That Damn Dog

So much for proving my existence

2007-02-14T12:24:00.000-08:00

We're off to New Zealand now. You can join us over here.

Still here

2006-09-06T11:19:00.000-07:00

I wanted to write a quick post to prove that I still exist. The last several weeks have been a blur with traveling, family visits and work. Hopefully things will slow down soon and I'll get a chance to write a decent post.

Alaska was amazing, although we didn't get the sunny weather I had hoped for. We did have a bear visit the bed and breakfast we were staying at, so of course we took lots of pictures. Sadly, no moose sightings, though.

I hope everyone is out enjoying the last bit of summer –– I wish I was!

Photo(s) Friday

2006-08-11T00:01:00.000-07:00

After many, many months I've finally gotten the Northern half of our trip to India uploaded. Check them out here.

Jam and Terror

2006-08-10T14:23:00.002-07:00

It's been a busy week of working and getting ready for our trip to Alaska next week. Any time we go on vacation I feel like I should clean the house from top to bottom before we leave. I don't know if it's misguided attempt to prevent anyone from finding out how messy we truly are in case we don't make it back, but it's pretty ridiculous.

I spent all day Tuesday dusting and sweeping, pulling out and shaking the rugs and ruthlessly organizing the family room. When I went in Wednesday morning and discovered that Jake had pulled all the Kleenex and paper products out of the garbage can and spread them around the room, I wondered why I had bothered. That damn dog.

Berries are ripening here and I've spent the last two evenings making jam – raspberry in the bigger jar and blackberry/raspberry in the smaller jars. We now have a total of 12 jars of jam, with plans for several more jars of blackberry, which should see us well into our 40s.

In other news, we're trying to decide just how many hours we should plan to stand in line to get through security at Seatac. The newscaster this morning reported that this latest ban on liquids is far more confusing to passengers than the previous ban on knives, box cutters and nail clippers. Lady, I've got news for you. Banning nail clippers still makes less sense. I don't care if they're the gigantic kind meant for cutting the thickest toenails, and have that swing-out thingy for scraping out dirt and whatnot. As Tom said, "I'd like to see someone try to take over a plane with nail clippers."

British airports have basically reduced passengers to getting on the plane naked, clutching a few select items in a clear plastic bag. I'm waiting to see if we'll need to Saran Wrap ourselves to qualify for some kind of express security lane.

Photo Friday

2006-08-04T12:58:00.000-07:00

The Last Daylily

In our garden, anyway.

Friends

2006-08-02T10:39:00.000-07:00

An old friend called the other day. The last time we spoke was during an exchange of letters not long before I left Arizona, more than five years ago. She also moved at about the same time and in the process we lost touch with each other. The occasional internet search turned up nothing on her, but as it turned out, she's also been looking for me and finally found my number.

We met through a mutual friend our senior year of high school and became inseparable immediately. Before high school ended her family moved away, reinforcing my long-held belief that to make a friend was to lose them sooner rather than later. Sounds depressing, but I seem to have a knack for making friends with people who soon move to the opposite side of the earth. When it happens often enough, you develop a real complex about it.

We managed to keep in touch through sporadic letters (these were the pre-internet days) and she was one of two bridesmaids in my wedding. My best friend since the age of eight couldn't be there because she was pregnant and on bed rest with her second child and another bridesmaid decided a trip to Brazil was a better option than a wedding. She was always unreliable, but still: not helping the complex.

Anyway, it was really great catching up with my old high school friend again. Other than the fact that she has a four-year-old son, it was like no time had passed at all. It was good to know that some people will still be your friend, no matter how much time you've lost.

Internet, I'm miserable

2006-07-31T09:02:00.000-07:00

Last week, Tom thought he was having a particularly bad allergy attack. Well, turns out it was a cold. Now he's passed the disease torch to me and I am suffering.

It seems to be some kind of hybrid monster of all the colds I've ever suffered: swollen throat, coughing, aches, lethargy, alternating runny and congested nose. My eyes feel so swollen and itchy that I'm ready to claw them out of my head. Most attractive is the panting; I can't breathe through my nose, so my mouth is always hanging open while I desperately gulp in air.

