This is Not Good

My 95 year-old grandfather lives in Solana Beach, California, and it would be an understatement to say I am worried about him. I talked with my dad this morning, and he is pretty close to flying out there to bring him back to Phoenix. I can't imagine how horrible it must be in San Diego county right now, so many families losing everything. Fortunately there have not been many fatalities, which I think says a lot about the emergency responders. I really hope those winds die down soon!

Oxbow Organic Farm

This year we split a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) box with our awesome neighbors Becky and Chris and their kids Colin and Darby. The farm providing the weekly goodness is Oxbow Organic Farm, and at the end of each season they invite all of their subscribers to the farm for a tour and barbecue. It was great fun--we piled into a hay wagon and got to see the actual fields where our broccoli, chard, tomatoes and peppers are grown. Halfway through the tour we piled out and the kids each got pick a pumpkin from the patch. Then all of the visitors got together for a great pot luck lunch with a live bluegrass jam in the background. Best of all, the weather was absolutely incredible, especially for this time of year--blue skies and 72 degrees. The only bad part of the visit was getting stung in the neck by a yellow jacket, but I'm feeling much better now.

Liam is Learning to Spell!

OK, he didn't really spell this one all by himself, but when he asked me to spell a word that used all of his letters it was the best I could come up with.

Giving Thanks Like a Canadian

A couple of weekends ago we were fortunate to be invited to attend a Canadian Thanksgiving Celebration at Jen's house (or, as our expatriate friends from the Great White North like to call it, "real Thanksgiving"). Amy is one of only two American toxicologists at her work--the rest are all Canadian. We also made a fair number of Canadian friends during our stay in St-Anne-de-Bellevue, Quebec when Amy was going to McGill. In any event, we had a great time, and the turn out was amazing. I was hoping for both English and French renditions of O Canada, but then Amy reminded me that this was a dinner, not a hockey game. Liam was psyched because his buddy Caitlin was there, but they were clearly not having any fun at all. :)

Dormer--Wiring

The last two days of this week was all about wires and electricity. We now have modern wiring up top (goodbye knob-and-tube), recessed lights, wiring for exterior lights, a shower fan, phone lines, and main floor smoke alarms, wired from above. Now we just need to pick out some fixtures!

Dormer--Framing and Exterior Door

After the initial lightning-fast burst of progress on the construction, we've had a couple of weeks with not much happening. Apparently this is normal for most projects, especially when it is time for the electrician, plumber, roofer, etc to do their things. Recently, our super-duper narrow custom made door was finished and installed, and the rest of the interior framing was completed. We also have a completely rain-proof roof, but that's pretty difficult to photograph safely.

The Paradigm Has Officially Shifted

This really caught my attention. Two of the periodicals I subscribe to, Wired and National Geographic, featured biofuels on their cover this month. National Geographic features an ear of corn on the cover, while Wired shows us a tuft of switchgrass. This seems appropriate to me, since NG tends to focus more on what is already happening, while Wired is much more future-oriented with a heavy emphasis on technological solutions to what appear to be intractable problems.

In my opinion, the NG piece is much more informative and balanced, in that it looks at a lot of the potential sources of biofuels--corn, sugar cane, soy beans, and cellulosic ethanol (which can actually be made from just about any organic matter containing cellulose, including switchgrass) and algae. They talk at some length about the trade-offs inherent in burning crops in our gas tanks, including the displacement of human food production and the subsequent conversion of wildlands into new fields and pastures.

Both articles are good, and although the NG piece mentions the dubious EROEI (energy return on energy invested) of corn, neither one is honest about the impossibility of continuing our profligate use of energy to move ourselves around in 6,000 pound hunks of metal. There just isn't enough arable land in the world to make that happen.

So I think it's good that our society finally seems to be waking up to the impending oil crisis, but there still seems to be a lot of denial about the incontrovertible fact that we are going to have to make a lot of fundamental, transformative changes to our lifestyles, economy, and political institutions. Hopefully that part will be in the next issue. :)

Getting Local With Food

This past Saturday was the 9th Annual King County Harvest Celebration Day. A bunch of farms around the county had an "open house," and invited the public in to walk the fields, ride a hay wagon, pick some produce, and (my favorite) eat some fresh veggies. We spent most of our time at Fall City Farms, where Herban Feast cooked a very nice roasted veggie pizza with goat cheese from the Raging River Farm, just down the street.

The boys watched an apple press in action, then drank the cider. They picked carrots, broccoli, and monster zucchinis. Liam got to play the Medium Billy Goat during a story telling session. And last but not least, they got to pet baby goats, a calf, and a baby yak. It was quite a day.

Yes Virigina, Global Oil Production Really DID Peak Last Year

This is a pretty powerful graphic. It illustrates that global oil production has not increased since the July 2006 peak, and shows a number of production forecasts that predict(ed) an oil production peak before 2020. The notes accompanying this graphic are worth reading, as is the rest of the extremely detailed post on The Oil Drum in which it appears.

We are entering a new world, and the effects are just now starting to be felt. There are many indications that the transition will not be a smooth one (for example, see here, here, and here), but there is reason to hope that there could eventually be some fairly positive outcomes, especially if we get busy RIGHT NOW. The re-localization movement is one effort in particular that gives me some reason to feel optimistic that we might be able to handle this transition.

Dormer--DAY 9

The guys have started framing the new interior walls. Dave also raised the ceiling throughout the entire second floor by about 5", which will be really nice. I also wanted to point out that Liam has been selecting his own clothes and dressing himself for some time now, and he has clearly inherited my adventurous fashion sense.

Dormer--DAY 7

Things have slowed a bit from the initial rapid pace--Dave and his gang of merry nail bangers are working on more of the details inside now, and there have been meetings with various subs--plumbers, roofers, electricians, etc. However, Burke did bust a move on the deck.

Dormer--DAY 5

At the end of Day 5 we had a roof and a wall. These guys are moving fast!

Dormer--DAY 4

Day 4 was, perhaps understandably, a bit shocking, because this was the day the cut a HUGE HOLE in the roof of our house. Not for the faint of heart.

Dormer--DAY 3

Day 2 was mostly prep work for the big, big job of day three, which was putting in the 30' long, 18" thick beam that will carry the load from the new dormer and distribute it down the sides of the house and on to the foundation. This was a huge undertaking, and I wish I had photos of the acrobatics Dave and his helper had to go through to get this thing in place. I think he took some photos while they were doing it, and if I can get a hold of those, I'll post them here.

Dormer--DAY 1

The first day was DEMO day. Our builder, Dave, and his helpers gutted our entire upstairs. Pretty drastic change, eh?!?