I've been Biking

And I'm pretty much digging it. Ive been futsing around on the Olympia Woodland Trail which scoots right by the house and, if you get onto another trail, can go all the way south through Thurston County. It's pretty awesome. And then I found this map today which shows the bike paths/trails and lanes in Olympia. I always get a little worried when I attempt to peddle around on the road so this helps a bit. Oh, and this map is a great idea, but not so much a good final product. Oh well. I took a ride today and I think I wound up by Smith Lake... perhaps even further south, it's hard to say. Either way, it was a couple of hours of peddling around through forests, around lakes, past old speed-walkers and over bridges. I feel like I had a pretty productive day.

Triumph Star Wars

Triumph the Comic Dog visits the New York City Attack of the Clones movie premier. Mildly not safe for work, etc...

This will always be one of my favorite clips.

The Product of My Boredom...

Mr. Skunk-cat!

Folklife 2008

Jessie, Paul and I went to Folklife in Seattle today!

A very tiny percent of the other people doing the same things we were.
Including the "you're all going to hell" group....

And then these dim-wads who were standing next to the angsty conservatives. Yes, their sign does say "We're all high NO ONE CARES" in response to the anti-everything crazies standing next to them.
So we wandered around for a good long time looking at all the folk crafty doodles and admiring folkie-skirts. And then I found the dumpling stand. They had apple dumplings with cider sauce and very very tasty ice cream. I think that not buying wasn't even an option. This was the before...
.... and the after. Sigh... I couldn't even finish it it was so tasty.



Here's a didgeridoo man who rocked out for about four hours straight. He definitely got money in his hat.

And here's a crazy man who sat in front of a box with a video game control perched on it. He would wait until someone picked it up and "played his game". This is his game. Enjoy...

Le Jardine

I finally got around to getting some plants, tearing up the plant beds and making a vegetable garden in the back yard. I know it doesn't look particularly tidy, but it'll get there.

The red circle is a tomato plant (early lady or something), the little green circles are broccoli, the yellow circle is a yellow squash and the aqua is a cucumber plant. The last two might be switched around, but I can't remember off the top of my head and I REALLY don't want to hobble out onto the cold, wet grass to check. I wound up buy all these at the Farmers Market in town yesterday for a smidge over 5 dollars.

Pretty great if I do say so myself!

Jeeze Monty...

I think you need to reeeee-lax buddy.

This One's for Katherine

We had a glimmer of Internet this morning during which I was able to register for classes, frantically check my mail and post some of the things to the blog that you see below, and then also attempt to try to upload this video. It failed and failed and failed again. However, on a whim I decided to go to the computer lab on campus before class (which is where I am right now, squinting at all this business I'm typing on this nasty-sticky keyboard) when it crossed my mind to search for the video to see if, after thirty minutes of spinning hourglasses, decided to upload successfully. And guess what? It did! Hurrah! However, I also have an outdated version of the Flash player required to run said video to make sure that it's actually there. So I'm going to put some blind faith in youtube and embed the video. Hopefully it's there because it's a good one! Enjoy...

Peter, hopscotching from the COM building on campus down to the field while we waited for the Space Brothers comedy show to open (15 minutes late, of course). Hope Katherine sees this and has a great day in France-land.

I Must be Stressed When...

I start feeling the crafty itch start to creep into my muscles. I was busy tearing apart my bin of fabric before I realized that I was in the full swing of a craft attack. Towards the end of the quarter I start getting swamped with papers and final projects which leaves no time (at least no reasonable time) for craft projects. Once I unconsciously realize I shouldn't be making anything, I REALLY want to start frantically sewing two things together, ANY two things (look out Monty...). So yesterday I found myself breaking out my brand new Ikea ironing board (it's so tiny and cute, how could I resist?) and cutting apart plastic bags. I'd seen the tutorial a long time ago and the idea has been ruminating in the back of my mind since. My final product was.... interesting. Apparently it's a hard process to get right, so I'm mildly pleased with mine. However, no amount of melting, shredding or burning will ever make brown Safeway bags attractive (on a side note, I discovered that if you bring in your own canvas bags, or shopping bags of any kind, into Safeway they give you three cents per bag back. How cool? I guess they're sort of sneaky about it and don't tell you that that's what they're doing when they just credit it back on your receipt, but my cashier forgot to do it so she just gave me the change back, thus my discovery). Anyway, here's the final three foot square product:

It's so ugly that I think it'll be a cage liner for mister Monty-pants.
Plus it has this weird texture... sort of like melty naked-mole-rat skin. I sense a cool art project in the future. Naked mole rat Halloween costume anyone? Or even better, a Procession of the Species costume! Bingo...
Oh, and I tore out a part of the yard next to our fence for some tomato plants and whatever other veggie starts I can scrounge up between the farmers market in town and the organic farm stand on campus. I'm pretty excited about that. Herb garden anyone?

