This is a week old, it somehow fell between the cracks of the system... anyhow, I still haven't succesfully gotten a picture of the ducks.

...

From an e-mail I sent last night:

"We also have two (very shy) ducks who visit the pond on windy days. I'll come round the corner and they rise up suddenly, quacking up a storm - freaked me right out the first few times.

They're not here every day, only when it's windy; but it's been windy all week. This morning I remembered, didn't go out right away; I looked through the window at the end of the hall first. Finally got a good look at them; but they noticed me (almost right away) and took off, suddenly, quacking like mad.

Very high-strung critters, ducks are. Learn something new every day..."


Just thought I should share that.

Tomorrow I'm going to try to get a picture - but no guarantees - they really are high-strung and shy... In the meantime, here's another picture, from christmas day. The only footprints on the beach, other than mine, were these deer tracks all over the place.



Maman - t'as besoin d'appeller sympatico, your e-mail is bouncing again.

Okay, that's weird.

I just published the big update/catch-up/backstory post I'd been putting together (covering sept, oct, nov & dec), and I couldn't see it when I looked at the page - turns out it's posting below, back-dated from the 9th...

That makes little sense, since I started that post on the 7th, and published it on the 17th. I'm not sure why it's tagged for the 9th. I worked on it that day, but I did on other days, too... Weird computer glitch at the google/blogger end, I guess.

Anyhow, for some clarification about which house I'm working on, and how that came to pass; and some pictures of the kitchen I was doing before this, with that whole saga summarized; and (of course!) another sunset picture, this one from Christmas Day: scroll down, past the seashell pictures below... my newest post is there, instead of here (where it should be).

Still can't decide between the last two...

The Back-story, part 3


I've just started telling folks about this blog, and I understand a lot of you aren't/weren't seeing my earlier posts. This blog was set to archive my posts (move them to a seperate storage location on the net) every week.

I just changed the setting, you should be able to see everything from the main page now.

I've been wanting to fill in the back-story sometime, but it's been so long, now, that I'm not sure how relevant a lot of it is anymore...

I left off my last back-story catch-up entry with "There's also a whole other entry's worth of explanation as to how & why, but the short version is that This (meaning the Bay House, instead of the beach house) is what I'm spending the winter working on."

Though I'm not sure it's all worth, telling, some of it may be relevant, I guess. The short version follows...

- Originally (sept), I was supposed to be renovating the beach house. Cute little place, essentially sound... I would have been re-organizing the space a bit, to make it work / flow better, and doing lots of cosmetic work: replacing some flooring, re-doing the bathrooms and kitchen, etc. Nothing too challenging, but a few steps up from the one-room-per-project, on-the-cheap budget renovations I've been doing for the last few years.

The clients - Jon, Tim and Sean - had also just bought another house on the island. Much bigger & more ostentatious, on the Bay side of the island. The plan was to do a major renovation of the Bay House some time next year, after the beach house was sold. Probably with a local contractor. Nothing for me on that project, it's just too big. I'd be staying at the Bay House this winter, as I worked on the beach house, to make sure pipes didn't freeze, etc., but that was it for me - it's just too big a project, even if I called all my friends onto it.

- Then (oct), they got an offer on the beach house. They counter-offered, we all waited to see... Obviously, we weren't going to renovate it if it sold. Jon started looking for ways to use me on the Bay House - there's a leak in the roof, there's thousands of square feet of wallpaper that needs to come down, probably some plaster repairs after that... also 4000 square feet of carpet to pull up, and bamboo flooring to put down instead... Basically, get a start on the big renovation. Also see what was wrong with the heating system (two rooms have no heat, or minimal heat), seal up the gaps in the skirting/basement walls, etc, etc...

At this point, I got a little freaked out - the scale of this place, and what it needs done, is way beyond what I (or any single person working on their own) can really adress. But having looked forward to a winter of peace, quiet and solitude, I wasn't about to back out now. And Jon had perfect faith that whatever I did, it would be useful, we could work out the details if & when we needed to...

- In the end, the deal didn't go through. Unfortunate for them - but great for me: I'm back on the beach house project, right? Not so fast...

- Somewhere in the middle of all this, they had dinner with the designer they were thinking of hiring for the Bay House renovation. I couldn't make it, as I was still busy with Chris' kitchen, so I don't know the details: but somehow the plan changed completely. Now they were going to hire him to do the beach house, on a much grander scale than Jon and I had been talking about, and sell it at a substantially higher price, instead. So now the beach house is a bigger project than I can do, and anyways the designer has a contractor he likes to use, so... I'm on the Bay House after all.

- By now (nov), the things that are wrong with the Bay House were starting to show. Jon threw together a quick list one day, off the top of his head: 23 items. I came back on thanksgiving weekend, notebook in hand, and started really looking around. And while it's fancy as all get-out, I realized that the place is just a drafty, half-rotten, big old barn - like the barn at Moulin-Morneault when I was a kid. In the end, the family had to tear that barn down, as a hazard. What the hell do you do with this barn? It's worth millions. But the siding's so rotten in places, that it crumbles when you touch it - the strongest thing is the paint. The house was built pretty half-assed to begin with, then neglected for 30 years. There's been numerous half-assed patch-up jobs, but nobody's ever taken the time to look at the house as a whole, figure out what it needs... When I leave, I don't have a list, I have - a sense of being in over my head.

But then again, I always was a sucker for challenging projects...


- Meanwhile, Chris' kitchen renovation is draggin on, and on, and on... It was supposed to finish in early November, but I had grossly under-estimated the extra time needed because of working in that small a space - having nowhere to store things out of your own way, constantly shifting piles of materials and tools just to cut a piece of wood...

