Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat...

Actually, it's more me than the goose that's getting fat, but that's not the point of the above somewhat musically-based post title. Instead, it's the fact that it's now officially December, and there's snow on the ground (about a foot of it) and Christmas is just a skosh over three weeks away...

It seems like just yesterday that the ground was bare and it was relatively warm, then suddenly, BAM! Zero degree weather followed by snow...

Thanksgiving week was good, despite the fact that I had to work from the Sunday before Thanksgiving until yesterday. Long time without a change of pace, but on the other hand, the amount of OT I made should take a tiny bit of the sting out of it.

Last night we braved the storms and nasty roads to drive to Boise to see the Oak Ridge Boys Christmas concert. What a great show! Those guys have been around forever, but they can still put together some fantastic harmony, and they're still as good as ever. We saw them at the BSU Pavilion a zillion years ago. This show was at the Morrison Center, which is a much smaller venue than the Pavilion (or the Taco Bell Arena as it's called now), which is cool because it seems a lot more personal. They don't try to blast you out of our seat with decibels, and you can understand the words to the songs...

They did about 40 minutes of their regular stuff, had an intermission then came back for what was supposed to be another 40 minutes and ended up being about an hour and ten minutes. At one point the Joe guy announced that what we saw behind them were Christmas trees, they were singing Christmas songs, and that they were not on a Holiday Tour but a Christmas Tour. Lots of cheering for that one from the audience!

For a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that I spend entirely too much time on Facebook, I have let this journal of what I (other people don't always agree with me and have said so in almost those words) consider to be a spectacularly ordinary life fall by the wayside. To any loyal fans I may have out there in InterWeb land, I apologize. To the rest of you, who may have only stumbled on this blog purely by accident, what can I say? I'm a busy guy...

So what have I done lately (lately being, say, the last four months or whatever it's been since my last post) you ask? The list is long and tedious, so I'll just hit the high points:

Night shoot in Baker in July. This shoot is always fun, and shooting Goex (real black powder) in my shotgun is always good for some serious smoke and fire. I actually place halfway decent this time, for once.

Idaho State SASS (Single Action Shooting Society) Championship in August. Last year it was so rainy and wet (in Boise in August? Go figure) that every body wrinkled, and I often wonder if all contestants were accounted for when it was over, or if someone may have disappeared into the mire like quicksand in an old Tarzan movie. This year, it was somewhere in the vicinity of 100 degrees every day, which is much more normal for Ada County at that time of year. I ended up fourth place Classic Cowboy, and was probably the only one shooting black powder. I also took home a second place medal in the Long-Range Buffalo (black powder) Single Shot side match. That was fun. I need to do that again...

Cycle Oregon in September. This was my 6th CO, which actually became a Cycle Oregon/Washington, as we spent three days in Washington the middle part of the week. We had two layover days, a private wine tasting, a 64 ounce stainless steel flask filled with Pendleton Whiskey, and tickets to the Pendleton Roundup. Great trip! As usual, I sun- and wind-scorched my beak, but it was worth it, although I did get tired of wheat fields in relatively short order...

Fishtrap Writer's Retreat in October. I spent a week in a relatively isolated cabin on the banks of the Imnaha River with four other writers, all of whom were excellent housemates. My goal when I got there was to finish my third book, which had been on hiatus for about a year and a half due to motivational issues. Amazingly enough, I sat down in front of my computer on Monday morning and came up for air on Friday with a finished first draft of the book nestled snugly on the flash drive plugged into my laptop. Eureka! Now I'm waiting for my editor to finish tearing it apart so that I can put it back together again, hopefully in time to have it in print enough weeks before Christmas to be able to sell it for Christmas presents to my "fans", if such people should happen to exist. I'm now down to only two unfinished books instead of three...

PBR Finals in October. I was back from the Writer's Retreat for just about nine days before Cheryl and I left for Las Vegas to visit Clint and take in some bull riding. He had a five day hotel stay at the Silverton in his pocket, but since he lives there he didn't need it, so his momma and I took advantage of it. Nice place. It's also attached to a humongous Bass Pro Shops store, in which I spent entirely too much time, and a lot less money than I was tempted to spend...

