An Update on the Ebay

Here's an update on the ebay. I mentioned in my previous blog I was going to put my old bike trainer up. So I wiped the dust away last night and took pictures and boxed it up. This morning I took it to the post office and had it weighed, then listed it today with a buy-it-now price of $55. At auction they sell for around $70 or $75 from what I could tell, and some don't sell at all. (Which is the bad thing about the ebay - if your item doesn't sell, you still have to pay the listing fees.)

Anyway, it's gone. Guy in Virginia did a buy-it-now and paid through paypal, and I've already had the money transferred to my savings account (it takes a few days to show) and he paid calculated shipping so it's not out of my pocket and I'm $55 richer and have one less thing gathering dust in storage.

Gotta Love the Ebay...

Really, you do.

First of all, where else are you going to find posters like this?
This is winging its way to me as we speak from somewhere in Wisconsin. I'm out $11, and you can't tell me that's not a bargain. (It's a nice summer evening and I've had one screwdriver already and I'm probably not done and you pretty much you can't tell me anything, but still...)

Here's a better example. These are mountain bike pedals I bought for Diane some five years ago. She didn't like them and I tossed them in a tool box and they've sat there for five years. Without the Ebay (I'm using the article in a Southern California fashion) these get tossed in the trash or sold at a garage sale for 50 cents.

Instead, I listed them on the Ebay tonight with a buy-it-now price of $15 (plus $5.50 shipping) and I sold them in about 10 minutes. (I'm not even exaggerating. They went that fast.)

The Ebay took 65 cents and Paypal took 89 cents and the rest is in my Paypal account right now, awaiting transfer to my real bank account, (or further cool BMW posters on the Ebay.) (And yes, I will always call it the Ebay from now on.) Actual shipping will cost me $4.85.

In the last month or so, I've netted well over $1,000 from old motorcycle parts, my road bike or other stuff I really didn't need. (Yes, I sold my road bike. It's too damn steep up here to ride it, and I damn near killed myself learning that a week or two ago.) I'll list my magnetic ride-your-bike-in-your-house trainer tomorrow once I get it weighed.

So, here's what I've learned about the Ebay:

• Take good pictures and write a good, honest description and people will buy what you have.
• Weigh your stuff before you list it. It sucks to ship something for more than someone paid for shipping.
• Buy-it-nows work. Look at the stuff that's about to sell, price your item at a reasonable discount from that and do a buy-it-now price. People will pay a fair price for stuff they want. (On the other hand, if you want to try to get maximum value, let the auction run for the full seven days and hope people bid it beyond what you would have asked.)
• Buy stuff before you sell and build up 10 positive feedbacks. I'm not sure that matters, but it seems to help.

Anyway, if you've got stuff you're not using, there's a whole world out there that might want to buy it. You gotta love the Ebay!

Is It Too Early to Care Unless You're in Des Moines?

Is it too early to start thinking about Presidential politics? It could be, I know, but I'm starting to lean.

I think Bill Richardson's my guy.

On experience, no one else is close. Congress, ambassador, energy secretary and governor. And as governor of New Mexico, he's gotten stuff done. (And got 40% of the Republican vote in the last election. When asked by the Des Moines Register editorial board about it, he said, "I don't know what they were smoking, but I did get that.")

So he's got a sense of humor, too.

I know it may be Barak's year, and I don't think Hillary will go down without a fight (and a scorched-Earth fight at that...) but I think both will fade.

Bill's the guy.

Have I Mentioned That I Love My Motorcycle?

No pictures of motorcycle parts today, I'm afraid (although it is still early and many things can happen...)

No, just words today; happy words of Bavarian joy.

I love my motorcycle. As I told Diane the other day, it's the coolest vehicle I have ever owned, without a doubt.

Been riding some (been busy, too, so not a lot) but the first couple of days hesitentancy and reacclimating is done. I still have to relearn and polish my technical skills, but that comes with hours and time.

Went to the BMW dealership in Modesto when I was in the Valley last week and bought all the fluids and filters to do a full servicing, which I'll get started on this weekend. Gave the bike a nice scrub yesterday and waxed the fenders and tank (shiny!) and last night (after beers with the people who raise goats) I was out here emery-clothing spokes and watching a rerun of Serenity on HBO. (I've never actually seen emery-clothing used as a verb before, but there's always a first.)

Anyway, life is good.

