#235

(aka photo-heavy General Update)

First, an attempt at an interview with Lazlo where he repeatedly threatens to walk out and I have to remind him to stay seated...

We went to the mouth of Clear Creek near the Kooskia Fish Hatchery sometime back (who knows what day) to see the eagles fishing. We weren't stealthy at all and scared them off before we could get too close. See him sitting in the branches on the right? Squint.

enjoying the sunshine

Thursday was Keith's birthday and we had to go to Orofino to get his cake (chocolate cake with raspberry filling and cream cheese frosting - was delish), so we did "the responsible thing" (according to Keith) and took the recycling as well.

And we saw some people fishing on the river on the way home.

Yesterday (or some day) we were driving through Kooskia and I had to circle back to get a shot of this VW Bug with "Kooskia or Bust" drawn in the dust on the passenger side window.

Just a random one of Mia playing tug-of-war with me with her Christmas present from Amanda and K2 - firehose recycled as a dog toy. Genius! Our dogs are tough on toys and these are standing up quite well so far. Our dogs should be dog toy testers the way they tear things up. "Pit bull approved" seems like it would back up claims of durability.

The other night we decided for our sanity we need to plan a lengthy trip away by ourselves (sans dogs even). Like a month. Picking the slowest time of the year at both the restaurant and the newspaper (late fall/early winter) means we need to pick a warm climate. Mexico is the logical choice since a) we've already been there and know the tiniest bit of Spanish b) it's warm and c) it's cheap.

Probably fly in somewhere and use their bus system to get down the east coast and around the Yucatan Peninsula. I'd really love to be at Chichen Itza for the equinox (as was our plan for our first trip, the one we threw out the window almost immediately once we realized how much driving was involved), but I have a project at the newspaper that is on deadline then.

Still, one month off is quite a bite and we have a lot to prepare: whittling down the bare essentials that we can comfortably carry in our packs, saving money, compiling info, figuring out who's doing what at the restaurant while we're gone. That might be hardest selling point...

Assaulted!

Ok, here's Lazlo's sad story as of late:

Our pit bull, a most loveable and affectionate and goofy pit bull, was jumped yesterday by two neighbor dogs and ended up with some pretty nasty wounds on his hindquarters. He's feeling pretty poorly, physically and mentally. Their hound took a couple of bites out of his rump. So I'm taking him to the vet this morning to see if he needs stitches or whatnot. His ego is a little bruised, too, so I'm getting something from a friend for that.

Update: The vet said no stitches, they have to heal by themselves. He shaved around the bites so a hair won't get in there and cause infection (it looks worse now!), sent some antibiotics home with us and said he can have aspirin, too. Lazlo was a good dog at the vet, of course. The vet said, "They (pit bulls) make such good patients because their pain tolerance is so high."

Lazlo says, "WTF happened?!"

take a penny, leave a penny makes another appearance

Mom and I decorating the dining room for the holidays.

SP through holiday decorations

prime rib and fries

our best cook, Diana

Got 2 more rolls from the Minolta developed...two rolls of b/w, one from a wedding in Sept., one mostly with restaurant pics. Pretty happy with how they turned out, putting the Diana Mini away for a while. I think it's best suited for occasional use. I want the control I get from the Minolta most of the time. But the Diana is so small it's easy to carry.

So we're trying to make Thursdays Keith's day off. Weaning the restaurant off of him. This morning we had to drive to Harpster to pick up sausages. We go through about 40# a month right now.

The river is thawing with all the rain and warmer temps. It feels like spring, not mid-January. If the ice breaks (it's looking like it will at Button Beach, just upriver from the restaurant) we might get really busy with fishermen.


There's supposed to be a bunch of eagles congregating on some salmon a few miles upriver. I want to try to get up there sometime tomorrow to check it out.

Pepsi finally came through with a sign! It's even more official now.

The path to the tiny house gets trickier with all this crappy weather. Mud moat. I'm going to go out there now and try to clean. Try to get motivated to clean...

Newness

Moved the cash register for better flow. And to make it different. The little tree on the crate on the left is from the original owners (Dale & Jilinda) wishing us luck.

Check out this great find @ Loving Hands (local thrift store), among the other things we found---a big chalkboard for $1.50! A DOLLAR FITTY.

My dreams of a restaurant special board in chalk are coming true. Kind of. I abandoned my initial plan to make a chalk sunset, realizing my own (and the chalk's) limitations, and settled on a pseudofence. I'm being totally overprotective of it and I will growl if someone tries to write something on it. Teeth bared.

