Following Edge

Today we made our first big fire. Backyard burning is almost a part of the standard charicature of the rural resident in our town of Elmira. Almost any sunny day from October to May, you can be certain to see one of our Elmira neighbors, with a beer in one hand and a shovel or rake in the other hand, perhaps with a few missing teeth, tending a big fire of branches, boards, leaves and even (though illegal) matresses, trash and toxic chemicals.

In the two and a half years since we moved here, we haven't gotten up the courage and energy to burn our own growing pile of branches, boards and other flamable scrap. But, since tomorrow is the last day burning is allowed this year, we finally got to it.

We started early in the morning, so that we might spend some of our Memorial Day holiday with some recreation. You can see in these pictures the progress of the fire from tiny to huge and back to tiny and can also see the size of the pile of branches and scrap go from huge to nothing.

The heat of the fire is something amazing. I got a tan on my face and arms from the few hours spent closely tending the fire. It's like going to Hawaii, but with none of the cost and 10 times the work. The fire could consume the branches as fast as we could add them and eventually turned it all into a small pile of ash.

Even the last picture here is not yet burnt out... after another few hours, the ashes were nearly half the size. By tomorrow, the two or three truckloads of brush will have been reduced to less than half a garbage can worth of ashes. No wonder backyard burning is all the rage out here!

The whole process (aside from waiting for the ashes and cinders to cool and condense) took only 4 hours, so we had time to drive to the coast, enjoy a windy visit to the beach, and eat at Mo's. An excellent day.

Anne Marie and I got the invitation posted to ourbirthdayevent.com for our annual birthday extravaganza on June 18. This year, the event, which usually celebrates both my birthday and Anne Marie's, will also be a graduation party for Anne Marie's completion of her second Master's Degree and the start of her clinicals. We emailed the web page link to the sadly disconnected people that don't read followingedge.com and even printed out and mailed a handful of copies to those who are so disconnected that they must use stone tablets. Check out the invite and RSVP if you'd like to come help us celebrate.

I recently came across the Forget-Me-Not Panties (protect her privates) site, which is so curious and wrong that I had to figure out what was going on. [If you must know, Keith encouraged me to try out the del.icio.us web link sharing system, so I subscribed to the "panties tag" since panties are such an important part of my blog readership, which brought me to the site in question.]

It turns out, as was immediately apparent to me, the site does not represent a real product. In fact, it's part of a viral marketing contest by EyeBeam, which might have caught your intention with their Rejection Line, and who have lots of other experimental social Internet projects.

Check out the scoreboard for the "Contagious Media Showdown", that Forget-Me-Not Panties is a part of. The top several entries are all very interesting: Crying while Eating, Delivr.net, and blogging-related sites blogebrity magazine, and autoblogger (which I know many Eugene Bloggers wish was a real product).

I used my own custom Delivr.net keyword to select an email postcard to send to David. He responded with "What is this?" which is less than I was hoping for from a panties-based postcard.

Anne Marie this week was accepted into her post-graduate nurse practitioner program. Congratulations, of course! So, we're vacationing in Philadelphia this Summer. Well, vacationing may be a bit of a misnomer for as Anne Marie will be spending most days in orientation and classes for her post-graduate program. But, Lauren and I will be enjoying the children's museum and Sesame Street Place in the sweltering heat, which is fair to call a vacation.

Now, is it possible that some of you who haven't figured out how cheap I am from my description of my in-car GPS navigation system, camper, bar stools, and DVD player? If you haven't figured it out yet... here's how it is...

Of course, I could have gone to Orbitz.com this week and selected the cheapest air/hotel/car package for $2,636 with amazing features like two overnight flights and a Howard Johnson hotel in charming, (kind of) nearby Bellmawr, New Jersey. Instead, based on my confidence in Anne Marie being accepted (it's like wagering on the sun rising, in my opinion), I have been watching for deals and shopping around for months.

The flight was the easy part. Prices (currently $360 a person at best) dipped to $250 a person about two months ago. I went beyond that by opting for a red-eye flight there (leaving Portland at midnight and arriving at 11:30 Sunday morning) and getting $229 a person. With all day Sunday to recover before classes on Monday, I think it'll work out. Anyhow, the Orbitz deal included flights across midnight both ways.

The car rental was only slightly trickier. I set up a handful of email addresses so I could repeatedly underbid myself on a car rental deal on priceline.com, which is normally not allowed. As a result, I was able to get a Compact class car for $13 a day. Sweet!

But the real hard work and the real coup was finding a place to stay. Anything in Philly above one star (that is, not riddled with drug deals and hourly room rental customers) is $71 a night plus tax (that is, at least $85 a night, if you don't know just how bad the room taxes are). Staying a bit away in New Jersey saves you $10 or $15 a night, but New Jersey has always failed to sound charming to me. Maybe I'd love it... maybe I'll never know. After working priceline.com, checking for deals on dorms and student housing and trying to cut a deal with bed and breakfast places, you'll hardly believe my creative solution.

