Top 5 Moments of 2008

I know there are a few days left but I feel that I should do this now, so in chronological order only:

1. Being dumped by my girlfriend less than a week into the new year. Unwilling to let this classic moment set the tone for the year I powered on and it ultimately led to many great things, which I'll tell you about when I can think of them. A horrible situation which bore surprisingly sweet fruit. Read on.

2. Losing my apartment. Much like a messy divorce, only minus the kids, I ended up having to move out of a very small but ultimately cool apartment. While I may lament the loss, I am glad that I managed to both get out of a very awkward situation (living with my ex), and move into a flat where I could finally feel relaxed (for the first time in 3 years). I moved into a flat with two people I actually liked. Both guys, both into video games, and both into movies. It really was The House of Trouser, it's just a shame the surrounding area was pants too.

3. Spending my 23rd birthday alone. Quite possibly one of the most depressing thoughts ever, I actually enjoyed having a day where I could do whatever I wanted. That being the case I was able to remember every moment of it. I read a book in the park and treated myself to sushi. No I didn't like being alone, but I liked it better than going out for drinks with a group of friends where Simon Burgess (the fun vampire) is almost guaranteed to turn up and ruin the night for everyone by simply being there.

4. Missing my flight home from San Francisco and having to re-book the flight for the 24th of December, so I'll be arriving home on Christmas afternoon. I guess this means I get an extra couple of days in SF but I've yet to decide if that is a good or a bad thing.

In the airport trying to arrange a flight home

5. Number 5 hasn't happened yet. There are a few days left in 2008 but with such a fantastic year so far, I'm expecting to be unable to write about number 5 when it happens. Perhaps a friend could just post up a copy of my obituary.

Honourable mention goes to my aging roommate for his interesting choice of reading material and unorthodox reading method (being that he sat the magazine up in the sink opposite the toilet, with the toilet roll on the edge of the sink).

This is where I moved it to out of the bathroom,
and the page it was on when I came back. I guess
he liked the dresses.

Roll on 2009!

Improvise, Adapt, Darwin, I Ching...

So basically I've been getting a little bored of the blog as you may be able to see. I have been doing stuff, but I don't really feel like writing all the boring details here. At this point I'm just going to skip a lot of details and write about the bigger things. I guess the big news is that I'm back in San Francisco. Jac and I left the farm on Tuesday and travelled down to see a cool book store just north of SF. She left me there to make the long journey back up to Eugene in Oregon and I got the bus into the city.

It is so weird, I don't feel like I ever went to the farm. It feels like I never left the hostel. The cool thing is that I feel like I know the city a little better now and I can talk with people about good places to see. I met back up with Rika, a Japanese girl I met at the hostel here on the way to the farm. It was good to have someone I could just talk to straight away. It turned out that the Academy of Science in Golden Gate park was having a free admission day on Wednesday so I decided to go along. I met Rika there because she was visiting with people from here language class. I didn't get to see everything but it was definitely a cool place and I took plenty of photos. Here are some choice cuts.








Thursday night was cool because there was another pub crawl organised by the hostel. The pub crawl is the best way to get to know people and and to just have a laugh. Jesse, who was leading the group decided to take us to some very... different... bars. It was an awesome night though and as far as I know everyone had fun.

Pamela tries to explain what kind of club we're in

Check out that artwork

This morning was difficult. I wasn't really hung over (to be honest I suspect I was still just a little drunk), I just couldn't be bothered to go and do any shopping. I have been incredibly lucky though, I met Nicki. Nicki works on the breakfast bar and I got talking to her yesterday, so today I just spent most of the morning drinking coffee and talking shit. Luckily it turned out that she also had shopping to do and was going with a friend to shop in the afternoon. Being the lovely person she is, she invited me along. Naturally I accepted. It was an awesome day and really great to see the city with someone who lives here.

Its people like Nicki that make this trip so cool. Don't get me wrong, most people are OK, but you meet a lot of weirdos when you travel. You also meet a lot of boring, or insecure, or stupid people but every now and then you meet someone who you can just feel relaxed around and really enjoy hanging out with them. As a result, I didn't take any photos today but if I had, they would have all been awesome.

So now you are up to date on what is going on. Go away.

Over Due

This post was supposed to be uploaded on Sunday morning but as usual I didn’t have time, so I’m uploading it late and the next post will be up very soon telling you why it took so long to upload.


Turns out that if you are out of the country and then don’t contact anyone for over a week they automatically assume you’re dead. Funny that. So let me assure you all that I am still alive and well. It has been a busy week for me, but busy doesn’t necessarily mean interesting. For the most part I have been painting, but let’s start where we left off.

