The great thaw of 2008

Spring has sprung, the birds are singing, and everything is greening up and blooming. My fave tree in the yard is this cherry willow. I took the shots of this tree on Friday, April 18th. At mid-day, many of the blossoms had just opened up - widely. The day before, they were all just buds.

Then, last night, we did a little cooking on the grill - outdoors - without coats - and burned some scrap wood in the firepit. It was a fantastic evening, and at one point, my friend Jim suggested taking night-photos of the cherry willow. I thought that was a good idea, but reminded him that my tripod got 'accidentally broken into pieces' during our Christmas hike up K2. So, sans tripod, and sans flash (I hate flash), here is my fave shot of the cherry willow at night:

...and this one is Jim's fave. The difference between them is the ground spotlight. In my photo, we have that light diffused (albeit through a dish towel). In Jim's preference, below, we see spotlight unabashed.
So, Happy Spring, y'all!

Whaa......Spring??

While I'm still hesitant to put the coats and jackets away, I have finally moved the snow shovel from the deck back into the garage. I was so eager for spring this year I started growing some things indoors. My favorite: the tulips!!


And, it seems this week everything in NW Ohio not only enjoyed good weather (one day getting up to 77!), but also began vigorously sprouting and blooming. Which means I am spending more time outdoors.....

This shot is of my tulip tree. It's like a naked magnolia, except the flowers are a little less sturdy than regular southern magnolias, and a little less fragrant, but not by much. There are a few trees like this in the neighborhood, and at first glance, I can't help but think that someone's tree has recently been tp'd. Albeit creatively.

I've got a scattering of daffodils in the front, back, and side yards...

And new this year, two forsythia bushes.

Animistic Fun!

I don't want to be one of those folks who sends 2 dozen photos of all their kids' or pets' antics to everyone in their email list (a few is fine, thanks friends!) - so instead, I'm going to load some recent pet photos here. I've mentioned before that Djiini (pron.: Genie) just hates to be photographed face-on. She's really camera shy - I've tried several times to get a good facial or close-up shot. I've been very unsuccessful. But, I was recently able to capture her in one of her more odd positions: sitting on the back deck, monitoring the yard for squirrels. (That's the old bbq in the background.)
And, on one other occasion, I was able to bribe her into a face shot with the carrot of "wanna go for a WALK?" Of course, this only worked once, and in a low-light situation, I wasn't able to get a crisp shot. So, this will have to do.

Now, with Kathman(du), I've got no problem getting portrait-style shots out of him. He looks directly at me, even in low light requiring long exposures (and by nature, stillness). He is a zen-cat. Here, he's peering down from his perch atop the bookcase:

...and, still on the bookcase, not at all perturbed by my many photo attempts, here he is at eye level: perched, but not really ready to pounce.

Where in the World is it the 21st,, the 22nd, and the 12th century - simultaneously? Why Nepal, of course!

Happy New Year, or Navavarsha, Nepal! Today, April 12, 2008, is the Nepali New Year: 2065, or 1129, 2140, or continuing 2008 - take your pick.

Not to be forgotten, the large number of Tibetan refugees in Nepal celebrated Tibetan New Year, or Losar, previously - on February 28th. By this Sherpa calendar, derived from Tibetan and Chinese calendars, February 28th turned the page into the year 2140.

On the Nepali Sambat calendar, today is the first day of 1127 for the Newar people of Nepal, who count the years since a prominent citizen paid off all outstanding debts to provide a new beginning for his countrymen.

The current government calendar, the Bikram Sambat, is a North Indian calendar adopted in Nepal in the early 1900s. By the Bikram Sambat calendar it is 2065. This according to multiple Nepali friends, who generously sent me well wishes for "2065 BS". However, Kantipor - Kathmandu's main newspaper, the last day of 2060 BS faded without much ceremony - yesterday.

These are of course in conjunction with the western Gregorian calendar, which is more predominantly used for commerce.

And all of this comes amidst a hive of other activity for the tiny country: Tibetan protests against the Chinese embassy, and the related crackdowns; and an election.

