$0.20/lb

$0.20/lb
Originally uploaded by sawyer.george

Now that I have a swanky 'new' MIG welder (thanks Steve!), I can get down to building myself that bowl lathe. I wandered into the local scrapyard today. It was like I'd finally entered the deep south. I must have seen a half-dozen different styles of mullet, and got into 2 traffic jams within 100 yards, one involving a crane. The beautiful, crusty mountains of steel more than made up for the clientele though. Near the back corner where I found my haul was a pile of steel shavings 20 feet high, very strange. The grand total for 280lbs of steel, $59.71. Considering a professional bowl lathe runs for $2,000, I'd say I'm doing pretty well.

The desk

The desk
Originally uploaded by average lavender

After years of biding my time I've finally managed to get my favorite desk. This desk lived in various places around my parents house: near the kitchen, in a bedroom, in a hallway. I always remember it stuffed with papers and old Christmas cards. With no pleading and no promising not to ruin it my mom agreed to send it back with George. Now it's living in the living room; a great spot to use and store our computers, my ever-growing stationary collection, the camera, and all the various cords that come with things these days.

My lucky day

Today I look forward to the relief that's coming at the end of the day: George will be home. I look forward to this for purely selfish reasons and feel no remorse or guilt about it. Starting life here in Asheville while progressing well and confidently proves a difficult task when half of the team simply isn't here. Sure, I can hang all the pictures and put them wherever I please, but we all know that when he gets home George will move them all slightly so they're level and level with the top of the door casing or perfectly parallel to something else. Trying to live in house by yourself is very unlike setting up shop in an apartment - apartments are temporary, strangely proportioned, hodge-podge lodgings that feel informal, gritty, and cramped (you know, in my experience.) Houses have whole rooms devoted to one purpose: a bedroom, a dining room, a kitchen, a living room and they're all HUGE compared to the space that served all these various purposes. I am not person enough yet to fill this space and the cats have chosen the yard as their turf.

Additionally there will be a return to food. I don't remember the last time I experienced such anxiety, frustsration, and confusion about eating. I want to cook all sorts of things but there's no need to. While my new job is exciting because I don't have to get up at four a.m., my internal clock is all messed up because now I stay at work until two a.m. This means I wake up at nine and freak out because I've wasted the whole day (as far as I'm concerned), have a reassuring cup of coffee and launch straight into doing things, sans breakfast, and by the time I have to start wrangling the cats inside I've just enough time to get my ridiculously large shirt and stupid hat together for work and whisk out the door to scoot my way to breadland, sans lunch, where I get a big cup of ice water fill my mug with their mediocre iced coffee and prey on any scraps the pastry department has left behind like a fox in a hen house - sly and ravenously. Sometimes there are pastries from the case up front left over we can have, sometimes I shell out money for a sandwich (yeah, I have to buy a sandwich from the place I work made on the bread that I baked - LAME) or we order out for some noodles. Sometimes I try and bring my own sandwich or some leftovers but I haven't perfected their transportation to and storage at work, it's a little annoying.

George's return will clearly solve all my issues. This includes having someone else around to let the cats out in the morning.

Ahhh

Gosh

I don't know why you all haven't rushed over to read Hope Larson and Byran Lee O'Malley's amazing new short: Bear Creek Apartments!

Garden update

Holey broccoli
Originally uploaded by average lavender

The garden looks pretty sickly these days. It could have something to do with the drought, it could have something to do with the fact that the cats think it's the most incredible litter box, it could also be attributed to something nibbling away at ALL the plants. Not surprisingly, the squash is thriving. (We also have a mystery squash growing out front, under a window box. No one knows how it got there.)

Living and the room

Living room 1
Originally uploaded by average lavender

The living room is nearing completion. Looking through this doorway it seems pretty great - but looking in the other direction there are bare spaces on either side of the doorway which look...lonely. Two matching desks? Long banners? A tall bookshelf and a side table with a plant and some hip art? Blank? Furnishing a home with a budget of $0 is a sick game of waiting.

Letter books

Letter books 3
Originally uploaded by average lavender

You know those little projects you have that you think you're going to buckle down one day and just do but then never do them because there's something more pressing to accomplish? I finally finished one. Some people have boxes of nostalgic whatever squirreled away under beds, in attics, crowding mantles, but I have stacks of letters. There's nothing like getting real mail. Real in the sense that it isn't electronic and it's something you actually want to read from someone you actually care about (I mean, unless you don't care about them and they're a terrible person, like say, a landlord.) So after you receive the mail, you read it, you savor it - what do you do with it?

It's really satisfying to have all these (90% in chronological order, I might add) somewhere nice, somewhere clean, somewhere safe. The first letter is from Cynthia, mailed to me when I was living in an apartment complex behind a Wal-Mart in Rochester.

Woe is us...