Last Friday morning was an early start as Wendy and I were heading over to Guy (Wendy’s dad) and Kay’s house to finally get ourselves a turkey. It was a 6:30am start and was still dark when I crawled out of my sleeping bag. By the time I got to the house the sun was just coming up so I sat in the porch to take some pictures and Rye (one of the cats) sat on my lap to keep me warm.

Copy this and paste it just below to create a spider's eye view

So we left the house at about 7:15am and arrived at Guy and Kay’s around 8:00am where we were greeted by the most Turkeys we’d seen since the ride last week. It can be very difficult to sneak up on a turkey in a car, as you might imagine, and as a result they all flew over the other side of the house. Wendy and I went and knocked on the front door and spoke to Kay who told us where the feed was and what direction we could fire in. Kay has been feeding the turkeys around her house, so they are quite tame and easy to get close to. They also come running to you when you open the feed bin. At least that was the plan. Proving once again that turkeys are not stupid, these guys had decided to stay on the other side of the house, and were even headed for the neighbours’ property, which would have meant no turkey for sure. Wendy put some feed out and we started to make our way around the house to try and run them back to the food. After traipsing around the property down and up inclines and through bushes and trees until eventually we had herded them back to the food. We had brought the air rifle as well as the 22. so we could take a shot without scaring any of them off first. I had the air rifle and aimed right at the head of one of the turkeys. It looked like the turkey was trying to stare me down because it just didn’t move at all, it just looked at me. I pulled the trigger and missed. Wendy stepped up with the 22. and fired. She missed too, and the turkeys flew away. We decided to go in and have a cup of coffee with Guy. He showed us the new library and work shop they had recently added to the house and we talked quite a bit about all the British T.V. he has been watching like Foyle’s War and New Tricks. Then we had to leave because we were expecting a new volunteer at the farm, and Wendy still had some things to do.

Wendy dropped me off in Boonville on the way home so I could get a burger. For some reason I just had a real craving for a burger. I took a little walk around some of the shops in Boonville and after a while Peter came down to pick me up as he had to go to the post office anyway. It turned out that the new volunteer was almost in Boonville and Peter wanted to stick around to meet her and show her the way up to the farm so I sat in the car while he went to the post office. Eventually it turned out that the person who had been standing across the road looking confused was the one we were waiting for, but since Peter was just having a conversation with someone else, and I was reading the paper in the car no one really seemed to make the connection for a while. The new volunteer’s name is Jaclyn and is just here for 2 weeks to help on some of the general jobs we have been trying to get done.

Jac and I ended up spending most of this week painting the valley cabin which I had started on a few weeks back. We painted the half of the ceiling that hadn’t been done, then we did a second coat on the ceiling. Then we decided to paint the walls, but were unsure if we had enough paint, so we did everything but the kitchen, then we did a second coat on that. During all this, a friend of Peter’s who wanted to go for a ride on the horses came over for a trek. It was a nice clear warm day and we rode up to the ridge again. This time it wasn’t foggy and I got a couple of pictures. This one is ok.

Booooooring

When we got back I took Harris (one of the horses) back to the pasture and as I was putting the gate back I heard a thud. I looked up and saw Harris on the floor rolling around in the dirt just loving it. I thought it would make such a cool picture that I went for my camera. Wouldn’t you know it, the little beggar got up and ran off. It was still a pretty good picture though.

Ooh the little scamp

This one is also good

If you look closely, you can see his willy

The next day, something very unexpected happened. Jac came out of her cabin in the morning to be greeted by a very friendly and unfamiliar cat. The happy little fellow followed her down to the house to meet a very surprised Wendy. Jac had arrived probably a week or more after Alex had gone missing and so she didn’t know that this eager companion was the little guy we had been talking about and assuming to be dead. We can only assume that someone had been driving past and seen him, assumed he was a stray because he didn’t have a collar, and taken him home. He was very hungry though and ate about three bowls of food. This made him look like a ferret that had swallowed a grapefruit. Wendy gave him a collar to make sure people knew he had an owner and now he is back to playing king of the hill with all the other cats. He seems to want to get into the house a lot now though and runs in every time the door is opened, which kind of upholds the theory that someone took him home and maybe kept him in the house.

The little feline whore

It turned out that there was a little more paint that we could thin a little and use to paint the kitchen, so we did a coat on that. Perfect opportunity to do another time-lapse video. This one worked much better as you can really see all the painting.



Being that we needed to let the paint dry and figuring that we had earned a day off after several days of nothing but painting, Jac and I decided to take a trip to Mendocino. It wasn’t really a sudden decision, we had actually been planning it for a few days and gave Peter and Wendy plenty of warning. We set out for the coast on Thursday Morning.

