Ah Weekends

What a crazy day in the stock market, eh? We had quite a bit of idle time today and we spent it watching the Dow plunge and come back up. The bank I work for was down about 20% at one point and ended up about 10% down. My office mate is collecting job postings. Not me. If I get laid off, I'm heading the way of Thoreau. I don't have the interest in computer programming anymore; I haven't had much for years. I can't spend the best part of each day doing something I don't care about. I'm doing it now because it'd be silly to walk away from my salary.

After helping setup and unload dogs at adoption day on Saturday, I spent the afternoon at the range. I volunteer at a dog shelter located near my property. On Saturdays, the dogs are washed and brought to the suburbs for adoption. I'm currently fostering a 5 year-old shepherd mix named Polly and I dropped her off. She's getting along fine with my two big boys and doing real well, but she isn't entirely what I'm looking for. For one, she doesn't know how to play and that's a big part of why I like dogs. It's a shame when people get a puppy and then wreck it by not interacting with it. I've tried tussling, throwing the ball, etc. and she doesn't know what to do. Other than that, her personality is fine; she's very loving although a bit demanding at times. She stays around when offleash at the property. The other strike against her, is that while she has the coloring of a German Shepherd, she definitely is not a German Shepherd. I really like the look of German Shepherds and want another in my house. For now, I'll keep Polly at my house and occasionally take her to adoption day. If she gets adopted, I'll have my friend who runs the shelter on the lookout for a young female German Shepherd.

Recently I bought an Advantage Arms 22lr conversion for my Glock. It works really well; I'll have to post a mini-review sometime. I shot a couple hundred rounds with it and then moved to the rifle range and shot another hundred with my Ruger 10/22. I'm definitely improving: more and more bullets are hitting the black portion of the target. I'm still having problems with the pistol with most bullets striking the left side of the target. With the rifle, I'm working on improving my accuracy in the cross-legged sitting and standing positions. I do well sitting though it's uncomfortable as hell. Standing, I feel like a flagpole swaying back and forth. I also brought out my Saiga 223 for a little practice, but when I arrived at the 100yd range I was going to have to wait nearly a half-hour to put up my targets. At this club, when there are five or more shooters, target changes are only on the half-hour. Usually when I get there, there aren't enough shooters to trigger this mode and I can immediately put up my targets. On Saturday, though, the 100yd range was the busiest I've ever seen and I arrived just after the hour. I only had an hour and a half until I needed to leave to pick up Polly, so I went to the small-caliber range instead and, thus, could not shoot my 223. Since I'm now a more experienced shooter, I'm a bit anxious to get out the big guns.

Sunday, I finally mowed the back acre like I talked about a couple weeks ago. The battery on my 4 year old DR Brush and Field Mower no longer had the power to crank the engine, so I had to find a new one. $70. It's hard to say how much land I mowed because there are a lot of trees and brush limiting visibility and the area is non-rectangular, but it's pretty good sized. It's definitely larger an acre and maybe as large as two. I should write up a review of the DR Brush Mower and my techniques in using it to clear brush. Sunday, I took the first pass. Later, I'll go through with a chainsaw and a small brush cutter.

This acre is really nice. It has a mixture of big leaf maple, vine maple, Douglas Fir, pine (Lodgepole if I remember correctly), Western Red Cedar, Red Alder, and Western Hemlock. Sorry, I don't have pictures; I tried but the batteries on my camera need charging. The acre is "bordered" on the north by a steep dropoff to the creek 75' (?) below and a lightly travelled highway. Some highway noise filters up, but away from the dropoff the sound is slight. To the west is a neighboring clearcut getting congested with brush and 5 year old Douglas Firs. My ridge and the trail up to the ridge are to the east. South is more of my brush and the old dirt logging road. The logging road is so overgrown that if somebody hiked it now, they probably wouldn't realize it was a road.

When I bought the property, the neighbors were running ATV's around my property. I put up a fence and a good gate and let nature take back the roads. At one time, the Red Alder was so thick in places that it was difficult to walk through. I've thinned the Red Alder so I could get the DR Mower through, but a fast moving ATV or a truck couldn't make it. To be really ATV-unfriendly, I left 6" stumps. Imagine hitting one of those! I keep an eye out for evidence of trespassers and ATVs, but haven't seen any ATV tracks in a few years now.

I'm now thinking it might be good to have a road out to the far side of the property. It might be good to set up a trailer out there. So, I'm thinning the Alder again. It needed it anyway. The forester I talked with several years ago suggested thinning them to 10' apart and they are much denser than that. I'll take out the crooked ones first. These won't ever be worth much money. After that, I'll go through and see what other trees need to come out and what other adjustments are necessary to run my full-size van through during the summer. In the winter, I know there is runoff that floods one section of the road.