George is headed north, last I knew he was somewhere in Virginia. He's hoping to stop and get a little sleep somewhere along the way and then hit up some dude in New Jersey for some veggie oil before 10am. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Girl is a little clingy, a little unsure of how she feels about George being gone, he is her favorite. Boy is pacing and yeowing. I have been watching "Murder, She Wrote" and eating dinner - refried pasta with garlic. None of us know what we're going to do without George for two whole weeks.

Enough about dinner, let's talk about breakfast. This morning we went to the Sunny Point for breakfast, we even walked there! While George had eggs over easy with sausage and cheddar grits, I had an orange cornmeal hot cake with blackberry butter (okay, it was Earth Balance) and a side of mapley, peppery bacon. All the food was, naturally, incredible. There was, however, one thing that I did not love about my meal, and it wasn't the service, it wasn't the noise, it wasn't some screaming child, it was that our table. While wonderfully outside, it was one of those tables in "the path." You know what I mean, it's near the server station so someone is constantly whisking by you with busy energy. I'm a fairly picky person, but I'm not going to go through the trouble of having a fit and asking to be moved because that's just out of line and ridiculous. I will however have a grumpy moment while I fidget around trying to find the spot that makes all the bustle less annoying. Also, 90% of the time stuff like this doesn't actually bother me at all, it's just that we've been seated in "the path" three times since we've been here - which mystifies me because we've only been out to eat like four times!

I think maybe I'm more sensitive (i.e. crazy) because I work in a food environment, so the last thing I want to be around when I'm not working is other people working like I work. Sitting next to the bus tub and water pitcher make me feel as though I should bus my table the table of the people next to me in addition to filling my own water glass. Going out to eat is a gluttonous treat, it's exciting and special, I look forward to it.

For fall/winter I hope to perfect the art of cheesey grits.

One room down, seven to go.

Kitchen
Originally uploaded by average lavender

The one room that's 99% put together is our kitchen, mostly because we didn't have to really hunt around for furnishings. Hope & Mal gave us their big island that didn't work in their kitchen and everything else simply fell into place.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm due at work at three o'clock so I can bake bread until midnight or one a.m.

Scoot

Scoot
Originally uploaded by average lavender

Vrrroooom!

northward

I'm coming north!

Jenne isn't =( She went and got a real job at the City Bakery.

I'll be collecting furniture donations for our empty house.

I just sent this proposal over the the Green River Preserve. They have 3 diesel buses they're thinking of converting.

projectiles

headstock for future bowl lathe
Originally uploaded by sawyer.george

project 1: build a lathe burly enough for turning giant bowls
-found headstock, $42 on ebay, from an old Atlas metal lathe
-find suitable steel I-beam, etc...
-find access to, or buy, MIG welder
-make bowls
-sell bowls

project 2: new antenna for cellphone
-done, it actually works better than the replacement I bought

project 3: set up Etsy.com account
-see if there's a market for podbarks
-sell other stuff

project 4: update portfolio
-wait for yannick to email photos...

project 5: make furniture
-helped mill lumber (from Hope's mom)
-pick up whatever she doesn't use
-design furniture
-buy more tools...

project 6: collecting waste veggie oil
-found 2 barrels for filtering
-find restaurants

'sup p'up

pu'p bed
Originally uploaded by sawyer.george

I finished the Isuzu P'up conversion on Friday. Surprisingly, there was virtually no troubleshooting. I took it on a test drive, and aside from the smell of stanky old car interior, everything went great.

For those of you who care, if any, the system works like so:
-dirty oil into the small tank (heated w/ coolant)
-flip switch, pump oil through filter into big tank (also heated)
-once up to temp, flip switch to switch from regular diesel to veggie
-before final shutdown, switch back to regular diesel to clear veggie from engine

On Tuesday I'm going to drive out to the camp Ryan (the owner) works at. They have a couple of diesel buses they want me to look at. Could be fun!

Saturday: funday

Baby beet
Originally uploaded by average lavender

To our surprise our beets have sprouted! Eeee! We also have two tiny little kale sprouts - which is surprising because the kale end of the garden is the end of the garden that Girl has deemed her giant, fancy, new litter box. Peeking their little limbs out this morning are some oh-so delicate carrot sprouts! The peppers are flowering like crazy.

Stuff's cool around here, the kittens are finding their daily rhythm - 6am: meowing (Boy: Meh-eh-eh Girl: mao?) 6:05: napping 6:30: circling, more serious meowing 6:35: outside! 12 noon: nap time inside 3pm: outside! 8:30pm: grudgingly come inside. I'm losing my rhythm: three days in a row working at 8am, one day working from 3pm until 1am (!?), a day off, then starting at 7am. And George never had much rhythm to begin with. (Zing!)


I want to take a little moment to talk about "the blog". My goal for the blog is to post more frequently and about fewer topics; since we've been fairly slack about posting I feel the need to give you this big general updates, which is a little boring. So while I'm going to try and bring you better, more interesting content, I would like you to let me know you're reading (Curtis? Shannon? Uhm...Johann? Emily?) Comment, people! I live for it!