Out of Plumb

The finger is healing well but I have to relearn how to use it. If you curl your fingers in with the palm up you will notice that they all curl in more or less a straight line. Mine don’t any more. I have to learn to bring that finger down farther to make up the difference. It is a little red and angry in the picture because I whacked it when splitting wood today. The bloody speck you see is the fingernail growing back in. What fun. No wonder it was spouting puss a while back. The nail has to grow its way back up through the skin, if you have had a bad ingrown nail you can relate. If it was a normal nail sure fine, but it’s a freakish ¼ inch wide dog’s toenail of a nail and I think it is growing off at an angle before coming through. A few days back I used a razor blade to make some room for it. Trust me doing that hurt a lot less than letting it tear through on its own. I would love to simply not have it, which is what the doctor said he had done on the day of the event. The insurance has stopped covering it so until I can fight and convince them otherwise the ‘dew-claw’ as I call it has to stay. I do wonder if I was to use the tooth fairy method and just rip it out if it will grow back. I know if you peel them back they will, but this has no nail bed and is only attached at the end. Its one of those “how tough are you” decisions.

Oh and I also got this done today:
I’m not satisfied with how they turned out but the wife loves them. I had never made cupboard doors before and well I did an inexperienced and quite crappy job. They look fine closed so I am sure in a few days I will simply fail to see them, like all men. It does lack a motor after all. One shiny spot is the handles, which I doubt you can see. I had tossed these paint caked knobs into the solvent tank weeks ago thinking that under the crust was a cheap metal door puller doodad. I checked on them yesterday for an unrelated reason and my ugly duckling had turned into vintage facetted clear glass knobs. The wife hasn’t seen them yet but will be thrilled.

Home alone this weekend and I should be in bed because I’m sick, but I am doing this instead. Blogging has got to be better that some of the, ahem, other uses of the Internet right? Today I retrieved some wood from near the campsite we were at last week. It had been cleared for the power lines and we just sitting there on Forest Service land. Got my little wood permit for 2 cords but I might have exceeded that by a weensy bit. I am not sure how much is on there but its substantial. Pulling it up the embankment back onto the freeway was a trick. Did I mention the possible illegality of this adventure? By the time I got the first trailer axle on the road smoke was pouring from the tires and exhaust. I pulled boost in 1st gear. I have only managed to do that one other time, moving another load of logs in Snohomish Washington. I underestimated what I was loading; you see I figured it was MUCH dryer than it was. Its not, it splashed me when I tried to split some. So much for burning it this year. Anyway this is house related. You see behind the two-side planks lie 8, 9 foot logs destined to become studs for the house. With studs running me $5 or more each and the logs making 40-50 studs it wasn’t bad for 4 hours work. Plus an hour’s travel time each way. All that is left to do now is cut them up. It means that I literally have to ask if I can borrow the sawmill. God I’m a hick.

Camping was great. We just trucked up the road about 45 miles to a spot along I 90 heading towards the Idaho. It is the abandoned RR grade for the old Milwaukee line. The camp spot was in a wide area just off the old track bed about a mile in. If you couldn’t have heard the trucks on 90 it would have been absolutely perfect but as it was we were impressed. We walked miles exploring, checking out road cuts and bridges. Found lots of the date nails used to gauge when the ties were installed, artifacts from the RR, spikes, tie plates, broken china and telegraph equipment. I even stumbled across a switch magnet. I promise I would have hauled it home IF I could have moved it. Think of the fun you could have with an electromagnet strong enough to rip off a car door. Cool huh? Absolutely will go back if only because I am addicted to this sort of stuff.
The Camp Site.














Stream, from colapsed RR bridge.

Are we there yet?


The accident I mentioned earlier was quite a surprise. When we first arrived I bet we hadn't been out of the truck more than 5 minuets before we heard this huge BANG from I 90. It was a truck slapping the guardrail with its trailer as it slowed for the curve. The wife and I had a conversation about how odd it was to be right there at that time and place. The next morning we started off for a hike with the mutt, meandering slowly looking for stuff. About 1/4 mi. from the camper we hear another crunch, looking up we watch a small pickup slap several times into the rail before catapulting up and over. It flipped end for end at least twice before coming to a stop against some trees. Even before the echoes stopped there was a whoosh and the dumb thing caught fire. Having just watched this unfold less than 40 yds away we knew we had to help. Trouble was getting there meant climbing down the RR embankment, fording the waist deep river and climbing back up to the truck. I told the wife to hold the dog crossed and over. By the time I got up two others were on scene and the three of us helped extract 3 high school girls. I was surprised how well they faired considering. Cuts and an obviously broken arm. Lucky. I crossed back after all the paperwork was filled out. I didn’t notice how cold the water was on the way out but coming back, well lets just say shrinkage. On that note...

