Our Home

Our low maintenance pets

Master bedroom

Master bath

Our computer room

Living room

A skink in the living room

A pileated woodpecker's nest

We Have Moved

We have now purchased an unbelievable home in Castle Rock Colorado. We took possession on November 1, 2010. Over the next couple of months I will be updating this section with info on our new home and where we live now. Live webcams will be forthcoming in the next few weeks.

Photos of our new house

After living in our home in Clifton Virginia for the last 19 years we are heading west. We signed a contract with a real estate agent who is a neighbor of ours, on Saturday, July 3, 2010. We were planning on fixing up several items, new deck, new sink in bathroom, etc. figuring that it would take as much as a year to sell. On Wednesday July 7, our agent called and told us she had someone that was interested and could they come over later that day. Apparently they liked what they saw, and after just a bit of going back and forth with phone calls, we agreed to drop the price the amount of the estimated repairs.

The new owners will do major renovations so why waste the money on updates that might be torn out later. As of Friday afternoon, July 9, we had a signed contract with the only contingency being a home inspection of their house to the next buyer which eventually came trhough. The closing is set for August 28. We vacated Clifton on August 10, 2010.

We will eventually be moving to the Denver, Colorado area, but we don't know exactly where or when yet. We will continue with our travels through the end of 2010. We will most likely spend some time this winter looking at houses in and around Denver.

We will keep you informed via our travelogue pages as we continue our travels and look for a new home. The last of the Clifton webcams were turned off on August 4, the night before the packers came. I have made arrangements with a friend to host my server in his home while we continue to travel. KWBY my Cowboy Music station, our traveling webcams and other services will be available from there until we settle down in Denver and relocate the server to Colorado.

We have a contemporary house on a little over 3 acres. The house was built in 1976 and was a "kit" house designed by Acorn Industries. We are surrounded with mature forests of oaks, beeches, and maples. Behind our property, just far enough away not to be seen, is a large electrical substation. It makes no noise and has no lights. The substation sits on 100 acres of forested land. Behind that is a large regional park consisting almost entirely of permanent treed acreage. Beyond that is the edge of Manassas National Battlefield Park. This unbroken forest creates a perfect corridor for wildlife.

We have deer, foxes, raccoon and numerous other wildlife traversing our yard on a daily basis. In the spring we can listen to mother foxes calling to their young ones, teaching them where to hunt. Sometimes we can also hear the young ones answering.

We have learned to respect the health of our little part of the world. Our only grassy area in the yard is just large enough to keep the septic field healthy. One year we found the grass was having trouble, so we hired a lawn chemical company to try to improve it. Immediately, the deer and other wildlife ceased coming. We quit the chemicals and the animals returned.

We try to leave the wooded areas of our property to Mother Nature. We allow the leaves to accumulate on the ground so they will decompose and feed the trees next year. If a tree falls, we leave it to feed the bugs and microscopic life, and they in turn make the ground healthy for the plants and all other living things.

We leave the snags (broken tree trunks) standing. They begin to rot, attract beetles and other wood loving bugs, and they in turn attract a myriad of woodpeckers. The woodpeckers not only eat the bugs, but nest in the hollowed-out trunks. We see Downey and Hairy woodpeckers daily. We also have a family of Pileated woodpeckers nesting in the area.

One of my favorite small birds is the Nuthatch. A small blue-gray bird, the Nuthatch can usually be found standing upside down on tree trunks looking for spiders and insects. They will also take a sunflower seed from the feeder and stick it in a hole on a tree then peck it open.

We occasionally find a skink (a small harmless lizard) in the living room. Originally we tried to get rid of them. We quickly discovered that the skinks were taking care of the occasional ant that wandered in.

As long as we leave the system alone, we will continue to have a very healthy environment.

Currently my favorite play toys are computers. As you can see from the photos, we have a few. Click for a listing. Recently I discovered a used computer store in our area that is an outlet for its parent company who manages computers for large office companies. That increased our server array from 1 to 4 for only $600.

We have lived in Clifton since 1991, and we really like it here.