, and thus the should-do's in front of me go straight to the avoidance list too. It's not a very healthy response, I know. But eventually I snap out of it. I pick something, anything, off the endless behind-schedule list, just to get moving; once moving, I triage everything else, and get myself off the dime.

Thus, my back-to-back vacations (Hawaii, Canon Beach) and business trips (Portland, more Portland) got me out of the blogging routine, and every time I'd think of ALL the things I could've blogged about, I'd become overwhelmed and put off blogging for another day. Feeling neglected, Gentle Reader? Just imagine what my Inbox looked like. Oy. At least my bills got paid.

So: here is me, getting off the dime.

This week the consulting work is a tad slow (and by slow, I mean I have billed exactly one half hour all week). So I took a load of stuff to Goodwill, took a load of food to the overwhelmed neighborhood food bank, updated my emergency kit, filed a year's worth of paper, mailed a bunch of stuff to my parents, baked bread, canned four quarts of peaches, got the finances up to date, and weeded the vegetable garden.

More Aloha

2008-07-21T22:27:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, we went to the Bishop Museum where we learned about the rich, vibrant culture of the Hawaiians and how their government was overthrown by the Dole Corporation. Poor Queen Lili'uokalani. We also learned about the two kinds of hula, the origin of the ukelele, and the three social structures within Polynesian cultures. Moxie took a horseback ride and saw sea turtles.

Today we ate shrimp from a shack 20 feet away from where the shrimp were harvested. We also drank coconut juice directly out of the shell:

Plus there has been so much tropical fruit, oh good golly, the fruit! I had been so sick of the berries, and here I've been eating pineapple, guava, passionfruit, papaya...Then there's fish, chicken, pork, rice (is that still grown here?), tomatoes, sweet corn, Hawaiian onions, and sea asparagus. I'm ordering wine from Australia and New Zealand, since I figure this is a close as it's ever going to get to local.

Keep visiting Flickr for more photos.

Aloha!

2008-07-20T11:48:00.000-07:00

I think Hawaii may be the best place on earth.

I'm here in Hawaii with my sister, Moxie, and we spent our first full day taking a lovely hike to some falls, getting rained on, eating lunch at a local restaurant on the "best local hole-in-the-wall restaurants" listing, and then washing off the day's mud and sweat with a dip in the ocean.

For now, I will just link to some photos. More to come!

Locavorism update

2008-07-13T17:55:00.000-07:00

We are 13 days into our one-month locavore challenge, although I'd been preparing ahead before we started. To review, our particular locavore challenge is: Washington state grown only in July, with two exemptions, olive oil and coffee. We are also not counting basic dry-good ingredients such as salt, yeast, baking soda & powder, and spices.I figured out where to buy things, ordered Washington-wheat flour from Winthrop, and started practicing my bread-baking skills.

Here are some things I’ve learned so far.

Lesson #1 - This isn't bad at all. There's lots of great stuff to eat from Washington state. The farmers markets offer a wealth of produce, we can bake our own baked goods, use honey instead of sugar, and eat plenty of meat, eggs and dairy for protein.

Lesson #2 - BUT: It would be completely impossible without farmers markets, and the family-run butcher shop in our neighborhood. If we were relying on the local grocery stores - even the ones, like PCC and Whole Foods, that claim to support locally produced food - we'd have no produce whatsoever, and a limited amount of meat and dairy.

Lesson #3 - I do not much care for okra. And that's all I'll say about that.

Lesson #4 - The perniciousness of sugar and salt: Eating whole foods cooked from scratch reveals just how much sugar and salt we generally eat. Having eliminated sugar, I am going through a 16-ounce jar of honey per week. That includes sweetening my morning coffee every day, as well as up to ¼ cup of honey every time I bake bread. I’d probably be using more in the winter, when we wouldn’t have the sweetness of fresh fruit. Similarly, having eliminated all processed foods I’m really aware of how much less salt we’re eating.

Lesson#5 - Good meat is...good! Though historically leaning vegetarian, we’ve been buying high-quality meat from our neighborhood meat market, and I’ve taken to cooking with bacon – good, thick, juicy bacon. I now understand why it has been prized, historically, not only for its keeping power but for the flavor (and salt!) that it adds.

Lesson #6 - Baking bread is fun! I’m baking two to three loaves per week. From start to finish, elapsed time is about 4 hours with two rising periods, a bit more with three rising periods, which makes a much lighter bread. I’m getting the hang of it, and I find the old saying is true: kneading bread is soothing. We’ve also tried wheat tortillas once, which were a little heavy but very easy to make, so we’ll do that again soon and hopefully improve. I tried cookies today for the first time - hazelnut shortbread thinghies with whey powder and honey instead of sugar.

Lesson #7 - I haven’t been appreciating juice enough. This month we’ve been relying on the very excellent apple juice from Rockridge Orchards, available at our farmers’ market for a whopping $7 per half-gallon. To supplement, I bought a steam juicer and was able to create a very lovely, if rather tart, half-gallon of juice. Using FIVE POUNDS of fruit. Clearly, I have been taking my juice for granted. And by the way, the steam juicer leaves behind a lovely fruit mush which, with honey and some cider vinegar as preservative, makes a great compote for toast or yogurt. Which leads me to...

Lesson #8 - Making yogurt is easy, boiling milk is a pain in the neck: I’ve found all dairy products available locally except for yogurt, for some reason. But I’d heard that yogurt is easy to make. All you need is a quart of milk, and ½ cup of yogurt, to make another quart of yogurt. I'm only about 50-50 on yogurt success so far, for some reason. Unlike bread, this is not something I see myself making from scratch in the long run.

Lesson #9 - Bring back Home Ec! I hit middle & high school in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, when the feminist revolution had exposed the sexism of offering home economics to girls and shop to boys. As a result, we got neither. I didn’t miss it at the time, but now I’m realizing how little I know about the basics of food preparation and preservation. Every week I find myself asking remedial questions like: What’s the difference between blanching and parboiling? Does buttermilk keep longer than regular milk, and if so why? Is it better to freeze berries or can them? Why doesn’t whole wheat rise as well as white? I hope these days young people are getting some kind of education on food.

Lesson #10 - A gal's got to have chocolate on her birthday: Today happens to be my birthday, and we cheated for the first time. We bought Halibut flown in from Alaska, and some Tillamook Udderly Chocolate ice cream. Mmmmm....

That's the rundown so far. Enrico isn't as enthused about this process as I am, but he's gone with the program so far. I think he misses corn chips most of all. A friend who's a lifelong Washington resident told us he thinks one of the Native tribes grows corn and makes cornmeal, so perhaps that's available after all; more research is in order!

Things I have learned

2008-07-11T09:49:00.000-07:00

First, a correction: It turns out it is not, in fact, illegal to let your cat roam loose in Seattle, as I recently and incorrectly asserted in my posting on coyotes. The City of Seattle's leash/containment laws apply to all pets except for cats and...pigeons (I kid you not). My apologies for the error, and let me just emphasize that I am sincerely sorry for the loss of anyone's pet cat to a coyote. Please, I do not want hate mail from the cat community, some of whom seem to be quite agitated about this whole coyote situation. I just still think the coyotes are entitled to live here. And that cats are safer indoors anyway - seems to me their demise is more likely to come from a car or a raccoon.

Speaking of which, we heard a coyote howl nearby last night. It was cool, I've only heard that sound in the desert of Utah before. Our dogs went absolutely bonkers. I do hope all the neighborhood cats made it through the night unscathed.

Second: I had an arborist out today to look at our ailing maple tree, which is apparently suffering from the tree equivalent of congestive heart failure. But the arborist also pointed out that one of the ornamental trees on our property, planted by the previous owner (a landscape architect), is apparently a rare and valued species which we could likely uproot and sell to an enthusiast for something like ten thousand dollars. And in fact, if the tree were smaller and in a more accessible spot, somebody might even steal the tree to sell on the rare-tree black market. Jiminy Christmas, the world is a strange place.

Worried Woo

2008-07-10T12:34:00.001-07:00

Today the contractors are fixing the carport, as well as the fascia boards and gutters on the house. There is much banging. Nelly does not like this one bit. My fearless lioness is hiding under my desk, just as she did through the re-roofing and the re-plumbing. Poor little Woo-Dog.

I supposed it doesn't help that the last time somebody banged on the house, they were burglars busting in the front door. Both dogs are jittery. The three of us are very tightly packed in here today. Though some of us are more comfortable than others.

Sometimes I really hate my brain

2008-07-10T11:00:00.000-07:00

For the past year or so I have been making serious efforts at reducing our footprint on the earth, environmentally speaking. We put in more energy-efficient windows, installed a programmable thermostat, and turned the heat way down at night. I'm on this local food kick, because I've become convinced that more localized food production systems need to be the way of the future. We have almost 100% compact fluorescent light bulbs in the house now. I'm tracking our weekly driving miles and gas mileage, so I can start trying to measurably reduce our gas usage.

But so many choices are not so clear-cut. For example, I have become increasingly concerned about plastics. They will not break down in the earth for 100 years, or maybe ever. Scientists don't seem to know, exactly. Plus they take oil to produce. And while a certain amount of recycling is possible, it has limitations. (I know, I should be linking to citations to back all this up, but I'm feeling lazy. I'm sure I've read it all somewhere.)

So, grocery stores are cutting back on plastic shopping bags. Some cities are even banning them. But what is our main use of plastic shopping bags here on Holly Street? As poop bags for our dogs. We have to scoop our poop, not only because it's polite and it's the law, but because all that poop matter going into the watershed really is a problem. (Ok here I'll link to a study on this, because it's actually quite fascinating, if you spend anytime at all thinking about dog poop.)

Because the grocery stores cut the bags, we were buying more plastic bags. But the whole public policy discussion about the bags in the first place made me think about all those poop bags going into the landfill. Is it better to flush our dog's poop, as King County used to suggest? The thought is kinda gross, but I was willing to consider it. Except if we all did that - we, Seattlites, the dog-lovingest city in the nation - the sheer volume of dog poop could overwhelm the waste management systems. And, even if you bring the poop into your house and flush it, you still had to scoop it up in something impermeable - and probably plastic. Thus you have eliminated the poop from the landfill, but not the plastic.

So I found, and ordered, 100% compostable and biodegradable "plastic" bags, made from corn. Which is great, and it makes me feel better. But the bags are produced in Denmark, which means they're shipping them all the way over here. How does the incremental amount of fuel used to ship those bags to Seattle compare with the amount of petroleum used to produce and ship a comparable number of regular plastic bags? And how do you weigh the fuel use against the potentially infinite time the regular plastic molecules will circulate in the environment?

And then Enrico points out that in landfills, nothing composts or breaks down, because they are huge and capped and there isn't any oxygen. For as long as the landfill holds, neither plastic bag will break down; nor will its remains leach into the environment. But the centuries will go by, and eventually that stuff will get into the earth and the water, right?

So since the bag is compostable, and poo eventually breaks down into harmless organic materials, should we dig a compost hole for our dogs' poo on some corner of our property? I mean, people use cow and horse poop for manure all the time. The Seattle Zoo sells the damn stuff to gardners. Armed with our compostable bags, couldn't we just compost our poo?

Apparently not, since the aforementioned study posits that the bacteria in dog poo - due to the nature of their diets and their digestive systems - does not break down quite so easily and harmlessly as poo from animals who mostly eat grass.

None of this even gets into the question of whether corn production for biofuels and compostable plastic bags is exacerbating the food crisis. I have my doubts about that, or at a minimum I suspect it's a red herring, something that could be addressed if we fix our food production systems, globally, which we need to do anyway. But still. Oy.

So what the hell. And this is just one little thing, the poop bags. Magnify it across all of daily life, and the questions, the dilemmas, the tradeoffs, all become overwhelming. The problem is, we as individuals just don't have the tools available to make all the changes that are needed, even if we are fully willing and motivated to give it a go. There are some meta-problems that need to be solved. But will the meta-problems be solved if there aren't individual people clamoring for the solutions?

You think this is bad? Don't EVEN get me started on my quest for a new garden shed.

Stupid brain.

Taking care of business

2008-07-09T09:50:00.000-07:00

I am doing a flurry of home repair and improvement projects, mostly small things that have added up over time but a couple of big things too. The consulting work is a bit slow, and summer is a good time to attend to some of this stuff. On the docket:

Replacing our carport posts
Replacing facia board and gutters (aka the rat control project)
Demolishing the nasty rat-infested shed and probably building a new one
Taking a heap of stuff to the dump
Hopefully fixing a variety of small plumbing mysteries (will the plumbing issues never end in this house?)
Preventative maintenance on the refrigerator
Having an arborist out to look at a couple of our trees
Painting/finishing the new doors and windows installed over the winter
Possibly replacing some iffy light fixtures

Much of this will be done by paying other people to do the work. Some of it is stuff we could do ourselves, but time has proven that we just aren't that likely to do so. Plus, since I mostly make my living off charitable foundations, I am expecting business to dry up next year due to the tanking stock market. Foundations have to grant/spend a portion of their money based on the value of their assets the prior tax year; thus, recessions tend to have a delayed effect. I figure I might as well get the homestead in order while the money is still flowing. Though if I'm not working much next year, I could do the work myself...