If There Was a Pool, June 16th Wins!

So it turns out I wasn't without a project for long...

This one, however, runs!

It's a 1974 R75/6, and I brought it home today from San Francisco. Isn't it pretty?

So here's how it happened. Since disposing of my disassembled Honda, I'd been reading Craigslist, looking for a bike like this in the Bay Area, Sacramento, Reno/Tahoe, Stockton or Modesto. On Tuesday this bike hit the Bay Area list and I had a feeling. The guy wrote a very complete description, both the good and the bad, and obviously knew his machine. I set up a tentative time to see it Wednesday evening, after working in Stockton. I liked this bike from the start - the right things are right, and the problem areas are things I can deal with over time.

But sometime in the late morning, in Stockton, I checked Craigslist again and saw a 1976 BMW R90S listed for $1,700. These bikes sell for $6 to $7K these days - they've gotten collectible as hell. So I left Stockton at noon and hauled ass to Palo Alto to see it before anybody else did and if I had been in the market for another complete restoration project, I'd have been in luck. The bike was there and the engine and frame numbers matched, but the engine was on its last legs. The guy selling it didn't really know the bike and it was obvious he wasn't comfortable with it and I walked, called the guy in SF selling this one, and went into the city.

(Just a side note, and I think it's his good karma and not mine, but I had to park my truck on city streets three times at various points in this process, and all three times a space opened up right where I needed to be. (Twice right in front of the building, once one door away. That never happens.)

Anyway, I saw this one, loved it and told the guy I'd buy it. $1,400, which I think is an incredible price. He didn't have the title Wednesday so I went back today and he gave me a bunch of spare bits, tools, manuals, the original seat, the touring bags (I took off for the photo), etc. We walked it through the DMV and it's legally mine.

I didn't post anything about it because I didn't want to jinx it. Anyway, I have opened the BMW-buying gate. Purchase away!

The Power of Three

(Yes, it's a "Charmed" reference, for those of you who don't appreciate the televised supernatural anywhere but Sunnydale...)

Actually, it's an idea; one we've had before but whose time had yet not come. What does everyone think about it now - combining forces once a year for some major home renovation or improvement project and rotating house to house?

We, for instance, want to expand our rear deck, connecting the side deck on the right side of the picture with the hot-tub deck at the left. It's a 325-square-foot expansion, and we could tie into existing deck structure (possibly reinforced) for a decent portion of it. There are specific things about it I don't know, but I know that with Dave, Scott, Sonnjea, Sara, Diane and me working on it, there is no part of this we couldn't do. And probably in three days.

We would obviously put you up, feed you, buy all the beer and have all the materials and supplies ready. And, we'd make the same commitment of time and travel to do projects at your places.

What do people think? Every three years we get a crew and an opportunity to tackle something major on our houses. The other two years we get the opportunity to visit and help our siblings/in-laws. I know we're not the family-reunionist of families, but this could give us a reason to. Scheduling is also an issue, but I think we could deal with it. What do you fine folks think?

Like Nature, This Land Abhors a Vacuum

Here's the problem I've discovered with clearing away the old motorcycle bits and officially declaring that project dead: Now I have no project.

I spent a whole day last weekend cleaning and organizing my garage and imposing some logic on even my catch-all tool drawers and the tote where I dump leftover screws and nuts. And now I've got this great land with good tools and essentially two days off with no work due and NO PROJECT!

For those keeping score at home, my grand total on eBay was a profit of $264 after shipping costs and selling fees, which was more than I paid for the original motorcycle, so that's something...

I could design and build a headboard, which I may get started on next week. Today I'm going to go clean the house and walk the dogs and enjoy the very nice weather.

In my serial obsessive nature (which is better than cereal obsessive, I suppose...) my latest craving looks a lot like this:
This is a 1977 BMW R100 at a dealer in Orange. Not a big fan of the big fairing in front, but those are removable (and replaceable with cool S-style fairings....)

This obviously isn't in the debt-reduction plan this year, and it's obviously just a big old toy. (But such a pretty toy!) So mostly I check craigslist and classified ads and occasionally drool when I see something like this.
Rest assured that if such a motorcycle did appear in This Land, pictures would appear on the blog.

Summer Movie Fun

Because it's so hard to find movie reviews on the Internet, I thought I'd give my own thoughts on two flicks I've seen recently.

