Beautiful Day For A Concert

It's very sunny today, so we finally retreated to the shade around 4 30. Terry's talking about going up to the stage for Broken Social Scene, but I'm going to hold down the fort here under the trees. I'll go up for Wilco.

Lollapalooza, Finally!

I woke up at 4am in Richmond, and finally entered the festival in Chicago around 6pm. Terry has been here since Wednesday. No matter, I'm here now. Let the weekend begin!

Waiting for Skordy

When I joined the Rock Babes tour group on the Guitar Hero site, Skordy was the first person to befriend me. We added each other as friends on our wiis, but she's always been offline when I was playing. But tonight she was online so I tried to create a match with her so we can play together. But I've never done this before so I'm not sure if I'm doing it right. I'm just hanging out waiting but I don't even know if she gets a notification right in her game or if I was supposed to set up a meeting time in advance or what.

JW Marriott Cancun

Terry and I stayed at the Marriott when we were in Cancun for Sungard's 100% Club. I can recommend it. The room was spacious, well-decorated, with a large and spotless bath. There were a few pools, and the beach. All were well-stocked with chairs, towels, and umbrellas. The food wasn't great, and the Margaritas were pre-mixed, but room service was prompt and reasonably priced. We had a nice time.

Vacuum-Packed Luggage

I impressed even myself when I was able to pack for 5 days at the beach (including formalwear and a cocktail dress) and 3 days at a ski resort in just one carry-on bag. I did it by compressing my snowboarding outfit in a luggage ziplock bag. It doesn't require a vacuum, just stuff it with bulky clothes, partially seal the top, then press out all the air and finish sealing the bag. I do this by putting the bag on the floor and kneeling on it to use my legs to get it as flat as possible while sealing it up. It doesn't help to reduce the weight of clothes, of course, so it's a relatively heavy thin package. And it doesn't help particularly much with already-thin clothes. But I almost always use it in winter with sweaters, ski jackets, etc. I got mine at LLBean and have been using the same bags for years, although there are other brands available in stores.

Lang vs. Calto

I can't believe I'm having this text. But Terry took me home tonite hours after Calto was falling asleep on the couch. I turned on the TV when I got home and saw KD Lang. She's looking far too much like Joe.

Standing on the Dock of the Bay

Well, perhaps a bit of overstatement in the title. But this is a picture of me standing atop my homemade pier. You can see through the branches that I am standing over the water, yet keeping dry.

Building My Pier

This photo was taken back on 3/13, I'm catching up on posts while I'm on the bus. I started building a pier last year during the drought when the water was too low to launch my raft from the shore. It's completely rudimentary, but I gets the job done. I just place downed tree limbs out into the water until I can walk out over the mud.

Ikea Food

I took a break from shopping for lunch, and was happy that the Ikea was so close. I had intended to it the meatball platter, but saw a picture of salmon with an apple glaze and impetuously ordered that. And I was delighted to find that it looked even better than the photo. This was juxtaposed against my recent memory of the travesty at the Hardees. There I saw a photo of bacon cheese fries that looked so delectable I ordered them. But when they arrived, they look nothing like the photo. I mean, there is no way that photo could have been recreated using the ingredients served to me. What's worse is that they tasted as bad as they looked. I was going to return them uneaten and exchange them for curly fries (which actually were good). But Terry, ever anxious to avoid conflict offered of his curly fries in exchange I let it go. And I, ever eager to enjoy some fries, obliged.

So Bad!

Terry mistakenly ended our computer-TV watching right when Conan was about to start. I stayed up to watch it on ';the big screen';, aka the wall. It was a rerun, but one I hadn't seen. And it was fine until the band. These losers were so bad. I don't remember their name now; I'd say it was Cemetary Texas if I had to guess, but I don't think that's it. It was some guy wearing a baby-blue cape who pressed buttons to play loops, and the male singer wore sunglasses and long braids. They really seemed like they don't have friends and they're a couple of misfits who will probably in play dungeons and dragons after the show. Poor Conan. He deserves better. The sooner Leno drops out, the better.

Beavers!

