You're Doing It Wrong

I’ve been meaning to take a picture of this for a long time. I wasn’t sure how well it would show up.

This is the side yard. If you see that darker green line that starts at the lower left and curves up towards the back — that is an animal trail.

When I first noticed it, I thought it was from yardwork but later I noticed it was there all the time. You can see it in the back, too and it leads up to a big gap between our back fence and the next door neighbor’s garage.

I’m not sure if it’s raccoons, opossums (wolves? deer? rhinoceros?) or both but this must be the neighborhood crossing spot. There is some open space beyond the street behind our house. Since we’ve lived here we’ve occasionally seen raccoons and opossum in the yard usually after dark.

Several years ago there was a dramatic baby raccoon rescue in our backyard. I used my barely-there photo and html skills to write about it here but at some point later I deleted it. I just dug it out and tried to improve the photos and you can see it here.

The Hound of Mapleton: there are actually two hounds but I did a lousy job of picture taking.

Yesterday and today’s photos taken in Florence, Oregon

I’m despairing over whether I’m ever going to have time to write a decent post again. I’m sitting on a couple of ideas but I can’t seem to put together enough time to get them organized and I have other priorities right now.

Also, that thing is happening where I wake up and can’t get back to sleep. I woke up at 4am a couple of times and that wasn’t too hideous. I woke up yesterday at 3am and that wasn’t even too bad. I’ve been able to monitor and the birds start singing between 4:06a and 4:11a.

This morning I woke up at 2am and that was completely gruesome. I feel like I spent the night dancing on a barstool and swilling tequila from the bottle. I did have a couple of glasses of wine with dinner. How come straight sleep deprivation feels like a badass hangover?

On Saturday I was working in the front yard and I saw this big yellow dog come scampering down the street. This was the happiest dog you’ve ever seen in your life. He bounded from one yard to the next bouncing in circles sniffing every wonderful hedge and tree trunk and marking his territory as needed.

Since I have adult onset fear of dogs all my brain was computing was “Omigod, dog with no people. He is going to run over here and bite me.”

He was too involved in his smell inventory to even notice me. My next door neighbor was much quicker on the uptake and I heard her yell, “He’s over here.” Then I clued in that there were kids at some distant location calling for the dog. She yelled again and the dog ran over to a red pick-up truck and set to work checking the smells on the tires.

My neighbor jumped in her car and drove towards the voices and a few moments later these two kids came sprinting down the street, huffing and puffing.

“Are you looking for the dog?” I asked.

“YES!” They said, together.

“He was just over by that truck.” I pointed.

Moments later the dog leapt out from behind a hedge and the kids smiled and grabbed his collar.

“Thanks!” they said and waved at me. Then a woman in a van came and picked them up and she waved at me, too.

And I thought, “Yes, what a great neighbor I am, helpfully pointed at your beloved and obviously sweet pet, in terror that he was going to run over and bite me. You are welcome.”

Nice view looking upriver at the Siuslaw in Mapleton, Oregon.

Walker zipped through town this weekend and hung out with us. We went to see Jerry Rig on Saturday night and saw the whole High Sierra gang which I only know via Bob and Walker. I tried music festival-ing in 2002 and 2004 and my favorite part was when it was over.

Just kidding. It wasn’t that bad but it’s not my thing. I’m perfectly happy to see one band every 3 months, not 137 bands in 4 days.

But Saturday night was fun and I stayed up until a record breaking 1:30am.

Sunday morning we headed down to Mapleton to deposit Walker with her Dad for a weeklong visit.

We hung out at their fabulous quiet house near the river and wandered through the rhodies in the yard. Later we took off for a stroll around Florence and had dinner, went for a short walk on the beach and then stopped by the Three Rivers Casino.

Bob and I drove home this afternoon and we’re trying to get organized for the week.

I just started my garden photo set which hopefully I’ll keep updating until I leave in June. I hope I get to harvest at least one thing before I leave.

If it looks windy and cold, that’s because it is. Behind us the sky is scary storm-grey.

Holiday Weekend

This is an old photo of the dragon boats in the marina by the old office.

Company in town and we’re off to look at the ocean.

Mid-Week Wrap-Up

Just in case you’ve been wondering, here’s the 08 pumpkin crop. (07 crop here). I planted them late which wasn’t a problem since it wasn’t warm enough for them. I put out two sets last night just in time for the night time temps to go back into the 40’s. The other one will go out front this weekend.

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Yesterday I totally ditched a completed post because I didn’t like it. Normally once I’ve gone through the trouble of typing I go ahead and post whether I like it or not. I don’t know what my problem was. But the gist was that we went to see Was (Not Was) on Saturday night and Bob’s review is here.

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Several weeks ago I spent an embarrassing amount of money on what I call shower gel but is apparently called body wash these days. It probably wasn’t an embarrassing amount to your average person who ranks smelling good as a high priority but I generally use whatever big jug of shower gel is on sale at the grocery store and wish that it smelled yummier. Then we got a coupon and I ran in on my lunch hour to look around and I tried this ginger stuff and this Jumpstart stuff that I was going to describe as citrus-y but the product description doesn’t seem to support that claim. I am very fond of the non-citrus-y stuff but I LOVED the ginger stuff. Now I’m feeling an urge to explore all sorts of wonderful smelling bath stuff which conflicts with my over-arching but sometimes easy-to-supress frugality.

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I’m started watching Bones because Angel is in it but I have come to really love the show. I think the investigation aspect tends to go for the gross-out or hard-to-believe but I love the characters and their relationships. The season finale was a major, mouth hanging open disaster. I don’t mind if a show surprises me, or does terrible things to characters I love. (See e.g. Lost.) But the finale had a plot twist that felt invented at the last minute, stupid and completely untrue to the character. I stewed about it all day. And I suppose you could argue that the writer’s strike contributed to the problem but they created this ultimate bad guy and then we had this huge hiatus and then they resolved it with this plot twist and a 30 second montage of the bad guy discovered and offed — before the audience knew anything about him. Huge fumble. Boo.

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Finally, I cringed when I saw this article in the Daily Telegraph (UK!):

With the discovery of gold there in 1848, the California Gold Rush brought 300,000 people into the state, transforming what was then a backwater into the embodiment of the American Dream.

Fewer in number, “new 49ers” may have swapped picks and covered wagons for suction dredges and mobile homes but many are just as confident they will strike it rich.

Bob went to the Obama rally. Coverage here. I stayed home.

Update: Wow, 75,000 record breaking crowd.

Here’s the second half of the filing, plus that box in the left has filing in it. I somehow need to get all of this done before June 20. Wouldn’t it be great it filing was like moving and you could buy a bunch of pizza and beer and get all your friends to help you?

Wardrobe

This week’s episode of Battlestar Galactica was fabulous but I’m having a hard time with capri pants?