A few recent pics of us out and about

It's cool to see the world through Emmett's eyes.  We have a second chance to have beginners' minds.  What is he looking at?  What is he thinking?  What might he be learning?

Just a cute gardening outfit from the other weekend.

The weather turned cold, so we busted out a couple new clothing items, including the hat here and the snow suit below.  Hungry Caterpillar is one of his favorite toys right now.

These two guys were quite interested in each other.  It was a rather tender moment.  I've been missing riding quite a lot, lately.  Hopefully horsemanship will be a part of Emmett's life.

The snowsuit.  Out for a walk with Pat.

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At Home Depot.  Almost as thrilled as his Papa.

Foggy morning ride

A couple walks and some other stuff I'm thankful for.

This past weekend was lovely.  Actually, the weather has been pretty amazing for as long as I can remember, now.  We took advantage of the sunshine and brisk air to go for some walks.  Zhora came over, too and did some crafts and helped out around the house with whatever was going on.  She's a good egg.  She and I walked the dogs, as well, but I didn't get any pictures because she really keeps me moving.  We had to tag all the mailboxes, throw the biggest rocks and try to outrun Eva.

The swamp is low on water, but high on beauty.  Eva was excited to have some weeds to push through.

I still love taking these washed out, over exposed photos.

We went out to Pat's Sunday morning to cut some trees, visit with Pat, and see the boys.  I set my axe down in the woods again and couldn't find it again... for the last time!  We stopped at Agway on the way home and I picked up some spray paint.

No more searching for axes.  We had a nice time in spite of it being opening weekend for deer.

We've also been having a little snow.  Nothing major, but we've run the stove 24 hrs for the last few days.  I just got my boots back from the cobbler and am looking forward to getting the skis down.

Jonas was happy to take a snow bath on Monday while I studied for my test.  He'll go all out to brighten my day.

So I took a break after 4 hours of studying school law and we went for a little hike.  Here are a couple more over exposed pictures of the back yard.

We went to see Supaman at the Greater Ithaca Activity Center.  It was crazy.  It was a small space with only about 50-100 people.  He told a lot of really corny jokes, which was unexpected and funny.  He was all about audience participation.  Here he is having audience members make sounds while he samples and loops them.  He also had us pull stuff out of our pockets and he walked around and free styled and riffed off of whatever he saw.  It was silly and really impressive.  We were totally excited to here him perform Prayer Loop, and he sang Why, too.  His cousin and DJ sang a little also.  It was really a great time.  If you need a reminder of how awesome he is, here are a few links:

He didn't say much about Thanksgiving, but reminded us that there is a real story of thanksgiving and admonished the audience to treat the land as sacred since it belongs to another group of people.  Mostly, we were reminded to take care of one another, that we are all one people, and to be thankful.  It was one of the more uplifting hip hop events I've been to.

This is Eva's little toy nest.  She was trying to lay on all of them at the same time, even though nobody else in the house shows any interest in them.  So cute.

Walking the plank

It's raining now, so I thought a few photos should get thrown up real quick.  We had a lovely weekend that started with putting new brakes and rotors on Sarah's Element.  At some point, Jonas got to go for a swim at the B-dale swimming hole, and we had a nice campfire on Saturday evening.  Sarah and I have been working on some little projects as well, but since none of them are done yet, you'll have to wait on the pictures for those.

I think Jonas turned 13 this year!  Crazy.  Except for the fact that he doesn't run with me anymore, and needs to take shorter walks, it's really hard to tell that he's an old man.  Sarah has been reminding me lately how lucky we are.  She sees a lot of animals younger than ours who are in worse shape.  We ran a bunch of errands Thursday getting ready for the brake job and the weekend.  Jonas was a trooper, so at the end, we walked from Brookton's Market down to the swimming hole and played stick for awhile.  He and I had the place to ourselves.  It was really nice.

There is a long story about how I wound up doing Sarah's brakes, but in the end, it saved us a bunch of money and I got yet another lesson in car maintenance.  If you're ever looking, Advance Auto always has 30% off coupons available (find them on retailmenot.com).  Buy the parts online to use the coupons, then go to the store to pick them up.

I don't feel like writing too much.  There's a story here, but let's leave it at, these springs are really hard to put back together.  Thanks to Erik and Nathan for moral and informational support.

Indy's been doing pretty well.  You can see she's sitting with that leg kicked out a little here, but overall, she seems much happier and in significantly less pain.  It doesn't hurt that we're in the middle of squirrel season; her favorite.

On Saturday Nathan came down from 'Cuse and Erik and Margaret and The Bandit joined us and Jenn, Bob, and Zhora for a cookout.  At some point, the kids started playing with the grown up Lincoln logs we have strewn all over the yard.  I got the idea that it would be fun to make a little jungle gym, so out came the chainsaw.  After a few minutes, we had a respectable little play thing.  El Bandito was happy to have a plank to walk and told a few pirate jokes.

Zhora and The Bandit ran back and forth and jumped off of the logs for the remainder of the night.  It provided a nice diversion for the adults as well.  I tried to give lessons on the "tuck and roll", but no one really understood the importance of a good exit strategy.  Once they've broken a few bones or voted for a few presidents they'll appreciate it more.