Xin Fu is a Chinese PhD candidate in statistics at UPenn's Wharton College (of Business). He'll be away for the Summer from July 15 - August 15, so he posted to craigslist to see if someone would sublet his apartment during that strange and limited period. Happily, I had been watching craigslist Philadelphia and swooped down on his offer with my greatest speed, charm and persuasiveness. Despite having gotten "a lot" of people interested, by the end of the day, he agreed to rent it to me for $515, even though he's never met me or spoken to me. In fact, we probably will never meet, which is curious. But, it'll give him some money for the Summer and gives me a furnished apartment for about $39 a day with no room tax. Thank you, Xin Fu!

Final price for my cheap travel package... $1384... about half price and better all around! After having my eye on this for months, I just had to gloat. I love the creative solution. I'm sure that Anne Marie is just happy that the creative solution didn't involve a cardboard box and ramen noodles.

Until Anne Marie told me that rain is expected this weekend, I thought we may have hit the Summer weather. I have been thinking about dragging the air conditioner in from the barn and Lauren really wanted to sit outside when we had dinner tonight. As you can see, this KFC was a reasonable Oregon restaurant and had no outdoor seating. Even so, we made our own picnic and everything worked out fine. As I think about it more, I'm a bit dubious about Anne Marie's expectations for rain. Maybe the weather will be warm and dry from now until September? Nah... not in Oregon.

In other news, a bit after 11:00 tonight, a gray filly (baby horse) appeared in our yard. Anne Marie was able to get it into a stall in our barn and remembered seeing it in a nearby yard. We went around 11:30 and banged on the door of this house to discover (from a disoriented man in a bathrobe) that he didn't have a gray horse, but the neighbor's gray horse was often in his yard. "Oops, pardon us." Unfortunately, there was no answer at the neighbor's house, so we have a visiting filly tonight. The excitement of farm life never ends.

Today was the pinnacle of a torrent of activity around the "little house" (our new identifier for the rental house we're buying in front our property). We've had the place re-roofed, painted inside and carpets cleaned. We've personally cleaned or replaced all the light fixtures, fixed the mini-blinds, cleaned the kitchen and bathroom, unclogged the bathtub, reinstalled all the closet doors, hauled away the piles of trash, swept the walks, pressure-washed the exterior, and numerous other little fixes, patches and improvements.

We took these before and "during" pictures for you to appreciate our wallpapering job. Honestly, we didn't have the time and energy to do a great job on it, but you can see that nothing could have made it worse than the wallpaper that was already there. It must have been on sale cheap in the 1970s.

The end result of all this work: a newspaper ad to bring in the "lucky" new tenant...

ELMIRA close-in country living,
 2 bdrm, large yard, woodstove &
 elec. heat. Pets possible. $695

"Country Living"... Don't you love that? That bit came to us through my mother.

It must have worked as we showed the house to 8 potential tenants today and got 4 applications back already. It's coming down to a dead heat between an urban widow/widower couple who want to move out to the country together before they get married and a rural Goodwill trainer/long-haul trucker couple who want to move closer in from a house far out in Veneta. It's going to take a call to references and some deep thought to make a decision. Or maybe an even better application will come in tomorrow. We're not going to make a decision until Monday or Tuesday since we won't actually own the house until Wednesday or later...

Basically, we're flying by the seat of our pants.

I am carefully managing my time between a big project at work and new projects that seem to start this time of year. Also, Lauren and I have a bad cold, and not allergies as previously suspected.

(This post has been briefly summarized for you due to possibly sensitive content.)

Tonight was the Eugene Weblogger Get-together. Despite my very, very low energy and really low turnout (compared to last month's crowd), the get-together was great and conversation was really interesting.

Blu made her first appearance. David, Kat, and Kinsey also attended. There seemed to be a surprising number of shared interests that came up. I was impressed.

But I was even more impressed with the amazing table arrangement I discovered. Previously, we've had trouble at Track Town being either too spread out or too crowded. I found a way to move the tables so that 10 or 15 people should be able to share conversation without too much crowding, but even with just a handful of people, it was great. I'll have to do that again next time.

Thanks to Blu and the other attendees. Hope to see more of the bloggers next month.

We're not really collecting chickens. Honestly. But, perhaps the disappointing results from getting only 4 chicks from incubating almost 40 eggs this season adds to our natural desire to help out a chicken in need.