The election was for a constituent assembly, and occurred on April 10th, 2008, 2064 BS (or 2060 BS), 1126 NS, or 2140. This election will decide the fate of Nepal's future: federalism, or continuing the monarchy - a pivotal point in its history. This was no small feat for those who voted. You think things are hectic here with a mostly 2 party system - try choosing candidates from a choice of 55 parties!

P. S. - Additional April New Year Celebrations...

Well, seems I've inadvertently overlooked several other New Year's celebrations. Not to be dissed, Happy New Year to Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Tamil New Year (Sri Lanka, Singapore), and the Dai of Yunnan, China.

What, March Already? And it's almost over...

March in NW Ohio is, obviously, not much to write about. Our winter cycle has been, for the most part, Snow - Melt - Rain - Flood - Repeat. Except, finally, at the end of March, we've had a few snow- and rain-free days. The coming week promises daily rain, with swollen rivers and creeks, so while the Snow - Melt cycle seems to have faded, the Rain - Flood cycle will likely continue.

At any rate, I've been neglecting updating the blog. I'm sorry. Where to start. OK - early March, snow, and sun. Opportunity for a good walk with the dog, which yielded only one photo in which she did not point her butt toward the camera. I think she's lens-shy.


Next is a photo of the scarily long icicles hanging from the west side of the house. (All the weather, for the most part, hits the west side). I shot this from inside my bedroom, so outside, from the edge of the roof, they looked much longer. I hear that's bad to see - could reflect ice damming in the gutters - but to my relief, all the other houses showed the same cold weather impact. I took the photo from inside because, well, I didn't want to layer up to go outside just to snap a photo.


These next few pics don't reflect my excitement about Spring's arrival. While it's here according to the calendar, many signs that I've noted in my previous Springs here. (Of note is that I have been here for more than one Spring.) At any rate, there are a few spots in the yard that can reliably signal the start of spring - a few patches of seemingly randomly sewn little crocuses (I think):


....and a singular little patch of Snowdrops (the viney stuff to the right, fortunately, stays green year-round), ...


.....and finally, a mystery patch. I'd have to look back at last year's photos, if I have any, of this section of the landscaping. But, I seem to remember Daffodils emerging here, and neither of these plants look like Daffodils. The light green shoots are the only ones like them in my yard, and, as far as I can tell, in the neighborhood. I have no idea what they are. I'm hoping the darker green grouping might be Tulips (!!!). Last year, there was one single Tulip in the yard, and it was about in this area. The previous year, there were none.


Can you see the little crocuses in the photo below?

Here they are!!

Here's hoping for a green spring!

Yeah!!!!!! SNOW!!!!!!!

.......is what I was thinking as a result of our recent local weather forecast, calling for 3-5 inches on Thursday night, and another 3-5 inches on Friday night!!! I couldn't wait to try out my newly adopted sport, skijoring. This sport, originated in Norway, is one in which a dog (or dogs) are hooked up via harness and belt to a person, and tow that person on skis. In my version, since I have no skis, I strap Djiini up with her car-riding seatbelt harness. She never wears this in the car, but it has a similar x-back design, which is better than just hooking up her leash. Then, I take her shorter leash, wrap it around my waist, and clip it to her longer leash, which is attached to her harness. We then step out into the back alley, whereupon I put down my cheap-o sled. My sled was actually much cheaper than the one in the link: instead of handles, it just has cut-out holes to grab on to. So, what I did was to enlarge two of the cutout holes so that I could stick my shoes through them, to ride the sled on my butt rather than my stomach. This also allows me some steering opportunity, albeit via a leash and dog. The only requirement: SNOW! Which we really haven't had much of this winter. I was so excited about the prospect, I kept looking through the windows Thursday night - waiting for the snowfall.

Imagine my disappointment when, upon waking Friday morning, what I saw outside was not at ALL what is pictured above, shot by my friend John S. in Colorado sometime in 2007. I'm still hoping for another skijoring opportunity this year.......

Just Your Ordinary January evening....

Spent eating some grilled steak, rice & veggies, bruschetta, fresh snickerdoodles, german beer, black coffee, a roaring fire, and in the company of two of my favorite animals.

What YOU, gentle viewers, have been up to...

I have to give credit to JKirlin for the "gentle viewers" moniker. I probably know very few of you, and for all I know, you could be smearing yourselves with peanut butter while reading this.

