Goodbye, Scenic Wheaton . . . . .

I am so sad that one of my very favorite bloggers, Scenic Wheaton, has taken down her blog. She is an excellent writer who has had some very interesting experiences. She has swum across the Chesapeake several times, she speaks the native dialect of Switzerland, she works as a physical therapist to amputees at Walter Reed, she rode her bike all the way down to the inauguration, to name a just a few, and somehow she has managed to appreciate living in Wheaton, which is really quite an achievement. I loved the subtle humor that often accompanied her otherwise very earnest and thoughtful point of view. I'm really going to miss having her in my little blogging world. I hope she's okay. Maybe she moved or something.


In my mind I tend to think of the bloggers that I read regularly as my imaginary friends. They are all real people but I've only ever met one of them in real life, so the rest of them just kind of float around in my head. I've sort of enjoyed this semi-anonymous, internet only, aspect of blogging, but now that I've lost one of my favorite imaginary friends I'm starting to think that maybe I should allow myself to be a little more sociable and less on the fringes of things. I'm quite comfortable there, but maybe I'll go to a blogger meetup or something after I finish my house. I guess I'm pretty attached to the blogs I read regularly. There's another one that I'm worried won't come back. She hasn't posted in a while, and I hope she doesn't disappear too.

On the other hand, it's kind of selfish for me to have such expectations of my favorite blogger people, since I don't post very often myself. But I don't think it would matter too much one way or the other if I were to suddenly or gradually stop posting. In a way, this blog has mostly been a bunch of fluff that I put together in an effort to cheer myself up during this annoying post-fire phase of my life. Maybe there won't be a need for that when the next phase of my life (which will not contain the word fire) begins. Who knows?

Anyway I miss you, Scenic Wheaton, wherever you are and I dedicate the photos below to your memory because you always seemed so enthusiastic about my silly water tower pictures. I did more than one post about water towers thanks to you.

Here they are - Here, here, and here.
And here's a little bit more:

This spring they painted the Glenmont water tower. It was an interesting process that went on for a couple of months. I took pictures, but got busy with school or something so I never posted them. Before they repainted they had to sandblast off the old paint and the tower went through some interesting transformations during this process. It started wearing clothes.

Nice skirt, or is that a dress?

That's a cute little shower hat, and an adorable pink apron.

Actually now the apron looks more like a cape. They raised and lowered that bottom section every day I think. I saw them doing it several times.

I used to enjoy painting up near the roof of my house. It must be really cool to be up on top of that water tower. I wonder how far that guy can see in the distance from way up there?

It's all shiny and new now. It used to be more of an aqua color, but now it's a very pale blue - almost white. I always enjoy seeing it in the distance as I drive over to work on my house.

Happy Fall, Y'all

Is it just me, or has the process of the leaves changing color been a little more spread out than usual this year? The maple in my neighbor's yard is just now beginning to reach its peak color. It was still green last week, believe it or not.

As you can see below, the trees across the street are completely bare, and have been so for a while.

I'm glad that the fall color has occured in phases this year. It seems to stretch out the time a bit more. So this year at Thanksgiving I won't be asking myself where the fall went. Instead I'll be appreciative that it has lasted for so long.

One Last Trip to the Beach

I was feeling kind of sad that my schedule hadn't allowed me to go to the beach one last time to say goodbye to the ocean and my ponies for the winter. But then we had that warm spell last weekend that extended into Monday, and to top it off, my fortune cookie on Saturday had the following message inside:

So it was pretty much a done deal that we would take Monday off. I worked really hard on Sunday, caulking and painting and mowing the grass one last time. I discovered that the mulching attachment on the mower does a fantastic job of sucking up leaves if you leave the bag on.

We headed out so early that the fields on Rt 198 still had their morning mist.

We had planned a little side trip to the Oxford-Bellvue Ferry because I really wanted to take a boat ride in my car, but they only run on weekends starting in November. But that's the dock back there behind the tree. I wonder if that tree is a descendant of the famous Wye Oak?

There was a singing seagull hanging out on one of the poles near the dock.

The water there was kind of oily, probably from the boats, but it made an interesting background for these leaves.

This giant red ball was decorating the gate post at the end of someone's driveway near the ferry dock.

When we saw this persimmon tree, Doug insisted that we stop and have a taste. The fruit tasted like a mixture of peach, apricot, and mango, with a whole lot of nutmeg added. Doug said this was a highly unusual persimmon in that it had virtually no puckeriness. It was pretty good. I was surprised that he didn't pick a bunch of them to bring home.

