yes!

Christmas present shopping is complete! Ellis's new bunk bed and dressers got delivered yesterday despite our steep, icy driveway! One of Trey's co-workers is probably giving us an infant car seat! Ellis didn't come into our bed at 3AM this morning! My boss is out of town!

So, today I give myself the day off from freaking out about not being ready for the new baby, mixed results at work, and the various pre-Christmas preparation as yet undone.

The Most Accomodating 3 Year Old Ever

Me: Ellis would you like a bowl of potato soup for lunch?

Ellis: No Dad, I was going to finish my doughnut for lunch.

Me: Ellis a doughnut isn't really something you eat for lunch.

Ellis: It's okay dad. I don't mind.

bullets of randomness

• We finally had our first snow. Nothing major- less than an inch or so. We'd already heard that the municipalities here don't really believe in salting the roads, but it seems they don't really believe in plowing either. So, our "do we really need snow tires debate?" is back on.
  
• I think most everyone who reads here already knows via other channels that we are expecting a new baby in February. Happily, everything is going fine so far. My midwife, however, wants me to do this to make sure the baby is in an optimal position. It's only about 80% as uncomfortable as it looks, but it's not an "optimal positon" for eating ice cream and watching movies and therefore not really in line with postures I care to assume these days.
• Ellis has been extra ornery lately. He's especially bucking routines we've had in place for a long time and refusing to do tasks he can easily on his own. For example, "Ellis, please get the forks for supper" he replies with "I caaaan't. I need somebody to help me. I don't have any hands." Properly motivated (=bribed), however, performance improves as this morning, when he rapidly put on his own coat and snow boots with long, tricky velcro fasteners in order to procure his gummy vitamins.
  
• This weekend Ellis "rescovered" (this his word for, well, re-discovering a beloved and forgotten item). We were at the grocery store and he recognized those little refrigerated jello cups that one of his classmates brings for lunch. Naturally, he starting begging for them and I refused to buy them because 1) they won't fit in his bento-style lunchbox and 2) I am just not paying for pre-made jello no matter how low my standards of domesticity sink. But I did agree to purchase a couple boxes of jello and discussed how we could use cookie cutters to cut out jello shapes. Ultimately, though we decided on canned mandarin oranges suspended in orange jello and fruit cocktail in lime jello. By the way, fruit cocktail...it's kind of grosser than I remember or this type is anyway. Ellis, however, LOVES it and cannot get enough. He will shove his tongue down into the corner of the bowl to get the last clingy gelatinous bit. Mmmm, appetizing. Which means the only question now is whether I think $12 is an appropriate amount to spend to let Ellis experience this little gem (link has been corrected) from my childhood. As a bonus, I'd finally be able to attempt the "stick of dynamite" jello mold (one orange juice can for a mold, one package cherry jello, one string of licorice [there's a picture of this in the updated and link and doh! i forgot the banana! thanks, internets]).

Repose

Comfy chair: check. Tasty snack: check. Movie: check.

Ellis has been ordering us to be quiet lately. We will be sitting at dinner and he will announce that there will be no more talking. When we ask him, "Why can't we talk?" He always comes back with some ridiculous answer like, "Because I have a glass of water." I have concluded that these silly reasons don't reflect his sorry attempt to come up with a real reason, but mirror back to us that he thinks most of the reasons we tell him to do, well, anything at all, are completely arbitrary.

Xmas Tree: Part II

The tree is still a work in progress, but this gives you the idea. I apologize for the poor color balance in these pictures. The room with the fireplace is actually much cozier than it looks in that picture.

Is that a word?

Me: Ellis you need to ask for the tissue before you get the boogie.

Ellis: Dad, it already snozzed out of my body.

You gotta keep 'em insulated

So the aforementioned attic insulation project is complete thanks to help from my visiting father. All in all it went very well excepting the fact that I bought way too much insulation, which is what you get for using the formula supplied by the manufacturer which is probably designed to make you buy a whole lot more insulation than you need. They probably figure that those of us interested in insulating our own attics drive eco-friendly Priuses and can't return more than one bail at a time, at which point we start making pillows for the homeless from our old clothes stuffed with this crap or perhaps use it to staunch the flow from our bleeding hearts. Fortunately, I have our eco-unfriendly Blazer and my boss has an even less eco-friendly truck with which I will be able to return it all at once, reclaiming my $300.

The installation of the soffit chute vents was far more arduous than blowing in the actual insulation. Because of the relatively shallow peak on a truss-style roof with few floorboards in the attic, this installation involved building something like a raft to float on the existing insulation, upon which I could lie down and get the soffit vent thingies stapled in place. The blowing was fun for about 6 minutes, at which point I realized that I would be doing it for about 50 more 6 minuteses before I was done.

I hadn't done a project of this scope with my dad in some years and aspects were notably different. He was generally fairly accepting of the fact that this was my house and I am an adult who has to make the decisions. The cussing for which my father is known was notably muted and far less creative than I remember it being 10 years ago. Remember, this is a man who when asked by an 8 year old, "daddy, can I watch you change the alternator so I can learn how it is done?" answered with, "you change it like you change everything on a car: you cuss the old one out and you cuss the new one back in."

Anyway, one area that had changed for the worse is that while I wasn't doing projects with him, his pessimism has achieved Grand-Master level status. The volume, darkness, and creativity involved, not to mention the shear certainty of failure have all advanced greatly, giving my father a truly complete game. He is like a closer with 6 out pitches who uses a random number generator to decide what to throw next. You just never can imagine what is coming next.

At various points he suggested that we would never get the soffit vent chutes installed in time, even though we had a full 16 hours to do it before the blower and insulation were delivered. In the end it took an hour to do the first three and one more hour to do the other 57 once we had a system going. He also suggested that we would never be able to get all of that insulation blown in in the 16 hours allotted. In the end, it took only a little more than 3 hours, with a long break. He suggested, as I was stapling up the last soffit chute that perhaps these were insufficient and I was destined to have wet insulation followed by rot and eventual destruction of all that I hold dear. He suggested that the insulation was going to settle far more than predicted. He asked if the attic floor could bare the load of the extra insulation and not collapse into our second story. Told me that the whole house was going to be full of dust when we finished. He pointed out where he had spilled two hand fulls of insulation and said, "You gotta make sure you get that picked up. It will never rot and when it gets wet it will be slick and someone will slip. " He also said that more insulation was a good idea as long as it didn't cause anything bad to happen and of course said several times that it was a shame I had screwed up the calculations of how much I needed because Lowes would never take the insulation back. (I checked. They will.) He warned me that sucking up the insulation that fell out of the attic into Ellis's room was likely to burn up my Shop-Vac and wove complex scenarios where various insects or vermin made cozy homes in the new insulation. (Someone tell me how a fox will get in my attic without me noticing?) At some point, I stopped arguing back and just amused myself with unspoken replies like, "Oh, checkmate old man, you really cornered me there. I never thought to consider that some a-hole on the internet had set up a malicious web of deceit aimed at making rooves in the snow belt collapse in 10 years."

