Still More on Our City

Why did we pick Olympia?

Seattle is too big for me. I’m a small town kind of guy. But not too small. I grew up in a town of about 45,000. I’ve also lived in a SMALL town. A town of about 800. Yeah. Don’t do that if you don’t have to.

So we were living in Milwaukee, and I hated it there. Too big. I know, all you people from Milwaukee are first like, “What?! You hated it here?!” and then, “What?! Too big?!!” Everyone in Milwaukee thinks it’s small.

There’s a million people and it’s pretty much run-together with Chicago. It’s big. It’s the Chicago as a neighbor thing that does it, I’m sure. Chicago… ugh. Don’t get me started about the overwhelming magnitude of that city. That place boggles me. And I’ve lived on the streets of NYC. Anyway, Milwaukee considers itself small because it lives next to Chicago. At least, that’s my theory. People in Milwaukee are always talking about getting out to a big city, like New York, or Seattle, or San Francisco. Granted, those cities are bigger, but truly, you can’t tell once you’re there.

Olympia is suh-weet. It’s middle-sized, there’s plenty of green, the people still like each other for the most part, you can get from the Eastside to the Westside in a matter of minutes, it’s near Seattle and Portland so if we (and by we I mean the rest of my family) do get a hankerin’ for the city, there are two available. There’s mountains, there’s the Puget Sound, the ocean is an hour away, the air is clean, there are no billboards on the freeway, rivers are clean, streets are mostly clean, there’s culture, and art, and food, coffee is everywhere… So far it can’t be beat.

We moved here because I needed the West. Terri needed a large body of water, having grown up next to Lake Michigan. She also needed the comfort of some sort of metropolis. I needed the comfort of knowing there’s seclusion available. I like Bigfoot, she likes coffee. (I like coffee, too.)

We both fell in love with the sights, smells, and sounds of Olympia. We also like its feel.
Thank the Gods for Olympia.

Late News is Good News

The house is done! I know, it’s been done awhile, and I’ve been talking about it, and putting tease pics out there, but not really done it up right. I’ll probably not put all the rooms in this post. Maybe I’ll just trickle them out there for when you’re all bored.

So here’s the major stuff:

The tree has been painted in Zane’s room:





Caspian lives in a space station at the edge of some planet’s atmosphere:





The kitchen is being used daily!





It’s great. We’re settling in. We finished it all up just before the friends and fam arrived at the beginning of the month.

The master bedroom isn’t done. It won’t be for a while. We sleep with Zane anyway, under the tree, in a giant floor bed. It’s freakin’ awesome so we don’t need a room of our own.

But everything else on the inside (except the ghetto bathroom upstairs) is done, habitable, and just about the way we want it.
Yay us.

Here’s what our kitchen used to look like:



It was alright, if you like old person country style. We don’t.

So here’s our kitchen now:


It’s much more comfortable this way. Even with the checkers. Even without the three layers of wallpaper. We like to sit at the table and drink coffee. We invite our friends to drink coffee there as well. Sometimes they do it.

A Listing of Weirdness

You may or may not know that I am interested in weird things. If you don’t know, then please take this time to learn that I am… … … … … Okay. Now that everyone’s aware of my liking for the weird, let’s talk about some weird stuff.

Alright. Since you’re not talking, I’m just going to list a gob of weird stuff, and hope that through the course of this blog’s lifetime, we can touch on a few of them.

UFO’s
Time Travel
Bigfoot
Chupacabra
Missing Time
Bermuda Triangle
Ghosts
Psychic Ability
Mitochondria
Science Fiction
Religion
Ancient History
Tesla
Chemtrails
Conspiracy Theories (all of them)
Dimensions
Quantum Mechanics (not regular mechanics. nothing much weird about them.)
Nessie
Dreams
Time
Space
The Muppets

I know, I’m talking a lot about Olympia. But I just moved here, and it’s wonderful. We’ve got cool neighbors, the weather is rad, rad, rad, there’s flowers everywhere. The streets are paved with cheese! They truly are. And our porch kicks ass. Here it is:



I’m trying to talk all my friends from Milwaukee to come visit. They can sit on my porch, and drink coffee and do other porchy things. Do ya think pictures like these will convince them? How ‘bout my friends that already came and did that stuff? Do ya think they’ll convince the rest of them?

