The O-Zone

It’s well and truly stuck down too!  I used another 5 gallon bucket of the adhesive.

It has to dry completely before we can put the grout on the floor.

So, next weekend I will play with mud again.  Oh joy, oh rapture, or something like that.  Tomorrow it will be a miracle if I can move around at all.  Sure makes the room look larger and neater, even in spite of the fact it is a total disaster area.

Finally getting around to putting grout on the tile floor in the basement.  Good, clean fun.

I only look demented because I am

Tomorrow we’ll move the washer and dryer again, and lay the rest of the tiles.  Next weekend I’ll repeat this messy grout process, and then we can start the rest of the finish work in the room.  It’s getting closer to being finished!  How exciting.

Mess cleaned up and ready for the next step, laying more tile to the left of this first section of flooring.

First a sunset.  Last night we had rock and roll thunderstorms.  One bolt hit just uphill from the house, around a second between the flash and the kaboom.  Mishkin leaped off the couch and ran to the sliding glass doors to look outside.  We’ve never seen a cat that wasn’t afraid of thunder and lightning, but we have one!

Between bands of clouds, and sheets of rain, the sun made a brief appearance.

Today I indulged Mishkin in one of his favorite games… wrestling.

He loves this game, and tries to put his whole head under my hand for the dreaded Aliens face hold.

After the face hold, then the real fun begins, he holds on to my hand and kicks with his back feet.

While he looks fierce, he isn't biting or using claws on his front or back feet.

We both play this game with him several times a day.  He loves this one almost as much as “chase the cat.”

It took the whole five gallon bucket of floor adhesive for the first half of the floor, due mainly to the extremely rough and uneven concrete surface the tile is being laid on, but the first four boxes of tile are now residing in their permanent home.

Two pieces of plywood enable us to walk around on the tiles in their half-way finished state of being.

This was a first for me.  I’ve laid tile on small surfaces like a bathroom countertop, but never tried a floor before.  I hope I can walk tomorrow 🙂

We have to get more floor adhesive, and a couple of buckets for the grout process which won’t happen until Thursday.  We want the tiles to be well and truly stuck to the floor before we go any further.  Dan will be getting a plumber lined up (hopefully!) and next week we’ll have the water filter installed.

Our plan is to finish the 2nd half of the flooring next weekend.  It should go a little easier, not so many weird cuts and angles, though the walls in that part of the room are even more out of square than the other.

Fun!

I’ve decided to do a study of sunsets.  They are such short lived things and frequently beautiful from this location.

Color intensifies at the horizon short after the sun sets.

The band of color spreads north and south.

The sky color isn't the only thing changing. The hills take on varying hues of blues and purples as they fade into the distance.

The whole sky takes on the deepest shade from the original band of color, and lower clouds take on the same color as the distant hills.

And then it begins to fade to pastels.

Sunsets here can last for an hour, or they can be quick flashes of changing colors lasting only a few minutes like the one last night.  I don’t think we’ll ever get tired of watching them.

Speaking of watching things, we now bring you the Bunny Channel.

Mishkin is intently sending thought waves at the bunny, "You don't see the kitty behind the glass, just waves of grass waving in front of you... come closer...." It didn't work but it was a good try.

I asked the bunny what he thought of Mishkin, and I got a nose wiggle and whiskers flew around his face.  Then he hopped off the porch and went about his business.  We had a major convention of these little guys outside our window last night, judging by the noise level.  They were even growling at each other, a very odd noise indeed, and some drumming was also going on.

It all started as a hard water problem.   We had the local well driller company do a test on our well water to see exactly how hard it is.  The scale is this:  Water in the 0-10 range is considered soft water; ours is 65.  This explains a lot.  Water this hard  can damage washing machines, water heaters, pipes, clothes, skin and hair.  Fortunately, calcium carbonate is the only thing in our water, no iron or other things which would  complicate the softening issue.  Good news, bad news.

So we need to do something about it.  At first we considered the normal water softener which uses salt, electricity, and needs to be drained, which means the salt is going into ground water besides being ingested.  Hmmmm.  Not our favorite option on several levels.

Dan did research and found a de-scaling system which acts almost like a catalytic converter does; it takes the calcium carbonate out of suspension in the water and makes it charged in such a way that it doesn’t adhere to surfaces like the inside of pipes.  This was the original purpose of this tank, to remove scaling from the inside of pipes and then the engineers realized it also made the water feel soft.  Wow.  No ground water pollution problems!!  How cool is this?  And no added sodium in our water for drinking.  We avoid sodium as a matter of course, and this is just a great solution, and we hope it works!  It also uses no electricity, and has two filters, one before the water tank and one immediately after the water heater to remove calcium carbonate from heated water.

