Thankful all THAT's over

Great White Dispatch
Notes from Damn Near Canada
No. 10
11/27/08
1345

Thankful all that’s over…

Thanksgiving Day is the end of a kinda-crappy couple of weeks. After spending 31 years displaying an immune system that would make Superman sniffle, I’ve been sick on and off for almost a month now. Thanks, Minnesota! Or more specifically, Thanks, casino! Or even more specifically, Thanks, cornucopia of random Asians and your exotic Far East diseases! My last month has been a Bouillabaisse of snot, cough syrup, in-and-out voices and weirdly sore body parts. I am proud to say that my lifelong streak of never puking due to illness is intact. Small victories.

In addition to my constantly fluctuating health situation, we’ve had the usual Gibbs family random problems. Three weekends ago, my ‘new’ vehicle made its inaugural trip to the gas station only to spit 10 gallons of fuel on the ground faster than I could put it in the tank. This would explain why the bastard was on ‘empty’ when I drove it home. Nothing like being stranded two miles from your house on a 20-degree morning while you wonder whether or not you’re going to blow up.

So I get that squared away just in time to discover that the mysterious water tank in my basement is slowly seeping water. And then not-so-slowly seeping water. Get my landlord over to look at it before the bottom drops out and unleashes 60 gallons of unfiltered well water all over my comic books and pretty much all my other cool possessions. The plan was to simply drain the tank, then cut it out of the plumbing loop because it really seemed to serve no purpose. Of course, we find that the plumbing in this place was done by ‘some dude’ and made no sense whatsoever. Pipes come in, pipes go out, pipes do loop-the-loops. My utility room is a cross between one of those warehouses in ‘Saw’ and some kid’s ultimate wet-dream Hot Wheels track, only I don’t get the fun that comes with torturing Donnie Wahlberg or smashing little race cars. I just get pipes, rusty water and a race against time.Eventually, we decide to call in a plumber, which is a pain in the ass because I’m never home and/or awake at Normal Human Hours.

Anyway, we get that done and it doesn’t cost me anything. Then yesterday I decide to fix the downstairs bathroom faucet that’s been dripping. Easy fix. Done it a 100 times, because I’ve never had the luxury of living somewhere with decent plumbing. As I’m shutting the hot water off, I accidentally torque the pipe and start an additional leak. Awesome. Nothing like making a little problem a terrible calamity. Plumbing is not my friend.

But today is Thanksgiving. As far as I know, there’s nothing leaking anywhere and for the first time in months, I really don’t have much to do. Airika’s attempting a Thanksgiving feast, there’s good music flowing from my iPod, I have a big pile of comic books, magazines and a novel waiting for me and pretty soon I’ll get a fire going in the fireplace. The dogs are in the kitchen, at the ready in case any stray turkey bits hit the floor. The deer are outside, scarfing corn and looking around like nervous deer do. And my bodily fluids seem to have congealed like day-old gravy. It’s a good day.

By Oden's Beard

I present to you my new pal Oden, a 1992 Chevy Trailblazer. Oden will be making sure I get up and down my dirt road all Terrible Winter long. He is named after Greg Oden because they are both Blazers and both are a little rusty and both will likely have shortened careers due to some catastrophic physical breakdown.

Constant Updates

Great White Dispatch
Notes from Damn Near Canada
No. 9
11/12/08
1500

Constant Updates….

Things are finally settling down here. After almost three months of getting settled (house stuff, job hunts, winter preparation…), we’re finally at a place where it’s just…normal. Just in time for the Big Bad Winter.

The last two weeks were all kinds of rotten. I officially started a new job (www.confluencemarketing.net – check it out!), had to put in a week of intense training at the casino (if you ever play Three Card Poker, you are a loser), bought an old 4WD truck, all while getting things in order for winter, being horribly sick and staying out of Airika’s way as she crammed for her Minnesota State license test. It was kinda hectic.

And just when things started easing to a halt…this:

Luckily, I am now prepared. Bring it on, you old bastard:

I did manage to get out and take some pictures with The World’s Oldest Digital Camera. Here’s a few snaps from the main (only) road between us and town. If I wasn’t so lazy, I’d have done this when there were still some leaves on the trees. It’s quite picturesque around here in the fall. Too bad I missed it…

About five miles from home, there's this farm set in possibly the best location ever. They've got the bluff in the background, a lake in the foreground, and it's all framed by the railroad tracks. Just friggin' beautiful. I wish I had a wide-angle lens to really do some justice here.
Some bluffs. First one is Barns Bluff, which sits 350 feet above the earf, but it seems much higher when you're up there. This greets us every time we head into town. Halloween night, some jackass set it on fire. It was something to see, flames reaching for the sky as I drove to work at 2 in the a.m.

Not sure if this one has an official name. Airika calls it Cecil. I'd ask why, but I'm not sure there's a reason.

Here’s possibly the last sunset I’ll be snapping till May. I mean, I have to trudge ALL THE WAY into the driveway to get shots like these. Not quite worth it when it snows.

Of course, I can’t get out of here without a critter update. I’ll run it down checklist-style:

-Tilly very nearly caught herself a turkey. She took off into the woods and all I heard was a surprised turkey guffaw before seeing the silly bird fly-crashing through the woods, snapping Weimeraner in hot pursuit. If you’ve never seen a wild turkey flee for its life, let me tell you: high comedy. Tilly, as always, is a failure as a hunter. She can’t climb trees:

-We’d been here two and a half months, and never laid eyes on a coyote. HEARD the bastards often enough, always at night as a herd of the yipping and chittering cretins mauled a rabbit or turkey or badger or something. But they remained unseen until this past Monday morning. We’re getting ready for work on the morning of the snowstorm, looking out our kitchen window when this big, ugly prick trots out of the woods in broad daylight and more or less stops in the front yard. I swear he looked right at us, saying, “Yeah. This is MY house, bitches.” Then he ambled off without a care in the world. I couldn’t produce the camera fast enough, sadly.

-Finally, my obligatory deer picture. This one was taken through a filthy window with a shitty camera, so there you have it. These three are regular visitors. They seem to dig the whole corn I throw out for ‘em. I believe these three are named Tooty, Frooty and Kat Von Deer, but I wasn’t close enough to be sure.