Pirates is great fun. (Forgive me for not typing the whole damn title, but I still want to be young when I finish this post.) Some critics have criticized it for not making much sense. Huh? It has pirates and curses and octopus-faced bad guys and the main character died at the end of the last Pirates movie and they want a sensible narrative?

What it does have is some of the coolest naval battle sequences ever, and enough good-humored fun to make it worth the price of a ticket.

Mr. Brooks. Mr. Brooks has an interesting challenge - how do you make a sociopathic serial killer likeable? And it's a different challenge than Silence of the Lambs. In that, Lecter is interesting and perhaps even fascinating, but not likeable. And he's not the movie's protagonest. Mr. Brooks is. If we don't like this guy, we don't watch. And this guy kills people for fun.

I thought they pulled it off pretty well. The actors are good, especially Costner and William Hurt. (Hurt is dead-bang great.) The story requires a healthy dose of leaving reality at the door, which is what we should go to movies for. Folks not into twisting-plot and psych thrillers can safely pass, and it'll be just as good on DVD and cable.

Goodbye, CB750, Goodbye

The CB750 is no more.

Having decided that spending more money on this bike wasn't what I wanted to do (thanks one and all for your advice), I moved it on this morning.

I've got about a half-dozen high-value parts (or hopefully high value parts) that I'll try to sell on ebay or craigslist, but the rest went to the transfer station this morning.

No regrets. It was a very fun project two winters ago when I started it, and if buying a house and moving and money hadn't gotten in the way, I do think I would have finished. I learned a lot, both about the mechanical and monitary sides of motorcycle restoration, and I still know what I want next time.

If nothing else, my land looks a lot bigger and cleaner!

An Electric (and ebay) Update

I know my electric usage is of import to really no one but me, but I did get the first fully post-CFL conversion bill today, and daily consumption dropped another 8.6%, to 26.5 Kwh per day. I know that's still not great, but we recently learned that the heater in our hot tub is going out and drawing 33 amps when it kicks in. It's still under warranty and on order, so we may see even more of a drop (hopefully) when it's replaced.

To compare to last year, before CFLs and before I insulated the spa: 37.9 Kwh/day to 26.5, and $240 to $140. I like this year's better.

As for the ebay update, I decided to sell off the Honda as parts and save up for a late-70s, early-80s BMW R-series. First piece got listed yesterday and sold today - my first ebay sale.

Spanky likes melted snow, too!

As you know, Spanky likes the snow.

He also likes to swim. We took the dogs up to this little lake outside Arnold the other day, just to let him paddle around. (Idgie, of course, treats the lake much the way she treats the snow.)

Anyway, it was fun.

A Deconstructed Dilemma

So I have a dilemma.

Actually, I have a motorcycle in pieces and I'm not sure what to do about it. Remember the history: I bought this non-running 1978 Honda CB750 a couple of years ago for $250 with the idea of tearing it all down (done) and rebuilding it in the cafe-racer style. (What I really, really want is a BMW R90S.)

Here is my dilemma. The bike had 48,000 miles on it and a frozen cylinder. (Piston rusted in place.) It had also been dropped fairly hard at one point. One of the engine mounts was broken off, and when I opened the block there was one small loose metal chip inside. So I can't know for sure what's straight.

I know the rest of what's wrong with the engine. The cam is worn beyond spec, as are the valve seats. As open as the engine is, it makes sense to replace the main bearings. All in all, with the cam, head work, bearings, gaskets, rings and piston, I'm looking at $1,000-plus in the engine.

Then there's the rest of what needs to be done to the bike. Most of it I'd do myself and that's more than half of the fun. And all of the learning. And another $1,000.

I've spent time and a little money (but not really too much) getting it this far. I stalled because once I commit to the engine, I have to go all the way and I haven't really seen the logic in that yet.

And I still want a motorcycle to tool around on. Especially as the weather gets nice, going out for a spin on some of our winding back roads would be great fun.

So what should I do? Bite the bullet and keep going? Sell off what I can on ebay and try again later on a different bike? Buy something running that would be worth restoring if I wanted to down the road? Buy a beater for less than $2,000 and call it a win? Get over it and buy golf clubs?

Advice is appreciated. (Smart-alec comments are anticipated...)

Bad Movies 2, Good Movies 1

Not been too much happening lately, except dancing to an ever-changing tune called by the local First 5 bureaucrats. And since there are only so many words like incompetent, asinine and infuriating, it would be a short blog if I only wrote about that. (I did make one of them whine to her supervisor, though, because I talked mean to her...)

