Two years later

Went through some bookmarks in my browser today, noticed that all the old blogs I've read over the years haven't been updated in quite some time. Then I remembered that I had this thing here, and felt a little silly that I haven't updated in a while. A long while.

So let's see: last entry was about our crazy neighbors across the street. Well, they moved away. New neighbors over there now, but they never talk to us. Maybe it's because it's too hot, or maybe they think we're nuts because we have this huge overgrown garden.

Oh yeah, the garden. It's immense. Every year it seems to get bigger and brighter. This year our tomatoes did really well. Peppers, too. Even tried broccoli out for the first time, and it did really well. The chickens have been a roller coaster ride of emotions ever since we got them. First we bought six, ate one because it was a rooster. Then we bought six more birds, three chickens and three ducks. Then something came along and started eating all of them. We're down to two of the original chickens.

Work has been decent to me lately. I've gotten to the point where I've removed all previous crap from the last IT guy and have replaced it all with my own doing. Feels pretty good. Everything's working. When I have to make a change, most of what I need to do can be done from my desk so long as there aren't any serious network issues.

This means that between mini projects and minor complaints, I can really daydream about projects. And I've come up with some real whoopers. Things like making a smokehouse to smoke meats and veggies and cheeses and fish. Various food preservation techniques like dehydration and canning and etc.

A few years ago I started using Mint to track my spending and help me make a budget of sorts. Every year I check out the various categories of spending and note that our number one cost center of everything isn't rent, or shopping, or anything else: it's food. Specifically eating out at a restaurant. So every year I make a silent vow to cut back on food costs. So far, it's been working, but that cost center of food is still highest on the list. We made the garden, eat all we can from it, but a lot gets wasted. Which then means that we fall back on ordering a pizza or hitting the local diner.

But now that I have at least two methods of preserving foods (dehydrator comes tomorrow), I'll be able to stretch out the usefulness of what we grow. Also I'm hoping to save some money by buying big package deals from the local butcher. Once I build out the smokehouse, shit's gonna get cray-cray.

I've done probably six or seven canning experiments so far. I think my most favorite was the whiskey butterscotch sauce, even though we didn't grow any of the components and it really isn't preserved at all. But it's in a jar. Preserving-wise I think the pasta sauce is gonna be the most tasty, maybe the pickled carrots...

Daughter got a job at the local farmer's market, so I go there every week. Pies are good there, sausage guy knows my name, and I'm starting to get addicted to these crazy garlic varieties that a farmer brings weekly. I don't know if we'll ever be able to produce enough food to support a booth there every week, but wife thinks we can. Maybe if we add in another field to the grow table... I don't know.

This isn't Philadelphia

There are times when I get started on something and don't know when to stop.

Yesterday when I got home from work, the neighbor across the street comes up and asks if I have a saw she could use for a project. She knows perfectly well I have a saw, I've used it in the yard a few times to build our huge raised bed boxes. She's just being polite, I suppose. Rather than just entrusting my brand new saw to her, I crossed the street to see what she was gonna cut to see if it could be done with a different tool.

Her front yard is about four feet long by about twelve feet wide and the grass has been trampled by frequent foot traffic to the point where there is very very little grass at all. She acquired some small pallets (think 2'x4') and wanted to reuse them as a sort of fence. The bottom two skid boards needed to be removed, and she wanted a single central board cut off. She said she had tried to pry the skid boards off, but couldn't with their claw hammer.

I knew we had the tools, but I had just gotten off work. She kept talking about how she needed a fence, but had no money to buy a fence. We had picked up a little wire border fence thing for our front section next to the road for $20. It protects the cacti and weird little plants the wife has planted in there. I think the lady was trying to guilt trip me into helping her, I don't know.

Anyway, I went into my house, grabbed a mallet and a rock hammer and proceeded to take apart all seven pallets. I had to hammer the rock hammer's chisel back between the boards, pry them apart, and move on. It was hard because the joints were all connected by four long nails. Once the prying was done, I left and came back with the circular saw, made the seven little cuts, and then told the lady I had finished. She was very glad and said she'd pay me something when they were able. Then I was able to really "come home from work" and get on with my evening.

