The morning started foggy. I was worried we weren’t going to see the eclipse too well because of the fog. And if the sun was eclipsed, would it be strong enough to burn off the fog? So I tested with the monocle before the eclipse started, and yes, I could see the sun’s full disc on my hand. So that was a relief. I was using Mark’s monocle to shine the sun onto a piece of white paper. Later on I put up a shade around the monocle so that the image would be clearer and easier to see. My friend got into it with a colander, but it was harder to see the eclipse than my method. 
When we weren’t watching my monocle viewer, we were watching the NASA channel on my iPad. That made it feel like we were watching the eclipse with tons more people, even though everyone I called was either busy or not answering their phone because they were watching the eclipse. When it got near totality (we were in the around 90% totality zone) Jaryth looked at it and said “the sun looks like a banana.”  And it really did! It also looked like the Cheshire Cat at one point. After totality, Jaryth got bored, but I didn’t. I set up a time lapse with my iPhone. At first I was holding the phone and propping the screen up on my leg. I sat like that for several minutes. But then even that was too boring for me, so I created a makeshift studio with my blankets and the tripod and left it running until the eclipse ended. [caption id=“attachment_1462” align=“aligncenter” width=“300”] My makeshift time lapse studio - so long as the dog doesn’t t knock it over.[/caption] I had a lot of fun with this eclipse. See you again in 2019 or more likely 2024… Did you view the eclipse? How was it? Let me know in the comments below!

I’m getting really excited. This time tomorrow I’ll be outside with a pinhole box, a monocle, and a tripod attempting to watch the eclipse. #eclipse2017

This is the closest I’ve ever been to a total eclipse–we’re around 92-94%.

Preparing for eclipse

Mark prepared a pinhole viewer with a box. And set up his monocle on a tripod and showed me where to aim it. I’m all set.

[caption id=“attachment_1445” align=“aligncenter” width=“1024”] View from my Office[/caption] Summer is hot here, but at least I have flowers.

We were farming today. With a small tractor, a medium amount of mud, and a lot of manure, err, I mean compost.

Our fence was crushed in several places today when one of the big trees next door decided to end its vertical existence. No animals, children, or adults were harmed in the creation of these photos. But there was a lot of adrenaline spewing about. [caption id=“attachment_704” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”] fence #1 taken out by the base of the tree[/caption] [caption id=“attachment_706” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”] middle of the tree took out the fence on the other side of the pasture[/caption] [caption id=“attachment_705” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”] The top of the tree takes out the playset[/caption]

Every dog I’ve ever owned came from the pound or a rescue organization (okay, Homer might not have, but my parents got him before I was born, soI don’t think he counts). But wow, trying to get another dog now that I’m not likely to burst into tears at the though of Shasta has become, ahem, challenging. Some of the challenges:

• every rescue I’ve found lists their available animals on Petfinder. This isn’t a challenge by itself, but it means that you have to use that system to find a suitable animal. And because most of the rescue organizations at best make guesses regarding breed, age, health, training level, whether they like kids or cats, etc. The data is, ahem, suspect. I can’t tell you how many dogs I’ve looked at after searching for “cat-friendly” dogs, narrowing it down to 7 or 8 animals, and having the description say “this dog cannot, under any circumstances, go to a house with cats”. I finally gave up using that search parameter, as it was useless. Same goes for the “young children” parameter.
• just like when we adopted McKinley, there is a huge “application” you have to fill out to even meet these dogs. It’s annoying to me, as I’m sure I’m instantly put on their mailing list (well, instantly in the form of whenever they get around to reading their mail. They don’t let me see any animals or even answer my mail, I just get added to the mailing list. (I’m betting on this, I have no proof, yet)
• but the rescue places are all staffed by volunteers so they don’t have a lot of time to read or respond to email, even if their site says “you’ll get a reply within 72 hours” I figure this must mean hours on Jupiter or something.
• the aforementioned application includes tons of questions about your home, lifestyle, vet, trainer, groomer, etc. which is fine, but so far 2 out of 3 have required references, one required four references - including how long they’ve known you and in what capacity, and they can’t be relatives. (because, I suppose, we all know that Aunt Mary who has been with me and my dogs all my life might be biased and give me a good review, while my co-worker Sarah, who barely even knows I have a dog wouldn’t be…

