We moved in!
To anyone who has tried to contact us, you may have thought that Scott and I fell off the face of the earth. Actually, we finally moved into the dome!
June 2nd we finally closed and have been here for a little over 3 weeks. Let’s not talk about why our original closing date was in April and we spent over 3 weeks in a hotel prior to closing, instead let’s talk about the glories of being homeowners in the middle of nowhere; Peru, NY.
Let us start out by saying that Greta loves it here. She wanders around all day, sniffing this and that, eating what she can out of the compost pit, grazing on the grass, and generally just being super happy. Fortunately, her stomach has adapted to this place as well, and adjusted to her new diet of dead rodents and roughage.
Peru is a small town that sits directly west of Burlington, across Lake Champlain. As the crow flies, it’s about 15miles, although according to Scott’s daily commute, it’s about 55. In town there is a bank, a hardware store, a supermarket, a liquor store, a diner that the locals rave about and a decent pizzeria – what else could you ask for? Well, I guess we might ask that the pizzeria stay open past 9 on a Saturday night, but what do we know? The people here are far outnumbered by cows and apple trees, and those we have met seem nice enough. Aside from people there are some resident alpacas, sheep, goats, bison, horses, and donkeys. Not in the pens we’ve seen fox, deer, rabbits, toads, moles, mice, snakes, humming birds, chipmunks, and stray children.
Where the dome is we sit up on the mountain at 1023ft, 735ft (see Scott’s new toy below) above Peru, so usually it is a few degrees cooler, less humid, and we have a great breeze to keep the bugs away. We’ve been warned that the great breeze carries a lot of snow right over the mountain and dumps on us, so Scott bought a snow-blower. One day on the way back from a trip to Lowe’s where we have become regulars, Scott spotted the snow-blower at a garage sale. After getting the gentleman to start it up (by the way Dads, it’s electric and pull start), Scott promptly left me for collateral and went in search of an atm. Being left for collateral wouldn’t have been so bad had I not asked the man where he was moving, my desperate attempt at “being neighborly”. When Scott returned – 20 minutes later – Bill was still on his soapbox ranting about how VT was being ruined by Socialism and Church is the only hope for the nation. Bill will be happy in Lancaster, PA (yes, Amish country).
Being up the mountain, while physically makes us closer to communication satellites and cell towers, realistically makes us light years away. We get little to no cell signals – apparently the “can you hear me now?” guy has yet to make it here – and forget about getting a cable or DSL line for internet. Our only option is satellite for internet, and we’re back to having a land line. So we got the landline and researched satellite companies for internet.
We soon discovered that because satellite is the only option here, it’s ridiculously expensive. So we found one somewhat reasonably priced, and ordered our dish. When the installer came to set us up, he took a quick survey of the property and said, “sorry folks, I could put up the dish but it can’t see the satellite from here.” What? Isn’t the point of a satellite that it can see everything? As he explained it, from our altitude, satellites fall along the horizon, not overhead. Our options were to mow down our trees to see the satellite, or go to another company, one who is significantly more expensive but has a number of satellites that can see our property. Being we moved out of the city to be around more trees, we are currently waiting on a new dish. When we get the internet up blog entries will be more frequent, and they will now include data from Scott’s new toy – currently it’s 9:58pm, partly cloudy with falling barometric pressure of 29.86 (uncompensated for altitude), outdoor temp of 64.5 degrees with 92% humidity, indoor temp of 68 degrees with 81% humidity, light breeze coming out of the north/northeast. Yes folks, he finally lives in a geodesic dome with its own weather station!
Without much contact with the outside world, Scott and I have gotten a lot of work done in the yard. We’ve planted a few beds of vegetables and an herb spiral in between the house and the pool. Although my father has found us two push mowers and a riding mower, we bought a weed wacker (aka trimmer or weed eater) out of desperation since until Dad shows up in mid-July, we have no way to mow. Scott weeded out the top part of the property between the house and the road to plant 30 young grape vines.
In case you’re wondering, we also planted hops for the homebrew. We transplanted some of the randomly placed flowers that were already on the property to places where we can actually enjoy them, and the seeds we started will be put in the ground this week. The pond sized pothole in the driveway has not been filled in (the first item I’ve officially taken to nagging about), but the pool has been uncovered and is actually blue – still cloudy, but blue. Unfortunately, we imagine the pool won’t stay blue for long as yesterday the re-circulation pump seized. Needless to say, Scott was very unhappy with that turn of events as it was the first day nice enough to actually swim. But over the past few weeks we’ve made some real progress on the garden – take a look at the before and after pictures – and this weekend the weather gods have finally started smiling on us. As if to make up for moving in the rain, two miserably wet weekends, and missing spring in the house, the longest days of the year have been absolutely spectacular. Things are looking up, and we’re truly enjoying being able to not see our neighbors, but hear their chickens… how many people do you know can say that?
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Next week, I’ll tell you about meeting the chipmunks in the barn, the mouse in the house, and the spiders everywhere. We may soon be welcoming the addition of a few cats to our family.