But I was able to watch a few movies this week, so I'll do reviews.

Children of Men - (Or, Please Kill Me Now & End This Needless Suffering)


This one surprised me. I had been looking forward to it, and I don't need happy stories or even happy endings to enjoy a movie. But Jesus Christ on a stick, this is just suicide-inspiring. Michael Caine kills his wife and dog and he's the most likeable character in the movie.

You have been warned.

Spider Man 3 -- (Wake me, and Toby McGuire, when it's over...)

Snuck into this free, so I wasn't overcharged. Didn't expect great shakes from Spidey 3, and got about what I expected. There are some good sequences, but mostly I was bored. All three villains were far more interesting than the purported protagonist, and the great inner conflict within Peter Parker boiled down to whether to wear his hair down over his forehead (bad Spidey) or combed neatly back (good Spidey.) Toby mailed it in.

Hot Fuzz (Or, When Good Zombies Get Guns)

This is the buddy-cop-movie spoof by the guys who did "Shawn of the Dead." (And if you haven't seen Shawn of the Dead, check it out. It's one of the best and funniest parodies ever.) (And it's not Scary Movie 2 slapstick scenes thrown together, either. It's has a legit narrative.)

This isn't as funny as Shawn because they stayed true to the buddy-cop genre and traded laugh-out-loud funny for clever. And it's very clever. It's the best of the three by far, and they get extra credit for pulling off a perfect - perfect - Point Break homage.

I Sing the Usage Electric

Sorry for the Bad Bradbury reference...

Today I continued my quest for electric power savings. First, I read the meter, hoping to see a big reduction even over last month and was disappointed. Depending on whether or not I count today in the math, I either show a reduction in daily kilowatt usage of 0.7% (not counting today) or 4.9% if I do count today. Since I did this about 9 a.m., I suspect the former is a more accurate figure.

I'd hoped for much better.

I my garage, (This Land) I'd installed three 8-foot fluorescent fixtures shortly after we moved in, two on the workshop side and one on the office side. I wired the one on the office side in series with an existing 4-foot fixture that's right over my desk. The short fixture worked weakly for a few days then never lit up again. Bad ballast, maybe? As the other lights are plenty bright, and I actually prefer it out, I never worried about it.

But was it drawing power?

So today I did a little experiment. I timed one spin of the dial on the meter with the lights off. 43 seconds. I timed it again with the lights on. 22 seconds. The garage lights speed the dial up by 21 seconds.

Then I unwired the old fixture and timed it again with the lights on. 31 seconds. This time the lights only speeded the dial by 12 seconds.

Now, as Diane was up and there were lights on upstairs and I can't be absolutely certain that exactly the sames lights were on or off upstairs when I did my experiment, I know these results could be meaningless. I did not control for all variables. (I could throw all the breakers but the garage light circuit, but Diane probably wouldn't appreciate it...)

But I think the same lights were on upstairs all three times, so I think my results might well matter. What the hell, if there are any savings at all from unwiring a light fixture that produced no light it's a good thing.

Torii Gate

Here's a few pictures of a Torii Gate I built to define and highlight the creek bed from the street. As you remember, the original vista looked like this:

That's not really that attractive. So I cleared the woody shooty things (which are some sort of impossible to kill willow our neighbor tells us...) and we had this:

An improvement to be sure. A couple of weeks ago, I bought a few more split fence posts (which they now sell at Lowes...) and put in a short length of fence across the front of the creek here, three posts, two sets of rails.

It was OK, but not great. It cut off the view more than I wanted, and because of the steepness of the slope I either had to put it up at street level and six feet past our property line, or weirdly low and near our property line.

Then in the end I ended up putting it right where a drain pipe that runs under our driveway empties, which is not the most brilliant thing I've ever done.

So I took the fence down, designed the gate, built a quick mock up to hold up in the space and discovered it was WAY too big. So I scaled it down and built this:

Scaled down was very nice, too, because I cut the lumber costs way down. Total cost with lumber, hardware, concrete and stain (which I'll apply once the wood dries out some) was $125. Not too bad.

Diane is planting hand-me-down vinca a neighbor took out, and even out there right now even though it's full dark!

CFLs -11, PG&E -25

Just got our first post-CFL conversion PG&E bill. It's not a full month of CFL usage, probably about 16 days worth and slightly less than that conventional.

