Fall at the Falls

It was a beautiful fall day and a quick little getaway was in order so we went out to Great Falls, MD. I hadn't been there for at least ten years, but it was at least as beautiful as I remembered it from the last time.

On the Maryland side you have to stroll along the C&O canal towpath to get to the walkway for the falls.

This is a little stream that runs between the canal and the Potomac. It was doing a lovely job reflecting the gorgeous blue sky.

"Leaflets three - leave them be." The poison ivy poem.

Here's the first section that we came to. A sort of narrow gorge.

This is the main part of the falls. Great Falls covers a very wide and rocky section of the river.

Great Falls, VA. I looked at the falls from over there this past spring. I think the main part looks prettier from the Virginia side, but the walk to the falls is nicer on the Maryland side and you can get much closer to them.

Dwindling Travel

I love to travel and I've been very lucky to be able to incorporate that into my gigs in the past. I very reluctantly had to give up cruising and touring about halfway through 2006, always thinking that I'd get right back to it in a year, or two at the most. Here's how that plan has played out:
2005
16 Countries: Portugal, Spain, France, Monaco, Italy, Netherlands, England, Scotland, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Estonia, Poland, Norway.
31 States (including DC): Maryland, DC, Virginia, Idaho, Washington, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut.
2006
5 countries: Canada, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Iceland.
27 States: Maryland, DC, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Indiana, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachussets, New Hampshire, Maine, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, California, Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Hawaii

2007
18 States: Maryland, DC, Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, Texas, Alabama, Florida, Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana.

2008
13 States: Maryland, DC, Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Tennessee, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Iowa, Nebraska.

2009
7 States: Maryland, DC, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Pennsylvania.

2010
3 States so far: Maryland, DC, Virginia. Exactly 2 one day trips to the beach this summer. No vacations for me. But tomorrow I’m actually going all the way to Delaware! (for a gig.) I’m so excited to be adding another state to my “travels” for this year!

At the rate things are going, I won’t even be leaving my house next year.

Stink Bugs in my Bass

Wasn't it a gorgeously beautiful day today? The weather was perfect. But then I had an outdoor wedding gig and two stink bugs crawled inside my bass right in the middle of Pachelbel's Canon. They are probably still in there because I did not see them crawl back out. So what am I supposed to do now? I don't want stink bugs in my bass. It's disgusting. I really don't want my bass to smell like stink bugs!

We have Franz Schubert in the house!

About a week ago my friend Nancy came over for a visit and decided that my living room would be the ideal place to get together for a reading of the Schubert Octet. She decided this in spite of the fact that the room was a complete mess, full of boxes and other stuff that I'd never unpacked. Maybe she was trying to do me a favor by forcing me to unpack. It worked!

The reason I hadn't unpacked was because I thought that it would be best to wait until all the baseboards and window trim was done before everything got spread out and moved into place. I hate the thought of everything getting all dusty from the relatively small amount of construction we have left to do.

I still think that, but it's time to actually start acting like I live here whether the house is finished or not. I'm so glad I finally got the stimulus I needed to do that. It's been kind of depressing having all those boxes piled up in there. Playing the Schubert is a much better use of that room.

Anyway I spent the past week painting the coat closet so I could put the coats away. It is so nice to have a coat closet! Our rental house didn't have one and it was always a problem. And that closet was the last room left to be painted so now the only painting left to do is the window and door trim and baseboards, if they ever get installed. Aren't I patient?

So over the last couple of days I've been moving all of the boxes to more appropriate locations and finally the room is ready for its inaugural chamber music session!

Nancy organized the whole thing and we'll have time to run through the whole piece twice I think. It's about an hour long. It's going to be fun to play it with some new people. Some of the players are friends or acquaintances and a couple of them I've never met before.

Later tomorrow I'm playing with a big band up in Baltimore at a place called the Wine Cellar. After that I'll be spending some time learning some new tunes (for me) for a wedding gig on Sunday. I think I might have actually even heard some of these songs before:

#41, Typical Situation, Ants Marching, Crash Into Me by the Dave Matthews Band; Upside Down and Times Like These by Jack Johnson; I'm Yours by John Mayer.

I guess I'll be checking them out on YouTube very soon.

Speaking of YouTube, here's a movement from the Schubert we'll be playing in about eight hours. I guess I'd better go to sleep now. Nighty-Night!

