Freakishly Happy

he snow has started to pile up here in Vermont, making everything postcard perfect
in time for Christmas.

 John is still feverishly working away on his contracting project. His
schedule includes many late, late nights, fueled by many ots of coffee and his
daily ration of a cookie. 

I am working three days a week at the store, doing my best to drive my
sister crazy. ;)

I've almost got all of my Christmas shopping finished,  which for me is a
first. Normally, I am  feverishly working on gifts until the 24th. 
Well, more like, working feverishly on the 24th to get all of my gifts done.
I'm not very good at this sort of thing.

We haven't really begun work on our bus yet. We're trying to wait until
Johnny gets his contract done. I would hate it if he felt cooped up in the
house while I worked on the bus, and it caused him to not be successful with
his work.  So, we will probably begin deconstruction/ construction in
January.

 I have been trying to do a lot of research about different components
of our bus.  Last week I found a clawfoot bathtub (one of the three things
that made me agree to the bus in the first place), in the newspaper for
$100.  We went and took a look at it in Whitehall, NY,
a town just over the border, 45 minutes from wells.  John and I both had
some reservations buying a used tub, because many of the ones we've seen in
this area have either been covered in rust, or converted into "Mary in a
half-tub."  We pulled into the drive of an older house that had been
converted into an apartment building, and my stomach fell. Upon first sight,
the house left much to be desired, and I was sure the tub wouldn't be what we
were looking for.  The man selling the tub met  us at the house, and
we three walked to the back of the house to view it. And suprisingly the tub
was in excellent shape, teaching me once again that I really need to reserve my
judgement.  The man was really enthusiastic about our project, and an all
around lovely individual.  

Unfotunately, neither of the trucks would start when we set out on that
adventure, so we had to return two days later to pick up the tub. 
Initially we were going to take Owen, the little red Toyota pick-up that our family has had since
the dawn of time.  As we were getting ready to leave for Whitehall, John noticed that the tailgate was
open, and wouldn't close because it was caked with frozen mud. Always quick on
his feet he ran inside and grabbed some chiseling impliments.  Halfway
through the job my father came out to see what we were doing, and when we explained
he told us that we should probably leave the mud where it was, as it was the
only thing holding the tailgate on.  When John asked him if the clawfoot
would fly out the back my father responded that in the invent that we stopped
quickly, the tub would most likely go forward not back. Now let me paint you a
little picture of Owen the red pick-up.  This truck is so rusted, that
it's a gamble  trying to find the gas tank hole through the holes in the
body.  It’s so rusted that Juli, Tim, John and I had a whole conversation on whether
the truck would disintegrate under the weight of the tub. Moreover, my father
doesn’t have the best safety record when it comes to this truck, as a few
months ago when the brake lines went, he spent a few weeks simply down
shifting, and taking corners at 30mph.  So
when he told us that the tub would most likely come forward not back, we
decided that it’d be in the best interest of us staying alive if we chose
another vehicle.

Now on Thursday when we purchased the tub we lifted it to see whether or not we
could pick it up, which we could.  The
man that we purchased it from assured us that he was able to remove it from the
house using only a tarp to slide it across the floor. When we arrived we were
able to once again pick up the tub and slowly inch it over to the back of the
truck. Then we encountered a problem; we had to lift it up and into the bed of
the truck. Now I’m quite a bit shorter than John, and although I could lift the
tub with straight arms, it was quite a feat to raise it the extra six inches
(putting to tub somewhere near my chest) to get it in to the truck.  It took several attempts, and quite a bit of
ingenuity, but after some time, and Johnny almost crushing his foot, we were
able to do it.  

We’ve also been researching different toilet options, and trying to decide
between propane and alcohol stoves, as well as trying to figure out the best
wood stove for our application. 
John has also purchased a webcam that we can use while we were converting so
you all can see what we’re up to.  
We will try to keep the blog updated as we get going more on our project.

Hope all of your are well!

Okay, I'm going to say it... I don't like Christmas music.  Well, at least not the vast majority of Christmas music that they play in department stores or over the radio.  This began as a tiny little nugget of annoyance way back in 1999, when I worked at this kiosk in the mall, and in order to keep things politically correct, they only played Christmas music that was pretty religiously ambiguous. Unfortunately, this limits what they can play to only about 10 songs, which are replayed incessantly.

This annoyance has been growing over the years, and is now a full fledged pet peeve. I think I may start a tally counting the diversity of songs played on the radio, and then count how much airplay each song gets in a given work day.  I'm guessing Walking in a Winter Wanderland gets about 17 plays per day.

 Furthermore, has anyone noticed that there aren't really any NEW Christmas songs?  The newest one I can think of is Happy Christmas (War is Over) by John Lennon and Yoko Ono which came out in 1971.  Three decades of nothing new, unless you count Kenny G., which I don't.