egads, I'm still here

My shipping company bites. I had to pull out the legaleese nastygram on Monday. Grrr! I am still here in CA fixing things, but finally moving forward. My storage units are empty & the container is packed to the gills. The good news is that I've scavenged everything on my list except a bathtub and a ladder. I even sold the Tipi (yay craigslist). I think I'm going to just saw a 55 gallon drum longways for a tub & rough it for a while... any excuse to use the new (to me) plasma cutter, heh.

I'm picking up my solar panels in Petaluma tomorrow then off to Alco Metals to pick up scrap steel. I can't wait to play, er WORK, with the welder. First project will probably be making the adjustable roof mounts for the solar panels - we'll see.

Great news this afternoon... One of my neighbors in Puna is going to help me set it up my solar system so I don't zap myself :) Brian is getting all of my batteries wholesale too, so that rocks - to the tune of a couple hundred bucks! Learning the little details of solar is making my brain hurt, but it's finally starting to make sense. Kinda wish I'd paid more attention to all of the electrical crap Phil's tried to teach me over the past 5 years on the playa - Amp Shmamp...oh well :P

Hopefully the container will be on the boat by Friday. Then I have a whirlwind tour of the Peninsula to visit HighWire pals, Amacker & play polo in La Honda. I thought I had given away my polo mallet & riding boots but I found them yesterday - yee haw!

Oooohh! And our new lava flow just did the 'bad thing' folks have been dreading. It created a lava tube & became pehoehoe (aka travels long distances, can't tell where it'll pop up and travels fast). The folks back home are shitting their shorts. Me not so much cuz my house MOVES :) woot! Here's to hoping that land prices plummit.

And a big shout out to my friends in Puna who keep calling me to tell me how COLD it is - 74 degrees at night, oh the horror.

Oh, and I was *THIS* close to getting a ride in a 16 million dollar Ferrari GTO at Sears Point last week - I'm still kicking myself. I have to say that seeing 30 GTOs in one place was quite a site. There are only about 45 in the entire world, so seeing 30 at Sears was a once in a lifetime experience. It was cool tho to stand right on the start finish as the GTO's whizzed by. One wrong move & all the spectators would have been splatted. I spent a good amount of the session up in the start/finish tower -what a view! Somebody hired a helicopter to film & I swear, the pilot flew so low that he was 10' feet above my head. We're still debating how he got permission to do that or if it was insanely illegal. My guess is that it's a licensed stunt pilot from LA who's licensed to do that kind of shit. Honestly it was right out of Mission Impossible... Big black unmarked helicopter chasing down hot sports cars 40' off the ground - it gave me the willies.

On a sorta sad note, I've noticed I'm pessimistic, snarky and impatient here...I can't tell you how many drivers and pedestrians I've cursed at. I always figured that's just what I'm like, but I'm not like that in Puna. I'm a completely different person. I'm defintely cut out for Island time & Aloha. Wierd, but good.

PS. Mercury retrograde can bite my hiney.