Return of the Quote Post-Xmas Tree Editon

Today I cut down a Christmas tree with supervision from Ellis.

"What the hell are you two looking at? Come on guys, focus."

"Here is my impression of Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Ok, so maybe I don't have the menacing part down yet."

"Smooth and even dad like this. Let the saw do the work."

"You need to be a little more aggressive. Uh, uh, now you're forcing it. Don't make me crawl back under there."

"Ok now finish strong."

Duty Bound to Do So

Back a ways, in a time whose events are now fogged over by the World Series triumph of that most hated of teams, the Detroit Tigers were in first place in the AL Central. I believe they were up by has much as seven games. Then going into the last weekend of the season, the Twins, who were something like two full games back with three games to play, managed to tie for first place on the last day of the season. This event precipitated a single day playoff and kept baseball alive at the Metrodome at least a little bit longer.

Our friends who were here over Halloween are Minnesotans and in advance of their trip we made a bet that if our team won the single game playoff, the other's child would don the colors of the winner, with those colors supplied by the winner and then photographs would be presented on the blog. Detroit lost. Then Minnesota lost in the divisional series. Despite this, Ansel and Ellis put on their Twins outfits and visited Ben and Jerry's.

Yes, they were pretty much this cute the whole visit. Ellis really likes this particular shirt and often picks it out, and he doesn't even understand that the guy whose name is on the back of his shirt won the AL MVP.

"How 'bout takin' a run over to Home Depot"

The title of this post was a sentence that sent chills down my spine when I was 14, although in those days it was Builder's Square rather than Home Depot. (It must have been bad, as I have told elements of this story on the blog before.) Often, on a Saturday morning, my dad would decide to head out to consider buying some tools for whatever project was going on or because he saw a good deal in the circular. Rarely did anything find its way back home because my father has a notorious problem buying himself anything. Before he was married, he didn't have a checkbook because in the time it took him to go get the money for something he wanted, he could usually talk himself out of it.

So these trips often turned into 3-4 hours carefully comparing features between similar tools while I stood there bored out of my mind. Then we would sometimes go to the other Builder's Square location to see if the price was better and then check a couple of other big box stores and then run back to see if there was anything like what he wanted in the classifieds. This was the days before the internet and also before my dad admitted he needed glasses, which meant he never, ever let his fingers do the walking. Investigations and question asking always were done in person.

Of course with the recent house purchase, we find ourselves at Lowes at least once every single weekend. And, on every trip, I spend 10-15 minutes drooling over miter saws. This has lead Rachel to declare that our trips to such stores are starting to resemble "a run to Home Depot". I am tempted to take her on a real "run to Home Depot" or allow my father to demonstrate the art in person later this weekend. 3-4 hours was no exaggeration and the hmming and hawing was generally over something much less expensive than a miter saw, like maybe a small drill index or a dremel tool or a small package of cutting wheels for a dremel tool. If the trip expanded to include Sears, then things became truly hellish as our Sears was in the mall, a place that made my dad really twitchy anyway. Combining that with the little angel sitting on his shoulder saying "you can build your own miter box from scrap wood and that rusty box saw is just fine" and the little devil saying, "you deserve it man, get the nice tool and never buy another one" created something that started to look like a psychosis.

Anyway, the devil is going to win out in our case: compound, double bevel...and a good stand.

Things that deserve a post that just get a bullet

We are so busy that many things are never going to get real posts. So, instead, we will be going with bullets.

• Hard cider. We have 15 gallons going. 5 of it is cranberry flavored and should be ready soon. The rest is from a special pressing done by a mill and orchard near our house. They reserve apples across the whole season to make an especially good batch for homebrewers. They let you just bring your fermentation vessel in and fill it right off of their tank, which is really convenient.
• Rachel liked the cider from the special batch, called "The Crush", so much that I put another 5 gallons in a keg and carbonated it for general drinking. Those of you that remember Apfel Schorle from visiting us in Germany will find this to be 10 times as good.
• There is a lot to do around the house...perhaps it should have its own bulleted list. Is it ok to put a bulleted list inside of a bullet in a bulleted list?
• Rachel's folks got us a K-cup coffee maker as a house warming gift. We love it, but also feel guilty for all of the waste.
• In general, all of the stuff we have had to buy for the house has left me feeling rather like a bourgeois pig. New furniture, new beds, snow blower, mouse traps because our new life cannot include vermin apparently.
• Changing the brakes on the Volvo myself and doing most of the work on the house ourselves has helped reduce the feeling that we are bourgeois pigs.
• The energy efficiency of the house seems a little better than I had expected based on the previous owners. Rachel has declared my interest in energy efficiency to be an obsession, but since we didn't buy the house early enough to lock in on a rate for fuel oil and even though I will try to time purchases to make sure we are topped up before rates start rising in January, we will no doubt have to buy some $3-$4 oil. This would be better than last year, when the oil went so high that you couldn't find a wood pellet stove anywhere in VT as everyone panicked.
• We won't be replacing any windows until next year.
• We will be adding insulation next weekend when my dad visits. I expect this to lead to a somewhat humiliating but also very comical blog post.
• Anyone with a good idea how to compost in bear country may submit their ideas, preferably electronically. If you wonder if bears really need to be considered, you should know that in February bears will come eat from your bird feeders if you don't bring them in. I suspect rotting food scraps would be even more of an attractant. I wouldn't mind if we could attract two bears who would fight over the compost. That would be way better than the wild turkey post.
• Ellis's recent antics will be getting their own post shortly. For now I will just say that his behavior at home is something like a wild animal trained in martial arts, perhaps a Ninja-Badger. His ability to hone in on and kick his father in the most sensitive areas seems to be his gift.
• Yes, pictures of the house are coming. But in the mean time, Rachel loves walking people through the house with the webcam.

Isn't it ironic?

We now have internet people. Yes, internet, the real thing in our home. After nearly 8 weeks of battling idiots and other crap, we now have DSL from the company so evil their name shall not be written.

