30 June 2013

Feeding the voracious knitter in me...

Today's a day that I'm trying to get some things done. Well, sort of.

This morning I got up, ate a toasted bread heel with homemade grape jelly, and opened the County Barn, threw down my ground blanket, rolled out my yoga mat, and started doing Son Salutations, then went into a whole self-created, whatever-I-could-come-up-with, spur-of-the-moment routine that lasted about a half hour or so. I'd been thinking for quite some time now that the county barn, with its cool air and doors wide-open to the morning sun, would be a great place to do some morning yoga. And I was right. Until the fire awareness meeting started and a half dozen of my coworkers were all standing outside at the barn's fire hydrant, watching me.

I finished knitting a tank top a couple weeks ago now, but I had a bit more yarn leftover than I expected, and I wanted to try and take the top apart and lengthen it a bit. But if you know me, you know how much I detest frogging (or tinking, as the case may be) - even if it means that I will like the end product more for my efforts. Well, in putting this off, I started looking at other shirt patterns on Ravelry, and then suddenly I was inspired to do something that I'd meant to do quite some time ago: I listed my own, self-designed pattern - dubbed the "Whitefish Headband" - for sale on ravelry. The pattern costs $3.50 and it's all ready to be downloaded by eager knitters. We'll see if I get any bites... lol.

In doing that, I was suddenly inspired to create another pattern. So I've now ordered more yarn not for a pattern I found but for a pattern that is working itself out in my head and on the sketchpad for a sort of tunic tank top. When I finish it, not only will I (hopefully) have a nice new shirt to wear, but I will have a pattern that others might be interested in which I could sell on Ravelry to make a few extra bucks. I've decided to call my store "Nomadic Knitwear" and I'm going to design patterns inspired by the different places that I've been. Let the entrepreneuriality begin.

29 June 2013

Heat Perceptions.

It's been hot. Two days ago we maxed out at 85. Yesterday we were supposed to top off at 88, though I haven't checked the weather gauges yet to see how hot we got yesterday. The rest of the week, actually, is supposed to be much of the same. Our only saving grace is that it's been clouding over with cool thunderheads in the afternoons and evenings - but after the initial cooling they leave us feeling sticky. I'm glad that today is my Friday, because it's a bit too hot to be walking around in the heat of the day in uniform.

I got my latest Vitacost order, complete with Wintergreen and Peppermint oils! Why is this exciting? Because I've been making my own toothpaste concoctions, and now they will have flavor! Also included in the package were a few tubes of discounted Desert Essence shea butter chapstick, and a toothbrush that comes with a spare head, for which I can simply buy replacement heads for the rest of forever and not have to replace the whole deal every time I wear it out! Hooray for less waste!

Mountain bikes are on my mind right now... I was hoping to get one of the new Specialized women's 29ers, but they got pushed out in availability until August... Sad day. So I'm looking around at some other options, and checking into getting a pro deal on a Santa Cruz bike - particularly one of their Juliana line (for women) - absolutely gorgeous bikes with great component line-ups that you can see here. I'm still waiting to hear the word back on that, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

June is just about done, and after tomorrow I will have been here for two months and be at least one third of the way through my season. In a couple more weeks I'll be taking my first mini-vacation of the season (there's another one in the works for later in the fall, not to mention other trips to visit California friends and relatives that I'd like to work into my weekends).

Well, I have to get going - my toothpaste needs to be remixed with Wintergreen and I've got to get dressed for work! It's supposed to be above 80 degrees again today, which means that I can allow myself to wear my shorts and short sleeves (with lots of whiter chick sunscreen, of course!). But I think I'll be able to suck it up - after all, it was 106 at my home in Big Bend yesterday.

24 June 2013

Checking In

Currently watching: Chocolat
Currently listening to: James McMurtry, Where'd You Hide the Body; Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins (audiobook)
Currently reading: Desert Solitaire, by Edward Abbey; Slim Calm Sexy Yoga, by Tara Stiles

Yesterday was the 81st annual Burning of Bodie; my hiking buddy came up and we spent the better part of the day hiking to the top of Beauty Peak and back, then went to the commemoration potluck and had a hootin' hollerin' time. In honor of Chocolat, I baked a Mexican Chocolate Cake with cayenne pepper in it for my "red hot" dish to pass. It was all eaten up by the end of the night, and good thing too, because it was too hot for me!

