Lists and Plans

The swatch after being blocked, and the yarn.

The weekend endeth. It endeth well. In a flurry of energy, I bounded out of bed at 10:48 this morning and went to breakfast with the spouse. Really, I was energetic and enthusiastic even though it was so early. Okay so I didn't get much of a jump on the day, and I took a nap in the late afternoon, but I really did think about all my current projects today. Mostly I straightened and set up work areas.

I got the sewing area ready for the next great round of Dave's Hawaiian shirts. I planned the layout for the garage staging area of give away and throw away items from the lake storage. I organized my spinning, knitting, and computing area...

I have noticed when I save posting till after 11:00 at night, I am winding down and mentally cataloguing the day. It's good for me as it sets up the next day, but it doesn't make for an interesting post. As I am getting ready to go back to Austin the day after tomorrow and I have a ton of things I want to get done and a few things I need to get done before I go, it's hard to think anyway other than in linear, logical, orderly lists.

Tomorrow I need to get up early so I can call the vet to ask if I can pick some green apples from the backyard of the clinic. My jelly and jam making supplies have all arrived, though the copper pan arrived a bit crushed--I was able to bend it back out but I'm not sure I want to pay that much for a damaged pot. I let the restaurant supply company know about the damage right away... and have heard nothing back since. I'll go ahead and make a batch of green (unripe) apple jelly in the next couple of days so I'll have it as an ingredient for the next round of confitures I'll be making when I get back.

Dave is beginning to look a bit ragged in his 14 year-old Hawaiian shirts so I want to get a few new ones cut in the next couple of days so I can take them back to Austin with me and sew one or two up. I didn't bring a machine here this summer as I just planned to cut them all out and bring them back to sew this fall, but I think I'll have time to whip up one or two while I'm home. I hope. Unless everything there has gone to hell in a hand basket.

Now that the design for the bed is done I am ready to order the wood from Dupuis. I'd like to get that cut list in to them tomorrow--along with the list for the Doug fir for the workbench. I bit the bullet and bought three pieces of woodworking equipment and will be setting up the last studio area in Austin when we get home this fall. There is one last room underneath the master bedroom that is only accessible from outside and which seems to have been the workshop space for the first owner. There is a cement floor, lighting, and even an AC unit in the wall. I currently have it filled with all of the things I would have stored in the garage or a tool shed, but the garage is a glass studio, and we don't have a tool shed. We do, however, have a closet under the stairs to the apartment which will make an excellent place to store all the art fair display supplies, tables, tents, etc. I can hang yard tools and hoses and such by the potting bench area under the back deck--unless the new rain barrels take up all the space there. I'll have to co-ordinate the layout with Jay when I am back next week.

The yarn I spun, plied, and washed was dry today so I balled it up and knit a few swatches to make gauge for the sweater coat I am going to knit from my Tour de Fleece yarn. It's much prettier than I expected it to be. I don't like barber-pole striping in yarn, like you get when you twist two different colors of yarn together. However it looks better when it's knit as it looks more heathery and not stripy. Now I just need to figure out if I'm going to have enough. The pattern calls for a certain weight of mohair yarn instead of a yardage. Mohair weighs like dandelion fluff so I have no idea what a commensurate weight in wool would be. Surprisingly, I ended up making my gauge with the same size needles the pattern called for. I can only assume that had I used cobweb-like mohair (even the three strands knitted together that it calls for), I would've had to go down several needle sizes.

When I come back from Austin I'm going to bring some sheet glass in my suitcase (in tile-sized pieces) so I can use them as the base for the glow-in-the-dark tiles I want to test. I have a lot of frit--and even a few jars of morceaux--here, but I don't have any clear sheet at all.

I'm going to see if the local animal shelter would like the rabbit play yard and super hutch. If they don't, I'll try to sell them. When they're moved out from under the deck I'll have room to set up my fleece skirting and prep station so I can do the big fleece for my master spinning class that I brought from Austin.

And that's enough to fill my brain for tonight. Good night!

Saturday?

It doesn't feel like Saturday. We took Kyla to the airport in Missoula to head back to Atlanta today and I had my usual joyful experience with TSA accompanying her to the gate. Two discussions with the TSA supervisor, a VERY thorough groin pat down front and back followed by a comprehensive residue test both on my hands (front and back) and on the the gloves of the agent who patted me down (also both front and back). But my cavities weren't searched, and I did not lose my calm so I guess I can count it as a win.