Toby makes a new friend!

2008-07-06T10:26:00.000-07:00

On Friday Enrico and I were walking the dogs together, and a block from our house we saw a telephone pole flyer announcing that one of the Seward Park coyotes had been seen on that very intersection, at 5 am a few days earlier.

For those not in the loop, at least three coyotes have taken up residence in nearby Seward Park. They have been ranging out at night and have eaten a few pet cats, and attacked at least one little dog. They're not the first coyotes to take up residence in the city. State laws - passed by voter referendum about eight years ago - limit the government's ability to kill or even relocate this kind of wildlife. A friend of ours in another neighborhood told us that when coyotes moved in there, concerned neighbors called a community meeting to complain about their disappearing pet cats. To which the city said - hey, if you're letting your cat roam loose, you're breaking the law. Keep the kitty inside; problem solved.

In fact, my cursory web research on coyotes revealed that they're extremely common in cities, and one study estimated something like 2,000 of them in Chicago, for heaven's sake. Enrico and I are generally pleased whenever the wild animals reclaim a little of what humans have taken from them, and we live in hope that we might one day coexist in more peaceable harmony with all the flora and fauna. Plus we're generally fans of the whole canine genus, from the tame ones in our own house to the majestic wolves and coyotes who have been so ruthlessly demonized and hunted. So we're pretty excited about our new neighbors.

I asked Enrico if this would change his behavior when walking the dogs through Seward Park. He likes to take them over the top, on the trails through the wooded areas, where he lets Toby run off-leash. Yes, we know it's illegal, but it's quiet and woodsy up there, and lots of people do it. Enrico figured coyotes are wary of people and would be laying low during the day. The odds of encountering one seemed pretty unlikely.

So the very next day - yesterday - he toddled off to the park with the dogs, and whom should they meet, but - a coyote!

Toby took off like a shot after his distant cousin, Canis Latrens. Enrico called him back, and the coyote returned shortly thereafter. As Enrico leashed Toby up, the coyote began making a sound which Enrico could only describe as a high-pitched "scolding." The scolding continued for a sustained couple of minutes as Enrico high-tailed it down the hill with the dogs.

So, there will be no more off-leashing for Toby in Seward Park. It's somebody else's home now, and that must be respected. I hope the coyotes get enough to eat there. My guess is that the population of rabbits - pet bunnies unwisely released into the wild by their owners, along with many generations of offspring - are goners. Which is ok with me, since they really shouldn't be there. I wonder if we can also thank our new canine neighbors for the puzzling absence of rats over the last few months.

Anyway, there is a community workshop on "Coexisting with Coyotes" on Tuesday night at the Pritchard Beach Bathhouse; I think we'll go to learn more.

Locavorism: Week 1

2008-07-04T09:04:00.000-07:00

We are four days into our real experiment with locavorism. As I mentioned, it seemed like we were already well underway because I'd been researching food sources, stocking up, and practicing recipes for the things we'd need to prepare from scratch.

The diversity of produce available at the farmers markets expanded greatly just this week. I even have tomatoes - tomatoes! They are hothouse, but very local.

Here are some things I've learned.

Although local dairy products are not a problem, the one thing I haven't found is yogurt. We can get yogurt from Oregon cows, or California, but not Washington. But my trusty book* told me that yogurt is very easy to make. All you need is milk and...more yogurt. I tried my first batch this week, and it was a flop. It separated into liquid whey and, well, whatever else there is in milk when you take out the whey.

Upon re-reading the instructions, I noticed the firm admonition to only use very fresh ingredients. Since I'd scraped the bottom of a yogurt tub that had been open for two weeks to get my yogurt starter, I figured this was my problem. So I tried again, and this time it came out beautifully. It is indeed very simple, except for the fact that you have to heat the milk to boiling, and of course that takes some care. Then you have to let it cool to a very precise temperature before putting in the starter yogurt. So it doesn't take a lot of work, but it takes a lot of attention while you're doing it.

So, add yogurt-making to bread-baking, steam-juicing and canning, on my list of newly developed skills.

Speaking of juicing, I finally managed to extract a full half-gallon jug of juice. It took somewhere between 4 and 5 pounds of fruit.

Meanwhile, our strawberry patch is going nuts, producing way more strawberries than we can keep up with. I have no desire to freeze the excess since local frozen berries of all kinds are abundantly available here in winter. So I decided to take a bunch to our friends on 4th of July, as part of our food contribution. The strawberries were so ripe that I didn't think they'd keep even two more days, so I cooked them down slightly with some honey and a bit of (local) apple cider vinegar. I'll bake a loaf of fresh bread, too, and probably take the juice.

So behold the fruits of my recent labor: yogurt; strawberry sauce; and a jug of aprium / apple/ strawberry juice:

* Stocking Up, by Carol Hupping, which covers things like canning, drying, freezing, making dairy products, baking bread, preserving meat and - I kid you not - storing food underground for the winter. It's like a pioneer woman's survival guide.

In other news: Farming is hard

2008-07-02T09:13:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I saw this article in the paper, about a church group that has started a small farm with the goal of developing a farmers market in the Central Area of Seattle, one of the few neighborhoods that does not yet have a market. It's also the predominantly African-American part of town, and so the organizers of this effort also want to do it in a way that will keep the business dollars in the black community. Unfortunately, for various reasons they were going to have to move their plant starts to a new farm location, and were calling for volunteers to help re-plant.

So we headed down there on a Saturday morning, and spent about four hours helping out. There were probably a couple dozen people from the church, and maybe 75 additional random volunteers like us. Some of the plant starts were still in trays, but others had been pulled from the ground and were heaped in buckets. These latter needed to be replanted very quickly, before disintegrating into green goo, like the old lettuce at the bottom of the plastic bag. I mostly planted, and Enrico mostly hauled bucket after bucket of fertilizer (manure) to the newly turned beds.

After four hours, my legs hurt so badly from squatting, I was pretty sure I'd be walking like a duck forever. My lower back was screaming. When we got home, Enrico did not even make it into the house before falling asleep...in the back yard. He literally couldn't get through the door without sleeping. The only thing that got me in the house was the desire to shower the manure off. After just four hours. This is how hard it is to be a farmer. I am that much more appreciative of these people now every time I go to the farmers market.

The dogs were appreciative that Enrico was acting like a proper dog and lounging in the grass with them. Finally! they said, you are getting with the program around here. And the smell of manure was a big plus, too.

A day in the woods, and lessons from Toby

2008-07-01T07:15:00.001-07:00

On Sunday we went hiking, our first warm-weather hike of the season. We had our last blizzard in the mountains just three weeks ago, the gem in the crown of our coldest-June-on-record. But then suddenly the temperatures shot up into the 90s this weekend. So we headed out into the woods.

The condition of many trails is still snowy or in the midst of massive melting; thus all but the lowest trails are off-limits unless you want to re-enact Napoleon's retreat from Russia. The middle fork of the Snoqualmie River was as high as we'd ever seen it, with the sudden heat wave releasing all that snow, and it was a lovely day:

When we take the dogs out for their first warm-weather hike of the summer, we always notice a distinct drop in their stamina from the previous year. Enrico still takes the dogs out to the woods all winter long in the snow, and although they are generally slowing down with age, they do better in cooler weather. Then summer comes, and each year we see a marked drop in their heat tolerance.

It started a few years ago on a hot, steep, dry trail, when they both just pulled over into a shady spot along the trail and laid down. This might sound like a perfectly sensible response to feeling hot, but it was unprecedented. Up until that point, the dogs' response to being somewhere fun was always, ALWAYS, to keep moving. Because as fun as this is right now? There could be something even better right around the corner!

So in deference to their advancing years, we starting limiting ourselves to cool, shady trails with abundant water. One year Toby started diving under the shade of the car at the end of a hike to cool off, and Nelly needed a lift into the car. In his youth, Toby would run madly up and down the trail for the whole hike, covering at least three times the distance of the rest of us, with a grace and speed to rival the cheetahs on the animal channel. But at some point he was content just to dash ahead and wait for us. We'd round a bend and there he'd be, happily surveying the woods as our scout, catching his breath before the next sprint. Now, in his 11th year, he ambles along with me, so sedately that I sometimes forget to take him off leash.

This year we noticed Toby's increased interest in the various holes and burrows created by the woodland residents. Animals create lots of hidey-holes in the woods - in the ground, in old tree logs, in tree roots, between the boulders of rock fields. Toby never seemed to notice them much before, probably because he was blasting by them at high speed. But now that he's moving more slowly, he notices and investigates. I halfheartedly warn him that one of these days he might stick his nose somewhere he regrets, like into a hornet's nest. But he doesn't care.

We consider Toby to be a role model - for his relentless enthusiasm for life, his boundless love, his spirit of optimism and forgiveness. There's a lot to admire there. And now, as he enters a slower, more reflective phase of his life, he reminds us of yet another important lesson: To remember to pause along the trail of life, to stop and smell the hidey-holes.

Locavorism: Pre-week I

2008-06-27T13:04:00.000-07:00

With the month of locavorism officially beginning in four days, we have done a great deal of prep research and practice. Although I've only committed to pure locavorism for a month, I fully expect many of our eating habits to change for the long term. Like my pioneer forebears, I now see food transported from a long way away as a luxury item. I hope to eat things like mangoes, or Italian cheese, with full awareness of how far they travel to get here, and the unseen petroleum cost I pay each time I eat one. I hope to be more intentional about when that premium is really worth something to me, and when it isn't.

So it's cherry season here in Washington, and we are swimming in luscious, delicious cherries. But cherry season passes in a flash. One week it's Chelans, then the next week Rainiers, and then Bings. Thinking about the long winter and spring, ahead with no fresh fruit - it'll be all luxury items from October to June, except for the cold-stored apples and pears which grow blander as the months pass - I decided to can some cherries, to have a local fruit treat available for the winter.

Now I've only canned for freezing before, so I first spent time reading up on water bath canning (which is sufficient for fruits, all too acidic to spawn botulism), and purchased a 21-quart canning pot along with fresh jar lids. My first batch were the lovely golden Rainiers - because whoosh, the Chelans were done already! - and I canned about 2 pounds, which produced four pretty pint jars:

On the same day, I finally mastered a decent buttermilk honey wheat bread, too:

Buoyed by my success, I bought an extra couple pounds of Bings the next week at the farmers market, richly red, and set up for more canning. I had also purchased a steam juicer, so I came home with a pound of "apriums" - a cross between apricots and plums. Canning takes so much water - most of it hot - to heat and sterilize the cans and lids, to clean and soak the fruit, to prepare boiling syrup, and to immerse the cans in boiling water for (in the case of cherries) a full 25 minutes. So I figured, I might as well do the steam juicing right after the canning, to re-use some of that boiling water.

Alas, this time all did not go as smoothly. I overfilled the jars, and they overflowed during canning, which means the seals cannot be considered reliable. One jar did not seal at all, so I chopped those cherries up and put them in with some applesauce I'd made with last year's cold-stored apples. As I poured those cherries into a colander, I kicked myself for letting all that beautiful, thick cherry syrup go down the drain. Two jars were sealed but I could tell they'd boiled over during canning, so I froze them just in case. (Little bits of food under the seal can be enough to cultivate unwanted organisms.) Only one looked like a clean seal.

On to the juicer, then. My pound of apriums, supplemented by some strawberries from the garden, produced less than a quart of juice. I regretted the squandered cherry syrup even more. The juice was bitter, but good - more like lemonade - and delicious with a bit of honey. More attentive to waste now, I scraped the remaining fruit oodge from the steamer, and added some honey to make a fruit compote for yogurt.

Apart from learning how much water goes into canning, and the importance of respecting jar head space, I am learning other things from this. First, now that I am putting more thought and work into obtaining my food, I eat smaller portions. It takes more work to get the food, so I think hard about how I'm going to use it. Plus, I rarely cook more than we need to eat, because the fresh food tastes so good.

Second, I have deeper respect for the skills of the pioneer or peasant woman who had to think through what she had, how she could use it, and what she might or might not have on hand later. Slowly, I am getting the pioneer spirit: waste not, want not. When the only fruit available is mealy, cold-stored apples from last fall, you make applesauce. If the seal on your canned cherries fails, you throw them in with the applesauce, and retain the syrup for something else. A little bit of high-quality bacon adds a lot of flavor to those nutritious collard greens. And juice - good heavens! The amount of fruit and energy required to make a glass of juice! Talk about a luxury.

When reading my great-great-aunt Lou's diary, I noticed the attention she paid to what she ate. In the winter in Winnipeg, she would comment when they opened a can of cherries for a treat. She commented on how many pickles she ate with tea, and the joys of a lovely fresh salad in summer. I think I'm beginning to understand why those things deserved valuable space in the single-page daily entries of her journal - writing space being carefully rationed, just like everything else.

Why am I doing this? Partly, it has piqued my curiosity. Partly, I am committed to eating local most of the time, and that means stocking up now for winter. And partly - I must confess - I see the deepening economic clouds, which seem frighteningly close to moving us from simple recession to true depression, and I think - it can't hurt to learn these skills now. Who knows when I might need them. Maybe that's crazy, but I just can't shake the feeling.

