Baking Day....

While John slept today (he naps before he has to go into work) I decided that today would be a baking day, so I made two loaves of Italian bread AND......I tried my hand at making bagels! I had a recipe for plain bagels, but decided to experiment on my own and made cinnamon raisin bagels. For a first try, I think they came out pretty good! And they are fun to make!! Since today was a baking day, unfortunately tomorrow will be a cleaning day.....why do today what you can put off until tomorrow?? (ha, ha)

Easter Weekend

Hope everyone’s Easter was enjoyable! It was sunny and 60 degrees here. We did have a traditional Easter dinner with ham and sweet potatoes. There is not a whole lot going on to tell you about. John has been working his 60 hours a week. This past week he did not run out of hours, so he did work overnight on Friday. 60 is the maximum hours for a local 5 day a week driver. Friday and Saturday nights I worked by myself. Everything went ok. We did have a ten year old in! This is his second time he was in since I started. We don’t have any uniforms to fit him. He wears the same size that Lori’s 6 year old Grandson wears! Lori is the Assistant Director.

I never did tell you how we came about the house we are moving into in May. It all started in December back in Pennsylvania. I posted an ad on Craig’s List (free on-line classified). It said that we where moving to Montana and looking for a place to rent that allows dogs. It also said that we where handy with house repairs. Sue responded to our ad in January saying that she would have a place in April that could use some of our handiwork. However we obviously needed something a little sooner. So we kept talking back and forth. And finally had to tell that we where going to stay where we where. Her rent is higher, and I would need to buy a car since it is in Stevensville (about 20 miles north of my work). Well then John got this better paying job in Missoula which is 65 miles north of Hamilton. AND when she’s home alone, Daisy started howling very loudly, keeping awake the other tenants!! So I emailed her to find out if the house was still available. And she was very excited to find out that we changed our mind! She was not looking forward to finding a new tenant and contractor, from Chicago. She is living in Chicago to take care of some ill family, but is keeping places here in Montana so she has reason to visit, and something to move back to. So we, especially John, can’t wait to move onto the 10 acres that comes with the house.

Well…that’s all for now. Don’t forget to check out the pages about the 2008 Capitol Christmas Tree!

Our Weekend

Well, for some (namely John) their weekend started a little sooner than expected. He ran out of hours, so he did not have to go to work at all on Friday! (Actually he did work in the morning, but that was the end of his Thursday.) When, I got off on Saturday morning, there was a garage sale that I wanted to go to near Stevensville (Stevi), so since we were meeting with our new potential landlord in Stevi, we decided to go to it. There were also a few others that were not advertised in the paper….but we did not buy anything at any of them. To kill some time before our meeting, we just rode around a little bit to see the town of Stevensville. The house we will be renting is not actually in town….more like about 2-3 miles outside of it. Our meeting went well and we absolutely loved the property and the house. It sits on 10 acres where Elk and deer travel through on a regular basis. We walked the property with Sue (landlord) and saw the skeletal remains of an elk! The house has 3 bedroom and 2 baths. A laundry room and a rec room! It is heated with electric baseboard heat but has a wood burning stove in the living room. I don’t think that Daisy’s howling is going to be a problem either, since we don’t have very many close neighbors and the only one that is close has a rooster that crows on quite a regular basis. We have another meeting with Sue next Saturday before she leaves MT and we should have a better idea of when the current tenants will be out.

We got back to our apartment at around 1:15 and there was a message on our machine asking me to come into work and fill in for someone who was “sick”. So I slept for about a half an hour and had to be back to work at 3:00! Today we slept in and then got up and went for a walk down by the river….we had a beautiful day here in MT….it was 50 degrees! (However it was 40 when we where in the mountains.) Lots of other people had the same idea we did…there were tons of people out with their dogs and lots of men fly fishing. After that we decided to take a drive and we ended up heading up towards the Skalkaho Falls (we saw those on our trip over the summer). On our way up to the pass we saw a small herd of bighorn rams (this time I finally got to see the male version with the BIG curly horns) but we did not get to go all the way to the falls, the road is closed in the winter. And that pretty much sums up our exciting weekend!!

John’s Traveling Around the Rocky Mountains!

My new job has me driving “Rocky Mountain Doubles” for S.A.C.S. Trucking. These are a tractor and full length trailer (48-53’) like you see everywhere, and then I add a shorter trailer (26-28’). The front big trailer is called the lead, and the back small trailer is called the pup. With this combination I can haul about 130,000 lbs (65 tons) of wood shaving or sawdust in Montana. Most states max out at 80,000 lbs (40 tons). I go to various lumber yards throughout western Montana and load their saw dust and/or planer shavings, and then return to Missoula and “dumps” it. Now when I say dump I mean that the tractor and lead are backed onto a platform and the whole shebang is it tipped almost vertical and shaken until all the dust or shavings come out. The same is done to the pup on a smaller platform. And no I don’t get to ride it up and down! I will do from one to three trips in my twelve hour shift. I usually start in the afternoon or evening and work Monday through Friday, I am home every day.

Now to the traveling part! The best part about this job (besides the pay check) is the beautiful Rocky Mountains that I travel through. One day I get to drive through the cherry orchards on banks of the thirty mile long Flathead Lake on the way to Columbia Falls. From here I get to see the 10-11 thousand feet tall mountains of Glacier National Park. Another runs takes me through the Flathead Indian Reservation, along the National Bison Range, and deep in the Mountainous terrain of Northwest Montana and Northeast Idaho. On this run you dodge elk herds in the early morning, and big horn sheep in the afternoons. And there are several other runs that take me to other parts of Western Montana. But they all return back to Missoula! I really like this job…it keeps me active instead of just sitting in the truck as a “Steering-Wheel-Holder.” And I really don’t mind working the hours either, but it does take away from home time and Deb. Keep checking our photo page, I may take some pictures and post them.

Well that is all for now. -John

FINALLY!

FINALLY A NEW BLOG!!! This is “The-Mouse-in-the-Corner” checking in. Since they have not keeping you better posted, but as Deb said in the last post, their life has been crazy and hectic! But things have calmed down to some extent. I have over heard talk of several posts that will be coming to you soon. These included the following:
1) John’s travels the Rocky Mountains and gets paid to do it.
2) Transcripts of the police radio during the “Moose on the loose on 5th and Desta” incident!
3) The house they will be moving into in May, and how it found them. I hope that I can sneak into one of the boxes.
4) The Howling Houdini (a.k.a.: Daisy May).
5) Pictures of the new beater car and Deb’s Badge!!!

Today I’ll just give you some brief updates. They did find a cheap beater car for John to drive to work. It is a 1991 Subaru Legacy. I’ve heard that the engine is still strong and the body is not damaged. I’ve also heard that the stinky wet dog needed to be removed from it. Ok, I don’t think it actually came with the stinky dog, but it must smell like it did!! So now Daisy can stay in the van outside of the Detention Center for the couple hours that John and Deb both work. And by the end of May when we move, she will be able to stay home and howl all she wants and it will keep only me awake, not the neighbors.

Contrary to what most of you think, the weather here in Montana is not sub-artic. On Friday we had 50o. We did have several inches of snow on the ground Sunday morning, but was gone by afternoon.

Signing off for now,
The-Mouse-in-the-Corner