Anyway, our usage dropped 11% over last month and our bill dropped 25%. Both were one-year lows since we've been in this house.

Next month will be a truer picture because we'll have only CFLs for the whole month. I'd love another 10 and 25 drop!

Drenched Dogs in Davis and Wattage Wows

Yesterday was Picnic Day at U.C. Davis, an all-campus open house, parade and party with a 100-year-or-so tradition. Diane volunteered to work at a Plant Science booth and Frankie was going to be there with the Cal Band, so we made a day of it and decided to take the dogs.

Did I mention it poured for a large portion of the day?

Spanky clearly didn't care. Idgie did give us those occasional "Don't you damn humans have enough sense to come in out of the rain?" looks. But it was fun, and they ride well and we all slept like the dead last night.

Haven't gotten a PG&E bill yet, but Diane is writing her column on our CFL switchover, so I did do a count and a little math: All in all, we replaced 54 bulbs with a total wattage of 3,155 with 54 bulbs with a total wattage of 658, a 79.1% decrease.

Another way to look at it, it's the equivalent of taking out every recessed bulb, every outdoor bulb, the overhead fixtures in Diane's office, the spare bedroom, both bathrooms and the garage door light.

Froggy in the Tulips

Dogs' Day Out!

Today the dogs went out to lunch.

There's a cafe in Murphys with a dog menu. Really. A turkey hot dog and two cookies and a big bowl of water.

Saw it a few weeks ago, and went today. The dogs quite liked it, and Diane's gonna write her column about the place. They have human food too, and it was OK.

Year Two and A Damn Lot of New Lights!

These are the light bulbs we've replaced with CFLs over the past few weeks. Made the last big switchover today.

The timing is very nice -- tomorrow is our one year anniversary in the house, so beginning tomorrow, we'll have a pretty accurate apples-to-apples comparison of energy usage and PG&E bills.

Today I even made a spreadsheet to analyse usage last year to this year, and month to month. Here's what I know so far: Last year, we used an average of 33.4 kilowatt hours a day and paid an average of $0.21 per kilowatt hour. When I insulated to spa last July, usage dipped significantly. I marked the months I know I changed the spa water, but obviously there were some I missed.

Anyway, we had a few rooms done a few weeks ago, and the early daylight savings time, and our bill in March was about the same as our February bill, even though we drained and filled the spa. So it's a start.

All right already!

Unfortunately I didn't take a before picture, but this is a reasonable substitute. The woody shoot things (to use the formal, Latin name...) make a pretty effective screen.


This is the after. Looking at it, when I wrote yesterday I had cleaned up the first third of the creekbed, I think I meant the first fifth. There's still a long way to go...

Raking and Hauling and Burning, Oh My!

Spring is nice. Owning four-tenths of an acre of well-forested land is nice.

Spring cleaning on said well-forested four-tenths of an acre is something other than nice.

We did expand the visible look of our land today. The creekbed that run on the left side of the house was always hidden from the street by a dense stand of trees and these woody shoot things that grow on the edge of the roadway. I had already limbed the trees up about 10 feet, which opened things up some, and removed one dead tree. (It was leaning, rotted away at ground level, held up by other trees. So I grabbed the trunk and ran opposite the lean and it fell quite nicely. Yesterday I knocked over some dead trees just over the back fence. Don't tell my absentee neighbor...) (They were dead, though...)

Anyway, today I cut down the woody shoot things and raked the first third or so of the creekbed clean of debris. VASTLY expands the look of our place, and will so even more when I find a matching two-rail fence to put up on that side.

CrawBerry

Goodbye Craw World

A (Craw) Fish Tale

Spring, Sprang, Sprung

Not a lot of explanation necessary...

Numbers

I'm not sure what it is with the movies right now, but there are a couple of numerical flicks out there. The Number 23, with Jim Carrey, which I'm not going to see (and which is redundant because once I write it stars Jim Carrey I don't need to add "which I'm not going to see"); and 300, which I will see.

I have a new favorite number: 4442.

That's the tax refund check that just appeared in my mailbox. Another happy number is 6, which is the interest HSBC is going to pay on new deposite until April 30 (after which is goes back to 5).