I could have initially just told the lady I couldn't help her, or that she could use my tools (probably not ever see them again), or that I would help her later... But I had the equipment, had the knowledge, and had the ability to do the thing that she and her husband couldn't do.

I think it's important to help people if they truly cannot do what needs to be done, but sometimes I get so far into something that I realize later I could have saved myself an hour of work if I were just a bit more selfish about my time.

Speaking of the boxes, we now have almost seven of them prepped out and ready for the dirt delivery. I just got paid, so we'll be making the trip out to see if we can find some decent compost/manure/soil for delivery next week. Hopefully we can get everything finished up and in the ground by the 14th. Any later and we'll be hedging our bets for final harvest time in the fall.

A Return to a Simpler Time

So much has changed since I last posted. I remember typing it up, now, and times looked pretty bleak.

I managed to find a contract to hire gig doing cell phone migrations, of all things. The company I was contracted to needed someone to assist with helping people shift from using Blackberry phones to iPhones. A worthy cause I was behind all the way, but I was curious to see what would happen after all the phones were switched.

During my stint there, I showed them what I could do. They were shifting lots of things around and changing their entire WAN topology. There seemed to be a revolving door when it came to the network guys, and most of them seemed to just want to browse facebook instead of fixing all these weird little issues that came up. So, I jumped in and helped out where I could.

Things were going pretty well, but as the job was contract to hire, I ran out the contract, but still no hire. I could tell they were squirrely about it, so I reached out to the recruiting community and found the job I'm in now. Good pay, decent benefits, and I'm essentially the only IT support staff this company has.

It reminds me a lot of previous jobs I've had where it seemed like people had a pretty good idea of what needed to happen, but nobody would pull the trigger and start any projects. Maddening.

Our landlords came by last week to check out the house since they hadn't stepped foot inside for over a year and a half. They seemed pleased with how we were taking care of things. At some point during the walkthrough, they indicated that they really were interested in selling the house, as they weren't interested in owning more than one house anymore. I get it, you know, they're both working, both busy, and I don't think they make a lot of money on the rent they charge us. Rather than ramp up the rent, why not just sell it?

First of all, I'm not even sure we are financially able to buy a house right now. I still have some student debt, just bought a car a year or so ago, and there's some rascally hospital bills that are still slipping through the cracks every month. We love the house, but I'm not sure we can really scrape the barrel and afford the house...

I have been bitten with the builder bug, recently. I bought a decent drill and circular saw, and have been eyeing various things in woodworking magazines. Last weekend I bought some wood and built two sawhorses and three raised beds for gardening. The beds are pretty big: 4'x8'x1'. The wife painted them yesterday and we're preparing for a dirt delivery sometime this weekend. Seeds are ordered, so that is that. Now I just need to buy the wood and build six more boxes and we'll have a decent amount of food for the year, so long as the weather and the plants cooperate.

At various points during our marriage, I've noticed that if Shannon mentions something three times, I should pay attention and follow through. I don't mean a Beetlejuice kind of thing, more like over the span of a few months, if she mentions something it means she's seriously considering it. The latest idea: raising chickens.

Turns out, it's totally legal for us to raise a maximum of 8 chickens in our backyard, so long as the area is kept clean and decently quiet.

I've already formed the coop and run plans in my head, and have even extended it so far as to include a rabbit hutch and perhaps an in-run compost bin. Chickens apparently are awesome compost stirrers, and we have a ton of compost stuff every year that just gets added to a stack without real decomposition happening.

It's weird, I always had this idea that I would gather information, pay off bills, buy some land, and THEN start the big homestead. But now, I think perhaps the homestead is happening in our current house, essentially right in the middle of a decently large city. I've seen pictures and read stories about how things used to be, you know, back in the "old days", when a family would have a garden, canning surplus, and even keep small animals to raise for food no matter where they lived.

