WOOO-HOOOOOO!!!!!!

I AM NOW MARRIED!!!.......



........to a 30-year mortgage that is!

That's right folks, I am now officially a home-owner!!!!

I've finally fulfilled my dream of purchasing a fixer-upper cottage in the country and boy do I ever have my work cut out for me! There are some who would consider the place borderline condemnable, but I've seen far worse homes brought back from the brink of disuse and demolition. The elderly couple who lived in it haven't been able to take care of it for a while and I am facing a lot of repairs.

The current challenge is in getting all of the old stuff they didn't want out of the house and distributed where it can be re-used and/or recycled. But not everything they left behind is total junk.... among some of the useful and/or saleable objects they left behind are: an old singer sewing machine table (the kind operated with a foot tredle, I'm definitely keeping it), an old wood xylophone I found behind the dresser, a large electric pottery kiln (selling it), a late 70s (or early 80s?) model trailer mobile home that was left on the property, and a bazillion different useful tools and whatnot. I will be deconstructing the trailer and using the materials to fix up the main house. People keep telling me that I should scrap the main house and fix up the trailer instead... but I like older homes that have character and history in them. Besides, the main house stands to last longer than the trailer if it is repaired properly.

Time to break out the tools, dig in my heels and put down roots where I have been planted! I am excited to say the least!

Pictures of the good and the bad are forthcoming within the next week. I am intending to keep a working photographic chronicle of the fixing-up process my new home!

My apologies to all of those who have written to me and are awaiting replies. I've been extraordinarily busy and my phone line is not turned on yet, thus the only access I have to the internet is when I occasionally have the time to come into cafes or libraries with wifi.

Oddness Abounds...

I FINALLY HAVE A NEW CAR... YAAAAAY! That's not the odd part though... The middle-aged man whom my parents saw riding down the street on a bmx bicycle, with a quiver of arrows on his back, a thick & flowing beard, and a motorcycle helmet with an antenna sticking out the top... that might be part of it... or maybe the woman who waylaid my coworker with an extended diatribe about how all chronic masturbators should be locked up.... or maybe it's the man who wants to keep tropical fish in his outdoor pond in northern New England and insists that they can be kept in cold water if you feed them the right food... oh, and let's not forget the guy who thinks there is a conspiracy between the government, the religious community, and the medical community to conceal the fact that homosexuality is actually spread by pathogens (I'm pretty sure he also mentioned something about the neo-nazis being involved too)... life around here not dull very often.

Candid pic of my friend J (used by permission) demonstrating the potential of abandoned shopping carts as furniture.

2008 Subaru Impreza 2.5i Wagon
It is bad luck for a captain to pilot a ship with no name, so she is now known as "MATILDA"!

Hike To Gunnison Lake & Mt. Sunapee

Thursday was my day off so I decided to go on one of my long, rambling walkabouts (gee, I hope Australians aren't the only ones allowed to use that term). It is a form of walking meditation; helping me to iron out my priorities and recenter myself spiritually.

The map below details my approximate route which spanned seven hours, two towns and almost every type of terrain common to this area of New England. The experience ranged from falling into mud-holes through frozen snow, to scratching up my legs in dense underbrush, crossing a waist-deep freezing river, climbing 50 feet up a maple tree to figure out where the heck I was, viewing a beautiful panorama of the surrounding area from the top deck of the closed-down ski lodge on top of the mountain and on bare-soled sneakers skiing down slopes which had just been in use two days previously. I killed the soles on my old shoes and thought it curious that I never fell once (I fall frequently when actually wearing skis). I met my parents at the base lodge and we went out for pizza. Along the way there were abandoned shacks, partridges flying up in my face, bridges of questionable design & stability, and a cast-0ff crutch on the side of one of the trails. What a day. All pictures are in order of appearance on the trip.

Goshen/Sunapee NH area (click for a more detailed view)

Trails ranging from mixed mud & icy snow...

...to snowy & slick.

Gunnison Lake (aka "The Goshen Ocean") with Mt. Sunapee in the background

Random trailer/hunting camp(?) in the middle of nowhere, literally 2-3 miles from the nearest road.

Should have listened to the little voice telling me that it was a stupid idea to wear low-ankle sneakers.

