Me time

I’ve been feeling the call lately, and the 4-wheeler rides haven’t been cutting it. So, today I set out to see some new country.

I had a great cover story. I’ve got a good friend who’s coming for hunting season and remembers the montanaiceweasel who always got his animal(s). If he’s shelling out for out-of-state tags, I better get a better feel for elk traffic patterns around The Gulch.

I hiked 4 miles all around The Gulch today. Poking and peeking into those places I’d missed the last 4 years. I found one new stander location and have several new driver routes ready to try out, not to mention the good “me time” I logged.

DISCLAIMER! (sticky)

I Think Walt Disney Has Possessed Me

A couple of nights ago I had a dream that I was sitting at a table in a coffee shop with Cindy Crawford, the woman that plays Electra, an old High School friend of the female persuasion and my wife. Now, this dream could have taken some really pleasant turns involving lace, vinyl, scented oils and rubber sheets (but no Ol’ Walt doesn’t “roll” that way and) my wife starts going on about how I haven’t been keeping in touch with old friends. I’ve never been on a personal basis with Cindy Crawford or Jennifer Garner, that’s not saying I’d turn them away if they showed up late one light on my doorstep, mind you. But, that old high school friend and I even spent a summer traveling through Europe (with a group) and I thought of us as good friends. As will happen, I haven’t seen or spoken with her since high school.

[Tinny, if you are reading this I suggest you skip the next paragraph]

When we shrugged we followed the 90/10 rule on privacy, well actually we considered going all the way with LLCs or Trusts. We even converted our assets into anonymous financial instruments for this but along the way decided it was too much work and settled on the 90/10. Anyway with the snooping powers the government has been taking over the last five years (what Fourth Amendment?) I feel any privacy shielding we once had against the government has been corrupted. I’m not aware of anyone who might be looking to “settle up” with me, and even if there was I feel I could more than handle them. So, I did something I didn’t think I’d ever do, I joined one of those popular social networking what-have-yous to try to get in touch with some of the people I once considered friends.

I wasn’t able to find the girl I was trying to find but did find “S” who was once a friend of mine also and we start trying to catch up on almost twenty years. She seems to be doing well for herself, mind you she doesn’t seem to have had as interesting time as myself since the old school days (sorry, honey). I guess somewhere in my subconscious I get this silly idea that it’s worse than I thought, and she was fibbing about being married (I’m guessing this came from the lack of husband pictures). Here is where that bastard Walt takes over my sleeping moments again. Last night I dreamt “S” and I were at a really fancy party….actually it was exactly like a Disney Ballroom party. Now, I knew she had made up this husband story so I decided to work a little charm and find her a man. As I was talking up what an awesome gal she was to whom I thought was the best guy there(myself excepted of course) I noticed she was doing the exact same thing to this stunning little redhead on my behalf. We look at each other realization dawning on each of us and both say at the exact same moment (Walt was probably holding the cue cards himself) “Wait, you really are married”. After the laugh track and singing blue birds finished……………OK, those didn’t happen but should have. We round up our respective spouses and all head out to get some dinner and drinks.

I told this dream to my wife this morning and all she says is “I suppose you’re going to go Blog about what an awesome guy you are.” I smile and said I would but I don’t think I could do myself justice.

Garden beds

One of the draw backs of living at 6600 feet in the northern Rockies is having a very very short growing season. Last year we planted on June first and everything worked out all right. OK we planted only root crops last year, but they turned out fine. This year I tippled the area of the lower beds, which we will continue to use only for cooler crops like peas, spinach and root crops. I also made some raised beds up on the ridge line where it gets much warmer. I think I posted about them before, right? Well today I just finished seeding the last bed and here are some pics. The area looks like the DMZ more because of our goats which are really sneaky than because of the local deer, elk and moose.

Of all the places….them, not my “compound”.

So, I saw a link coming from The Village Voice here today.

Pictures! / Humble pie

Yup, I took a bunch of ‘em today. They ain’t uploaded yet but they are slowly getting here.

This post will be about shooting……….Yup, that second part of the Bill of the Rights. You liberals might know it as the part you skip over from the “freedom speech” to the “secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects” etc… We went out shooting today. This was not the pre-hunting season sight-in that takes place every year throughout this country. No this was a real honest to god “Inauguration Day Shooting Contest.” Yup this title might have the hints that would get Jefferson, Paine, Adams hard but let me spell it out. The second amendment ain’t about “sporting uses” or hunting. The second amendment is is about watering the tree.

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

Anywho…. I have always considered myself a good shot. And today I proved I was when I had the conditions I’m accustomed to. I hit a 9″ paper plate 29 out of 30 time from a squatting position at 100 meters. However, when I was forced to stand and shoot (which has very very rarely happened in all the years of forced shots hunting) I couldn’t break 60% hits. This is like ………………well really really bad.

Whole pictures.

K has shown me how to set widths. So, from now on you all get to see all of the pics, and as time permits I’ll go through the old ones and fix them.

Pics, as promised.

Here they are, I wish I had gotten some before I almost filled the house with that last load of furniture, but c’est la vie.

We are in!

We moved all the critical items from the Airstream into the house last night. Yesterday I finished the DWV (Sewer) and set the tiolet and built a laundry counter with utility sink.  The day before I finished the install of the rest of the stoves. Today I finished the sheetrock (one side) in the bathroom and hung the bath door.  I’m very happy to report that the 3 woodstoves are keeping the house 30-50 degrees warmer than outside even without any insulation in the house (just need to install it………along with about a million other things) .

The passive solar I planned  into the house is working awesome and the mass is great for the early mornings.  The wood cookstove had it’s maiden voyage the other night when K brought up some leftover BBQ.

All things are proceeding as planned, we (with K’s help) backfilled most of thee spring house buying us a couple more weeks…………..hopefully it warms up for a couple of days. The forecasters are saying not to hold my breath, the low tonight is suppose to be in the teens….of course, we are registering 10-15 degrees warmer than the valley as an ole’ rancher told told me we would.  We still need to get the plow mounted.  This is becoming more and more of a point I’m worried about as the flakes are falling outside of the window.

Not quite as much as what is going on with the economy (which I’ve seen coming for over two years) but I guess that’s for another post.

The Last of the Big Ones, New Arrivials

Today we hung the last of the large rafters. We have twelve 10′ floor joists, for the front leg of the loft and third floor deck (observatory, gopher popping platform, etc.) left and 6 sets of 9′ pinnacle rafters.

Some closeups of the double “starbursts” from the core valleys.

Also in Goat’s Gulch headline news: Local Black Chick Makes Good!

This is the same hen that is the mother of the black chick from GCMII. She brooded these 7 the whole time unlike last time when we had to finish the job for her. She was a good momma who took them out showed them the waterer, food, cracked the larger grains for them, and even opened up a can of whoop-ass on one of the ducks who got too curious. We will be keeping all of her female pullets, to help mother any Spangled Hamburgs we want to hatch out, and are saving a special place for the cockerels (next to the stuffing and potatoes) since they are half meat breed birds, yummy.