Some people say a house becomes a home when people who love each other build memories there. I say a house becomes a home when it is possible to ignore the people you love with the entire Klingon language at your fingertips.

So we get home tonight and find in our mailbox an offer from Comcast saying that they are happy to announce they will now offer enhanced cable and high-speed internet to us and our neighbors. We don't likes the Comcasts so much, but we hateses the other guyses enough that we may be switching.

On the other hand, one might say that since the company whose name shall not be written wouldn't give us internet for two months and now have credited us with two months of free service, they effectively have saved us four whole months of internet charges. What a great, customer-focused operation they are.

if you guessed we still don't have internet at home...

you'd be right! Which is a shame because Ellis has been pretty hilarious, Trey has accounts of cider making, and we probably even have a few pictures that should be posted. But, we're both too swamped at work such that even trying to blog at lunch time results in, well, crap like this.

ghost of halloween past

For Halloween weekend, our friends Ben and Elissa came to visit. They were in New England so Elissa could defend her thesis down in Boston (congratulations Dr. Cosgrove!). Tragically and despite all the cows in Vermont, we have no pictures of Trey and Ben riding on or posing with any beasts of burden. But we did visit Ben and Jerry's and Elissa caught this:

However, these faces are much cuter with some superior DNA mixed in:

Elissa also gamely helped me complete Ellis's skunk costume, even though I lacked both skill and direction. I had this for extremely general guidance, but it's an extremely liberal definition of "pattern" that allows for instructions such as "Cut two ear shapes from the black faux fur and sew them together. That's one ear." Nonetheless, that's basically what we did. With some adjustments to reflect what a skunk's stripes/tail actually look like, I think we came out rather ahead. We were aided, of course, by the fact that this outfit didn't have to stand up to repeated wearings or daylight. Here's the only video we have of the tail in action:

Most importantly, though, candy procurement was successful. Trey sifted through Ellis's haul as we drove home and declared "Not bad, though too much chocolate for my tastes." Ellis piped up from the back seat "No, Dad, not your tastes- my tastes." After a few days of metering it out after meals, I hid or threw away the remaining spoils of Halloween. Yet still a few strays remained scattered around the house and keep popping up to provoke further negotiations on when and how many Ellis may eat. To our chagrin we came home from work last night to find Scout had been into a box of "candy sticks" (looking dubiously like good old fashioned candy cigarettes) from a Halloween package from Grandma Lise. To our much greater horror, Ellis was later seen amidst a suspicious number of chalky white crumbs. "I'm finishing the candy that Scout ate." Great...nothing like a few dog germs to up the nutritional value of pure dextrose.

still no home internet

Trey continues his battle with Fairpoint, trying to secure an internet connection for us. The suspected previous progress turned out to be in vain, since they had somehow entered the wrong address at which we wanted service. I wasn't with Trey when he made this discovery talking on his cell phone on the way to work, but he reported "I was so angry, I had to pull the car over to bitch at them." Well, yes, it does require one's full attentions. So, they've promised us we'll have it by Friday. We shall see.

What stinks? It's you.

A couple Halloween pics to keep you all entertained until we have internets again.

in response to yesterday's comment...

I have not "checked the trapline" with Trey, but I really don't think it goes like this:

murine update

Three mice dead. Since Trey got back, he's taken over responsibility and calls his morning trip to the basement to inspect for new casualties in the basement "checking the trap line". The fact that the trap line is only 10 feet long in total does rather detract from the impression that he is keeping up the tradition of early French fur traders.

expect no improvement, plus vermin

Here's a rare blog post from me, but posting frequency is likely to remain low with Trey out of town at a trade show and still no internet at home! Rather than slowly adjusting to lack of internet, it seems to keep getting worse. Trey is engaging our probable DSL provider in a game of who can be a bigger jerk, but these people are notorious experts. So, it will still probably be a while. Boo!

Meanwhile, we discovered evidence of mice in the garage and -much, much worse- in the kitchen. After a Wal-Mart trip last night, we are now the owners of several "you don't have to see or touch the mouse" style traps and a small jar of dedicated mouse bait peanut butter. And, yes, I have killed lab mice via cervical dislocation with my bare hands and I was raised by a mother who got impatient with our slowness to stomp on giant rats. I should be using the cheap, more environmentally conscious and reusable regular style mouse trap. So, I'll officially blame my choice on wanting to decrease the chance of pinching tiny fingers or a dog snout in the trap. But another factor here is that it's just really disconcerting to open your silverware drawer and see mouse poop and I just don't want to deal with the reality of a trapped mouse or its corpse.

Anyway, since Ellis was with me at the store last night, he had to get a full explanation of how the traps work, where the peanut butter goes, and where exactly in the house the mice might be during the day and night. He woke up this morning demanding to go downstairs and check the traps for mice...it was seriously like he thought it was Christmas. I'm sure this would be just an oh so valuable lesson for him on the realities of country life, but I planning to wait until he's in bed tonight to check the traps. Some of the traps I bought can also keep the mice alive (their advantage is they can hold multiple mice) and I'm not sure I can manage to keep both me and Ellis calm in the event that they are full.

Better Than Photos of the House

These guys, 10 in all, have made three or four appearances under the feeders and they will stick around for up to an hour as long as Scout is kept inside. Ellis spotted them the first time after I had already left for work and sprinted upstairs to tell his mother. Then he carefully explained how he and daddy were going to hunt them. Rachel suggested that perhaps killing things under the feeder was not very sporting and that we should go to the woods and find some other turkeys before killing one. He was not satisfied and told her, "Mom, these turkeys. We will get the skin off, get the chicken [sic] out and throw the bones outside."

There was just this one tom in the bunch. His beard was probably 4-5 inches, but at least two of the hens in the group were much bigger than him.

We actually did ask Ellis if he understood that in his scenario the turkey ends up dead and he seemed quite comfortable with that, and reminded Rachel that it will be dead when we get the skin off and chicken out.

House, no internet

I am sorry for the lack of posts and the lack of pictures. We have no internet at home. That will change Tuesday. Until then here are a couple of scraps:

Yes, yes, I know.

Well with the rain today we were so focused on getting the truck unloaded, we forgot to take much in the way of pictures. We will try again though. Don't lose heart. Or, just come visit.

Apologies

Well, the pictures I took of the house turned out crappy. I will take some more tomorrow.