Some of the trails were washed-out

Falling-down shack in the middle of nowhere on the back side of Mt. Sunapee. The dimensions would indicate that it's primary use may have been for a hermit with an ascetic lifestyle or a temporary camping retreat for a single person. Just enough room for one to lie down in with a small stove and a backback. It measured about 9 ft. by 4 ft. and was just under 6 ft. high.

The stove was sitting outside the entrance, mostly rusted into the ground.

It was high enough that the trees near the top were very short, most of them looking to be 5+ decades old yet less than 15 feet tall.

Cell tower and lodge at the top.

Distant view of Gunnison Lake

Closer detail.

Ski lift

I found the severity of the language in this disclaimer enough to prevent me from taking this trail.

Lake Sunapee at the top right and Little Sunapee to the left

Awesome name for a trail!

GOD BLESS CONCORD GROUP!!!!

Pertaining to my major car issue mentioned in the last post: my local insurance center has me insured through Concord Group. I decided to see if my comprehensive coverage would sufficiently offset this problem so I filed a claim. Not only did they come through for me with the full Kelley Blue Book value for my car, they even paid the bill for diagnosing the problem. I had been reticent about filing a claim because of the horror stories I've heard from friends who got into accidents or had their cars totaled in some fashion. I was envisioning having to haggle with the claims agent and possibly having to settle for a couple thousand less than what I should be entitled to in addition to having my insurance costs rise dramatically as a result. All I can say is that I am exceedingly pleased and thankful for the low-stress solution which was handed to me in the middle of a high stress situation.

What I See and Do Lately

A beauteous and detailed cross-stitch that my coworker & friend D made over the winter. She chose a wonderful frame and matting color to showcase it as well.

Detailed view of said cross-stitch.

My friend P and I went out and visited the old covered railroad bridges again (previously mentioned in this post). This gives a good perspective on the size of the entrance to the bridge, large enough for an old steam-engine train with a stack to pass through. (P, I blurred your face because I forgot to ask your permission to post your image).

Close-up of the texture of a favia (aka: pineapple or moon) brain coral at work.

Close-up of a sun polyp coral at work.

So I could proceed to whine about my car having broken down... as in TOTALED because the wiring harness decided to have a complete meltdown, fusing to the frame and melting through the floorboard in some spots. It all happened while I was driving and caused a scene that will make an amusing story in a few months (or years), but I am too annoyed to find it humorous right now. It was only a 2001 Ford Focus and it had just 71,000 miles on it. I was good to that car; keeping up on repairs & maintenance. My plan was to run it another couple of years to further enjoy the "cinderella period" (when a car is paid off but not yielding major troubles yet) before needing to trade up to another vehicle, but I guess this was not meant to be. I feel torn because I really want to get another Focus and support Ford (it's one of the few American car companies with fairly progressive, inclusive initiatives in place in it's facilities), but I am also very soured by this experience as well as the Focus' general track record on the Consumer Reports website.

On the GOOD NEWS front it looks like I will be a home owner soon! Nothing further to say yet because the deal is not cinched and the current owners are still waiting to get into another residence, but it is looking more hopeful than it was a few weeks ago!

Alive and Busy

Yeah, I'm still alive and still very busy! I'm in the process of purchasing a home in Cornish, NH... The last place I was looking at in Acworth was in need of too much work and asking price was not worth it after the counter-offers from other interested parties, yet it must have been worth it to someone because of their high counter-offer. C'est la vie! The place I am looking at now has a bit less acreage than I originally wanted and the house is a bit shabby, in need of extensive work, but it is still in fair condition and the selling price is extremely low. The folks currently occupying it are a nice elderly couple who can not live alone for much longer and need to unload the property quickly. I have finally been approved for a mortgage loan and I am still waiting to hear back from the property appraisers. Keeping my fingers crossed (again).

Ping-Pong!

OFFER!
COUNTER-OFFER!
COUNTER-COUNTER-OFFER!
VOLLEYED SHOT FALLING OFF THE SIDE OF THE TABLE!

Piffle! I don't like playing realtors' games, but it's a necessary evil I suppose. Still hanging in there, submitting a final, non-negotiable offer soon, we will see... knock on wood and hope for the best outcome... whatever is meant to be. I think I will know where it all stands by the end of next week.