Math Dreams

Subtitle: Strange Woman Forgets Everything She Learned in Math Class

This morning I woke up from a dream where I was trying to figure out whether there existed a formula for calculating the number of different combinations a series of five numbers could have. What a strange dream to wake up from, or even to have! Although I'm quite decent at arithmetic, I'm not really particularly a math type, so why would I even care about such a thing? Anyway, I was sure there must be a formula, which I probably learned in high school, but it's most definitely not something that's come up for me for at least 20 years.

So then, in my half awake state, still lying there, I started visualizing the possible number combinations for 123, because I knew I could do that easily and instantly. Because I'm so organized, I did the ones first and then the twos, and then the threes. Whoopdee Doo. I immediately saw a pattern and I thought I could also visualize it working for 1234 so I thought maybe I could make a formula from that. Keep in mind that I'm still half asleep while thinking all of this, but the snoring next to me is forcing me to become gradually more and more aware of my surroundings, and of what I am thinking, whether I want to be thinking or not.

There are six combinations for 123, which is 3x2. There are three different starting numbers and two combinations for the remaining numbers for each of the three starting numbers so that's 3x2, right? So I thought maybe the formula is the number of different digits (3) multiplied by the number of combinations for the remaining digits (2).

I didn't think too hard about the combination of four numbers, I just tried to feel it, and it seemed okay, and that's when the pattern, if this is even right, kicks in more obviously. But what I was really trying to do at this point was fall back to sleep.

Instead, I did the pattern of multiplying descending numbers 3x2 (x1, what the heck) and stuck a four in front of it: 4x3x2x1. I don't know if this works, but it "felt" right and I was still too sleepy to care.

When I finally gave up trying to sleep and got out of bed, I was kind of more wrapped up in why the hell was I having boring mathematical dreams than I was in trying to figure out if I'd actually "discovered" a secret mathematical formula while sleeping, ha ha ha!

Then I thought, hey maybe there are some math types out there who are also bloggers and they will read this and set me straight. Since I have had almost nothing to say for months maybe I'll just write this all out and people will read it and say "That's enough! I'm never coming back! She's boring and weird and I don't want to read a bunch of low level mathematical crap. Who knows what she'll write about next to irritate her remaining three readers?" Or maybe the math nerds will take pity on me and tell me they used to dream the same thing - when they were five.

Sorry, I guess I got sidetracked by an early morning case of ADD (adult deficit disorder). So the formula was solidifying in my head: four different numbers gets 4x3x2x1, or 24 combinations. I was really feeling the layers of it and it felt right without even laying out the actual individual piles of number combinations. I really wanted to stay in that state of right brain-ed-ness and not let my annoying, detail-oriented left brain burst my happy little bubble of discovery and wonder.

But now that I'm awake I don't trust it at all, so I'm going have to actually physically double check with five numbers, to answer my original question that I had during the dream. I guess we can add OCD to the ADD. At least I'm well balanced.

Let's see if 5x4x3x2x1 gives us the right number, that is if I'm able to lay these out in an organized enough way to get them all. I guess that's what computers are for, but I'm too low tech to do it that way at this time, especially since I haven't the slighest idea how to do it.

5 4 3 2 1 * * * * * : ( ^%$##@!!!

Okay, I gave up doing it with five numbers. It's a little too unwieldy and unpractical to do it this way and I'm just not that interested. But I'm mildly interested. I'm going to do it with just four numbers and call it a day.

4321, 4312, 4231, 4213, 4132, 4123.
3421, 3412, 3241, 3214, 3142, 3124.
2341, 2314, 2431, 2413, 2134, 2143.
1324, 1342, 1234, 1243, 1432, 1423.

Did I miss any? I went across the first row with 4 in front of the six combinations of three numbers. In the next row I switched the threes and the fours but kept the rest of it the same. Then I substituted the twos with the fours from the first row, and then the ones. This is what my brain "felt" but did not calculate during the time that I was still half asleep.

So now the fives. You'd start the first row with 5 in front of those 24 combinations and then you'd substitute the 5 for the four in the next row and then the three, etc. for each of the 24 combinations. So you'd have five rows of 24 different combinations, right? So that's 5x4x3x2x1 = 120. Please tell me if I'm wrong, because if this is right I want to remember it. I would like for it to be right because it's kind of a groovy formula. Also, how would you write this in an actual mathematic formula, with x's and y's?