I did spin today--I plied 582 yds and then wound it on a swift. After I took it off the swift I checked the twist (to make sure it was balanced) and it was; it hung in a perfect loop, not twisting back on itself at all. So I soaked it in hot water for a couple of minutes and then took it out and thwacked it a bit to set the twist. Tomorrow, when it's dry, I'll weigh it (to see how many yds/oz I get so I can make sure I have enough for the coat I'm going to knit), and then I'll knit a swatch for gauge for the coat. I am very eager to start knitting again. I am still bummed that I can't find the lavender cotton sweater I was knitting earlier this spring.

Spinning (and Dave's excellent pesto chicken for dinner along with Steve Adler's company) were the only good parts of the day. I already gird my loins for the contractor issues in Austin next week, and the DSL here (which was just upgraded to 25 Mgbs) tested out at 1.7 Mgbs download speed tonight. I checked because we kept timing out on Deadwood again. We finally gave up on watching.

It's too early to go to bed so I'll either read, work on the bed cutting list, or practice piano when I'm done posting. Or maybe I'll go clean the kitchen. Here's hoping tomorrow is a less blah day.

Tour de Fleece and Life

As of tonight I have spun just over 1.2 lbs of fleece into yarn singles which I will eventually ply together into a two-ply art yarn for a coat. Of course I have about another three lbs of fleece to spin first. I had hoped to have it all spun and done during the Tour de Fleece, but life has intervened and I am behind. However I cannot lament my tardiness as I spent the time I was not spinning being a good mother, a good neighbor, a good wife, and a good hostess. I didn't manage good housekeeper, but nobody's perfect!

Tomorrow Jessie's friend Kyla goes home to Atlanta, and next Tuesday Jessie and I head back to Austin. She gets her braces off, and I gird my loins to deal with contractors. Maybe I'll give myself a treat and have my legs waxed--nothing like ripping all the hair on your legs out by the roots to take your mind off of contractors! I am a little irked with my main contractors right now since they didn't finish the pond and get it filled and the water cleared in time for me to put all the koi from the holding tank on my back deck into it. I ended up leaving them in the holding tank, charging Devon with keeping the water filled and clean, and asking Zaga to feed them. I planned to release them into the pond next week when I am home. Unfortunately, earlier this week some animal discovered the all-you-can-fish buffet and removed most of the water and all but four of the fish from the tank. Whatever it was very nicely left heads from some and headless bodies from others for Zaga to clean up. I was very sad to hear that the three fish I brought from Atlanta--my big white one and the two big orange ones--were among the casualties. Had the contractors finished the pond when they were supposed to, I would've been able to put the fish in it and they would have been safe. If wishes were horses...

Now it's late at night again, and after being gone all day, I need some snuggling time with the spouse.

Sapphires!

We are home from mining for sapphires in Philipsburg today, and for the first time we left stones to be heat treated and faceted. Now I am thinking I might be regretting having one of my stones heat treated. It was already pretty dark--though more aqua than royal blue--and it might have been nice to just have it natural. The heat process typically clarifies the stone and saturates the color, but there is something to be said for natural...

Anyway it was amazing how many good sized unfractured sapphires we found today. Jessie, Kyla and I all had rough stones in the 2-2/12 carat size with no fractures. Kyla's biggest stone had a beautiful iron spot in it that will go yellow with heat. I think it's going to be gorgeous cut and will be about 1/2 to 3/4 carat. My big pink one has a large fracture that doesn't go all the way through so the appraisers thought it was worth doing. I said it was okay to cut it with a bit of an inclusion. The stones below are all mine from one small bag of gravel and include my large dark one and my big pink one. I left one more round one a little smaller than the one on the upper left to be done too. Now we just have to wait seven weeks until they're done!

A Day Of Pain

Today was torture--and not just because I spent over two hours dealing with CenturyLink screwing up our Internet service. We are left tonight with service so slow there is no way we could watch anything, and the 25Mbs service won't be turned on until Friday. *sigh* I just don't have the heart to call again to tell them they didn't set our service back to what it was--they dropped it even lower.

As if dealing with a telephone/Internet company wasn't bad enough (46 minutes on *one* call!), I also spent an hour and a half at the dentist getting one new crown put on and being fitted for another one. This time the dentist did not manage to numb me all the way--even after three hefty shots of novocaine--and it hurst much more tonight than it did after the first one was fitted.