Finally

As Rachel just so eloquently put it, we are on the verge of being house-poor. Not really, but it will be the biggest check I have ever written, although I did spend a whole lot more in capital expenditures in my first three weeks at work. Remarkably, we are still happy with the house and we are happy with our chosen lender. We were very lucky with the realtor we fell in with as he figured out what we were looking for very quickly and, personality and hobby-wise, he is a good fit for us. We did a heck of a lot of digging through the listings ourselves and completely ignored the house we are buying. But the realtor knew that, despite the list price being above our stated limit, the seller was motivated and there were some hidden advantages to the property.

Last night I walked through the property (house and land) one last time with the sellers. Normally, the realtors would do this with the buyer, but neither realtor could make it and the sellers had wanted to walk through the house with us and show us some of the stuff we might not figure out like where the timers are hidden for the outside lights. Generally, they were nice and helpful and only gave me a little bit of grief for getting the house out of them for a price that they consider a steal. It sounds like they got a pretty sweet deal on some land over on the lake themselves and built a house for themselves on the water.

As I drove up to the property, 15 turkeys crossed the road in front of the car and then while sitting on the porch waiting for Rachel to pick me back up a deer wandered into the yard. The sellers warned me to take the warnings about pulling in bird feeders very seriously when March roles around, otherwise hungry black bears will make quite a nuisance of themselves. I am not sure how to handle compost in this situation.

The wooded part of the land was nicer than I had remembered. The wooded part, 11 acres, will require some work to maintain and improve to bring in more wildlife, although the seller says that he shot a couple of deer off of the land every year and would have had ample opportunity to shoot turkeys if he had had a little more time to get out and do it. Looking at the land, I would think that it would attract more turkeys even than deer.

I am anxious to get moved and get to know our new home. It is far enough from here that we will shop at different places and take a much different path to work than we do now. The drive to Ellis's school and from home to work will be much shorter although the drive from Ellis's school to work (the more frustrating part) will be the same.

Tomorrow after the closing we will go take some pictures finally and you can all see what I am talking about.

The weather is cool and so is my hat...

This weekend we went to the children's second hand store and hauled off about a square bale of kid's clothes, shoes, slippers and outerwear. As more evidence that you can never tell what a kid will latch onto, Ellis has fallen head over heels for this hat that we grabbed to tide us over until we could get him a "real" winter hat.

Apparently, everyone is wearing their hats "over the ear" these days, and Ellis will not consider any other way. He has had a perpetually sweaty head for the last couple of days. Last night it took some convincing to get him to not wear it to bed. In the future, we may have to convince him to wear it to bed, if my coworkers' stories bear any resemblance to the truth.

That strip across the grass is his trail in the warming frost that was on the ground this morning. I am beginning to feel that, much like in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, we live in a place with two seasons: Winter Is Coming and Winter Is Here. We are now in the few days where early morning feels like the latter, mid-afternoon feels like the former and it isn't possible to leave the house in clothing that will keep you comfortable until you return home.

Shelburne Farms

On Saturday we went to a big festival at Shelburne Farm. It was a nice mix of the normal farm activities that go on there ranging from animal husbandry to cheese making, a number of exhibitors engaged in period crafts including a couple of guys building a table in the style of a post and beam barn, and a few additional modern exhibitors such as a local co-op that sells kits to convert fuel oil furnaces to wood pellets.

The big building in the back of this picture is the center of a large structure with two wings and a front stone wall that completes a courtyard. The wing to my left is "the barn" and the one to the right is full of classrooms. The tall center portion is where cheese making and other work go on. They served a number of farm produced foods including cheese and sausage.

The grounds are always available for hiking. Here we are heading a little ways up a trail. In the background is the main building again. It appears to be particularly well maintained. The parts that aren't stone construction are covered in cedar shakes that are obviously well cared for and the metal roof is perfect where the gables meet the main lines.

Up in a wooded stand there are these post drums. Some of the heads are a little creepy, but you can grab a stick and smack the drums and it can be heard for at least a few hundred yards.

Here Rachel is showing Ellis how to card wool. This was one of many activities for kids to participate in. Others included making your own twisted rope, making a grape vine wreath (we made a garland for Rachel's head), grind your own cornmeal and make a pancake out of it and so on. There was also a group of teenage players doing short versions of Tom Sawyer and Romeo and Juliet on a wagon-stage.

Ellis greatly enjoyed the tractors. Even though he climbed on several newer tractors that tend to come in a rather unsettling green, he liked this one best. I don't remember for sure, but I think the plaque said it was an IH.

Now you might wonder, "why would he put in a picture of a donkey?" Well it turns out this donkey was the donkey that Eyeore was modeled after. Actually, this is the first donkey I have ever been close to that wasn't a biter. It is a miniature Sicilian donkey named Penelope. They live for 30 years (Penelope is 13). They were soft as a puppy and ate from our hands very gently.

After a long day at the festival, Ellis somehow dug up a stamp with built in ink that I think he got at the festival at school the previous week. In addition to his own face, he stamped his shins and forearms as we drove home. I am ashamed to say we didn't scrub it all of the way off until today. The look he has on his face in this picture pretty much sums up his attitude of late, a sort of energetic mischievousness mixed with being a little fragile from being a little tired.

This kid and cheeseburger

Tonight we wanted to go out to supper and I was lamenting to a coworker that Rachel doesn't get to have sushi anymore because of the time I got so sick after eating it and that I don't get to have things like chicken wings very often because it isn't up Rachel's alley nor is it good food for a kid. So my coworker suggested The Matterhorn up by the Stowe ski slopes, a chicken wing, burger joint with a sushi bar that was family friendly. She was right on all counts. Rachel had her sushi. Ellis had chicken fingers and I had the second burger in the last year that ranks in my top five of all time. Thanks to this blog, I will eventually have a record of my top five (top ten, top 100, one can only hope) burgers of all time, so long as burger technology continues to advance producing yet unheard of ground meat tastiness. I consider the last major advance to be the use of blue cheese. Tonight's was a half-pounder with blue cheese and crispy onions on a very nice bun that was toasted on the griddle with the proper amount of butter. I even surprised myself when I put the lettuce and tomato on there instead of letting it pretty up the plate and return to the kitchen.

Ellis was quite a character throughout the evening. In general we have entered a phase of smart-assedness that I thought might not come for a while yet. As we left the restaurant, Ellis let go of my hand and I said, "remember what we do in a parking lot?" (The correct answer: hold hands.) He stiffened his arms and said, "I don't want to remember." "Nothing" and "nowhere" have also become common answers to questions like, "What did you do at school today?" and "Where in the school do you lie down to take your nap?"