I guess this is a perfect example of if you don't use it you lose it. I'm sure this descending factor thingy has come up before sometime in school somewhere. I got as far as pre-calculus in high school but I don't remember a thing about it other than that I liked it and did okay with it - probably half Bs and half As. I'm not totally stupid. My favorite math course was geometry, which seemed more artistic somehow than other forms of math. And creative and logical at the same time. I liked that. Then it was on to music in college and it's been nothing but basic arithmetic for me ever since.

I just remembered why I was even dreaming about this. It was because I'd been dreaming that I would sell on Ebay some hand painted numbered tiles that I bought when I was in Sorrento on my cruise gig five long years ago. I wanted to figure out how many different house numbers would work with these tiles, which I'm not going to be using since they don't work with the color scheme we ended up with.

Uh oh, there's one number in my five tiles that is used twice. So my 5x4x3x2x1 thingy isn't going to work, even if it was the right formula to begin with. My gut instinct is telling me that I should do 5x4x3x2x1 and then divide that result in half. I don't know why I would think such a thing, and it's probably wrong. I've suddenly lost interest in this topic because the snorer is up and now I can go back to sleep. Maybe I'll dream up the right answer. But since I don't really need to know, maybe I'll just not worry about it anymore.

Also, before I was dreaming about selling my hand painted tiles on Ebay, and messing around with number combinations, I was playing millions of games of Free Cell in my sleep. I just discovered Free Cell after years of playing just plain old Solitaire. It's a lot more interesting and winning seems to have a lot more to do with creative organizational skills than it does with how the cards happen to fall.

Hey, I wonder how many layout combinations there are for Free Cell, and more importantly, how many possible winning layout combinations there are? 52x51x50,etc........? And would you cut the number in half because of the fact that there are two reds and two blacks for each number? And blah, blah, blah? Who cares. It's time to add two more hours of sleep to my previous three.

So how was your morning?










Is it better to be half asleep or half awake?

Is my glass half empty or half full?

And, most importantly, is my brain half empty or half full?


* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

apples, apples, apples

This year was a particularly good year for our apple tree. We've been enjoying them for well over a month now and the final apple was picked just a few days ago. It's great to have such excellent apples on hand. We've mostly been eating them fresh but Doug has made applesauce with his Foley food mill a few times. I love his applesauce.

We had about three times as many apples in our refrigerator and on our countertop as you can see in this current picture but we've been eating so much of them that it's finally gotten down to a manageable quantity. These will last us for probably another month if we take our time.


Last week my awesome friend JoAnn offered to make us a pie so I took her enough apples for two pies and today we got to taste the results of her excellent pie-making skills. This pie tasted perfect to me. It was tangy and not too sweet and the baking seemed to make the flavor of the apples even more intense. And they were tasty apples to begin with. The crust was delicious too. Thanks JoAnn!

Now that I have an actual kitchen maybe I should learn how to make a pie. I remember watching my grandmother do it many times when I was growing up. And I'll be able to take the pie out of the oven with my amazing new potholders.


See how red that apple is? Usually when you buy MacIntosh apples in the store, or when the deer knock them off your tree, they are half red and half green. If you don't pick them too early they'll become sweeter and they turn completely red on the outside.

The next best thing to having your own tree is to hit one of the local fruit stands. There are actually orchards that are not too far out of town. And now is also an excellent time to buy locally made apple cider.

Glenmont Skies

The Glenmont shopping center is probably one of the least attractive places in all of Montgomery County. But this evening it was looking pretty good.

There's nothing like a little sunset to help things look as good as they possibly can.

It's really not a good idea to stand under those wires. Those birds are always there, taking care of business.

a most peculiar day

Today was the first day I've had completely off in a while and since it was also relatively cool, I was all psyched to mow the grass. But today was also the day that Doug's five year old overpriced lemon of a $700 Honda mower decided to call it quits for the final time. It has been acting cantankerous practically since the first year Doug bought it, during the one spring that he had to mow the grass because I was off cruising. Today was the first day that Doug could not get his precious baby interested, even after considerable poking and prodding.

H E L L O

.

