A machine

Outside my kitchen door this morning, where there once was a rotten deck, where for two years there has been nothing but deck dreams, this machine arrived. Ground-breaking proceeded as planned.

Momentum. We has it.

Further adventures with fleece

The washing machine worked wonderfully! Of course I probably have another 4 loads to do, but so far so good. And my machine's not too dirty. I think I'll run a load of dog bedding through the washer and that'll be that.

Carded some of the washed fleece and it looks lovely, doesn't it?

Fleece adventures

Our neighbour sheep were shorn a this spring. A bag of fleece arrived last month. Today we've been washing the fleece and carding has begun. We tried doing a preliminary carding prior to washing on some of the fleece to see if that would help expedite the washing process. Just an experiment, as it was an approach suggested by a friend. Most of it we're just washing as-is knowing it'll all have to be thoroughly carded before spinning. It's not particularly dirty fleece, partly because Icelandic fleece is naturally low in lanolin.

We're using the washing machine as our wash vessel. I may live to regret this as I know a thorough cleaning will be required afterwards. But somehow the idea of lugging hot water to do multiple loads in an outdoor laundry sink doesn't strike me as any less work.

Sad yet miraculous story

Limpet, our dog, has a "thing" about the van. She gets very excited when we leave and loves chasing us. She doesn't do this with other vehicles, not even Chuck's truck, but she knows the kids and I are normally in the van, and she gets very excited. Normally she barks a bit and races up the grass at the side of driveway. She stays off the road and it's kind of funny how hard she runs. The long uphill is what she enjoys the most -- she goes flat out until she runs out of juice and gives up about halfway up the hill. When we're gone she hangs out by the house and doesn't normally hear us until we've already done the hill. She comes cheerily towards us, usually meeting up with us at the carport.

I had to pick Erin up at work on Saturday afternoon. I took the van and Limpet did her usual "chase" routine. Ten minutes later I returned home. While I was gone a couple of friends were over and they were looking at decking lumber with Chuck in one of the sheds tucked into the edge of the forest off beside the steep downhill part of the driveway. Limpet was with them rather than in her usual location by the house. And so she was alerted much earlier than usual to our arrival home. Her poor brain misfired, I think. She thought "van! driveway hill!" and peeled out of the woods in heady hope of a chase up the driveway.

Unfortunately I wasn't going up. I was going down. And the point where she hit the driveway was about 2 metres beyond the obscuring corner of forest, and about 2 metres beyond where I was travelling at 20 km/h. I slammed on the breaks. It's gravel. I just skidded. The dog disappeared under the front grill.

It was awful. There were sickening dog-screams. She was trapped. You've heard me rant before about the lack of ground clearance of this vehicle. There was almost no room under there. Though I hadn't felt myself run her over with the tires, I couldn't believe there was room underneath for her. Chuck and the other two came running and looked. I was told to roll forward a couple of feet.

And then the dog took off running, tail between her legs. On all fours, looking very much abashed, but apparently almost as right as rain.

Still, it wasn't as miraculous as all that. She was covered in grease and smelled of burnt fur. She started limping. She didn't seem to want to change position. Going from standing to lying down proved excruciating. She didn't eat or drink. She went off and hid under the laundry stoop.

We finally got her to the vet today. She has no broken bones, but she's got a nasty burn in her groin area which she's been licking horribly, along with a lot of other bruising and general soft-tissue injuries. She's in a cone, which she's not at all pleased with, and on antibiotics and painkillers. She's not really eating or eliminating well yet. She did get down a deer sausage or two, but that's it for the past couple of days.

We had planned to go camping this week, but that was nixed. Now we nurse the dog instead. But it's pouring buckets of rain, so camping wouldn't exactly have been idyllic either.

"Race" day

I knew of precisely one other runner in my town. Running isn't exactly a hot sport here. People hike, they mountain bike, they ski in the winter, they canoe and kayak, they walk the trails. But runnings definitely isn't big. So it has been tough for me to find race events to use as goals. Most Calgary events take place on Sundays, and we leave Calgary for home Saturday morning. The only event in Nelson so far this year was cancelled. I'd been looking at races 4 to 8 hours away, wondering how I'd ever manage the logistics for something like that, given how full my life is and how tightly scheduled the kid-activities are.