Plans are well underway to visit Alyssa in Sequoia within a month. I'm taking a couple days off, and I'll be driving down there to do some major hiking. I've called Alyssa twice now since I got here from Big Bend, both times the conversation easily lasted over an hour, and I was left feeling so grateful to have a good friend like her. I would even say a best friend. I can hardly wait to see her next month, and we have both said that we look forward to being neighbors again in Big Bend in the winter. It was Alyssa who introduced me to James McMurtry - my current music craze - and listening to the album (which I used an iTunes gift card to download) reminds me of fun times with her and West Texas in general. I absolutely love it. Word from our silversmith back there tells me that, very soon, I should be receiving my specially commissioned bracelet depicted the dear view of the Sierra del Carmen which I used to see outside my house every day in Rio Grande Village. My boss still wants me to come back early, but no word yet on when exactly that will be. But it's nice to know that he hasn't forgotten about me.

I've been trying to get back into the swing of things with yoga again. The book I've got from the library - Slim Calm Sexy Yoga - is very helpful for learning sequences that aren't too long. I've also been downloading different free yoga podcasts through iTunes, some of which I enjoy, others which I delete without even finishing. It's a lot of experimenting, and mostly enjoyable. Though it definitely serves to make me glad that I mostly have the house to myself when I'm pulling all these crazy poses!

My current books read count is at 5, with two more on the way. Maybe not the amount I could accomplish back in my childhood, but I will be glad to have read 7 books in two months when I'm working 40 hours a week and all the other shenanigans that come up on top of that. I would say that my computer addiction is somewhat at a middle-ground right now - still a bit more wasted use than I would like, but fairly balanced with other, more productive activities.

Speaking of which, I think I ought to call this good, finish some emails, and log off so I can do some yoga! :)

Until next time!

17 June 2013

Success!!

So the internet may not be all it's cracked up to be, but I've still had some good luck with some things recently.

Today, for instance, I received the package containing my 3rd attempt at buying new trail shoes for work: GoLite Lava Lites. This is the same company that Alyssa likes so much for their outdoor gear - okay, maybe it's technically a different company, but they share the same name and used to share the same website. Anyhow, they're barefoot technology shoes (zero drop, no foam sticking up in weird places in the footbed) and after reading the reviews I decided to order a size 8.5. Usually I'm somewhat in-between the two, but the reviews said they ran small, so I confidently ordered the larger of the two sizes and was pleasantly surprised when they fit wonderfully! Yay! It would appear that my search for appropriate work footwear is finally over. Now I just need to get the $200 in refunds back for the shoes that I've tried and am sending back.

I'm on the email list for Dr. Laura Koniver, the Intuition Physician and have been getting semi-regular updates from her for several months now. Recently she sent out a blog post on tooth care, and I was intrigued by her step 1 - something she called "oil pulling". You swish coconut oil in your mouth for a minute to ten minutes to help loosen things up for brushing. Interesting. She also recommended just plain baking soda as the best (and cheapest) way to brush your teeth. While looking up articles on natural sun protection, I stumbled upon a recipe for coconut oil toothpaste (incidentally, multiple sites claim that coconut oil blocks 20% of the sun's rays and thus works as a great sunblock; it's also good for keeping the no-see-ums from biting you... sounds like a great combination for Bodie!). You just mix 2 T of coconut oil with 2 T of baking soda, add 10 drops of peppermint oil if you have it, and voila! So I softened some coconut oil a touch and whipped it up with the baking soda, cleaned out a mini spice container and filled it with the stuff, then brushed my teeth with that this morning, swishing it around for awhile before finishing the job so I essentially combined the oil pulling and tooth brushing in one fell swoop. It felt pretty good! I think I might have to try and find some peppermint oil in the store or online (or maybe my personal midwest favorite: wintergreen!), but the plain coconut oil and salty-tasting baking soda is alright for now. I've still got a partial tube of the Trader Joe's baking soda & fluoride toothpaste to use up, but I think I'll start using the natural stuff once a day. It's certainly cheaper overall and creates less waste than those non-recyclable, non-emptiable toothpaste containers. And after what I've been reading on fluoride lately, I'm not convinced I need it in my toothpaste, especially if what Dr. Koniver says is true about it being present in just about every fruit and vegetable and the water supply - doesn't seem like we need an extra dose when we're getting it from everywhere else!