A quick perusal at my Sitemeter stats over the last couple of months shows a few interesting trends in the readers who visit the site. First off, thanks for visiting, and re-visiting! Next time you do so, would you mind logging into some server or network in a really obscure place on the map, so my map's red dots can fill in more fully? I need a few hits from Outer Mongolia, or all of Central Asia, for that matter, to help fill in the blanks on my world map hit-shower.

Apparently, a couple of folks are really interested in the following posts, in this order (with links!):

• Various Nepali holy day festivals
• Ankor Wat, Cambodia (and every spelling iteration imaginable)
• The post about my dog potentially having OCD
• Iframe, Morocco - the mountain retreat
• The 2006 Christmas Shot (not the 2o07 version). Sorry all you who thought that this was an actual, drinkable shot recipe
• My front porch railing repair (perhaps because I used the term "This Old House" in the post title? hmmmm)
• Cherry Pie (sorry, a friend made that and I don't have the recipe)
• And finally, one that makes absolutely no sense to me. Now, I can see the others getting lots of hits because of travel, food, or home repair interests...I get that. But this one? I have no idea...Marty & Kendra's son, Gabe....aka, Dolphin Boy

At any rate, thanks for reading!!

I've bagged K2!!!

Well, this was a goal I didn't think I'd accomplish this year. At least not before year-end. But, as luck would have it, circumstances allowed the most perfect window of opportunity. It took some huevos, though, and without my friend Jim to climb lead, I wouldn't have been able to reach a previously unattainable goal.......summiting K2. Especially not on a spontaneous decision made just Christmas morning of this year (aka, yesterday). My minutes of training were about to pay off!

The landscape is so sweeping, I couldn't fit the entire summit scope into one photo and had to do a bit of a collage mash-up:


It was a pretty cold day for climbing.....but I managed to get this shot snapped before the gales blew my tripod over. Jim's summit pose:
While I struggled to shoot photos with some event integrity, Jim opted - during his turn behind the camera, and my turn to summit - to document my clumsy ascent:

oops, never mind the ladder.....or the cornfields, or the barn either, for that matter....
...and a Rocky Balboa-style fist-pump....

Finally, the last summit shot!


Finally, got THAT off my life list, and a couple of years early, to boot. Bring it on, ought-8!!

The 800th Post! or, Christmas Eve 2007

So, another year's Christmas is among us. I've been especially jolly with this one, for some inexplicable reason. I've spent much of the afternoon and the evening baking goodies for friends....what I like to call a mini-epicurean artistic experimentation.

I wanted to try a new twist on my nearly famous low-fat pumpkin pie. It includes layering marshmallow creme on the pie crust before adding the punkin'y goodness, in which I have an admittedly heavy 'spice' leaning. But that's another post. At any rate, when I went grocery shopping (after Tom's pre-New Year's Eve party, probably not the best idea) I couldn't find marshmallow creme. So I got marshmallows instead. And of course, the first pie turned out horribly, horribly wrong.

What is supposed to happen is that the marshmallow creme marbles through the pie filling and in places, bubbles over the top, to add a fake meringue-type covering. What actually happened was kind of that, but not. I carefully layered the small marshmallows on the bottom of the pie crust before adding the filling, taking care to even spritz them with butter and coat them with spices. Then I slowly added the pie filling. Turns out, marshmallows float. So even before going into the oven, it was visual chaos.

To add to that, I used a whole can of fat-free evaporated milk (12 ounces) instead of a true cup (8 ounces). So besides being visually chaotic, it was a runny, soupy mess. I baked it anyway. It's still runny. (But not so much that my cat & dog weren't able to feel as though, briefly, I baked a pie especially for them.)

Which reminds me: Tom & Maria - sorry I wasn't able to come through on that pie I told you I was making for you guys......

So, with the second pie, I adjusted accordingly. I microwaved a bowlful of marshmallows, but must have overdone it - because the result was a yellow-ish series of globs resembling melted plastic, by sight, smell, and consistency. I had to throw away my rubber spatula! So I tried again, half the time, to zap the marshmallows. This time, it resembled marshmallow creme, but that apparently doesn't spread so well on a graham cracker crust. So the underlayer of marshmallow creme ended up being kind of star-shaped, rather than covering the entire base of the pie crust.

