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Monthly Archives: July 2008

From the Weekend…

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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… 

Our local brewery, Starr Hill was on hand so we had to raise our glasses for them!
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Our friends Tom and David:
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Kate and Katie and I laughing it up in the camping area:
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Me, Katie and Kate hammin it up for the camera:
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Bombadil (do check them out!) on one of the smaller stages:
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We played quite a bit of ladder golf
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Scenes from the night:
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Next up–Drew graduates on Saturday, so we’re cleaning house, buying party food and getting ready to celebrate his awesome accomplishment!

Use the side door.

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Rapture.sm

Well we’re headed to Floyd Fest tomorrow morning to spend the weekend camping, catching up with friends and listening to some pretty great bands, so there will be a couple more days of silence here on the blog.  Drew had his last class on Tuesday and he presents his final project next Friday and then he is d-o-n-e.  I think it hasn’t really sunk in for either of us that the past three years of school are really and truly coming to a close, but I imagine that when it does, we’ll look kind of like those folks above…except with our shirts on.

Look Ma!

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

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mantle, a lovely word

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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.  

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Now close the windows

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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:

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And here is the image that I saw walking down the hall just a few minutes ago this morning:

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Mable_guest2

I can only imagine what she thinks about every morning at one of her windows, but this morning ritual looks like a poem to me every day and if I ever get the words right I will stick them here too.  Sometimes the images just seem to say it all though.

proverbs, plants and ice cream.

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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.


zinnias (too high for you, mr greedy rabbit!):
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Zin_3

Tomatoes blushing and peeking, and a lone jalapeno guarding the perimeter:
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And the patio flowers sitting like chatty women keeping an eye on the comings and goings of the yard:
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Marigold

I guess some days it just takes proverbs and plants and ice cream to keep one’s perspective on point.

we laughed

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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.

gracie’s got a brand new collar

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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.

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Rollin rollin rollin…

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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.

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Pardon the pumpkin-y glow, it was about 9:00 when these came out of the oven and the camera wasn’t loving the kitchen light.

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Tom. Well, Tom the Tomato

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Tomato

Well there it is.  The first tomato of the year–begging for salt, pepper, mozzarella and its old neighbor, basil.  There’s more that I want to say, but my brain is begging for a few pages of my book and bed, so, in honor of this little yella fella, we’ll stick with less being just that much more.
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