We saw this lovely sweetgum tree. I think fall is farther along in DC than it is on the Eastern shore.

The sweetgum tree had these balls hanging from it.

After we passed this sunny sorghum field, we stopped at the St. Michaels Perk for breakfast before hitting the highway once again.

Finally we arrived at Assateague. By then the temperature had risen to right around 70 degrees. Everything looked so clean and fresh. I've never seen the horses manes look so white. I guess they had gotten a lot of rain recently.

We had the beach practically all to ourselves. We were there from noon until about 3:00. It felt wonderful to be in that lovely light and to breathe that fresh ocean air.

I don't usually have very much to do with seagulls because one pooped on my head at Rehoboth one time. But on Monday there weren't too many around, so I decided to make friends with this one. He was very clean and white.

If you've never seen seagull feet closeup, now's your big chance!

I decided to entertain myself by taking a video of the seagull. Of course he poops a little bit right at the end of it. That's what I'm talking about!

An Inconvenient Life

We were without internet for over three weeks, until today, and it has been a royal pain. I didn't realize just how much of my day to day functioning is internet-based. But now I've kind of gotten used to living in isolation. It's not too bad. I have a lot more time to do other things. And the course I was taking over the internet has unfortunately pretty much fallen by the wayside. No more straight "A's" for me I guess.

Anyway, that is why my posting and commenting and visiting of other blogs has been kind of light lately. I need silence and my separate keyboard and my separate screen and my trackball in order to be truly functional at the computer. Using my laptop at Panera, parking outside my friend's house in the middle of the night, or sitting on her couch at more reasonable hours still leaves me feeling spastic and unable to think. Also, I haven't yet memorized all (three) of the html things I use for blogging.

While I was feeling sorry for myself about the internet situation, I started pondering some of the other inconveniences that have been added to my life after everything went up in flames over four years ago. The main thing is what I alternate between calling the cinderblock cell and the cinderblock chalet, depending on my mood. We've been renting this house while we get our real house, FoamCoreFantasy, back into liveable condition. It was not my idea for it to take this long, but that's another long story.

The cinderblock chalet is small, and that was fine at first since we had just lost more than 90% of our belongings. And I was on the road or working on a ship for most of the first year so I wasn't really bothered by that or by its ugliness. In fact I like small - it's very easy to keep things neat and tidy in a hotel room or a cruise ship cabin. Ugly is a little harder to take. The kitchen and mud room in the rental house are kind of late 70s trailer home or hunting cabin style. But at least it has a washer and dryer. Speaking of mud, it is impossible not to track things in. The house is built on a slab at ground level and there's no sidewalk up to it so leaves, dirt, and other debris are always finding their way in. I'd have to vacuum every fifteen minutes to keep the floor clean, and that's impossible.

Some of the things we don't have are related to our "temporary" situation, so I guess I shouldn't complain. We don't have a TV, but we don't really have time to watch one right now either. I just drive the 5 miles to the nearest Blockbuster when I feel the need to stare at the screen for a while. We don't have a land line phone, so when our wireless goes out we can't get online. We don't have trash service. We have an oil tank for our heater which never seems to get filled before it runs out. It takes at least twenty minutes longer to get anywhere in DC than it did from my "real" house. But it takes less time to get to Baltimore, so that's good.

One of the weird things about this place is that it has a huge gravel parking lot and the landlord rents out parking spaces to various large vehicles. So for two long years, every time I left the house I was pretty much forced to look at this truck:

Never Have an Ordinary Day!

Isn't that nice?

My days are weird enough already, thank you very much.

I've always found that when I need cheering up, cookies and milk do the job quite nicely. I don't keep cookies on hand because that's kind of the last thing I should be eating, but I'll go buy them if I get the urge. So for two years I somehow found myself buying those Pepperidge Farm cookies on a nearly daily basis. What can I say, I was pretty miserable and cookies cost a lot less than drugs or alcohol. Fortunately 7-11 has them in a two-pack and they come in a bag of eight at the grocery store, so it's a large amount of excess calories, but it's not nearly as much as a normal sized bag of cookies. And it is more comfortable to "only" eat two cookies, or eight, or sometimes six, if I was feeling generous. Anyway, I recently noticed that I haven't had the urge to buy Pepperidge Farm (Chesapeake, if you must know) cookies for about six months and that may very well be how long the truck has been gone. I tried (and apparently failed for the most part) to not see it, so I didn't notice exactly when it stopped being there. I remember glaring at it each morning, already regretting how my day would undoubtedly end. I'm really glad that stupid truck is no longer parked there. I need to have ordinary days, without the cookies. The school buses that park there now don't seem to be activating any food urges, so that's good!

