Still here...

Sorry about the long break in posting.
As I posted last we were about to head to Oregon for 2 exciting weeks. The wood working class was very exciting, we learned a great deal. Port Townsend, WA where the school is is as you might guess a port town. There is also a wonderfull boat building school there, which we got to tour. There is a historic fort there, as well as many 1800's buildings, we learned that the hotel we stayed at on the waterfront was known as a seedy brothel in it's hayday. Many a sailor would get drunk there and wakeup at sea to discover they have been shanghai'd to crew some ship or another. We didn't get to explore too fully as we spent most nights designing our projects for class.

After the class we retured to southern Oregon, to Ashland and surrounding area. Our friends live in a quaint sleepy little town called Jacksonville. Which btw is where Bruce Campbell lives! I didn't see him, but I looked!! We toured the area a bit, and set to work building the first of our planned gypsy vardos. Unfortunately things were complicated early on by hard to find materials and shortages. We got plywood ordered, took 2 days to get, we had to order in clear fir for making structure, and we got lucky and found a huge pile of fir brick moulding at a recycling center, which we cut into strips and bent laminated into roofing spars. We tried like hell but we just didn't have the time to get a skin on it. We got the 4 walls framed in ontop of the floor system, and al the roofing spars bent, sanded and cut to length. We ran out of time and energy, we had been working dawn to dusk for 5 days straight. We decided to take a break and enjoy the last 2 days with our friends. We hiked through a beautiful state park full of water falls. One of our friends taught us his waterfall trick. If you stare at a waterfall and let your eyes go out of focus for awhile and the quickly look at a solid object it will jump and quaver. It made the trees all over the hillside look like they were growing before our eyes! Pretty cool trick.
We caught an obscenely early plane, made it home, and then Dracomama and Munchie were on a plane 3 days later to Alaska to visit Dracomama's sister for a week. That was a long week for both of us.

We are all home together now, obviously more has transpired since then but non of it was notable. We still haven't gotten into our new trailer, it took forever to get my last payment from the Rogers house I was working on. We just got it last week! *Indignant* I lucked out and got a great deal on a truck that needed a tiny bit of work on, the guy was selling because he thought it needed new fuel injectors, what it really needed was a tuneup. So plugs and wires and $1000.00 off the price. Just like to mention, somebody else told him it needed injectors not me! We can finally go get our trailer sometime in the next week. I have some other projects to finish up before I can start fixing on it, but just havin it will be a step in the right direction.

As for living situations, well we are not quite as self contained as we would like anymore. The waste tank has a crack in it. Made things interesting when I went to the dumpstation. Lets just say the trail I was leaving wasn't bread crumbs. So needless to say we no longer have running water and we can't use our bathroom in the middle of the night. We are still parked with the Cottage crew, they are moved in. We use their facilities for everything now, we can't cook without running inside for water or to do dishes. Having a real shower and toilet is nice but not convenient to our home. We are debating what to do for the winter, I think we both want to head away from the cottage crew as this situation wold not be feasible in the cold and snow. I might look into an RV park that would allow winter guests, people wrap their trailers and rv's in styrofoam and have LP delivered. We are also thinking of getting a 6 mo lease at an apt somewhere on the west end of the cities, we like it over here. It all depends on work really, if I can stay busy all winter long an apt would be doable. We really want to head down to New Mexico for xmas with Dracomama's brother, and stay for the worst of the MN winter in the southwest. I could probably find work there as well as here, business cards are cheap and tools would come with us in the back of the truck.
I'll keep you informed as we get our new trailer and get it livable. We'll see what the end of summer brings.