The Yard Moral

So you see, if you move into a house with a ready garden (or a couple of them), you’d better ask the previous owner just how much time they put into maintaining it. After I’ve neglected our yard this much so far, Terri and I realized that every time we came to look at the house when we were buying it, the owner was working in one of the flower beds.
I hope that next year I’ll be able to at least mow the lawn, and keep the flowers wet. But I’m not going to do much pruning, weeding, or cutting back this year. I think I’m going to go with our friend and neighbor Mechele’s Gardening Way. Survival of the fittest. If there’s a plant that takes over the rest of them, so be it. If one needs so much extra attention that I’m out there pruning and cutting it, it should just die and make room for a better plant. She’s got a rad bunch of flowers and such, too. Wise.

My friends were just here, as well as the family I grew up with. Do you say, “my family” when you’re not talking about your wife, and kids? Doesn’t that get confusing? I mean, if I’m talking to my wife, then it wouldn’t be. Or if I were talking to my sister, or parents. But when I’m talking to you, how would you know who I was talking about?

So, my friends came to visit, and so did my mom, dad, sister, and my sister’s youngest son.

My parents think I’m a crazy hippie because I haven’t watered the lawn. This is the Pacific Northwest! It’s supposed to be raining all the time! It’s not. I just keep waiting for Nature to water my lawn. And besides, it’s grass. It’ll be green again, as soon as the rains DO come. And I am a crazy hippie. My parents should already know that.

Here’s my crazy hippie friend, Lindsey, doing crazy hippie things on my hibernating lawn:

...

Unfortunately, it’s taken quite a bit of work to get the inside of the house done. On the days that I do make it out to the yard to relax, or to play, I definitely don’t feel like mowing the lawn. The yard, with all its needed attention, is starting to be less attractive. But not so much so that I’m going to do anything about it. I think it’s too late now.

The lady next door has called to tell us how to get rid of dandelions, twice. Apparently, it’s quite a complex maneuver. It involves dampening soil, digging at certain measurements, and plastic bags. She gets some, “Yeah, sures” from me. I doubt I’ll be out there removing dandelions with plastic bags next year, just like there was none this year. I like ‘em. I like their puffy heads when they go to seed, too. I like to blow them. The old lady next door is probably going to end up hating me. She’s also reminded me that clovers are weeds, too. And that they attract bees.

They also attract babies:

Our House...

The next few blog installments will be about our yard. We love our yard. Fell in love with it at first sight.





There are tons of flowers, too.



When we first moved in, I knew I’d be out in the gardens, or mowing the grass at least every other day. Our yard is filled with exotic plants that need tending. I even thought about posting a picture of “what’s blooming this week” on my website.

We love our yard.

More on Olympia

Living in Olympia means that when Mt. Rainier blows its top, we’ll have a great view of the show (at least until the ash hits). It also means that we’ll avoid the lahars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lahar, the pyroclastic flow http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyroclastic_flow, and most likely the bombs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lava_bomb.

At first, moving to the Ring of Fire didn’t even cross my mind after we’d decided to move here. Then it crossed my mind, and my wife’s mind, but we decided that if we were meant to move across the country, and into the end of the world, then we were obviously meant to go up with a big group of folk.

But now that we’re here, it turns out that if the volcanoes around here blow, and if a tsunami slams into the Pacific Northwest Coast, Olympia will escape all the major effects of those occurrences. Certainly, we’ll shake, if the Earth does, but all the major stuff will fly around on either side of the city.

Blessed! Blessed, I say.

I love Olympia.

More Cryptids

How about that Chupacabra? He’s back in Argentina. That little sucker really gets around, doesn’t he? Someone needs to write a good story about the infamous vampire of the farmyard. Hmmm….
Well, for now you can check out his latest escapades in Argentina at this cryptid lover’s website. All the news of weird is here: http://www.cryptomundo.com/bigfoot-report/chupa-chile/

Love of Sasquatch


Does everyone love Bigfoot? Obviously everyone does. No one ever shoots him. People are always trying to take his picture. Hell, people take plaster casts of his footprints. They search for his hair, and his poop. People love Bigfoot. I love him. I’d make out with him. And I’m a dude.

The Secret of NIMH

My wife says I’m manic depressive. Here’s a bunch of sites about that, starting with NIMH. I had no idea NIMH was real. Poor rats…

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/bipolar.cfm#readNow
http://www.mentalhealth.com/book/p40-ma01.html
http://www.medicinenet.com/bipolar_disorder/article.htm

Do YOU think I’m manic depressive? I like the term. I like it better than bipolar disorder. Isn’t everything in this reality bipolar? Should be. I know I am.

And now I’m speaking in tongues.
My wife is probably right.

Zeus and the Others

So Olympia is obviously the city of the Gods. It’s verdant, and clean, and the air is alive. I feel like a God living here. I could die here, easily. It’d be a good place to go. I hope I die of coffee overdose. That would be sweet. It might even be better than to be ripped apart by wild animals. (That’s my first death-choice.)