It's not right...

the colors are all wrong (or at least a little wrong), but I'm going to have to deal with it till I work up the energy to buy new paint and repaint the bathroom.



I have been thinking about finding a winter job. I've done a lot of thinking about this actually, but have yet to act on it. I'm still picking up a few lawn jobs here and there, just enough to keep me thinking I have enough money coming in to pay the bills.

My friend Luke just asked me to make a logo for him for his yoga studio in Lewiston. Here's a couple of preliminary sketches... but I think they're a little too busy. I'll have to work on a simpler version, or something completely different.

Well hello my long lost friends...

I know it's been a long dry summer for my blog. I apologize. I will try to rectify this over the following months and change my ways.

Here's what I've been up to lately...

I've been online dating. Shocking I know, but I thought I'd give it a go and see who I meet. I've met some very nice guys, but unfortunately I haven't encountered a bonfire that's consumed me yet. Or maybe that's fortunate? I don't know.

I've found that it does take a lot of time and energy and I've considered discontinuing as soon as my paid for month is up. And I think that will be in just days.

I went up to Sandpoint a few weekends ago to meet up with a friend for some camping and hiking. Unfortunately it rained on us all weekend, though fortunately the cloud cover kept the air temperature fairly warm. I think we missed the brilliant colors of fall by a couple of weeks, but we got to see the beginnings of it.



Besides meeting new guys and trying to decide what part they are going to play in my future, I've been hanging out at home with Pumpkin. She is doing fantastic. She's made herself right at home in my little abode and has even become a bit territorial over it. She has taken to watching life outside of the windows and if she happens to see any of my outdoor cats through the windows she bristles up all over and slams herself up against the window or sliding glass door. Of course I go over to try to calm her down and she acts sweet and innocent as if nothing happened. This is my little Pumpkin Pie reluctantly posing for a photo.



I've also been working pretty hard on my bathroom remodel project. It's been ongoing since February... I think I'm nearing the final product... I've gotten the ceiling painted just last night and this evening I'll be painting the walls with a dark blue glaze. The plaster that I just finished texturing the walls with wasn't a color that I was excited about so I'm going to augment it with blue... I'll post pictures of it when it's in it's finished glory. Everyone will be clamoring to use my restroom when they take a gander at that picture...



And since I didn't get this lovely picture posted in a more timely manner... and I just couldn't keep you in the dark about my culinary expertise... Behold, the salmon burger on a bed of spinach, topped with sweet pickled red onions and a cilantro cream sauce.



Take a look at the color and composition of that plate... astounding... and it was delicious too.

Fall is falling...

I got stuck in the mud this weekend... a precursor to the snow and ice I'll be getting stuck in soon!

I have been failing in keeping my blog well updated this summer... Sorry.

Here's a bit of what's been going on:

Little Miss Pumpkin is not so little anymore... She really does like to eat and eat.



The roomies outgrew the roost and flew the coop.



I finally finished painting Willow's parent's basement.



I got to try out sailing for the first time. It was a blast...



My mum requested an outdoor tub be set up for her birthday. This is located in my garden.



And the most recently photographed event was going to get wood with the fam.

I can't believe how fast this summer is going by. It almost feels like fall already. I don't like it. Wasn't it still snowing just last month?

Lawns are still keeping me busy, though many of them have become every other week instead of weekly. All of the odd jobs are keeping be busy, ie: flower garden clean up, hedge trimming, pruning, etc... I need to get back to a painting job I started in May also... It MUST be done by mid-August! So hopefully I can finish that up next week.

My own 'yard' has been very neglected. Just today I finally got around to weeding the flower beds in front of my place. It was so irritating to see that weed bed every time I drove home after a long day of work, too tired to work in my own yard. Now that it's somewhat cleaned up, I need to plant some more flowers in it. With all the weeds gone you can see that the flowers are quite sparse.

I'm sure everyone will be thrilled to know that I am finally bathing at home again. My dad got the bathtub fully plumbed in last week! Sorry it's taken me so long to tell you about it. I'm sure the suspense has been killing you. Now it's my turn to get some work done... I don't like the accent tile that I bought to tile the shower with, so I'm doing some investigating into making my own tile for the shower. There's a pottery studio down in Lewiston that I'm hoping will help me with my quest for the perfect tile. I want a deep blue green, that feels like deep water in the middle of a lush forest. I haven't found any tile at the flooring stores around town that fit that specific bill. I found a candle at Pier 1 that is the perfect color, so I've been hauling that around town tile shopping with me. No luck yet.