Ellis's memory has been ridiculously sharp lately. For events, songs and also places. Because of much going on we had driven all over the place, stopped for dinner in a strange town and then driven 15 miles home in the dark. As we drove by the dairy farm near our house (I am not even sure that Rachel knew where we were at this point) Ellis hollered, "Hey, where are the cows?"

Where is Maria?

Today we went to a picnic at Ellis's school. For those of you who were wondering what it is like, here are some pictures:

One of the things I really like about the playground is the way they built this play structure around the existing pine trees. It makes the school, which is on a fairly busy road, feel a lot more secluded.

Ellis really enjoys the play ground. That main structure under the trees is shaped like a big boat. Here he is climbing up on the poop deck.

Ellis also enjoys the playhouses. As we walked past this one in the back of the picture he said, "This one should be a chicken house."

The picnic was nice and pretty simple. Among other activities there was a little bouncy house. Perhaps the most popular was a big pile of hay that had hidden toys in it for the kids to find. Even after the toys were gone this remained a phenomenally popular activity. I would say that this further proves that one need not spend any money on entertaining kids, but, from what I hear, hay is gonna be expensive in Vermont this winter.

On the way home Ellis was ridiculously tired. When he yawned and Rachel pointed it out, Ellis said, "I was just stretching my mouth!"

Why we aren't posting more

Ellis is in his first "real" week of school and seems to be enjoying himself immensly. He has reported to us that he isn't taking a rest at school and is remarkably chipper when we pick him up. He seems to like his main teacher, Miss Becky. She has reported that he has been following her around a bit but has also showed a fair bit of empathy when it turned out she had forgotten her towel for putting down on the ground when they eat their lunches outside.

In other news, as has largely gotten around by now, we are attempting to buy a house. Things have gone quite smoothly so far. The one complicating factor is that our landlords on our month-to-month rental have given us notice to get out, by Oct. 6th. As of right now, it seems as though we will be able to close and move before that date, but it seems that there are always surprises to be had in this process. Like why can't anyone actually calculate the total amount of money you need to show up to closing with? I had to disclose everything I have down to the dime to get approved for a mortgage, but they can't tell me how much of it to show up with to close the deal?

After seeing a lot of places we found one we liked, had the majority of what we wanted and had a motivated seller. We had heard a lot of talk out here about the market not really being down as it is everywhere else, but it seems that almost nothing was selling, so how far down it was wasn't really something that was easy to figure out. Based on what is selling as fall approaches and sellers are willing to take less to get it over with, I would say things here about the same as everywhere else, except that prices here started out much higher compared to a lot of other parts of the country.

Hopefully within a couple of weeks we will have pictures and be moving in. I tell people that it has 12 acres and a 3 bay garage. And, the house is pretty good too.

Yes, it is worth it

Well, Ellis seems to really like his school and dropped right back into the culture of a Montessori school. The school is a historic building with a lot of nice learning materials and playground toys. We asked Ellis this week what his favorite things about school are and guess what he picked?

The red plastic cars out on the playground and the red tape X's in the bottom of the toilets to encourage the boys to aim. So I tell you, yes, Montessori is worth every penny.

September, push yourself ahead

Fall is here. Vacation is over. We didn't take many pictures, but as soon as some of my sisters-in-law get their pictures up, I will write a post. The short version is that fishing was fun but lousy, weather was beautiful and we all probably should have slept a bit more.

It has cooled off here tremendously and it felt like fall today. At our elevation we may see a frost before the end of the week. Ellis started school today. This is a painful phase-in week where he is only there for an hour each day and then comes home and gets to relax with Rebecca. He seems to really like the school and was apparently quite impressive in his memory of how one uses the materials in a Monetessori classroom. Rachel was with him today and she is pretty sure that he is indeed left-handed. He is sinister I tell you, sinister.

I have met some real characters lately. My favorite was the one-armed house inspector. As I was talking to him he mentoned owning a gym and building motorcycles in addition to his job as an inspector. I said,"Man, you are one of these Vermont guys like Butch* with a whole bunch of careers going on at once." and he said, "Yeah that is why I only have one arm. I used to also run a business making fresh pasta and I stumbled in the wrong place and lost my arm in one of the big mixers." (If I heard hme right, he still rides his motorcycles, even though he is down an arm.) He also appreciates high quality clothing, covering his stump with a smart wool sock.

*Butch, to my knowledge, has been the skipper of a dive boat in the Caribbean, a building inspector, a realtor, a hunting guide in Wyoming, and a breeder of Morgan horses and was almost a carpenter before any of that other stuff. He's an avid hunter in general and also quite an environmentalist in addition to being a serious shooter and reloader. His other quirks include halting a phone conversation so he can sniff the wild chamomile in the field he is driving by.

Away, Away

Tomorrow we go on vacation back in Michigan. Tonight Ellis was in bed and I went into his room to collect the various things for the carry on-sort of a diaper bag equivalent for a bigger kid.

Ellis: What are you getting?

Me: Some extra clothes for you for the trip tomorrow.

Ellis: Don't forget snacks!

Me: Ok.

Ellis: And do you have some fresh pants for me?

Does that mean pants with an attitude?

Last night we were snuggling on the couch and Ellis kept kicking me.

Me: Ellis, stop that it isn't nice. Ellis, I mean it you are really irritating me.

Ellis: No I amn't.

He apparently has extrapolated the formation of contractions to those beyond the commonly accepted ones.

And, today on the way home we had to stop while this crossed the road:

There were two hens with a large flock of poults, with one family having obviously been born earlier. I think I counted 16 poults, 13 are visible in this picture plus both hens. They were quite tame seeming and to be this fertile (or perhaps to have such survival among their young) I suspect they are receiving much of their sustanence in someone's front yard...hmmm...what could I use to lure them to my yard...I have to end the post now, I need to be able to tent my fingers while I make diabolical plans to lure these turkeys to my yard and I can't type and tent at the same time.

Pinnacle, Other Notes

So a second pretty sweet feature of the newest iPhone is the ability to take pretty high quality videos. No more making sure the video camera is charged; if the phone is there, you have video capability. This video gives you a good idea of the steepness of the trail at the end and also what a good climber Ellis was. Once we got above the first outlook, everyone we passed in the last hour or so commented on what a good hiker Ellis was, or how they hadn't ever seen a kid that small up the trail that far. I only carried him about 250 yards on the way up. On the way down I piggy backed him where it was safe to, mainly just to keep an even pace.