It seems like a simple solution, buy the tank and filters, and get a plumber here to install it.  But, first things must come first.  The tank sits on the floor, and we need to finish the floor in the basement which at this point is unfinished rough bare concrete.  Last year we purchased tiles for the floor but we hadn’t gotten up the energy to do anything with them since there was work to do first before the floor.

Seems like a simple solution, finish the floor.  But first things must come first.  We also wanted a closet for the washer and dryer to get them out of sight and make the room look more presentable.  So, before we can do the floor we had to build the laundry closet for the washing machine and dryer to live in.

We had the building materials for the closet in the garage since last year, but hadn’t felt like doing any building with them.

Walls built and sheetrock tacked down; new water tank sitting on the floor between the two other appliances.

We have the first tiles on the floor, dry fitting them to see how things are going to line up.  The landing at the floor of the stairs into the basement is already tiled.  And, of course, no two walls in the basement bear any resemblence to straight or square so all the edge pieces are going to require a lot of fiddling.  These new tiles are a smokey gray with purple overtones, and with random streaks of a golden yellow; they remind me of the granite cliffs around the area.

The hand-made door into the crawl space will be replaced with a small normal type of door with a felt gasket around all edges to keep mice from using it as a major highway into the house. Theoretically this will help cut down on the numbers of mice that Mish catches. Poor kitty....

We have to remove the washer and dryer from the closet first before we can actually work on this part of the room as they are too heavy to move across ungrouted tiles.

Hopefully we will get a plumber in to install the water softener equipment later this week.

Last of all will be painting in the room and installing a wall propane heater, and a couple of new light fixtures.   We have paint, we think, for this room, but neither one of us can remember what color it is.  It will just have to be a surprise.  And we have light fixtures in the garage.

All in all, these changes will make the basement a pleasant space instead of some place to avoid unless absolutely necessary.  It is the coolest room in the house in the summer.

We had a visitor on the porch yesterday, a baby Snowshoe Hare was peeking in the sliding glass doors.  Baby chipmunks are out and about in full strength too, and they too like peeking into the house.  Mish just has a fit that he can’t go out and play with them.  Better for all concerned that he can’t!

"Wow, what's in there? Something to eat perhaps?" Cute, small edition of the adults.

The baby hummingbirds are out in full force now, and we are filling the three hummingbird feeders at least once a day.  Pretty soon the baby Western Bluebirds should make their appearance.  The adults are very busy feeding them, and the male Bluebird spends a lot of time chasing chipmunks out of the Serviceberry bush next to the house.  The chipmunks weigh more than the bird, but he appears bigger with his feathers and he definitely has a lot more attitude, so he wins those confrontations.  It’s highly entertaining to watch.

It’s summer time, officially!  The rains are probably gone now for the next several months.

Late evening sunset on the longest day of the year.

Things are still so green everywhere around us.  Soon it will be browned by the hot summer sun.

Wildflowers are hidden by the tall grass, makes a good treasure hunt to go look for them.

The solar panels produce an amazing amount of power early in the day on the clear summer days.  It makes the fact the generator is acting up once again not as urgent a problem as sometimes.  We still need to sort it out, but it’s hard to get too excited about the problem.

By 11 am in the morning, the batteries are full and the rest of the day the panels are producing enough power for us to do whatever we want with electricity.

It seems odd to us that more emphasis isn’t given to installing solar panels all over the place with the intention of selling excess power back to the grid.  My cynical nature tells me that this isn’t of interest to the (pardon the expression), powers-that-be because there are no moving parts to wear out and thereby no ongoing source of income from installing new parts.  Planned obsolescence needs to become a thing of the past in this country but in this, the best of all possible worlds, that isn’t likely to happen.

All snows have melted from the ski resort, and they are no doubt counting the days until it returns.

We’ve been hearing this noise at night out in the woods, and Dan figured out what is doing it.  We have Ruffed Grouse here, and they drum in the spring, but it is a deep sound that starts slow, builds speed and then tapers off, sounding almost like a generator motor starting and then failing to engage.  This other sound was different, a rapid short burst of thumps.

It’s bunny hops, also known as Snowshoe Hare!  This is how they let each other know they are in the vicinity.

He loves the clover in the short grass in front of house, and sometimes we see him jump straight up in the air and kick his white feet out, joyously.

Pretty soon the babies will be running races all over the place.  There is always quite the population explosion for these little guys.

Our friend Brandon was just here visiting over the weekend.  It was so nice to see her again.  We took her two different directions from our house, up into the mountains for a woods and rocks experience, and then we went over to a ghost town to visit a museum.  The weather was just perfect, not hot at all and very few mosquitos.  We could get spoiled by this so very easily, in fact I think it has already happened so I can start whining about too hot weather any second now!