The river, road on the right, RR on the left.
The truck, hard to see in the picture, camera just didn't zoom enough.
High water and aparently gut mark
The rail

I try to stay away from politics, it is after all a blog about our house remodel, but if I have Senators personally leaning on my classes and through them me, I say the hell with it. I love Scott Adams's Dilbert blog; I read it most every day. Read the entry, how close do you think he is? Looks a hell of allot more coherent than the crap I see on TV.

What would happen if you bread a dog and a goat? Do you think it is possible the Chinese have already done it? My dog just coughed this up:

I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t put a safety pin high on the list of things puppies should be eating. Now she wasn’t chewing on it and I yelled at her, no sir! We were playing fetch in the house (don’t tell my wife) and she brought the toy back, dropped it at my feet and gave a little hack. This thing just dropped out of her mouth, her eyes never left the chew toy in my hand. It was so casual, like spitting out a cherry pit. I suppose I should be proud of her, I mean look how mangled that pin is!

THINGS MY DOG HAS EATEN: note in order to qualify it must come back up the way it went down or have taken the more ‘scenic’ route. Simply chewed up does not count.

TV remote, blue bathmat, box of color crayons, cardboard box (numerous) VCR remote, shotgun shell, stuffed animals (numerous), green bathmat, baseball, baseball bat, water dish, food dish, plastic toys that squeak (numerous), feather pillow (about that let me just say oh-my-god), slippers (numerous but always the left foot), dead furry things she finds outside (numerous) dead robin, dead, sparrow, tuna fish can, enough wood to build a small cabin, roll of electrical tape, roll of duct tape, DVD remote, drywall, sheetrock mud, paint brush, doormat, blankets (numerous), spatula, squirt bottles, dirt and most recently something as yet unidentified that turned her poop green.

Got word back on the blue spazonite. The advice was succinct, don’t eat it and don’t bring anymore home. Found out from an unrelated source that we couldn’t get anymore if we wanted to. Last year the mine was reclaimed, i.e. covered over and pronounced pristine. I will not tell you what the active ingredient in the spazonite was but had you attempted to eat some it might have tasted faintly of almonds. Sort through the paranoia about this particular ‘spice’ and you discover a weakness for UV light. It becomes rather harmless in a matter of an hour or so when exposed to UV. To make my spazonite dangerous you would have to break the rocks and then lick them right away, freshness is key. The compound can only get you if you have a way to ingest amounts of fresh stuff, like a spring trickling through a spazonite deposit. I must admit I am relieved, mostly because my professor neighbor didn’t see my pile of green spazonite.

Well the ore car is in place and we are taking bets on how long it will be there before some high school kid wraps a chain around it some night. Makes a nice little rock pile to put all of the rock related junk I haul home. Speaking of that our neighbor, a professor for the Butte School of Mines noticed a rock I had out in preparation for artistic ornamentation. It is a neat gray rock shot through with vibrant blue crystals that seem to grow out of old fractures. Picking up a chunk he casually asked if he could “borrow” it. I immediately thought that I had discovered some long overlooked deposit of Blue Spazonite. (I decided to name it after myself) While I wracked my brain to remember the location from where I acquired the Spazonite, I casually asked what his interest in what I now thought of as ‘my’ discovery. With a wry smile he mentioned that he would like to do some tests on it. Curious now, and suspicious he might have eyes on my Spaz mother load; I inquired what the end results of such testing might discover. “Oh weather or not you have to get the EPA in here to truck all the topsoil on this block to a hazardous disposal site”. Well isn’t that just swell. Looks like you can add my ore car to the list of things you shouldn’t lick.

I have been picking away at some things but accomplishing nothing overly productive. In the last nice evenings of fall we are trying to get our yard into shape. Years ago I salvaged, ok I stole, an ore cart from an abandoned mine outside of Philipsburg Montana. I know, I know, tread lightly but in my defense they were reclaiming the site and had shoved all of the ‘artifacts’ (read trash) into a pile. The worst I figure I did was stop this particular cart from becoming someone’s Honda. I plan on perching it on a rock pile we have at the corner of our yard on some mine rail I salvaged someplace. Its rustic, which is what we in Montana say anytime our stuff is crap.


The chariots are some I built for the kids at school for the homecoming festivities. Two people pull, one rides and they joust. It’s kind of funny to watch. After four years of hard use and sitting outside they were in need of some repair. After the work (new floors in each) they get a new coat of paint and then it is back to the racing. We figure there is 8 or 9 miles on each.


This is the only interior house related thing I have done. This little trim kicker at the bottom of the stairs. That compound bevel was a pain in the butt.