On our way to Saturday Market this Saturday, we stopped by PetSmart to pick up some medicine for Snickers (the horse) who injured her eye somehow. As we were leaving, Anne Marie spotted a sign reading "Found: Big RED Hen. Needs good home". We called the number on the sign and soon wound up at a little condo apartment with a lady, her grown daughter, a huge dog, and Hazel the hen. It turns out that they found the hen on the grounds at their church and have been keeping it inside their little condominium for five weeks. The constant effort to clean up after Hazel (or to prevent the dog from cleaning up after Hazel) made them thrilled to know that we could take Hazel to the country and offer her a good home.

Now, after spending over a month sitting on the couch cuddling with Audubon Society members in a suburban condo watching daytime TV, one could wonder if she will think of her new home in the country as a really "good" home. On the other hand, they were feeding her bird seed, so she'll probably be happy to have some proper food and the company of chickens again.

Hazel is a BIG chicken. As close as I can guess, she is probably a New Hampshire Red, though she seems big even for that breed. Her size could be a problem for the "pecking order" in our chicken coop, but she both has a docile nature and appears to have had a badly-set broken wing, so when the "pecking" began, she put up a good show, but evidently came out on the bottom as she's been laying low in the coop all day today.

I just realized that there are only a few days until this month's Eugene Weblogger Get-together. I was sure it was anlther week away... where does the time go!?

So, as a reminder for Eugene-area Webloggers: The Eugene Weblogger Get-together is THIS WEDNESDAY, May 18 at 6:30pm at Track Town Pizza near the U of O at 1809 Franklin Blvd.

Why not join us? Enjoy some (free) pizza and talk with the usual crowd of local blog personalities. There are usually a handful of participants and there is no firm agenda,
just a small, and friendly get-together. There are over 100 active weblogs on the Eugene Weblog List. Why not meet a few of the people behind those local blogs?

Eugene Weblogger May Get-together
Wednesday, May 18 at 6:30pm
Track Town Pizza
1809 Franklin Blvd (near campus)

I imagine Friday the 13th is my lucky day, since I was born on Friday the 13th. It's really on the the rest of the week that's been unlucky or overwhelming.

I am hustling to get the new "little house" rental ready for renting. The contractor finished the repairs, the painting and the re-roofing this week. There is only a pile of small repairs and cleaning left. On top of the anticipation for signing the papers and paying the down payment for the place, it overwhelms almost all of my free thoughts outside of work.

Additionally, the "yellow truck" (whose aesthetic you can appreciate here) broke down. I had it parked next to the "little house" and was loading roofing material from it onto the roof with my little tractor when it decided that it would not start. After trying to charge the battery via "jump-start", then by battery charger with no luck, I'm not sure what I'll do next. I'll probably waste some time crawling around under it tomorrow, if I can manage to feel any more energy than I did today.

Speaking of tractors, I bought a second one that has been sitting on the "little house" property. You can see a similar tractor here, but mine has a back-hoe on the rear. Why did I buy it? The smallest reason is that I love my little tractor and sometimes wish for something a little stronger. The biggest reason is that the owner was selling it for $750. Given that both the tractor and the backhoe each go for 2 or 3 times this price, it's hard to avoid. But, of course, it's another thing to worry about.

Overwhelming. Hope your Friday the 13th came out a bit more relaxing.

I've been silently sad and concerned about David and the boy he used to call his son. David wrote tonight about the issue and I stupidly could not restrain myself from commenting on his writing with my criticism, even though it's not going to do any good and even though David instead needs my support. I wish I hadn't seen his post. I hope he'll be able to forgive me at some point.

Had a fine day. Until this fall, when Lauren will start going to school 5 days a week, I spend half of every Tuesday with her. This morning, before lunch (and ice cream), we visited the new Minds in Motion in Springfield. This place is great... on a par with kids' learning activity places in any larger town. Arcade, play structure, puppet show stage and lots of great books, home and office play environments, science activities, and the giant set of Lincoln Logs pictured here that we used to build a house! I highly recommend it to any parent in the Eugene area.

Even though the last week has been a too much "Kids get to do whatever they want" (actual Lauren quote), she was very agreeable today. Even though I've started all the pills and shots that Dr. Lommen recommended, my energy level is still very low, so it's even more amazing that I could be very agreeable today. (Of course, I need to be patient since Dr. Lommen's treatment is supposed to take 3 months to 2 years.)

The other exciting news is that less than 12 hours after I wrote about Herman Krieger's photo essays, Herman himself wrote to me to thank me for the entry and offer a copy of Churches Ad Hoc: A Devine Comedy. I got it today and it's a real treasure. I recommend you go to Amazon and buy a new or used copy. At the very least, make sure you've looked over all the great photos he offers on his site.

It was pleasant both to enjoy his generosity in sending the book, but also interesting to know that my readership reaches enough people to come to his attention so quickly.