First two rolls from my Diana Mini are developed. Realized a major error in the operation---turning the advance knob too far for half frames. Ah got it now!

bumper sticker on a friend's camper

old brekkie joint in Missoula

cabin de Blankenship for one night @ Christmas

we were alone in the hot springs...

going down Lolo Pass (winding road)

The rest (of the ones I liked) are posted here.
Review of our cabin on Yelp.

Still working on getting Keith out of here (the restaurant) more and hopefully we'll start working on the tiny house bit by bit. It's about all we can do at this point to stay on top of laundry and firewood chopping.

It's official

We have a sign for the building!

We won't talk about PEPSI's extremely lame excuses for not getting out sign-on-a-post changed. Keith talked to Coke, thinking that would light a fire under PEPSI, but it looks like we're at their mercy and it will be 2-3 weeks before the old Jilinda's sign on the pole comes down. Rats!

But the menu is out (oh, by the way, here's the link to the restaurant's site that I made by myself in my big girl panties) and the new name is on the building. Our decorating budget was swallowed by payroll and other imminent bills, so we're working on changing the decor in small steps.

We have some horse tack to hang up, the "x" brand will go somewhere, my grandma is making curtains for us, I need to order some enlargements of the ranch pics so we have something to put on the walls. I was at a point where I was really frustrated at our inability to make all of the drastic changes I envisioned. But, you know what, mental health is a prized possession and I'm not about to give mine up to a restaurant.

Oh yeah, and happy new year.

Decay & Diana

I'm really interested in this person's stream on flickr lately. You can read into that all you want and you'd probably be right.

Yesterday my Diana Mini came in the mail. It looks like this. Only without the flash. Which I might get someday. But don't need right now.
I've run about half a roll through it so far, mostly in the kitchen at the restaurant last night. (I'm trying to get a whole roll out that I can have one-hour developed in Missoula before we go to the hot springs Thursday.)

It's tiny and plastic (it's a toy camera) and it takes square or half-frame photos like these:

I can't wait to see what kind of things she'll produce for me. 36 or 72 shots to a roll, I have a lot of time to experiment.

Nothing less than our success depends on it

from Indexed, a great site

Oh, December. I can't wait to see the end of you. Nothing personal, 2009--just let's get our 2010 on already, yeah? Yeah.

So many things to do to get ready to change the restaurant over to Adine's. Little or no money. Little or no time. How are we going to accomplish this? Pure will. Blind luck. Toss a coin.

This last week we had an epiphany about our menu and decided that instead of offering a few we-took-the-meat-out-of-this-for-you vegetarian dishes, we're going to offer several high-quality purely vegetarian options on the menu. Then advertise in local venues that we have a real bona fide vegeterian menu. Yep.

Whoa.

That is not really done in rural Idaho, not 'round these parts anyway. So we hope it pays off. I think it will. For example, cous cous with roasted vegetables and various sauces, spaghetti squash with avocado and Parmesan cheese... Seasonal ingredients, of course; in the summer we can offer a fresh herbed sweet corn and tomato salad. Et cetera.

This is very exciting for me, as a vegetarian who generally has to choose between grilled cheese or a green salad when I go out to eat.

The snow is melting as we get steady rain. Everyone else is complaining about this, mostly about the resulting slush. But we're happy to think the river might be thawing and hoping for increased business from fishermen. Whatever it takes to get us through December. We have faith business will pick up in January.

Keith and I are (and have been) officially in Countdown Mode. We're leaving early Wednesday afternoon for Missoula, spending the night at a friend's house, then Thursday to Lolo Hot Springs for a gluttonous 24-hour mental vacation.

Hoping to reproduce, or exceed, the relaxation level our last experience there:

May '05

just finished the semester, went to Lolo Hot Springs to unwind
cooked up a crazy plan to go to Mexico after graduation

Shouldn't be a problem. Probably won't be cooking up any crazy travel plans that will be executable in the near future, but it doesn't hurt to dream.

180º pano from the driveway of the restaurant

It started snowing at about 7 a.m. and hasn't really let up. At least it's warmer!

If I was a skier/snowboarder, that's where I'd be. But my husband is sick, I've been here since 6 a.m. and my mom's coming in to relieve me, so I'm headed home. Happy Saturday!

c-c-c-c-c-cold

I'm just going to state the obvious upfront: it'd g.d. cold! And not the kind of cold I was complaining about before. That was mild cold. This is 14°-in-the-house-when-you-wake-up cold. We got it up to about 75° last night with our little stove, before I fell asleep. But by 7:30 this morning, when Lazlo was whining to go out, I was completely under covers trying not to breathe in dog farts, debating whether or not it would be worth it to get dressed in something warm.