I reallyreallyreally wanted to get the damn grass cut, so I quickly went inside to research lawnmowers, and I soon figured out which moderately priced non-Honda would best satisfy my needs. I even called someone I knew who had recently bought the same one to make sure he still liked it. As I was attempting to share this information with Doug he informed me that he had decided that this afternoon would be a perfect time to do our annual paddleboating session at Lake Centennial.

.

I knew full well that this was a diversionary tactic, not only for the sake of getting me off track in my quest to do whatever it might take to get the damn grass cut, (i.e. spend $400 on a new mower) but also so that he could further delay his own wallboarding duties inside. He doesn't seem enjoy it much when I'm not in there cheering him on. But that's not my fault. My plan was that we would both do the taping and mudding just as soon as I finished mowing the grass. I found out later that the secret reason for the paddleboating trip was so that we could stop in some random hardware store in Clarksville, MD that might have lawnmowers to look at on the way back. We live in Silver Spring so that makes total sense. Yeah.

As usual, we had lots of fun paddleboating, although I did notice Doug gazing rather wistfully at the kayaks. The weather was perfect too - not too hot and not too bright. We can go kayaking next time, especially if you mention it before we rent a paddleboat.

I wish I knew how to make a slide show here. I still haven't gotten around to learning how to do that. You'll just have to pretend those ducks above were in a slide show.

.

Do any of you locals remember the Enchanted Forest? I read recently that many of the original buildings and statues had been restored and moved to a new location. And we just happened to notice it today because the new location is on Route 108. We stopped in on the way back to check it out.

In case you don't know about the Enchanted Forest, here's a link to the story of how it all got started.

The Enchanted Forest stuff has been combined with a petting farm that includes hayrides and pony rides. There were a lot of little kids in there who appeared to be having an excellent time. It seems like a very quaint and gentle place. When I went there as a kid I was sort of past the fairy tale stage and possibly a little jaded by then (a huge fan of fractured fairy tales), but I thought it was cool the way they had so many stories depicted all in one place. My little brother loved it.

"Help! Save me!"

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.

The Dragon as Minstrel

"Yaaay! I finally finished washing the dishes!

Thank goodness for Playtex Living Gloves!"

This is the house where Goldilocks visited the Three Bears.

It took me the longest time to figure out what those things were up on the roof. It's a corn cob pipe for Papa Bear, some kind of night cap for Mama Bear, and a giant baby bottle for Baby Bear, all conveniently located right up there on the roof.

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe,

She had so many children, she didn't know what to do;

She gave them some broth, without any bread,

And whipped them all soundly

And sent them to bed.

NICE!

Follow the Gingerbread Man into the Enchanted Forest Pine Tree Maze!

I'm really sort of glad I'm not a kid anymore. Our imaginations were fed by some rather peculiar stories and notions, even back then. I can't even imagine what it's like today to be a kid. Probably a lot more frightening.


So after all the fun was over, we went to the hardware store in Clarksville which had nothing useful in the way of lawnmowers, and then to Home Depot in Aspen Hill which had the one I really wanted, plus two that Doug was interested in. We had a little debate, but it remained friendly. Then I was sent off alone on sort of a reconnaissanse mission to Zimmermans Hardware in Burtonsville to make sure I really liked the one I had picked out because they keep their mowers on the floor and I could actually roll it around, unlike at Home Depot. Finally we went back to Home Depot and bought the one I liked. So that went really well. And it was much more efficient than many of our purchasing adventures are, believe it or not.

Tomorrow I will take the bull by the horns and finally get my grass cut.
Toro, Toro, Toro!

Eastern Shore Side Trip: The Wye Oak

This past spring, during a break between services at a gig on the Eastern Shore I decided to go visit the Wye Oak. Or I should say the place where the Wye Oak was before it came down during a huge thunderstorm in 2002.

I remember seeing signs for the Wye Oak on my many trips to the beach over the years and wondering why in the world there would be a sign on Route 50 for a tree, of all things. But I was always in too much of a hurry to get to the beach on the way down, or to miss the bridge traffic on the way back to ever stop and see it. I just don't like anything cutting into my beach time to the point where I would often go there by myself just so that I could do it no breaks. But one day in 2000 or 2001 I had Doug with me and we decided to stop and see it. Doug just loves taking little side trips and I figured it wouldn't take up too much time so I went along with it.

