YouTube channel change

As some of you may know, I recently completely changed how I share YouTube videos. I now have a YouTube channel with all our videos, so you don't need to come to the blog to see them (but you still should from time to time to see our written posts). So check us out here : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA0Q5lakuMY-Md-lXWZjjjA

Stories from the Tent: Episode 1

Dinner in Paris

Brooke and I had a lovely dinner in Paris yesterday evening. Paris Idaho that is. Paris is a quaint little town. It's town hall is also a library. 

It reminds me of my experience living in Burns Wyoming, a little town of 300 people. In Burns, the old elementary school was town hall, and there was a restaurant in the cafeteria. I think I once got a milkshake there. They also had rocky mountain oysters, but I didn't dare try them.

Anyways, Paris Idaho is just 11 miles from where my ancestors moved to from Switzerland in the 1800s. I'll probably need to venture back sometime.

Some of Paris was so strange with a series of buildings and homes packed together quite tight. It reminded me of San Francisco. But the rest of Paris was spread out like a more typical small town.

A Montage of our Summer on the Ranch

What apparently stresses me out

“There, right there, what was that thought?”

“Well, I guess I was thinking about finding a new apartment”

...

So I got to tour the Church of Scientology in San Francisco. The first time I walked past, I thought it was a private-like church, but as I looked more carefully I realized that it was actually a visitor center.

I have heard a lot of crazy things about Scientology and I wanted to check out if they were true.

When I got in, I learned that is was basically a self guided tour. There were a lot of places to sit and watch presentations on different aspects of Scientology.

The church of Scientology is a particularly litigious group and I will only share my experiences in the visitor center.  

The first station I stopped at was dianetics. It's basic the idea that you can control your mind's subconscious associations. I moved over to the next station on Scientology. After watching a video that was pretty reminiscent to an “I am a Mormon” video, I realized each station had more than one video, like 6 or so. There was also like 8 stations to go to. In essence, there was hours of material to watch.

It wasn't until maybe 4 videos in that I saw something that I was interested in. I got to see an e-meter, which is a device that measure electric resistance between the user's hands. An auditor (not the accounting type like me :P) looks at the changes in resistance when a question is asked, and a spike indicates an area of stress where more questions are needed.

I got to try the e-meter as a worker in the visitor center asked me questions. I felt like my thoughts didn't match up exactly with the spikes of the e-meter.

I also asked if Scientology had a system of levels that you need to pay to advance through. I was told no, there isn't anything like that. The closest thing was a rehab course they offer that is very affordable.

Life off the Ranch

So I'm in a car right now headed to Oakland, writing on a notepad on my phone. It's funny to think on this same phone notepad is where this whole blog started, as I was standing at la lineara in Mexico to cross into the United States.

Well I'm not sure what direction the blog will take now. Originally, I made this blog expecting it to be boring, I’m not even sure what I planned on talking about. But then my life suddenly became more interesting as I moved to a ranch in San Jose. My internship in San Jose, and thus my time on the ranch is coming to a close. Hopefully I will have new adventures to share, but we will see.

I do have one more experience to share, yesterday we went to San Francisco. This was my second time there. The trip was similar in a lot of ways to my last trip. I saw a lot of the same sites and I didn't investigate other things I wanted to look at more.

One fun thing we saw was some seals battling for control of a slab of wood in the water.

We also took a boat tour of Alcatraz.

On the first day, we didn't get to investigate the Church of Scientology like I wanted to. The parking lot we had parked at supposedly closed at 9 pm and we need to get there before then.

I also wanted to take some pictures of the old Hash Ocean headquarters for my other blog. We got to do both of these things the next day though. So I will post those stories tomorrow. 

Our Last Day on the Ranch

Our last day on the ranch really snuck up on us! Ricky and I have wanted to hike the hill behind the house the whole time we’ve been here, but hadn’t done it yet. We sort of tried two other times, but ran into problems:

The first time, we didn’t really know where was best to go to get up the hill. We weren’t super motivated to climb the hill yet, but just explored the property we’re living in.

The second time, it was really hot and our cat friend (Ricky named her Maple Story - Maple for short) followed us. She would stay back and meow for us to come back towards home, and when we kept going up the hill, she gave in and continued to follow us. She seemed worried about us, haha. But we were also worried about her because she was panting like a dog! Also, we got to the fence where our property ends and couldn’t really find a way to get past. It was rusty barbed wire and we didn’t find a good place to hop it in the area we went. So, we decided to give up that time too.

