Cheap turkeys in Walla Walla

If you happen to blunder into this blog soon, you might find you can get a good deal on a turkey at Safeway on Rose Street in Walla Walla. I happened in Monday night and wound up with a 13.5-pound Safeway brand turkey, frozen, for $3.46. Supposedly you had to buy $25 worth of stuff to get a discount, and it was supposed to be 37 cents a pound for that size of bird, but I bought about $16 worth and got the 27 cents a pound deal. $3.46! Freaky.

Almost done, photos to follow

The flooring project, which I squared the bulk of away Sunday afternoon and Monday, is nearing a close, though I'm still fooling with the woodwork that is the transition from the living room to the dining room, as well as from the laminate floor of the child's room to its carpeted closet.

Anyway, the re-org has left my aging computer untethered from the Internet, which puts a damper on blog posts, especially ones with photos.

So, trust me: It looks good, but it'll look better when you can see it!

Home improvement

This post will take a while to get to the point, depending on what you're looking for in it, so just stick with me.

So, I usually forget to take "before" and "during" photos, so it should be no surprise that the befores are missing. But here are a couple of during photos of the now-in-progress project to install new flooring in the living room and the soon-to-be-former office. Those last five words are foreshadowing, for all you literary types.
Oh yeah, the living room is getting overhauled, too. Trust me, you're glad you can't see too much detail on the carpets.
OK, here's the roundabout part:

Our office has had several names over the years.

When we lived in this city in the 1990s, we called the office "Monny's room" because that was who lived there before he moved out and the computer and all our extra crap moved in.

In our dinky apartment in New Hampshire, we still called the second bedroom "Monny's room," though we occasionally also called it the office, among other words. It was small.

Here, we've pretty much called the office "the office" from day one, but in late July or early August, Allah willing, it should have a new name. Like, maybe, "Aurelia's room" or "Ridley's room" or "Gabriel's room" or something like that.

Whatever it is called, it will not have carpet. I am not a fan of carpet. I think it might be fairer to say I despise carpet. Read into that if you like... Also, if you were looking for the big excitement, go back a paragraph.

Anyway, being as we have two leviathans hanging around - and I'm alarmingly klutzy sometimes - tile is out, as is cork, as is most kinds of wood. I'm not sold on bamboo, either, not for flooring anyway. Too many questions about the adhesives for my taste. So our friends at DuPont, who make low-emission and generally responsible flooring now have this stack, plus another behind it, ready to be installed. On Monday!
And because every big job demands the acquisition of a nice tool, the butterfly lady kindly bought me this handy dandy late birthday present.
Stay tuned. If the job goes as planned, the next "during" photos all will be a blur. But the "afters" should be good. They damn well better be, anyway.

Oh, and someone likes the same music I do:

Birds of note

While in Kyoto last week with my father and the butterfly lady, we visited the Gold Pavilion (Kinkakuji), which is notable for its, um, pavilion clad in gold and - now, to me - for its pond, which when we were there had about a half-dozen Baikal teals swimming around. Here's what they look like (someone else's video, alas):

What a treat! Not a bird I ever expected to see, for sure.

Yesterday, I caught wind of another oddball bird, a great gray owl, that is hanging around the local Corps of Engineers flood-control project, and I met up with a couple of in-the-know bird people who showed me its haunt. A half-hour of snooping around in the cold river bottom and presto! Here's a for instance, so you can see how cool it was:

Work - where you to rest up after vacation

I'm still a little fuzzy from the time difference between Kyoto and Walla Walla, but I suppose all will be smooth soon. It is jarring to be in a place where I can understand virtually all of the conversations around me and read everything I can see.

Is that a good thing? I don't know. It's handy at the grocery store when you're trying to read labels, but not so handy when you have to listen to every cotton-picking thing everyone says.

I don't think I've used cotton-picking in a conversation, ever, by the way.

New back yard

Winter is approaching, and with it - maybe - some rain. For us and our Newfies, that means mud season in our abysmal back yard. But now there are Eight Paws of the Newfpocalypse, so we decided to install a lawn (and underground sprinklers).

Here's pretty much what the yard looked like before:
That darker patch in the middle used to be a planter bed, which was super successful last year but not so much so this year. Yuki's puppyhood took a toll. Anyway, I used a Ridgid digging fork for the demo (about $30, bought to replace a crappy Craftsman fork I finally got my money back on. The Craftsman was the second free replacement after the original conked out). Here's how much fun hand turning soil is:
It is good exercise, though, and the rental rototillers were heavy and our CRV lacks a trailer hitch. I think the whole demolition/grading (with a rake, mostly) took about six hours for 450 square feet. Hey, small yard. But small yard full of junkola. I found a bunch of former paving in part of the yard:
and smaller odds and ends, too. This place would have been a good archaeology lab, though it is too rich in artifacts to be realistic.
Anyway, here's a view of the prepped yard, and the big stack of sod (About $95, including sales tax and a $5 deposit on the pallet):
At this point, I hadn't laid in the sprinkler, but I squared that away in about an hour using flexible PVC, a couple of sprinkler heads (our side yard is too small to irrigate without watering the porch and/or driveway). The pipe, sprinkler heads, joints, timer and such cost about $130, so besides time, this project was pretty inexpensive. The labor was laborious, though:
You lay sod just like flooring, really:
And here's mostly finished:
I misunderestimated on the square footage, so I ran out just as I finished the yard. As in, I ran out of sod at the same time as I ran out of places I needed to put it. Now all we need to do is see if it takes, and holds up to the canines, and the winter, and...