But there's a campground about half an hour from here that hosts a 10k Fun Run/Walk/Bike every year. I saw the blurb in the paper last week. Today was the day. I hadn't run since Tuesday when it had become clear during and after my run that there was some sort of foreign body embedded in the sole of my right foot. Chuck and I dug away at it, going quite deep, but couldn't see anything. Of course it was much worse for a day or two after that. I was pretty sure whatever had caused the pain was still there, but gradually it seemed things were feeling a bit better. By Friday evening I was weight-bearing again and did a short slow run with Fiona and Sophie and it didn't really feel a whole lot worse afterwards. Yesterday it was better still. So I figured I was okay to run today.

To call it a race would be an overstatement. There were about 50 people walking the route, a dozen cycling and 6 or 8 lonely souls running. There was no official timing or keeping track of finishing order. There were kilometre markers. There was an official start. But that was all.

Before the event began I met up with a new-to-my-town runner who single-handedly increased the number of local runners by 50%, a woman about my age who has been running for a while and ran a Half Marathon three weeks ago. She moved here last week. We ended up running together the whole time, talking (puff, wheeze) as we went along about our kids, who are similar in age, about our community, about Garmin Forerunners (she has one, but couldn't find it this morning after her recent 1500-mile move). It was nice. I'd never run with anyone before and we seemed pretty well matched. The course was half secondary highway and half trail, exquisitely flat for this mountainous area, since it mostly skirted the shores of a lake. Temperature was in the mid-70's with the sun out but not terribly humid. A lovely day for a run.

My watch time was 53:56, for what that's worth. We were the first runners to finish which isn't saying much since there were only a handful and only a couple of the others were younger than us. But it was a good time for me and when I finished I was still feeling good. Except for whatever is still in my foot, which feels a bit worse again. Oh well.

There were zillions of donated prizes and they drew for prizes by lottery until everyone got something. It was cute, informal and homey. But not really a race. Still, it's all I have for now, and I'll count it in my training log as a race.

The piano room

Ignore the wainscoting. This is always the way with home improvements -- fixing the worst thing makes the next-worst thing look more awful. The kids are at work removing the white press-board panelling as I type. Not sure what we'll be doing with the walls yet. Everything is a work in progress.

The floor has now had the sealer oil topcoat apply and the colour has come up beautifully. The floor is just soooo lovely.

Flooring in progress

Look! No carpet! Real wood!

Noah, Erin and I went off for a whirlwind trip to Calgary for lessons. We left after Erin finished work on Saturday, making for a long, tiring day. Especially since I'd been up at 5 a.m. in order to fit in a 2-hour run before getting her to work. We arrived at our motel about 10 p.m.. Thank you double iced latté!

It's Stampede week in Calgary, so rather than paying radically inflated motel rates we stayed elsewhere, drove in in the morning, and then headed westward again as soon as we were done. Another long day. We arrived in Golden hoping for a lazy crash on motel beds for some well-deserved TV-watching. Alas there was a big power failure, 8 or 10 hours in length. I don't generally mind power failures at home. We have candles, solar lanterns, crank flashlights, the wonderful outdoors, and a variety of ways to amuse ourselves. In a dark motel room with two grumpy kids who had been looking forward to Dr. Who it was a different matter entirely. I went for a run. We read until there was no more daylight. Things were threatening to get ugly so we decided to just sleep.

Today we drove home. Chuck, Fiona and Sophie had been holding down the fort here. The flooring installers were hard at work. By quitting time they had finished the hallway and the living room. The finish hasn't been applied yet, but it already looks lovely.

Fresh veggies, veggie-burgers and venison sausage for supper. Roasted garlic sandwich bread cooling on racks. London Fogs brewing. Electricity flowing through the mains. Lovely wood floors. It's good to be home.

Gig-worthy quartet

Noah's quartet played yet again at a community event. Today it was after the big dedication of the "Valhalla Mile" project and before and during the serving of the Happy Birthday Canada cake. The Valhalla Mile dedication brought a couple of hundred people out plus a bunch of politicians and other dignitaries. A mile-long segment of privately owned waterfront wilderness adjacent to Valhalla Provincial Park was bought by a local environmental group and The Land Conservancy thanks to a phenomenally successful fundraising drive.