Random quote I read the other day and liked:
"Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow." -Lawrence Clark Powell

Wonderment

The last half decade has been a time of questioning, probing, growing, loss, grief, and further growth built upon these things; much as it is for many others. The complexity of it all continues to amaze me; the flow of life, the pattern of thought, how one thing leads on to another, epiphanies giving rise to further insights which are paradoxically simplistic yet complex and refined, often leading to further questions and even deeper understandings. It is much like the visual representation of pi above. It loops in upon itself infinitely, refining itself to a seemingly invisible end, at least invisible to the naked eye, after that one can close their eyes and imagine refinement to the molecular and subatomic scales. (Pi, the movie also makes reference to this concept.)

This fascination may also explain why I enjoy allegory, symbolism, analogy, and metaphor so much. They use a simplistic representation to make a seemingly complex set of parameters more accessible, and human curiosity leads us to explore them deeper. If we are brave enough to indulge this tendency in a wise fashion, it is one of the qualities which refines our person and keeps us active and living, leading to purer, higher forms of thought and a greater closeness with The Divine. The term "work in progress" may seem over-used but are we truly allowing ourselves the curiosity and fortitude to be precisely that?

Hmmm... speaking of which, I just finished reading Till We Have Faces, another work by C.S. Lewis. If you have read any of his work in the spirit that it was written, maybe you understand why my thought processes dwell in their current form. Lewis' work is a breath of fresh air in the middle of a seemingly dark political and religious landscape. At the very least it gives a lot of food for thought on what it means to be human and exist with all the troubles and hard questions which are thrown our way. My thanks goes out yet again to my sister and several friends who turned me on to his writings.

YAY!

I FINALLY got pre-approved for a mortgage; currently in the process of negotiating on a seemingly nice property in a VERY rural town near by! It is a small fixer-upper cottage on 5.5 acres on the side of a mountain ridge line. I will not talk any more about it for now because the deal is not in the bag yet. We will see what happens. It looks good, but I'm praying for the door to close if it isn't meant to be. This is a major life decision and it is stressing me out a bit. If everything goes well and my final offer is accepted I can expect to spend the next month repeatedly jumping through hoops like a trained circus poodle: orchestrating contractors for inspection, dewinterizing, plumbing, ad infinitum... oh yeah, and let's not forget MOUNTAINS OF PAPERWORK! But oh will it ever be worth it in the end! (?)

Random Stories With A Common Thread

Recent quiet times and meditations have yielded a lot of retrospective comparison and learning from some strange and unpleasant memories. Lately, whenever I sit down and quiet my mind... in meeting, outdoors while I am hiking/cross-country skiing, commuting to work... I keep casting the line out and when I reel it back in, there is my past, prior modes of thinking and how things have changed over the years and I examine the evolution that has taken place, the cause and effect. I am dissecting and further understanding the discoveries which have given rise to different ways of thinking, new understandings and further questions on top of those. It is a lot to juggle but this all has it's purpose.

A month ago I started going to the gym again. The human body is fascinating and it amazes me how quickly it can change and adapt to it's current use. I miss physical activity and striving for better health. I also suspect I will not need this supplement to my daily routine when I eventually have my own land to work, wood to harvest for winter heat, a garden to tend, and vast hiking trail networks around the wide open spaces surrounding the place I can call home. For now it seems to be my lot to look inward and keep building up the inside while honing the outside. It feels like a preparation for what is to come.

Back in my late teens, I started a rigid fitness regimen which might have been comparable to the training routine of a special ops marine. Throughout most of my later school years I was one of the awkward fat kids who got picked on for my weight and social ineptness. On top of being closeted back then, these were two attributes which amplified each other.

When I committed to becoming lean and mean, I became TOO lean and VERY mean. I began to stare through people instead of looking at them. Everyone was regarded on the basis of how threatening they were or weren't. While attending kick boxing classes, the bullies' voices were still ringing loudly and painfully in my head, so I would visualize their faces on the punching bag. One time I kicked it hard enough to take it off the chain, breaking the attachment ring and sending it halfway across the room. I am not bragging. I am ashamed and I am telling you that I was wrong. I always thought that I understood the trite bumper sticker quote that I see so often,"You are what you hate,"...suddenly it doesn't seem trite at all.