Ellis very much enjoyed the minutae of the hike (and this was why the pace was uneven), looking at toads and other small animals as well as the rocks. I noticed some pretty large flakes of mica here and there and pointed them out to Ellis. He immediately clenched one but he misheard me and started calling it "mike". In the course of the trip he had probably half a dozen differnt pieces of mica, inevitably dropping each and hollering, "mike, I dropped mike."

After the hike we stopped in a favorite bakery in Waterbury Center and had a very good lunch and dessert and a lot of liquid. They had homemade tappenade for their italian sub and live music by the owner's uncle in from New Orleans. In the course of five songs he played three of my guitar favorites including: The Weight, Embyronic Journey and Can't Find My Way Home.

We also met some midwesterners who live above the bakery (this is the place with two giant tables forcing patrons to sit together) and had a nice talk about jobs and why midwesterners are in Vermont. I should have gotten their phone number since they probably know how to play Euchre since the one of them said, "I like hanging out with midwesterners because they are used to making their own fun." And, that is about what Euchre is, isn't it?

Well I started out down a dirty road

After recent meals, including something called a "Fire Dog" chased by a cheesesteak on Thursday and raclette dinner with friends Eric and Robin on Friday, some exercise was in order. So, I took Rachel and Ellis up Stowe Pinnacle.

Since work wanted me to have a data phone and was willing to get me the much praised and somewhat hated iPhone, we experimented with geotagging our trip a little bit. I will say that the iPhone is fun, easy to use and replaces a lot of other technology one might have. However, the expense is fairly high and with the way Apple has strangled AT&T and by proxy iPhone users, I am still a bit queasy about it all.

Anyway, to visit the results of the geotagging with a little photo essay attached, go over here. I would suggest that you pause the slide show and just click through as the rate at which it plays is pretty fast.

A Strange Fashion Sense

We have been very busy, what with Rachel starting her job and all. Ellis is enjoying his month with the babysitter and we have had a few more fishing adventures.

A few weeks ago a road side stand by our house had goose berries, something I remembered having in pie as a kid, so Rachel was good enough to make me a pie.

I thought it was excellent, Rachel compared its flavor to dirt so I ate it all myself. Ellis didn't like it either.

This past weekend I tried to fish the Little river, but they had opened the upstream dam and the water was at rip-your-waders-off levels by the time I got there. I ended up picking a bunch of staghorn sumac for a batch of tea. I found it to be lemony and with a hint of peach. Rachel said it was an interesting mix of flavors, but mostly celery. Noticing a trend....

We also went to a U-Pick and got close to 15 lbs. of blueberries in about an hour. While the other patrons lolligagged about we ran with military precision. I think Ellis picked more berries than the average adult excluding me and Rachel. Plenty more went into pie holes all around and we got some great fall raspberries that are just coming on.

And, I took Ellis to a new lake, Lake Elligo. It was a beautiful lake (you could see the trees on the bottom in 20 feet of water), but not much different fishing than the Waterbury Reservoir close to home. Rather than wasting drive time, I think we will stick to learning to fish the reservoir. We picked up some smallmouth last time and I am finally set up for deep trolling with fly line, so we will hope for the best this weekend.

On our way back on Sunday, Ellis declared that he wanted to "make some tie flys" when we got home.

We have done this a few times now. He is remarkably good at wrapping thread around the hook, but needs me to start most material tie-ons, but he is getting there. He lasts for about one fly per sitting and then is off to do something else.

Notice the cars in this picture. They are everywhere. I picked up the boat trailer at the tongue the other day and 5 cars fell off. And, I start each day with them running up and down my chest. And several are involved in elaborate dirt moving in the sandbox. He snuggles them in bed like a blanky.

I promise more diligence in picture taking of future adventures.

last login: never

I started my job yesterday and recieved my brand new shiny university email account today. The lab culture is largely unlike any other lab in which I've been contact, possibly in a good way. But probablty best to not write too much about work.

Now that I'm back at work, Ellis is with the babysitter full days (she came half days last week so they could both get acclimated). Ellis is pretty much loving having an adult fully dedicated to his amusement. For our benefit, he does act happy when arrive home from work, but we are clearly less fun than the babysitter.

Ellis has been experimenting with phrases dealing with less concrete concepts: "ya know", "I guess" and etc. So we get musings like..."Mom, I guess Scout ate up all her food. You know, I guess we should put food in her bowl, I wonder. We might."

Finally post-worthy

This morning I was awakened at 5:10 to the sound of Ellis hollering from our bathroom, "Daddy, I'm all done. Daddy, I am all doooonnnne." I have to give him credit for taking care of approximately 2/3 of going all by himself without waking me to take his clothes off or put him on the toilet. When I walked in he was proudly sitting on the toilet with a book in hand. After I got him dressed I sent him to the living room to play trains. But minutes after I dozed back off I was again awakened by a matchbox demolition derby on my chest. At that point I gave up and just got up.

So, it is no wonder that I put cumin on my toast thinking I had the cinammon sugar. Considering all of this and a traffic jam up on the way to work, I had a surprisingly good day.

Tonight we went down to the farmer's market/concert series again. I met some people from Michigan and a rather colorful, older fellow. We were waiting in line for some free Ben and Jerry's (cake batter or fudge brownie) and the guy in front of us was hogging down a giant serving of apple strudel. He looked up and I said, "Eating one dessert while waiting in line for another. I like your style." He smiled, patted his belly and said, "Yeah, I probly don't need it, but my daddy taught me that if yer proud a sumpin, build a roof over it." Rachel didn't let me invite him to dinner.

Yucky Fish

Ellis got to go fishing for the first time today on the Waterbury Reservoir where we paddled last weekend. We hit the water at 7:30 in the morning and had a bit of success. Clearly, we have a lot to learn about how to fish these deep mountain lakes. We mostly stuck to areas where the brooks feed the lake, in about 25 ft. of water.

Here is Ellis with his first fish. I set the hook for him, but he reeled it up and lifted it into the boat. He had no appreciation for why I would want a picture and refused to hold the fish in the proper orientation, which is why I had to hold it to get a decent picture of it:

Ellis was remarkably patient while we fished for four hours. He liked it better when I rowed rather than using the motor. Later I realized this was because I couldn't hear his 8 million questions over the running motor. He seemed to have a very nice time, I bet he would have happily gone back out this evening even.