Icing on the cake is that I still do the zombie shuffle when I walk as my ankles and knees are still in major pain from yesterday--everyone else is recovered. Sure, I'm hte oldest, but I need to get back into shape! For the rest of the night--which admittedly isn't very much--I'm going to chill and read my book. I wish we had a big deep soaking tub here--or a hot tub--but I'll just have to settle for a hot shower. Naw, that doesn't sound appealing at all.

Tomorrow off to Philipsburg to mine for sapphires!

Glacier National Park 2017

Wild Goose Island

The river below is right next to
the road we started on

I am reminded that I am no longer a spring chicken, I am more like an old stew hen. I hopped handily enough out of bed at 5:15 this morning and hustled everyone into the mini van for our trip to Glacier. Then I drove with spry alacrity up to the park, arriving at West Glacier just before 8:00 am. At that point Dave took over driving and I took over photographing EVERYTHING with the new camera.

Looking back down the road we drove up

My sexy spouse

 With all the stops (and we didn't make one at Logan Pass this year) it took us until 10:40 to get to Swiftcurrent Motor Inn. It's right next to Many Glacier on the northeast side of the park. It was drizzling lightly when we arrived, and we were all hungry so instead of hitting the trail right away, we waited 20 minutes until the cafe opened for lunch and then we ate. With one thing and another, it was about noon before we hit the trail. Hindsight is 20/20, but if we had started hiking right away we probably would've seen the moose by Fishercap Lake or the enormous sow grizzly and her two cubs further up the trail. But you never know when the wildlife will be out and about. I'd like to do that hike again--next time earlier in the morning (maybe after staying the night at Swiftcurrent).

Bullhead Lake--the end of our hike

Field of beargrass

The last time we hiked the Swiftcurrent area Jessie was only 8 or 9 and we hiked a more strenuous trail up to Iceberg Lake. I could no more have done that hike today than I could've flown. The hike we took was very easy and mostly level, but at the end of 3/1/2 miles Dave and I reached Bullhead Lake and decided to call it good enough. We were on the Swiftcurrent Pass hike, and we knew we weren't going to do the steep part at the end leading up to the pass, but I thought we'd make it to the end of the Bullhead lake at the bottom of the mountain. However the girls turned back before we even got there and said they'd wait for us at Redrock Falls. Dave and I went on, but then it started raining again and the descending hikers reported no animal sightings further on so we turned around and headed back out.

Ground squirrel

The cows of Glacier

In spite of the lack of wildlife bigger than squirrels (except for the multiple small herds of cows at the entrance to and even inside the park at the Many Glacier entrance) it was an incredible hike. I have never seen so many different wildflowers blooming all at once--and the beargrass blooms were just dense everywhere and taller than Jessie. Last winter was a big snow year, and the spring was very rainy so the growth is explosively lush. And it's not like we didn't see large animals all day. We were fortunate enough to take in the casual browsing show put on by a young male mountain goat up by Logan Pass. I even saw another goat settled in on the side of a cliff above the road as we were on our way back down the road at the end of the day.

Jessie's pic of the fire from '15

The burned area now

It was our first visit to the Park since the devastating fire on the east side two years ago. Jessie was on a boat right off shore of where the fire started and ended up being out on the lake for two hours watching it grow from a plume of smoke to an explosive conflagration. The boat she was on was held there in case they needed to use it to evacuate hikers trapped by the blaze.

Where Siyeh Studio was born

Today the burned trees still stood stark and bare--many peculiarly burned leaving blackened bark with shocking white trunks showing through. And beneath all of them bloomed a riot of wildflowers and lush meadow grasses. As sad as it was that there was a fire, it was really overdue. That area was full of beetle-killed pine trees just waiting for a careless match. Nature reboots just like everything else, and fire is one of her major ways to do it.

Even when the sky is sullen, there's no
more beautiful place to be

The requisite mountain goat shot

We're home at last, and I managed--barely--to hobble into the house and down the stairs groaning all the way. My ankles hurt. My shins hurt. My calves hurt. My hips and my gluteus maximus hurt. The skin on my inner thighs hurts the most as I wore one of my currently-usual dresses on the hike and chafed that tender skin most egregiously.