Since then I have run into some of the bullies who used to pick on me. Some could not look me in the eye. Most of them are not doing well; either in poor health or an unfavorable living situation. The ones who are truly happy are the ones who have changed their ways. The grapevine has lent the back story to some of their lives. Most of the stories were sad and littered with family problems and abuse. Bigger people hurt them, they hurt me, I hurt back and the war keeps going until someone walks away from it and forgives past trespasses. I forgive them. I now understand why some soldiers who come home from a war keep on experiencing it and fighting phantom opponents long after the battles are over. The fighting leaves them hollowed out, lacking hope and the will to reach for something better, desperately trying to reconnect with who they used to be. There are some who would tell me that I can't possibly know what it is like to be in the thick of battle, dealing with landmines, bullets, and all manner of threats. Regardless, I feel there are some apt comparisons and likenesses, especially on an emotional and spiritual level. How many of us have built our persona on a fighting mentality, only to find that it poisons our minds and leaves us more vulnerable? I never understood Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs until I saw how it played my own life and the lives of others. You can't move on to the next level until the basics are fulfilled. Struggling in survival mode is not conducive to higher human functioning.

One time, while I was out walking, there was a group of three men whom one could call stereotypical rednecks, along with the virulent homophobia. They had been drinking. I was cornered and threatened with bodily harm. In the scuffle, I sent two of them to the hospital with broken bones. No police showed up and no lawsuits were filed, I suspect they were not eager to bring more attention to the fact that a "*expletive* queer" who also happened to be smaller than them was able to get the upper hand and repel them with such prejudice. Conventional wisdom says that I was right to defend myself, but I know that I was wrong because I did not even attempt to talk them down or take them on a peaceable, intellectual level. Knowing what I do now, I think this would have been possible if not probable. I took away emotional injuries from that experience which I think were worse than the physical ones they sustained. If I met any of these men again today, I would ask for forgiveness. This is what happens to a person when they begin to base their identity on a characteristic which breeds violence, fear, and an aversion to open communication. It still hurts and it still reminds me of what I never want to happen again.

The gym routine continued at a suicide pace and in my early twenties I became so thin that my health began to deteriorate and this spawned rumors of AIDS. It was time for a change. I ended up breaking down on many levels, but I rebuilt myself. Now I have come full circle. In my late twenties I am enjoying feeling strong and able again. I like to stretch, relax, and focus on a physical goal in the knowledge that I am lessening my chances of ill health, decreasing the chance that I will some day need major forms of life-saving intervention from the health care industry. At the same time I hope never to be thin enough that people think I am less than healthy. Again I am able to see those around me, with my past reminding me of what was, an intimidating yet enriching future ahead and I walk now with my eyes open, seeing the people around me again for the first time.

More Great Quotes

Gleaned from a recent magazine article, I can not remember who these words were attributed to:

"The richest person in the world... isn't the person who has the most, but the one who needs the least."

"...the real trick in life is to turn hindsight into foresight that reveals insight."

Booxez

I finally finished reading The Five People You Meet In Heaven , it was beautiful and very nourishing for the mind and spirit. I just finished watching the movie based on this book too. Well-directed and it did not leave out anything pertinent from the book.

Currently slogging through the rest of The Saint, Surfer, and CEO, it feels dry and I am experiencing a bit of guilt for not liking it as much as the other people I've known who thought it was profound.

In the spirit of wanting to revisit some of the classics, I just started slogging through Sense and Sensibility and there are now recurring memories of why I did not enjoy even the condensed version of it in high school. Maybe I am just not intellectual enough to connect with it or perhaps it is the fact that I need to crack a dictionary several times on each page to research disused English vocabulary words. Regardless, I doubt I will be finishing it.

C'mon, you can't tell me they aren't intelligent...

As featured on Cute Overload.



Nothing much going on right now. Did my taxes, waiting to get in contact with the mortgage broker again... watching movies and TV series on DVD to pass the time between the gym and the days when the weather allows me to hike or cross-country ski. I am especially enjoying the first two seasons of Upright Citizens Brigade. It is a pity that the show was cut down in it's prime. I don't believe a lot of people really understood it and appreciated it for what it was. Yes, it was a bit twisted, off-color, and obscure but it was definitely ahead of it's time and marketed to the wrong audience.