I just wish it were a little easier. I mean, when we got Shasta, we just walked into the pound, saw him, decided to play with him and his brother, then decided to adopt, filled out the form, paid the fee and went home with a dog. When we got McKinley from Rescue Pup, I found him (on Petfinder), asked to see him, met him, filled out the application, they came and visited our house, and we adopted him. It took more than a day (because of the home visit) but definitely no more than a week. I’m currently on week 3 of trying to find out more about Hope, Darla, and another dog who’s name I’ve now forgotten. I got an answer immediately about Darla, saying “you sound perfect, please fill out an application” so I did, and then nothing. I didn’t get an answer about asking to see Hope until today and all it said was “please fill out an application” when there was nothing on the Petfinder site about an application or anything. I had to dig around to find what I think is the correct application. And finally dog #3 they haven’t answered yet (that’s the one that said I’d get an answer within 72 hours - Jupiter hours, I’m assuming). I would go and adopt from Rescue Pup again, except that all they have are blue heelers, which they won’t place with kids. Since I remember what Brendan’s pant cuffs were like (they are called “heelers” because they bite the heels of the cattle they are herding, and if they don’t have cattle, they bite the heels of the children they are herding), I don’t blame Rescue Pup, but it is annoying because I understand that about that breed. What’s sad to me is that the difficulty I’m having makes me want to go to a breeder. Do you know of any “mutt” large dog breeders I can visit? Luckily the pet store that we go to only gets drop-kick dogs in their puppy consignments, so I’m not tempted to go there to get a dog. But man, if they had any large dog puppies (great dane, mastiff, great pyrenees, akbash, shepherd, wolf hound, etc.) the only thing that would probably stop me is that their prices are insane. So, hopefully my application for Hope will be considered, and maybe I’ll be able to go visit her later this week or this weekend. But I’m not holding my breath.

I was hoping for a long morning alone with my writing. But instead I got to help clean up a flooded bathroom and attempt to fix the washing machine that hit it’s planned obsolescence date today. Mark thinks the pump cracked. We bought an expensive washer 3 years ago thinking naively that if we paid a lot for a good brand it would last longer than the cheaper model we’d bought 3 years before that. Nope. This time, if the repairs cost more than the cheapest model we can buy we are going out and buying the cheap, no frills model. At least that way in 2014 we will have paid less on our rental. In 2008, we did all this research, but the reality is that washing machine reviewers don’t have 3 years to evaluate a machine. So they really don’t know if they will last a reasonable amount of time. And no, I don’t think 3 years is reasonable. We had the same washing machine my entire childhood with a family of four. My three-year-old son has seen two machines die in this house! (Yes, the last one died about two weeks after he was born!)

So, Thursday or Friday I got a note from my mail carrier saying that I had a box waiting for me from Amazon.com. Since I have received all of my Amazon orders I was not really sure what it could be. Since it was addressed (on the note) to J. Kyrnin, I was thinking it might actually be a present for Jaryth because his birthday is coming up. So I head to the post office this morning, and after waiting in the long line (of course!) I get my package and open it up and inside is a girl’s size small hockey shorts with “pelvic protector”. Um buh? I checked the box again and yes, it was addressed to me. But on the inside the shipping label was addressed to someone in New York State, both billing and shipping addresses. What I then learned is that Amazon makes it challenging to deal with problems that occur outside of their standard problems. If I wanted to return it, I was told that “returns are easy.” But then I wasn’t sure if the hockey player in New York would get the refund or not. I don’t want the money, it isn’t mine. I then thought I’d return it as a gift, and that wouldn’t work as a) Amazon does gift returns as a gift card to the recipient (ie. me) not the sender and b) this item was apparently not eligible for returns or exchanges. So then I moved on to their customer care form. First I have to indicate that the problem I’m having is not part of their online help. Then I have to choose from a drop-down that, unsurprisingly, has no option for “I received something I didn’t order and is not a gift.” I chose “other non-order related.” But it is kinda order related, but anyhow… So then I get another drop down, and by this time I’m getting ready to give up, except that I don’t want to throw away a perfectly good, brand new item, as that seems like a waste. So I slog on. I fill in the next drop down in the “other” category again, because again they don’t have one that is related to my issue. I then give details and then “more details” and hit the “contact me by email” option. I am now supposed to wait no more than 12 hours for a response. I hope that the hockey player doesn’t start her hockey games for a while. This seems like something that many online form creators should be aware of - namely the goals of the customers using the form. My perception of this customer service form was that they were trying to avoid having to talk to me. There was a lot of focus on getting me to use online help, and I’m sure that’s useful for the majority of requests. But for those that don’t fit into that mold, the form can get annoying very fast. One of the features that this form had that ended up being annoying was that it changed dynamically when I chose various options. Designers and developers love these types of forms because they are interactive, fun to build, and help the customer self-select exactly what they need. But I found it really annoying as there was never any indication that the end was in sight. I would select one option, and another would appear - poof. I would choose from that list, and the form would change again. As I said above I was getting really tired of filling out the form (and you should be aware that this form was the last in a series of things I tried before using it. I tried returning, gift returning, and then just looking for a number I could call before finding that link to customer service. If I had been even slightly busier or on any type of time restraint I would have just given up and dumped the thing in the trash never to worry about it again. I suppose the other reason it was tedious is because all of the choices I had for returns, gift returns, and even customer service were assuming that I had made some type of mistake. For example, when asked why I wanted to return it, I was given options like:

So I have a goal of getting our living room (and bedroom) rug cleaned by the end of March. And in order to accomplish that goal, I have a number of mini goals. These primarily revolve around tidying the bookshelves that I haven’t looked at in a while to make sure the books that are in it are ones that I want, need or haven’t read (so can’t decide). The sad part of this goal is that I discovered that some of the books in that case have not been looked at or touched in so long that there was a fine patina of dust covering them. It’s not helped by the fact that this case is right next to the cat door that the dog forces his muddy self through on a daily basis (hourly when Jaryth is pounding on something). By my estimation there was about two pounds of dog fur, mud, and allergen filled dust just in that corner of the room. And because of this I sneezed approximately 800 times. Proof that I’m allergic to cleaning! Let me tell you that sneezing 800 times is NOT fun. My throat was raw, my eyes were running, my nose was completely clogged, and I was generally miserable. I then took some Benadryl which didn’t seem to do anything but put me to sleep. Granted I got a better night sleep than I’ve gotten in a while, but still, it would be nice to not get the major allergic reaction and be able to complete the cleaning in one swoop rather than in about 5 swoops with the final three bundled up like a mummy with just my eyes showing. Mark threatened to get me a clean-room bunny suit! And what’s really sad is I was considering that as an option. Yes, I know that’s silly. But you would understand if you were biting your tongue while you were sneezing so much that you couldn’t breathe. Next time I am going to wear a painting mask and possibly gloves and goggles. I may look silly, but that might help deal with the dust allergies. I might include ear protection too, not from the loud noise of my sneezes, but because then maybe my ears wouldn’t itch afterwards either. And the bonus is that we have all these things … somewhere.

[caption id=“attachment_289” align=“aligncenter” width=“400” caption=“My First Sushi - Carrot Sushi”][/caption] For those who scoff at the idea of carrot sushi, well, I have nothing to say to you. I didn’t have any daikon or other more traditional veggie-sushi veggies. Maybe next week will bring more “real” sushi foods into the house. But really, carrot sushi was yummy. I debated trying celery sushi too. What about tomato sushi?

I’ve decided to compile a list of all the things that I’d like to change in my life (or do or improve, etc.). This is kinda like a master goals list. The point is that I can’t achieve my goals if I don’t know what they are. So here goes in no particular order:

• Eat less junk food - ultimately I want to get it down to 1 day a week or even just a few hours on that one day
• Bake my own bread
• Eat NO feedlot or factory meat. I want to only buy or raise my own grass fed meat and poultry.
• Have an artisan turkey for Thanksgiving in 2011
• Eat 5+ veggies and fruits per day.
• Sleep at least 8 hours a night.
• Go to the dentist every six months.
• Grow a vegetable garden - and expand it every year. This year I’m expanding to potatoes.
• Work out 30+ minutes per day (beyond our daily walk).
• Cook 3-4 meals a week.
• Read to Jaryth every night.
• Write a novel.
• Grow my site to be in the top 20 sites on About.com.
• Let’s get real, I want my site to be #1! :-)
• Build an eco-friendly house.
• With a tower.
• Ride my horse 3-5 times a week, regardless of weather.
• Go on trail rides with Betsy.
• Paint and draw.
• Create a website for swapping books with other book artists. Or (and) mail artists.
• Pare down my stuff to be more minimalist.
• Make cheese.
• Eat only locally-grown (within 100 miles of here) food.
• Support more local artists, farmers, shops, etc.
• Give something to someone every day.
• Get a tractor.
• Chickens - for eggs and meat.
• A small cow - for milk for cheese.
• Meditate 3-5 times per week.
• Yoga.
• Writing down what I eat.
• Journaling every day.
• Learn to make sushi I made sushi on Thursday night (photos to come soon)
• start seeds for veggie garden indoors (for earlier harvests)
• clean out the creek so that it flows better
• plan a nut orchard
• plant fruit trees
• give away at least 100 books in 2011
• clean my office
• write at least 1 review of an app or book that is pending per week
• build a bookarts swap site
• build at least one of the domains that I own
• move one site off of my home server onto its own site
• send more postcards - 1 per week at least
• read 100 books or more in 2011 (I’ve already read 14 – check out my GoodReads profile to see what I’m currently reading

For this week, I’m focusing on the following:

So, I’ve watched the vegetarian sushi video a couple times, I’ve bought my sushi rice and sushi vinegar (wasabi and soy sauce are already staples in my home) oh and the nori. Now I have to do two things:

1. finish my work for the day
2. stop being a wimp/chicken and start my attempt at making sushi!

Oh and we got a new 7-cup food processor (or “food robot” in my translation of the French) today. I can’t decide whether I want to make hummus first or chicken nuggets. The biggest challenge with reading a book about local food and you’re in the summer chapter is that now I want fresh tomatoes, peaches, and zucchini. I think I’m also going to make some zucchini bread tonight or tomorrow from the frozen zucchini I stored from the summer. Take THAT winter! It’s sad, but I’ve been wishing it would snow. Right now we’re having these coldish days and sometimes rain, and that just means that you risk losing your boots when you walk anywhere on the property beyond the 1/4 acre surrounding the house. And unfortunately, Jaryth doesn’t have any puddle jumpers because we didn’t buy them when we saw them in the stores and of course, there are none now. No one buys puddle jumper boots in January, do they? I suppose I could look in a consignment store, but that would require shopping and my agoraphobia limits me to the post office and school. ☺

So my two goals for the next week or so are to make:

• vegetarian sushi
• cheese

I’ve been told before that making cheese isn’t terribly hard. Of course finding rennet could be challenging… but one step at a time. There is a beer and wine making supply company in Kirkland that also sells cheese making supplies. And I want to make some bread. I think I need to get my Laurel’s Kitchen bread book out again. At least now I know where it is. This book is really inspiring me, taking me back to the things that are important to me.

So, I read my previous blog post to Mark, and his first response was “Good luck!” And of course, I got a bit frustrated because that’s the sarcastic (for those playing along at home, yes, he was being sarcastic) response I dread when I talk about trying to be greener and eat more healthy. But after we talked for a while, we came up with an initial game plan:

1. Salads for dinner – Three years ago we implemented the plan of having a pitcher of water on the table for dinner every night. This has become so ingrained that we will sometimes end up with two pitchers because he puts one on at the same time as I do. So, the new plan includes salad every night. I am in charge of the salad.
2. Getting a new food processor – The only one we have is a tiny 3-cup model that I got when I was in college. It has served us well (okay, it really has served us just okay, but we’ve been too cheap to get another) for the 13 years we’ve been married. But I want hummus! And other things you can make only in a nice big 9+ cup food processor.
3. Getting rid of the bread maker – Of course, in our tiny kitchen, getting a new appliance means getting rid of something else to make room. And the fact is that we never use the bread maker. We mostly use it for kneading, and we have a dough hook on our KitchenAid mixer, that we use more often. Neither of us like the bread mixes you can get and bread baked in it tastes dull and boring. Do you know anyone who wants a bread maker? Hardly used!
4. Getting rid of other things we don’t use – Finally, we’re going to go through our clothes, the kitchen cabinets and even (gasp!) my books and the storage shed; giving away or selling anything that we don’t use. This should free up a ton of extra space!

