Monthly Archives: July 2008

Well, it was a great weekend!  We listened to some amazing music (my three favorites were, in this order, Bombadil, David Grisman and Amos Lee), got pretty dirty camping and shook the ‘ol money makers.  Our photog friend Tom took some great pictures so I’m popping those up.  Floyd Fest is great because it’s a family friendly festival so it stays very relaxed and there’s not a lot of worry about leaving gear etc in the camping area before heading to see the music, and everyone is happy doing their own thing.  We laughed and laughed with our friends, staged a foot race, discovered some new artists, and started making plans for next year.  Here are just a few of the pictures… 

This website has been entertaining me this afternoon–it’s always fun to see yourself in unusual places, I suppose!

I love mantles because they take on such an alter feel and I do believe that they are the other half of the reason that people love fire places so much (you know, in addition to all of that warmth and crackling and whathaveyou).  I recently found this little bird to add to our mantle and I just love that it seemed so at home right next to Drew’s beloved glove form as soon as it was there.  

Now close the windows and hush all the fields:
If the trees must, let them silently toss;
No bird is singing now, and if there is,
Be it my loss.

It will be long ere the marshes resume,
I will be long ere the earliest bird:
So close the windows and not hear the wind,
But see all wind-stirred.

-Robert Frost

Here’s our cat Mable yesterday morning:

Unfortunately it wasn’t the best day ever–a few hiccups that aren’t earth shattering, just some things that dampened my mood.  I just wrote a sentence about lemons into lemonade and I remembered that I saw a bumper sticker this morning on the back of a very old subaru that read something like, when life hands you lemons just think oh look! free lemons! and additionally saw a little sign in a bookstore this afternoon with a Scottish proverb etched into that read, be happy while you’re living for you’re a long time dead.  At the first of these two I admit to rolling my eyes slightly because it was early and I was already working on some lemons (and possibly driving one) of my own.  The second of these sage tid bits just made me laugh a little.  How true.  So, I came home, caught my breath with Drew, ate some ice cream and took pictures of the little things.  The little growing things.  And so, without further ado, I share with you some triplés d’affection, or things in three that make me happy.

Regardless of where you fall on the political scale, I think it’s fair to assume that we’re all in agreement that we’re very lucky to live in a country where you can agree (or disagree) to disagree (or agree) and that there is an over arching theme of each to his/her own.  Which brings us to satire.

Here’s a website called, Things that are younger than John McCain.  It’s a blog, not a list, but there were some funny ones on there like, the six pack, the Wizard of Oz, polyester and more if you feel like poking through. I’m not taking this space to knock John McCain,  I just think that this is a very amusing and harmless way to voice dissent.  I haven’t looked, but I’m sure that someone else has put up a site called something to the tune of, Things that have more experience than Barack Obama–in both cases the author might be adding unnescessary fuel to what I consider to be easy (and distracting) points of contention, but it doesn’t mean that they won’t get a laugh out of me in the process.

It’s hard to know if the joke’s on me or on Grace–I’m the one that bought her an orange polkadot collar, but Grace is the one unknowingly sporting it around.  Generally we go for the canvas collar, but I came across this one and thought that we would dress her up a little.  Grace has always been adorably possessive of her collars, as soon as we take it off, she jumps up and tries to hook it with her chin, and if we leave it off of her she will deposit it with her other belongings in her toy basket in the corner by her bed.  She has never chewed one up, and has one of her old ones in her basket that she will occasionally pull out and flip around with the same delight normally reserved for her stuffed lobster.  The lobster was a gift from Mom, and Grace has never pulled one bit of cotton out of it and is in fact very possessive of it around other dogs to make sure that they don’t hurt it either.  Every other toy that has come into the house generally gets gutted immediately, and I used to be pretty good about re-stuffing them and sewing them up until we figured out that she enjoys playing with the limp rag bodies just as much and so now she has what amounts to a basket full of Peter Pan’s shadow and one very plump bright red lobster.  We think of Grace as being a relatively serious dog, but with her silly orange collar and her collection of deflated toys, she is perhaps a little more comical than we’ve given her credit for.

Well, I’ve reduced the size of my batches, so the onion rolls are going much more smoothly now and it seemed safer to put these pictures up. These rolls are a standard at my Aunt Vicki’s house, and they really make the life of a sandwich just that much better. We’re having a bar-b-que to celebrate Drew’s graduation at the end of the month and I thought that the pork would be even better on Onion Rolls, so I’m about half way through making all of them. I hope to finish on Sunday and then they’ll stay in the freezer until the time comes. It’s been a nice thing to look forward to, I have always enjoyed the process of baking as much as the eating (well–almost!) and it’s been very relaxing to come home, click on the radio and start measuring out the flour, especially knowing that there’s a party at the end of the bread crumbs.