Monday, January 31, 2011

Road Trip!

Bob's birthday was this week, so we decided on a little road trip to Albany.  There's a very nice zoo/wildlife park there.  I've been there before, but with a group of summer camp kids. 

When we got into town, we saw a sign for the Flint Riverquarium, and decided to hit that first.  What an amazing find!  It's a gorgeous site with beautiful displays.  And I never knew that sturgeon could live in this area.

Like most museums, this one is designed for kids, and who said there's an age limit on being a kid?  The tunnel led around to various back views of the displays, plus a chance to be a display yourself.




We did eventually go on to Chehaw Wildlife Park.  On a weekday, in winter--we had it almost to ourselves.  Much more peaceful than herding a group of kids on a hot summer day.  It was chilly, but sunny, and the alligators were all taking naps.  What is slightly unnerving is that I was not using a zoom to take this picture.  I did use the zoom on the big toothy guy--don't want to get too close to that!







Saturday, January 22, 2011

Splitting wood

A chilly winter means fires in the fireplace--which means splitting the wood from those trees we had taken down last spring.    Now that we've reached "a certain age" (to put in delicately) we decided to take the easy route--and bought a log splitter.  It's not motorized or gas-driven, so there's still exercise involved--just not the heavy jolting of whacking something with an ax.  And some of those big gnarly pieces were pretty good at resisting an ax--but not hydraulic + woman power!  Here's the toy, and the result of about an hour of playing with it.  And now I'm sitting by a well-earned fire!



Monday, January 17, 2011

So much for resolutions

But I am at least posting again . . .

Since last post:  Went to a old-fashioned soda fountain in town and were lucky enough to be there when the owner got in three antique (late 1800's) candy cutting machines.  They're lovely display pieces in their own right, but they also work.  Later that afternoon we watched old-fashioned hard candies being made and cut with them.  The Victorians were so cool about having everything be over-decorative.

I've had the bad luck to come down with tinnitus.  This just means that I have a constant loud shrilling in my ears--it's enough to drive one totally batty.  Alas--moden western medicine has no solution beyond "try to drown it out with a radio".  So it's time for alternative solutions.  So far I'm taking vitamin B complex, drinking water with concentrated cholorphyll in it, and tryin acupunction.  But the real sign of desperation is that I am walking around with radish seeds taped to my ears.  In theory this is to apply pressure to acupressure points.  But it does make me feel like I've gone off the deep end.
Bob's been doing some amazing work on his models.  I felt it was a shame that documention consisted of, at best, putting it on a table and snapping a picture.  So I rigged up a mini-shooting studio (and, of course, didn't get a picture of that) with a clear plastic storage box and several clamp-on lights.  Must say that for a first try, the results aren't bad.  Going to have to talk Brother Michael into doing something similar for his woodturned pieces.

And I've woven a couple of scarves.  The black-and-white one is handspun alpaca for Bob (there's a picture of it on the loom in an earlier post) and the copper-and-green  one is rayon chenille for me.

So see?  I have been busy.  So there