The beavers had gnawed through most of this sycamore when I checked on it go the fall, but the tree was still standing. I see the beavers finished the job. I'm sorry they targeted this otherwise healthy tree, but since I didn't catch the damage in time to save it, I'm glad it's finally down. It was very dangerous when it was mostly gnawed through but hadn't yet fallen. I intentionally didn't check on it over the winter since I was afraid I'd take one wrong step and it would topple and crush me.

This one I'll have to move.

This tree, while down over a fence that merely separates property and not cattle, nevertheless has squashed a portion of the fence. I'll try to fix it this spring before stuff starts growing up through the downed section and it becomes very hard to right.

What is this?

This lovely old tree has always had a good half and a bad half. But the bad half seems to me to be looking worse than usual. It might not have deteriorated, I haven't been over here to see the tree since fall so I might be misremembering its condition. Regardless, I'll have the tree guy take a look at it when I next get one out here.

Recently Downed Tree

On my way to the back field I was surprised to find a large pine down. The trees along this fenceline generally stay up; this is the first one I've seen come down since we moved here. But I'm not going to deal with it right away since if you look closely you can see that it didn't hurt the fence. So as long as the cattle are contained, there's no hurry to clear the tree.

Onetime Flowerbed

This used to be a flowerbed with a variety of spring bulbs, but as you can see we've let it go. A few crocus and some groundcover are all that's left. But it's just as well since we're redirecting the driveway and it's going to go right over this area.

The Last Purple

This is the very last purple crocus in the onetime flowerbed.

Last Crocus

It was a beautiful day so I took a walk around the back acres. On my way I saw these few remaining crocuses. There were many when we first moved in, but I never did anything for them so they've dwindled.

My Business-Terry

I caught Terry on the way out the door to his conference. Isn't he cute with his lanyard ID?

Driving Shoes

It was somewhat annoying that Terry insisted we spend our first day in Orlando at the mall, but at least it turned out to be a very good mall. They had a Tod's outlet, which I'd not seen before. Coincidentally, I have been searching for a nice pair of driving shoes since I scuffed a pair of ribbon-trimmed stilettos on my dirty car mat a few years back. As it happens, Tod's is the only company I know of that makes driving shoes, but their pricing reflects this lack of competition. But I lucked out and found an adorable pair of driving shoes in my price range as the outlet! Jealous? Ok, you're probably not jealous if you've never wanted a pair of driving shoes, and it is admittedly low on the pyramid of life's necessities. I'm blogging from my phone so I will save my argument in favor of driving shoes for another time.

AT-Segway

 
I had so much fun on the regular Segway, I wanted to try the all-terrain Segway. So I signed both Terry and myself up for the Ft. Wilderness segway tour. We had such fun we spent the rest of the afternoon plotting a business plan for making money selling Segway tours through our farm. We still haven't quite worked that out, but it might be part of the whole hammock camp experience. . .

This, at a Family Resort?

 
I don't think the hotel management ever considered how their pretty pink awning would appear from the balconies of all the rooms on that side of the building. . .

The Seg Way

I took the Around the World Segway tour at Epcot this morning, and had a wonderful time. I couldn't help but grin like a fool the entire time I was zipping around on that thing. It isn't as easy as I thought it would be, but it's certainly not hard. Mostly it's just plain fun.

The Lamb

A few years back I picked up a really sweet Persian lamb jacket at a vintage shop. I wore it a few times, but it was a little too small to be comfortable and so mostly just sat in my closet. But when my hairdresser told me all about how she used to have a persian lamb jacket that she just loved and missed, I knew my jacket had new hope for an active life since Rhonda is petite and the jacket would fit her. I brought it by the salon before I left for Florida and Rhonda obligingly modeled it for my blog.

6 o'clock Scramble

Goddess Chicken with sun dried tomatoes and artichoke hearts-- sounds good, eh? It's the first meal I've tried from the six o'clock Scramble site my sister subscribed me to. I can see how families would think this is great. And it's not bad, don't get me wrong. But I'm ruined since I know how to cook well, so I know exactly what steps were skipped to render this meal's preparation quick, easy and foolproof. And it's those steps that actually make a dish delicious rather than "quick and healthy". Nevertheless, I need to get back into the habit of cooking and I can actually motivate myself to cook these ridiculously simple recipes because I can prepare them in less time than it takes to drive to the Dairy Queen.