And in the number arena, 9 is a bad number -- my Sallie Mae student loan interest rate -- but 3.9 is a better number, and I was able to transfer most of my outstanding student loan to a Discover Card with a 3.9 fixed rate on balance transfers until 2011. I'll get the rest paid off myself in the next month of so.

The Thumbs Say "Yea!"

The Blackberry is the bomb.

I've had the 8700 for about a week now, and although it hasn't saved my life or won us any contracts all on its own, it is handy, light, cool and fun.

(It did settle a bar bet when Diane and I were out the other night, but since she was right and I was wrong I consider it a knock against the device...)

I don't know if my timing was right in buying it -- I wanted to wait until we were busy enough to justify it -- or if buying it influenced business directly, but whichever way it was, it's working. We're busy. People I've pitched in the past are calling, and for the last week or two I've been scrambling to try to keep up.

So why, might you ask, am I taking the time to write this post, when Blackberry isn't giving me a cut for this quite positive testimonial? Have you seen the post below it? Isn't it obvious?

Off Kilter

Let me say up front I know this is a bad idea. When you have sisters and brothers-in-law as smart, clever, funny and merciless as I do, you don't have to give them any ammunition to work with.

Having said that, here's a picture of me in my kilt. Like I said, the Elliott tartan is quite striking. The sporran is a great place to carry your Blackberry!

I led a foreign policy discussion this afternoon (I get asked once a year for the past three years) and today's topic was immigration, and I thought I'd remind them we all came from somewhere else. Besides, it let me make a good joke.

"I suppose I should address the way I'm dressed," I said. "I've been doing this for three years now, and this is the first time I've worn a tie."

Yeah, well, polite laughter is still laughter...

Doubters? Doubters?

It has recently come to my attention that some of you out there -- and you know who you are -- doubted that we've been getting "real" snow here in lovely Avery, Calif.

Hrrrumph.

Lest anyone doubt again, last night we got 10 inches. I got home around 7 p.m. in Diane's Hyundai. Measured the snow on its roof this morning, so it wasn't accumulation. Here's a picture of accumulation -- since last Thursday.

Here's some other pictures, just for the hell of it.

And even a few arty ones.

Snow Day

I had a dentist appointment Friday but a took a snow day instead. Here's what it looked like around here when we woke up Friday morning.

Since I own cross coutry skis, I thought I'd use them on our morning walk. The snow was too deep and powdery, though, so it was just like having very long and skinny snow shoes.

As you know, Spanky likes the snow. I'll spare you any more pictures of Spanky eating snow (although if I could have recorded sound last night I'd put up an audio file of him crunching icey snow.) We got home around midnight and just took a quick walk to the corner and he'd run 5 feet ahead, tail wagging madly, then crunch crunch crunch hardened snow off the side of the road. We'd catch up and he'd sprint forward then stop and crucnh crunch crunch again. The. Whole. Way. To. The. Corner. And. Back. Silly dog!

Idgie is more regal in the snow. She likes it, but when Spanky plows through the deep drifts, she's more likely to pick a path of less resistance.

In Praise of Z-Chains and All-Wheel Drive

When I bought my two-wheel-drive truck, we didn't live in Avery, at 3,400 feet, where snow is a certainty every winter. I didn't sweat it, though. I figured there'd be 10 days a year or so I regretted the decision, and 355 I appreciated the better gas milage.

I did buy good chains, though. Z-chains, which turn out to be the cat's frickin' PJ's when it comes to snow chains.

It had just started snowing as I drove to school today. It was a production day, so skipping wasn't really an option. Got it about half done, and there's a late story coming in, so that was about as far as I could get, so I came home around 3 p.m. And the snow starts in Murphys.

I went about two miles above Murphys and it was building up on the roads enough to make me pull over. I got out my Z-chains, read the instructions, then put the first one on. These chains are great -- you don't have to lay them out and drive over them. They just sweep around the tire from behind, latch here, here and here, and snap on a rubber tensioner. I put the first one on, and honestly wondered what I had done wrong. "Is it that easy?" I asked myself. Second went on in less than a minute. Truck trucked right on home and into our drive. If you need chains, Z-CHAINS ROCK!

But tonight we had to go down to Angels Camp for play rehearsal (I still don't know how I got dragged into the Calaveras Follies...) and we went in Diane's Hyundai Santa Fe. All-wheel drive with traction control. Started raining in Angels Camp while we're running the numbers. Then started snowing in Angels Camp (ele. 1,400 feet). So when Diane's number was done (she's the star, by the way) we started up the hill. An inch-plus in Angels. Snowing steady. We have chains in that car as well, but I decided that I'd see how well we did without them.

