Happy Halloween?

Old houses have a lot of character and, sometimes, include a few unwanted surprises.  A few nights ago Millie put Colin down to sleep and walked in to the bathroom for a shower only to find the biggest brown spider we've ever seen crawl across the tub.  This was particularly disturbing after running across a large Black Widow while cleaning out the exterior vents the day before.  So, the next morning we stumbled out of bed to make coffee and noticed a furry brown ball hanging from the kitchen blinds.  Hmmm...that wasn't there yesterday.  Somehow, a fruit bat managed to find his way in to the house and chose our blinds as a makeshift den for the night.  Luckily for us he was fast asleep.  Wearing leather gardening gloves, I plucked him off his perch and set him in the big maple out front.  It seems Halloween came early this year.

When we're not escorting insects and flying mammals out the door we've been very busy here working on home improvements before it's time to fly south for the winter.  Since returning from Mexico for my week-long-engine-installation excursion my days have been filled with back-breaking, sweat-soaked, labor-intensive house projects.  After a month of sanding, caulking, patching and primering I can finally say the house is painted.  And, it looks great.  I was planning to build a fence around the property this summer but as the weeks went by I knew I needed help.  So, I hired a local contractor to do the fencing and convinced my new neighbor to split the cost of the adjoining section -- an unexpected bonus.  This freed up my time to get the yard cleaned up and focus on a few other home repairs.  The work is almost done -- all we need now is renters.

Unfortunately, all this house work has really cut into our recreation time.  We didn't get a chance to explore central Oregon as much as we'd like.  Our plans for camping and biking and fishing and lake sailing seemed to evaporate in a cloud of sanding dust.  At this point I'm looking forward to getting back to the Mexico where I can procrastinate boat projects over a taco and a cold Pacifico.