Note my expression.  This was an authentic moment.  The Bandit developed an impressive gap crossing strategy on his own.  Man, learning is fun!

Don't blame him... Would you trust that guy?

Keeps the voices out.  Added benefit; keeps strangers away.  Also, the hat went surprisingly well with the beard.

Foil Bull!

On Sunday Nathan helped me go back and grease the caliper slides.  Then Sarah and I crafted for a bit, then we went riding.  Rambo is doing great, old and blind or otherwise.

It was a lovely day except for the bugs.  We had a nice little breeze that helped to keep them down.  When we came home, we worked on our projects a little more, watched a movie, and called it the weekend.  Not bad.

Now we're looking ahead and see our trip to Ohio on the horizon.  Zhora will be coming with us and two of the dogs, I think, so it should be an interesting trip.  We'll be in Ohizzy for 3 1/2 days and have Art in the Park, Drumms, and family time on the agenda, so it'll be the usual busy fun.  Well, the rain has stopped, so I guess I should bet back out there.  Sit vis vobiscum!

This is why I run...

Small miracles: Weekend round up

I went back to work yesterday and, while chatting with students, invariably asked, "How was your weekend?  Did you do anything fun?"  While a few kids will tell me about a movie they watched or even a sleep over, most of them reply with some variation of, "I was so bored."  This blows my mind.  I'm SURE that I said the same thing when I was in middle school, and am so glad to be out of there.  Boredom, to me, is a concept like conservatism; I know it exists and that some people experience it, but I can't imagine why, how, or the effect of it.  Sarah and I have been packing (over-stuffing) our weekends to a glorious extent.  I thought I'd share some of the happenings in and around 54 Ridgeway with you.  They're not earth shattering, but they keep us out of trouble.

A small miracle occurred the weekend before last when I tried to start one of my saws and it wouldn't keep running.  That wasn't the miracle, that was frustratingly predictable.  Anyway, after calling Agway for an estimate, I decided to clean out the carburetor, change the gas filter, gas line, spark plug, and air filter, myself.  It cost less to do all that than to take it in for a tune up.  The problem, of course, was I didn't know what I was doing.  But after viewing some Youtube, we were off and running.

After disassembling way more than I had any right to think I could put back together, and cleaning all the parts and replacing some parts, I managed to get it all put back together.  In between episodes of tinkering, we went into town, Sarah and Jenn and Zhora went to a ballet, Bob and I cut down, bucked, and moved a bunch more trees (with the saw that wasn't in a dozen pieces), Vinnie came over, we had a fire,  we looked at the moon and the stars and sat by the fire.  And then, as dusk set in, the last piece of the saw slid back in place, I pulled the cord, and it fired up on the first try.  So cool.  To be sure, working on engines is still not something I enjoy, but the feeling of accomplishment was great.

From left to right, Monkey, Zhora, Sarah, and Jonas get ready to look at the craters of the moon.  Will they see the princesses and zombies that live there?

On Sunday, Sarah made a grilled polenta cake with arugula, raspberries, and cucumbers.  It was quite a fun little dish.  So, that was weekend number one.  Weekend number two, this weekend past, follows.


Turkey season started on Friday, May 1, so on Thursday I made my donation to conservation by purchasing a hunting license.

Thursday night Sarah and I worked outside in the yard and in the garden.  Sarah has the veggie garden looking really good and we're stacking wood like it's our job.  Some of the logs are really big, so wedges were needed to split them.

Making wooden wedges is a great skill to have.  It comes in handy to be able to whip out some quick, functional wedges, and practice makes perfect.

Thursday evening I headed over to Jenn and Bob's new place to hang out, eat dinner, and hunt the next morning.  Zhora and I hung out some, too.  She is quite the little goat princess.

Friday morning was beautiful!  The view from the hill top was inspiring.  Although there were a few gobbles, none of the turkeys would come in.  Time ran out and I headed to work.

After hunting with Tony on Saturday morning, Sarah and I went to work on our new countertops.

Of course it took longer than we thought it would and there were some mistakes, but we got it done and enjoyed our time together.  Working with Sarah on the garden, with the horses, on the house, in the woods, etc. is one of the greatest happinesses in my life.  She was positive and incredibly helpful.

We finished up around 6 and took the rented mixer back to Home Depot, picked up some burritos from Moe's, and headed home for a well deserved sleep.

On Sunday I rolled out of bed around 3:50am and headed out to Pat's to hunt.  Although there were no gobbles (incredible), I saw a flying squirrel and had two piliated woodpeckers hammer on the tree I sat under.  Fortunately, Pat brought out some eggs for me and we sat in the sunny field watching the boys munch grass.  Then I met Sarah at Agway and we headed back to Pat's to fix the fence, put a new battery on the electric fence, pull some trees out of the woods, and fill the truck with compost.  Sarah learned to use the tractor and I stood by looking on, proud as punch.  She looks so good behind that bucket!

Came home and unloaded the compost.

Started working on this year's been tipis.

Burned some yard waste and had a beer.

The pile of fresh wood would have to wait until Monday.  "Bored", they say...