Looking for reading recommendations

2008-06-26T08:18:00.001-07:00

My lackadaisical (sp?) blogging of late has reduced my readership such that I will probably get no responses to this, but - here goes anyway.

I would like to educate myself some more about two period in US history, in order to better think about the state of our democracy today, and what we need to do to heal it.

Specifically, I am interested in:

The earliest days when the structure of our democracy was put into place - the questions the founders thought about, how they thought about them, their inspirations, why they concluded what they did, and where they disagreed. I think we need to go back to some of that original thinking - even though the social norms have changed considerably - and revisit some first principles about democracy, and the conditions and safeguards required to sustain it.
The "progressive era" between the Guilded Age and the New Deal - that populist uprising in response to obscene concentration of wealth and corruption of power, which yielded women's suffrage, the labor movement, the Grange movement, and a whole host of other innovations by the people, for the people. Plus, there was a depression in there, which also seems relevant to our current circumstances.

There are a jillion well-known books about the "founding fathers," and not many about the progressive era, so on both fronts I'm not sure where to start. Recommendations would be welcome.

must...resist...

2008-06-25T10:01:00.000-07:00

I have been telling people the story of our recent run-in with the law, and everyone except my husband says: Fight! Fight the man, sister. Don't take this obstructive-vegetation-charge lying down. My minister says: If it were me, I would feel compelled to find the neighbor who did this. And then get all mafia on their ass. Which doesn't mean it's the spiritually sound thing to do, but hey. I'm from Boston.

Enrico's take is: Cut down the tree branches. Rip out the lavender. Take the high road, and let it go.

Which just goes to show how saintly Enrico is. Because a whole bunch of people are working their little gray cells right now, trying to come up with an elegant way for me to to fight back. Awww, shucks. It's good to have friends.

I called the inspector who cited us. Somebody phoned in dozens of these complaints in our neighborhood. Which is a relief, actually, because I was worried that we had inadvertently pissed off a neighbor who is now on an anonymous passive-aggressive campaign to get back at us. In which case I would want to mend fences asap.

"It must be some person who's a walker, and who's read the code in detail and gotten religion about it," the inspector said. Ok, that makes me feel a little better. So I asked him: Are you obligated to follow up on all such complaints? Because I've been doing a little drive-by math, and I'd say 60 to 80 percent of properties are in violation of this particular code. It is clearly an unenforceable standard, in the sense that the city could never realistically enforce it evenly, and thus cannot enforce it fairly.

To which he cheerfully admitted that he didn't have a whole lot of work to do that day.

Here are some of the responses that have come to mind. I welcome others.

Get all gandhian on their assess. When a law is unjust, or is enforced selectively or punitively, the Mahatma said: Fill the jails. Force the authorities to enforce the letter of the law, thereby demonstrating the absurdity of the law by overwhelming the system. Thus, I could start phoning in hundreds of complaints, all over the city. The upside to this is, it's Gandhian! (Recognizing that Gandhi would never have stooped to worrying about something so unimportant, unless obstructive vegetation laws were used to oppress a specific class of people.) The down side is, I might bring this same irritant down on the heads of others, and that seems like bad karma. The filling the jails strategy is only authentic when the jail-fillers consent to participate.
Organize. Go door to door. Have you recently been cited too for this absurd thing? Want to do something about it? Compile a statistical report of houses out of compliance with this standard, and send it to city council members (one of whom happens to live on my block, so with a little luck she's already been caught up in the sweep!). Organize letter-writing and phone calling. Call the newspaper. Point out the inconsistency between our mayor's bold proclamations about combatting climate change, and this mandate that will reduce helpful, carbon-sequestering plant life.
Smoke out the snitch. Organize a block party, or better yet, the long-delayed block watch meeting. Strike up casual conversation about the person who is obsessively measuring the size of our lavender plants. Surely this person is is suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder, or early onset dementia, and is in need of care? See if anyone starts to squirm.
Get over it. Cut down the tree branches, rip out the lavender, and focus all this creative effort on something that actually matters. Like, hunger. Or homelessness.

THIS? Is why people hate government

2008-06-23T17:09:00.001-07:00

Today we received a citation warning in the mail from the City of Seattle, informing us that one of our neighbors had filed a complaint about us. A complaint which will result in a $500 fine if we do not take corrective action by July 7. And what is the terrible offense that we've committed against the neighborhood? Loud dogs? Naked limbo parties at all hours? No, it's worse. I offer you photographic evidence of our crime:
Yes, we have been cited for "vegetation obstructing the public right-of-way." The vegetation in question being lavender.

But wait, there's more!

You see the problem here, right? Nope, it's not the "for sale sign" that somebody else put on our property without our permission. No, we have also been cited for "vegetation that overhangs a public sidewalk within 8 feet of the ground" AND "vegetation that overhangs the street or alley within 14 feet of the ground."

To the neighbor who took the time to call this in to the city inspector, I say: BITE ME.

To the city inspector who took the time to drive all the way out here, photograph our property, and issue us a citation, I say: Dude. Seriously. Get a life.

And you know, the irony is, for 14 months we have lived directly across the street from this:

A burned-out arson hulk, site of crack-smoking, all-night cat orgies, indigent copper salvagers, waist-high grass, and flurries of asbestos-filled ash when the wind really kicks up. But the REAL neighborhood blight? Is obviously our unsightly lavender flowers.

Lost crafts

2008-06-17T07:48:00.000-07:00

I can distinctly remember reading the feminist classic The Women's Room by Marilyn French just after college, and really appreciating for the first time just how hard women's work was prior to the era of modern conveniences and broadened professional horizons. All that time cooking from scratch! and canning! and good heavens, the effort required to launder anything.

This last point has been reinforced every time I watch one of those PBS-style reality television shows, where families have to live in the Victorian or Pilgrim or Pioneer eras for a month, or whatever. The men get to build stuff, and at the end of the show they're all, "This was the most fulfilling experience of my life! I totally found myself!" But the women? Every day they wake up at dawn, cook, clean, labor, churn butter, cook, clean, make cheese, cook clean, sew, drop exhausted into bed - and wake up the next day to start the whole cycle over again, relentlessly. And the worst, absolute worst days, are laundry days. By the end of the show the women are all, "Get me home to my washing machine or I'm going to fricking kill somebody."

So I grew up in the era of convenience, and I appreciate how much these things made the lives of my mother and grandmother, and me, easier. Yet here we are as a society, confronted with the unintended consequences of some of those conveniences - they consume too much oil, they produce too much waste, the resulting eating habits cause too much diabetes and obesity.

Which is ok, because I believe we can find a new balance, with all that we've learned along the way. But as we've tried to make adjustments, I'm struck by just how many skills and crafts have become rare or even extinct.

For example, we've long had a manual push-mower for our little tiny yard, and it was amazingly hard to find somebody who could sharpen the blades. "Oh, that's a real skill," said the woman at one mower repair shop. "My dad tried to teach me, and I never got the hang of it. We had one guy who could do it, but he died. There's another guy across town, you should go there." So we did - he was old, too - and the mower came back better than new. Snicker-snack! went the blades. "That," said Enrico, "was $50 well spent."

Another example - I am thinking of doing some canning this summer, due to the local food experiment and the price of food. I would love to have some Washington cherries year-round. I have jars, purchased over a decade ago when we were poor and energetic, and canning from our garden seemed like a good idea. But I need new lids (you have to replace those every time). I tried three grocery stores, two drug stores and a hardware store - none of them sell canning supplies. It's like the art of canning has just disappeared.

I find this again and again. A clothes-drying rack and clothespins. Replacing the ripped canvas on our deck chairs - who does that? The metal frames are just fine, no need to send them to the dump. Why don't more of the local dairies go back to re-usable glass bottles with a deposit? I'd do that. I'm glad I kept my vintage edition of Joy of Cooking, because it explains basic things about food preparation that the newer cookbooks don't bother with any more. Even getting my clarinet refurbished, I learned that the last of the apprentice programs for this skilled trade was shuttered years ago, and now very few people really know how to do it well. Instead there are quickie community-college courses that barely scratch the surface of the art.

So perhaps there are a host of new, old careers and trades that will open up again as a result of our forced simplification. Maybe this is a good thing - maybe there are people out there who would much rather master the art of tool-sharpening or musical instrument repair than sit in front of a computer all day. Just like artisan bread-baking has come back, and quilting. Maybe we'll end up with a world that's both more sustainable, and more interesting to live in.

Preparing to Go Locavore

2008-06-13T16:45:00.000-07:00

The day is quickly approaching when Enrico and I will start our one-month experiment with (almost) pure locavorism. Locavore is the term coined for people who emphasize eating local. It was the Word of the Year last year for the Oxford American Dictionary (following the related "carbon neutral" in 2006), and the concept was further popularized this year by the publication of Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Locavorism is becoming increasingly popular, even mainstream. Why? Well, a variety of reasons:

the 1,500 mile distance that the average meal travels to our plate (emitting carbon dioxide all the way)
the dependence of large-scale industrial farming on petroleum, toxic chemicals and antibiotics
the nutritional superiority of fresher food
loss of genetic diversity in our produce and livestock
the genetic freakishness and miserable existence of lifestock animals, e.g. turkeys genetically modified to have such big breasts that they literally topple over if they try to stand up - which they can't do anyway, since they're packed into cages that don't allow them to move.

All of these things are concerns for me too, and so we've been preparing to make July Locavore Month.

Because I needed to do some research into where we would find various food items, in fact we are well on our way to locavorism already. I've been hitting the farmer's market every week, just like last summer, and oh! the beautiful, tasty produce. One big revelation is meat. Though we have been largely vegetarian for years, that was not about a moral objection to flesh-eating, but rather about all the things noted above, the unsustainability and unseemliness of meat production in this country. But buying some beef from a happy, field-raised cow or chicken grown by a friendly farmer nearby feels different, and possibly a better ethical choice than tofu made from industrially produced soybeans.

So I finally stopped in the local meat market in our neighborhood, Bob's Quality Meats - and why have I never done this before? The proprietor is a third-generation butcher, getting his meat from ranchers in Eastern Washington who supplied his father (the eponymous Bob) and grandfather before him. None of the meat comes from feed lots, and most of it is organically fed (though he was quick to explain that "organic" can only apply to the grain that's fed to the animals, since you can't control the grass; plus, chickens are omnivores). I bought chicken! and bacon - oh my god, real bacon. It's a revelation, really. Next time I'm going to try some of their sausages, made on-site.

So what's a locavore to eat? Happily, we live in a place that provides a lot. We've chosen Washington state as our foodshed for this exercise (as opposed to the more restrictive 100-Mile Diet).

So far, I have identified sources for: vegetables, fruits, milk and cheese (butter is proving elusive, but I'm optimistic it will turn up), eggs, honey, jam, pickles, vinegar, wheat flour (I'm particularly proud of my find on that one), rye and emmer flour, beans, lentils, wine, beer, seltzer, and juice (though we're going to pay through the nose for that, and it's going to be apple, apple, and more apple). We're practicing baking our own bread, and plan to give flour tortillas a whirl soon, maybe even pasta. We may have to make our own ice cream.
Items likely to be off the menu, unless something unexpected turns up, include: sugar, molasses, all corn products other than fresh ears, citrus fruits, bananas, avocados, tea, most nuts (including peanuts), olives (ouch!), balsamic vinegar (double ouch!) and pomegranites.
Items that are still unclear - the search continues - include tofu, at least some form of nuts, and grapes (lots are grown in this state, but likely only for wine). And seafood - what constitutes a locally caught fish? Something will, but my test here is transport/carbon emissions - so we clearly don't eat Alaskan salmon, even one caught by a Seattle fisherman. Shellfish are probably easier.
Amazingly enough, pre-processed foods are not necessarily off our list - there's a place in town, Eat Local, that has pre-made meals and desserts made entirely of local ingredients.
Exemptions: We're exempting light-weight base ingredients like salt, baking soda, baking powder, yeast, and most spices (though we'll use fresh herbs as much as possible). I figure, people have transported spices for a long time, and I don't think that's going to break the Carbon Emissions Bank. We're also each giving ourselves two additional exemptions, and I am choosing coffee and olive oil - though the oil will come from California rather than Europe. Enrico is leaning towards olive oil and chocolate.

Part of what I'm coming to appreciate too is that we've not only lost touch with where our food comes from and how it's grown, but also basic cooking and preserving skills that were a matter of survival and good eating for milennia. I can't tell you how many times I've arrived home from the farmer's market with something and thought, huh. I wonder how you cook that? So I'm thinking I might follow up Locavore July with a focus on preparing and preserving food in August - making cheese and yougurt, juicing, canning, drying, etc.

For those interested in playing along - join us this summer!

Karma

2008-06-10T18:39:00.000-07:00

Ok folks, in case you thought I was kidding about the Queen of Narnia plunging us into Eternal Winter here in Washington state, just take a look at this picture, showing blizzard conditions just up the road a piece. I can't even continue to joke about it, because the blizzard claimed the life of an experienced day-hiker on Mt. Rainier, and two others are stuck up there with severe hypothermia while rescuers wait for a break in the weather. This is just madness.