Monday morning before she left, we went for a ride on our Ranger, up the private road to a hillside a half mile from our house.

Dan and Brandon heading up the road to a gate we had installed between our two parcels of land. The green gate is off to the side of the private road.

The grass is high and green.  No danger of fire from the hot exhaust pipe on the vehicle.

There is a road under here somewhere....

There is a canyon that starts a few hundred yards from our house, but the terrain is so rough and there are so many fallen trees that we’ve never tried scrambling around to find it.  So we drove up the road a bit until we could walk across the grasslands and overlook the canyon.

Out of the trees and into wide open grasslands just a short distance from our house.

The Ranger seems small parked out there down the hill where we were walking.

Fun to get to use this machine for play instead of pushing snow.

There are several thousands of unfenced acres up there to wander around on.  The ground is rough, though, and the grass is very high which obscures where we plant our feet.  It makes for slow going.

Attempting to recreate the scene from "Sound of Music" by running down or up the hill would result in a broken ankle.

Regardless of how fast or slow we can walk, it’s extremely peaceful and quiet up here on the hillsides.

Around the crest of the hill is the pond at the head of the canyon.

There are supposedly some beautiful huge old trees down there, and someday we will have to persevere and find our way down to the bottom.

A very steep canyon wall for people who like climbing. I'm not one of those people.

Brandon in the middle of nowhere.

Birds are a lot more visible this time of year, all excited about the summertime.  This female Dusky Grouse (formerly Blue Grouse but some bird-brains decided to split the species into Dusky and Sooty), was very curious about the Ranger driving past her.

She was standing tall, trying to decide if we were something to run from, or not.

We could see her deciding to look at us from the other eye, in case we might look better or at least different, from another prespective.

We thought she might have a nest nearby since she wasn’t leaving quickly.

Redtail Hawks patrol the hillsides.

When the hawks decide to descend to the bottom of the hills, they fold their wings back and zoom very fast.  Our parrots always complain even if the predator is leaving at high speed.

During our walk up the hill, I added to the collection of wildflower pictures from in and around our property.

The daisy family is well represented. This is a Shaggy Daisy.

This is a Showy Daisy.

Brown-eyed Susan.

This is a Clarkia. When we first moved here, these flowers were so thick the hillsides looked pink. The rainfall appears to play a huge part in how abundant this flower is from year to year.

Thread-leafed Phacelia, this flower always reminds me of a geranium, which also grow wild up here. It confuses me every year.

These Harebells are sometimes misnamed bluebells. We have those as well, but these are larger flowers and showier, and a paler blue.

Harebell picture taking with a bunny-cam, showing how they look from a hare's perspective.

I haven't been able to figure out what this one is in my wildflower books.

There are more wildflowers blooming around here, but this post was already getting a bit too long.  Stay tuned!

This baby fawn is less than a week old, most likely.

The pictures are a bit fuzzy because I took them through the glass window in the front door.

"Look, Mom, the grass is short! Walking is sure easier here."

Our macaw as making a racket about this time, alerting us to the deadly predator in the front yard.  She has been on a roll today, yelling at all sorts of creatures.

Baby got past the distance comfort zone, and headed back to mother.

Pretty good at walking.

Big ears, and paying close attention to what the mother was saying.

The mother deer was staring at the house trying to decide if it was too dangerous or not.

She is really focused on the noise coming from the house.

She decided it was no big deal, and the baby was allowed to explore again, and then they headed up the hill.

They will be around here pretty much all summer.

We usually have several does and fawns here.  Since we don’t have dogs outside, the does leave the babies by our house to play and run around while the adults are munching everything in their path.  Like my flower beds.

We went for a walk today down by the river.  I garnered four mosquito bites, but next time we will take some bug spray with us!  It was fun to go for a walk again; our knees are recovering from the mistreatment of the other day.

Temperatures in the high 60’s and low 70’s makes for very nice walking.

A wide slow curve in the river, a favorite fishing spot for mergansers and other diving ducks.

This is a place where we’ve seen Mink playing along the edge.

The water level is dropping and not so much silt in the water. The melting snow must be just about done doing its thing.

We love all the green, and misty rain is very welcome.

Last years' Mullien stands tall.

There are tons of wildflowers in the grass, not readily visible from this distance however.

This is the view from the turnaround spot on our walk upriver, looking back.

Next to this grove of trees on the left side is a rock bar covered right now with over a foot of water.  Later on it’s a fun place to walk around, while trying not to break an ankle on the rounded river rocks.

Same space on the walk, looking upriver.

There is an old abandoned cabin along our walk.  Various birds use it for a nesting place.

The yellow flowers in the grasslands behind the cabin is a type of wild mustard.