Bad-ass bulls, etc.

My mom, her boyfriend and I moseyed over to the fair a couple times Saturday, once in the afternoon to check out the exhibits and eyeball the rides, and again in the evening/night for the rodeo, which coincides with the fair each year.

The nighttime rodeos each day are the usual way for people to see the events, but people living on the cheap (night tickets are $10) could take in rodeo action during the day prior to the fair getting into full swing.

But then you wouldn't get the "advantage" of the harangue from the announcer, nor the genuinely entertaining antics of the rodeo clown. We're lucky to have a hyper, athletic and funny guy, JJ Harrison - a local dude who used to be a schoolteacher here - who pretty much horses around during the competition. Sometimes his timing is crap (i.e. capering around on one side of the arena while a competitor puts his butt on the line riding a feisty horse or a pissed-off bull. But he is hilarious.

Anyway, last night's highlight, for me, was one bull that after ditching its would-be rider, refused to be corralled and spent about 5 or 10 minutes killing time in the arena, feinting at the clown, walking around where it pleased, ignoring the cowboys who roped it and generally making a pest out of itself. A huge, scary, threatening pest.

I know, I know: Rodeos are a horrible scourge on animal welfare. But a) I'm pretty sure from having been to a bunch that's not true; and b) at least these critters aren't killed (bullfighting, cockfighting, dog fighting) and have a chance to win on their own (unlike horse racing, to pick an example at random).

I did wish a few times I was at a rodeo in a country where I don't speak the language, so that the announcer's nonstop commercials for trucks, trailers, home loans, bank accounts and anything else a sponsor had on offer would just be babble. But that's a pretty minor complaint, in the big picture.

On a side note: Although our city can be pretty segregated ethnically, the fair is not one of the places that happens, and neither is the rodeo.

Around town

Big Katy doesn't like the big heat of summer around here, but sometimes the weather is Newfy-approved. Or there are sprinklers to soothe the beast. Yuki, of course, is way too young to be out on major expeditions. Anyway here are some shots from a walk with the pooch and the butterfly lady to the college's organic garden, where we volunteer some time, and beyond, to Big K's favorite in-town haunt.

The entrance to the garden has a funky gate of reclaimed junkola. It is still up because meth addicts don't waste time with ferrous metal.
Big K lends a helping paw to a flower-seed collector, or at least puts on a helping face.
The water dog thinks Eastern Washington stinks, mostly, but not the parts that have sprinklers.


Here's a pretty pleased face midway through the party.
and taking a break after the festivities in another Newfy-approved area, the shade.
Lulu's right, they are our family :)

Wishing for fall

But not very hard: I'm all for hot, dry weather.

I am, however, thinking seriously about installing an underground sprinkler system and a small lawn for our back yard. The dogs would enjoy the grass, I think, and it would help to keep the HUGE supply of weeds at bay back there. Plus, it would give me a fun project that wouldn't cost very much (the sprinkler part, anyway - I don't know what turf runs these days, and the dogs make seeding impossible).

I would bemoan this move as a surrender to the all-American ideal of a green stretch of grass were it not for the quite small dimensions of this lawn-to-be. One thing you can say for our house: There's not a lot of room wasted on a big yard.

Anyway, that's what's occupying the non-work, non-puppy, non-cook, non-swimmer parts of my brain just now.

New puppy = lazy Saturday

But not too lazy. Our new Newfoundland pupy, Yuki - or whatever we wind up calling her instead - passed the night more restfully than I expected... which means I got up with her at 2:30 to go out, come back in, go back out (after whizzing on the floor a couple of times), hang around outside (for some appropriately placed whiz), come back in, play, play, play and conk out at 3:30. But she did sleep the rest of the night, so that's pretty good, really.

She did need to have someone sleep down on the floor next to her crate so she could get over the scariness factor. She raised a hue and cry until I came down, opened the door and cuddled her for a while. Naturally, she got too darn hot and schlumped into her box to rearrange the towel and curl up for both of her long stretches of sleep. Yeah, big scary crate.

But we received her non-housebroken and non-crate trained, so you have to start somewhere.