You may be wondering why I'm posting two days in a row: it's because I was planning on going into town to meet up with my hiking buddy for a hike, but he ended up having to work today. I finished my knitting yesterday, finished listening to Catching Fire on audiobook, finished watching the multi-disc BBC documentary on Scotland that Denise lent me, and don't have any plans until after the park closes when a coworker and I are going to go for a walk and I'm going to break in my new hiking shoes. So today is mostly reading, writing, meditating, tidying, and generally sitting on my butt. Hopefully tomorrow I'll at least get out to the post office to send out my returns, and maybe get a new book or two from the library (and possibly a movie). As it is, I'm reading "Desert Solitaire" by Edward Abbey from the Bodie library and I'm absolutely loving it!

Until next time...

16 June 2013

The Perils of Online Shopping

Aside from buying my textbooks and a ukulele in college, I never did much online shopping in general. But when I got to Big Bend, where I would never venture to the modern convenient department stores that usually supplied all my needs, I would start to order things online.

It began with my granola... a staple of my diet, at about $5.50 a box in Terlingua I realized that I needed to find a cheaper way to supply my needs or change my diet. I chose the former and became a member of the Amazon Subscribe & Save community, receiving monthly shipments of a soon-to-be favorite granola with a large quantity and a low sugar level. That was only the beginning - toilet paper, henna, and other odds and ends would make their way to my P.O. box over the next several weeks, all with incredible good luck - things tasted good, they fit right, and I was generally pleased.

But when I got to Bodie, it would seem that my luck with online shopping had run out. It all began when Amazon Subscribe & Save stopped offering my flavor of granola, forcing me to purchase a flavor with a lesser quantity and a greater sugar level. I ordered shoes for work, but found out that they didn't fit well, so I returned them and ordered another - only to find that instead of the advertised brown they were actually a rather radiant PURPLE. Wow. Most recently, I ordered a gently used and highly discounted bike rack. But when I went to install it, I opened the box and found that it was not the "Fork Lift" I had ordered, but a set of 48" round bars with 4 Q Towers. AAHH! Luckily these things are going to be returned and refunded at no cost to me.

I've cancelled my Amazon Subscribe and Save, and will be switching over to Vitacost at the recommendation of Alyssa - hopefully with better luck, since they still offer my now-favored granola brand and flavor at a reasonable cost. I've got another pair of shoes coming, and one more that I'll try out if these don't work, and the company I bought the roof rack from is looking to see if they have the article I actually ordered so that I don't have to go looking for one on some other site.

I suppose I now know firsthand the perils of online shopping. But isolation necessitates its use, and I don't think I've been discouraged much overall.

Until next time!

10 June 2013

Money might not grow on trees...

... but I seem to be finding a lot of it in the sagebrush around Bodie!

When I came up to Bodie this summer, I thought I might not have a room, so I purchased a pop-up trailer for $750 and towed it up, only to find that I did have a cozy little place to stay. This posed a problem in my ultra-utilitarian, nomadic lifestyle: I was now the owner of a large, heavy box that I had no use for whatsoever. I posted it on craigslist about a week after I got here, and I reposted it with pictures the other day - which got an immediate and earnest response from an interested buyer. Yesterday I showed the trailer, accepted payment, and signed over the title - for exactly what I paid for it! Woohoo! I can't describe how happy I am to have that big stress box out of the back forty and the money back in my pocket!

Two weeks ago I got to work overtime monitoring a film crew for a Levi's commercial (they finished their filming this past week and will hopefully be putting up the commercial relatively soon). This was the first time in my three years at Bodie that I've ever been asked to do overtime, and I was thrilled! My paycheck for the month of June is going to be rockin with that added overtime on it.