But, out of the blue, I get a call from my sister offering me an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii. It's not until mid-July, but I have no reason to think that the Queen of Narnia is ever going to release us from her curse, so I'm sure it will be just as welcome then as today. I am practically weeping in gratitude for my brother-in-law's dislike of flying. I know the weather isn't punitive, but this sure feels like weather karma.

Plus, I'm annoyed with Enrico at this moment for giving me the go-ahead to make a lovely dish for dinner that requires a very precise cooking time, and committing to be home at a very specific time in order to enjoy said dish, and then deciding to go out with friends for a drink without bothering to call me to say, "Hey! Take that pot off the stove. I'm running late." This is a cardinal sin of marriage, no? But once again, karma will out. Because who's the one going to Hawaii for free? ME, baby. That'll learn ya.

It's hard out there for a bird

2008-06-09T15:09:00.001-07:00

A couple of weeks ago - on that one weekend that was actually sunny and warm, remember that? Vaguely? Before we returned to the wet 55-degree gloom without end, like when Narnia was plunged into constant winter by the evil queen?

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago it was warm. And I was cleaning up our patio and planting flowers for the summer season which might theoretically arrive, someday, when the evil queen is vanquished. I noticed Toby carefully inspecting a big tub full of junk that had been sitting by the patio for months. Actually it was full of blue-glass wine bottles which I've been collecting for years with which I plan to someday create a fabulous border around my flower garden. That is even less likely to happen than the vanquishing of the evil queen, but I digress.

I noticed Toby sniffing around in there and it occurred to me that the bottles probably contained really nasty stagnant water, and since Toby is one of those dogs with an inexplicable taste for really disgusting things, I shouted at him to leave it, because by golly I wasn't spending a rare sunny day on yet another trip to the damn emergency vet. But he ignored me. And next thing I knew, I saw him making that unmistakable snapping motion with his head, the motion of a predator attempting the knockout plow to its prey.

I'd seen this move before, when Toby killed a rat right before our eyes a couple of years ago, and I immediately assumed he had another rodent trapped in the plastic tub. So I grabbed his collar and began gingerly pulling bottles out of the tub - only to find a clutch of four baby wrens, flapping about in a panic.

Now, rats are one thing, but I draw the line at baby birds. We have a long history of giving shelter to bird families on this property (see here and here). So I hauled Toby away by the neck and stuck in him the house. Then I went back to the tub and pondered my options, with Toby howling his protests from inside the house, and the mama wren screaming hers from around my head.

I gingerly pulled the bottles out, because the poor birds were flailing against them in panic and I was afraid they'd hurt their little wings. With obstacles out of the way, two of them managed a wobbly, low-elevation flight to safety beyond our fence. But two remained, and they didn't seem to have the skills to get out on their own - which begs the question of how they got in there in the first place? Because there was no sign of a nest in there, or of eggshells. Perhaps they'd run in through the drainage holes at the bottom of the tub, I don't know.

Eventually I managed to help all the babies get beyond the fence, and I could hear the frantic family reunion off in the bushes. I let Toby out; he made a big show of pouting. Later that night, I heard chirping on the front porch and peered out to see three of the young ones assembled on our doormat. For a while, I'd see the family around the property, but I've lost track of them now. They're probably all grown up and indistinguishable from all the other wrens.

This morning in the wee hours we heard a crazy cacophony of birds. The racket was coming from a tree across the street, and Enrico stopped by on his way to work to see what the fuss was about. There he found a raccoon, calmly eating a bird. He said the raccoon was surrounded by all manner of birds - crows, wrens, starlings, robins, flickers - angry and protesting with all their might. Many of them would normally be enemies - I've seen crows raid other birds' nests for a snack - but they were all united against the raccoon. Not that it made much difference. Not much they could do against such brazenness, not to mention the opposable thumbs. I hope the raccoon wasn't eating my little wren friends.

And, on top of that, the peregrine falcons who live downtown on the Washington Mutual tower lost their entire brood this year. All three babies died. Falcons have been nesting in that tower for almost 15 years, and each year the good people of Puget Sound follow their adventures excitedly, thanks to a video feed. Remember the year Stewart had to raise the chicks alone after his first mate, Virginia, died tragically after crashing into another glass skyscraper? Oh, how we cheered him on, that plucky single dad. Our hearts were warmed when he came back the next year with a new wife, Belle. But this year, there is tragedy again. The scientists are investigating.

It's hard out there for a bird.

Photos from France

2008-06-06T15:38:00.001-07:00

It's taken me forever to post these, and I swear I thought we had more, but - whatever. We didn't take a lot of photos because it was generally dark and overcast, and we spent a lot of time indoors where it's better to just buy the pre-made photo books. I thought we had some more photos of Paris proper, but - here are pictures of our apartment, the marathon, Versailles, and one of the rare sunny days at the Luxembourg gardens. Enjoy!

Oh for heaven's sake

2008-06-06T10:20:00.000-07:00

It's supposed to be hiking season already. We're two weeks from the summer solstice. What the hell is this??

Snow forecast for Olympics, North Cascades

Snow is in the forecast for the higher elevations of the Olympics and north Cascades. The National Weather Service says up to two feet of new snow are possible by tonight, creating avalanche danger and hazardous conditions for climbers or hikers in the backcountry.

While most of the accumulation will be at higher elevations, the Weather Service says the snow level will drop to about 3,500 feet. About three inches of snow are possible at the higher mountain passes: Stevens, Chinook, Washington Pass and roads to Paradise and Hurricane Ridge.

Suddenly wide awake

2008-06-05T18:21:00.001-07:00

Now that it's happened - now that Barack Obama has the presidential nomination of his party locked up - I find that all my ambivalence and fatigue is gone. I want this person to win, I want it so badly that I'm ready to get on a bus to some state that's not so solidly blue, and do whatever the campaign office says it needs. Need me to make photocopies 12 hours a day in West Virginia? Make phone calls in Texas explaining that Barak Obama is not actually a Muslim? Need me to beg and cajole some of Hillary Clinton's die-hard older women supporters in Ohio, state of my birth? I'M THERE.

Because damn, I want him to win. And not just in a dear-god-heal-us-from-the-Republicans kind of way. I am genuinely psyched.

If Clinton had been the nominee, I would have been psyched too. I'm back to my earlier state of mind, thinking - holy CRAP! Take a look at what might happen here! We might actually elect somebody like that for the first time ever! How can we possibly let that pass us by?

Of course, what's happening to me is exactly what all the pols said would happen: That Democrats would unite. We'll see. I've seen heard shockingly hateful, racist scree from some of those older, female Clinton supporters. I hope they change their minds, I really do. I might even be willing to get on a bus to help convince them.

Mission accomplished

2008-06-03T15:34:00.001-07:00

I'm relieved to say that I did just fine at the big speaking event. Which included stalling when the governor was late, and then cutting her off when she talked too long. A useful skill to develop, I suppose.

I'm pretty tired and might post more if I can figure out how to create a coherent narrative out of this whole thing, which really wasn't about the governor at all, it was about THE PEOPLE, and there were some pretty inspiring moments. But for now, I leave you with an illustration of my spectacular finger-pointing skills.

Updates from a really crappy blogger

2008-05-30T13:27:00.000-07:00

It's true, I don't seem to have the same drive to blog lately. Maybe it's because my life just isn't that interesting. Maybe, over a three year span, I have basically expressed every opinion, musing, and soap box tirade in my repertoire, and I have nothing left to offer. Maybe I spend too much time sitting at the computer. Maybe the evolving nature of my professional life has made too many of life's funny stories off-limits as blogging potential. I would try to explain that last one, but I can't think of a way to do so without revealing that which must be kept off-limits if I want to keep working in this town. Plus there are some professional ethics involved. Stupid ethics.

But here are a few things I can report.

On Sunday, I will be standing up in front of the largest crowd I've ever spoken before, upwards of 2,000 people. Including the governor, the speaker of the (state) house, and the senate majority leader. I was chosen to pinch hit for somebody else, because the organizers of this event have decided that I'm the sort of person who can be asked at the last minute to stand up in front of a bunch of people, deliver a serviceable if not terribly dynamic spiel, and not freak out. We'll see if they're right. Let's hope so. Because I don't really have time to complete a Toastmasters course before then.

Things to do before Sunday: Pick out some clean clothes. Rehearse script. Shave legs.

Enrico's thumb is growing back. Thanks for asking!

And, I have decided (and Enrico has agreed) that we will try a variant of the 100-Mile Diet for the month of July. Our variant will actually be a Washington state diet, with two key exceptions: coffee and olive oil, those twin elixirs of life! I just received a shipment of flour that I ordered from what appears to be the only producers of flour from wheat grown in Washington, so we can make our own bread and pasta for the month. I'm going to have to give up sugar, but at least our state makes plenty of honey. And thank HEAVENS, lots of alcoholic beverages. I'm planning a field trip to a farm that produces open-range meat, dairy and eggs. If anybody knows of a source of lentils and dried beans grown in Washington, please, let me know. Washington state is supposedly the biggest producer of lentils in the country - they grow 'em by the bucket out in the Pelouse - but damn if I can figure out how to know whether I'm buying local.

The City by the Bay, the Emergency Room, and other adventures

2008-05-19T19:17:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I made an absolutely fabulous trip to San Francisco to meet up with my sister. She is there on business this week, and a month ago she called me and said, I know you just went to Paris, and probably spent a whole year's vacation budget on that trip, but is there any chance you could bop down to San Francisco for a girls' weekend? And I said: Does a bear have hair!?

We had a fabulous time, and everything went like clockwork. Our flights arrived within an hour of each other, right on time. Priceline came through at the last minute with a decent hotel that was, if not reasonably priced, at least manageable when split two ways. The weather was spectacular. The food was scrumptious. I managed to buy myself a pair of earrings - which may not seem like a big deal but bear in mind that I own absolutely no earrings, all of my jewelry having been stolen four months ago, and my holes were starting to close up. But if you're just going to own one pair of earrings, it becomes a momentous decision. I am pleased with my choice, a white-gold-and-black-pearl combination that is so flexible, I may never need another pair.

Anyway - My sister has posted her pictures so I'll just send you there to check them out.

Moxie had never visited San Francisco before - how is that possible? - but even I managed to do some new things in my 48-hour whirlwind visit. Like take the streetcar across town and back, hanging on for dear life while standing on the running boards. Most cities would have stopped letting people hang off the sides of those things long ago, because seriously, it is not that safe. But god love San Francisco for refusing to jettison tradition for the sake of liability paranoia.

The trip was only slightly marred by the fact that my brother-in-law (Moxie's husband) broke his wrist over the weekend, and was forced to navigate the emergency room and adjustment to one-handed living while all alone. Having some experience with broken extremities myself - it's kind of a hobby - I feel for him. But he's plucky.

And then it got even weirder when I got home and Enrico promptly sliced off the top of his thumb while making dinner. So we got our own trip to the emergency room. Enrico is fine, the thumb will grow back, and nothing had to be re-attached. But to do that story justice, I'll have to blog about it another day. I'll just leave you with this little tidbit of dialog from our car ride home from the hospital:

"So what do your discharge orders say?"

"'You have lost the tip of your finger...'"

"Well that's not really accurate. You didn't lose the tip of your finger, you cut it off."

"Of course I didn't lose it! It's right here in my pocket, wrapped in gauze. I thought they might want it. I know exactly where it is."

Gotta go now. Enrico is going to remove the high-tech battlefield clotting gel from his thumb.

On another note: Frantically studying consensus

2008-05-06T18:33:00.000-07:00

This morning I got a semi-frantic call from a past client saying that they are VERY STUCK on a VERY IMPORTANT DECISION and can I please come facilitate an emergency meeting tomorrow to help them get unstuck?

It really is a very important decision. And in fact I advised them weeks ago that they should, before getting any further down their path, agree on exactly how they would make this decision. But alas, time was of the essence and they were flush with the glow of possibilities.

So although I have relatively little experience working with true consensus models of decision-making - consensus being a term that is misused most of the time to mean "unanimity" when in fact it's a much more complicated thing - I am hard at work reviewing the tools of the trade so as to try to help these lovely people.

A flurry of emails and phone calls have ensued, with phrases like "savior" and "to the rescue" bandied about. These phrases make me very alarmed because I can be neither savior nor rescuer. That is decidedly not on our list of consulting services, and if it were, we would command a much higher billable rate. But nonetheless, I will show up tomorrow with a reasonable grasp of the principles of consensus.

Frustration

2008-05-02T08:22:00.000-07:00

I am so depressed at the way the Democratic primary has turned into a full-blown Shakespearean tragedy. As my husband will attest, I cannot stand to read or watch stories where you see this awful train wreck coming, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. That's why I stopped reading Atonement a couple of chapters in, though I went to the movie thinking - hey, it's just 2 hours long; I'm sure it ends with some kind of uplifting resolution, right? I can stand to get there in 2 hours if not 200 pages. And then, there was no uplifting.