Also, after Chris re-scheduled the job (again), the helper I'd lined up got another gig. Then it happened again, and my replacement helper started classes...

It's unbelievably hard to find good help in NYC. Usually I'm happy about that, because it means I stand out in comparison. But the same factor becomes really frustrating when it's me looking for help. I used to have Steve, who'd bounce back and forth between me and a painter he knew: but he went & got a real job last year.

I tried out a few guys at the beginning, but it was just an exercise in frustration. What a bunch of slackers and hustlers! So I was by myself for two months.

But now... the delays were piling up, and I was desperate to finish so I could head out to the island. I started calling my friends, did they know anyone good? Turns out one of them had some time, himself - Whoohoo! Better yet! And so Paul rode like the cavalry to my rescue.


The project didn't move that much faster, because the kitchen's too small for us both to work at the same time; but it allowed me to run all the errands while he worked, and to start getting ready for Fire Island. In other words, it saved my ass.

Paul, incidentally, is married to Allison. Together they owned the shop in Williamsburg, next door to the wedding reception? Allison is pregnant; so there will be more baby pictures before this is all over...

December was a lot of back-and-forth, getting most of my tools shipped (literally) over here, getting a lot of the materials I thought I would need together, coming out here a lot to figure out the work and get a better grip on the project. While trying to finish the Kitchen From Hell. But eventually, we finished. But even the cavalry was looking pretty burnt out by then...

Paul, at about 1:30 am, on the last day:

I remember travelling half-a-day to New York, in order to do one day's worth of stuff and pick up the last of my tools. And then the transit strike happened, so I walked the 5 miles, and did the day's worth of stuff, and took a cab home with my tools at 2 in the morning. I remember being so, so, tired as I got on that train at 8 the next morning... and so, so happy to be finally done... and just fried by the time I got here & unpacked...

me, on arrival the next day:

With that as background, you'll understand why I say that Christmas was absolutely perfect. I didn't see another living soul except the deer. I took a walk on the beach. I wallowed in the quiet and peace... and that's about it.

This was the sunset:



The pictures of the inside of the beach house that I posted a while ago, and the picture of the deer on the boardwalk at the very beginning, were also taken that day.

It was a beautiful, warm sunny day, more like March than December (is that why March is feeling like December, now?). I spent hours on the beach. Merry Christmas!

So. That's (the short version of) how I came to be out here. Next update catch-up backstory posts: New Year's Eve, some winter storms...

I'm working on another back-story/catch-up post, but for now I just wanted to post this, from last week:


just because it's my favourite picture of this winter, so far.

The wind chill that day was -4 (about -20 C), and I was on the neach for over an hour, but I never even noticed.

More pictures of Luca.



... and no wonder:



Congratulations, you two.

That's one lucky kid.

To flesh out your image of the pines a bit more... some links:

http://fifinder.com/villages is a website about the various towns in Fire Island. There's a map of all the villages, and if you click on the name of a village, you don't get much, but if you click again on "read about ___", you get a pretty good description of the village.

http://www.fireislandqnews.com/ has a good overview of last summer's events in the Pines and its "sister" community, Cherry Grove. Together, they're known as "Gay Fire Island". I haven't been here in the summer, but I gather the Grove is a little less high-end, and a lot more flamboyant. Every 4th of July, a Ferryload of Drag Queens stage an "invasion" of the pines. You can read all about it on this page. Also check out the story on the Fire Island Dance Festival fundraiser, that happens here (the Bayhouse). And the bit about World Famous Bob, just because she's a friend of Virginia's (she worked at the shop in Williamsburg / next door to the wedding reception). Horrible picture of her, though.

The local grocery store, the Pines Pantry, is closed for six months of the year. But their webcam is still up & working, at: http://63.116.179.15/ViewerFrame?Mode=Refresh&Language=0, providing you with an up-to-date picture of the Pines Harbor. Not much going on there most of the time, but if you check it on Saturdays & Sundays, you can see the biggest social event of the week here in the winter: the ferry arriving and leaving. Quite a few people come on quick daytrips, just to check on their house, or because they're shopping for a house to rent this season, or to buy... about 25 or 30 people most weekends, which is apparently quite unusual, and only because we're having such a mild winter.

Speaking of which, I promise to post my winter storm pictures here as soon as I get a chance...

After reading Andrée's comments, I realized that I maybe need to flesh out my picture of the Pines a bit...

First off, the whole thing is only 2 blocks wide. This is a picture of the harbour/downtown area, coming towards it from the Bay side, looking out towards the ocean (North is at the bottom). The house I'm living and working in is on the Bay side, right on the water, just off a bit to the right of this picture.

This is a Google Earth picture/map of the Pines, (North at the top, like a normal map). Gives you a better idea of the scale of the whole thing, I think. The green line is the boundary between the Fire Island National Seashore's zones - there is absolutely no building of anything on the other side of that line.

I've indicated the Beach House and Bay House locations. (NOTE: If you click on any of these pictures, you'll get a much bigger version that's easier on the eyes.)

A closer view. The blue line is the ferry channel. Incidentally, this is the only route within 4000 feet from shore that you're allowed to drive a jetski - and then only at 6mph. Jon is pretty dissapointed, as he wanted to install a little boatlift/crane on our seawall, and get a jetski. I'm dissapointed because, without the little crane to borrow/use, I can only get a tiny sailboat (light enough to put in & take out by hand). Oh, well.

More, later.