I could continue to gripe about this place that we will be living in for hopefully only a couple more months, but I'd rather just forget about it. Ignore it. The one thing that I've really enjoyed about staying here and can't ever ignore is the beautiful and huge magnolia tree. Here it is in the spring:



And here's the same tree in the fall. I definitely like this tree even more than I like cookies!

Phabulous Pho

Pho Real. Seriously, that's the name of my very phavorite pho place. Okay, I promise I'll stop with the phoolishness now. Oops, that was a PHAIL. I'm having way too much phun here.

Pho Real is located in the shopping center at the corner of Briggs Chaney and Old Columbia Pike in the outer reaches of Silver Spring. It is very attractively decorated and very clean, and the broth is always fresh and delicious, and never greasy. They serve it with basil, bean sprouts, jalapeno slices, and lime, which you can add as you see fit, along with the red chile sauces. I usually skip those because I like tasting the combination of basil, jalapeno, and lime with the broth without the distraction of hotness. I always put the bean sprouts in first so that they'll become as soft as the noodles. The summer rolls at Pho Real are also excellent.

And here's one more photo phor you. On the way there today, I spotted this cute out building on Briggs Chaney Road. I think it looks rather nice against the phall pholiage.

sad start to the day

As much as I complain about the deer eating stuff in my back yard, I still think they are beautiful and I do enjoy seeing them and I am slightly attached to them because they visit us so often. But I also wish they weren't so bold because in my area they are constantly being hit by cars. I guess they aren't that bright and just don't know any better, so they get scared and bolt out into the road in a state of panic.

This morning I pulled up to my house ready to begin a day of painting, and there was a deer that looked like it had just been hit lying right in the middle of my driveway at the edge of the road. It must have suffered a concussion because there wasn't any blood or broken bones. She was really pretty - her stomach was so clean and white. Anyway the sight of that pretty much ruined my morning. I called animal control and was told that they would pick her up within 48 hours.

I took the recycling out to the curb and as I got closer I couldn't bring myself to look at her. I noticed that there was no smell yet. I went inside and took a picture from the second floor, but I've decided not to post it - that wouldn't be right somehow. I kept thinking about her lying out there in the driveway and about how the animal control people might not come for another day or so, and since I was still wearing the rubber gloves I had put on to stain the threshold, and since she didn't smell at all, I decided to go out and move her over to the side of the driveway.

So when I went out there to move her, she was gone. I figured that animal control must have already been in the area. But then about an hour later when I was inside painting my foyer, animal control came and knocked on the door, wanting to know where the deer in my driveway was. At first he didn't believe me, so I showed him the picture I'd taken.

I guess someone saw that the deer was "fresh" and saw an opportunity to have a couple of months' worth of free meat or something. I felt a little less sad after thinking that something useful might have happened as a result of "my" deer getting killed. I wonder what the animal control people do with all those deer that they pick up every day? The guy who came to my house had two deer that he'd already picked up today.

This deer situation has been getting worse and worse over the past ten years or so. I hope the powers that be will eventually come up with a solution that is both intelligent and humane. As long as they continue to develop every possible inch of space, it's going to continue to be a problem.

random observances

The sky was so beautiful today. I'm SO glad it's not raining anymore. Now if it would only warm up enough for me to go to the beach one last time!

This bird was just sitting there on the top of the cedar tree. He was big and fluffy and light gray. I have no idea what kind of bird he is.

This is the worlds tallest stump. It's been like that for two years.

These balls are looking out the window and wondering how much longer they'll have to wait to assume their proper place in the world.

Another beautiful fall sky. I can't believe the leaves are changing already!

P.S. Don't forget to vote for your favorite moulding!

while the cat's away.....

Cyndy will play..... this time with power tools! (cross-posted at foamcorefantasy)Usually I avoid these things like the plague because they can be very dangerous to your hands and I need my hands. But I decided to save a whole lot of decision-making time by constructing a few mockups of potential moulding for our kitchen cabinets.