Since then, it's mostly been a case of trying to catch up on all the stuff that we didn't have time to do this summer, what with haying and all. But things are sort of starting to wind down, now. The calves will be shipped this week, I've got five of the posts set for my new bull feeder, and the generally slightly easier pace of fall, due to the shorter days after the time change, is about to set in. Time to get back on my trainer; I'm getting fat. Gotta get ready for another Cycle Oregon...

Training, training...

In preparation for dragging my chubby behind from Elgin, to Enterprise, to Clarkston, etc. on this year's Cycle Oregon (which I was not going to sign up for. But that's another story that I won't go into at this particular point in time...) I've been riding my very cool, very chic 2010 all-carbon Specialized Roubaix. Indoors on the trainer, unfortunately. Because of weather, time constraints, etc. that's the most accessible place. It's not the most exciting riding, but it does keep me from turning into the Goodyear blimp. I go through a lot of DVD movies...

I'm up to pedaling an hour and forty minutes, and I try to vary the routine from session to session. For example, last night I did :05 warm-up, then :30 sitting spin on big ring cog 6 at 13+ mph, then went to timed intervals. The new resistance unit on my trainer is a lot more resistive than the old one that it replaced. So I did intervals for an hour, doing :01 standing on big ring cog 10 at 17+ mph, then :04 sitting big ring cog 6 at 13+ mph. By the end of the time, I looked like somebody had hit me with a bucket of water. I think my socks were even soaked through...

Then I moved on to my weight bench. I've been slowly increasing the weight I'm lifting without changing the number of reps. I've read where that's the way to build strength rather than mass. I'm bulky enough as it is. I'm up to 75 pounds on the bench press for 15 reps, followed by 25 crunches. Next is 25 butterfly curls at 38 pounds, then another 25 crunches. From there I move on to leg lifts, 25 lifts at 45 pounds, then I do 25 situps holding the leg lift weight up with my, of course, legs. Next is 25 bicep curls with the leg lift weights, first left arm, then right, then both. Last but not least is an exercise that I have no idea of the name for. I have a small dumbbell bar with 25 pounds on it that I hang behind my head with both hands and do 25 reps with. When I'm done with the bike and the weights, I cool off with a Cytomax and whey protein smoothie. It's supposed to be good for me and help with recovery. I don't know about that, but it tastes pretty good...

So anyway, as of last night I have just a skosh over 512 miles since January 1, including the 6.85 mountain bike miles from last Sunday, and I'm the same weight that I was when I finished Cycle Oregon last year, so I'm feeling pretty good about that. Last year I did Cycle Oregon on 1100 trainer miles and only about 200 road miles, which seems backwards but you do what you can, ya know?

On a side note, I'm extremely proud of my lovely wife. She's been working on exercising and watching what she eats all winter as part of the family Biggest Loser contest, and she told me the other day that she is now able to get into some clothes that she hasn't been able to wear in quite a while. YAY!!!! And even though the spring work is going on, she's still finding time to exercise!!!

In the words of Mark Twain...

or I think that's who it was anyway, "The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated". Or something like that. No, I haven't dropped off the face of the planet, and no, I haven't been kidnapped by aliens or any such thing. It's just that posting on the blog has kind of fallen under the radar, as it were. 'Tis spring, and a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of, well, spring work, and a little bit of spring play-time. I've been cutting fence posts, breaking and repairing my chain saw, fixing fence, traveling to Las Vegas to go house shopping with Clint, that sort of thing...

So what has gone on in life? Lots of stuff. We did indeed go to Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago, looking for a house for Clint, who will be starting culinary school at the Art Institute in July. Since student housing is like $650 a month, and the housing market is extremely depressed in the Vegas area at the moment, we decided to see if we could find a house for him to buy, instead of renting, since he plans to stay down there for some five years or so. We figured that, what the hey, if he can sell the place in five years for what he paid for it now, he's lived there for free for five years, essentially...

So after looking at a bunch of places, we made an offer on his favorite one and turned the Smerf-mobile for home on that Friday, then found out the following Tuesday that he's about to become a homeowner. Even better, the deal should close in plenty of time to get the $8000 federal tax credit check as a first-time home buyer. That'll do some house fixer-uppering and make a few payments. It's about time some our tax dollars helped one of us instead of all the bums who... Never mind, I won't go there...

