No-show in 94

And here I thought Nightingales were going to be camped next to us... they never showed up.

Heh.

I am excited to be getting my King Rocker t-shirt in the very near future - should be here any day now!

Have a smashing day.

My camping reading

I am back from camping, well rested and ready to return to work.

I devoured one book while sitting in the woods - The Darwin Affair by Tim Mason.

I grabbed the ARC when I attended ALA Midwinter earlier this year.  It caught my interest, and I dare say it lived up to expectations.

The tale is a good thriller, set in Victorian England and full of interesting characters - including some who actually lived.  The bad people are quite dislikable, and the worst has tendencies on the level of Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs.  He is NOT a nice person.

I don't want to give anything away - I recommend it!

Into the woods we go...

Au revoir!

We are off to the forest for a few days to escape the July 4th madness.

Personal fireworks are not legal where we live now, and I've only heard a handful of isolated booms over the last few days.  However, we had such a good time last year that we're headed back to Newhalem.

We've reserved a site in the loop that was overrun by a forest fire a few years ago.  It reopened last year, and while walking around we decided it looked interesting.  It's also far away from the amphitheater and the walk-in camping (which is always really crowded).  It will be interested and a little different than being in the heavy woods!

Time to get moving.  See you in a few days!

Don't stop until you're finished

There are some things that must not be left half finished, such as removal of pampas grass.

Burn it if you like.

But after you burn it, you must finish the job.

If not, it WILL return to mock your feeble efforts.

Why does it smell like smoke?

Yesterday in one of Michael's messages from home he mentioned he could smell woodsmoke, but could not figure out where it was coming from.

We are entering the dry time here, and the possibility of fire increases every day.  But we live in the city now, so the most likely type of fire is a grass fire along I-5.

When I got home, I could smell it too - a lingering smell that was very much like a campfire.

So weird!

Shortly I took the dog out for his evening walk.  One of his favorite routes is to head to the other side of I-5 on the overpass.  There's a wide view from there, and I didn't see any lingering smoke in the air.

But when we got to the other side of the overpass - mystery solved!

A couple of months ago there was a house fire at the very first house across the overpass.  A lovely 100-year old house went up in flames one afternoon.  Recently they've been cleaning the house out, and yesterday I saw they had removed the entire front porch.  Workers were sweeping inside the house, which appeared to be pretty gutted.

I'm going to guess the smell was wafting across the way as they deconstructed the house and threw all the burned wood into the dumpster or a truck to haul away.

Poor house.  I'll be interested to see where they go from here.  It looks significantly damaged.  Will they rebuild exactly as it was?  We'll see...

Life in the Convergence Zone

A few months ago we moved to a new home much closer to my work.  The shorter commute - 15 minutes rather than an hour and 15 minutes - is wonderful.  My body is especially happy that it's not sitting in a car all day.

The weather is much different here, even though as the crow flies we're not that far from our old home.  North Whidbey is in the Olympic rain shadow, and is strongly affected by the westerly winds off of the water.  Temperatures are usually 5-10 degrees cooler than along the northern I-5 corridor.

Now we live in the area where the Puget Sound Convergence Zone occurs.  When it happens, the weather can get a little wild, including thunder and lightning.  T&L was a rarity at our old home, so I'm excited to live in a spot where it's more likely to occur.  We already had one very loud storm wake us in the middle of the night a couple of months ago.

Yesterday when I arrived home from work these almost mammatus clouds were lurking above our house...

They were trying!  Some did form down in Seattle earlier in the day.

In 2007 when we were visiting South Dakota the day we went to the Badlands was quite stormy.  I had fun with one of the photos I snapped as we were driving along.

Bring on the wild weather - I love it!

A lust for paper products

Hello friends - I have a problem.

It's not an horrible problem - certainly not life-threatening in any way.  Unless the buildup of unused and half-used notebooks becomes so large as to crush me.

I suppose it could happen.

For two years I subscribed to Field Notes.  They're lovely little items, and while I'm using many of them for different things I'm still giving them away.  Though looking at what I have unused, I'm pretty much down to what I want to keep for myself. Aren't they lovely?

Then along came Cognitive Surplus - I've restrained myself and only have one of their notebooks, but I am so tempted by them!

Ants!  I love them so.

This morning I was suckered into clicking on a Facebook (damn you!) advert for a company called INK+VOLT.

Swoon.

So many notebooks and planners.  This one, however, speaks to me.

I must use up some of the other notebooks before buying another, or so I tell myself.

Thank goodness it's time to get ready for work, otherwise I may succumb to my weakness for paper!