The highlight for Ellis came when he caught a Master Angler-size bullhead. I was fooling with my rig and didn't see his bobber disappear and he either didn't see it or know that he should care. He reeled at it for a minute and handed me the rod. At first I thought we had our first perch and then it rolled underwater and I realized it was a catfish of some type. My dad enjoyed this story, since I often failed to watch what I was doing bluegill fishing when I was little and I would pick up a bullhead, which is pretty tough to do if you are paying attention. The bullhead mouth is set low and made for bottom feeding and if you set the hook on the assumption that it is another type of fish, you usually miss a bullhead. Most fisherman catch most of their bullheads at an age where someone else is taking the hooks out, I know that I did, which is advisable because of the little stinger.

Of course, as with anything done with Ellis, there were a few choice quotes:

"Son of a who, daddy? Daddy, son of a who?" (Said following a bad line tangle.)

And, once we were all settled in our second fishing spot, "Daddy, let's talk a little bit."

Finally

We have had a creemee. If you are from the Midwest you would recognize it as a close cousin to frozen custard. In some parts of the eastern U.S., apparently, creemee is a synonym for soft serve ice cream like Dairy Queen. I can tell you without a doubt that what we had wasn't the same recipe as Dairy Queen and was much closer to Snow Bear. My guess is similar butter fat, but maybe no eggs, and most importantly it was very dense and smooth, almost slick.

Rachel had twist and Ellis had "chokit". I tried one of the blend in flavors (butter pecan). However they introduce the flavor it doesn't come out fully mixed. Instead the ridges of the soft serve cap are trimmed with the flavor. Butter pecan was good and in general I thought the whole creemee platform was good. Ellis seemed to agree but Rachel was a little luke warm. Then again, she wouldn't go two steps out of her way for Snow Bear either.

The lady at the creemee stand could tell we were newbees by the slow way we ordered and we told her we were new to Vermont. Then, when I asked for maple flavored (thanks to Sarah, who knew? maple ice cream, this might be heaven), the woman asked, "how do you know about our maple flavor if you are new to Vermont?" Turns out, maple is only available in the fall at this stand, which I find strange since spring is when you make maple syrup. In fact the way she asked makes me think you have to be at least a 2nd or 3rd generation Vermonter before you are allowed the good flavors like maple.

Reservoir

We live 10 minutes from the Waterbury Reservoir. The power dam here was originally built by the CCC in the 1930s. The dam is 1/3 of a mile wide, 180 feet tall and the water it holds back forms a nearly 900 acre lake with depths reaching 100 feet. The reservoir was drained in 1985 for dam repairs and tihs cleared out all of the fish. As a result in 1986 when it was refilled the fishery had to be rebuilt and from what we hear, this was very successful.

We took Ellis over there and rented a canoe on Sunday and paddled around a bit.

Canoe rental was a little expensive, but the canoes were of good quality with good seats and good pfds. Ellis seemed to have a nice time, but as you will notice, he mostly ate on this trip.

Mainly, he is eating because the camera was in the snack bag and we tended to notice it and take pictures when we were eating. We saw a small heron of some kind, green, little blue, tricolored...didn't get a long enough look.

The scenery was quite beautiful (as a better photographer would have captured). Once we were done we had a little picnc in the state park.

The amazing thing about the place is that there isn't one home on the entire shore, just wilderness. The main drawbacks are the state park, which is nice with very good facilities, but naturally attracts any number of bozos and the fact that it is an all sports lake at all times of day. That means skiers, jet skiers and all kinds of fish-scarring jackassery. Fortunately, the lake is big enough that everyone can pretty much keep out of everyone else's way. The best boat launch doesn't open until the park opens at 10 and this keeps some of the larger boats off of the water during the best fishing hours.

In other news related to out door adventure, it seems I have gotten poison ivy on the forhead and scalp, or should I say, the part of my scalp that user to have hair and some other parts that still have hair. It looks just like poison ivy, but hurts more than itches. Rachel said, "You must have rubbed your head in something." I replied, "That's funny, I don't recall finding a patch of poison ivy that smelled like sausages."

Saturday Conversations

We wanted to go rent a canoe today, but the weather report looked iffy. We took advantage of Ellis getting us up at 5 am to take Rachel up to the waterfall we found last week and then had breakfast up in Stowe.

There were some good conversations with Ellis today. While Rachel was snoozing, he wanted to go outside and was naked from the waste down, so I sent him to find his pants in the bathroom attached to our bedroom, but Ellis declared, "I think I want fresh pants. I will go get fresh." He returned with two pair of undies and when I noted the extra pair he said, slightly exasperated, "That one is my hat." Right there he stuffed it down over his head and wore if for probably a half an hour, totally forgetting he had wanted to go outside.

Tonight at dinner I stood up and hit my head on the chandelier above our dinner table. When I muttered under my breath, Ellis felt left out and asked, "What happened?" When Rachel explained that I had hit my head on the chandalier, Ellis bounced right back with , "Just like in Michigan." Indeed, I did often hit my head on that chandalier in the house in Michigan.

Hopefully we will try a creemee soon and that will get an entire post of its own. Perhaps tomorrow.

Why doesn't everyone live here?

I know that some of our readership are Rotarians. Perhaps you could explain to me how curing polio is furthered by giving away free ice cream at a free concert because that is what Waterbury Vermont's Rotary club was doing tonight. Also, it looked like the whole club was particpating in the activity and I didn't see a single breakfast burrito, pancake breakfast, vat of soup or anything resembling a chili sale.

Seriously, we are getting to know our new home a little bit now and we are pretty happy with it. Thursday evening they have a farmer's market on the town green, most of which is value added rather than direct farm produce. Lots of prepared food, some of it very good, various crafts and also some local wine makers. In the summer there is often free music as there was tonight in the form of a large jazz band which was quite good. So we had a pleasant evening down in town.

Last weekend we went up to a bakery in Waterbury Center (yes, that is its own town distinct from Waterbury). They had only 2 large tables to eat at forcing small parties to sit with strangers. Both of our sets of tablemates struck up a conversation and upon learning that we were new to the area, gave us some of the inside information. These conversations, among others, caused Rachel to say, "I think most people here are really nice. And, they seem to know that they have a very nice way of life and want to keep it that way by getting you on the inside of the club quickly."

Scout has taken to running off pretty far from home. People snag her and take her home and then call, never angry, although no one has taken her in twice. Today someone called saying they had let her into the car thinking that Scout belonged to their step-daughter who has a Brittany as well. Then they realized it was a different dog and called me rather than just booting her back out of the car. When they called they were within 200 yards of our door, which in my opinion means they were so nice they accidentally dognapped our dog.