So the quartet was asked to play. They hadn't been rehearsing lately but had a run-through last night. Suddenly there's a togetherness and musicality that had been lacking before. They're playing much more as an ensemble. The things I used to have to spell out for them, in detail and repeatedly, are just happening spontaneously now. They sight-read through a new piece and it sounded almost ready for performance after one run-through.

They tentatively decided on a short play-list. Today they managed the whole thing themselves -- decided on the order, chose to include or omit repeats appropriately, added a couple of extra numbers on the fly when turned out a little more music was needed. Very professionally done.

They're just about ready to be more than a kid quartet. I think they're just a few months away from having enough repertoire to start taking real gigs. For money. Weddings, receptions, parties and such. I'll just need to help them dig up more repertoire.

Today they got paid in cake.

Historic dad-guy

It's Canada Day, and Silverton hosts a day-long community celebration. History and heritage are big. Chuck was asked to be one of the blacksmiths demonstrating at the living museum "Fingland Cabin." They used coal, which was new to him -- he normally uses charcoal (made in the shark hole) .


They made a lot of racket and attracted a fair number of onlookers, many of whom were fascinated by the whole painstaking process of turning cold steel into wrought creations. Fire, the clank of metal on metal and the hissing of a water bath hold a certain attraction for a segment of the population. Dad-guy included.

Flooring prep

It's happening! After my escalating complaints about the grotty carpet, and my impulsive removal of most of it from the piano room, and a bit of uncharacteristic leadership from me in terms of contacting suppliers and installers, we are now less than a week from new flooring.

When we moved into this house 15 years ago we looked at the carpet, which was already 10-20 years old at that point, and said "well, that has to be replaced, but maybe we should wait until after we no longer have a pukey baby." After that it was "until after we no longer have a toddler spilling juice." After that there were more pukey babies and more spilly toddlers. And then there was just the inertia.

We tried to make do. We bought a steam cleaner. We bought a lovely Dyson vacuum cleaner. But the frequent, powerful but ultimately fruitless cleaning caused the substrate and underlay of the carpet to break down faster and faster. It was basically just rotting away. Going bald. Smelling terrible no matter how much it was steam-cleaned.

So here we finally go. The tax rebate cheque is covering the cost. The installers will be here Monday.

We've moved four huge bookcases and an entertainment unit. The carpet is gone from the living room too. Patches of irregular concrete have been levelled. The last of the painting is underway. The remaining furniture, plus the entire piano room contents, need to be removed over the next few days. It's fun work, though. The inertia seems to be gone.

The Only Fruit Salad

I don't much like fruit salad. When I grew up fruit salad was pretty much limited to after a Christmas dinner gorge when I wasn't really in any fit state to enjoy any more food. Maybe that's why. For whatever the reason I have an aversion to pineapple, banana slices, grapes, tinned peaches, pears and mandarin oranges mixed together in a large bowl.

But this, this is different. This is the Only Fruit Salad I'll ever love. And gosh, do I love it. So does the rest of the family. We discovered it last summer. I couldn't make it through until August again without it, so I confess we're occasionally buying California fruit.

The Only Fruit Salad

4 nectarines
4 peaches
1 1/2 cups of blueberries
juice of 1 lime
1/4 cup sugar (or less, to taste)
1 Tbsp. fresh-grated ginger
1/4 cup coarsely chopped fresh thyme

The thyme is the odd ingredient here. It really works. Really really. This salad is enough reason in and of itself to plant your lawn over with thyme.

The neighbour lambs

Our neighbours have a tiny homestead which comprises a huge veggie garden, dairy cattle, rabbits, turkeys, chickens (meat birds and layers), goats and sheep. The goats and cow have birthed already and we're into a (late) lambing season now. Sometimes we get a phone call when an animal is birthing. Sometimes we just happen by.

The other day Fiona and I were finishing a run when we noticed a sheep grunting in the field. We stopped by and watched the rest of the process. And the same day Sophie, Fiona and I all visited with a couple of the newborn lambs.