Logan Peak

Heaven's Peak

Next time I'll wear some spandex workout shorts under my dress for hiking. Or I guess I could just dress like everyone else in their frufty Gore-Tex with their rain gear and their fancy hiking boots and their walking poles. I definitely got some funny looks in my Keens and a blue dress with a camera slung around my neck--especially in the rain by Bullhead Lake after most of the casual hikers had turned back. Whatever. My mother used to do all her serious hiking in thongs--excuse me: flip flops. I keep forgetting that Jessie told me "thongs" means something else now other than footgear. Again, whatever.

Bird on a dead tree

Birdwoman Falls

Now I sit with a pre-shower Negroni, posting and curating the day's photos to pick the best one for the 365 project and the runners up for here. It's going to be a tough choice--Glacier National Park is my favorite place on earth for a reason: there is nowhere with more breathtaking views.

Monday Blues

Adverbs are my favorite descriptor, but adjectives come in very handy when describing days. There are long days, hard days, dark days, great days, sunny days--the list is is inexhaustible. Today was a difficult day. I took the trailer to the lake and filled it with the first big load of my parents'--mostly my Dad's--things. I did pick up a some of Mom's fabric and the kitchen utensils from the lake cabin that Ed and Susan don't want, but it felt like most of the load was everything from Dad's life. There were two boxes of ski maintenance equipment including old irons for waxing the bottom of the skis and files for sharpening the edges. There were boxes of maps, notes, entomology books, and tax returns going back to 1983 (okay, I picked those up in my last load, but they fill out the feeling of the rest of the things I loaded so I added them in). Everything I loaded today was stuff they had stored, not things from their daily lives. And almost all of it will go to the second hand store benefitting the animal shelter or to the dump. There are a few things worth selling, and fewer still that I will keep. I am left feeling like I am wiping all trace of him away.

It will be an early night tonight as we're leaving the house at 6:00 am for Glacier tomorrow morning so I'm not going to go on. I'm feeling melancholy and sad, and I think I'll just go to bed.

Death Of an Appliance

I decided to finish the Frosted Mini Wheats for breakfast this morning and end my binge on sugary cereal. However when I pulled the carton of milk out of the fridge, it didn't slosh, it sludged. Uh oh. I knew we'd been having a problem with the freezer--the ice cream bars weren't (bars) and the ice cream wasn't (iced). But apparently the whole unit is giving up the ghost. I could have called a repairman, but I think--though I am not sure--that this fridge might have been the fridge we had when I was a teenager. Maybe not, but it is an OLD unit. So instead of repairing it, we decided to replace it. I went online, and then the ruralness of our situation became apparent and Dave and I drove to the Home Depot in Kalispell and picked one out.

I had to face the hard reality that we are truly in the boonies here when I tried to order one online and have it delivered and I got the message, "We're sorry. Appliance delivery isn't offered to your area. Your nearest store may be able to offer other arrangements." So I couldn't get free delivery--or any delivery at all for an on-line purchase--but we were able to go into the store, pick from 3-4 models in the basic style we wanted that they had in stock, and schedule delivery for Thursday. We could have picked from a wider selection had we been willing to wait, but what they had was more than good enough. And for $48 they will deliver, unpack, set-up and install (water line) the new one and haul away the old one. I call that a steal of a deal.

On the way home we stopped at the Tamarack Brewing Company in Lakeside for lunch. They have some of the best food and best beer on the lake. It's too bad that Lakeside is right outside of Kalispell and so clear on the other end of the lake from us (about a 45 minute drive). Wish they were in Polson. They also had a gorgeous firepit outside made by Big Sky Backyards. I looked them up and fell in love with the the one below. Someday it might adorn the garden at Stone's Throw.

As we are mostly sans fridge, we will be eating out for a few days. Or Dave could shop daily for fresh food and we could pretend we're Europeans who grocery shop everyday and who neither store much nor have big refrigerators. I will, however, see if the neighbors can keep our ice cream for us till Thursday. And I can't wait to have ice and water in the door again!!!!! The old Kenmore certainly didn't have it (its ice maker hasn't even worked for the past few years) nor does the Thermidor fridge at Stone's Throw have ice or water in the door. Come to think of it, we didn't even have ice in the door in Atlanta--just water. We haven't had a fridge with ice and water in the door since Jessie was one and we lived in Austin the first time! Oh I am going to enjoy this.