Ellis continues to enjoy the country. He is very into the minutiae he is finding. He has a million questions about the various bugs and has been bringing up a pile of horse poop he saw last week every single day. Generally, he is fascinated by poop. At some point we told him that it was the food his body couldn't use to make him grow bigger. Now he wants to know how each food contributes to him getting big. "What do crackers make?" "What do cherries gimme?" "Do dey go to ma bones?" Bones are his favorite body bit because of the various bones scattered around the farm, he has a better grasp of what they are I think.

Before I forget about it and consider it normal, I must also say that Vermont has some fairly loose liquor laws that make it possible for a family pizza joint to have beer and wine. For those of you in Ann Arbor, imagine if NYPD had Bell's on tap. Also, there isn't any of this horse poop we have in the Midwest where products that are perfectly legal to buy Monday -Saturday are suddently illegal to buy or sell on some part or all of Sunday. Can I get an amen from the choir? Oh, and the free ice cream was Ben and Jerry's.

One week down

Today marks our one week anniversary here in Vermont. So far so good. The house is working out pretty well and we are adapting to doing a bit more driving when we want to go to Costco and Home Depot. In some ways it is the best of both worlds. We are up in the country, far from the "big city" (Burlington maxes out with 40,000, including the 9000 students at UVM), but we are 8 minutes from a good grocery and hardware store and the town of Waterbury has a nice pool, public library and ice rink. When you consider the landscape and outdoor opportunities, it might be hard to convince ourselves to move closer to town.

Today, Ellis and I went on a three hour exploratory mission to find decent maps and good fishing spots. We managed to find maps and a couple of decent looking fishing spots, but I am going to have to do more asking around at the tackle shop to really figure out where to go. I promised him a walk, so we found a turn out in the vicinity of Moss Glen Falls, and found a nice hike with an unexpected reward at the end. It was only unexpected because we didn't really know that Moss Glen falls was on of the biggest in the state with a 125 foot drop and, to add to adventure, no marked trail or guard rails.

Ellis was notably cautious even near the shallow, gentle water below the falls. He picked up rocks, enjoyed the mud and talked to a guy who makes rock sculptures who was doing just what Ellis was doing: carrying off pockets full of rocks that haven't moved much since the glaciers receded. (The variety of rocks was really astounding but alas I know next to nothing about geology beyond that throwing a rock at someone is a good way to hurt them.)

Here is Ellis having a good contemplative moment near the lower bit of the falls. At this point I thought that bit of falling water behind him was all there was to the falls, and then we hiked up the trail a bit and scurried down the bank to find this:

It is pretty hard to do it justice when you can't see the water move, the mist billow and hear the roar, which was loud enough to make a pretty strong impression on Ellis.

You can continue up a steep hill (steep enough to be a challenge with a toddler) and see the top of the falls and the 80 foot deep gorge cut by the river above the falls. Ellis was tired of pictures by the time somone offered to take a picture of both of us. This one was the best of several.

Once you reach the level plateau you can look out here and there across the valley. This is much more impressive in person and the struggle to take this picture caused me to renew my vows to learn how to use our good camera better. Once we were up this high, we walked well beyond the range of the few tourists sharing the trail. Ellis commented that the woods was pretty and also, "very quiet, I can't hear any stuff."

This place was only about 15 minutes from our house, but we dallied a bit on our way home at a place called "The Shack". More or less a one off Dairy Queen style Brazier with a big back yard, they make corndogs that are delicious. Ellis thought so too. Rachel has so shamed me for putting up photgraphs of food, that I didn't take a picture. But, I think the corndogs were homemade. After I gather some more data, I will report back.

The mind of a preschooler

Ellis continues to amaze with his grasp of some things and his lack of grasp of others.

He calls clothes hangers "hookers" and has taken to giving unpacking orders such as, "Mommy put those clothes right on the hooker." I suppose it is possible that he is acting on his high morals and suggesting we should do more to help women escape the red-light districts of Vermont.

Then today we went to the hardware store for a plunger and he carried it into the house and triumphantly announced to Rachel, "We are going to plump da toilet wid dis plumper."

He also is continuing on solving his own problems. We have been playing a game called "Angry Crabs" where we announce the arrival of an angry crab and start to pinch him gently, almost tickle really. Today I told him that he could make the angry crabs go away by giving me a hug and he said, "No, I shoot dem wid ma gun." What a punk.

Ellis is also doing a lot of narrating the events going on at any given moment. We were putting up the bird feeder and we had only unpacked a few tools. The result was that I was putting in the stakes that hold the base down with the back side of a hatchet. Here is Ellis's play by play, "Poundin' in da stakes. Using a big flat hammer. Dunno why he using dat weird hammer."

Our New Home

The moving truck and arrived on Sunday with all of our crap and filled our house with it. The house is a 3 bedroom ranch NE of Waterbury Vermont.

We have neighbors but everyone has more than 5 acres including us. We have a nice two car garage and a monstrous basement that we are trying to figure out how to use. Looking west we see a line of trees, a line of mountains and then behind that Camel's Hump, Vermont's 3rd largest peak.We also have a stream running behind the house and with recent rain we can hear it with the windows open. At 6:30 this morning there was a big deer standing so close to the house in the front yard 50 feet from the house. The neighbors ride their horse down the street routinely and their are unicorns. Just kidding, their aren't any unicorns. We are, however, 5 minutes from the Ben and Jerry's factory and I hear that they have a few unicorns on the their back lot.

Ellis has been remarkably unperturbed by the move, and has enjoyed the chaos of unpacking immensely. It did dawn on him a bit today that he won't be going to his old school and that mommy and daddy have new jobs, but all in all he was good on the trip and is enjoying being outside with more to see and do. Here he is enjoying his first sandwich in the new house.

Scout of course loves the country and is making herself at home in it. By that I mean running away and rolling in smelly stuff on a regular basis. I came into the bedroom yesterday and told Rachel, "Scout has run away." Her response came back quickly, without thought, and with unabashed optimism, "For good?" Of course it wasn't for good, but how would I have known? My evidence that she had run away was that she was nowhere to be found, not that I had seen her walking down the road behind the house with her belongings in a handkerchief on a stick. Anyway, Scout came back so stinky that I noticed her return by her odor, not by visually spotting her.

Our backyard has a nice stand of birch trees and of course the bird feeders are up. We have had Rose-Breasted Grosbeaks feeding a lot, including a female that looks like an inflated sparrow. Also we have had Ruby-Crowned Kinglets, which I have never seen before.

Work started yesterday for me and we are still swimming in boxes and slowly getting to a point where we can manage to cook at home. Once things are a bit more settled I will get a few more picitures up from the inside of the house.