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.

I Have Internet!!!

But I have to stand at the kitchen sink to get it. I also get cell reception in my room and at one corner of the kitchen table.

As I write this, there's a fire going on somewhere in the valley below me. I see no smoke or flame, so I'm staying put for now. I'm on days off, so I'm not sure what to do if it comes ripping up the saddle. I could stay and fight it, but then again, I"m on days off. So I may just pack up and head for the coast.

Today I went into Santa Clarita for shopping and errands. It was about 45 minutes down there. I was in a wonderland. There were all the stores that are in San Diego! It made me dizzy just looking at all the possibilities! Funny thing was, I had to buy a little cooler to put my frozen goods in for the ride home. Thank god I did. I got stuck in traffic in swealtering heat going up the grapevine. Only when I started worrying about dying of heat stroke did I stop worrying about my bon bons melting in the seat next to me. They made it though. So did I. Has anybody tried ice cream bon bons? They're delicious!!! You can get them at trader joes.

I also ate sushi today.

I did however, fail to get my eyebrows waxed, and the possibility of getting them done in town is looking pretty sad. So I may have to go back to Santa Clarita tomorrow. It's an emergency.

I took a few pictures to tide you guys over for awhile. I don't have many, but today was really my first free day. So, more to come.

The crew:


My barracks and the station:


The only bear I've seen so far is the one that greats us at the gate:

Apache Saddle

Apache Saddle
So I made it safely to beautiful Apache Saddle. My new station is actually quite nice, albeit out in the middle of nowhere. Minutes after I arrived my first day, I saw a mama deer and her baby grazing in the grass on our compound. I saw the famous California condor (an endangered species) just yesterday. We have pretty strict rules out here because of the bears. Trash needs to be in it’s receptacle or bin, and closed tight. Bears and raccoons scavenge through it anyway. On my way up the mountain my first day here, I saw bear crossing signs. Basically the same as immigrant crossing signs, with the mother leading the child across the street. Very cute.
Most of the people on my crew are quite enjoyable, and I’ve even begun to think of a few of them as my brothers. However, there’s at least one individual on my crew that’s all around unbearable. I’m not the only one who feels this way. But enough about that. Just thinking about it may cause me to go postal. We don’t want that.
The town(s) around here are cute. Yes, cute. And all the stores close before I can get to them. I have yet to have a day off, so I’ve been unable to do any sort of extended grocery shopping. I hauled butt into town yesterday, only to make it through 3 aisles before they started to turn the lights off (at 5 minutes to 7pm). So I quickly snatched items off the shelves, only to get home and realize I had incomplete pieces to at least 4 different meals. Thank god for pasta. The closest town to us is Pine Mountain Club (PMC). Kind of a clubhouse sort of town with a few places to eat, drink and buy food and the local paper. It can be expensive though. I hauled butt down the hill (again) today to go to McClish’s coffee house to get internet connection. They were closed. An hour early. Imagine my irritation. So I bought Bailey’s and chorizo at the market next door and headed back to the barracks. So this will actually be posted a bit later than it was written. But I have clever ideas that may get this across. Much like a message in a bottle, or messenger pigeons as I believe it was Drew who said it.
I have also decided to cave in to a wireless card for my computer (the kind that uses cell reception to get internet connection). It’s quite the exciting notion, except that I have to wait until Monday when I can head down to Santa Clarita on my day off. Everybody does most of their shopping in Santa Clarita or Bakersfield because the selection and prices are pretty sad out here.
We just came back from our “off forest” assignment. Sad as it was, it counted and we’re now back on the bottom of the list. We started out by Castaic Lake (around Santa Clarita) on a fire that was completely out. We spent a day there, then spent the night by the lake. There was a Cleveland strike team there, as well as a management team that had a few of my Cleveland people on it. So I actually got to see a bunch of my old co-workers. Small world. Then we got sent up to a fire at an Indian Reservation by Sequoia. It was mostly out as well, but it turned out there was plenty of work for us to do. Unfortunately though, the only place for us to sleep was on the concrete engine bay floor at the local fire station. I don’t use sleeping pads, so I just threw my sleeping bag down, curled up my sweatshirt for a pillow, and crashed. Two nights spent on a concrete floor was brutal. I can’t believe how well I slept last night in my own bed back at the barracks. It’s only 8:40pm right now, and I’m extremely exhausted.
Well, one day I shall access the internet, and this will be posted. At that time I’ll be able to check my email and reply back to everyone on facebook. Ok, actually I cheated. I was able to check my email while coming home yesterday, with my cell phone. Imagine that. Mostly junk. But it took a long time, and responding would probably be more of a pain than it’s worth. But in a few days I should have it figured out.
That’s about all for now. Carrie signing out--- from the saddle.

My New Home

So I've been doing online research on my new home, considering I have not had the opportunity to view it in person. I'm surprised to see that although my station (and thus barracks) has no physical address and the cell reception is "spotty", it is a fairly civilized area. I mean civilized in the populated sort of way, not necessarily the character of the town. That remains to be seen. Those of you who would like to Mapquest it or Google Earth it, it's called Frazier Park or Pine Mountain Club (Pine Mountain Club is a bit closer to my Station than Frazier Park). The zip code to PMC is 93222.

So here's what I found in the area:
Apartments/houses for rent!!!! (I'll be living in barracks for a few months)
A candy/ice cream shoppe
A car wash
2 thrift stores
Frazier Park Moose Lodge (apparently community events happen there)
Madd Bailey's Pub
A Mexican Food Joint
Several coffee houses
Several markets/general stores
A health food store
Plant Nurseries
At least one post office
Kern County Public Library
Dance Lessons
2 Dentists
An orthodontist (in case of emergency)
Several Yoga/Pilates/Gym places, including Curves (see, advanced civilization)
More than one gas station (at least one stoplight, and multiple horses)
A few places that would probably wax my eyebrows
2 motels (hint hint... plus lots of campgrounds)
A behavioral health center
Museum
No sushi places :-{
A search and rescue station
Many other exciting ammenities!!!

I've also discovered Netflicks, which I'll most likely start when I get there, and I'm considering a wireless access card for my laptop (to use with my spotty cell phone service). For entertainment, I have a bike (push bike), rollerblades (not sure if those are usable in this sort of country), tennis shoes, and a map. I figure I can also take the time to actually do my self-taught French lessons as well.

To keep up on the breaking news in my area, log on to
http://www.mountainenterprise.com
(you'll have to cut and paste into your browser due to my inability to make the darn link work)

Also, check out Los Padres National Forest ("The LP") whom I'll be working for:
http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/lospadres/
I'm on the Mt. Pinos District.

That's about all for now. I'm moving up there Aug. 16th and will begin work with my new crew on Aug. 17th. I'm only 3.5 hours from San Diego, people. I'm over an hour from the beach. And there's bears and elk up here.