Today, it was our last chance, and we were determined to hike the mountain! We waited until it was evening so it would be cooler. We had a plan to walk straight up our property to the place that we thought would be the best to hop the fence. When we got to the fence, our challenges began. Ricky ripped his nicest pair of jeans and I got mad at him for wearing those jeans in the first place. Then, we realized that the grass was a lot longer on that side of the fence because the cows can’t get to it. It really grossed me out to step on so much matted down grass that you would sink down with each step. I was just picturing mice and rattlesnakes having burrows under all that long, dry grass. You also can't tell where the rocks are under the grass until you actually step on one. I really just hated not knowing what was under the grass! But then it got worse. We noticed that the part of the hill we had planned to go up was a whole lot steeper-looking when you were right up close to it. And we kept slipping on all the grass. So we decided we would try going the less steep way on the left side of the mountain. But just trying to get over to the left side of the base of the mountain proved a challenge. The grass was not so matted down anymore, but was almost as tall as us. Plus, there were these horrible weeds that were tall and so thorny! They would poke into our thighs and arms with each step. We both got frustrated with how things were going.

“Ricky, wait! I can’t do it!”

“Hurry up, we’re losing daylight”

“Which way do I go? Come back and hold my hand!”

We were not far at all when we looked ahead and saw many, many more of those tall, thorny weeds and decided to give up on the idea of climbing the mountain. It was also dark by then and we were scared my phone would die and we would lose our source of light. We went back to the best place to hop the fence and headed back home. Maple had followed us to the fence-line but did not ever get over to the other side of the fence with us. She just followed along on the other side meowing at us to come back because she was worried about us. She was happy when we were back on the right side of the fence again with her.

When we got home after the hike, Ricky took off his shirt and I noticed something dark on his nipple. We just had a lamp on, so in the dim light, he thought it was just lint. But when he grabbed it, he realized it was a bug and threw it on the floor. I had him find it on the floor to kill it so I wouldn’t be worried about it being in our room with us all night. When he found where it was, I thought to take a picture of it for some reason. Later, I Googled “ticks” because I had a feeling that was one, and it definitely was. We ended up flushing it down the toilet and all was good. I was just a little paranoid for the rest of the night. I kept feeling like bugs were crawling on me even after we showered and washed every inch of our bodies! But he was lucky it hadn't bit him!

Pregnant Cat Mysteries

The ranch has a few cats that come and go from time to time. The ranch owner feeds them a little bit to get them to stick around and to hunt mice and whatnot around the ranch. So far, I have encountered 3 cats.

The first was a black cat. I have only seen this cat in passing.

The next is a cute little grey cat. This one is extremely friendly. In fact, it is the nicest cat I have ever met. It sticks close to the house and rarely goes away; when she does, it isn’t too far. Because of this cat’s friendliness, the ranch owner thinks it was a housecat that was abandoned here. Brooke and I speculate it was abandoned in a nearby park on the other side of the mountains.

After a few weeks of being here, we noticed the cat’s stomach got super big. We also noticed the cat seemed to have large nipples and was unusually affectionate for a cat. We thought these were signs that the cat was pregnant/in heat. Using google I learned cats show signs of pregnancy around 3 weeks. So I thought that was the case with this cat.

A few days later, I look at the cat and take this picture.

It looks like the cat is much skinnier.

I began to think the worst…

Maybe something happened…

So I started looking all over the area for hopefully living kittens, knowing that is probably not what I would find.

I figured the cat would likely have its kittens under the porch, so I tried to look under there. It was hard to see things, but I did stumble across something interesting. 

This spot is more or less where the ranch owner was standing when he shot the coyote. Here is the casing to the bullet he shot.

But I looked all around and didn’t find anything.

The next day, I saw the cat again and decided to give it another shot. I found an opening under the deck of the pool that showed some promise.

As I thought about it, the large openings could allow a coyote inside, so on second thought, I reconsidered if the cat would have kittens there, but I thought it couldn’t hurt to check. I glanced in, something caught my eye. I looked a little closer and saw a small furry body and blood. I worried. The cat was right next to me. In the dark of the porch, the fur the the dead animal inside looked the same as the cat. I grabbed a stick next to me and went into the hole. I was crouched as the opening wasn’t very large. Soon I saw that the animal's body was not a cat. It was a decapitated squirrel. So that was relief.

But it doesn’t really solve my mystery. Maybe the cat was never pregnant at all, maybe she was just bloated and in heat.