Sadly, I don't even have the comfort of staying home from work and sleeping the day away because I have a deadline in five hours. Guess I better stop hanging around here. Bye, Internet.

Photo Friday

2006-07-28T11:04:00.000-07:00

Vanity, thy name is camel.

I have never seen an animal more in love with the camera.

Heatwave

2006-07-24T11:03:00.000-07:00

We, like the rest of the country, are suffering from above-average temperatures. Hardly anyone around here has a pool; it rarely gets hot enough to make maintaining one worthwhile. Last year it stayed so cool that we never switched from flannel to cotton sheets on the bed.

Drinking water alone doesn't seem to combat the heat, so I've been making pitchers and gallons of lemonade and peach iced tea. Finally, a use for all those bags of lemons I keep buying!

Yesterday we decided to head out to the lake to cool down. Lake Crescent is a 10-mile-long glacial-carved relic of the last ice age and is fed by mountain snow. At more than 600 feet deep its crystal clear waters rarely warm up enough for comfortable swimming, but it rarely gets this hot here, either.

We got to the lake in the afternoon, after many people had already headed for home, so we were able to stake out a private bit of beach. We were soon joined by two teenaged girls who squealed with the chilly water before becoming acclimated to it. Their presence drew a crowd of boys who splashed and hollered in that particularly manic way of teenaged boys, while the girls ignored them to chat with the one boy who wasn't screeching like a fool.

After they all left we lay on the beach, soaking in the now-tolerable rays of the sun and enjoying the quiet. I was reminded that this is a rare place, with the ocean, mountains, rivers, lakes and beaches all within easy reach.

Photo Friday

2006-07-21T13:36:00.000-07:00

Details

Mmmm, meat.

2006-07-17T08:43:00.000-07:00

Pot roast was on sale the other day so I bought a couple, had them sliced thin and made a big batch of beef jerky. For us, jerky is a road trip staple, but so expensive that I prefer to make my own.

When I was a kid, my grandma used to make her own jerky. Knowing how much I liked it she would have a batch waiting for me every Christmas. Yes, meat is a perfectly acceptable, and in fact welcome, gift in our family. I was given bacon for my eighth birthday...but that's another story.

Hunting, fishing and gardening was both a pleasure for my grandparents and a way to feed five children. When my grandpa built their garage, he made an entire room at the back for storing canned goods. There were rows and rows of peaches, pears, applesauce, green beans, corn, tomatoes and stewed venison, all grown, caught and canned by my grandparents.

My grandma made jerky by drying it at a low temperature in the oven, but I use a dehydrator. I marinate the meat overnight then dry it for 6-8 hours, depending on the thickness of the slices. It's a small thing, but in the age of convenience, canning and preserving my own food makes me feel more connected to slower times and my family's way of life.

Marinade
I'm usually a measure-it-by-eye style of cook, so this is more of a rough guide than a recipe. All measurements are approximate and are open to interpretation.

3 cups Yoshida sauce (original)
2 tbsp Honey mustard
1 tbsp Cidar vinegar
1 tbsp Olive oil
2 tsp Italian herbs (dried)
1 tsp Worchestershire sauce
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 seasoning salt

I prefer more peppery jerky, so I grind pepper over the top of the strips as I lay them in the dehydrator.

Photo Friday

2006-07-14T00:41:00.000-07:00

Lady Washington

The Lady Washington, most recently playing the part of the HMS Interceptor in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, visited our harbor earlier this week. They offered tours by donation at the City Pier and "adventure sails" to those interested in paying the price.

It's relatively small and seeing it in person really made me appreciate the faith the crew must have in their captain to agree to cross the ocean in what amounts to a floating chopstick.

Harvest Time

2006-07-11T12:45:00.000-07:00

Our cherry and pear trees are producing bumper crops this year; they seem to do especially well every other year, as if to say that producing heavily is so exhausting they need a year hiatus between stellar crops. They're both fairly old trees, so it's entirely possible, I guess.

