Out on the Town!

Monday we went to try on costumes and to do a little publicity for the play.  We started at the library and the kids did the garden scene, the queen did REALLY well reigning in her 'fit' to keep from scaring the smaller kids. 

After the library, we went to the park and they sang and handed out flyers and enchanted people.  It IS awesome to see a giant white rabbit running around with a king and queen and Alice!  Chandler looked so horrible, that's the point-the Duchess is ugly.  But she had on green and blue eyeshadow and bright lipstick, a pink dress and a blonde curly wig, so the little girls thought she was so pretty!  hahahaha!  Never mind the age lines and the fact that her makeup was hit or miss and she had a huge mole with a HAIR in it.  hahahaha!

I have been hard at work on my 2 little projects I volunteered to take on, building a frame for White Rabbit's house and coming up with a breakable cup that is not dangerous.  The van is crammed full of pvc pipe and fittings for the frame, so after that's put together that will be done.  The cup is proving to be a HUGE pain in the ass.  We need it by Friday, so I am running out of time to concoct something.  Sugar glass is no good-the break down rate is too fast.  It starts to melt and ooze about an hour after it sets.  I cut up a plastic cup and glued it back together, but for the glue to give when it hits the ground, it has to be lighter than what's needed to hold it together.  If that makes sense.  Enough glue to keep it from falling apart when handled is so much that it won't fall apart when it hits the floor. 

So, knowing I got no sewing or crafting skillz, I have opted to fall back on what I can do and that's shoot children. 

The kids are having a blast, though I did have to reassure Chandler than ONE DAY she would get to play a beautiful girl in a play.  : )  It was good being able to get to know some of the other actors better.

We go back today for a work day and tonight is a long rehearsal, I am looking forward to tomorrow and a nice day off to be home and...clean the house.  *sigh*  I need to mow, too. 

Afternoon with friends

We had a brief but very nice visit with Katy and a surprise bonus Julie this afternoon!  I intended to wander around and take more photos, but got caught up chatting and then Matt called to say he was off work early!  Next time...

Through the glass door, the polarization filter on the camera did a cool thing with the grass color!

 It's Frankenzucchini! 

We got to stop by 3 libraries, I may have enough books to get through the weekend now!

Monday, NBTS Party and more!

Yesterday was a LONG day! 

I got up with Matt at 4:30 and e-mailed Teresa because it's a 12 hour difference now and the math is not as hard as it was.  hahaha.  I have all these sticky notes charting the time difference between here and her ship, first when it was 10 p.m. here, it was 5 a.m. there and so on.  Now she's on the way back!  That's so exciting, I know she will be SO glad to be back on solid ground again and back to her family.

Since I was up anyway, I decided to get a jump on the day and we got the kids up (at 6:45) and we went ahead and dropped Matt off at work to keep from taking 2 cars into town.  The kids and I went on over to the clinic where I did the weigh-in and measurements and blood test for our insurance.  I am interested to see what my blood test results are, I have been a little worried about diabetes, enough that I dropped 15% of my weight last year.  It does not run in the family, but anything that can affect my eyes or my mobility later is NOT worth a slice of cake now.  I will feel better when I see what the results are.

After that, we had breakfast (egg and cheese croissants, SO yummy) and sat at the restaurant for a while, chatting about what movies are getting wrong these days and Jake gave me a full run-down of super heroes and how they all interconnect again.  He can do the same thing with Greek, Roman, Norse and Egyptian gods.  I wonder what skill category that falls into?  Total recall of made-up beings, their powers, positions and influence.  hahaha!  We tried it with the Presidents, but it does not stick.

The kids were sighing about the library when it occurred to me-it opened at 9!  We had nearly an hour to cruise the stacks before the pool opened!  They whooped and headed for the door.  The man in the booth behind us said, 'Those are not normal children.'  hahahaha!  I said, "Thank you SO much for saying so!"  Beaming, we left for the library.

It took barely 10 minutes for Jake and Chan to pile up my basket, so I got Jake to carry it for me while Ben and I looked for books for him.  He is not a big reader, in the past he has only agreed to books that were about building, doing, making, history or other facts.  I picked up a few Bunnicula books at an easy-reader level with bigger print and he went through them in a single day.  So we picked up more of those, he chose a couple chapter books and I added a few Dahl books for him, too.  I am so excited he's gotten more interested in reading!  Jake found the new Alex Rider book, he was very happy about that.  I LOVE the library.  It it was $100 a month to be a member, I would probably find a way to budget it in, it's that vital to our lives and we get that much use out of it.  We go 2-3 times a month and leave with several hundred dollars in books each time.  There's no way we could read as much as we do without it.  And it's only $25 a YEAR!  It's $80 a year just to go to the botanical gardens and they sure as heck won't let you walk out with an armload of anything for free!

Up at the pool, we signed in and hopped in!  It was LOVELY for a swim, perfect weather.  The rest of the folks started to trickle in and before we knew it, it was noon already!  We went on over to Katy's and I snacked a little on some fruit while the kids ran around.  At 12:45, we left to go to the orthodontist.  Chan got a new tensioner on her impacted tooth and Jake got pink brackets to celebrate his last checkup!  He gets them off in a month!  Eep!  I am really excited about that.

We headed back up to Katy's after a quick stop in at Taco Bell for a chicken burrito each.  We played and hung out and chatted until nearly 4, waited out a storm for good measure and we had to hit the road again to get Matt after work.  I was late getting there, the storm made for several wrecks, one on the only bridge out of town which is not far from where Matt works and traffic was backed up all the way to the Arsenal! 

