Icky Ticky

We found a tick on Gus.

I'm guessing he picked it up from the last time we went for a walk at the North Bank Ranch. I first noticed it as a swelling above his left eye. Upon closer examination I found what looked like a wart.

I know it sounds kind of silly but there are warts that will grow really fast and I thought that's what it was. But in the back of my mind there was a suspicion...

I even went so far as to Google warts and found something that sounded like what Gus's new addition looked like.

But a few days later the swelling over his eye didn't go away (which I thought might have been from the dogs playing together in a rough manner like they sometimes do). At least the "wart" seemed to have stopped growing.

Then I did what I should have done in the first place: I put my reading glasses on, got a flashlight and took a good look at the thing. That's when I noticed the little black strings at the skin line. And then the little black strings moved!

AAACCKK! A tick! Another Google search and I found a site that showed how to remove ticks from dogs using a special tool. You can use tweezers if you don't have the tick removal tool. The thing about the site was the tick it showed looked exactly like the one over Gus's eye.

So lacking the special tick removal tool I got my tweezers and tried to carefully remove the tick.

As you can see I was successful.

It left a nice little hole over Gus's eye.

Lacking any rubbing alcohol I swabbed the hole with my Sea Breeze cleanser.

I am happy to say that today except for the little hole left behind the swelling is all down and everything is back to normal.

Looks like I'm going to have to invest in that special tick removal tool.

Oysters Casino

Here is one of the things we've done with the extremely fresh (just harvested) oysters we got from Winchester Bay the other day.

We made Tyler Florence's Oysters Casino. You can click on the link for the recipe.

First of all it was really easy.

Second of all it was really delicious!!

Crabbing

Today we took a little trip to the coast to try our hand at catching crabs.

It was a little colder than we expected. It didn't seem to bother the numerous surf scoter ducks.

Pulling up the crab rings.


Too small.

It's not a lot of fun when it's barely 40º and the wind is blowing. I had to do something so I got a couple more pictures of the sea ducks.

We had two crab rings. One has a bait basket that locks the bait in a cage. The other ring just has the bait pinned to the ring.

We discovered this fellow was having an easy lunch with the unprotected bait. (Look at the middle of the picture. It's a seal.)

More sea ducks under the pier.
Sea gull.
Coast Guard chopper buzzing around.

Well, the crabbing didn't go so well. We got a total of three, so we didn't get totally skunked, but they were too small and we had to throw them back.

So to make up for it we stopped at the oyster place and got a few fresh oysters! Can you say Oysters Rockefeller, Oysters Casino, Fried Oysters, and Tina's Favorite Oysters? YUMMY!

No Nukes Allowed!

I guess that means I can't bring my dirty bomb with me to Eugene...

Outside Of Our Rental

Here are a few pictures of the outside of the house we are renting. This is looking at the house from the street towards the east.

The front door.
Gate to the back yard.

From the corner of the garage looking out the back yard (to the south-east).

From the back corner looking at the house. That is a shed on the right that we don't use.

The shed with an additional little section fenced off behind it (that we don't use) and the back neighbor's yard comes slightly into our yard (the wooden fence part).

The only bad thing that I can say about the yard is that #1: it doesn't drain very well, so when it rains it's like a big pond and the dogs are running in about an inch of water. And #2: the grass is clumpy, not even, which makes it harder to get a good scoop on the poop.

Our latest info on the property we want is that the new owners are from out of town. They are coming in at the end of this week to sign the papers for their closing. Then hopefully they will come to a decision on an asking price for the divided section they want to sell and we will be able to start with our negotiations.

Meanwhile we are going to look at another place today that is new on the market. This will be something we'll keep in mind if we like it well enough and the other place totally falls through.

North Bank Ranch Walk With The Dogs

We took the dogs out to the North Bank Ranch today for a walk. Good for them and good for us. This is at the beginning of the Jackson Ranch entrance ("D" on this map).

Looks like the makings of a new bridge.

The natural order of things: Gus staying close, Chester mid-range, and Clyde scouting way ahead.

Clyde leaping through the brush.
All yield to the horses. I like that.

I'd say Chasm Creek is aptly named.

These little signs everywhere make it easy to know the boundaries. The other side of this fence is the Jackson Ranch.

A nice walk on a beautiful day.

The Inside Of The Rental

I think I promised I would show our rental house. Today will be the inside because I forgot to do the outside (!).

These aren't exactly in order but maybe you can figure it out. The house is about 1300 square feet, perfectly rectangular. There is an attached garage that makes the entire house an "L" shape, but judging from the other homes in the area I think it was added after the house was built.

So here is the living room from the entry way. We are looking towards the front corner of the house.

Here's from the other corner. The dining area is right behind me. There is a big map of Douglas County on the wall that we check where all the properties are. I'm pretty sure we've driven all over the entire county and seen everything so far.

Here's kind of another view of the same, just closer so you can see our little area. My husband hangs out on the little sofa and I usually take over the bigger sofa. We stopped burning in the fireplace because it's too much of a pain when the smoke starts backing into the house. There must be some sort of design flaw with that ugly thing.

Behind the big sofa on the wall is my desk where I have my printer and bills and miscellaneous other papers. You can see the corner of the map on the wall. The desk may be messy but I know where everything is! ☺ (Ollie The Fluffy Cat is in her favorite place--on my chair.)

Here's that dining area I mentioned earlier. We didn't bring the chairs in because the cushions got wet and they were all old and funky anyway. One thing we forgot about when we figured we'd just replace them was that this place doesn't really have a year round out-doorsie kind of climate. We'll have to wait until spring when the Lowe's or Home Depot restocks their patio furniture department to get replacement cushions. Hopefully we'll be on our way to our new place by then...

You saw part of this bathroom earlier (the rat in the tub). These bathrooms are so small. Or maybe I'm just too fat? Anyhow this is the guest bathroom off the hall in the middle of the house. This is where I have my stuff.

A little further over.
Our bedroom from the hall door. The window looks to the back yard.

This is from my side of the bed (where the dog beds are on the floor). The closet is behind me and we're looking at the little bathroom door.

Here's the bathroom from the little door we were just looking at. The door we're looking at now leads to the laundry room.

The sink. This wall is shared by the guest bathroom. I sometimes think if we opened the medicine cabinets at the same time we'd be looking at each other!

Here's the hall. The first door on the left is the guest bathroom, right next to it is our bedroom. Opposite the bathroom and our bedroom are two other bedrooms. One is empty and the other is full of empty boxes and other boxes we didn't want to leave in the damp garage.

Swinging to the left is the entry way. You can see the front door and the open door on the right is to the laundry room. Opposite the laundry door is the kitchen.

Here's the laundry room. To my left would be the door to the master bedroom bathroom. To my right is the door to the entry way. And directly behind me is the door to the garage. I had to put the baby gate up so the dogs (mostly Chester) would stay out of the cat area. At night the gate goes across the door from the master bath to bedroom, the dog bed (in the lower left) goes on the bathroom floor and the door from the laundry to the bathroom is closed. Chester is put into the bathroom and this way if he can't wait for us to get up in time and has an "accident" it's easy to clean.

And from that lovely visual we go to the kitchen. This is the view from the entry way with the dining area in the back.

Click here to see from the other end.

I'll try and get some pictures of the outside soon.