What's up with the house?

Well, I'll tell you. Nothing much. Since the neighbors refused to let us go through their field, our mover is going to build a ramp next to the driveway since the driveway is too narrow for the house. It adds an extra days work along with some stress onto the job. We still don't know WHEN the house will be moved. Now the state police are in the mix so we have submitted the application to them too. This soup is seriously getting spoiled by too many cooks! At some point, maybe in the near future, maybe in the distant future, all the entities will be able to agree on a date and we can get the house over here. My half full glass is starting to seem kind of half empty.

Cherish the Ladies

Shortly after we moved to Washington we got a mailer from the Washington Center for the Performing Arts. Cherish the Ladies, a traditional Irish music group comprised entirely of female musicians, was on the schedule. I am awfully fond of them and bought tickets on the spot. Well, as luck would have it, Matt ended up being in Los Angeles on the day of the concert so I asked Tom if he would like to go. It was so much fun! It felt wrong to be sitting in a seat and not dancing during the show. Although all the musicians were thrilling a few really stood out. Dierdre Connolly has a beautiful voice for Irish music. Donna Long played a piano solo that broke my heart.

The Witches of Toledo (+ Winlock)

Kathy invited all the local witches for coffee hour last Friday.

Leslie, Jill, me, Ardeth & Kathy

Frosty

I stepped outside this morning and almost slid right off the wood porch. The cars are covered with ice crystals and my fingers can't seem to get warm. Looks like the first frost is here. Is it wrong of me to wish for Southern California weather even in the midst of the fire disaster?

Helping out

Consider making a donation to Noah's Wish. They are sending teams to San Diego county to help the animals that evacuees had to leave behind. Imagine losing your house and then losing your pet who gives you unconditional love whenever you are down. Noah's Wish tries to take the added burden of losing pets off of the shoulder's of people who are already pushed to the limits of stress and fear. They did (and are continuing to do) a great job helping after Katrina. Also consider a making a donation to the Red Cross.

City of Fire

To my beautiful Los Angeles (and all of Southern California),

I am so sorry you are on fire. If I could send some of our rain down to you I would.

To our friends in the Southland, please be careful.

Love, Michelle

Sigh

The field owner said no (see previous post). He doesn't want us moving the house into his field because he doesn't trust us to replace his fences properly. I am tired of this mess and we haven't really even begun.

Well, it doesn't look like we can move the house out onto the road using the driveway. That leaves moving it sideways out into the neighbor's field and up onto the road from there. We knocked on the neighbor's door on Friday to explain the situation. He is thinking about it and I am on pins and needles waiting for his reply. He uses the field as one of his cow rotation fields so he is concerned about the field getting torn up and not getting fences put back right. Apparently he spoke with the people we bought the Sister House from when he saw all the activity. They told him they sold it to some people from California. When people say "California" up here they kind of sneer it out. I wish he didn't know that is where we are from. I can tell that, in his mind, being from California means we have moved here to destroy the moral fabric of the community and trample all over the locals. I don't want to pressure the guy and further enforce his opinions of Californians but I really need an answer. It looks like we have some less rainy days coming up on Tuesday and Wednesday and that is when the house mover would like to position the house in the field where it will sit for about a week until the actual move day.

Also, another snippet of bad news is that the county road people will only let us move the house on Sunday. That sucks because we will have to pay time and a half for all the utility crews that need to be on hand and since it is elk hunting season finding willing workers on a Sunday will be hard. It is a little funny that they are holding us to a Sunday move because the house is directly across the street from a Mormon church so Sunday is probably the busiest day of the week on that street.

Playing with dollies (or We're off to see the Wizard)

The sister house got lifted onto dollies yesterday even though we still don't have an actual move day! There are so many entities that need to be involved (county, utilities, highway patrol, etc.) it is tricky to nail it down. It is raining like crazy today. I went to take pictures and got soaked. I don't know if I have mentioned it but the house is the same width as the road we live on so we will really be messing with the traffic once the move gets going. Our moving contractor is the one who has to deal with county permitting. I am curious to see what type of traffic control they will request.

If the deluge from the sky had been less I would have taken the trouble to arrange some striped socks and pointy black shoes in this picture. I think the house looks like it could have fallen from the sky out of a tornado.

Well, looks like the house will be rolling down the road on October 23th or 24th. We have been extra busy getting everything in order. Right now we are making sure that all the utility companies are on alert so they can move any lines that hang too low for the house to pass under. We have the pad at our place graded and we have taken down two trees (*weep*) so the house can fit onto the lot. We still need to take down a fence to get her in here. Over at the house there isn't much left to do. We need to clean up the bricks from the chimney demo and take off the front porch.

Got a call from the bank that our construction loan funded yesterday so we are ready to roll. And how do I feel about all this life changing activity?

Bellingham

Here are some shots from our trip to Bellingham. The central part of the trip was going to see the band that did all the music for Andy's movie. I didn't take my camera to the show because when they played the night before the drummer's wife's wallet was stolen. Big bummer because Andy danced and I have no photographic evidence! A little background - Andy was a film major at Western Washington University. He filmed a movie there called The Dream Garden. He is still editing the movie so none of us have seen it yet.