Not Much Ado About Nothing

After our big day out yesterday, we utterly failed to do anything much today. The girls didn't even want to go out to the lake they were so tired! They spent the entire afternoon watching Breaking Bad--and that's after sleeping the entire morning. I wasn't much better. I got up and fed the cats, but then I went right back to bed for a few hours. Now after doing mostly nothing all day myself (I sat on the periphery of the girls BB binge watch), I am writing a quick post, getting the dogs settled for the might, turning off the sprinkler, and going to bed. Tomorrow I am going to insist we go out to the lake. It was 96 here today (consider that we have one little air conditioning unit for one room in the house and nowhere to put another one) and we are just not set up to handle those temps. I need to spend the afternoon in a nice glacier-fed lake staying cool.

Summer and the Bison Range

Two does in the creek

my best shot of the day

Today may be the first day I have really felt like it was summer vacation--odd timing as it was also only the second day I have set an alarm since we have been here. We got up and out the door by 7:30 this morning to drive through the National Bison Range. It's only about a half hour away from the house and we arrived so early the visitor center wasn't even open yet. Even so there were three other vehicles spaced out a bit on the road in front of us.

Tiny mountain chipmunk

Antelope on the ridge

Wildlife sightings were decent, not great, but the 300 mm lenses on the new camera let me get some great close-in shots. Jessie, however, got the best shot of the day (again) (with my camera as hers is in Austin) of a young bull bison swiping his nostril with his tongue. We saw antelope, deer, bison, and chipmunks. We didn't see bighorn sheep or bears, which we have in the past.

Herd of cow and calf bison

Jessie's tongue-in-nose-bison

I want to make one more drive through this summer but at the end of the day. The latest you can start through is 7:00, and as late as it stays light, that would leave plenty of opportunity for great photos as the animals move around at the end of the day. I also would like to make that drive in the Mini Cooper with the top down. Dave is a bit nervous about that idea as he thinks the bison might mistake the Mini for another bison and either try to mate with it or fight it. I want to take the Mini as I can get good 360 degree photos without having to get out of the car (which makes Dave very nervous).

Another picturesque doe

Saw lots of buck deer with large racks

The reason the day felt like vacation was that--even though I did much the same as I have been doing--I didn't feel like I should be doing something else instead of napping or watching woodworking videos. I just went with the flow wherever it carried me. I need to cherish thee moments because come fall and Austin, I'll be in the thick of it again.

Bull bison lying in his dust wallow

Old trestle bridge for the railroad

Tonight will be an extension of the sloth with dinner at Dairy Queen in Ronan, followed by the new Spider Man movie. Tomorrow I'll probably take the railer out to the lake and empty my parents things out the metal building so it'll be ready for my uncle when he arrives in a few weeks. I still didn't spin today, nor did I practice tomorrow. At this point it's going to be hard to conquer Rachmaninoff and finish all the fiber I'm spinning for the Tour de Fleece, but I can't be too concerned. The inbox will always be full.

The pink glow of sunset on the snowy peaks in the east as the moon rises over the Mission Mountains

Sloooowed Down

Gallifrey guards the new trailer.

I am suddenly in the land of unbelievably slooooow Internet. We couldn't even watch Deadwood tonight because it was too frustrating waiting to it to buffer enough to play (over and over and over again). I called tech support, and they (of course) don't see any problems or congestion on the line. So now I get to spend Sunday afternoon waiting for the technician to show up. We are supposed to have 10 Mb service, shouldn't that be enough to stream two movies at a time?

Spinning was also a challenge for the last two days. Instead of my goal of four ounces a day for each day, I produced zero ounces. I do have 16 ounces done for the first four days, but I may need to reset my goal. After all, it's an endurance race as much as anything and I need to be in it for the long haul (till the Tour de France ends on 7/23).

My one accomplishment of the day was acquiring a very nice used enclosed trailer. With all of our back and forth from Austin to Polson, it doesn't make sense to have to rent a U-Haul every time I need to take more than a couple of suitcases. I managed to drive it home and back it into the drive with no (serious) mishaps. Now I have a way to get all the blue pine and douglas fir lumber home for my building projects!

Tomorrow is our early day at the National Bison Range so I am going to head for bed.

Welcome To the 5th...

Rocket girl

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Lord am I beat!! It stays light in Montana till quite late so home fireworks don't really get serious till around 11:00. By 10:30 we had determined that the lighters were useless, it was too windy for a candle, and the matches were all old and too humidity-soaked to light anymore. So off Dave went to WalMart (the only place in town still open on the 4th of July) and bought a small propane blowtorch. Then, so to speak, we got cooking with gas! We finished ours not long after midnight, but there were still fireworks going off in the neighborhood at 1:00 or 2:00 am.