With the cherries, we usually leave the crown of the tree to the birds and pick our cherries from the lower and middle branches. There's plenty to go around, although I'm not crazy about the purple splats the birds leave on everything within a one hundred foot radius of the tree.

Fortunately the pear and cherry trees don't ripen at the same time. It would be a full time job dealing with all that fruit. I still have pears we canned summer before last. We'll have to start pushing them on friends and relatives to make room for the new batch.

When the pears are ripe it's worth your life to walk under the tree. They get big enough to at least give you a decent concussion when they fall. Once they've fallen, we have to get out and pick them up immediately because Cooper's developed a taste for pears and will take a bite out of each one before choosing a favorite to race around the yard with. At least they don't have the same effect on him that banana has on Jake.

Photo Friday

2006-07-07T10:31:00.000-07:00

Exploring Fort Casey

A couple of weeks ago we visited Fort Casey, a World War II bunker concealed in the banks of Whidbey Island, Washington.

New Zealand, here we come!

2006-07-05T23:54:00.000-07:00

It's official. We have honest-to-goodness, real-live confirmed tickets going to New Zealand next year. Using our frequent flyer miles, no less. We'll be taking advantage of our free layover to spend three days in Sydney, then going to New Zealand for six weeks. Woohoo!

Photo Friday

2006-06-30T09:14:00.000-07:00

Red

Columbine growing wild along the Gorge Trail in Watkins Glen State Park.

Watkins Glen

2006-06-28T23:43:00.000-07:00

In the Finger Lakes Region of Upstate New York is a lovely little state park named Watkins Glen. Watkins Glen contains many a waterfall, the picturesque Glen Creek and fabulous stone stairways and trails courtesy of the Works Progress Administration of the 1930s.

Glen Creek has carved its way through layers of sandstone and shale to create a narrow gorge full of rapids and pools in the water-smoothed rock. A different climate exists on each wall of the canyon; one side is the shade-loving wet side, the other is dryer, exposed to the sun all day.

After hiking from the main entrance to the upper end of the Gorge Trail, and stopping constantly for picture, we climbed Jacob's Ladder: 180 steps that lead to a grassy picnic area and Hallelujah! a restroom. Here we rested, ate lunch and wondered how the long the couple waiting for the shuttle bus would sit there before realizing that it wasn't scheduled to run that day. Later, we saw the man leave to hike alone back to the main parking area, so answer turned out to be: at least an hour.

On the hike down the gorge we found this flower from a poplar, or tulip tree, on the path. The species of tree this flower came from was featured on JLB's site earlier this month. I kept seeing the spent petals of these flowers on earlier hikes and couldn't figure out where they were coming from. This was the only intact one I found, but it's pretty clear where the name "tulip tree" came from.

The picture above is of Rainbow Falls. Apparently, there was more than the usual amount of water flowing through the canyon, so the waterfalls were bigger than usual. This is one of two falls on the path that you can walk behind. Mainly I jogged through, hunched over my camera to keep it from getting wet, although the view from either edge of the waterfall is just as interesting.

I think it's safe to say that although brief, our trip to New York was memorable.

Photo Friday

2006-06-23T09:58:00.000-07:00

Peregrine Falcon

This Peregrine Falcon was nesting on cliffs near Niagara Falls. We spent several minutes watching it swoop after seagulls before it came in for a landing on a small tree just below us. Talk about being in the right place at the right time!

Do you see the Peregrine in this picture? I was surprised to have caught it at all because, according to my bird book, they average 25-34 mph (40-55 km/h) in traveling flight, and reach speeds up to 69 mph (112 km/h) in direct pursuit of prey. During its hunting stoop from heights of over 0.62 mi (1 km), the peregrine may reach speeds of 200 mph (320 km/h) as it drops toward its prey.

Cross your fingers

2006-06-22T10:33:00.000-07:00

Mridula of Travel Tales From India is a finalist in a travel contest at Oktatabyebye.com where one person will be given a laptop, a digital camera and 50,000 rupees to travel for 15 days and blog live about it as they travel.