The tree was enormous, very old and very weather beaten, and it was clearly past its prime. It was the kind of tree that you could almost imagine somebody hollowing out and making into a house except that it was really not in very good shape at that point and you just don't do that sort of thing to trees anyway, except in cartoons. But that's how big it was. At the time it was the largest White Oak tree in the entire United States and had held that title since at least the early 1900s. I had never known that as I sped past the exit to it at least a hundred times over the years so I'm really glad I finally got to see it.

I found some old pictures of the Wye Oak here and there. I have linked to all of the websites where these pictures were originally located down at the bottom of this post.

1921

1935

1965

2002

I had my camera with me when I went to visit it again this last time. Here are some of the pictures I took:

It's looking pretty empty here - a fence around a mulch pile?

This is the official sign. Click on it if you want to see what it says.

They planted a young clone of the Wye Oak in the middle of its former trunk.


The Wye Oak seems to be asking WHY?

They have lots of grain storage right across the street.

A few doors down I saw this gate made out of old wagon wheels.

The Wye Grist Mill is still in operation

There are picnic tables nearby

and an old abandoned barn is just around the corner

So if you aren't in a big hurry to get to or from the beach the way I usually am, visiting the Wye Oak is a great little side trip to take along the way. Here are some links to additional information about the Wye Oak:

An American Champion

The Quiet Giant, The Wye Oak

The Maryland State Tree

The Wye Oak Comes Down

so what else is new?

As I have mentioned before, both of my blogs were started as the result of a certain unpleasant event and branched off from each other into a house-specific blog and this one, which has gradually developed into a rather lighthearted diversion from my somewhat grueling life over the past five years.

Once we moved, we basically stopped working on the house in spite of the fact that it is nowhere near being finished, which is annoying, but I suddenly started gigging a lot more and although I continued to have fun taking pictures all over the place, I somehow lost the urge to assemble them into blog posts. I kept thinking I should, but somehow it didn’t happen.

I think the reason for this might be because the types of things I would ordinarily write about, those bright little moments that have cheered me up and brought me joy, don’t seem to stand out as much as they had previously. Now that we are back in our house everything feels like it is back as it should be. Well not everything - there are still some things that need to be taken care before I can fully resume my previous life but it’s getting there. Obviously I have proven time and again over the years that I have the ability to be patient far above and beyond what would be in a normal person’s best interest. But we are not normal around here.

So this is all pretty boring stuff, and I should just get on with it if I’m going to spend time wiggling my fingers over the keyboard. Since I don’t have much to say maybe I’ll talk about what I’ve been up to lately. There hasn’t been a whole lot of construction work taking place here lately – it’s been practically next to nothing since April, which is frustrating because when productivity is happening I like to keep going until it’s done. I hate losing momentum. On the other hand, working on the house is not exactly my idea of a good time so the procrastination is not entirely unpleasant.

In April and May I did some unpacking and played a lot of gigs. It was a good mix of shows, various orchestra concerts, some church gigs, our weekly jazz octet thing and some small combo work. All the stuff I like to do. Except tour and travel.

In June Doug went on vacation, I mean on tour (which in his case is a vacation because he made less money and had more fun than he would have if he had stayed at home). Since his vacation, I mean tour, was already on the books, I regretfully was stuck turning down a gig on the QM2, which sucks because in addition to missing an opportunity to make more money than I do here at home, I missed a fairly decent itinerary that included Europe and fjords and trips to New York and New England.

But I was too busy to stay resentful for long – in addition to a decent amount of playing, I started and finished a pretty big painting job for my parents. It felt really great to actually finish a project like that in a relatively short time. Also I successfully convinced them to branch out a tiny little bit and add some touches of color to their all off-white interior. The convincing was a major accomplishment and it was therefore particularly rewarding to hear them acknowledge how good it looked after it was all done since they know what they like better than I do.

Also in June I pulled out my fancy new computerized sewing machine, which is still not as easy to deal with as my old workhorse machine was before it got all melted and destroyed, and I made a dress(!) and altered a blouse so I have two new things I can wear. I wore the dress to a gig at Glen Echo and instead of being boiling hot in pants I stayed nice and cool and comfortable in the sweltering heat.
Two more things done.