These two are twins -- one strong, one weaker. The darker little boy was easily following mama around within a few minutes, poking around and figuring the udder thing out on his own. The white little girl lamb needed to be helped to stand and nurse. So far she's doing well, getting stronger.

We like this vicarious homesteading experience our neighbours are providing us with. They're new to it all themselves, and their enthusiasm and resilience in the face of misadventures is a pleasure to observe. Certainly they've debunked for us most of the romance and glamour of the self-sufficient lifestyle. We are inspired by their hard work and resourcefulness. But it's not a simple life, that's for sure.

Still, in a greening meadow in the spring, lambs are rather fine.

Running girls

Another 2 km today. Faster pace by a good bit. Fiona's legs are now officially sore. Rest day for her tomorrow.

Fiona's marathon

Fiona is running a marathon. A kids' marathon. Her own private one.

She started tonight. She and I went to the little spur of the Galena Trail that is exactly 1.0 km long and ran it both ways after supper tonight. We ran a pretty decent 9:00/km pace, which included a couple of shoe-tying stops and some "silly running".

She had a lot of fun. We talked the whole way, with the respiratory demands of her bubbly conversation helping set a do-able pace. She wore the heart rate monitor for a while and liked that. She felt very strong and grown-up to be running with me and finished feeling strong.

When we got home we made two small footprint stamps, one left and one right. Then we printed off a calendar. For every kilometre she runs she'll put a stamp on the calendar. When she gets up to 42 stamps we'll run the extra 195 metres and call it a marathon and then we'll do something special to celebrate.

I first read about this approach at kidsrunning.com. Often programs like this are put on by an organization with a lead-time of 6 weeks, and kids get together on the final day to run the last 1.2 miles (or 2.2 kilometres or whatever) for the big finish, and then everyone gets a medal. It would be great if there was something like that for her to take part in, but we'll do okay on our own I think. Sophie is also planning to take part, which will be nice.

Indoor climbing

Sophie has been taking advantage of a well-timed homeschoolers' climbing program, coming to Nelson with us on Tuesdays and hitting the indoor climbing wall with the help of a couple of instructors and a the companionship of a couple dozen homeschoolers.

Chuck and I climbed a lot before kids. We've done the tiniest bit of outdoor climbing with them over the past couple of years. But we're short on shoes and harnesses not to mention simple places to set up a top-rope, so this seemed a nice way to get Sophie a lot of vertical experience in a short period of time. Indoor climbing is very different and I admit I don't quite understand the attraction when compared to rock climbing, but it's sure a lot better than nothing!

Sophie seems pretty confident and capable. She enjoyed climbing a lot. Piano was cancelled today and Fiona and I got to watch part of the last climbing class which was nice.

Yessir, yessir...

... one bag full.

A bag as tall as Fiona.

It's from a white sheep, not black, but that's all the better for dyeing. It's amazing what teaching a few violin lessons will get you in the Kootenays. I love barters!

We have hand-carders and a drum-carder we can borrow. Our only spinning implements are a couple of drop spindles. This is going to be a long-term project.

Predatory near-tragedy

The seven hatched chicks, now heading into adolescence and standing 8 to 10 inches tall, were moved out to the chicken coop a week or so ago. They hunkered inside the henhouse at first, intimidated by the older generation. Overall things were going well. The big chickens were scarfing the little ones' higher-nutrient food, but other than that they'd been respecting each other pretty well and there wasn't any undue aggression.

Today I guess the little guys finally got comfortable enough to start looking for adventure in the far reaches of the outdoor corral. And alas, they discovered a crack large enough to allow for escape. Noah noticed a couple of small chickens sallying around the smithy and sent up the alarm.

We ran outside in the chilly downpour and quickly had four of the five escapees back in the coop. But one was missing, and ominously so was the dog. We knew right away that they were together and that the scene wasn't going to be a pretty one. After quickly securing the escapees, stopping up the crack, we found the dog on the lawn with a small feathery lump. The lump wasn't moving and was soggy and significantly defeathered. I looked closely and it was apparent that it was still breathing but there was blood and flesh showing. I picked it up and resigned myself to breaking its neck to put it out of its misery, something I knew was going to be horrifically difficult to do.