Best shot of the night and J took it

This morning I had a piano lesson at 8:00 am and needed to get up at 7:00 to practice.

Dad, we need a blow torch...

I didn't make it out of bed till 7:30, and even after a half hour of practice I was still terrible at the Rachmaninoff concerto I've been working on since May. *sigh* I'll kill it next week--along with Beethoven's Prelude in C. I cannot tell a lie: After my piano lesson I went right back to bed and slept till 10:30. For a further bit of honesty, I could easily have slept till noon. I think it's something about the Montana air (back to that whole lack of oxygen thingie.)

One of the parachuters

Polson City fireworks

But I dragged myself/sprang (it's kind of a lively zombie move) from bed at 10:30 and rousted the girls so we could go clean up firework debris and I could move our cars out of the neighbor's drive. The neighbors on both sides go away for the 4th so they and their dogs can escape the noise. I wanted to have their yards cleaned up before they got home. One of the fireworks we set off shot a hundred little men hanging from parachutes into the air and they drifted up to two houses away in every direction that wasn't the street where they would have been easy to pick up.

My best photo of the Polson fireworks

Rocket to the moon

My duties this morning were to clean the street (it's a bigger area than it sounds as right in front of our house is a diagonal intersection where two streets join) by handpicking as well as sweeping. I also moved the cars. Then I left Kyla and Jessie to the rest of the bordel (in one of the French senses of the word--not the English) and I am inside cooling off. Dave wants to try a new restaurant for lunch, and then I'm going to take the girls out to the lake. I think it will be a challenge to spin my four ounces of fiber for the Tour de Fleece today.

Quel bordel!

Jessie as Carol Burnett

Jessie as Charlie Chaplin

Happy July 4th!

Selective color effect focusing on red hues (which
apparently include reddish brown too)

It's the Fourth of July--Dave's favorite holiday--and tonight is the big family fireworks. Dave and I are going to sit for this one--I plan on taking lots of photos with the new Nikon DSLR camera I got last week. After six months of taking pictures everyday with my iPhone I decided it was time to upgrade my tech. I read the reviews, was honest with myself about my aspirations and limitations as a photographer, and  found a nice mid-range camera with a good bundle on Amazon. The bundle included the standard 18-55 mm lens as well as a 70-300 mm lens, a wide angle lens, a telephoto lens, and a filter kit--as well as host of little accessories and a bag. The camera is also red. Woot.

I have played around with it a bit--mostly in automatic mode--but I haven't spent a day on my own with it yet. We've driven into Missoula twice since I got it and both times I minimized the number of stops I made to take pictures. I need just me and the camera off in the Mini Cooper for a day--maybe with Gallifrey as my co-pilot--to really go in-depth. When Jessie bought her Canon DSLR (several years ago now) I bought her a book that walked her through the different features and functions and encouraged her to go through it with her camera so she could really learn it inside and out. That wasn't her learning style so it didn't happen, but she mostly figured it out in her own way.

Selective focus on yellow flowers also catches the highlights
 on the pine needles

Me, I like a structured, organized approach. I took a formal film photography class back in the dark ages of high school (even learning how to develop my own black and white film) so I have a basic working knowledge of aperture, shutter speed, ISO, white balance, etc. I've also done a quick read through the manual. Now I'm looking forward to making a blended list of all the features of the camera along with basic manual photography techniques that I'll use to plan photography days. One day might be repeated pictures of the same subject but shot with different apertures. I know the theory of what will happen, but it will be good to get the hand practice in of actually taking the shots. Other skills I want to brush up on include shutter-speed-focused pictures, macro photography, night shots, portraits, fast action, landscapes, nature, etc.). This camera also has some cool special features and there is one I particularly want to experiment with: selective color. I already had a bit of fun with that one and would like to go to a very color-saturated local (like the farmers market) and practice there.

Friday this week will be my first day of play and I'm going to start with a very forgiving subject: nature. Specifically I am going to take an early morning trip to the National Bison Range where in the past we have seen bison (duh), antelope, big horn sheep, and even bears--all of them close enough to get really good shots. Tonight, however (and here we get back to Fourth of July celebrations) will be my first night shooting. And, hey, what could be more forgiving than fireworks?