Anyway, that is how the Democratic primary seems. Hillary Clinton is determined to destroy Barak Obama at any cost because she's sure that she can and must defeat McCain in the general election. She is convinced that she can do infinite amounts of damage to him, the party, her own standing with black people, because there will be some kind of happy re-set button as soon as the nomination is closed.

I, who once rejoiced that I would eventually be voting for either the first woman president or the first black president, envisioned a general election where I would actually work on behalf of a candidate, for the first time - and it didn't even matter which one it was.

Oh, how those days are gone. I feel nothing but dread and disgust, once again, in the face of our political process. I want to like Clinton but I can no longer muster any warmth of feeling whatsoever. And what bothers me most is that she seems to be showing us that she really loves the dirty, elbow-throwing, grudge-holding, scorched-earth, my-way-or-the-highway politics that have gotten us into so many messes. I guess I thought that after creating so much ill will in the world, after so many years of entrenched bitterness paralyzing our systems of government, we might actually get somebody with the will and the leadership presence to say: "Whoa. Everybody take a deep breath. We're all in this together. There's a better way forward, a more graceful and productive way, and I actually have the vision to help us all take it." I have been waiting for our Churchill moment. Alas, Clinton seems not only to have fallen into the ways of scorched-earthing and grudge-holding, she seems to relish it. And her husband too. That makes me sad.

I actually think that Barak Obama is the person with the will and the leadership presence to mobilize us on that more graceful path, but sadly, it appears that it might actually matter that he is black. This also makes me sad. And again, with the Shakespearean tragedy thing. Jeremiah Wright - why on earth is he stoking the fires? Why can't the media let this go? Why is it that when Wright says 9/11 is God's damnation for America's sins, it becomes endless media fodder that damns the candidate too, but when Jerry Falwell declares that 9/11 is God's damnation for America's (homosexual) sins it's barely a blip on the radar, let alone a real problem for Bush or McCain? Why is the Daily Show the only "news" outlet that is pointing out this hypocrisy?

Meanwhile, we continue to fall for that oldest trick in the book: When the people are on the verge of uniting for real change, find a way to turn them upon each other. Witness the black community under attack, and eating itself alive along with the feminist movement, with the rest of the left either joining in the fight or standing by in helpless hand-wringing. How did the Clinton campaign go so far over to the Dark Side that they are actually fomenting the self-destruction?

So here I sit: The candidate whom I think to be better qualified to make actual reforms (Clinton), now appears to me fatally flawed and blinded by her gleeful embrace of dirty, win-or-lose politics. The candidate whom I think to be our first real shot at a visionary personality who can transcend old ways and mobilize us on a new path (Obama) now appears fatally flawed because of the color of his skin. I'm no longer sure either of them can win, and I think to a significant extent they did that to each other. It's almost enough to make me stay home in November.

Otters and lions and dogs

2008-04-21T14:22:00.000-07:00

Last night for some reason we settled into watching a slew of nature shows on that animal channel on cable, which we never do, but I was scanning the tv listings for something that would really kill my brain, kill it good and dead, and there I saw: The Secret Lives of Otters.

Now, I am married to a man whose most cherished dream in life is to have a pet otter. Please, can we get an otter? It can live in the bathtub. It would go swimming with the dogs. It would be so cute. I would hug it and squeeze it and call it George. Please, please, can we get an otter, can we, can we?

I have - unreasonably, I know - shot down this idea every single time it comes up, but knowing the deep inner working of my beloved's heart, I figured the least I could do by way of compromise was to switch to the show about the secret lives of otters. And for a while there, I was starting to come around to his way of thinking, because DAMN. Those critters are cute. But by the end, Enrico looked at me sadly and announced that he didn't think an otter could be happy living in our bathtub.

Yet we had little time to grieve for this lost dream, because the parade of amazing animals marched on! The next show was about Big Cats. Toby likes it when we watch animal shows, because he is intrigued by the tiny little animals running around inside the box. Much of our enjoyment of animal shows in fact comes from watching our animals watch the animals. If it gets really interesting, Toby will get off the couch and sniff the TV screen, sometimes even looking around the sides of the television, trying to figure out, where did those tiny running meerkats disappeared to? Meanwhile Nelly looks at him in disgust, all Do you SMELL an animal? No. That means it's not real. Use your nose, dumbass.

So Toby was having a grand time watching the cheetahs and leopards hunt, and then they showed some male lions doing what male lions apparently do: lying around indolently, waiting for girl lions to bring them some damn food already. The animals are not interesting to Toby if they aren't moving, so he had settled back down in disinterest when the male lion ROARED - and I swear to god, Toby actually levitated a foot off the couch. I have never, ever, seen him look so shocked as he did at the sound of that lion. If he had pants, I swear he would've wet them. Which maybe suggests that he's not quite as dumb as he sometimes acts.

The Incident, Part II

2008-04-18T15:53:00.000-07:00

Many years ago, right after we bought our house and got Nelly, we moved in with a friend for a couple of weeks while we had some remodeling work done. Our friend had a very sweet dog named Sunny (may she rest in peace), the most loving, playful, non-dominant dog on earth. She had absolutely no interest in being the boss of anyone. As opposed to Nelly, who still hopes to get the Ring of Power and make us all love her and despair, or even Toby, who wouldn't mind being the boss of somebody, but dude? It just takes too much time away from waxing his board, you know?

At that point we only had Nelly, and she and Sunny were great friends because Nelly could be as bossy as she wanted, and Sunny would just be all: peace out! behold my belly. And then they'd run around the yard and gnaw on each other until they were both exhausted and covered with slobber.

But one evening we humans were startled by the terrifying roar of a dog fight, and we rushed to the kitchen to find that Nelly had Sunny flat on her back, pinned to the floor at the neck. It appeared that Sunny had the temerity to suggest that Nelly stop eating her food, because even hippy love dogs have boundaries that begin at the food bowl. We banished Nelly to the bedroom and disciplined her in the firmest ways we could imagine. Sunny's whole body was shaking, a sight I will never forget, to see an animal trembling like that in shock and fear. She was uninjured, and I wouldn't have blamed my friend for being very upset; but she was very gracious.

Within half an hour, the dogs were the best of friends again. You would never have known anything had happened. All of the humans, however, remained utterly traumatized, and for a long time - I mean YEARS - we referred back to this in hushed tones as The Incident.

So, fast forward. While we were in France recently, we engaged our friends' kids to come by the house and let the dogs out each afternoon. The two older girls have been gradually shedding a long-held fear of dogs, while the younger one has, seemingly from birth, adored all animals with the burning fierceness of the sun. The elder girls are just old enough to start taking on small jobs for money, so we hired them to stop by each day with their parents just to let the dogs out in the yard for a bit.

It's striking to me how completely normal behavior for children just happens, by sheer accident, to be incredibly rude in Dog Language. Kids hug and drape themselves over dogs, a gesture that is an extreme assertion of dominance in Doggish. Kids are short and therefore look dogs right in the face, showing their teeth in a big smile, which is downright threatening to a canine. Kids do all this while speaking in high-pitched (i.e. submissive) tones, sending a confusing mixed message of subordination and dominance. I frankly marvel that there aren't more dog-bite incidents involving kids.

We've trained all our friends' kids to focus on Toby because, we explain, Nelly is old and achy and doesn't like much attention. Toby may not like the hugging, but his tolerance appears to be without limits. And even so, sometimes when our young friends are draped over him in an expression of ecstatic love, Toby looks at us with a puzzled and pleading look that says: Why is this small human acting so rude?

Our friends all came by the day we returned from France, and were bursting to tell us how much they Love the dogs! And are such good friends now! We chatted with their mom about the trip over the din of girls running around with the dogs. I heard the littlest girl say, "Nelly doesn't like as much petting as Toby," and that probably should have gotten my attention. Then I noticed that two of the girls had Nelly cornered, and one of them was leaning over her, holding her head firmly between her hands, staring her in the eye with their faces not six inches apart, murmuring sweet endearments. And even as my brain said "Danger!", there was a growl, and a snap of teeth, and then wailing.

Nelly did not bite. She just growled and snapped, which is actually standard Doggish for "you are making me feel threatened and anxious, and I really need you to stop doing what you're doing." It is the canine equivalent of using your words - asking your sister to please stop pestering you while you're trying to read, instead of just punching her in the head. I have no doubt that Nelly first tried saying this politely in Doggish - flattening her ears against her head, probably trying to break the threatening eye contact despite being caught in a head-lock - and I also have no doubt that she had no intention of biting. Because the whole reason wolves evolved complex communication is to avoid actual conflict or violence, which only weakens the pack. In the ten years I've known Nelly, I've only seen her snap at a person four times - and once was at a veterinarian shoving a kennel cough vaccine up her nose, which seemed kinda fair.

BUT. But. Despite all this rational logic, I cannot stop feeling badly about this. I felt badly even as our friend B., the Mom, matter-of-factly reviewed with them all the ways that the girls had contributed to this unhappy event (after first verifying that no actual biting had taken place). She reminded them that they had been studying animals in school and learned that cornering an animal almost always makes it afraid, which makes it dangerous. I imagine there are plenty of parents who would've just whisked their kids out of there and vowed never to let them near our vicious beast again; so of course I'm relieved that B. was so gracious about it.

But despite all that, it's been a week and still, I look at Nelly, and I think about The Incident, Part II, and I feel badly.

Tomorrow I'm taking care of the girls for the afternoon, so I'll be interested to see if there is more processing. I want to treat this with just the right level of seriousness, neither minimizing nor overdramatizing. Kids do need to learn how to behave around animals, and Americans are notorious for absurdly anthropomorphizing our pets instead of respecting them enough to treat them like animals. Just as we have a reputation for ignorance about the language and culture of other peoples, we often can't be bothered to learn the ways of the animals who live among us, expecting them to simply acculturate and conform to human ways; we become surprised and frustrated when they persist in being dogs, or wolves, or bears.

I can recall being actually bitten as a kid, on the nose, on two separate occasions, by dogs belonging to family and friends, and here I am all grown up with two of the damn beasts in my house. So I hope that years from now, I may still be talking in hushed tones about The Incident, Part II, while these girls will be grown-up young women, perhaps with a dog of their own as a best friend.

Return ramblings

2008-04-16T07:46:00.000-07:00

Yes, we are back from France, and I know I should be posting stories! and pictures! But we didn't really take any pictures, because it was France, you know? It was huge, and monumental, and whenever we had something keyed up in the tiny little frame of the digital camera, we'd look at each other and go, myeh. That really doesn't capture the experience at all.

Plus I was relying on Megan and TM's copious picture-taking, but they accidentally erased all of their photos midway through the trip.

As for the stories, the trip was fabulous. Really fabulous. We both came home with colds that, combined with jetlag, have left us minimally functional for the past few days. Happily vacationed, but very tired. Nelly greeted us with her usual overwhelmed relief, like her little heart was going to burst from it.

Megan did finish the marathon, and we had a lovely day darting around Paris to catch her at various locations. It was like a big scavenger hunt, setting and finding these meet-up points in corners of the city you might never otherwise visit. I want to give a big shout-out to the regular Paris citizens who form little musical bands and play along the race route for six hours straight. Especially that awesome bass brand near Place de la Bastille, where we spent over 2 hours dancing on park benches and waiting for Megan to come out of the Bois de Vincennes.

We also bought me a new wedding ring in Paris, which was very satisfying. Our hotel for marathon weekend was near the high-end jewelry district. Place Vendome in fact has nothing but jewelry stores, like it's some sort of bizarre zoning regulation. However, these are jewelry stores where every single item in the window could pay off my mortgage. Even if their wares were within my taste and budget, I suspected that inquiring whether their gemstones come from certified conflict-free sources would be like going to McDonald's and asking if the beef is organic free-range and the coffee fair trade? BUT just as I had given up, we found a lovely little boutique which, while not exactly cheap, was several orders of magnitude more reasonable and more artsy/funky in their designs. The sales woman was lovely and I have myself a new ring that is simple in a "someone with a lot of skill worked really hard to make this ring seem casually rustic" sort of way. Which suits me just fine.

Now I'm trying to get into a new routine, back into the work groove but NOT the groove I was in during the month of March, that desperate and unwavering drive to finish billable hours before turning into a French pumpkin. No, this is my opportunity to start fresh, with a routine that includes exercise, and meditation, and nutritious locally produced foods. We just finished our tax return under the deadline, and based on that Enrico is urging me to WORK LESS, WOMAN, because of course I pay a full third of my self-employment earnings to Uncle Sam, and didn't I go into business to have more freedom and flexibility in life? According to our bookkeeping software, our single largest expenditure so far this year - by a long shot - is taxes. But it is followed, in close second place, by "Vacation." For which I feel very fortunate.

In France!

2008-04-02T23:11:00.000-07:00

Well hello, gentle readers! Miscellaneous Shellfish comes to you from an adorble little 6th-floor apartment near the Place de la Republique, looking out over the metal rooftops and dormer windows, so very La Bohème. We type on a funky French keyboard in which the w, a, q, m, comma and period keys are relocated, so please excuse the typos.