I started my big gun sprinkler on our field last week, just in time for the first big thunder-boomer of the year to come blitzing through, depositing a phenomenal amount of rain in a very short time and washing a ton of dirt and other assorted junk over the head box for the main line and actually plugging a 3/4" nozzle. I was truly amazed...

Branding is pretty much done. There are a few more calves from some late-calving cows yet to brand, but not many. Brett's been helping people all over the place brand calves, along with building a few leather goods...

Clint's giving up his apartment at school this coming weekend and moving home. He's going to commute to classes the rest of the school year, and save the rent money...

I think that spring may finally be sneaking up on us. I've been doing all of my biking indoors on the trainer because the weather's been so crappy, but yesterday afternoon I finally got out and did a 7 mile ride on my mountain bike, up the creek to our lower gate and back. Great day for a ride. Coming back down the road I decided that there's really very little chance of me becoming a hard-core mountain biker. I'm too chicken to really bomb the downhills, and too wimpy to hammer the climbs. And the bashing around on the downhills is hell on my wrists, so I guess I'll mainly stick to road riding, with the occasional gravel road foray on my mountain bike for leavening...

Saturday I spent adding to my collection of juniper fence posts. The cool thing about juniper is that you don't have to treat it, and it still lasts for years in the ground. Our neighbor has been doing a juniper eradication project, so all I have to do is knock off the limbs, buck the trunk to the right length, and presto! Instant post! I got nine of them in one really small area. Partway through the first pickup load, the roller in the nose of my chainsaw bar went on strike. Fortunately Cheryl was still in town, and was able to get me a new bar. I ended up with almost twenty posts for the day, and the pile behind the shop is getting pretty big. I'm thinking I may attack the homestead next. There are some cut trees over there that look about right, and some more I can knock down myself. Might as well keep going while I'm on a roll...

Skunk Wars...

So this past November, an apparently huge population of war-like skunks decided to attack our house. The war began with an extreme hosing of the utility room area, which drifted to the rest of the house, the night before we were to leave for the PBR finals. As such, pretty much all of our clothes, our shoes, my computer case, the whole enchilada smelled strongly, and I do mean strongly, of skunk. Once we got to Vegas, we went through approximately a gallon of Extra-Strength Febreeze in a mostly vain attempt to battle the stench...

Fast forward a few days. We got home, only to discover that the house had been hosed again. Speaking of reeking! This second, totally unprovoked barrage elicited what some people might think is an extreme reaction, but I don't think so: I went on the offensive...

Out in my shop are an assortment of various sizes of traps. After a scouting expedition around the perimeter of the house, I discovered that the varmint's main means of ingress and egress to the underside of the house were two tunnels, one behind and one befront. It wasn't long before each of the two tunnels was ringed with traps, nor was it long before the first of the ninjas was captured and executed...

I'm getting ahead of myself here, just a skosh. I set the traps on a Thursday afternoon. Friday morning when I got up, there was a skunk in one of the traps behind the house. Boom. No more skunk. I went back into the house to have breakfast and my morning coffee, then ventured out to take the now defunct polecat from the trap and reset it. What to my wondering eyes should appear but another of those striped menaces, caught alongside the dead one in a trap that hadn't been tripped. Boom. Two dead varmints to get rid of. Peeww!

Over the course of the next few weeks, leading up to the end of the year, I caught a total of fourteen of the stinking beasts. Then came the big snows of January, and the threat abated. We were sure that the war was over, and that we had won, but it was not to be. I stuffed rocks in the tunnels, and proceeded to get back to some semblance of a normal life...

Then, one night in mid-February, the beasts returned, this time beginning some sort of territorial battle under the utility room, and stinking the place up a tiny bit in the process. A fresh tunnel had been dug in that area, which I promptly ringed with traps, along with setting the traps back at the tunnel in front of the house...

Like ninjas in a B-rated action movie, the smelly varmints apparently only attack one at a time, which is fortunate. Since this latest onslaught began, I've trapped eight more skunks, all at the front of the house, and two pack rats, which could actually probably be considered collateral casualties, both at the back of the house. We've now been two days skunk-less. Hopefully this is a trend that will continue...

Trapping twenty two skunks at the same house is probably some sort of record, but that's okay, I'm happy without the fame and fortune...

Building websites, part deux...

