I’ve never made a gingerbread house before. I didn’t feel deprived by this (except for maybe a couple years as a youngster that I really wanted to make one when I saw those kits in the grocery store) until I was reminded once again of my lack of experience by being invited to a gingerbread house making party. So I started getting really excited about the party. Here are some of the results.
Our Candy
Hot Cider & Rum
Gingerbread House
Well tomorrow I turn 27. And I’m just going to take a moment to be happy to have made it here. Just over 6 months ago my life could have been altered so dramatically that I might not have made it to this birthday, or not made it all in one piece. For all intents and purposes I am in one piece. I have no more CT scans scheduled and although I’m still not 100% internally, I can run and swim and bike….and I am happy to be here.
Caroline
Well it took me long enough, but this past weekend I wandered back over to the abandoned greenhouse. Walking down the road I became quite sorry I didn’t go a month ago before all the leaves fell to the ground. All the pictures are great though. You can see the whole album here.
I found these comics and thought they were kind of funny. I’m really quite baffled that I’ve gotten back to a point in my life where my list of things to do is so robust I’m actually paralyzed by inaction. This post was the first thing I started doing. Alright, this wasn’t really on my list of things to do, but sometimes you have to deviate. Right? Aside from the million projects I have going on at work (don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled to have such a wide range of projects to be working on…everything from graphic design to web development) TYUL had it’s first board meeting last night. I was kind of dreading it because of the impending amount of action items that were going to come out of it, but sure enough (as I predicted) I was excited enough about youth ultimate that I just kept wracking up the items on my list. Perhaps I actually have to start delegating some work?
Although Halloween isn’t my favorite, I do like pumpkins….the carving, the seeds (and the pie that starts in November)…. I found this great picture via Two Brunettes…. Amazing. Check out the whole post….
I mentioned before that I started exploring my road. I think I also mentioned my wonderful encounter with Daisy rolling in cow shit. {As a side note, a neighbor found her collar!} Here are some of the other pictures from my road…I’m hoping to get back to the abandoned greenhouse and cornfield later this week.
Here’s Daisy, loving running down the road. This was before the ‘rolling in cow shit’ incident.
And the cows…. (I’m scowling…).
I’ve been experimenting with letting daisy run around the neighborhood. I thought maybe because the weather was so wet and cold tonight that she’d go to the bathroom in the yard and come back to the door in a few minutes. Well as it was getting close to bed time (at least an hour after I’d let her out) I thought I’d go look for her. Sure enough she was in the neighbors yard, down a few houses. She made me chase her around a while before she got in the car, at which moment I became acutely aware that she had been rolling in cow shit. Rolling in shit and dead stuff is one of her FAVORITE past-times. Unfortunately. Not only was she covered in shit, but her collar was missing. Awesome. And giving her a bath isn’t the most pleasant of activities either. I think it is safe to say I won’t be allowing her to run free around the neighborhood anymore.
I started exploring my ‘neighborhood’ this past weekend. {Note: My ‘neighborhood’ is a country road with a majority of inhabitants living in mobile homes.} I’ve stumbled upon some very interesting things and places and I can’t wait for the light to be right to go back and shoot them. I wandered down what appeared to be a deserted gravel driveway, but about a quarter mile down I ran into an overgrown, run down, obviously long deserted, greenhouse. It was eerie and actually quite scary (we all know how good my imagination is)….I felt like I should be in an X-files episode… ug. I think you’ll get it when you see the pictures… but there was also something pretty fantastic about it. The next incredible discovery came when I walked down the service road to the big power lines running perpendicular to the road. I thought this would be a great little path to run on (once I’m allowed). I walked a little ways down this road and ran into a corn field. Not just any corn field. It looked long dead. And was ringed around the outside with 4-wheeler tracks. I’m really curious about the life and death of the corn field…very curious. Anyway, not so sure that will be a great place to run, as the ring around the corn field is littered with smashed corn stalks…probably not so stable for the knees…ankles….spleen? haha.
Last night I managed to take a few shots of some of my neighbors (the cows). The sun was setting gloriously over the hills and as I enjoyed my surroundings I stumbled upon a little lady bug….
Ok, first off, I kinda hate Halloween. I mean, I think I liked it as a kid…dressing up, getting a @&*! ton of candy (what person under 16 doesn’t like getting a @&*! ton of candy?)…but it was sometime in my late teens that I started feeling like dressing up and asking for candy was lame.
Then I went to UNC where the Halloween festivities are inexorably linked to massive mobs of drunk college kids stumbling down Franklin Street, competing for the most inventive, funny, cheapest (insert chosen adjective here) outfit…and I admit there are some good ones. There’s nothing to DO, per se on Franklin street on Halloween night except people watch and avoid getting pushed into a fire. Well, I partook in said mob my freshman year, and maybe one other time when I was actually of age and, sorry to say…. it ain’t no big thing. Once would have been enough.
Anyway, I digress, originally I wanted to write this post about the resurgence of vampires and zombies in popular culture and ask WTF? Anyone have any thoughts on this? OR firstly, maybe I should ask if people have noticed the phenomenon? Aside from usual Halloween fanfare….haven’t there been an unusually high number of vampire related tv shows and movies? I’m pretty sure the blame lies with the Twilight series… a series I didn’t read. {Anna read them and admitted they were pretty much crap but impossible to put down. Do I hate or love those kinds of books? Who knows.} But my curiosity is piqued by vampires and zombies and I am wondering what it is about them, OR what it is about our current society that breeds this popularity?
One thing that I find pretty fascinating about vampires and zombies and mummies {aside from what I think about their current popularity} is that they all have origins in reality. I actually didn’t know that zombies had anything to do with reality until I listened to this podcast (which is GREAT). And that’s all the time I have right now….
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