I Was Boring Today

Day 3 of the Tour de Fleece, and I kicked butt and spun names, or spun butt and kicked names... or whatever. I spun. A lot. I have spun about 14 oz so far leaving only about 42 left to go. Okay, even if I weren't already exhausted I'd be really tired just thinking about it.

Besides fiber, today was about my mother's roses. I deadheaded and took out large canes that had died during the winter or were killed last summer by cane borers. I cleaned house a bit. I napped. It must be summer when I can condense an entire day's activities down to a couple of sentences! Had I not been on a mission to post every day this year, I probably wouldn't have bothered today. Tomorrow, however, will have all the excitement and action anyone could want as it is July 4th and we have enough fireworks to take down a small country. Pictures will be taken. Stories will be written. We will go down in history.

Baby Driver

We saw the new Edgar Wright film "Baby Driver" tonight and loved it! It was set and filmed in Atlanta, and I only have one criticism of the film: There were too many white people in it. Atlanta is a city with a 38% white and 54% black population. It was weird to have the postal workers, the construction workers,  police officers, security guards, and the average people on the street overwhelmingly white. It really struck me as wrong. We lived there for 13 years and moved there from a city with an 8% black population (Austin). When we first moved I was struck by the large black population. Then we moved back to Austin and I couldn't help but think, where are all the black people? But there is a much larger latino population in Austin so it doesn't seem so white-bread as, say Missoula Montana where I grew up. It is 94% white. I loved the diversity when I moved to Chicago from Montana. Chicago is a very balanced city--at least as far as black, white and latino at 33%,  32% and 29% respectively.

Now we're home and getting ready to retire for the evening. I'm ready. I still feel a bit meh from yesterday--though I did find out from my uncle today that my great aunt Annabelle (Gramma Jessie's sister) sold John Dillinger his last driver's license.

Family

It's so quiet right now that when I am not typing, I hear the slight echo in my ears of the sounds of "John Wick 2" which Dave and I just watched. There is just the faintest ringing from an excess of sound left in them. It was a good day--there was a nap in it. There were also lots and lots of fireworks of the mega variety purchased. The one thing I forgot to buy was earplugs--I think we're going to need them. We have some serious artillery shells and cakes that have 500 grams of pyrotechnic composition in them--the most allowed by federal law without a license.

The neighbors on both sides of us will be off camping somewhere for the 4th as neither they nor their dogs appreciate all the fireworks that go off in our neighborhood. Speaking of dogs, I need to go to the vet on Monday to get Jig some doggy valium. He is terrified of the fireworks and will be holed up in the basement with the doors closed and a white noise fan on too. Valium would be just the little extra boost I think he would appreciate.

After picking up fireworks, I cleared out half of the boxes of my dad's papers and ski clothing that I brought home yesterday from storage at the lake. I threw most of the papers away, but I kept his entomology and biology books. I also kept the book they made for him when he retired from the forest service. The clothes and gear will mostly go to the resale store that benefits the local animal shelter. Dad got Jig there, and I think he would have liked to see his things benefit them.

Before picking up fireworks, we went downtown to Pop's Grill for breakfast this morning. The cafe shares an interior wall with an art gallery and there are windows between the two businesses allowing one to look over some of the work while eating. So we went in after we finished breakfast, and as I was wandering through I to looked up and on the wall right in front of me was a copy of one of my great grandfather RH McKay's photos signed and dated "Flathead Belle" 1920. I bought it and it now hangs on the wall by our front door along with all of my father's photos of mountains he climbed or skied or both.

Oh I'm in a melancholy mood tonight. I've always loved Montana, but this year it's been hard to be here. I keep thinking of all the family who have passed from my life. I won't get to ask my grandmother if her sister was there the day Bonny and Clyde robbed the bank where she worked. I can't ask my mother who the camel cigarette belonged to that has the words "Do you want to take years off your life?" and the date 11-3-52 written on it that Jessie found today in one of Mom's drawers is a sealed tube. Mom would have been 12 then and my uncle wasn't even born. I can't ask Grampa the story behind his Dad's middle name, Lafitte. These are only some of the questions that have popped into my mind in the past two weeks.

Okay, time to go to bed to snuggle with my spouse. I need some reassurance about life, and he is very good about grounding me in the here and now. If I hurry, I might even get there before he starts snoring. But even if I don't, he'll wrap his arms around me in his sleep and everything will be okay.