If you've read Mridula's blog, you'll be familiar with some of the amazing treks she's done and the fantastic photos she's taken. So get over to the Oktatabyebye website and leave a comment to show her your support (she's contestant #3). Good luck Mridula!

Leaving the Nest

2006-06-21T00:14:00.000-07:00

I found this bundle of feathers nestled in a bed of sunflower seeds under the feeder in the pear tree. He seemed quite undisturbed by my presence but when Cooper came over for a look, ran around in circles until he remembered he had functioning wings. I guess the dogs won't be going into the yard unsupervised until I'm sure that the local baby birds have a little better developed flight response.

Being a Tourist

2006-06-19T12:23:00.000-07:00

When I found out that I'd be doing my latest shoot in upstate New York, Tom decided to go along and we extended the trip by a few days in order to visit some of Tom's family. We haven't seen them in about six years and his now 17- and 12-year-old cousins have shot up in height since then. They're a tall family and I felt like I was in a grove of trees whenever we were all standing around together. At 5'7" I'm not exactly tiny, but I was by far the shortest person in the bunch.

After flying all night, we arrived early Friday morning and spent most of the day relaxing, catching up and in my case, napping. We decided to spend Saturday visiting Old Fort Niagara and Niagara Falls. I was really looking forward to it as I haven't been to either one. We took a scenic route along Lake Ontario to the the fort, through small towns and lush green countryside. Tom's uncle went with us and we spent about three hours exploring the fort.

The "French Castle"

Originally built by the French in 1726, it is the oldest structure in the Great Lakes area. It was twice occupied by the British before finally being ceded to the United States after the war of 1812. Located on the shores of Lake Ontario, it's a windy and exposed location and would have been miserably cold in the winter. Just across a tiny inlet is Niagara-on-the-Lake, Canada –– a community so close you could practically throw a rock through the windows of the houses there. It was clear enough to see Toronto, 25 miles across the lake.

On the way out, we noticed this groundhog and two babies out grazing on the slopes just inside the fort walls.

After the fort, we drove to Niagara Falls. It was too late in the afternoon to take the Maid of the Mist boat tour that goes to the base of the falls, but we were able to get out on an observation platform that looks like a bridge to nowhere and hangs out over the river. I'm not afraid of heights, but once Tom mentioned that we were basically hanging in space with nothing below us, I could swear that I felt that platform swaying and shuddering every time the wind gusted.

The traffic over to the Canadian side of the river was light so we decided to cross over and see the falls from another perspective. Just before we left the parking lot, we noticed that the bridge to Canada allowed pedestrians, so we left the car on the American side and walked over.

The picture above is taken from the pedestrian bridge, of the observation tower with the falls behind it.

The view from Canada was even more spectacular and allowed us to see the Horseshoe Falls with its enormous plume of spray.

We stopped for dinner at a restaurant overlooking the falls and watched the colors in the sky and water change as the sun began to set behind us.

On the walk back, the moon began rise and by the time we got to the car, we were treated to a gorgeous full moon.

Photo Friday

2006-06-15T14:50:00.001-07:00

Mystery Flower

Does anyone know what this is? Because I don't believe I ever planted it, yet it has appeared in my flower bed as if it was invited in. If it's a flesh-eating predator as I suspect by the tongue-like pistel and stamen, and the long hairs inside the flower, I'd really like to know.

Photo Friday

2006-06-09T13:28:00.000-07:00

Sunrise at 30,000 Feet

That's right: I'm traveling for another photo shoot. My flight left Seattle at 11:40 pm, had one layover and ended up in upstate New York. See y'all next week!

Lessons

2006-06-07T09:43:00.000-07:00

I learned something this morning: If you are standing in your kitchen, holding a bowl of cereal and you lunge for a man who looks like he's about to stab himself in the side while trying to cut himself a piece of watermelon, the milk and cereal will get there before you do.

Photo Friday

2006-06-02T11:57:00.001-07:00

How NOT to Launch a Boat

Lesson 1: A truck does not float.

Lesson 2: A dock is not the ideal place for your parking brake to fail.

Lesson 3: Insurance is a good thing to have. Too bad this guy didn't.