It was all Majestic and Stuff....

Dharyll came up this weekend and we decided that since the whole weekend was tremendously sunny we should do outdoor things. Like hiking. So we took off north on 101 and went to Mt. Ellinor. It was a really pretty drive, we circled around Lake Cushman and then drove up and up and UP some mountain-ish sides when all of the sudden BAM, there was snow. It got to be about two feet deep and we were on this dirt/gravel track halfway up the side of this mountain so we parked, I pulled on my handy-dandy hiking boots and we squelched around in the snow for a while. It was 90 degrees out and sunny while we were tromping around on snow so there were some crazy hot/cold spots in the air. There were snowballs thrown, holes in the snow to get your leg stuck in, and some pretty views.

Pretty pretty.

Tom Lehrer

We watched some videos of Tom Lehrer in my 1950's class. Some of his songs are harder to get than others, but these are still pretty great....

Pollution

The Vatican Rag

Who's Next?

I Got it From Agnes

Collapsible Buns

Knitting, essays, measuring tapes and buns all in one pile.

What Star Missed Today...

1. Rain: it rained today. Not anywhere near epic conditions, but there was rain and I did walk in it for unusually long distances. Also, everything had big, fat, happy rain drops squatting on them.

2. These flowers: who also had happy rain on them.

Gorgeous. They were tucked away behind the Lab buildings on the way to the O-farm. A lovely little surprise in the beginning of what promises to be a very long day.
3. The Walk to the O-Farm: Here is the path, and here are the leaves that line the path (note the happy rain is here as well).
This is what happy rain looks like.

4. My Tea: Oh so pretty in its very own mug.

Ahhh.. blackberry tea.

So tastey.

So I went to beekeeping this morning and learned about...

bee disease!

(if you say this out loud it mostly rhymes).

Anyway, it turns out the bees are dying. Who knew? There are a variety of things causing this: Varroa mites, tracheal mites, American Foul Brood, and of course the Colony Collapse Disorder which is the main source of the bad news. About 32% of bee colonies failed last year, 29% of those were caused by CCD which at this point, remains a mystery. Everyone is panicking about it, including Haagen-Daz (the ice-cream company and also the main contributor of funds towards researching this epidemic. Our ice-cream is IN DANGER! Don't you people realize how frightening that is? Contribute dammit!).

Oh, and we also learned a little bit about the animal predators.

Skunks:Will walk up to a hive, scratch around on the side panels to get the bees nice and angry, and then saunter to the front. Here, they wave their luxuriantly rank tail in front of the hive entrance. The bees then attack the tail, get stuck and then the skunk just turns around and picks them out as if they were little popcorn kernel snackies. Crunch crunch crunch....

Bears: Don't really want your honey mr. bee, all they want are your babies. The bears like the brood (which are apparently quite edible, but a little tangy... I really wouldn't know).

Lizards: And other small critters can sometimes just hang out inside of the hives and pick bees off as they buzz on by. Jake (the bee-instructor) was telling us about a lizard he found in the bottom of a three story hive. He had popped off the first two supers (the boxes bees hang out in) and found a little, fat lizard on the floor of the bottom one. The lizard had been there SO LONG that the bees had covered him in a thick layer of wax with just his head free. He was calmly and quite contentedly snapping up bees the walked past his head and showed no desire to move in anyway. Jake popped him off of the floor, a change that the lizard wasn't too happy about, so he wound up just staying in the hive anyway. His little wax mummy casing was pretty nasty because of the months of dead skin sheddings that had accumulated. Gross.

I think that's all I'm going to tell you for now.

Rhubarb

Meet Mr. Rhubarb plant. He lives in the back yard and has TURNED INTO A MONSTER. It's like, 3 feet wide and 3 feet tall. He is the size of a morbidly obese child. I'm thinking I should probably chop off a few stalks and eat them or something but I don't know how to go about this almost murderous business. Any tips?

"Rawwrrr I'm HUGE" said the immensely pleased rhubarb plant.
Oh, and this is Paul the Rhubarb Fairy. New creation... check him out in my place of biz-nass.