Monthly Archives: May 2007

I am so getting one of these.

I don't know what this picture is from but I think I need one.

Stop launching fireworks PLEASE!

Thanks to the asses outside my house blasting dance music I'm still awake, so I emailed a bunch of realestate agents about properties they're listing here in Ontario. It's actually quite amazing. You can get a somewhat scrubby piece of land in the 20-100 acre range with power and DSL connectivity in the $15,000 price range, and given that a yurt is only about that as well, I can conceivably own a “house” and land without ever going into debt, which is a real dream come true.

Now, it's not like I haven't talked about this before, so I was asked by an old friend, “what makes you think it'll work this time?” — a reasonable question!

As you may recall, I do have 50 acres in New Brunswick that Rachel and I almost developed, but I gave up on it (the photo was taken there, with CT's Corvette). I'd like to think that in the five years since then — certainly in the last year — I've done a lot of growing up and am a lot more sure about what I want in life and I really believe that I can do it now. I don't know if I'm sorry I messed it up the first time, but I know I will be sorry if I don't figure it out eventually!

If I do this, I'm going to go with a yurt because not only does it offer me a lot of future options but also because so far I'm hearing nothing but good reviews of them. Anyway, I guess if I bought a little lot like this the first thing I'd do is build a washroom and shower/bath building that would also act as my “utility” building that the power and internet connectivity would run to, and then drop a yurt next door (because I don't really want to do a yurt as a permanent installation).

The reason I mention this is that I'd like neighbors. Loneliness is hard. You'd have to have the cash to come up with something you could live in that would be tough enough to handle the winter (probably $3,000 to $6,000 minimum depending on what you need), but I wouldn't be looking for rent or anything like that. You'd have to be either legal in Canada or willing to live illegally (not my problem). If you want to take part in this message me (and feel free to include your phone number and realworld name if you're really serious). I feel like I've screwed around and wasted time and money far too long and need to stop dreaming and start doing.

A good life is out there!

So tired!

First, thanks to everyone who's been sending me little stories about their yurt experiences! It's definitely helping convince me that this is a good idea.

This morning, after doing a little sculpting, Nefarious and I went to High Park and after playing for an hour or two we went for a walk up through the forest and saw tons of beautiful trilliums and caught a toad, which she got to hold and was quite pleased when it peed on me instead of her (no camera on that trip unfortunately). After lunch I thought I'd start a project that had recently been proposed to me — organizing my books by subject — which is entirely more work than I'd expected.

I'd say I'm about 10% done. What you see above is only about a quarter of what I need to organize… So many categories of books: cookbooks, food theory, farming, gardening, home construction, primitive skills, survivalism, gun smithing, religion, philosophy, math, computers, homosexuality, automotive, Scandinavian fiction, body modification, politics, cults and communes, indigenous cultures, military history, and so many other piles. It's really fun actually because I'm rediscovering a lot of things I'd forgotten I had.

I've been cooking a lot more (so it's probably good that I now have my zillion cookbooks — almost all vegan incidentally — sorted out in one place). I'm kind of rusty because Jon did most of the cooking for the last year and a half, but it's fun doing it again. Supper was simple but given how quickly it was devoured, also quite successful I think.

Just a nice veggie and nut stirfry with chicken and brown rice in a lemon-ginger sauce (I'll switch back to primarily vegan in three weeks when Nefarious is in California for the summer). My hillbilly drink isn't moonshine or urine, it's just maple syrup and lemon, my favorite way of making lemonade. Desert was vanilla-mango frozen yogurt with mandarin oranges and a half a brownie. Nothing particularly exciting but it was yummy…

I found a book on pain management that has lots of information on nerve blocks. If anyone reading this is a doctor, feel free to give me a good reason why I shouldn't inject acid or alcohol or something into the nerves to try and kill the connections permanently. I hate feeling nothing, but I'd really rather feel nothing than constant pain, and I hate taking painkillers because then I have to take stimulants at the same time to keep myself conscious and I just don't think that's healthy.

Other than that, I either have incredibly annoying new neighbors or they have incredibly annoying guests for the long weekend. They've been spending every night until about 11 PM screaming their heads off on their balcony, and because of the holiday, fireworks go off within fifty feet of our house every fifteen minutes all night long, so neither Nefarious or I have gotten any sleep at all the last couple days, and definitely not tonight either. It seems sort of insane to be launching fireworks in the tiny back yards of a dense neighborhood, but given the hell I've raised with fireworks, I suppose I can't complain too much.

I can't wait to get out of the city.

Tomorrow I'm making an underwater video camera enclosure out of PVC for Jon and Clive to take on their fishing trip next week, and maybe I'll do some underwater test filming in Phil's pool or something (I'll post pictures of it; it's super simple). Hopefully it doesn't drown my sister's DV camera!

Project DOTI

I was talking to my father yesterday and a part of me is considering making a pitch for the remaining part of the old farm I grew up on, although I'm a little cautious for a range of reasons.

Anyway, I want to visit a few in person first but barring any unpleasant surprises I think I'm buying a yurt in the next month or two and moving into it. I'm rewriting all the BME software so that it operates on a distributed “work packet” model so it's very easy for the half dozen people who help keep things going can work from anywhere. Anyway here's a picture of a yurt in Mongolia:

I don't have a lot of money to spend but that path would let me have an owned-without-debt semi-permanent place to live (for something I can afford while I build a “real” house), and if my father pseudo-gifts me that property, it would work now, and the same applies if I buy a property that's a bit more north-east of here. I think if I had a yurt I could spend next summer building a sand bag house (versus an earthship, although I still think earthships are great) — I like both how cheaply they can be built, and how they integrate into the landscape.

Here's a shot of another one:

Or maybe something crazier… although when I showed Nefarious a picture of the house below (she liked everything else, especially the yurt picture, but I think that's also because it had a little door with kids in it) she told me that it was most definitely a broken house.

I feel like I have to do this now not just because I really want to, but because it's important to me that Nefarious sees a beautiful art house being built inexpensively. All of the pictures in this entry are from the highly recommended book “Home Work” by Lloyd Kahn, a part of the amazing Shelter series which has kept these thoughts in the front of my mind for a long time with stories of outwardly successful people who ditched corporate life in the city to drop out and do something more rewarding.

Heh

My tattoo and my car

Long Weekend Art Projects

Admittedly I have not played with paper mache for at least twenty years.