Matt, Maggie Anderson (the drummer's daughter), Andy & Bailee

Lisa, Jolaina (the star of The Dream Garden), & Bailee. They all live in Toledo so we get to see them often.

Colin & his daughter Keira. Colin and Andy are partners in film. They make their movies together. As Andy was making The Dream Garden, Colin was filming Room 113.

This is Bailee, Jolaina's sister. She is a delight! Matt and I are sooo going to adopt her. Here she is seen standing on a bridge overlooking a waterfall that she fell into once upon a time. I wouldn't say she is accident prone but I would say she is very adventurous and so her potential for disaster is higher than normal. Love ya Bailee!

When the mice are away . . .

The cat will play! Matt and I went to Bellingham over the weekend to meet up with Andy and his friends up there. He went to school in Bellingham and shot his movie there so there were many people to meet and places to see. While we were away Tom graded the pad for our house! Here are some before and after pics.

Congratulations Jenny!

Maybe it was a truck?

Fun weekend - no pictures

I managed to not take a single picture this weekend despite the fact that we had the whole "new" family together. Andy was up from Los Angeles, Ben was down from Olympia and Grandma & Grandpa were visiting from Carson. Bob and Lani also came to play with us. On Friday night Ben, Andy, Matt and I went to the Toledo High homecoming football game. Toledo got SPANKED! We didn't stay for the entire game. After the game we went to a Toledo bar for a little local flavor. There is a ridiculous rivalry between the towns of Toledo and Winlock and we were joking about it all night. I almost got us into a fight by saying too loudly that I prefer our tavern (Frank's Hideaway) in Winlock over Harry's in Toledo. Relax people. FYI, if you want scary, mean drunks go to Harry's. If you like your drunks dopey and happy go to Winlock. I like my drunks dopey and happy. I hope nobody from Toledo reads this!!

Saturday was spent with the women in the house doing women stuff and the men outside doing men stuff. Kathy, Lani, Grandma & I were inside baking cookies while Tom, Bob and Grandpa were outside trying to get the Cat running again.

Sunday everyone drifted back to their own towns and things quieted down. It was really wonderful to have everyone together under one roof for awhile.

GAME ON!

I picked up our building permit from Lewis County on Friday. The permit was the last piece of the package needed for our construction loan. We will be signing the loan papers on Tuesday. We are going to try and get the Sister House moved to our property sometime during the week of Oct. 22nd. I don't know if that is actually possible since there are a few different entities that all need to be available at the same time and we also need some cooperation from Mother Nature. The week of Oct 22nd is important because Tom leaves for a few weeks of hunting at the end of October and when he returns we are into Thanksgiving and we all know that schedules get a little loosey goosey once the holidays start

I feel as though I have been chugging up a huge roller coaster hill and we have just rounded the crest of the first giant drop. Here we go!

After the rain - cue uplifting music

Portland visit #3

Matt and I went to Portland for the Finntroll concert on Wednesday night. We headed down a little early to grab some dinner. Many people ask if I miss Los Angeles. The answer is that I miss it most when I want to go out to eat or go to a movie. If I never eat another grilled cheese sandwich made with Kraft Singles and Wonderbread and served with a side of tater tots it will be too soon. My point is that it was a treat to head toward the land of "real" restaurants. From the book eat.shop.portland we selected Ken's Artisan Pizza because it was a cold rainy night and the warmth and aroma of a wood fire oven sounded perfect. When we drove by though the place was overrun with customers. We are neither patient or well adjusted to standing in the rain so we just drove right on by. Since there seemed to be a bunch of other options in the neighborhood we parked and walked. In the next block we ran across Navarre - also listed in eat.shop.portland. It was the happiest of accidents. These people are food geniuses. Never have I smiled so broadly whilst eating turnips. They were served with brown sugar sauce and it was inspired. We also ordered braised greens, the pickle plate (mostly for Matt - but I did eat a pickled bean), home made bread with olive oil, prico (yeah!! fried cheese!!), and Matt had some steamed clams because he has decided that ocean filters don't count as animals. He may be have a point, I don't know. For desert I had THE BEST PIE EVER - peach/raspberry. There is no point trying to describe this perfect pairing. Matt had spice bread with goat cheese and honey. Just his style. I tried it but it didn't hold a candle to my BEST PIE EVER.

We were trying to time everything so we got to the venue after the opening band played. We were doing alright until the bridge we needed to cross was closed and the detour sign lead us into a no man's land of underpasses and signage voids. So we got to the concert a little after Finntroll started playing. They are such a happy metal band. A brief description of them is the marriage of "traditional Finnish hoedown music,"humppa", mixed with folksy black metal." We had a great time. I took a snippet of video. That lasted until I got busted by the bouncer. Here's my question: what difference does it make if I get a little footage to amuse myself and friends. It's not like the quality is bootleggable or anything. It is useless to pretty much everybody. Oh well. Here is the footage. It will stay here until I get reprimanded by someone who cares (?).

The hair swinging kills me. Is this a parody of a parody? See Dethklok. And Dethklok on MySpace.

And Dethklok with Finntroll music (!!! - check out the name on the store at the very beginning). The crowd went bonkers when this song played. Enjoy.