Bouncing Off The Walls

I love my parents and all, but keep in mind that I've been living in my own home for over a decade now, and staying with them (it seems for the duration of winter) is driving me stir-crazy. This is not due to any transgression or shortcoming on their part. I'm simply ridiculously independent and feeling some major withdrawal from not having my own home environment to micromanage and a lack of an easily-available internet connection. The up-side: cheap rent and living expenses for now, which is enabling me to save up for a down payment on a home even faster than before, and I get plenty of exercise hiking all my familiar childhood trails.

There is a popular book that I am in the middle of reading (on the advice of a coworker) - The Saint, The Surfer, and The CEO; a decent read so far, but parts of it feel like a pre-scripted interaction within an Amway presentation, with people planted in the audience. Regardless, there are some interesting theories put into the book and I shouldn't discount it on the basis of it's mechanically contrived feeling. One of the concepts put forth in the book is that within the complexity of life, circumstances and teachers are sent our way repeatedly until we learn what they were sent to teach. I can not truthfully disagree in this case. It has felt for some time like the people and circumstances in my life are there to teach me to stop being so headstrong and independent, learning to be more socially passive and take help and acts of kindness instead of being the one who always gives them. My other lesson seems to be in the areas of patience and tolerance... Being a bit of a social introvert, I have a strong aversion to people who talk a lot while not expressing anything useful or meaningful, suddenly it seems like I am being surrounded with them everywhere I go, babbling non-stop and sometimes trying to engage me in conversation. I have to keep reminding myself that they do it because they want approval and camaraderie, seeking a connection just like any other human being. I just need to step back and patiently allow them to come into their own and hopefully outgrow the tendency toward verbal incontinence.

I was playing around with google maps a few weeks ago and stumbled across a woodland lake I had never seen before...

...and only a stone's throw away from one of my favorite hiking trails. It was in a section of the woods which I thought I had known like the back of my hand while growing up. Obviously I didn't know the woods as well as I thought, so I decided to go out and find it. After traversing the trail to where I figured was the nearest point, I guessed which direction the lake would be in and I bushwhacked through about a half mile of underbrush and ended up right on the shore...

...on further exploration around the entire perimeter of what turned out to be more of a large pond, I found a well-marked ATV trail leading from the other side of the lake onto a neighbor's property about a quarter mile away, but I also found something else interesting...

...on the shore of the pond was an old, decrepit sugaring house that looked like it was on the verge of falling down...

...note the large collecting tank for the sap...

...there were faint traces of an old (and long since grown-in) road leading to the structure and miscellaneous bottles & rusted out equipment lying around. I wish I knew the history of this structure: the conversations that may have taken place, the people who worked in it. If it was a family business... I am hoping to talk with the neighbor who presumably owns this property and ask about it.

More Miscellaneous Pictures:

Weird anthropomorphic stump aquarium ornament at work

My feline children resting comfortably

My former roommate brought 'Spud' for a visit at my workplace and she dressed him up in one of the small dog costumes.



I'll wrap this up with a cutesy-amusing video of 'Ozzy', a Brussels Griffon owned by one of my coworkers, reacting strangely to having winter paw-wear put on him.

'Monty the Magically Malevolent Mantis Shrimp'

So we're a bit distracted and disturbed at my workplace... obviously so when we give some of our charges names like the title of this post. Check out the YouTube video below for a video I took of 'Monty' at mealtime. We have him trained to recognize the noise of the long tweezers tapping on glass as a signal that it is time to come get his food.

Video Caption on Youtube:
Young green mantis shrimp (Geonodactylaceus sp.) takes a piece of krill from long tweezers. Note the loud clicking noises as he violently whacks the tweezers with his claw in an attempt to take the food. This is why I do not feed him by hand. They are commonly known in the aquarium trade as "Thumb-splitters!" We named this one 'Monty'. He is currently about 2 inches long, was about three quarters of an inch when we originally acquired him by accident with a load of aquacultured live rock at my workplace. They are normally a pest organism in reef tanks but we didn't have the heart to euthanize him so we set up a mini-reef just for him. They are some of the most intelligent invertebrates in the ocean and they have the most complex eyes of all creatures, with the ability to see colors far outside the range of most mammals. Oh yeah, that's my coworker you hear calling me a dork in the beginning (she thinks it's abnormal that I am actually taking a video of this).