Moved to Keene

Bea and I are now living in Keene, NH!


Our apartment (#4) is located two blocks from Central Square (a rotary, or traffic circle, or round-about) which is the center of "downtown." We are in walking distance to pretty much everything we need, which is awesome.

One of the rooms in the place smells like cat, but we're rectifying the situation. Brother James lives about a mile away at Keene State College, pretty much a straight shot from our place which is cool.

The internet situation at our apartment at the moment is similar to our internet in Sheridan, WY. We can pickup a weak signal at one specific spot in the house, but so far that's it. Once we have our employment situations figured out, maybe we'll splurge and get some real internets, until then it's weak/no signal or the library.

Foghat and Me - Where do I fit in?

This is Scottie; I work with him and he's pretty cool.
Scottie is the husband of Rod Price's widow.
Rod Price was a guitarist for Foghat. (Slow ride, take it easy...)
Before he died in 2005, he (Rod Price) was living in Wilton, NH.

Spanish Goldfish

Sometimes my mind wanders a little with the little bits of foreign languages that I know, figuring out how to possibly say things etc. Maybe it's to try and keep what little I know from being forgotten, or perhaps for some other strange reason, I don't know. Tonight while cleaning up after Bea's brother's snack I thought to myself (then out loud to Bea and her sister) PESCADO DORADO (goldfish - Spanish).

Now, I'm not entirely certain (or even vaguely) that's how Spanish speaking people would refer to Goldfish, but I think it's a pretty good guess for a laymen like myself. Either way, isn't that fun to say? Try it.

Kind of like DOMANI MATINA (tomorrow morning - Italian) or L'ANANA (pineapple - French).

I suppose they may say PESCADO DEL ORO or just Goldfish, but that's not as fun.

Applepickin'

Brother James and I picked apples in our parents' back yard after we both got out of work this evening. This is the first time any apples have really been picked; most of the time there aren't any apples, but where there are the apples are pretty nasty (non-edible). This year Mom did some pruning which dramatically increased fruit production. Please note the following:


Mom was worried about me using the ladder to pick apples despite the fact that I spent about two months picking olives using ladders in Italy, and I've been working with ladders all summer doing barn repair; however, I can understand her thought that just because I do "unsafe" activities more often does not make them any more safe.

Anyway, we were only able to access a couple apples by climbing the ladder, we found the ladder much more useful when we extended it all the way and jabbed the branches with it causing the apples to fall into James's waiting hands.


These are golden delicious apples.
Point of interest: these golden delicious apples are neither golden nor delicious.
Point of interest: most golden apples are not delicious (even if golden).

In my book, golden delicious apples tie with red delicious apples for last place. Someone once described them as potatoes with red (or golden) skin. They're mealy and lacking in flavor. That being said, the apples from our parents' golden delicious tree are not in high demand. Our mother may axe the tree after this year to promote healthier growing in the peach tree and the other good apple tree (which may be Courtland or Macintosh, but she doesn't remember).


This is were the bad apples go to die.
(bad apples go to the fire pit)

This is the final haul of good apples. I think I will make a couple pies out of them. Apple crumb pies to be exact.

Jaspers was closed!

I drove into Nashua this afternoon to pickup some supplies for making the last two beers for the wedding, but when I arrived the brew store was closed for some reason today. Drat. I will try and scoot in tomorrow morning before going down to Cambridge.

The likely beer line-up for the wedding may or may not be as follows:
* Apricot Coriander Ale
* Dunkelweizen
* Belgian Wit
* Smoked Porter
* Spruce Molasses Winter Warmer
* Rhubarb Hefeweizen
* Pumpkin Ale
* Double Brown Ale
* Pale Ale
* India Pale Ale
* Coconut Curry Honey Hefeweizen
* Raspberry Wheat Ale
* Apfelwein
* Cranapfelwein

Apartment Hunting - Keene, NH

Bea and I selected an apartment for us in Keene, NH. We will be moving in sometime between 8.27 and 9.1 depending upon a couple things.


The apartment is nice and has some quirky aspects about it that make it fun (like the angled window dealie), but I must admit I was somewhat disappointed with our options of places to choose from. I was really hoping that we would be able to have another place like our Wyoming apartment which had a yard and was almost a whole house to call our own, and it was cheap! However, Keene isn't the same place and it's unrealistic to have the same expectations, but we're still excited to experience our new habitat. We'll be two blocks from Central Square (the rotary in the center of downtown Keene), which is a pretty sweet deal.

More photos and stuff to come once all this goes down.

Puncture Wound

The wound itself doesn't look that impressive; it's the right most dot on the bottom of my hand. I slammed my hand hard against the side of the barn where an old rusty nail was sticking out a quarter of an inch or so. The swelling doesn't even look so bad either, but it was extremely painful to do menial tasks such as holding silverware or signing my name.



The old doctor at the walk in clinic prescribed me these and then went on a little speech encouraging me and all my friends to vote and work on getting a universal health care system in place. Right on.



The barn is filled with nasty rusty old nails sticking out everywhere, but the one that made my day was located just above the top left corner of the large door opening.


Other than the hurt hand, the rest of the day went well. The new sheathing boards are going on nicely and Jeb and Scottie made some serious progress tearing down the old roof. Fun fun fun.

Ol' Rusty - Alive and Well

Oh happy day! After another 8 hours of transmission work with Rob, Ol' Rusty started up and is happily shifting in and out of all gears! Rob is my hero!

So, there's only a few other issues...
* Windshield is slightly cracked
* Rotors and break pads rusted up from 6 months of non-use
* Need to register the truck in New Hampshire
* Wyoming registration expired in June
* Needs state inspection and change of title

Nothing much, just some loose ends, but everything is coming right along!

O.M. and Life

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time.

- Macbeth

Ol' Rusty Revival?

I took the day off from work today so I could help Rob help me put a new (used) transmission in Ol' Rusty. Luckily for us it was raining for the first half of the day, but we were rewarded at the end of the 10 hour day when we turned the key and Ol' Rusty . . . still didn't quite work. :(

Well, we made a lot of progress, but we need to go back and pull most of the parts out again and make an adjustment on the new (used) transmission, and maybe get a new starter motor.

Rob was pretty bummed out, and my dad thinks we probably destroyed stuff, but time will tell on that. I'm withholding my judgment until we can pull the thing apart again. All in all it was a learning experience for me since I've never done any automotive repair before, and Rob is a good guy to learn from.

Nashua Barn

Nothing like starting the work day with a huge splinter shoved under you right ring-finger-nail. This was followed by 8 hours of grueling jack-hammering in the 98 degree 75% humidity. Get along little doggies. I was completely soaked with sweat by 8am.

We're working on a barn that's on a farm/apple orchard. Here's some photos:


Yikes!


The inside is pretty messy, but it will probably get a lot worse before it gets better.


Me in a tilted silo. This the first photo of me in 2 years without a beard.