My House

First, I’d like to start off with a picture of a little coyote who was roaming around our station. There’s a few of them.

Now onto my house. You’ll have to excuse the lack of furniture and décor, as well as the mess of things that don’t quite have their own place yet.
So here’s my house. I plan on putting something on the front porch to take up that empty space in the right corner. Obviously, there’s the front door. It leads into the kitchen. The top window is my bedroom. If you go to the left, that’s my deck.

Here’s the deck. If you go down the stairs on the other side, it leads to a storage shed as well as down into my front “yard”. Really it’s just a bunch of trees. Maybe I’ll do something with it later, but for now it’s unimpressive. If you walk in to the door here, it leads into my living room.


This is the view to the west, looking from the deck. The view is really hard to capture on camera in either direction because the trees are in the way.


This is the kitchen, obviously. On the right hand side by the side window is where my little breakfast nook with stools is going to go. It’s not here yet. I eat on my living room floor.

So turning directly around is the first glimpse at my living room. The door to the deck is on the left. Like I said, it lacks furniture and décor, but that’s in the works. And yes, my roomie is my bike… for now.
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This second picture is as you turn the corner into the living room. Again, notice my beautiful bike.

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This is turning around and looking from the corner of my living room (where the funky lamp was sitting). The door on the left is the bathroom, right before you go up the stairs to the loft. Obviously that’s the kitchen again on the right.

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This is my bathroom. Just like any other bathroom I suppose.
It has a toilet, sink, bathtub, and shower. It also has some pretty high shelves that don’t hold much because I can’t reach them. I’d show you, but it’s really hard to get pictures in small rooms.
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So, up the stairs we go. It may look a little dusty… that’s because it is. I haven’t gotten that far into my cleaning yet. I feel like I’ve hardly been home. Yes that’s my shoe rack up there on the right. I don’t have closets. Still working on solutions for that. One thing at a time.

This is my bedroom loft. No doors or walls that face the living room, so it has a very wide open feel to it. Very cool in my opinion. I love it.

My bedroom again with the shades drawn to block out the afternoon sun.

For a little different perspective, this is looking down into my living room from my loft. Strange, I know, but this is also pretty hard to capture on camera. Maybe I’m just not trying hard enough, but I’m hungry and I need to go grocery shopping.
So there you have it in a nutshell. Come and visit to make a little better sense of it all.

All Moved In

So I'm finally moved into my new home. This morning I unpacked my last box... and dumped the contents on to the floor. Who needs a place for everything anyway? Plus the boxes of books that I've thrown into the storage don't need to be unpacked anytime soon. Thus the storage sheds.

I've been sleeping on the futon mattress that Debbie sold me. You should have seen me man-handle that thing from the van into the house, then later- up the stairs to my loft bedroom. Could've killed me, I'm sure, but it got there and I survived it.

Other than that, the only furniture I have is deck furniture. A bistro set with a table and two chairs, plus two patio chairs and a lounge chair donated from my landlord. My futon frame was out of stock, and they decided not to inform me, so I've ordered another one and am awaiting it's arrival. My new pillow-top queen mattress from JCPenney is set to arrive in about a week. The little dining set should arrive in less than two weeks. I'm undecided on my bed frame. Mainly I just need to do a little more research online to see how tall my bed will be with the new mattress plus a bedframe. Looking at more of a low platform bed with drawers in it.

As we speak, there's a fire going on in our northern district. Besides my captain, myself and one other firefighter, my entire crew is down at the district office covering another engine. My captain is covering the other engine at our station, the other firefighter is comitted to a fuels project, and I'm alone on a pick-up truck. Probably not going anywhere, which is good because I need to get down to San Diego tonight to get my teeth yanked around tomorrow morning. Yippee.

I'll post some pics of my new place when I get them. They'll most likely not include furniture, but you can use your imagination.

Argh!

I feel I've been pretty darn flexible with my new move. I've shopped at new places, bought groceries at the town market, moved into a PO Box, and live an hour from anywhere. I've changed doctors (ok, not orthodontists) and dropped out of school (ok, not really). But what on earth am I supposed to do about my hair?

Let me go back and brief you on my hair history. Without getting into the gory details, I've been mean and daring with my hair throughout my life. After 8 too many bad haircuts, I went where Natalie went... because she had gorgeous hair and wouldn't let anyone near her hair with a pair of scissors that she did not trust with her life. So I went to Revive (kudos, just ask me where) and have never gone anywhere since. This was four haircuts ago. I don't get my hair cut often enough, but we wont discuss that right now.

So I've done a little research on the web, and have come to this conclusion: I'm terrified of getting my hair cut up here. I don't know anyone who gets their hair cut up here (not anyone I'd want my hair to look like anyway). It's gotten so long, and it's been behaving in the drier air (or is it the water?) and I don't want to ruin it's good karma by bringing it in to a stranger who might have less than pure thoughts about my hair. I could end up with a bob. Or a mullet. Or really short hair. Seriously.

I think my answer is to just wait until I'm back in San Diego again. My hair appointments will have to coincide with my orthodontist appointments. I've tried really hard to assimilate to the life up here, but my hair and my teeth are different. They're sacred, and can't be screwed up. Goodness.

I hope my hair guy knows what he's done.

The Bike Ride

I went for my second bike (that would be a push bike) ride up here this evening. The first one was pretty uneventful with the exception of a lady in a car slowing down to make sure I was ok. Hey, I'm at altitude here. Mile High Saddle. And that's just the saddle. Everything is a hill around here... both ways.

So anyway, we haven't had much time for PT's lately, so I've had to conjure up all my discipline and motivation to do it on my own. So yesterday morning I went up the road for a run. It was absolutely gorgeous!! I decided I could get further and see more if I rode my bike, so that was the plan for this evening. I took my camera along so I could show you guys. Especially since many of you are wondering why on earth I would move out here.

This is the road I went up (looking back towards Apache Saddle). It's called Cerro Noroeste. Notice the trees. We have lots of them.

This is looking towards the northwest. It was a little hazy, so it's really hard to capture what my eyes could see. I wish I could capture it all in a picture.


It's amazing how much the eyes can take in out here. Everything is so big (expansive?) for lack of better word.

And of course I had to stay for the sunset, and then haul butt down the mountain because I didn't had batteries in my headlight. Not to mention that every squirrel and lizard rustling in the brush convinced me I was being stalked by a mountain lion.