But then I looked more closely. Its eyes were open; it moved its legs a little. What had looked at first to be an open neck wound was just a large raw defeathered area. There was a similar area on one wing. A little blood, a lot of missing feathers, but more mess and slobber and baldness than actual damage.

We brought the poor fellow inside and put him under the heat lamp to dry out. Initially he looked like a monster-sized freshly-hatched chick with the addition of blood and bald patches. Unable to stand, he lay trembling and limp in the box, still a sodden lump. I told the kids I thought he probably wouldn't still be alive in a few hours.

But gradually he's drying out, warming up and looking much better. With his remaining feathers dried out a bit and some muscle tone returning the raw bald flesh on his neck doesn't look like the gaping wound it did at first. He's eating and drinking now, getting up on his feet and shuffling around a bit. Maybe he'll make it. If he escapes without infection he'll likely regrow some plumage in a few weeks and be ready to rejoin the coop. We're all rooting for him.

Performance Weekend

Summit Strings played at the official grand opening of the newly-refurbished Silverton Memorial Hall on Friday night. The hall is beautiful. The washrooms are no longer located at stage right, opening almost onto the performance space, behind thin doors through which much could be heard. Now they're sensibly located at the back. There's portable staging, new chairs, a brilliantly refinished floor and a fully equipped commercial-style kitchen. Not to mention audiovisual bells and whistles, from a sound system, video screen and projector, satellite TV and internet capability. Wow! The Summit Strings kids have grown up playing in this hall. It houses the first grand piano to reside in the community (ours is the second) and is the only venue big enough for large audiences. Erin performed her Bach piano concerto movement with orchestra here back in 2004. The community orchestra cut its teeth here with an early performance in 1999. Most of the videos I've ever posted on this blog take place at this hall, whether at recitals, ensemble performances or summer programs. We are thrilled that the hall has had new life breathed into it.

And so the kids provided musical interludes for the open house quite happily, knowing that they were lending support to a venue that has and will continue to provide them with many opportunities.

The next morning we starting rehearsing for the recital. With sixteen students performing and our accompanist arriving just the day before there was a lot to fit into Saturday. And then Sunday we were back at the hall with its shiny floor and lovely acoustics.

Fiona performed Humoresque, a piece she had learned a year ago, a comfortable old favourite. She played it with the shifts, with her vibrato, and nice phrasing and articulation. I had remembered only today that she had bailed out of her last recital performance after 16 bars. Today there was no hint of worry; her piece was comfortable and secure and she enjoyed performing.

Sophie played Fiocco's Allegro. It was a solid clean and confident performance. You can see from the rehearsal photo above that Sophie really looks like a violinist now. She sounds like one too! A year ago she was a tentative player who didn't like to use full bows or big tone. She's now projecting confidence in her tone and musicianship in a huge way in her solo performances. She plays in a way that really conveys the beauty of the music. She's got a good heart, this girl, and it now shines through her music and sparkles with her tone.

Noah played the first movement of the J.C. Bach Concerto in C Minor. This has been a real transition year for Noah, as he's moved from weekly lessons with his grandmother to monthly or bi-monthly lessons in Calgary. He didn't have the maturity, self-teaching skills and advanced musicianship that Erin did a year ago when she made the move, so he's still trying to find his stride and make the infrequent lessons work well for him. But boy oh boy, something's working! His J.C. Bach, on which he'd had little guidance in polishing up for performance, was stunningly musical and technically flawless. He'd never played it with piano until yesterday and after he heard how it fit together with the accompaniment there was an instant blossoming of all his musical smarts. Contrasts, phrasing, dynamics, articulations ... everything just fell into place by the second run-through. By today's performance it was more amazing still.

As of two weeks ago Erin had been planning to play a well-learned unaccompanied Bach solo partita movement. But at her last lesson her teacher told her she'd rather she played the 2nd and 3rd movements of the Bruch Concerto in g minor. Poor Erin! She hadn't even really finished learning the 3rd movement and neither movement was anywhere near polished. She's been working mostly on Mendelssohn and another Bach, not Bruch! She also had her first-ever final school exams coming up, three of them, a couple of lingering English assignments and a bunch of shifts at work. But at her teacher's urging she set to work with a vengeance.