So we motored. And motored. And motored past a spin-out. And a second. Going uphill I could feel an occassional stutter as the wheels tried to spin and the traction control told them not to. But other than that, it just pulled steady. Turned off 4 onto Avery Sheep Ranch, and that had been plowed, but a while ago. Two to four inches of snow. No problem. Turned onto Roan -- six inches of snow. No problem. Turned into our driveway -- a berm and 12 inches of snow. Got there, then started spinning the wheels. In the driveway. Home.

Snow Jackalopes

Only Diane qualifies as a snow bunny, but she had Frankie and I with her today. Here's proof:

So I haven't skied since high school, and then I only did it once. And I never got past the T-bar and onto a chair lift. Today we went to Bear Valley, where both Diane and Frankie have considerable experience. Peak rates because of the holiday weekend, but Frankie was home because of the holiday weekend. And Bear's only about 40 minutes away, so what the hell. We got up early and headed up.

On the plus side, I never fell. Not once. Two times down the bunny hill for some instruction, two times down Cub, three times down Super Cub (both sides) and I didn't face-plant once. Turned, stayed balanced, zipped around pretty well for the first time. (There was one near-fall and a couple of "turn...turn...TURN...TURN!!! moments, but no falls.)

My big question was when did I turn into a complete and total wussy when it comes to heights? (Or was I always?) Chair lifts are way up in the air, and sometimes they rock back and forth. This is NOT GOOD. I did it, and the last two runs down Super Cub I really enjoyed, but I never got comfortable on the lifts. Maybe in time, I guess. Maybe in time.

Further Updates

We have more Spanky news, and it isn't what we hoped.

The pathologists are pretty sure what they're seeing in Spanky's biopsies is cancer, so we do have an answer. Because of where it is as much as what it is, treatment isn't much of an option. The doc is looking into one drug that might shrink the swelling, but beyond that, there isn't much to do. We have drops that seem to prevent the bleeding pretty well.

So that's the news. Spanky's home and happy. He led us on our 2.5-mile run yesterday and a 3-mile walk today. He eats and sleeps and likes his biscuits, and as long as he's happy and comfortable, we're happy. We'll value the time we have, and say goodbye when we have to. Thank you for all your good thoughts and wishes. Spanky wagged his tail for all of them.

Spanky's Home

Spanky came home today and slept.

And slept.

And slept.

We had visited him Sunday and he looked great -- happy and frisky and excited to see us. He was excited to see us this morning, too, but it had a "I want to go home now!" edge to it. But he got to, and we have drops and no results. Probably start to get those tomorrow, although the fungus test takes weeks, apparently.

Anyway, we're happy and poorer, but Spanky's home. Yea!

A Spanky Update

Spanky had biopsies done today and came through the surgery fine. We were gonna go see him around 4, but the doc thought it was best not to excite him.

Yesterday was a bad day that included serious thoughts that it might be time to put Spanks to sleep. His nose is worse; bleeding off and on. The problem was that when we had him in last week they didn't actually do anything to figure out what was going on with his nose. Our vet did non-invasive tests, basically looking for signs of cancer that has spread. He saw signs that something was up, and expected the test results to confirm the worst, so he didn't do the nose biopsy. The tests later came back negative.

But yesterday Spanky's worse and I don't want him to suffer and Diane and I are talking (and crying -- lots of crying) and wondering what to do. And I'm damn upset because we don't know what to do. We don't have an answer about what exactly is causing the problem, and because of that can't know for sure it's not treatable. So we're wondering whether to put Spanky down, knowing there's at least some chance he could be cured. It was not a good day.
I called our vet and vented, told him I was upset -- upset at him, upset at the situation. He explained his approach and basically offered to do the nose tests today instead of next Tuesday. (His partner, who is the specialist, even came in today to help him do it.) They're charging us for the tests and surgery but not for the hospitalization. Diane and I even had to work through that -- are we putting our boy through surgery just to make us feel better and not him -- but decided the potential good outweighed the bad.

So we don't have answers today, but hopefully we will soon. And maybe they'll good ones, because Spanky's a good boy! (banga-banga-banga...)

The World's Best Dog

This is the world's best dog.

If you get a chance, think a good thought for him.