The cold is really preventing people, it seems, from going anywhere they don't need to go. Restaurants included. We're considering how to reduce some of our un-fixed costs and one way to reduce costs is to reduce payroll. Keith is basically already working for free (though he does get a paycheck), but he's taking on the line Sat-Mon nights. But only TWO WEEKS until our mini vacation. I remind him every. day.

We're running lunch and dinner specials every day for the next week.

Today's lunch special - grilled steak salad for $7

Hopefully that will draw people in and, if not, at least it gives us some distraction. Something to do other than stare out the window wishing for customers. Making it through December is going to be hard, we know. Getting on the other side of it will be a relief.

Considering what decorating changes we can make while it's slow, we're already using our new Leave a Penny, Take a Penny dish/holder/thing.

If only someone would leave a grand or two in it. Wouldn't that be awesome?

Acting like adults

Yesterday my mom and I decorated the windows and dining room at the restaurant for the holidays. And we didn't get mad at each other once! In fact, it was pretty fun!

That's saying a lot considering our styles are about as different as you could imagine. I am all about less-is-more, back-to-nature and my mom is all about blinking lights and dancing santas. She made a comment about how our lack of arguing meant we were "both growing." ha!

Friday we moved my great-grandparents' dresser into the restaurant (Keith's idea--a great one) in place of the salad bar. I had collected some things that I thought we could use for a seasonal display (craft stores and thrift stores a few months ago) and I think everyone, my parents especially, where a little anxious about how it would all come together. I think it looks awesome. They admitted it's pretty nice. And the feedback has been great.

Yesterday we went shopping for holiday tchotchkes and found a good deal on some second-hand ornaments and hit the hardware store for some garlands. It was slow after lunch, so we took the opportunity to take the fall decorations out of the windows (popcorn and pumpkins) and we ripped off an idea I saw on design*sponge, I think. Or The Kitchn? Oh, wait, it was The Kitchn.


This is actually not a good representation at all, but I didn't get a good picture during the day (dead batteries and blah blah blah). I will try to get one next week. Ornaments hanging on branches supported by gold ribbon.

Things are slowing down for us. We've expected this. People are saving their money for Christmas now. Hopefully fishing season will help us out. And we're going to start running budget-friendly specials instead of steaks, etc. Though we still have steaks every night.

It's a little stressful to have slow days (or weeks) and Keith, being in charge of the food costs, probably feels the most pressure. He keeps joking (in that not-really-joking way) about how we moved here to slow down and relax and what happened to that plan? That plan was ... put on hold? I told him I dreamt of pulling the Aloha down the coast of Mexico. He'd be on that in a second. Really.

I'm trying to brainstorm the aesthetic changes I want to make for the new restaurant and then prioritize those and factor in budget (minimal to nil)... One thing I am not sure about, maybe I should take an informal poll: chalkboard vs. whiteboard menu.

I really love the idea/look of a well-done chalkboard.
See:

How fantastic is this?! VERY.

But my concern is that white (or colors) on black is harder to read than red/blue/black/green would be on a whiteboard. One waitress said chalkboard is definitely better, especially if you clean it with a damp rag to get rid of the ghosties. So I am leaning that way. Ideally I would be the one doing the lettering and art for these because I'm picky like that and not everyone on staff has A+ spelling and grammar skills. But that's not relevant to the chalkboard vs. whiteboard argument, I guess.

But I think a chalkboard just goes with the theme more. The theme being Family Cattle Ranch.
(Maybe a cow-shaped chalkboard?)

My grandma dug up some photos from her parents' ranch and I started scanning them to use on the website. And maybe blow up a couple on Rasterbator for dining room art?

Here's a great one where you can really see the X brand on that black cow.

I think this one said "dehorning" on the back. Eeeek. That's my great-grandpa on the right.

We're close to getting a sign for the building and possibly magnetic signs for the vehicles. I will be ordering business cards soon, with the name of the new restaurant... December's going to go by fast!

I told Keith we are taking a mandatory mini-vacation and that I was picking the location and he could pick the days. He picked Christmas eve and Christmas day (since we're closed on Christmas) and I picked Lolo Hot Springs. Cabin with satellite TV, micro/refrig/coffee pot. Hot springs and pool across the street. We'll take our own groceries. I'm very excited about hot springs in the winter. Keith is thinking about the possibility of sleeping the entire time. I told him he could---it's his vacation. Although I'm a little disturbed by the idea of a 36-48 hour vacation. Isn't that just a normal person's weekend? We'll take what we can get.