This past week I played with a couple of singers for Bastille Day at the French Embassy on Wednesday, played for a pool party in Potomac on Friday, and did a guitar-bass duo in the lobby of the Atlas Theatre on Saturday. On Sunday I drank way too much coffee after sort of being off of it for a while. I met my friend at Starbucks to carpool up to a rehearsal in Baltimore and our receipts contained an offer for a $2.00 drink after 2pm, which is exactly when we got back there so of course we had to spend the $2.00 to get the deal.

It was so hot on Sunday that I decided I needed to spend the afternoon sitting somewhere cold and dark instead of mowing the grass, so Doug decided that we should see Metropolis at the Avalon. It was a very long, very strange, and very excellent movie. The soundtrack was gorgeous. And then I somehow stayed up until 6:30 this morning. I didn’t even try to go to sleep. Apparently the effects of coffee are cumulative and they build up. So it’s time to go without it again for a while.

Today I played at a retirement home in DC. It feels so good to play music that obviously means so much to the people who live there. It’s a really special feeling. One time at the Hebrew home in Rockville a man came up to talk to me afterwards and he said he was soon going to be celebrating his 103rd birthday. He’s the oldest person I’ve ever met. He’s on a walker but takes no medication. Isn’t that amazing? That’s probably why he’s still alive. Imagine all of the history he has lived through.

Okay that wasn’t so hard. I obviously haven’t lost the ability to blather on and on and on, once I get started. Maybe next time I’ll post sooner rather than later because the longer you put something off the easier it is to not get around to it again. Hmmm.….that rings a not too distant bell. I wonder why?

some things never change

I'm Not Really a Blogger...

There's a nail polish that I wore as part of my getup for the tour I used to do called "I'm Not Really a Waitress." It's an excellent shade of red if you're into that sort of thing. And the name of the color made it more fun to wear somehow. It still amuses me.

I've been trying to figure out why I haven't gotten around to blogging in over a month. I've been busy but not ridiculously so. Well relatively speaking anyway. When I've had free time I've done other things. My brain has been in a different place since I moved back into my house. At least part of my existence is now back to where it should be.

I wasn't a blogger before the fire - in fact I didn't even know what blogging was when I started writing my first posts on the bus back in 2005. I wrote about the fire and its aftermath, put up a bunch of pictures from my three month cruise gig in Europe, wrote about the road gig, used it a little bit to observe how I felt about some of the post fire crap, and then it kind of became a little cheering myself up device, with pretty pictures and random little observations. I needed cheering up because for five years I was trapped in the limbo of our house situation and not particularly happy (rather horrified actually) about the way things were playing out. It was a rather miserable and bleak existence over all. So blogging for me was kind of an escape from all of that.

Now we're finally back in our house - well not completely, but at least we're living there. It feels great to be back. I've always felt some kind of connection with this particular spot. My sense of direction is based here. And there's just something that just feels right about living in the same location where I cut the grass.

Since moving back in we've done very little work on the house which has been wonderful from a labor and dirt perspective although as a person who likes to see things through to completion, it's been a little frustrating and discouraging. But it is so much nicer than it was before so I'll take that. And immediately after we moved back in the gigging started to suddenly pick up a lot, so that was excellent timing.

The only thing missing for me is travelling. I really want to get back to doing ships and/or a road gig. I've had to turn down a number of ship gig offers with really nice itineraries over the past four years and that just sucks. But after we tie up a few final loose ends I'll be free to do that once again. I can't wait!

If I'm going continue to do this blogging thing I'll have to find a different reason to do it. It's kind of nice to not need it to serve as an escape from my miserable existence any longer, hahaha. I know - it'll be the icing on the cake of my happy existence from now on. Or maybe the sprinkles. So if I don't post, it's because I'm on a diet.

So that's enough of that - now back to the usual fare. Yesterday when I was cutting the grass I noticed that one of our magnolia bushes has two random blooms on it, and they are much brighter and darker than what this bush usually puts out in the spring.

And then a tiny baby bunny hopped out from UNDER the mower just in the nick of time. It freaked me out even though it happens all the time, especially when the grass gets long. This one is the smallest I've ever seen. Look how short his little ears are! I turned off the mower and spent a little quiet time sitting there with him while I took his picture. I hope he didn't mind.

(he's hiding)