We were planning to use a copy of the original crown moulding from our old house to go around the tops of all the cabinets. Doug really want to use it in the kitchen for sentimental reasons. But the other day, he got started putting it up and we realized it didn't look good because the recessed lights cause the moulding to completely cast a shadow upon itself. So we'll just use it somewhere else instead. There are plenty of places it could go.

I remembered the experience with making the vent pipe covering and decided to get things moving by doing a sample of what I had in mind myself. That way when Doug gets back from his trip it won't take as long to get it done because all of the discussions will have already taken place.

My original idea was just to use a piece of half-round. It would look neat and clean and simple. But the sizes I bought were not big enough to look right so I ended up splitting a wooden closet rod in half. That one was so easy to make that I decided to get fancy and play around with the other sizes of half round. The second one I made is a flat trim board with small half-round beads on the top and bottom. Then just for laughs, I made another one that was three pieces of half-round attached to a trim board.

After the glue was dry I cut them with the miter saw and glued the two mitered ends together on each one. I couldn't find the staple gun or the finish nailer so I just used glue to put them together. I primed and painted them last night and this morning I put them up to see how they'd look.

#1

#2

#3

#1

#2


#3 - that's just silly!


#2 on the left, #1 on the right

different angle - #2 on the left, #1 on the right

When I first made #3 I was laughing because I thought it looked like Lincoln Logs, if you're old enough to know what I'm talking about. Then yesterday as I was driving home from my gig, I saw this and it just made me feel like mocking #3 even more.

If you think they all look bad, please don't hesitate to tell me, because the other option is to go with no trim at all. Except that then the stupid outlets for Doug's recessed rope lighting will show.

Posting from Panera

So yesterday was my first day off from EVERYTHING in over two weeks and the weather was just wonderful in honor of the occasion. I'm pretty much not a rain type person, but it did cause this rose bush to look rather delightful.

The internet is not working, but at least I have heat. Hopefully the oil truck will show up before it runs out. Meanwhile, I'm keeping the thermostat set to 55 degrees. That feels really nice.

I have a test I'm supposed to take for an online course I'm taking, but I'm not used to being able to think with a bunch of loud inane conversations happening all around me. Maybe it will be quieter in here tomorrow and I can do it then. I'm not in the mood right now.

Apparently Panera is the big hangout for the Leisure World crowd. There's this old couple in front of me looking out the window and giving each other a non-stop commentary about the various goings on out in the parking lot. "Let's see if that idiot can back out of his space without hitting anyone." "Oh look, she's putting on her seat belt." Most of their comments were really smug and obnoxious and completely unnecessary and unfortunately they were irritating me so much that I was not able to ignore them. It was almost like the senior citizen version of Mystery Science Theater. I sure hope I don't become that bored, obnoxious, and smug when I get old. I'll probably become one of those silent types, rocking in my chair out on the back porch looking at the herds of deer running through. I hope I won't be compelled to say "look, a deer" to anyone who will listen, although I think I've shown telltake signs of that behavior already. I'll just have to watch myself.

I'm not really feeling this posting from Panera thing so I'm probably going to make myself scare for the next week or so. Unless the secret project I'm about to go work on ends up being photo-worthy.

I hope this weekend of wetness passes quickly for all of you!

like a deer in the headlights

.



They sure are pretty. But they don't respect me and they're not afraid of me or my car. They eat my apples and they sleep lying down right in the middle of my back yard at night. I don't know if you can make them out in the picture below, but there are two pairs of eyes there, glowing in the dark. If you click on the picture you'll see that they are relaxing in the grass. Don't bother getting up, it's just me flashing my camera at you in the dark. I hope I'll be able to grow something besides grass after I move back in. Sheesh!

Fall Flowers

The other day Doug ran out of gas right next to the Heyser Farms orchard way out here on New Hampshire Avenue in Cloverly. I was already working over at the house when he called, so I grabbed the gas can that I use for the lawn mower and went to rescue him. I've only ever driven by there before, but since I was parked there for a minute I decided to get a few shots.

It looks like they have a cutting garden in addition to some very loaded apple trees.

It also looks like they just dump their unsold produce into a compost pile of sorts. There was a very strong apple cider vinegar smell. If you click on the picture you'll see that there are all kinds of vegetables there in addition to the apples. It's a very colorful compost pile!

In other news, today is day six of thirteen straight days of gigs. I am very grateful to be working so much this month doing what I love, instead of working so much on the house . Well I'm still working on the house every day, so nevermind. Anyway, I'm happy to be employed. And we are making good progress over there right now. Slow, but good.