The woman is very happy about this:

So my sub-one-percent chance of drawing one of the good hunt tags failed. Not surprising, you have to have 8 years worth of preference points saved up to have a 2% chance so it's not a shock I didn't win with 1 point. 7 more years though and woo. Getting tags for the zones that have animals is pretty impossible, no wonder so many people just go to OR or NV to hunt, even with the out of state costs it's still reasonable if you actually want to hunt more than once every 50 years.

Friday night I drove to Placerville to spend the night so that Saturday morning I would have only a few hours to drive to get to the land navigation class. It was an expensive option paying for a hotel room but it was the right one, I got a shower and a real breakfast and everything Saturday morning to start the weekend out right, I wasn't tired, etc. On my way out of town Friday night I stopped by REI to get some last minute things: a water bottle (to replace the one the woman stole from me), a sun hat (my seattle sombrero gets really warm in the summer) and a thermarest. Sleeping on the steel deck of the Jeep is no fun even with a blanket down so I got one of the REI house brand pads on closeout.... because it's not camping season or they have this year's model of pad? Whatever it was cheap and worth every penny. Slept great and it was fast and easy to deploy and take down.

Here is a picture of my camp, with the hamburger helper simmering away. I had to put all the food in the bear lockers (you can see them as those brown squares way in the distance) because there were bears in camp both nights. Glad I was in the metal box on the Jeep and not in a tent!

Class itself was a lot of fun. Long day on Saturday working maps and walking around but I was feeling pretty confident with the map and compass after that and Sunday's GPS work gave us a way to verify all our manual measurements. Now I no longer really want a 'fancy' GPS for field work. Just a good 1:24k topo map, a compass and a cheap ass GPS that can display UTM and I'll be set. I've got two iPhone GPS apps that work well and display correctly but the phone is so fragile and I wouldn't want to subject it to shock, dirt, water, etc. The government issue GPSes we got were little Garmin etrex units and they weren't bad although I'm going to try to find one that's even simpler and smaller if such a thing exists.

On the way home on Sunday I drove to my parents place as a detour, one to pick up a .22 revolver from the safe and two to check out dad's new shop. He wasn't kidding that it's 'pretty big' it's 1100 sq. ft. with 350 sq. ft. of storage in the attic that's tall enough for me to stand up in. He's still got to paint it, insulate and sheet rock the inside, etc but obviously there has been a lot of progress since I was there last.

And... it works! Painting is next. So far though I've found about 3 things I would improve upon with the next revision, but I doubt there will be a next rev since this one is good enough (for now anyway).

Done! Now with a racing stripe.

Last night after waiting about 10 minutes for the net to start we realized that the person scheduled to do net control wasn't going to show up. I asked what the procedures was, did someone just jump in an take it? The popular vote said that I had just volunteered to do it so I dug the script out of the pile of junk I had cleaned up a few weeks back and got to work. Only 8 people turned up, guess it's quieter in the summer with people out doing things vs. sitting at home goofing with radios.

One of the woman's ex boyfriends is getting married this summer up in SF. I've met him a few times, he's one of those crazy smart guys that does his own thing in every way and is wildly successful. He's got some sort of numerical analysis company, I can't even begin to understand what they do and he's got 200 employees now in spite of the fact that he dresses like a skinhead in a kilt and officially changed his name to "Loki" and refuses to use capitol letters at all (something I'll admit to trying to copy at times). He's also got a really dry sense of humor, as evident by the comment on the back of the invite:

I wonder if he'll have the groomsmen in kilts too?

Dad dropped off the metal versions of the cardboard mock-ups I made last week. They look pretty good, hopefully I can drill the holes tonight and see what fine tuning I have to do. I think I'm going to have to cut about 1/2" off the 'tab' that holds the two pieces together but that's OK, that part was designed to be cut to size during the final install. I'm learning to engineer a little wiggle room into my designs.

I've been going back and forth about taking the Jeep vs the car to the class this weekend, but it turns out the camp site is about 25 miles down a dirt/gravel road. Jeep it is, even if it will double the gas cost for the weekend.

Stuff done this weekend that needs to get documented:

- made jerky for the NASCAR freaks (instead of the woman taking cookies)
- dinner with Scott and Lina at their new place (took them a bottle of my best wine!)
- the flintlock's maiden voyage to the range
- made the screen for the Jeep for the camping trip
- hammock

I'm at work too early. The contractor guys came this morning at 6:30 so they could make some final measurements for the mirror before they cut it and show back up at 3:30pm to install it. The bathroom has to be done before next weekend or we're screwed with company in the house and only 1 shower.

Was in Austin this week for a couple of days enjoying the almost Vareck like temperatures. Sure, it's 10F cooler in Austin than where he is and no one is trying to kill us there (as long as you don't go to the east side anyway) but it was still hot.

We went to dinner Tuesday at some chain steak place because Andrew was craving some 'real meat'. He got his t-bone and since they had quail on the menu I gave that a try. Big difference in the appearance in the picture vs. reality but it was pretty good. Needed better sides though, a big blob of potatoes is not all that interesting and it needs some greenery one the plate somewhere you can eat, those parsley flakes don't count.