To anyone who has tried to contact us, you may have thought that Scott and I fell off the face of the earth. Actually, we finally moved into the dome!
June 2nd we finally closed and have been here for a little over 3 weeks. Let’s not talk about why our original closing date was in April and we spent over 3 weeks in a hotel prior to closing, instead let’s talk about the glories of being homeowners in the middle of nowhere; Peru, NY.
Let us start out by saying that Greta loves it here. She wanders around all day, sniffing this and that, eating what she can out of the compost pit, grazing on the grass, and generally just being super happy. Fortunately, her stomach has adapted to this place as well, and adjusted to her new diet of dead rodents and roughage.
Peru is a small town that sits directly west of Burlington, across Lake Champlain. As the crow flies, it’s about 15miles, although according to Scott’s daily commute, it’s about 55. In town there is a bank, a hardware store, a supermarket, a liquor store, a diner that the locals rave about and a decent pizzeria – what else could you ask for? Well, I guess we might ask that the pizzeria stay open past 9 on a Saturday night, but what do we know? The people here are far outnumbered by cows and apple trees, and those we have met seem nice enough. Aside from people there are some resident alpacas, sheep, goats, bison, horses, and donkeys. Not in the pens we’ve seen fox, deer, rabbits, toads, moles, mice, snakes, humming birds, chipmunks, and stray children.
Where the dome is we sit up on the mountain at 1023ft, 735ft (see Scott’s new toy below) above Peru, so usually it is a few degrees cooler, less humid, and we have a great breeze to keep the bugs away. We’ve been warned that the great breeze carries a lot of snow right over the mountain and dumps on us, so Scott bought a snow-blower. One day on the way back from a trip to Lowe’s where we have become regulars, Scott spotted the snow-blower at a garage sale. After getting the gentleman to start it up (by the way Dads, it’s electric and pull start), Scott promptly left me for collateral and went in search of an atm. Being left for collateral wouldn’t have been so bad had I not asked the man where he was moving, my desperate attempt at “being neighborly”. When Scott returned – 20 minutes later – Bill was still on his soapbox ranting about how VT was being ruined by Socialism and Church is the only hope for the nation. Bill will be happy in Lancaster, PA (yes, Amish country).
Being up the mountain, while physically makes us closer to communication satellites and cell towers, realistically makes us light years away. We get little to no cell signals – apparently the “can you hear me now?” guy has yet to make it here – and forget about getting a cable or DSL line for internet. Our only option is satellite for internet, and we’re back to having a land line. So we got the landline and researched satellite companies for internet.
We soon discovered that because satellite is the only option here, it’s ridiculously expensive. So we found one somewhat reasonably priced, and ordered our dish. When the installer came to set us up, he took a quick survey of the property and said, “sorry folks, I could put up the dish but it can’t see the satellite from here.” What? Isn’t the point of a satellite that it can see everything? As he explained it, from our altitude, satellites fall along the horizon, not overhead. Our options were to mow down our trees to see the satellite, or go to another company, one who is significantly more expensive but has a number of satellites that can see our property. Being we moved out of the city to be around more trees, we are currently waiting on a new dish. When we get the internet up blog entries will be more frequent, and they will now include data from Scott’s new toy – currently it’s 9:58pm, partly cloudy with falling barometric pressure of 29.86 (uncompensated for altitude), outdoor temp of 64.5 degrees with 92% humidity, indoor temp of 68 degrees with 81% humidity, light breeze coming out of the north/northeast. Yes folks, he finally lives in a geodesic dome with its own weather station!
Without much contact with the outside world, Scott and I have gotten a lot of work done in the yard. We’ve planted a few beds of vegetables and an herb spiral in between the house and the pool. Although my father has found us two push mowers and a riding mower, we bought a weed wacker (aka trimmer or weed eater) out of desperation since until Dad shows up in mid-July, we have no way to mow. Scott weeded out the top part of the property between the house and the road to plant 30 young grape vines.
In case you’re wondering, we also planted hops for the homebrew. We transplanted some of the randomly placed flowers that were already on the property to places where we can actually enjoy them, and the seeds we started will be put in the ground this week. The pond sized pothole in the driveway has not been filled in (the first item I’ve officially taken to nagging about), but the pool has been uncovered and is actually blue – still cloudy, but blue. Unfortunately, we imagine the pool won’t stay blue for long as yesterday the re-circulation pump seized. Needless to say, Scott was very unhappy with that turn of events as it was the first day nice enough to actually swim. But over the past few weeks we’ve made some real progress on the garden – take a look at the before and after pictures – and this weekend the weather gods have finally started smiling on us. As if to make up for moving in the rain, two miserably wet weekends, and missing spring in the house, the longest days of the year have been absolutely spectacular. Things are looking up, and we’re truly enjoying being able to not see our neighbors, but hear their chickens… how many people do you know can say that?<Next week, I’ll tell you about meeting the chipmunks in the barn, the mouse in the house, and the spiders everywhere. We may soon be welcoming the addition of a few cats to our family.
posted by Dome Dweller at 5:33 AM