It was no better heading to Madison and it took over an hour to get there.  We checked the movie times and grabbed dinner, then hit the 6:30 show with a full minute to spare!  I really like the $1 movies!  The theater is clean, there is usually a nice crowd, the sound and picture are good.  And $5 to see a movie that would usually cost us $45 is REALLY great.  We saw Pirates 4.  I did not like it as much, I guess the Kraken was my favorite thing and it's gone now.  Plus, Barbossa looked so old and scary, it was distracting. like something was going to fall off.  And all I could think about Jack was how much bigger his syphilis bloom was in this movie and wondered as to the state of his other parts.  Eep  I predict Triton is in the next movie.

We got in around 10, much to the delight of Small Dog, who temporarily forgot who we were and made a good stance to defend the house via posturing and shouting sharply 'row, row, row'.  She came inside, ran around and around like a nutcase and fell asleep in about 3.5 minutes.  The kids were right behind her in that effort!! I checked my e-mail and went to make sure they had brushed and they were sacked out.

The joy of books and anticipation

Having made our big decision to hike part of the AT, some 550 miles of it, which is nearly exactly 1/4 of the total distance the trail actually covers, starting next April and, knowing we needed plenty of experience and a moderate amount of gear in the 11 months until our departure, our first stop was, of course, the library.

Among the books on how to backpack and what to take and cooking in the backwoods and defending camp against bears and skunks, we scored Bill Bryson's book about hiking the AT, A Walk in the Woods.  We started it on the way to hiking at Buck's Pocket last weekend and have made many slow drives to Dollar General, the mile taking an easy 20 minutes both ways so we could listen to it more.  Upon reaching the last disc in the van, the kids brought it inside to start it all over again from the first disc.  It's just as funny the second time, though I have to say, I feel more trepidation AFTER hearing him describe his hike, made at the age of 44 with no more prep than reading a little and buying a ton of gear he seemingly had no idea how to use.  He just...got on the trail and started walking North.  

I will be heading toward 38 when I finally get on the trail.  I have longed to hike it since I was 12. I was given a stack of Backpacker Magazines ranging from 1980 to around 85 by the school librarian and I was not without one of the issues for at least a year.  I memorized the whole vocabulary-always, always my favorite part of doing anything new are the words you can bandy about that are exclusive to that activity-then made gear lists, made lists of hikes I wanted to do, bought wool socks at the thrift store because they were best for hiking.  I got $50 a month in allowance starting at age 14 and I used it to buy hiking boots, a pack, fleece jacket, water bottle and a poncho, accumulating gear over the months, the whole while knowing neither of my parents would ever, ever take me backpacking. 

That summer, my mother went to Greeley for the summer quarter, a college just north of Denver.  She bought tickets for me and my older sister to fly out and we spent the next 3-4 weeks driving in her tiny car all over the Rockies, hitting the Tetons, Yellowstone, we drove into Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, camping in a minuscule 3 man tent she bought at JC Penney for the main reason that it popped up and required barely 90 seconds from taking it out of the trunk to crawling inside.  On the way home we went through Kansas and stopped at St. Louis and rode the arch cars all the way to the top.  I was hooked on camping travel.

The summer I was 16, I took a job with the forestry service and mowed grass all of June to pay for a ticket to fly to Missoula, Montana the first of July and I lived in a small tent with a girl from Denver for 5 weeks while we hiked and chopped trail out of the woods along the Continental Divide.  I wrote Matt the whole time I was gone and he NEVER ONCE WROTE ME BACK and years later when I got back in touch with my old tent mate, she had trouble believing we were actually married as everyone thought I made him up.  hahaha!  But that's how long we have known each other-over half my life and then some.  Longer than we haven't known each other.  But not as long as I have wanted to hike the AT.

Labyrinths...

Today was a day that has been looked forward to for over a month now.  We knew we would be home over the holidays and that the first check of the year was going to be quite puny because of said holidays.  The 19th was Jake's orthodontist appt-and the day before the first full check of the year-and so we planned to have a day out.
Checking the weather over and over, I was assured it would be clear and sunny and around 47.  Even on the way into town this morning under heavy gray clouds and chill straight out of a freezer, the radio guy said it would clear around noon and be nicer all afternoon.

We finished at the orthodontist, went to the library for some books, met up with Heather, split up, I got gas and lunch (not from the same place!) and headed up to Green Mountain Nature Trail to meet back with her and also meet up with Katy and Cathy.

We arrived first and waited a while, then decided to eat, it was SO cold with the wind coming off the water.  Brrrrr!  We finished lunch in record time and ran for the van.  Everyone else showed up and we went over our options.  We decided to walk part way around the lake, hoping the wind was blowing toward us and would be better over there.  Not so.

We made it to the bridge and came back.  Heather opted to go on home at that point, she had a croaky kid or two and it was colder than any of us had planned for.  Before she left, she gave Chan a bag of clothes.

The rest of us went off to check out some labyrinths in the area, going to the one off Waverly first since it was closest.
 

Chan slid in the considerable mud and ended up with a soaked pair of pants.  Heather's bag to the rescue!  Yay! 

Next up was the labyrinth at the Mental Health Center on South Parkway.
It was our favorite of the day, huge and complex and well away from anyone else.

Mecha-shiva, mecha-shiva, mecha-shiva!

After we finished up there, we went to the last labyrinth of the day on Holmes.  It was in need of some work, so we just walked around and looked at the custom bricks.

 We opted out of the last one for the day, it was getting late and I was cold through.  The sun never came out and it never got above 38.  We made plans for another day and Cathy and I went to the local used bookstore before heading home.

In all, it was a cold and bleak day as far as the weather went, but I am glad we got out in it anyway.  I am tired of feeling trapped by the winter!