Maybe I'm more old-school than I thought?

Setbacks and delays

Seems like it happened just a little bit too early.

Moving closer to the river, moving south to be in a slightly warmer climate, moving closer to the center of the business of the city... These were all shifts in the right direction. Getting the kids into a different school system, being five minutes away from work, having lots of businesses close to us for the wife to get a job... All good moves. Checks on the list, if you will.

Getting into a different state, learning new tax rules and payment laws and all the rest. It was a good idea, right? Starting the slow crawl to get out from under debt and start saving money for the big move out to a farm somewhere and be free of at least some of the rat race.

I got terminated from my job last Thursday (or was it Wednesday?), and although the reason given was something about getting a complaint from a client, I'm pretty sure that if it were something so banal as that, I'd be written up, scolded, and we'd all move on.

Regardless, here I sit, after sifting through ten job posting sites and calling a few staffing firms, feeling lonely and a little out of sorts. I have enough cash to pay for the rent and regular bills, enough food to keep my family from starving, and hell, I'm listening to Pandora and typing this from my couch in the warmth of my house. Things aren't so bad, I guess they just happened too quickly for me.

Had my debt been paid off, had I amassed some savings for some land, had I been just a bit further in the grand plan, I'd be fine with getting term'd for no good reason. But instead, I have to shift things around, ensure that bills get covered, put on the smiley face for interviews, and try to stick myself back into the rat race for a few more years.

The weird thing about the season, though, is that lots of people are getting the flu, having to reschedule interviews and sit-downs... So things get delayed even more.

Charlie Brown

I knew a guy once, he went by the name Charlie Brown.

He was a hood rat, the kind of guy that would tell you his down and out story while chomping on an eight dollar cigar. He preferred Micky's Malt Alcohol to most any kind of drink, but that was probably because it was more punk rock than PBR at the time.

Charlie knew a lot of people. He went to the right shows, made the right kind of friends, knew the right things to say. He had an easy laugh and a sharing smile. Charlie never ratted to the cops. He didn't share secrets. He probably knew more secrets than anyone.

I met Charlie Brown at a local coffee shop back in the nineties, during a time that I was doing a lot of the same stuff; I went to shows and made friends and tried to say the right things. He told me he was on the street, and I kinda took pity on him. At the time I was still living at home with my parents. They trusted the people I trusted, since they knew I knew how to read people pretty well.

I knew Charlie Brown wasn't really down on his luck. I knew he could go home any time he wanted. I knew he could make a phone call and get a few hundred bucks from an uncle or other family member. I knew he wasn't the kind of guy that didn't have nothing to lose. I knew I could probably trust Charlie Brown, but I didn't know how far I could trust him, if that makes sense.

So anyway, I took Charlie home, gave him some good meals, had some good parties. Back then, I knew how to throw a party: invite the right people together and everyone shares a little of what they have, be it smoke, drink, or whatever. And as long as nobody acted like a dick, everyone had a good time. Reflected well on me, and on everyone involved. It was what I did.

Charlie stayed with us about two months. He did dishes. He swept up the floor. He folded his clothes and didn't steal the bait money we would leave on cabinets and tables. He did all the right things.

One day Charlie decided he had fattened up enough. His winter with us was over, so he had me drop him off at a restaurant where a girl worked and said goodbye. I saw him a couple times after that, but it wasn't like seeing an old friend, more like seeing someone you went to school with a decade ago.

Sometimes I think about Charlie Brown, you know, I wonder what he's up to. Maybe he's got a beer belly and three kids and a dog that won't shut the fuck up. Maybe he's got a mortgage and a rich wife and he spends his days waxing their four cars in the garage.

I think he came up with his own street name. I think he did it because of the old saying, "You're a good man, Charlie Brown." But I don't really know if he was a good man. Or is. I think he was a way for us good men to realize we were really the good men. Not that he's a bad man, you know. He never took the twenty from the kitchen table, never stole from us. He knew we were open and honest with him, and I'm pretty sure he was smart enough to know you don't fuck with those kind of people.