We have spent the last two days on a whirlwind museum tour, having purchashed the two-day museum pass that gets you into something like 60 different museums. So many museums, this city has. Yesterday was the Louvre, and although it was of course spectacular, if I never see another Virgin Mary robed in blue and red, that will be just fine. We started our week with the obligatory walking tour of the old historic center, including the iles on the Seine and Nôtre Dame.

My French seems to be serving me just fine, despite the 22-year absence, although my brain wants to speak more quickly and fluently than I'm able. It's like that part of my brain has had a stroke. I reach for words that I'm sure I know, but I can't find them. Inside me, there's still a woman who is fluent in French, but she's FALLEN AND SHE CAN'T GET UP.

I'm amused to find that the French still have the gift of insulting you in that careless way that you shouldn't take very seriously; the art of the backhanded compliment that somehow simultaneously and good-naturedly says "it's odd to hear such good French from an American!" and "Ouch, your painful American accent hurts my ears so very badly." But part of the art of the French insult is that there's generally undeniable truth underneath; my painful American accent me fait mal aux oreilles à moi, aussi.

Anyway, things are the same here - grandiose, monumental, smelling of diesel and fresh-baked bread - yet different, with the Louvre's big glass pyramid and the Musée d'Orsay. We are having a grand time, though Megan threw her back out and isn't sure yet whether she will run the marathon on Sunday. We have our little apartment for 2 more nights, then we'll be in a hotel by the Opéra for 2 nights. Then Enrico and I head to the town of Versailles, where we shall sleep in Louis XIV's former stables. Then one night at Chartres and briefly back to Paris.

aaaahhhh

2008-03-26T20:46:00.000-07:00

In other news: Opossum in our driveway!

omigod omigod it's almost time to go!!!

2008-03-25T17:44:00.000-07:00

I should not continue to torture you, gentle reader, with my mind-numbing and self-absorbed countdown of billable hours. But let me just say: Three days left and ONLY 21 hours to work! Woo and hoo. If all goes according to plan, I will actually have Friday morning off to run errands for the trip.

Meanwhile, we are so unreasonably excited. We have the new Rick Steves Paris book. We have a whack of euros and an apartment that we're renting from a Frenchman named Ugo. We have two spiffy new cameras to replace the ones that were stolen. We have a nice young couple coming to house-sit.

I think that Nelly senses something is up, though. Her level of anxiety whenever I leave the house has gone up noticeably. She is doing the canine equivalent of grabbing my ankles and begging me not to leave her. I get out of the shower and she is standing there, silently condemning me with her piercing gaze. Like, I know the schemes you are hatching in your perfidious heart. You insult me to think I am so stupid.

Plus the other day she inexplicably peed in the dining room. Normally I would conclude from this that she's developing yet another a bladder infection, but I'm pretty sure this was just a fit of pique, or fear, or something.

When we went to Italy three years ago, I stayed over there for a full month while Enrico went for just over two weeks. When I got home, Nelly actually ignored me. Normally she greets me with overhwelmed, joyous relief, that I have returned from whatever danger has kept me away from the protective embrace of the pack. But that time in Italy, I pushed her too far. She may be woman's most loyal friend, committed to the unbreakable bond of the pack - but that time, she was all, who are you? You are dead to me, woman.

So it's hard to leave the dogs. They are old now, so you never know. But I am somehow confident that nothing bad will happen to them, if for no other reason than Nelly would stubbornly refuse to go into that great unknown without the opportunity to chide me, one more time, for my perfidious heart.

The light at the end of the tunnel

2008-03-19T08:56:00.001-07:00

Billable hours required in March: 98
Billable hours completed: 72
Billable hours remaining: 26

Unavoidable non-billable hours required in March: 21
Hours completed: 12
Hours remaining: 9

Hours to work at part-time job: 31

TOTAL HOURS of work remaining: 66
Days remaining until France: 10

This just might be doable. Of course we also have to clean the house, leave copious instructions for the dog-sitters, file the taxes, assemble all our travel information, do laundry, pack, find out why the replacement for our stolen camera hasn't arrived, call the bank and credit card companies to authorize overseas charges, and obtain some sort of obscure renter's insurance for the apartment in France. Oh, and BILL ALL MY CLIENTS so I can look forward to some nice juicy checks upon my return. But it still might be doable.

High maintenance

2008-03-13T18:34:00.000-07:00

Of all the statements I've never expected to hear about myself, this one just about takes the cake:

"It's really hard getting you to eat."

Seriously? Because I eat about six meals a day, squirrel-like. Or at least the way I imagine squirrels eat, the lucky little bastards.

But the other night when I thanked Enrico for cooking dinner and added that I knew I'd been a bit picky, he replied, yeah, it's really hard getting you to eat.

I guess it's true. By the time dinner rolls around, I've already eaten, like, five times already! So exhausting, I'm drained from all the eating of tiny little meals. Not to mention all the working, and everything else. It's so much easier just to pour a glass of wine to cut the edge off my appetite.

But of course I have to eat eventually and if all else fails, I'll fill up on thin mints or breakfast cereal or chips with a little melted cheese, mmmm that's my favorite. So to save me from this terribly un-nutritious fate, Enrico either takes me out to eat (but then we have to worry about Toby punishing the pot holders for our absence), or patiently pushes me to identify something I might like. Mac and cheese? Vegetable soup? Veggie burger? Tuna melt?

I swear sometimes I don't know why that man puts up with me.

So long, little pins; we hardly knew ya

2008-03-10T17:18:00.000-07:00

Today the little metal pins came out of my finger. The logistics were the same as the insertion procedure: No food or water for six hours ahead. Happy drugs feeding into the right IV. Tournequet on the left arm. Nasty numbing drug in the left IV that for about 15 seconds feels - and I am not exaggerating - like your hand has been dunked into scalding water. Why, why would something designed to reduce pain first cause so much of it? And then they apparently deliver the knockout punch in the form of a big fat needle into the nerve at the base of your finger, but by then the scalding-numbing drugs and the happy drugs have done their jobs and you either feel nothing, or don't give a crap, or both.

Then they do stuff. Then all of a sudden they tell you it's over, and give you very important after-care instructions, from a very great distance, while you nod your head and think, "this is probably important, but somehow I just can't make myself care."

When they put the pins in, they went heavy on the numbing - and I mean heavy, because I felt absolutely zip in that finger for 24 full hours - but the happy drugs didn't seem that intense. I was aware of not feeling anxious, but I didn't feel noticeably psychically altered.

This time, it was the exact opposite. Clearly they didn't need as much numbing, since they were simply sliding the pins out of my nearly-healed bones instead of drilling them into my freshly broken ones. But the happy drugs? Oh my, this new aenesthesiologist really outdid himself on that front. Wow, was I ever stoned.

So I decided the obvious thing to do while chemically deprived of the ability to care would be to call tech support for a really tenacious and annoying computer problem. It was perfect. Ninety minutes later - problem solved without the slightest irritation, and only floaty, dream-like memories of the entire experience.

But it's all worn off now, which is good because I still have SO much work. Poor Enrico is basically on his own, as I worked straight through the weekend. My billable commitment for the month somehow grew, from 96 to 102 hours - I KNOW, how the heck did that happen? 48 down, 54 to go.

Mathematical realities

2008-03-05T07:28:00.001-08:00

At the start of this week, we had four weeks until we leave for France on the 29th. That's 27 days, to be exact.

By the time we'd counted down to day 25, I had this growing sense of unease about everything that needed doing before the big departure. I'm not even talking about trip preparation, packing, cleaning the house for the dog-sitters - I'm talking about work.

I believe that most sources of anxiety and fear become less scary when you detail them out as precisely as possible, and stare them in the face. Uncertainty adds to anxiety. Plus, it's generally true that the things you make up in your head are much worse than reality.

So, I sat down and calculated exactly how many billable consulting hours I have contracted to complete before March 29, as well as all unavoidable unbillable hours (for example, filing the business taxes, interviewing for a new gig, some pro-bono work). And of course I have a half-time job. Here are the totals:

Billable hours contracted: 96
Unavoidable non-billable hours: 17
Half-time job: 80
Total commitments: 193

You do the math (well ok, I'll do it for you) - over 4 weeks? That's 48.25 hours per week. And in the middle there, I have a second surgery to take the metal pins out of my finger. Until then, I have major written deliverables, and I can't type properly with my left hand.

Now lest you say, well, people work 50-hour weeks, what's the big deal? I must remind you that as a self-employed person, my week is filled with hours for which I do not get paid. Checking my email. Billing my clients. Driving between my billable appointments. Eating lunch and going to the bathroom, which you salaried people generally get to count toward your total. So usually your billable hours constitute, at most, 80% of of your total work hours.

But fear not. It will all get done. I have already knocked off 25 billable hours! I have put the running tally, by client, up on my white board so I am constantly aware of the remaining days and hours. But you will understand if I do not spend a whole lot of my scarce hours blogging.

So, taking just the consulting side of the house (setting aside my job), here is the scorecard, as summarized on my handy white board:
Hours committed: 113
Hours completed: 25
Hours remaining: 88
Days remaining: 24

Tick, tock.

My dawg done ate my weddin' ring...

2008-02-28T17:13:00.000-08:00

I promise I will stop belaboring my recent streak of bad luck. Really, I'm almost back to normal. I've got a surgery date to remove the extra hardware from my hand, and I can foresee a time when the "s" key will no longer be my nemesis. We're nearly done dealing with insurance companies. We'll be getting upgraded iPods and cameras in the mail, along with a check worth exactly a plane ticket to Paris and a new wedding ring. Which is handy, since we're one month away from a trip to Paris, where we might just do some romantic wedding-ring shopping. (I like to think that if their heirloom rings had to get stolen, Margaret and Helen would want me to spend the insurance payout on a new wedding ring in Paris.)

Things are nearly back to normal.

But this I just must share. Today I was telling a colleague that I'd had to ask for an extension on a project, having realized that I just couldn't make up for lost time on all fronts. I had to ask for some slack.

"Well, yeah," she said. "Your life has been like a country and western song."

And I thought, Yes! That is exactly what it's like. Not like the tragedy and hardship of people in Gaza, or Iraq, or New Orleans. We didn't lose our house to foreclosure or a family member to violence. No, for exactly one month there, it was like we were living the lyrics to a VERY BAD country song.

My dog done broke my finger,
Some som'bitch stole my weddin' ring.
My car got smashed by a big Ford truck,
Oh why oh why do I got such luck?

That is the perfect metaphor. Not tragic so much as absurdly depressing, or perhaps depressingly absurd.

Reclaiming our life

2008-02-22T18:34:00.001-08:00

Bit by bit, the pieces are falling back into place. We got our car back today, with a spiffy new rear end, after a ten-day respite at the Subaru Wellness & Plastic Surgery Spa.

And I cleaned like a fiend today, not quite as fiendishly as my sister, but considering my gimpy hand and the state of our house, I'm pretty pleased with the progress. We cleaned up after the burglary, but that doesn't mean everything was in its place. Some things were just neatly stacked in random piles, giving the illusion of tidiness that wasn't really there. Piles of paper, especially. Papers strewn all over hell and yonder as they searched for something valuable to steal. I have definitely made progress on that front.

Plus for the first time, I can actually exert some muscle with my gimp hand. Poor Enrico has been valiantly washing all the dishes and walking the dogs and pretty much handling all two-handed lifting for a month now, but my bones have healed enough that I can scrub pots! And the toilet! And the troubling crusty stuff on the inside of the toaster oven!

It's all part of reclaiming our space after the home invasion. I know, the crusty stuff inside the toaster oven really cannot be blamed on the burglars. But I get to a point where I cannot focus on work, or anything else, with all the disorderliness around me. Like Jane Austen and Flora Poste, I cannot endure a mess.

Tomorrow we are hosting our good friends and their three kids for dinner, which is always great fun. The dogs love it when the girls come for dinner, because when you are a dog, CHILD = PEZ DISPENSER. I think we'll make turkey sloppy joes, with some gingerbread cookies for dessert. The girls, and the dogs, should like that.

Free from civic duty

2008-02-21T08:19:00.001-08:00

There was a plea deal in the case, and thus our juror services are not needed.

Back to work then, after this brief injury-surgery-car-accident-burglary-travel-illness break. Work...what is that like? I can hardly remember.

But I won't be troubled by work for long, because we leave for Paris in a mere five weeks! Wohoo!

Doing my civic duty. Maybe.

2008-02-20T09:32:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I reported for jury duty, my first time ever, which seems long overdue. I have to report again this afternoon, as part of a group of 35 potential jurors being whittled down to the necessary 12 plus an alternate. It would be a two or three day trial, which I could manage just fine.

It's a very interesting process, jury duty. (I won't speak about the specific case, of course, just the experience.) First comes a period of boredom, when you wait in a huge room of people to be put in a potential jury pool. When you get called to a courtroom for jury selection, I think the initial reaction for most people is curiosity - So this is how it really works? How does it compare to television and movies?

