Vermont 50

Something I hadn't previously mentioned was that I've been training for my first ultra marathon. I'd booked a race for September 27 in Washington state. Back in June, when the move entered the picture, I dropped out of that race and registered for the Vermont 50 on the same weekend (September 28).

It was fairly challenging to stick to my intense training schedule during the move and in the aftermath of the unpacking, new job, housework, etc. There's a great running community here, however, and I soon learned some of the great trails nearby and was doing the odd run with others.

The day of the race came, and it was my good fortune to have Erin there to cheer me on (at two spots). It was incredible scenic. There were cows.

Erin greeted her emotionally-spent and utterly-exhausted husband at the finish line.

By the time I was recovered enough to have an appetite, I was so f%^king hungry that my vegetarianism temporarily took a back seat.

I deserved ice cream, too.

Burlington's farmer's market...

...is pretty great. This was my haul in anticipation of Erin's arrival tomorrow!

Bed, part II: Complete

That latex mattress I wrote about earlier? Incredible! Now it just needed something to sit on.

I went through the same process I went through with the mower: looking at the best new option, looking at secondhand options, and then opting to do things the hard way. So I'll build it, I think, and to take one step further along this path of low-impact consumerism meant doing so with secondhand materials. Lucky for us, there's a recycled construction material warehouse a few blocks from home!

I started out looking at conventional dimensional lumber, then got sidetracked by some attractive rough-sawn 2x4s (the sort that actually measure 2"x4", not 1.5"x3.5"). They didn't have the sizes I needed so I wandered over to an unsorted pile of barnwood and live-edge boards. Bingo! I took at least an hour to think things through and build a pile that I thought would do the trick.

This is what some of the live-edge wood looked like, before and after (the after is after more work than I care to elucidate on):

Several hours into this project, it did cross my mind that perhaps dropping a few hundred bucks would've been easier. Or at the very least, putting out $50-75 for nice new lumber. But I was building character (in myself, and into the bed). And making a mess of our basement (it was a rainy day).

Fast forward a big chunk of my weekend. And we have a bed. The plan is to finish it in 100% tung oil, but I'm done for now. It's nice, solid, and it weighs a ton!

Craigslist goodies

Each time we've moved, we've made a chunk of cash by using Craigslist to sell things we no longer need or want. It was nice to do the same in reverse.

In the past days, I picked up a nice, solid bookcase for Erin to refinish when she's out to visit, and a nice little table for our breakfast nook. Whidbey approves.

(Not my) backyard hops

One of the crappy things about leaving Vancouver so unexpectedly was that I couldn't harvest the hops I'd planted on the roof of our coop this spring.

On the advice of a coworker, one of the first things I did upon moving to Burlington was to join Front Porch Forum, a daily emailed digest of news and offerings in the neighborhood. Is this a great place or what?! To my good fortune, someone down the street posted that they had hops to give away. Yes, please.

These friendly folks had been using them as a cover for their backyard chicken coop and it was time to make things sunny again. This was some of the "before".

 This is what I harvested:

 About three hours and ten very sticky fingers later, this was my haul:

The engineer in me had to measure their moisture content and be sure that I dried and stored them at the recommended 8-12% moisture range. I hit the middle. A few days later I tallied the finished product at 2lbs, 15oz. Enough for 3-5 batches of beer. Now, if only I knew which varieties I was working with! The kitchen smelled amazing.

Tomatoes

I have great coworkers. One of them brought me fresh tomatoes.

Treehouse!

Unfortunately, our place doesn't really have treehouse trees. The closest things are a few brittle box elders.

Back in January, we'd planned for me to take a treehouse-building workshop in Vermont and to use it as a mini-holiday. Little did we know that I'd be living here by the time it rolled around! It was a fun week (and I have a great job that allowed me the time off not long after starting!). We built this:

There were Oreo cows nearby: