Happy Halloween

It was a good thing that Halloween was on a Saturday this year! We ended up carving 12 pumpkins - including 3 that we grew ourselves! Great fun was had...

Seasonal Color

After our long, hot, dry summer we seem to have moved directly into winter. I know I mentioned this before, but... it's a shock when one day the dahlias are blooming profusely and the pumpkin vines are shading some still-green fruit and the next we are cleaning up black spongy remains of stems and leaves, burned beyond hope by a heavy frost.

So I'm trying to get back into step. Trying to adjust to the abrupt change. And truly I've been enjoying the fall color - while driving through the tree-lined streets on my way to work this last week, and sitting by my 2nd floor office window looking out onto the urban jungle that is Redmond. Yesterday the wind picked up and we had a terrific swirling storm of leaves just flying off the trees, burying the parked cars below, revealing the tree trunks as if by time-lapse photography.

Today, at home, Mark mowed over the last of the leaves from our big oak - thankfully before they all ended up getting blown into our neighbor's yard. All crushed up, they will return what they took from the earth last spring. There are still some green trees though, so maybe we'll have a second mini-fall season before it gives up entirely.

And on the river trail in our little valley the leaves were thick this afternoon when we went out for a walk, crunching wonderfully beneath our shoes. Tomorrow it is supposed to rain again.

And the river is already rising!

Right place, right time

We were driving down the country road that connects our little town to the next one - a winding little two lane road through corn fields and grazing land - when I saw what just HAD to be a pheasant standing on the side of the road. Right coloring, right profile for a pheasant... but I've never seen a pheasant in Washington outside of a State Fair pen with an earnest 4H-er standing by. How odd. So odd that I wondered if that is really what it could have been. Mark hadn't seen it, after all...

You know how it is sometimes, whizzing by at 60 mph.

We finished running the errand that had brought us out in the first place, and headed back home again - same road, opposite direction - about an hour later. Sure enough. There stood a pheasant by the side of the road.

Maybe not so odd though. On the OTHER side of the road, about 30 yards from where the bird was hanging out, was a place for hunters to park their trucks while they tramped through the fields with their dogs, trying to flush out ducks during fall hunting season. The pheasant was on the 'safe' side of the road, the hunters all heading in the opposite direction - open season 'over there,' safe harbor 'over here.'

A bird in the right place, at the right time.

A little of this and that

In keeping with the 'diary' aspect of blogging, I wanted to make note of a few things here:

On the local front:

We had 4 raccoons visit again over the weekend. They knocked on the door (literally) so I think it was probably 'our' little family group again - I wonder where they've been? Since there was a news report last week of some poor woman being killed (shredded, actually) by a group of raccoons that she was trying to shoo off her back porch, I'm a little less thrilled to see them, all grown up now but still together...

We had a hard frost on Saturday night that burned the leaves on the pumpkins, the dahlias, and the coleus, so we had to do some clean-up on Sunday. We have 3 big ripe orange pumpkins and 4 small white ones, as well as one small-ish green one that we are hoping will ripen, but even if it doesn't, it looks nice. Not a bad crop, I guess.

On the national front:

The hilarity that resulted from the announcement of President Obama being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize ten months into his presidency and with no actual accomplishments behind him as yet, is worth recording for posterity as well. Public comments included speculation that the standards for an honorary degree at ASU appear to be more exacting than for a Nobel Peace prize. Some kind soul pointed out that, while there may be very few items checked off his 'to do' list, the president DID actually host a peace conference between a professor and a cop. (On the down side, he hasn't really helped with the whole Jon and Kate mess...) Several folks lamented that the award came on the day the US declared war on the moon - bad timing I suppose. But then the whole thing seems to have been a phenomenal case of bad timing. Anyway, someone else allowed as how the president should get the Nobel prize for chemistry too - he HAS 'great' chemistry, if one listens to his fans on NBC at least - and another broadened the discussion to the notion that MLB should just go ahead and give the world series championship to the Yankees because of their aspirations. My favorite? "Bonk, Bonk, Bonk, Bonk" (That's the sound of Hillary Clinton's head banging against the wall.)

Anyway, winter, it appears, is here. (Not sure what happened to fall, but we seem to have missed it here in the northwest.) There is much going on in the world to enjoy.

20,000 miles

My 'new' car rolled over to 20,000 miles this morning. It is almost exactly one year old. How do these things happen?

Well, I mean I know HOW it happened, but I'm still surprised at how QUICKLY it happened. Are we THAT mobile? I guess we are.

We drove to South Dakota last year shortly after buying the car - and came home from that trip with coyote damage to the front grill. Fortunately no other damage has been sustained, but it doesn't exactly smell like a new car any more. We drove it to Tucson for Christmas, down and back from Portland quite a few times, and then out to Wyoming and back to South Dakota just recently. We've been south to the Oregon coast, west to the Washington coast, north to Bellingham, east to Leavenworth; we've been to see tulips, craft shows, hiking trails and gardens. We've gone ferry riding, errand running, island hopping, grocery shopping, mountain climbing, and 'best-clam-chowder' searching all over the state.

Even so. 20,000 miles is a lot in one year. I'm beginning to have guilt about conspicuous consumption.

But probably won't change my ways. We've having too much fun to do that.

Here's to the next 20!

Something of Interest

I just want to point the reader to a website for "Improbable Research" which honors said researchers for, you guessed it, their improbable research. Findings honored this year include the fact that fleas on dogs jump higher than fleas on cats and the reason pregnant women don't just fall over from imbalance, and, well... read it for yourself. (Link provided - just click on the underlined text.)

(Don't miss: "Does Knuckle Cracking Lead to Arthritis of the Fingers?", Donald L. Unger, Arthritis and Rheumatism, vol. 41, no. 5, 1998, pp. 949-50 - which outlines 60 years of personal research. Kudos to Mr. Unger, that's for sure.)

I love finding this sort of thing on the internet. It gives me faith in the world. We're going to be alright if we can still have a sense of humor. If irony lives on, we too can persevere. People pursuing their passions and following a train of thought out to the very end - we need more of those. Curiosity and brains are a wonderful combination.