I recently came across a beautiful, insightful, and highly comic photo essay by local photographer Herman Krieger call Mall-aise. I recommend you go look it over. If you're from the Eugene area, you'll recognize many of the locations, though some are also from the Lloyd Center in Portland, and probably other places.

A review says that Mr. Krieger "has a talent for finding interesting juxtapositions of subjects, which he arranges in such a way that they become comical works of art". I couldn't agree more.

You can find more photo essays on local people and places at his site. He also has a book published called Churches Ad Hoc: A Divine Comedy, which includes photos of many places familiar to me and from which selections are available on his web site.

Really cool! One of my favorites is of a dog at our usual feed store.

I visited Portland with Keith today and, although we had a great meeting at the corporate office about our project, I stopped at lunchtime to visit Dr. Lommen again and review the lab results collected after my last visit.

It turns out that elevated cholesterol is the least of my problems. My level of Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) is really high. DHEA is a hormone that is related to testosterone and estrogen and evidently plays a part in cortisol production (in other words, critical to proper operation of your body). A bit of research indicates that DHEA is the "Snake Oil of the 90s" and thought to be a "Fountain of Youth". Based on the claims by the people selling DHEA nutritional supplements, the level of DHEA in my body should make me feeling young and looking thin. Yeah, right!

Evidently, my DHEA is so high because both my testosterone and my cortisol are extremely low and my body is trying to increase production in my adrenal gland, which it's working. The low cortisol explains my energy level since it's the hormone that leads to adrenalin and gives you energy to get though the day. A graph of my cortisol shows almost a flat-line through the day, whereas it's supposed to start high and last through the day. No wonder I've felt like I'm flat-lining every day... I am in a certain respect.

The terms for my separate, but related, conditions are "adrenal failure" or "adrenal fatigue" and "metabolic syndrome" (although I don't have most of the classic symptoms: obesity, hypertension and insulin resistance).

It sounds kind of scary, but I'm happy Dr. Lommen has a plan in mind. I'm going to be starting cortisol replacement and testosterone injections, among other things. It may take 3 months for my testosterone level to provide any improvement in my symptoms and probably 6 to 12 months for my adrenal function to return to a useful level. That's a while, but I spent that long just waiting for a return call from the last specialist I saw.

It's progress... at last.

Everyone should have something they can do to fill up those vacant hours before and after work. I mean, who want's to spend all that time just relaxing! And, any parent will know that caring for your child and keep the household in shape just doesn't take up enough time in the day!

So, I've really jumped into the fun and excitement of working on the neighboring property that we're buying this month.

Before work and at lunch on Monday, I got copied, signed, printed, folded, spindled, mutilated, and sent by overnight mail almost a pound of papers for the mortgage for the place. Before work on Tuesday, I met with the current owner to discuss the improvements I should be making and the valuable parts of the buildings that he'd be taking away before the sale. After work on Tuesday, I met with the contractor who will be fixing the ruined wall, re-roofing the place, and repainting the interior.

The contractor's a great guy, but, as with all contractors, he might say I need to buy a "Framitz" and the hardware store says "Oh, you mean a Fridle? Did you need half inch or five-eights inch? Dura-back or contractor style?", to which I respond simultaneously with "Duh? Uh... Don't know. Wha?" and "Curse the bloody bastard!", which comes out sounding like "Dur thuh Dohdy noodle no But... Wha?". Happily, the folks at Jerry's Home Improvement hear something like this all the time and know it means "I don't know what I'm talking about. Just pile me up with the most expensive stuff and attach one of those red flags to the back of what you load into my pickup and make sure it reads: Sucker!".

But despite how easy it is to buy things at Jerry's, this morning I first had to get the camper off of my truck. I hadn't done it so far because the condition of the jack brackets makes it pretty precarious and dangerous. Imaging hoisting hundreds of pounds of wood and metal in the air 4 feet using something like 5 foot long toothpicks attached with thumbtacks. Then, risking your life by putting pallets and a tarp under it before trying to set all of this back down without breaking it. When I need another hobby, we'll fix the jacks and jack brackets and clean the whole camper out... but that'll have to wait until this fun is over.

Then, after work, I loaded all the roofing supplies and wall board into the truck and got them home. Tomorrow I'll spend my spare time checking in with the mortgage processor and helping the contractor unload my truck.

You cynics may discount my eagerness to take on this new hobby and may think that the new $875 a month in house payments for the new place are driving me to spend all all my time working outside of work. But, the bigger drive is just the possibility of having the work over with in a couple of weeks... as in "Why do you wear shoes 3 sizes too small? It feels so great when I take them off". It'll be great when we have a renter in there paying $700 a month to cover our expenses. Uhhh... just a moment here... Oh well, maybe the IRS will help me make it work out.