As it turned out the two movements were too long for the program. They would have made up 17 minutes on a program that was supposed to fit 16 students into an hour and a bit. And rehearsal time was limited. So she opted to do the 3rd movement, the one she been scrambling hardest to learn. It's an incredibly technically demanding fast movement, the most difficult of the three by a long shot. She was stressed. It wasn't how she likes to perform, without the security of fully-developed mastery. She was still firming up her fingerings and memorizing it at the rehearsal. But by this morning the improvement was dramatic and this afternoon she really nailed the performance!

Fiona is always impressively precocious, sweet and petite. Erin is always the advanced student who blows everyone away with her proficiency. Today, though, all four of my kids shone. Each one of them made me so happy and proud.

Bach eats a cracker

Discovered on the camera today when looking through it for photos of the recital. Action-figure J.S. Bach eats a cracker. While standing on the piano, of all things. Naughty fellow.

Runniversary 3

It has been almost 3 months since I started running. I'm so hooked! Last weekend when I finally finished the accounting and the taxes for the year my treat to myself was a late evening run. Far from feeling like a fitness obligation, running is now the high point of my day.

Remember me mentioning how satisfied my geeky self is about all the on-line training logs and technology available? Here you get to see some of the graphs I have fun playing around with.

This first graph shows my weekly mileage since the end of March. The yellow and green bars are walk/run sessions of various sorts. Pink is a fast "tempo" run, light blue a hill run, and the dark blue bars are my "long slow runs." My mileage has gone from about 10 miles (16k) a week to 26 miles (40k) a week. Note my attack of sensible-ness two weeks ago, when I took a step-back week and reduced my mileage to help prevent injuries and allow my body an easy week to recover strength. I plan to repeat that every 4-6 weeks.

This is the graph I'm even more pleased with. It shows the improvement in my pace on the 5k distance. My pace (minutes per mile) has dropped from almost 13 minutes to about 8:30. In metric units that's an increase in speed from 7.54 to 11.3 km/h. (That last speediest 5k was one where I drove down to town and ran there on a fairly flat route in order to see how fast I could push myself.)

Last month I mentioned that I was thinking about training for a Half Marathon for next year. I'm now wondering about running in one in October of this year. I ran the 21.1 km distance on my long (hot!) Saturday run a week ago so I know I could finish the race. We'll see if the logistics work out. The race is a few hours away and on a weekend that I know is likely to be problematic.

I've now logged over 200 miles on my total. My goal of 500 miles in 2009 is feeling like a pretty conservative one right now, assuming I stay motivated and injury-free. My goal for the next couple months is just maintenance. "Building a base," they call it. Giving bones, muscles and ligaments a chance to fully adapt to running by maintaining a consistent schedule. I might get the chance to do a 10k Fun Run in a couple of weeks. There's been one nearby in years past but publicity always comes out at the last minute. I'll do it if it happens.

New things I've learned about running:

1. Audiobooks are great for long slow runs.
2. A cold cold bath for the legs whilst sipping a London Fog is the best way to smooth recovery after a long run.
3. Bears meandering around on the side of the road will usually run off when you wave your arms and shout "get lost, you stupid bear, this was supposed to be my fast run, and you're in the way!"
4. GU energy gels are pretty disgusting to eat but they actually don't taste bad when you're salt- and sugar-depleted. Allow me to recommend the Espresso Love flavour.
5. Rain. Rain is wonderful. Nothing beats running in the rain.
6. There are far too many motorcyclists on our road who have been inspired by this video. (Yes, that's my running route. Since the road is 40 km in its entirety, the video has probably been sped up. A bit. Still, it's insane how some of these guys ride.)
7. There is no natural limit on how much money one can spend on running gear.
8. A long run on a hot day will result in visible salt encrustations on one's skin.
9. BodyGlide anti-chafing product is mighty awesome stuff.
10. Dogs who can shame you with their spry fitness in March don't do so well past 7 kilometers or any time the temperature is over 20 C. Neener, neener, neener, Limpet! (She now stays home most of the time.)