Lunch on Wednesday was at Rudy's, that shell gas station and BBQ place. In spite of their sign it's the best BBQ brisket I've had anywhere. Think I said that last trip too, but this time I got a picture so I'll say it again.

While I was away the mushrooms were growing at home, got to harvest them yesterday and we'll have to figure out how to cook them tonight.

Suddenly it's wild kingdom around here. First there were the squirrels (which the woman has started feeding a 'special blend' she makes that the pet store using only the nuts they like... no reason for them to have 2nd class food) then the doves sitting on the garage door sill, now we have ducks hanging out in the driveway area. Only after I opened the door and rolled the bike out did they even move, and then they hung around long enough for me to decide to get the phone out of the top case and try to take a picture.

Friday Sue came by for lunch, and things just seem to be getting worse and worse for her. She got laid off a couple months back, her wacky husband hasn't worked for the last 4 years staying at home playing Mr mom, and has no interest in going back to work, and her shitty car finally died. They want $5k to make her '98 Mercedes pass smog. Ha! Now she's using her mom's old car, a 1982 Cressida wagon. Looking up how to spell "cressida" I learned that it's the last of the RWD Toyota sedan/wagons before FWD took over in the 90s. Huh. Guess I wouldn't have minded one of these back then. What's amazing about this sample is that everything works, even the power antenna. I should have taken a picture of the stereo, what was the fascination with "10 band equalizers" and lots of sliders on car decks back then? Did it really help, or just provide lots of little plastic things to break off and look bad?

The woman was out with some friends on Friday so I got a chance to try out one of the fancier 'meal in a box' things (aka hamburger helper part 2). The chicken marsala came out looking OK, I managed to pan fry the chicken well and get the pasta right, but the flavor was just gross as all get out. I choked down a little bit of it but I'm glad I made it as a test at home before taking it on the trip in a 2 weeks. Would have been pretty disappointed to put all that effort into something and ended up eating power bars instead. Guess I'll just do the lasagna stuff, it always turns out.... well edible anyway.

Saturday was mostly wasted, I went to the clays place for some practice in the morning, goofed around the house in the afternoon and then we went to a graduation party for one of the barn kids. Is high school graduation really all that big of a deal? Her parents had it at the Hilton in one of the banquet rooms and they did have table games there which was interesting. I've never played roulette for 'real' before, and it's about as boring as watching the woman play in Vegas. I should have tried blackjack or something, but I can't see that being any better other than you have to pay attention while you lose money.

The contractors did not show up on Saturday either (which is why we mostly just hung around the house during the day, they were supposed to come and finish the bathroom). How long before I have to finish it myself?

Sunday was another lazy day, we went for a bike ride and stuff after the woman got back from the barn and I worked on my 'dead pedal' project. I want to put a dead pedal in the Jeep but the aftermarket ones are designed to bolt into the floor. I like having the sealed floor mats that keep the mud and stuff from getting everywhere and I don't want to cut them so I had to come up with an alternate design that only uses existing holes and doesn't actually bolt to the floor. I modeled it out of cardboard, I'll be curious if dad can take that and replicate it in metal. I may have to do like I did with the bracket and cut all the bits out myself and do the bends and just have his guys weld it up.

Ah, here I sit outside the office of the guy who will eventually be my boss. Why outside? Well he's not here for our meeting, my guess is that he never shows and never bothers to even acknowledge that he missed the meeting he called or reschedules it. Our group isn't even worth a courtesy blow-off notice anymore.

On the good side, the cabin paperwork is complete. There is an escrow office across from work that's the same company as the one up by the cabin so they had the papers sent there for me to sign so I wouldn't have to find my own notary. I signed the papers at 10:05am, the buyers signed them shortly after (or a fax of mine or something, I don't know how they could have got them to them so fast) and things were ready to close by 1pm. Now we just wait. The recording office isn't open on Fridays (shock!) so it either happens today or early next week. The date is supposed to be the 23rd and I'm not sure if we just sit until that time or will it fund and be completely done at close? "close" sounds very final but no one could really say when the deal actually happens after "close". It's been a while since I bought a house so I can't remember what happened last time... oh yea, and with the Milpitas place I leased it back to the owners for a month so I didn't move in at close anyway.

Last week was a bit of a vacation week. The woman and I went up to Napa, well technically St. Helena, to the culinary institute for a two day cooking boot camp. It seemed a bit rushed but we really did learn a lot and although not technically 'fun' I'm glad we did it. We both agreed that it wasn't worth the cost so we won't take another of their classes but for a one time 'experience' it was good enough. They even call it an 'experience' in the brochure. I should write more, but now that its' not fresh in my mind and I've had time at work to dull down my excitement I'll just let the pictures do the talking.

At some point I really should update this thing with a whole bunch of entries:

- CIA class
- bathroom model
- flintlock ordering

Getting gas this morning I noticed that it's the 4th fill-up in a row where the trip meter has been at 145.x miles. Apparently my commute is so routine that over 4 weeks I don't vary by even 1 total mile going back and forth. I park in the same spot at work, take the same routes home, etc. Predictable.