weekend cont'd...

Saturday's adventure started off on a good foot.

We almost always eat breakfast here if we're going through Lewiston in the a.m. After a Hawaiian waffle sugar rush I was ready to hit the road.

In Moscow we stopped at the recycled building supply place to check out their inventory and started making all kinds of mental notes about what we would buy on our next trip.

We found some old wood frame with glass french doors I think we're going to use for our front door(s). We'd originally wanted a kind of barn door that would allow us to open up one whole end of the house. But that would be tricky to insulate against Idaho winters. So we decided these french door we found would work great. But we didn't buy them. Because we're broke.

But we did buy a two-way mirror for the bathroom. For $20!!! Whatta steal! We had this idea for a while and we were lucky to happen upon a good-sized mirror, already framed in.

For next time: corrugated tin for the kitchen (and maybe bathroom?), old windows (as a room divider, hung in columns---cheap: $5-$20/ea!), shower base/drain and 2"x2" redwood for the shower floor, possibly a toilet (still working on the R&D of a composting toilet)... We might need a trailer to haul it all home. Assuming we have the money to spend. But everything in the yard was really reasonably priced. Unlike what's-his-face with the used lumber here in town ($.40/board foot!!!).

Then we finished the mission: we returned my sister's car to CdA. Driving up through the small towns on the Coeur d'Alene Reservation I saw signs for a store called The Warpath and I decided that if I was a tribe I would name my casinos so they'd be offensive to white people--i.e. Broken Treaty Casino, Solts o' Genocide--but they'd still gamble there anyway and I'd always be letting them know that they owed me (the tribe) and it was only fair they drop some coins in my casino. Passive-aggressive, I guess, but yeah. Maybe it's obvious I wouldn't make a very good businesswoman.

Wildlife Alert: On the way there we saw a MOOSE!!! On Hwy 95 (almost exactly HERE) going across four lanes of traffic! I was driving and Keith was slow getting the camera out, so this is the best shot we got. Deal with it. (We also saw another moose on the way home, but no pic.)


We left CdA lickety-split and when we got back to Moscow we decided we were hungry so we went to Ted's Burgers. (I had a grilled cheese and onion rings. Yum.) My mom was flabbergasted because the kid behind the counter spelled her name correctly (Merry), but later she was whispering that it's probably the only way he knows how to spell Mary, because, you know Merry Christmas. She said that was the first time anyone had spelled her name correctly without asking. See, small miracles happen every day.

We also hit the People's Co-Op in Moscow which made me pine for The Good Food Store in Missoula. I bought $6 worth of TVP for ....well, all kinds of stuff: chili, spaghetti sauce, sloppy joes. I could have spent a lot of time and money in there. But I had very little of both. It's another place we'll be making a list for and then saving up to visit.

On the way home we took the shortcut through Julietta/Kendrick and it was a nice change of scenery. Beautiful farm land up there.


And we saw a lot of old barns we wanted to raid for wood for our tiny house. We dreamt about how we could go into the barn demolition and resale business.

When we got back home we saw that the fire over the hill from us was burning like crazy.

And it's still going. We've been watching planes and helicopters dump on it all day.

My dad some some Dept. of Lands guys in town this morning and they said it "doesn't look good," but they haven't lost any structures yet.

Cougars and now a fire?!? Dangerous neighborhood we moved into!