Side Project
There is a small side project underway at poohsart.wordpress.com. It will most likely be compiled here at the end of the 100 days, but until then, pieces are being posted there.
Collaborating with miss RJ.
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Boulder Mountain Tour
Kirsten & Father & Uncle Andy & I all participated in this year’s Boulder Mountain Tour, and all for our very first time. I have to say that it wasn’t quite the thrilling competitive event that I had always imagined my first BMT would be, but that was 100% my fault and was actually just fine. I was back with the red lantern carriers, or so it felt, but I had a very pleasant ski and cruised my way down the course. Post race, while we waited for the rest of the family members to cross the finish line, my C.A. & I scouted for evidence that the new Skadi Nordic Squishy Ski Tie was infiltrating the market. We met with surprising success. And I am convinced that the Skadi Ski Tie is going to be the next big thing in Nordic Skiing.
New Year’s Weekend
Susan, Kirsten, Peter, & Laura Valaas
Kirsten Valaas
Chiwawa River
Peter Valaas
Grandma Yasuko's striped jello!
Thanksgiving!
Adela with Christmas tree
Ryan watching Adela pull the Christmas tree, so chivalrous.
Loki, dog of winter
Hurray for my first Thanksgiving at “home” in a long time! I am using quotes around home to indicate that we were not actually at home for Thanksgiving, but at a close enough location so as to be considered home (not to incorrectly provide emphasis). Good snowstorm, good turkey, good game of pictionary, good to be normal.
Bike… fit
Checking bike fit... or just enjoying the landscape!
One of my cycling guru friends took a picture of me on the bike so as to educate me about proper bike fit. But I just look at it and say, “the open landscape is sooooo pretty!”
Sourdough Alligator
From a short trip to San Francisco… this picture is entirely for Brian Gregg.
sourdough alligator
Chocolate Thermometer
My mother gave me a bar of chocolate earlier this week. (Chocolove Ginger crystallized in dark chocolate, 65% cocoa content, for those of you who think THAT is the most important piece of information in this blurb.)
This is behavior of which I highly approve. I put it in the car door pocket on the way home. And when I got home, I took it out. I am not such an idiot as to leave an entire bar of chocolate in the car on a hot summer day, despite previous evidence to the contrary. The crisis in this story is that my mother had requested to try a square when she gave it to me. (Which leads me to believe that the gift wasn’t entirely altruistic. Gifts of chocolate rarely are.) So she sampled, & I sampled, & my little sister mysteriously showed up right at this time and she sampled too. Two squares of chocolate fell out of the admittedly poorly re-wrapped chocolate and remained, unbeknown to me in the car door pocket. For some reason I had a lot of errands that day, and when I noticed the chocolate remaining in my door I got to watch it solidify as I drove and then melt and puddle in proportion to the length of my errand. I really should clean that out. Or I could never ever put anything else in that pocket ever again.
Hey, I never got around to finishing that chocolate bar. And if I can’t read the love poem on the inside of the wrapper until I finish the chocolate. First things first, I must be going.
Quail
The beautiful quail babies have grown up and flown the nest. Er, flown the coop?
We released them (legally) into our backyard gully and watched them rise as a flock and, stretching their wings for the first time as they discovered they could fly, beat their way gracefully through the clear blue sky and into a new life of freedom.
Just kidding, there was no soundtrack and it happened nothing like that. They were living on the porch in their chicken/rabbit house and replenished their food and water, opened their door(s) and went back to doing my thing figuring they would meander away and have an entire day to figure out the wild before nighttime. I check back in an hour. No one has left. So my C.A. joins in the cause and attempts to usher them out of the cage. One startles into a short flight into the yard. Success! The next couple are herded out of the cage and immediately try to find their way back in. We are talking straining their necks through the wires like maybe they’ll pop through. So we had a rotating cast of quail as we tried to get them out and they tried to get back in. Another one flies out. Success! Only he flies straight into the wall of the house and does a vertical flight against the wall up to the eaves before a hilariously clumsy tumble back to the porch. Eventually, we get them all out and they stand around dazed in the yard in groups of 2-4. They’re on their own but I go around and pour out the remainder of their game bird food pellets in piles around the edge of the yard. Not like we have any other use for it.
The quail have regrouped since then and seem to be happy and healthy! They’ve been back through a couple of times to eat the wild bird seed I set out. And yes we can tell which birds were ours because 1) none of the wild birids are the same age and 2) I think they’re actually a different species than the local quail. oops.
So… no quail were eaten in the experiment (at least not by us) and I finally got to raise little baby quail chicks, which I have to admit that I’ve always wanted to do.