So last Friday I went to the library and used their high speed internet to upload a bunch of chap pictures. There are now something like seven pages of chinks and two pages of rodeo chaps, and a page of miscellaneous stuff that doesn't have much on it. I'm hoping to get some pics of the latest bible covers along with some other pics that I just found on my camera and get them loaded on the website. It's looking good so far, and he seems to be happy with it. It even loads relatively quickly on my dial-up connection, which is sloooooowwwww....

Once again, the new location for Empire Leather on the web is here...

Building websites...

Lately I've been working on a new website and blog for Brett. I'm planning on having pictures of a bunch of the chinks, chaps and other stuff he's made on the website, and a shopping cart on the blog page for purchases. So far it's coming together pretty well. His website is at www.empireleatherco.com and his blog is at empireleather.blogspot.com...

There's not much on either place yet, but it's slowly coming together...

...the goose is getting fat...

The Christmas goose, that is. Or was. Considering that this is now the second full week in January, and consequently Christmas was roughly three weeks ago, the goose, or turkey as it were, has long since been devoured and a new one will eventually be selected for Christmas 2010...

This was an interesting Christmas. The annual community Christmas program slash potluck was on the 19th, with our annual Christmas church service on the 20th. Cheryl and I went shopping, just the two of us (how weird is that?), instead of going to the program. Then Sunday night I did the Christmas service at the little church. Audience was actually pretty good sized, and Vicky finally got there to do the reading she's been wanting to do for the last two Christmases, but which she didn't get done because she kept getting snowed in. Then I started on two months of graveyard shift on the 21st...

A little note regarding graveyard shift: I worked off shifts for actually quite a few years, then I've been on days since I went in the lab, except for a month when I first came in from the yard. But this particular graveyard stint coincides with a combination shutdown and layoff (damn slow economy), so it's really quiet around here at night...

So anyway, we normally have Christmas dinner, with family, extended family, friends, whoever, on Christmas Eve, somewhere in the vicinity of 6 PMish. I start work at 7 PM. Consequently, I got to hear about how everything went after the fact rather than being in the thick of the festivities. Worked out okay, though. We opened presents the next day, and I got lots of goodies in addition to the gun safe I bought in November and which just got moved into the house and stocked from the existing non-fire safe cabinets last Friday. I even got a bunch of stuff I asked for, like a dandy pair of warm slippers, a new zip-up sweatshirt, and a DVD copy of El Dorado, starring John Wayne, James Caan and Robert Mitchum. What more could a boy ask for?

On the whole, in spite of having to miss the celebration in town, Christmas was pretty good...

PBR Finals

Hm, what have I done since Cycle Oregon? Oh yeah, the PBR (Professional Bull Riders) World Finals in Las Vegas in November. We took Brett to the NFR for his 21st birthday, which is in December, so Clint decided that we should take him to the PBR finals for his 21st. Being the understanding parents that we are, we did just exactly that. I got online early on and got us tickets for the second weekend, including the final final, made us reservations at the Jockey Club to use one of our timeshare weeks, and away we went...

The Jockey Club is an old property, but has been remodeled a bunch, so the rooms are pretty nice. The only problem with the Jockey Club is that it's being overbuilt by one of those megahotel/casino places. By that I mean that the new place is for all practical purposes engulfing the JC, which makes access somewhat interesting, and totally ruins the view on the south side of the building. Our apartment had a fantastic view of a concrete wall ten feet away. On the other hand, the Jockey Club is pretty much centrally located on the Las Vegas strip, between Bellagio and Monte Carlo and directly across the street from Planet Hollywood, so you can pretty much walk to most anywhere on the strip...

Brett and his buddy Cliff drove down on Monday, and we flew in on Wednesday. We got to the hotel about 10 PM and, being hungry, Cheryl, Mema and I went across the street to PH to get something to eat while Clint went to find Brett and Cliff. After we ate we took a walk up the Strip, spent some quality casino time and had a few "free" drinks then headed back toward our digs. We were almost back to JC when Cheryl's phone rang, and a voice said, "Where are you guys? It's after two, and we're home, and you're not! Where have you been?" We got quite a kick out of the kids calling to check on the old folks. After that we rarely saw them alive...

The bull riding was great. The weather was wonderful, we had good seats, and we had an all together fun time. We've had people tell us that "we've been to Vegas, we don't need to go back." But Cheryl and I both think we could go back a bunch of times, because you never get to see everything...