From Seneca to Cuyahoga Falls

With The MWP having July 3rd off and me having almost all the time off, we decided to take a trip out to Ohio to do some geocaching. Cuyahoga Valley National Park is chock full of earthcaches, so we loaded the GPS unit, the cooler and the dog and away we went.

Things you can learn while geocaching: that your dog can read signs.



Glaciers have made interesting rock formations everywhere:



Cuyahoga Valley National Park is also a nesting ground for Great Blue Heron. I swear there is a heron in that picture, you can't see it because it folded it's wings as the shutter snapped.



This was my favorite spot, you could access it via a series of stairs and boardwalks that lead down into a gorge...





...and you find yourself at Brandywine Falls:



Rufus seemed to be impressed.



The falls were pretty impressive, if you just drove by and were unfamiliar with the area, you would have no idea they were there.



We'd like to go back and do some more geocaching there when it's cooler, we take it easy on Rufus during the summer because he doesn't take the heat very well. The park is about 2 and a half hours from the house, perfect for a day trip.

Explosive in all the wrong ways

Rufus celebrated July 4th by being explosively ill all over the backseat of our car when we were almost to my parents' house. I spent part of the day cleaning poo out of the backseat of the car while The MWP wiped his butt.

Please tell me your Independence Day was better than ours.

(He's feeling much better today, we have no idea what was wrong with him. He has always had a weird stomach. Aww, he takes after me.)

Fish Hat Strikes Back

If negative energy transfers itself from your mind to your knitting, then this poor hat is truly cursed.



I know my sister will love it, but man, was this ever a nightmare to knit.



Pattern: "Fish Hat [Dead or Alive?]", Knitty Winter 2008
Yarn: Lion Brand Homespun, Williamsburg Colorway
Recipient: My sister, it's a birthday gift...but her birthday was on the 18th.

My sister requested this yarn and I am going to request to her that she never requests this yarn again. What a piece of crap! It's splitty, it unravels and it makes you feel like you're knitting with a plastic bag. I know she'll love it though, so I took one for the team. She and my BIL are visiting from my North Carolina this week, so I'll be delivering it on Wednesday!

Summer Vacation...

...is not actually all that fun when you would rather not be on it. Oh sure, I've got CSS and XHTML to study, books to read, the entire internet at my disposal, 4 game systems to play, walks to take and a list of things that I've been meaning to do around the house, it still kind of stinks.

(Books from top to bottom: "The Gallery of Regrettable Food" and "Gastroanomalies" by James Lileks, (If you haven't looked at the Gallery outtakes on his website, you should go look, I can't believe people used to eat this stuff.) "The Happy Hooker" by Debbie Stoller and "Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook.)

Meanwhile, in Dirt Watch 2009, I have 8 chive sprouts, plus a new sprout that I have no idea what it is because I moved the pot. ETA: Update! Apparently the 93 degrees that our weather station registered today suits the little seeds very well because a few new sprouts are poking up. And I am still not sure what they are, but I'm guessing oregano and basil.

Dirt Watch 2009

Welcome to Dirt Watch 2009! Last weekend, I decided that I wanted more herb plants, but since money is a little skimpy, my options were 1) get some seeds, plant them and hope for the best, even if it is late for seeds and 2) suck it up and don't have anymore herbs.

I went with option 1:



(Yes, I am well aware that oregano takes over everything in the container. Desperate times, desperate measures.)

In this pot, there is actually one tiny little sprout that could be the beginnings of a rosemary plant. It's very tiny and just under the "y" in rosemary. I am optimistic that it's rosemary and not a weed. There were no weeds in the empty pots when I planted the seeds last week.



Stay tuned for the next installment of Dirt Watch 2009, hopefully I'll be agonizing over thinning seedlings!

He's In!

I just got a phone call from Four Footed Friends and Rufus will be a calendar boy next year! Team Rufus raised $383 and change, coming in at fifth place. No word yet on what month he'll appear in, but I'm assuming it will be December. Thanks again to our donors!

Best laid plans

What I was supposed to do tonight
Go to knitting (Hey, Hurricane Knitters! The MWP was going to come back tonight!)

What I actually did tonight
Bailed on knitting because of combination of terrible headache (thanks, neck and shoulder muscles!), traffic nightmares and nasty thunderstorms with constant cloud-to-ground lightning* as we were getting ready to go. Planned on spending the night laying on the heating pad...and then the lights went out. Spent the night painting my nails by candlelight and listening to baseball on the radio.

Lights are back on now. Time for heating pad, Advil PM and bed!

* Holy crap, the clouds above our house were rotating. As a trained weather spotter for the National Weather Service, I can officially say that is a Very Bad Sign and in fact, about 20 minutes after the storm started rotating over our neighborhood, it earned itself a tornado warning.