Breaking News

Older brother Big M's wife (we'll call her Little M) is going to have a boy in November. Welcome to the family, Baby M.

(addendum: this will be my fifth auntdom. Mr. Clean has three boys and Robin has a girl.)

Meantime, here's my baby again.




rc

Guilty as Charged

I had my hearing in traffic court today. The officer showed up in a Hawaiian shirt. He read the date of the infraction wrong, but when I pointed it out, he denied his mistake. Despite my excellent moving-radar-doesn't-work/roads-weren't-icy-at-all defense, delivered through my sweaty, shaky, palpitational anxiety; the judge agreed with the cop.

The good news is, he offered me online traffic school to keep the citation off my record. So the ticket is paid, I'll do the driving school, and it will all be over. As a native pointed out to me, don't expect to get a ticket overturned in a poor town like this. Cops are just fundraisers.

Now I'm ready to have a drink and watch DVD's all night.

Rose

I'd Rather be Fishing

We're back in town, and here's some local color.

The fishing fleet should be going out soon.

Crab pots stored in stacks.

Glacous-Winged Gull
One of many local gull species.

Looking up the river, the piling is a channel marker.

Looking out the mouth of the river to the Pacific Ocean.

"The Bar"

Rose

Kitties Make a House a Home

Ailleanach is my nearly constant companion. She has gotten friendlier lately, cuddling up with me in bed or on the sofa.

r.

Leftover Images from the Trip

Pintail- flocks of these were everywhere

Got the car stuck in soft sand at the roadside in the middle of nowhere. Here are the ruts from spinning my back wheels. Below is the desolate roadside scene.

Lake Abert and Abert Rim

a fault scarp mountain and companion lake

jc requests a city destination for our next vacation. We're thinking of San Francisco.

Rose

Lava Beds National Monument

Approaching the lava beds from the high desert, with snow-covered peaks in the distance.

lava tube caves

"aa" rocks from cooled lava flow

miles of aa from a distance

petroglyphs

(right) petroglyph cliffs

(left) fault-block mountain

Rose

Sage Grouse Lek and "Not a Parking Lot"

I woke in the chilly predawn to temperatures in the twenties. To see the Sage Grouse display, it is best to arrive at the lek before sunrise. As the rosy rays of the sun kissed the sagebrush, I was still miles from the lek.

I turned off onto the rutted and dimpled gravel road. The directions said to travel 8.4 miles. At ten miles an hour, the grouse would be done displaying by the time I arrived. A small herd of Pronghorn Antelope bounded off when they heard the car.

After traveling nine miles and seeing no signs of the Grouse, I turned back. It was then that I spotted the white ruffs of the males catching the light. I had found the lek.

I was treated to an hour-long display of the males puffing out their chests and fanning their tails in competition for the females.

Then I headed down the road to chase other birds.

This pair of Sandhill Cranes let me snap a picture before flying away.

A Rough-legged Hawk strikes a characteristic pose.

In the afternoon, I woke up jc and we went for a ride. As we sat on a small country road watching American Avocets and Black-Legged Stilts in a soggy field, a local in a pickup truck and dirty baseball cap pulled up alongside. "You f---ing hippies!" he yelled. "This isn't a parking lot!" We waved and smiled and he continued on his way.

Later we have plans to sample the local Thai fare.

Rose

Malheur National Wildlife Refuge Birding

Snow Geese

Say's Phoebe Northern Shoveler
Mud Lake
Long-billed Curlew
High Desert Museum
Franklin's Gull

Bovine Family

Some Blooms from the Yard

Lost Time

As I was preparing to go to Dahlia Man's this afternoon for our usual Wednesday dinner, jc reminded me that it is Thursday. Sure enough, I missed a whole day. I also missed my appointment with Dahlia Man.

On a brighter note, movers came and brought my piano to the new house today. All the important stuff is done. With it comes peace of mind.

rc

a Schvitz

The Scholar is on Spring Break, so we all headed off to spend a day taking in a hot soak. Along the way, we stopped and hiked up and down crude mountain steps 0.4 mile to Toketee Falls. Doesn't it make you want to jump right in?

We crossed the fallen log with our supplies for the day and made another short hike to the hot springs.

The springs sit midway up the mountain overlooking the beautiful, rushing stream we just crossed. We relaxed and talked and ate. There was only one moment of tension when jc brought up the factor of stress in infertility and I got a little edgy and sulked for a bit. He said all the right things afterwards to comfort me.

We drove down the mountain a little before stopping for our picnic dinner of spicy Korean Ramen, kimchi, black beans, sardines, spam, and homemade jerky. A few sojourning Korean young men studying alternative medicine in L.A. joined us with a bottle of soju, something similar to gin. One of the boys wanted to give me a lesson in eating with chopsticks. I wasn't very good at it, but jc can do it just right.

On the drive home, we stopped to look at the stars twinkling in the night sky.

Rose

The Prestige- movie review

link

I had to watch this twice before I "got it". If you guessed that someone in my household likes magic, you'd be close. If you knew that it was jc, you were correct. This was a perfect movie for the Scholar to watch, because it kept even him guessing.

The plot is so multi-layered and unexpected that it surprises at every turn. You can believe nothing that you see. The story follows what seems on one hand to be a senseless, destructive passion; yet the humanity of the characters shines warmly through, leaving you with the hope that just maybe there is some good to be salvaged.

A must see if you don't mind working for it.

rc

Spinach Pancake

Ki'il and the Scholar came by tonight to view The Prestige, which was much better upon the second viewing. I had a stomach bug yesterday, so Ki'il made me a comfort meal of spinach pancake, featured below, and rice porridge with a little zippy soy sauce. It was delicious, as her meals always are, and here are the pics to prove it.



Rose

Sleeping Quarters

Shadow likes to cuddle when she sleeps. Here she is gives jc's foot a hug. Kitties have an excellent sense of smell & they seem to love their people's stinkiest parts.

rc

Pictures of me

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Kierkegaard- Quotes

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.

The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for
which I can live and die.

People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which
they avoid.

Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

Moving Underway

I'm writing from the new place, using the wireless signal from the old place. The cordless telephone picks up the signal here, too. Ki'il helped me move everything from the kitchen this afternoon after we signed the lease. Then jc and I each grabbed a kitty and walked across the street. Shadow cried the whole way. She's still under the impression that she's being tortured or something. Ailleanach is relaxing in the sun in the bay window, enjoying the wraparound view. Now I'm going to cook our first meal in the new home.

Rose

laundry day images

a new basket

kitty bed