Phutu...whatever

2/15/2003 Well, I've been making a dandy mess of things around the house lately. I realized that I have to cut some straight lines in the existing plaster so that I can butt the new drywall up to the edges cleanly and make the whole thing look smooth. Of course this sounds pretty simple and it is, but it's really messy. I have been using a circular saw for the majority of the work...it's really effective but it makes the plaster into a noxious cloud of dust that penetrates into every corner of the house. I was cutting at one end of the used-to-be-hall near where I installed a smoke detector and a little into the cut I heard what I thought was the saw making a beeping sound...but it was the smoke detector telling me that I was in danger and should evacuate. Luckily, I didn't have to smash it or anything because it stopped squealing as soon as the air cleared up a little. I actually finished (I think) all of this messy business this morning and I should now be putting up the new drywall pieces instead of writing this. Sometimes procrastinating is essential.

It started raining a while ago. I went out onto my front porch and looked around at the bonsai that I have out there....they weren't getting wet, so I moved all of them around to maximize the impact of the rain. For some reason, the trees and everything else always look healthier when they are watered by mother nature...I guess I haven't perfected my touch yet. Actually, the rain is welcome as long as it doesn't fall while I am working at the track...except that Romi doesn't like to go outside in the rain. That means that I have to escort him outside to get him to go to the bathroom. I think that I'll go to bed early tonight and get up early in the morning to do some somewhat less messy work on the house.

2/12/2003 Dory and I took a little trip to Santa Barbara these past two days. I can't say that I am enamored of southern California much. There is only one species of palm that is native to the state....you really wouldn't realize from looking around southern CA. Everyone has cut down the beautiful oaks and planted stupid palms and other exotic tropical trees. I'm not sure that imported trees are a reason to not like a place. The trees aren't really so much the problem as a symptom of the attitude that is the problem. Of course I could be totally wrong. I actually liked Santa Barbara, it's a nice city...I didn't like what I saw of Ventura or Oxnard. We went to the Santa Barbara Botanic Gardens while we were there. That was one reason that I liked the place. It was a really large garden filled with all CA native vegetation, including some really nice oak trees. We also spent some time on the City College of Santa Barbara campus. I was mostly taking care of Romi while Dory met with some professors for work. I sat under a large oak tree on a nice little bit of lawn reading about oak trees. I managed to collect a few viable looking acorns that I plan to turn into trees. Yeah, okay...I'm a little interested in oaks at the moment; live with it.

The real problem with our trip was that we drove over eight hundred miles in under fourty-eight hours. That much driving makes for a lot of looking at things that are whizzing by but not stopping because there isn't enought time. There were a lot of things that I would liked to have stopped to see but in the end I had only enough time to snap a couple shots of oak savannah on the return trip. We did stop at Hearst Castle for a little tour on Tuesday; it took a couple hours and was interesting. It's more like a museum than a house. In fact, as I was walking around I kept thinking that I was in the Palace of the Legion of Honor (a museum in S.F.) The most interesting part to me, which will probably be uninteresting to most people was the oak trees that are growing all around the mansion. When construction began aroun 1920 Hearst paid over $40,000 to move the full sized trees without killing them...unfortunately many of the ones that he moved died anyway. Now, the ones that are remaining are getting quite old. I noticed that someone had put cables between some of the larger branches...an attempt to save a tree or an attempt to sculpt it? I was told by the guide that they are simply trying to prolong the lives of the trees as long as possible. I was a bit disappointed because I thought Hearst might have been interested in training full sized trees into "bonsai." Dory was very interested in all of the old marble mosaics that Hearst had imported and laid down. I was less interested, but I took some photos for her.

I had to neglect to work on the house to go on the trip obviously, but here are a couple photos of the drywall that we have been putting up...and a photo of Romi as well. More writing later, I have to get to work now. 1/31/2003
1/21/2003
12/18/2002

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