Yesterday, while I was waiting for my last load of laundry to finish, Ryan came to my house with Dani's phone number and told me to give her a call. Dani is the business manager for the Bodie Foundation, who I worked for my first two weeks when I did the early opening for the museum. I called her up and she asked what I was doing today (Monday) because there was supposed to be a 2-hour private town tour for these four visitors and now the tour guide can't make it for whatever reason. Naturally, I agreed to do it. I don't have any plans set up for today, and it would still leave me plenty of time to get to the post office in town this afternoon to take care of business there. Plus, it pays.

So what am I planning on doing with all this extra money in my pocket? Well, something that I've been thinking about for several years now, but can only justify in my current situation: I'm going to buy a new mountain bike. I officially gifted my old one to my sister yesterday, and I've got my sights set on a beautiful womens 29er model that Specialized puts out. I just have to give the local bike shop a call, maybe do a little haggling, and get them to order it so I can be ready to roll as soon as possible. Because let's face it: I'm surrounded by dirt roads here in Bodie, and I would LOVE to be able to ride more. I have no fear of investing in a good bike - with my track record, I'll probably have it and use it for a long time.

02 June 2013

Mileage

I've been here about a month now, and I've hiked about 44 miles, and biked 25. Compared to Big Bend, that doesn't sound like much. But bear in mind: I probably average a minimum of 7 miles of walking every day that I work; and I have to drive in order to get to any place that I can ride my road bike.

In terms of hiking, I'm just getting started. I've got a little 1.5 mile loop that I'm working on incorporating into my morning routine (I've been waking up around 5:30 and I don't have to work 'til 7:30 at the earliest, most days, so there's lots of room in the morning routine) and I'm trying to make a 2-4 mile after-work hike into a weekly group event with some success so far. I've also found a hiking partner in Lee Vining that, after two trial runs, seems willing to put up with me for longer distances, so I'm sure there's more to come. Not to mention that I'm going to Mark and Lynn's tomorrow to do some hiking with them as well.
As far as biking goes, I'm looking into the possibility of getting a mountain bike. I'm keeping my eyes open for a good deal on a used one or something similar, because I think that the state of my bike back home, combined with the cost of shipping, wouldn't make that a worthwhile venture. Plus, I think my sister has it. I suppose she can keep it, if that's the case. I think that if I'm going to buy one, I'd like to invest in one that's halfway decent. I'm kind of wishing that I had bought one of the awesome bikes they had at Desert Sports before I left there instead of that dumb trailer that I'm trying to sell now. I think I'll stop into the bike shop in Gardnerville and see if they've got anything neat on their floor this weekend.

Where other activities are concerned, I've got a shipment of yarn that came in this past week and the needles to go with it I will pick up in town tomorrow or Tuesday, then I'm starting to knit a tank top pattern that I bought on ravelry. It's really cute looking, and I'm excited to be knitting my first warm weather item - everything I've ever knit before has been for wearing when it's cold! The green yarn that I ordered turned out to be a bit brighter than I expected, but I think it'll look good on me when it's all knit up. If worse comes to worse, I can probably gift it and buy the yarn in a different color or maybe sell it somehow or something. But I'm thinking it'll look good.

My reading spree took a turn for the worse this past couple weeks, and I am only just now coming on the closing sections of Isabel Allende's "Zorro". I've still got "Ninja: 1000 Years of the Shadow Warrior" by Mr. Man to read before I can turn in this slew of books, which will be due again on the 8th of June - I'm hoping I can renew them a second time because I don't think I'll finish that historical book very quickly. I've got some books checked out from the Bodie Private Library as well that I'd like to read, so I think I'll wait to get more public library books until I finish those, so that'll probably be at least a couple weeks or so.

I suppose that's all for now. I've got to get packed for Mark and Lynn's tomorrow, and get my grocery list figured out for the month ahead so I can get everything I need in Carson City. On top of that, I've got to eat supper and get to bed on time, so I'd better get moving. Mark and Lynn want me to be at their place by 9 in the morning tomorrow!