And it must taste good.

Deer in mustard. I'm sure it must be an inspiration for a recipe somewhere.

There was a male Pheasant calling, or coughing which is more descriptive, in the tall grass behind the deer.  If we could translate what he was saying, most likely it was something unkind directed at these four footed invaders of his space.

Above the river was a flock of Nighthawks feeding and diving, and flirting with each other.

How many cows can you see hiding in this picture?  42.  They’re really good at this.

Actually, look for Nighthawks instead.

Long wings and a huge mouth, a great combination for bug eaters.

They make flying look effortless.

Zoom!!!

More zoom, on the upswing.

Amazing fliers. These are one of the last spring migrants to arrive on their breeding grounds.

So…. how many Nighthawks did you see?  We saw over 40 in this flock, but only caught a picture of a very few of this loose flock.

We do have one very sad report to make.  While we were gone over the weekend there was a tremendous thunderstorm, and there must have been some high winds associated with it.  And it knocked down the Bald Eagle nest.  That is one of the very unfortunate aspects of them building a nest in a large dead tree.   It was a very sad and shocking thing to see, their nest gone and their babies gone for the year.

Last week I got a new life experience as a vugraph operator, broadcasting a bridge game in real time.  We went to Penticton, BC, for the bridge finals of the Canadian National Team Championship Flight A; the teams were playing for the right to play in the Bermuda Bowl  in Sao Paulo, Brazil.  This is the most prestigious bridge tournament in the world.  Vugraph operator is the closest I’ll ever get to a bridge tournament at this level.

We got there on Thursday afternoon, and set up a couple of practice sessions to work out the bugs.  There were some, but judicious application of a flyswatter took care of those pesky critters!

Friday morning we went live, prime time as it were.  My heart rate was extremely fast, which didn’t help with keeping up with the extremely fast play of the cards.  I was very worried about missing the actual play of discards.  It took both of the two morning sessions to get used to this, and to settle down and enjoy the ride.

I discovered that I was too short to see over the screen and to the middle of the table, and for the afternoon sessions I had a box to sit on.  That helped a lot, and we figured out that if we stacked two chairs together, I would be able to see.  We did that at both tables for all of Friday.  Even though Colin and Bruce were both a lot taller than me, it also helped them.

Friday morning, getting ready to start session 5 of 8, perched on two chairs.

I was much more relaxed Friday morning, and the whole day was very entertaining for me.  Dan didn’t have it so good, he was stuck being bored while I was at the bridge venue.

International competitions all use these screens.

The way this works, for people who don’t know duplicate bridge for team games, is this.  Each team has four players playing during a session, and each team has a north/south pair and an east/west pair.  At the Open Room, the home team sits north and south, and the away team sits east west.  At the Closed Room, the home team sits east and west, and the away team sits north and south.  Both tables play the same boards, and the results are compared between the two tables.  This takes the element of luck out of the game to a huge extent, and it becomes a game of skill and cunning.

The cards are placed in a carrier which is set in the middle of the blue square seen in the middle the table, and flap is dropped down concealing the opening in the middle of the screen.  The players make their bids which are done using bidding cards, and the blue square is slid back and forth under the screen.  Once bidding is done and the opening lead is made, the flap is raised and the cards are played.  The players can see each others hands and cards but not their faces, so “table feel” is pretty much a non-issue.

I was sitting in the corner of the table, between the south player and the west player.

My job as vugraph operator was to keep track of which board number they were playing, enter the bids and play of the hand online, and it was then broadcast and commented upon by world class players from multiple countries.  The idea is that the vugraph operator is an observer and not a participant in the game, and so other than double checking the final result for the board, I managed to refrain myself from saying “SLOW DOWN, YOU GUYS!!!” which was something I felt like doing a whole lot of the time.

We got home bright and early Sunday morning and spent the next couple of days relaxing and recovering from this excursion.

On our way home we stopped at Mount Baldy ski resort to check it out.  I had hopes of being able to see the mountain we live on from up there, but alas we weren’t able to drive farther than the base of the mountain.  To get up for a view we would have to ride a chair lift and that wasn’t operating, and something I wasn’t keen on doing regardless.  On the upside, we did see a moose.

Monday we went to an organic farm and picked up 16 containers of just picked strawberries, and I spent the afternoon cleaning them, and that was our supper.  I always feel rich when I have a bunch of strawberries to play with.

The organic farmers, a young hippie couple who reminded us of us when we were a lot younger, have planted pickling cucumbers and I plan to get some of those and see if I can make pickles out of them.  I have Mom’s recipe and hopefully I can duplicate them.  Dan says that when he was in school, he could trade of those pickles for anything another kid had brought for lunch.  They were great pickles.  I miss her!!!!!