Then the judge and attorneys start asking the jurors questions as part of the selection process, and some of those questions can get pretty personal, so there's a weird voyeuristic quality to it, as well as a sense of false intimacy that gets created as you learn not only about other people's experiences, but their views on society, morality, the law. During the breaks and the waiting, you start to get to know some of these people. (Hey, you were burglarized too? How long did it take for the police to come? Have you checked the pawn shop?) A bit of bonding happens because you're thrown in together, because you can't talk to anyone else about the particulars, and because of what you've learned about one another whether you wanted to or not.

As the attorneys worked up their questions, there was occasional humor to try to offset the probing nature of the questions. As the jurors got to know each other and the routine, a levity crept into our interactions. And then I looked at the defendant, and was reminded of how incredibly serious this is for him/her. This is not an interesting experience for them. This will not just be a matter of mild discomfort from sharing a little more than you'd prefer among strangers. This has got to be excruciating, and frightening, and the most serious thing in the world. As the defendant sits looking at us, the people who will decide, can s/he tell that we're a little distracted by curiosity, and by discomfort at having to tell our story? - or even, at times, a certain enjoyment at the opportunity to hold forth with our story? Because at times, as the attorneys probed on our opinions about the fairness of certain kinds of laws, it almost felt like a lively debate in a coffee shop.

Anyway, back to the courthouse this afternoon. I doubt I'll get picked, just because of my ordinal number in the pool. But we'll see.

Miscellaneous shellfish

2008-02-16T09:02:00.000-08:00

The car is in the body shop. We have a sporty rental car that I dislike, but whatever. The front door to the house has been fixed, both windows replaced with double-paned windshield-quality glass that will shatter but not break if anyone tries to bust it in again. The contractor was late and his carpentry work is not nearly the quality of the people who did our back door and our windows last fall, but that's ok. It makes me appreciative of the other guys' craftsmanship rather than disappointed in this work.

I went to LA on business and came back, and it was ok. I wasn't really in the mood for either the trip or for facilitating a day-long meeting, but it went fine. After having a snit about the airplane ride, my back is feeling much better, all of a sudden.

At the airport I bought Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, which I devoured and loved. I was already on the local food bandwagon - agriculture consumes nearly 20% of our fossil fuels in this country, three-fourths of which is for transporting the food after harvest. But reading this book nudged me down this path a little further, and on Wednesday when my brain was too dead to work I spent the day asking the Internet various questions about my local food options. I learned many interesting things - like two-thirds of the country's lentil production happens just east of here, and yet I can buy none of these lentils at my local markets. Or that many of the organic food companies I rely on have actually been bought out by large corporations (e.g. Cascadian Farms, Odwalla, Muir Glen) - not sure if that's good or bad, but it's news to me.

I'm sure I'll share more on this later, in that overly earnest way I have when I've recently had a moment of clarity on some new subject. Suffice to say that Ms. Kingsolver makes it seem a very joyous thing to re-connect with where your food comes from, and not a deprivation. I learned that making cheese is actually pretty easy. I am reconsidering my position on meat, concluding that a locally raised free-range turkey is probably a more ethical food choice than tofu from petro-thirsty soybean mega-farms using genetically engineered seed. I can no longer look at a banana without seeing a luxury item, and I'm ok with that.

I made another trip to the pawn shop in search of my wedding ring. I do not like that place, Sam I Am.

We are trying to finalize travel plans to France, which is behind schedule and therefore stressful. But I have faith that it will all work out.

I think I'm coming down with a cold. Tomorrow we have symphony tickets. Monday we are planning to see the Oscar-nominated shorts. I think that about brings things up to date.

My first caucus

2008-02-09T16:22:00.000-08:00

It does not fall to me to recount the contentious and convoluted history of the Washington state primary and caucus system; suffice to say that we have had both primaries and caucuses in this state, and at the moment we technically have both, but only the caucus counts.

So, we headed off to our caucus today, right across the street at the Vietnamese Presbyterian church. And let me tell you, the neighborhood was crawling with people, pouring forth from their homes and cars to converge on the overrun church and the overwhelmed Democratic party volunteers.

In the past, I have always scorned caucuses as elitist, making important decisions with just a tiny percentage of the voters. I realize it's pretty much the voters' fault for not showing up, but still: I chafe at the fact that 6% of the voters in the state of Iowa play such an inflated role in getting this party goin'.

But having attended one, I must say that I might just be a convert to the caucus. It positively hummed with civic spirit. Several precincts were caucusing here, and ours had no official chair, so the 42 of us who showed up just made do and figured it all out for ourselves. Scrunched onto the stage of the packed auditorium, we chose our temporary leader by acclamation, and strained to hear as he read our marching orders. Many of my neighbors made impassioned speeches on behalf of their candidate. We voted, discussed, and some of us changed our votes; then we tallied it up and elected delegates from among those who were present and willing. And that was that.

I'm sure there are more than 42 registered Democratic voters in our little precinct, so clearly, although the attendance today all across the state busted all precedent and expectation, it is not a model that would scale up well. But it felt like we owned it, just us regular folks of all races and ages, from the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance to the day's adjournment.

Where to begin? Or, finding grace in anything

2008-02-08T11:58:00.001-08:00

When last we left off, I had just had surgery to insert two metal pins in my left ring finger. The surgeon had, against his expectations, been able to save my wedding ring from the metal cutters. The furnace was broken, again, but the problem had finally been found and a repairman was scheduled for Saturday.

Then, things got interesting.

On Saturday morning, I was rear-ended by the hugest Ford abomination you've ever seen, causing three grand in damage to our car and probably herniating (sp?) a disc in my back. At least that's what the doctor said, after "You're here again?"

On Saturday afternoon, the furnace repair guy showed up with the wrong part, leaving us for two more days with no heat. We spent the weekend holed up in the bedroom with a space heater and a stack of movies, which after my initial meltdown and in spite of my back pain, turned out to be kind of fun. The furnace got fixed on Monday.

On Wednesday, I came home in the middle of the day to find that our house had been burglarized, and our dogs let loose in the process. The burglars came right up to my front door and busted it open with my two large dogs barking inside. That takes nerve.

Fortunately - and this is a longer story - the two men who are redeveloping the property across the street (the arson house, with Garry the Exceptional Oak) happened to come by before I'd gotten home, and they saw the busted door, recognized my dogs and let them back in, and called 911. They also went to great lengths trying to track me down by phone, via directory assistance and google. They even called my church.

The police came, the nice neighbors boarded up my front door, and the dogs are unharmed. The wedding ring miraculously salvaged by the surgeon last week? Stolen off my dresser this week. The house was trashed.

So, I have spent two weeks dealing with insurance claims (medical, auto, home), making up lists of stolen goods, and arranging for various repairs (to my body, car and house). It's pretty much been my full time job.

While we are unable to distill any meaning or lessons from our baffling run of bad luck, we are also very conscious that with one exception - the sudden death of a family member a few weeks ago - none of this rises to the level of the tragic, and in fact there are bits of grace to be found along the way. The new neighbors who helped me. The friend who dropped everything to come help me clean up our thoroughly ransacked house (thank you Megan!). The fact that the dogs stuck together, stayed safe, and came home quickly. The incredibly kind police officer, a dog person herself, who helped me check Nelly and Toby for any signs that they'd been kicked or otherwise injured.

There are some other odd and even funny stories in all this, which might provide fodder for weeks to come, or not depending on whether I want to rehash them. I will say that one of the most bizarre experiences was going to the local pawn shop to ask them to look out for my wedding ring, as well as two other rings that I inherited from beloved departed aunts. Never been in a pawn shop before. Some of the humor came from my friend Megan's reaction to what got stolen and what did not. "Look at all this great camping gear! This is a high-quality backpack, who wouldn't want this? You have great books, I totally would have taken these."

Yes, I'm sure they would've stolen our poetry collection if they'd just had a little more time.

Furnace broken, again

2008-02-01T07:51:00.001-08:00

Our ongoing battle with our piece of $%^&* furnace continues. The repair men have until now been unable to diagnose its woes - though one particularly incompetent one gave us what turned out to be completely inaccurate information. The next visit was free, but by the time he got here the tricksy tricksy furnace was on its best behavior again, and no malfunction could be found. But THAT guy gave me the secret decoder ring for reading the morse-code-like error messages that the furnace emits. It communicates its distress signals in the form of a tiny, cleverly hidden, blinking red light. So THIS time, I can give them the secret code! Ha HA!

But first I must go to the hand doctor and have my surgical dressing removed. So much drama lately. The relentless work deadlines continue as well. I'm really look forward to my stint of R&R on jury duty.

Back to being a simple wino, thank god

2008-01-31T18:19:00.000-08:00

Having weaned myself off the Vicodin yesterday so I could safely drive to work this morning, I am happily able to once again indulge in a little red wine in the evening. It's very satisfying indeed.

Yesterday I mentioned to one of my clients my lack of love for the Vicodin, and she replied "oh, I must confess I don't mind the occasional slight buzz!"

Neither do I, said I. I just prefer to get it from a nice glass of red.

Morphine derivatives have been known to make members of my immediate gene pool talk to the walls, fixate anxiously on their next dose, and invite the surgeon up to their hospital room for a nice buffet lunch. My family and the morphine family, we just don't mix. We're like the Hatfields and the McCoys.

Oddly enough, I adopted a dog with the same problem. I'm pretty certain we don't share any recent ancestors, and without complex language she can't really communicate her experience; but Nelly very clearly has some sort of psychotropic response to morphine compounds. It's the canine equivalent of talking to the walls - and the vet long ago marked her file with a big red sticker: Avoid morphine if possible.

Sometimes you need the big guns, and when Nelly was hit by a car and she was bleeding into her belly with a hole in her lungs and a gash on her head - they gave her the good stuff. Better to chat with your imaginary friends in a case like that if it means relief from pain. And so, I took the Vicodin briefly this week. But skittered away from it as quick as possible.

My titanium-reinforced digit, and other random updates

2008-01-31T07:11:00.000-08:00

It took 30 hours for the localized numbing to wear off. 30 hours! Those are some impressive chemicals. As the numbing receded, there was pain. But not too bad, and there were painkillers.

The biggest annoyance is the feeling of being jabbed with a thumb tack right where the pins come out to my skin. I think it's just the bandages pressing against the tops of the pins, and I dearly hope that the sensation will go away when the bandages are removed tomorrow. Because - bleh.

In other news...

I do not have enough metal in my finger to set off the metal detectors at the airport. Apparently I asked the surgeon about this twice, while doped up on the happy chemicals. He didn't seem to mind the repetition. He seemed like a patient guy, for a surgeon.

I mastered the difficult and fatiguing task of showering one-handed, with a plastic bag taped on my bum hand. Again - I will be very happy to see these bandages go tomorrow.

I have procrastinated until the very last day on a variety of tax-related matters. I'm off to work outside the home for the first time today since the surgery, but when I get home tonight - the tax man must have his due.

Our Netflix queue just happened to spit out a disk of The Office and one of Arrested Development - two shows which, while very funny, include a lot of dislikable characters and eople making asses of themselves in ways that make me yell at the TV. "Nooooo, Michhael, stop talking now, why do you never learn??" I'll have to remember to mix up the queue portfolio a bit more in future.

Truly one-handed typing. While stoned.

2008-01-29T08:46:00.000-08:00

I'd been thinking of this pins-in-the-finger surgery as a simple outpatient thing - which it was, and it wasn't.

The surgery itself was easier than I expected because my hand was 100% numb and I didn’t see anything. Plus he saved my wedding ring! I came home with some lovely x-ray art showing my two neat little pins:

But the initial recovery is harder than I expected. I figured the pain would be like after the original fracture, ‘cause they basically just refractured it, right? (Literally, my x-ray art shows that the crack has grown bigger). But the pain is worse - exacerbated by the area where they put the tourniquet, just above my wrist, which feels like it's been pounded upon with a meat tenderizer.

They numbed my hand in two ways: by putting on the tourniquet and injecting numbing drugs by IV, and also with some shots directly to the finger. These shots last an incredibly long time - I had total numbness, I mean total, for 12 hours. It's been 18 hours and I still don't have all the feeling back. And yet I feel pain, which is impressive and a little intimidating. So I am taking the Vicodin, oh yes I am.

My hand is also much more immobilized by bandaging than I expected. And of course whenever you put all those chemicals in your system, it feels like CRAP.

So I had been rather fixated on the procedure itself, which turned out to be relatively quick and painless, but was kinda in denial about the fact that it’s an assault on the body to drive metal into bone, no matter how small.

So, today I recover.

On pins and...pins

2008-01-24T18:02:00.001-08:00

So, turns out I need to have little pins inserted in my finger to prevent it from healing in a bizarre scimitar-like shape. And I will probably have to sacrifice my wedding ring, unless they can force it off my bloated finger after they put my arm to sleep but before they insert the metal pins. Looking at the enormous purple sausage jutting out from my hand, that prospect seems so cringingly, painfully impossible that I almost prefer that that they skip the wrangling and go straight to the metal cutters - which is not to say I'm indifferent to my wedding ring. I really am quite fond of it.

Turns out the good surgeons like to add some anti-anxiety drugs to the IV mix, because people tend to get anxious when they are fully conscious and watching as their wedding ring is cut to bits and metal pins are drilled into their bones. Go figure.