I feel it would pretty much be a waste of time trying to describe Mendocino to you but suffice to say it is a cool little town. It is actually a ten minute drive south of Fort Bragg (where Jeff and I saw Quantum of Solace). We spent the day walking around all the shops and checking out the cool old buildings in the town. I particularly wanted to check out the Lark in The Morning music shop I had heard so much about. I always like the accordion as an instrument and having heard Lisa play her button accordion at Thanksgiving I decided I should learn. In case you have no concept of the price of instruments it might be worth pointing out that I felt $400 for an instrument I’ve never properly played was perhaps a little silly. Considering, however, that the Accordion theoretically shares a lot of similarities with the harmonica, I didn’t think much of spending a few bucks on a harmonica and a couple of beginners books. Luckily it turns out I chose a good harmonica and exactly the right books for the one I’m learning with. Which was nice. I’ve barely had time to play it yet but so far I’ve figured out how to play Silent Night which I thought would be appropriate considering the time of year.

Other features of the day involved a walk on a beach, of which I got a shitload of pictures. Here are a few.

Another one of these for the collection

We also noticed how cool the sunset was and so I had to take a bunch of pictures of that. Here is one.

There was a cowboy riding towards it but he went over the cliff

Having been given some tokens in one of the galleries we went to have some cheap cocktails in one of the hotels before getting some dinner. After talking for some time in the hotel bar we suddenly heard some singing just outside the bar and when we got up to look we saw this...

This is exactly how it looked to me at the time

Suhweeeet. Bless their little cotton socks. To be fair they were really good carollers and they sang quite a few songs. It was very weird though with the weather having been so good recently it made it really hard to believe it was December. We paid for the drinks and were going to get food but decided that since we had been coerced into drinking by the token spewing old dope peddler in the gallery that it would be safer to get a motel room than drive home. After getting ourselves a room at the Surf Motel we went down the road for some dinner at that old haunt of mine (where I went once before) TW’s Bar and Grill. The food there is nice enough but the one thing you can count on is the quality entertainment. On this particular night it was Karaoke night. There were so many wonderful hits ranging from the likes of Coldplay all the way to Marilyn Manson. Delightful. We ended the night with the idea of drinking more (since we could) and just finding a movie to watch on T.V. The problem was that there weren’t any Movies on, so we channel surfed watching shit program after shit program with the occasional break provided by the likes of Family Guy and Robot Chicken. Thank God. About the time Jac and I were just getting tired enough to fall asleep, whaddayaknow? Judge freaking Dread. Well there goes my hope of sleep for the night, how about you Jac? Oh, she’s asleep already.

The next day it was back to Boonville to prepare for Wendy’s potluck. Wendy and her horse riding friends have set up a group to meet once a month at one another’s houses. This month Wendy had volunteered to host the potluck, so it was a bit of a mad rush back at the house to get everything prepared. I can’t really write much about this because it was just a bunch of people talking about horse stuff, which doesn’t make for an amazingly interesting blog. I had a good evening though. Everyone was friendly and chatty, but I was tired as hell and I kept yawning and drifting off. Luckily I don’t think anyone noticed and I did wake up a little when everyone started talking about checking the horses’ poop for problems. Jac was the only one who saw me chuckling quietly in the corner.

Yesterday Jac and I finished painting the cabin and then I started writing this. This morning I was woken up at the cabin (I say morning but it was more afternoon) by Wendy with both the guns. Apparently there was a huge group of turkeys just up the valley, so we traipsed up there. We couldn’t see any turkeys so Wendy tried calling them. We heard one answer on the other side of the valley, so we walked back. Still no sign of them. After walking around the valley for about half an hour, we gave up. Back at the house I’m finishing off my blog and hopefully I can upload it before anything else happens.

The Happiest Post Ever

Death is in the air at Lone Tree Farm. It may just be fog but I have the distinct feeling that it is cold, wet, slow moving death. No idea what I’m talking about? That makes two of us.

It has been about four days since anyone has seen Alex, one of the farm cats. The feisty little feline explorer spends a lot of his time wandering all over the farm keeping the packrat population down whilst the others largely stay on the back porch waiting to be fed. I’m told that whilst it is no unusual for Alex to miss the odd meal when he is cleaning out the hill cabin, it is unusual for him to be away for so long. Wendy tried calling for a while but the little guy hasn’t shown up. We did hear some Jackals very close to the house a few nights ago. It’s possible that they got him. Holding out hope that he is still alive would be more naive than optimistic at this point. Godspeed little buddy and remember, in animal heaven, everything has wings. All the more food for you my friend, all the more food for you.