Besides working and messing around at home, I've been doing a lot of thinking about what I'd like to do for work this winter. What I've come up with so far is: 1)Cook at Wais Divide (in Antarctica) 2) Work on a sailboat somewhere or 3) maybe go back to school for nursing? Who knows what will happen. I've been hoping that something will fall in my lap like it did last summer with the job down in Antarctica. I may not be that lucky again. So if anyone has any suggestions on where I should go or what I could do, leave me a comment with some info on it! I'm up for anything. In fact, I talked to a lady yesterday that said I could go cook a sorority in town for the winter, or she'd ask her son who is the skipper of a fancy yacht if he needed any help... or she know a professor who might need help with a camp he runs up in Alaska for glacier study in the summers. Now that's quite the variety to pick from! Unfortunately, I don't think I'd last very long in a sorority, and the skipper son only has two other job positions on the boat and they are filled, and the summer camp for glacier study job would be an office job in Moscow... So I'll be waiting for something else to pan out.

Ode to Chris

Poor Chris... He broke his clavicle last week.

I whipped him up some boxer shorts with this snazzy fabric that he fancied.



I was in such a hurry to get it packaged up and mailed I didn't get a picture of the shorts themselves... Maybe I can get Chris to send me a picture of him modeling them...

Summer...

just started and it's already flying by! Holy cow. My arms and back are super tan, but the rest of my body is as white as the day I got home from Antarctica... I'm an odd sight in a swimming suite I bet. Though I haven't made it into a suit yet! My friend Chris said he'd teach me how to swim... better (what I do is kinda embarrassing) but he moved himself to Boise and with the price of fuel, there's a slim chance I'll be spending the money to drive down there for the weekend...

Here's a pretty little picture of my lily white legs, one with a few gashes in it from a blonde moment at work.



My garden is going crazy with blooms. And my strawberry plants are loaded with little green strawberries hanging like grapes from them. A few things have gotten eaten by some fuzzy little wildlife that has moved in recently. But I won't be chasing them off because I think they're so dang cute. I hope they don't eat too much.



Here are some of my garden flower pictures for your viewing pleasure:









Unfortunately... sort of... I didn't get the bathroom sheetrocked or the bathtub installed last weekend. It was, after all, Father's Day, and my pops was working on helping me finish insulating the bathroom walls before we seal them up with the sheet rock. Then I skipped out on helping him in the afternoon and made dinner for the fam. We had a delicious dinner of bbq steak and other various tasties. Then we went and planted a pear tree I got him for his special day. My dad is awesome.



That's my bro on the left, Dave, my dad in the middle, David, and my mummer on the right, Mary. It's just like old times... I'll have to put up a picture on here of all of us gardening when I was just knee high.

So, since Dave was over, we had to take advantage of his muscles, and we had him help us carry the new (cast iron) tub into the bathroom. I certainly don't need back problems!



And my parting picture, these are my new roomies...

Miss Sugar Pumpkin...

is the name of a very sick little kitty I found in the yard of a vacant house in Troy as I was mowing yesterday afternoon. She's a stray kitty, not friendly and not clean... or healthy. She was completely out of it, stumbling around, falling over, and didn't even realize I was right next to her. After calling a Moscow vet and the Troy vet clinic (which is open by appointment only) and calling the Mosocw Police and talking to the Latah County dispatcher, I came to the conclusion that no one cared about this sick little kitty except me.

After finishing up my lawns for the day, I returned to the lawn where I saw her and found her right where I left her, huddled up under the edge of a bush. Of course I didn't have a kitty carrier in my pickup waiting for me to rescue strays all over the country... It's a good thing I don't find sick and injured animals very often... So, I went over to neighbor Ali's house and asked if she had a box I could take the kitty home in. She produced a perfect sized box and an old sheet, which helped a lot in catching the little scamper.

Last night Pumpkin slept in my kitchen in a pet carrier. She ate a tiny bit of food but then proptly passed out in it. At least she made it through the night. I'm hoping that she'll still be kicking by Monday so I can take her to the vet to get her checked out, though if not, at least she's had a luxury hotel to sleep in instead of the rain, cold, and bushes where I found her.

Poor little thing.