Then I got creative, and added marshmallows around the border. Then I thought it might be neat to try to make a Christmas Tree out of marshmallows on the pie. I even cut cold marshmallows with angles for the tree (pre-cooking), but of course, none of that effort remained after cooking. The end result, though, is much better by comparison. I had some left over during my third pie, so made a small snack-size pie for myself. I figured I should at least taste my new recipe iteration before gifting it to others!! (It was an insulin-overloading taste explosion, if I say so myself.)

So here is the first pie: a picked off scabby topped goo:


...and here is its refined version (much better looking!). Now this pie was able to pass the quality test for gift-giving, for looks (meh) if not for taste (spicy!) :


While waiting for my second pie to complete, and before making a batch of Snickerdoodles, I took a walk along South Main, to see the luminaries. These are lit by homeowners all along S. Main on Christmas Eve. The neatest part: whole families were out strolling along the walks, and each one to a person that is encountered offers wishes of "Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!" It's like the happy ending part of some Dickensian tale.

So, with that, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

It's a Picture-Perfect White Christmas!!

...That's what I thought when I viewed this photo from a friend, J. Stevens, taken in Colorado earlier this year. Oh, well - a girl can always dream!

YAAAY!!! SNOW!!!

The first real snowfall this year happened for much of the central and eastern states this week, so this corner of NW Ohio was included in that sweeping series of fronts. FINALLY!! There is very little that's more peaceful than spending an afternoon out on foot, in fresh snow. It's got such a wonderful non-smell....smell. The absence of smell. And sounds seem much more hushed. The most wonderful way to spend a Sunday is watching a day's worth of snow falling - slowly at times, furiously and blowing at others. I didn't take as many (good) shots as I thought....but here are a few.

The first was an "ohmygod" moment....of course I imagine the worst in terms of ice dams along the roof/gutter joins, but then, every house had icicle arrays.

a little drift!!
This rosebush is so jammed up on its seasons - poor thing was trying to bloom a late bud - that instead froze solid on the fence. Goody photo op for me, tho!

Have a seat! I love that you can see how wonderfully the snow piled up here. Despite the blowing. This is some great, snowman potential snow. Now, to dust off my old Calvin and Hobbes ideas....
I inherited this birdhouse with the house. It has never had a roof, and as far as I know, it's never had birds, either.
Still the cutest damn gingerbread house on the block!

Crabapples that the birds didn't get to...

Latest photos......

On a recent road trip nearly cross-country, with my new dog Djiini, I learned what the true meaning of luxury is. Lying stretched out in the passenger seat listening to some funky interesting music, dozing, while someone else gets to deal with traffic! That stick-thing with cloth butting the end against the window? My new old scythe. Everyone should have a long, heavy, rusty-bladed farm implement for decor inside a house with an active dog-cat relationship.....

....and that traffic wasn't fun. Or fast. This sign was in place to slow Thanksgiving traffic on interstates, but in this case, it was merely a miserable reminder of how long it would be to drive thru Cincinnati.

Well, the decorations are up, and if I do say so myself, it looks a little ginger-bready this year. But still the best on the block....meager as the decorations are......


Our first real snow of the season was picture perfect - a powdery still 4 inches or so!

My New Kitchen Commode.....

I picked up a commode this weekend, and put it in my kitchen. It's the old style that was basically a cupboard to contain ye olde chamberpot and such. But, I'm going to use it for something it was never intended.......food. Pet food, to be exact.

...playing with the sepia toning feature......

...and not.

My dog's food is stored in a nice, airtight container of thick plastic that my cat can't get to. I store cat food in the fridge crisper drawer, because my cat is an omnivore and can get to it if I place it in any cupboard, using child safety restraints, or even in plastic airtight containers. Unfortunately, I don't buy the volume of cat food that I do dog food, so I don't find it worth the effort to buy a large container like the one I keep the dog food in. Or have that much temptation on hand for Kathman. But - I just know he won't be able to pull open a drawer or turn the handle to unlatch the chamber pot door to get to his food in its airtight container.

So, it's in the Commode with the cat food - and even better that I now have a surface that is not my kitchen table to hold things like mail, keys, the occasional surprise flower bouquet from a friend, etc.