Today, we went downtown (in the auto, not on foot), and she got some visiting time in at the bank, where they plied her with treats, as well as at work, where we dropped in for a spell. Pretty big day for puppy, who's now completely conked out on the kitchen floor. Still, she didn't walk far at all, but with large-breed puppies, you have to go easy for a *long* time (the rule of thumb is as many minutes walking each day as the puppy is weeks old - not even around the block here, unless you carry her). She's ridiculously cute.

How I spent my weekend

The front yard has been a disaster area since we moved in three and change years ago, and although I've made a few moves to improve it, it has been mostly weeds most of the time.

Assets include four Russian sage plants (planted by me), two trees that survived out of the lot of 10 from the Arbor Day people a few years ago (though one is pretty bent and needs staking), a rhododendron (one of the three great objects, don't you know), a pretty carnation-like plant that has tons of little pink flowers, three pussy willows and an assortment of hyacinth, grape hyacinth, tulips and now about a half-dozen lunaria (those really cool silver dollar plants that have the funky seed pods and look like this when blooming (thank you UNH Cooperative Extension for the photo!):

However, as is so true of most of life, assets have been outnumbered by liabilities, including:

• Crabgrass (I'm thinking it's so named for its weird shoots that usually run underground)
• Armyworms (curses!)

• Weird wild carrot/parsley type weeds that are nearly ineradicable and unusually numerous.
• Other weird wild carrot/parsley type weeds that are nearly ineradicable and unusually numerous.
• Assorted weedy grasses, which combined with the crabgrass apparently give the armyworms a great neighborhood to live in.
• A square concrete pad, about 4 feet on a side, which I was reminded today is (was :) about eight fucking inches thick (code for sidewalks is 3 or 4 inches), poured by the city in the distant past to accommodate a previous resident.
• Three oddly placed square concrete tiles, about 15 inches on a side, maybe for a walkway? (these are now an asset, of course)
• 400,000 river rocks varying in size from thumbnail to Palestinian grenade (heavy enough to dent a tank, in other words).
• Relentless sunshine and a busy street with the mountains on one end and damn near Oregon on the other, which is another way of saying about 400,000,000 weed seeds blowing into the yard a week.

Saturday, I trimmed the pussy willows (yes, I thought of that, too) and dug out the more stony side of the yard, retrieving so many stones I could make a snazzy dish for the outdoor faucet and the downspout from the gutters, as well as surrounding the water meter with a significant pond of stones.

I rearranged the concrete tile things so they are now three diamonds in a row, kind of Japanese walkway style. I dug up maybe 250 pounds of weeds, too. I got two blisters and a good night's sleep.

Today (Sunday), I dug out the other side of the yard, but not completely, because I did the same thing when we moved in so it wasn't critical. But I did zap most of the crabgrass and dug out several armyworms. I observed a wolf spider, several centipedes, some unidentifiable spiders, a ton of people at the neighbor's yard sale and some pretty clouds.

I also demolished the concrete slab using an electric jackhammer (I did sing Jackhammer John while I was at it (for two hours)) borrowed from my neighbor, whose kindly daughter and several other relatives helped me chuck into the back of a truck. I got the hang of the jackhammer when I had about 1 square foot left to demo. Today, I re-got the two blisters, plus another. But it was well worth it.

Anyway, the plan is to plant eight lavender plants (picked up in Oregon - no sales tax and friendlier businesses with lower prices than up here), stake the tree that needs it - and maybe move it - and infill with poppy and black-eyed Susan seeds.

In case you were wondering, and had the patience to get this far, black-eyed Susans are my favorite flower.

What did you do today?

I was up to a few things...

These kind gentlemen were part of a crew assembling the craft I got to ride in this morning (my first balloon ride).How about this view?
I can see why a balloon ride is on the do-before-you-die list - it was an unparalleled experience, hard to describe. The sensation was like the moment after you do a flip turn in the pool and are coasting/surging out for the next length, only the view is much, much better.

Quasi-evidence it was me up there:
If you're a reader of the Union-Bulletin, you can look for a column about the ride in the Balloon Stampede tabloid, and also a photo feature (with not these shots) in an upcoming Panorama.

Also, what I've been up to on the loom lately.
I got the gold silk I used in the weft of this scarf as a throw-in with my new-to-me loom. It is a Wow! yarn for sure.

Seen on the road to adventure

A lot of the concrete pourers left their shingles on their handiwork back in the day. R.E. Mills is the only one I can recall finding in the city who left his phone number, too.

Customer service

Now, I'm all for shopping local, but not yesterday. The butterfly lady's glasses broke - frames snapped in half, so she needed a new pair. This isn't so bad (except for the cost), because she's been looking for new ones anyway.