I'm also advised that I will most definitely want to make use of that Vicotin prescription after this is done, because forcing your broken bone into position and then nailing it together with metal leaves a bit of an achy feeling behind. Little bit.

I'm flying to LA a couple of weeks after, so I guess I'll have to get one of those special letters for airport securing certifying that I really do have metal inside my body. So please don't strip-search me.

But hey - it's all ok. In most times and places on earth, someone in my situation would just splint the finger as best as possible, and would end up with a slightly deformed hand, and would adapt. It's a reflection of the luxury of my existence that I can go to a clinic that specializes exclusively in hands, and they can arrange it so my finger will (probably) heal good as new, and I have insurance that will mostly pay for it. Plus, we can afford to buy me a new wedding ring. It'll be romantic.

The little-read blog of 9-Fingered Flora

2008-01-23T17:51:00.000-08:00

I know, I have been completely AWOL from the blogger scene. I'm sure the blogger scene has suffered greatly for it, too. I have been described by my parents as "the one that does not blog."

I haven't had much in the way of inspiration, what can I say? But here's something new and different that happened this week: My dog broke my finger.

Yes, that's right. It's a variant on the "dog ate my homework" excuse for being lame, a variant which can only be rolled out selectively, but hey, it comes with props! In the form of a shiny metal contraption, on your hand!

It was not her fault (yes, it was Nelly). It was an accident (no, she did not bite me - sheesh, several people have asked me that - Nelly has a lot of flaws but biting people has never been one of them). I was walking the beasts and we rounded a corner and encountered a dog up close suddenly, and Nelly was startled, and lunged (lunging at other dogs HAS always been one of her flaws). The leash must've been wrapped around my hand funny, and SNAP - I actually felt my ring finger break.

Of course it's a pain in the ass (I say, typing one-handed-ish), but in fact I am an old hand (no pun intended) at cracked extremities. Fingers, feet...at least this time it's my left hand. If only I'd thought to remove my wedding ring as coolly as I iced, splinted and called the doctor. With just a scosh more swelling, they'll have to cut my ring off.

Tomorrow I go to a specialist, who will tell me what kind of contraption I have to wear and for how long, on the blackened and twisted appendage that looks (and I quote) "like a hideous thing that crawled into a hole and died." Did you know that the three segments of your finger could actually take on a zig-zag shape? It's true!

Meanwhile I have lots and lots of work to do! So many people want our consulting services, and on the community organizing side of my work, regular citizens are turning out in droves, clamoring to change the world. It's busy but quite satisfying. I've been surfing the creative force of the universe, and one stinkin' broken finger isn't going to kill my buzz.

(And no, that is not a Vicotin buzz speaking. I have 'em, but I haven't taken a single one yet. Because I'm an extremity-breakin' bad-ass, that's why)

Well-trod trail

2007-12-14T15:26:00.000-08:00

We are having some sad and stressful times in the Starkadder family, so instead of writing about all that I'll return to comfortable and happy territory: the dogs.

Nelly, who just turned 11, has decided that she does not want to go on walks in the morning. Or rather, she wants to go, but not until it is sufficiently light and dry out. For years Enrico has rousted himself at 6 am to feed the dogs, let them out, and then walk them. Lately, once the breakfast is done, Nelly bolts for the bedroom and jumps up on the bed next to me. She hunkers down and stares at Enrico, a black dog invisible in the darkened room except for her reflective eyes, clearly daring him to try to get her out the door.

This is remarkable not just because Nelly, like all dogs, loves walks. It is also remarkable because she has a complex set of largely self-imposed rules, one of which - nay, several of which - involve the etiquette of the humans' bed, otherwise known as Home Base. Dogs may only come up on Home Base upon invitation from the humans. Said invitations may only be accepted in the morning after breakfast, or during a daytime nap involving one human (but never two). Dogs may not spend the night on Home Base, except when one of the humans fails to come home for the night. Getting up onto Home Base in the evening before bedtime is forbidden when both humans are at home, even if a sincere invitation is extended. It's an abomination against the universe, and that's all there is to it. The fact that Toby is willing to break this taboo each and every evening does not change the absolute wrongness of it, and Nelly is confident she will be proven right on this score eventually.

Home Base also has magical protective properties. It is the only place Nelly will flip on her back and present her belly for rubbing. She's a proud and cautious dog, and Home Base is the one spot where she feels safe enough to make herself that vulnerable, even to us. It's the one place where she doesn't mind being packed together in close quarters, where Toby is allowed to snuggle up against her. There is no fighting on Home Base, not even so much as a warning growl. Home Base is the inner sanctum of the den, where the pack piles in together in a heap for warmth and comfort.

Thus it makes sense that Nelly takes refuge there from the unspeakable horrors of a pre-dawn walk in the Seattle drizzle. What's surprising is that she is letting herself up without an invitation, breaking one of the most basic rules. Once up, even the offer of freeze-dried liver will not pry her loose. "If she had clamps on her feet," Enrico said one morning, "she would engage them. She's not coming down."

So Enrico and Toby head off into the dark, dank morning now, and Nelly and I spend a little longer curled up together, content to wait for a more light before venturing out of the den.

The Mac makes me feel old

2007-11-29T08:01:00.001-08:00

I am still liking the new Mac, but clearly it is made for young people. It's starting to annoy me that every time I open an application, the first thing I have to do is figure out how to INCREASE THE TYPE SIZE so my farsighted eyes can work without strain. Why is Apple so fond of tiny, tiny type?

In some applications this setting is easy to find and to change by default. Other applications bury it in obscure places, or offer no discernable way to change the default (I'm looking at you, Firefox). I have to adjust the text size Every. Single. Time., a constant reminder of the aged and decrepit state of my eyesight. My business partner Zena is a Mac gal, and I never understood why her Word and Excel documents would come to me with the Zoom set at 150% or 200%. That setting showed about 6 words' worth of text on my old PC screen, but turns out it's the bare minimum setting on the Mac.

Now broadcasting from the Apple Nation

2007-11-27T18:33:00.000-08:00

Yes, we here at Miscellaneous Shellfish have finally made the switch from PC to Mac! An adorable little MacBook Pro which boots up in about 30 seconds instead of the 30 MINUTES required by our two-year-old PC. Literally, I would get up in the morning, turn the computer on, and head into the shower. Then I'd start up Outlook, and go make breakfast. If I forgot to turn it on before the shower, I would lose a full 30 minutes of billable time. Unbelievable.

The technology switcharoo partially explains the gap in blogging, what with the need to migrate data. Said migration was easier than I expected, although Intuit makes it really, really inexplicably unpleasant to migrate between the PC and Mac versions of its own Quicken software. I can't in any way blame Microsoft for that. And I rushed to install that Leopard OS upgrade before reading the fine print and learning that lots of things don't actually work with it yet. Like, my print drivers. And Adobe Acrobat. But, we are still well pleased with our purchase. (A special shout-out to the Miscellaneous Parents for the early Christmas generosity!)

In other news: I am relieved to know that the federal government will no longer demand that Amazon.com hand over records of its customers' used book purchases. Because my FBI file doesn't really need to include the fact that I've purchased The Genaology of the First Metis Nation, and sold Satre's Nausea in the original French. Clearly, I am a deeply subversive individual meriting further warrantless surveillance.

Back from the north, again

2007-11-20T06:56:00.000-08:00

We had a fabulous trip to Winnipeg, with four generations of the family assembled. My cousin who's three years older than I just became a grandmother - a GRANDMOTHER - and my dad received an honor from his alma mater. My sister and I stayed at the grand old hotel downtown, and spent a couple of days at the spectacular Manitoba/Hudson's Bay Company archives. The nice archivist helped us find photos and maps and post diaries and all sorts of goodies. We even found a detailed survey map from 1870 showing the exact plots of land where our ancestors lived. We visited the old fort. We had many hearty laughs with our fun and witty relatives.

I might - might - have suggested, in a moment of tipsy and sentimental enthusiasm, that I could return for the Festival du Voyageur in February. February. In Winnipeg. The main attractions include sled-dog races on the frozen river and a jigging contest. Oh, and there's a 5-K run. And some kind of "Survivor" contest where teams compete to live for a few days in the fort and in teepees. Average temperatures in Winnipeg on these dates? A low of -5F high of +5F.

Sadly, I won't be attending the Festival this year, as I just accepted a consulting gig that involves a trip to southern California at that time. Another year, maybe.

Confessions

2007-10-26T09:47:00.000-07:00

Yesterday somebody at work made a comment that constitutes a great compliment, perhaps the greatest of all. She said that her participation in a training I had organized made her hopeful for the first time in a long time. She said that ever since the Iraq war, which she tried to prevent with all her strength as a citizen activist, she has been tired and discouraged, but she is feeling renewed hope.

Well, yay for that. But here's the problem. After six months in this job (not to mention 20 years of working for do-gooder organizations), I still have no idea how to change the world. I am apparently able to make people hope that it could be possible, but I find myself unable to pull the rabbit out of the hat. I thought perhaps that as I worked, I would arrive at a vision of activism evolved for today. I know what it's not. It's not thinly attended and unfocused protests, it's not writing your member of Congress (sadly), it's not MoveOn.org's relentless self-promotion disguised as citizen empowerment.

And to be fair, I am not the only one daunted by this task. In an exhaustive piece of research well-known within the social sector, Robert Putnam demonstrated in Bowling Alone that nearly all forms of civic participation are in sharp decline. Assembling an astonishing array of data and surveys across nearly a century, he shows that participation in a wide range of "social capital" activities rose sharply from WWII through the 1970s, and has been in a nose-dive ever since. This holds for voting, political party and union membership, religious attendance, charitable giving, civic and social clubs, PTAs, and even team sports, card games and dinner parties. The trend line masks an even more pronounced drop in participation, because older Americans participate more actively than younger ones. This is not a matter of retired people having more time - in which case we would expect every generation to become more engaged as they age. Rather, people born in the 1930s have always been more engaged than those born in the 1940s and 1950s, who in turn have always been more engaged than the next generation, and so on.

Thus, my lack of a vision as to how to galvanize the people to take back our country is not just me. I'm trying to buck a very big trend.

So here I sit, having committed the great sin of generating hope with nothing to back it up. I've never been the inspired-and-inspiring sort of leader. Probably the most common thing said about me professionally is that I "keep the trains running on time" or I "make people feel calm." My boss once said he hired me for this job because I'm "a builder, not a barn-burner," meaning that he was looking for someone to do patient spade work, not inflame the masses. Ok. I'm doing my spade work. NOW WHAT?

A month away, more or less

2007-10-23T19:32:00.001-07:00

Took a little unplanned vacation from blogging lately. No particularly reason. Just happened that way.

What happened while I was gone? Nothing earth-shattering. Let's see, some highlights...

We got five new windows and a new back door. I love my new back door. It has nine little panes of glass. We also painted our den, and I made a little floor mat for underneath my office chair out of four square of marmoleum. It all pleases me.

Along those same lines, we installed a programmable thermostat, and have been talking seriously about what it would take to reduce our carbon emissions by 80%, the change generally considered necessary on everyone's part to avert total planetary climate disaster. So now we can keep our house 10 degrees cooler at night. I wake up in the middle of the night and I feel like I'm on a camping trip! All bundled up, with a very cold nose. It feels right.

I decided finally to ditch the PC and buy a Mac. So I drove to the Apple store...and it had closed, that very day, for 10 days. For remodeling. Is this a sign from the universe?

I recovered a stolen car for a local car dealership. The big monstrosity (a GMC Yukon) had been parked across from our house for a couple of weeks, which was weird because the house across the street was, you know, torched in an arson fire. So finally Enrico and I went over there and peered into the windows, and Enrico pointed out that there were still plastic covers over everything that said "REMOVE BY DEALER ONLY." And the only other items in the car were a hacksaw and a set of bolt-cutters. Hmmmm. So I called the dealer and indeed, it had been stolen. Why would you steal a $40,000 car and then abandon it across town in front of my house? I don't understand the criminal mind.

I start teaching a class on Monday, on social activism. I'm looking forward to it, I like to teach. We're going to start with homeostasis and Martin Luther King and Saul Alinsky and Bill Moyer's theory of social movements. Big fun.

The gold-tiled airport

2007-09-27T18:52:00.000-07:00

Bought my tickets to Winnipeg for the next family/research trip - nearly $600! What the heck? Is Winnipeg in such high demand? In November? Are the airport bathrooms tiled in gold? I'm confused.

Back from Haitus

2007-09-24T14:07:00.000-07:00

Our week in Oregon was wonderful, and it feels like the fall is stretching out in front of me like a new adventure, pristine and shiny and unexplored. Some client and volunteer projects have wrapped up, more or less tidily. Some cyclical things are underway again. The summer trips and visitors are over. Aunt Lou's diaries are transcribed and sent back to Canada.

I'd like to try to travel lightly through the coming season, not too heavily burdened; lean and focused on a few things that I can do well and experience fully. The house is clean from all the visitors, and it would be satisfying to actually keep it that way, not so much out of a sense of duty but to create an environment as uncluttered as I'd like my life to be. Maybe I'll paint the den after the new windows are installed. Or maybe I won't. Who knows. The world is my oyster.