Determining a game plan is a great way for me to feel like we’re on the way to where I want to be. Then reading about the cynicism of Monsanto and the loss of heirloom seeds and the pro-corporate greed of our “representative” government is a little less depressing.

I am reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver right now. And at the same time, I have been regularly reading The Zero Waste Home (a blog). What’s interesting to me is that I started both of these reading projects by reading some reviews and comments about them. And the comments I read went along the lines of “this is impossible!”, “what you’re asking me/us to do is not possible except for crazy zealots,” and “I don’t believe that your kids are all that thrilled by this plan for (zero waste or growing all your own food) as you imply they are.” And I admit that I read both the book and the blog with those thoughts in mind myself, kinda like I was watching a train wreck and couldn’t stop myself from rubber-necking on the side of the tracks. The problem isn’t that the ideas in these books/blogs are impossible - clearly they are possible as at least two families have made it happen. But the problem is that I don’t like to feel guilty and I don’t like to feel hopeless and that’s what both of these things do to me. I know for a fact that my home is still going to be producing waste and buying food from the grocery store a year from now. I know, with relative certainty that my son, husband, and I are all still going to be eating cookies, chips, and french fries in 2012. And I’m fairly confident that while I’ll have a garden again this year, I probably won’t be able to get much enthusiasm from my son or husband for eating what I grow. So here’s what I need:

3" of rain in Seattle equals some flooding in our barn. And our creek has overflowed its banks.

This is where there is a pipe under the road. It’s full.

The overflow pond above the pipe is full too.

And the water is flowing down from the neighbor’s property, and missing the creek entirely. P.S. It’s still raining.

So, I’ve started cooking again. I figure it’s not good karma for me to let Mark do all the cooking forever. ☺ But in order to facilitate this, I’ve started looking at online recipes. And I have two questions:

1. Why does Cooks.com get listed so often when their recipes are all the same?
   I did a search for something the other day, and was excited to see that there were like 20 recipes listed on Cooks.com. Of those 20, there were exactly three different ones. Three!?! I think Cooks.com is one of those user-generated content sites, and it’s obvious in this situation that there are no editors doing anything there. I mean, how many times do I need to read the same recipe? Even if they have slightly different titles, they are the same and once I’ve decided I don’t want the first copy of it, finding it again 10 more times just makes me leave the site without using any of the recipes. Lame!
2. Why do people, when rating recipes, give a recipe a 5 star rating and then proceed to explain how they completely changed the recipe?
   For example: “This was an awesome recipe! My family loved it! I replaced the chicken with tuna, added tomatoes and green onions (for color), and got rid of the garlic and onions (my family doesn’t like them). Oh, and I used cauliflower instead of potatoes.” And this is on a recipe for chicken-potato pie. It sounds to me like she made tuna-cauliflower pie.

Any suggestions for great, easy recipes are welcome! Please comment.

We are participating in a garage sale today and tomorrow, and it’s been interesting. In the morning you get all the people who look like they are searching for a Van Gogh hidden among our clothes. They glance at the stuff and sniff or if they are feeling sorry for us tell us they like our house/barn/dog/tree before they walk away. They do an awesome job making you look at the detritus of your life and think “wow, I bought a lot of crap!” and then you consider dropping the prices even though you have only been out there for an hour. But you stand firm, after all none of them even made an offer let alone bought anything. Then around mid-day the neighbors start showing up. They ask how your dog is doing (he died a month ago) then comment on how big Jaryth is getting and how they see us walking every day. I think most of our neighbors know us by sight, but we only know the one or two who come out. It’s bizarre to be greeted by people who comment on how big Jaryth is, and they are complete strangers to you. It’s 3pm now and we’ve done pretty well. Most of the big baby things are gone. One monitor sold. And some jewelry. The computers will have to go to Costco, I suspect. And the baby toys and clothes to charity. But we still have one more day!