So I called the eye doctor, whose office is less than a block from our house. No dice: Their turnaround is seven to 10 days, and that's for a rush job. OK, no big deal. I called one of the dispensing optical places in town, and the guy said that depending on the prescription, they might have the lenses in stock (a couple of hours), or at worst a couple of days.

Two days is too long; two hours is OK. So I asked whether he could check, if I told him her prescription. Nope, I'd have to bring the prescription in for him to see.

Bullshit. The prescription is four god damn numbers, not some inscription in Aramaic. Besides which, I do not like gamesmanship, and he just wanted to get us in the door so we'd be one step closer to buying from his shop. To put it gently, fuck that. And in this small way, fuck Walla Walla, too. Pissants.

So we called a LensCrafters in the metropolitan area about an hour's drive to the west. "No problem," says the lady on the line, "Just read me the prescription and I'll see if we have the lenses in stock."

Indeed they did, and though we paid a pretty penny, she got her glasses, we got an excuse to go shopping and Katy the Newfoundland got a nice ride. I would have been happier, though, with a viable local option, or at the very least, adequate customer service.

New Hampshire lite/fight club

Well, we finally got a decent snow. I think the last time I saw snow like this here was in the mid-'90s. Katy is a hog in mud in this; Max is OK with it, but would really prefer to have his snow a la carte (aka without the Newfie who's usually included).

Here's their usual hostilities:

Geez louise

OK, now that all hell has quit breaking loose:

Strong wind did not destroy our home, nor are many dead, unless you count the trees, but wow. Big storm, big wind, lots of trouble. As for us, just a little damage when the power crews re-hooked up our electricity (the power pole was destroyed by a falling tree). The front page for that day is here.

Anyway, the paper had to publish off site, a new one for me, and the first time in memory the paper couldn't get out at the plant. A good video about that is here, produced by my friend and colleague Carlos. Complete with my messy hair, cackling and a nice shot of the butterfly lady (and the rest of the crew, of course).

The video is from our makeshift newsroom - we could finish the paper in town but had to use an out-of-town press - and around town, which as you can see took a decent wallop from the wind. Not a big storm from a global perspective, but a good thumping for this city.

Needless to say, this was a great day from a work perspective. Pretty sad for our city, though. No human casualties were reported, though.

The past few days have been pretty busy, in a good way...

Snow days? Pah

A brief reminder of what winter weather looks like blew away with the breeze the past couple of days. Snow fell like mad (for here), but now it is so mild I wore a T-shirt and shorts to walk the dogs. Pretty nice, really.

Penny-pincher me is always happy to see toasty weather in the "cold" season, so as to keep the gas bill down, but ex-New Hampshire resident me is sad to see the flurries flee. What can you do.

Is this town the next Napa?

Apparently, someone thinks so, and the flagship publication of the company I work for carries a story to that effect. At one point, a local person makes a reference to "wine-country living" and I can see that some people here do enjoy that kind of lifestyle.

But many others do not, and I think if you spend some time out here, you'll find a lot more bullethole-ridden road signs, beer cans tossed at the side of the road out in the wheat fields and empty storefronts than you might associate with a cutesy tourist trap.

For this I am thankful. My alma mater has spent the years since my commencement doing a disgraceful job of re-landscaping, turning the campus into what one of my pals calls "the entrance to an REI," and I think that if certains powers-that-be had their way, the whole god damn city would be upscale, generic crap.

I'm all for progress, but I will be sorry if my town finishes marginalizing the people who can't afford an $8 hamburger.

Maybe Harry Potter's in town

En route to work today, I heard a gaggle of crows raising Cain in a tree. No big shock, but then out of the tree tumbled a great-horned owl.

The owl landed about 15 feet from me and hunkered down, blinking and rearranging its feathers for a couple of minutes before silently flying across the creek and out of sight, pursued by several crows.

That's not the first owl I've seen between work and home, but I haven't seen one in quite a while, and never on my somewhat busy street.

Fighting the clutter war

My late uncle, a lunatic packrat, kept his house full, and I do mean full, of mostly all junk.

A few treasures lurked in the shadows:

Here, a dust-drowned set of handcrafted elephants of increasing size from teeny to a few inches tall.

There, cordial glasses in the form of crystal thistles.

Everywhere, undiscarded junk mail, stultifying books, flimsy old tableware, empty hooch bottles.

I do not wish to dispute my uncle's title as Reigning Champion of Junk Retention, so I frequently visit upon my home a flurry of tidying, which usually results in a bag - or several - for the local charities to figure out. I enjoy the process, mostly because I like to rediscover all the stuff that I thought was worth keeping the last time I passed through.

I don't buy much stuff, and neither does the butterfly lady, which leaves me wondering about the ability of my belongings to multiply. I would prefer that when they do procreate, they make something useful that I want, like a table saw or a new motorcycle, instead of five cardboard mailing tubes, 35 pencils and a stack of plastic plates.