Sometimes you have to roll-start

There's an odd feeling that I've done all this before. Sometimes I focus on the thing I'm doing and it feels fresh, new, inviting, and requiring bravery. Other times it feels like I'm adding another mark to the list, but it's the same mark as so many other days.

I think I get this feeling the day after payday every time. Usually it's when most of the money is accounted for and is already allocated to bills and food and etc. Truth be told, I make enough money to have shelter and food to eat and even some fun stuff on the side, but it's always so close.

I guess this is what it's like to be in near-poverty? Or maybe what it's like to just not be really rich?

We attended a wedding this weekend, sans children. It was a nice, humble, quick, non-religious wedding with a full open bar at the reception. The food was good, the people were nice, and everything felt right about it. WHY CAN'T MORE WEDDINGS BE LIKE THIS?

After the wedding we hung around for a while, listened to the toasts, ate some dinner, then rushed out to go to a drag pageant our friend was competing in. He didn't win, but was very delightful.

We pretty much slept in all Sunday, didn't get anything done that we needed to do, and now it's Monday!

Maybe that's why I feel so shitty: I didn't get to finish anything on my internal list. No check marks. And now it's back to the grind-stone and doing the same shit I always do.

A recurring check-mark that is always a positive is the kids. I think people have kids just so that they can keep track of the passage of time. Both are getting so big, so wise even though they're still so young. They say things some times that just... weird me out they're so precocious. One will be talking to the other and (in a way of teaching the other something that neither really knows about, like how the brain works) will say something so profound it just makes me wonder. But then they'll turn around and just be kids again.

Life is good, though. Fall is essentially here: the windshield of the car/truck/thing is fogged up in the mornings, jackets have to be on if you're outside for more than ten minutes, and I can almost smell cinnamon everywhere. Soon it'll be time for the sweaters and then hats. And football. And snow shovels. But then later it'll be time for digging and planting and growing.

And I like that kind of cycle.

Paul Bunyanish

Our back yard is what some would describe as completely overrun by bushes, vines, and other nefarious plants and weeds. The guy that lived in the house before we did tried his best, I think he really did, but he didn't dig deep enough. He cut the vines but he didn't pull them down from the trees. He trimmed some tree limbs, but didn't do a proper job of it. Really, he just didn't really know what he was doing.

So there's a fenced-in area, about fifteen or twenty feet deep, then behind the fence there's another six feet or so and then there's a stone wall that's around four feet tall. Then behind that there's another fifteen or twenty feet, and then what's left of an alley.

The fenced-in area is pretty clear of debris and weeds, the only issue is a huge pine tree that has had free reign over the back yard. The branches were everywhere until my wife did some proper pruning, and now it's more manageable.

The area behind the fence, the little six feet section? Yeah, it's completely filled in with old brush and cuttings from whatever pruning the dude tried to do in years past. So the whole area is about two feet deep of leaves, pine needles, and otherwise carpeting filled with spiders and bugs of all varieties. Scary.

The main source of all the vines that have been strangling the trees in the back yard seems to be coming from around some honeysuckle and mulberry trees, the two species lending themselves greatly to split branches and great highways for the vines to travel up.

One of the trees we decided to cut down yesterday.

It's weird, the amount of sunlight one tree felling can grant you when the space it occupied is no longer occupied. And now we're able to see back into the back-back-back yard, and we've seen things like baseball mitts, broken TVs, old tires, big round bouy things, and all manner of other debris from years forgotten.

We've planned some of this plant removal from before moving in, noticing how completely overrun the area back there truly is. But now that we've actually taken that first step into the great beyond, it's as if the job is just too big. There are just too many vines. The honeysuckle is just too overgrown.

But there's still the remains of the mulberry in the back yard. The eight or so big branches and the hundreds of small branches that are in piles, waiting to dry so we can then burn them all.

And then, perhaps, we can start to cut down another small tree/bush and continue the process until the back-back-back yard is reclaimed.