Staying with the theme of death (don’t worry things will cheer up in a paragraph or so) two of the chickens also passed on. Their heads fell off. Well ok, we chopped them off. I was wondering if I could actually go through with killing an animal as I felt it would be total hypocrisy being a keen carnivore and yet unable to kill what I eat. Wendy assured me they were both ‘cocks, which don’t lay’ though which strengthened my resolve. I wouldn’t want to kill pleasant chickens but I gladly take out a couple of lazy assholes (please don’t leave any comments explaining what is meant by a ‘cock’ here, I know already, and for the record, Wendy called them roosters. I just like typing cock. Cock). It wasn’t really a very nice job so I’ll spare the weak stomached among you the details. It didn’t put me off chicken which, considering I’m not an idiot who thinks chicken grows on trees, is not all that surprising. It was still very interesting to see a chicken got from this...


To this...

'You say Alex is missing?'

We cooked one and froze the other for later, which we might need if the turkeys don’t come back. After my last shot at a turkey, they all disappeared. We didn’t see a single live turkey all Thanksgiving, and believe me they were out there. I could hear them mocking me with their little turkey voices, ‘come and get me’ they would chortle, and I would run to see them but they were gone. So anyway, I’ll shoot one of them soon and then I’ll be the one laughing. Well maybe not laughing, that would be a little ‘odd’. Like the beginnings of a serial killer ‘odd’.

Squeal piggy!

Other activities this week have been very wholesome and include the likes of more carpentry, bread making, and horse riding. Wendy showed me her recipe for bread a few weeks back so I’ve been poncing around the kitchen like an old lady baking bread. Real men bake bread. I have actually attempted to make the process manlier by making the loaves look cool like the one I made to look like a skull, or my very popular Stego-loaf with real stegosaurus-like... stegs. I got some requests this time. Wendy asked if I could make a horse loaf which was a stupid suggestion. How the hell am I going to make a loaf look like a horse? I’m not Leonardo Da Baker. Jeez. Plus horses are kinda girly unless they have a cowboy on them, or lasers coming out of their eyes. So I decided to go with a horse’s head instead.

As you can see, its shit. It totally lost its shape when I baked it. A lesson learned; don’t ask Wendy for loaf ideas. I had also asked Jeff before he left what he wanted in the next batch and he excellently suggested a space theme for his loaf. Well Jeff left, so he wasn’t around for the maiden voyage of the USS JEFF.


It has all mod cons including a soft fluffy interior and a nice crusty outer shield array. Basically, its a loaf. My own experiment was an attempt at a tartan pattern.

Baking experiment leads to Frankenloaf

Yet another bump in the road to bread mastery.

We took the horses out for another ride, which was fun. It was the first time we’ve been riding since I got my new boots, and I convinced Wendy to teach me how to ride ‘western style’ so I could look totally the part. Of course, I still had to wear a ridiculous old riding hat that looked like a huge boob on my head, and in-turn made me feel like a tit, so I guess that constitutes a pair. It was a long trek and I got to see lots of the area up on the ridge, I’d have seen a lot more but it was foggy. One thing we saw lots of was turkeys. The little buggers had been hiding, they know exactly what time of year it is and had been setting up camp further up the ridge. There were dozens of them. We could have probably thrown a rock into the middle of the group and nailed one. Sadly there were no rocks within easy reach, so we rode on, and the little voices began again.

We eventually reached Wendy’s fire truck. You don’t get an explanation here because it is too much typing but Wendy actually owns an old fire truck from probably the 1930s-40s. It doesn’t run and is in a complete state (unless they used to use rat shit to upholster car seats in the 1930s, in which case it was in mint condition). We took some pictures for me to put up here and started back to the house.

Peter is clearly jealous here

We gave the horses a good exercise on the way back by ‘loping’ some of the way, which is the western name for canter apparently. Shuna, the horse I was riding, was very happy to lope but being a very clumsy horse she was tripping over herself quite a bit so I didn’t push her. I didn’t fancy trying to gallop down the hill on my face.

The last bit of news is that we finally got to put a huge window into the apple shed. I say we but it was actually done by a friend of Peter’s who is a very good carpenter and managed to take a huge chunk of wall out without the building collapsing on us, which was a bonus. I didn’t realise that I was lacking shots of that side of the shed until there was a huge hole in it so you’ll have to make do with just the after shot.


So there you have it. Its nothing but death and construction around here. I’ll leave you with Pepe, another of the farm’s cats, trying to re-enact a scene from The Thing.