The kaylinn dog is ready for a weekend of fun!

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A Run in the Mud

Ms. Kaylinn had a glorious morning of playing at the dog park today. One minor detail - it rained for the past 2 days, which made the dog park more of a mud park. She was not phased in the least. Mud splashing everywhere she ran back and forth getting her ball, every once and a while taking an interest in the many dogs around her but generally fully focused on the true purpose of her life - bringing the ball back to us.

She does this hilarious cooling off process which consists of going after the ball, runing back towards you as if she is going to drop the ball and then just continues running down to the water behind you. She then lays down in the water (with the ball in her mouth) until she feels ready to run again and then comes back up the hill to have us continue the playing. It's quite funny. After all the mud and water however, it was definitely time for a bath when we got home!

Eclipse Watching

I didn't think this was a bad pic considering it's from a tiny point and shoot camera I used standing on my porch!
It was quite interesting to watch. I think the animals were a little confused why I kept walking outside. Leia didn't have a problem with it though and was quite excited that I left the door open for the majority of the night. She was more than happy to hang out on the porch.

Kaylinn didn't care where I was in the house, she just wanted me to throw her the ball. It seems she has found her purpose in life and that is to play fetch.

A Day off Work...I guess

Well, the litter box is cleaned, the kitchen floor is swept, the guest room is cleaned up, the bathrooms are cleaned, the dishes are stacked in the diswasher and the last load of laundry is drying. At this point, I can finally sit down to do something on my day off that I actually WANT to do! Although I have to head out in 20 minutes to run some errands...oh well, I guess at least I won't have to do all this stuff the rest of the week while I'm also attempting to work.

Tomorrow I get to give a presentation on freshwater resources - a topic I know VERY little about - at a seminar that apparently was listed at the top of the editorial comments last week in Beaufort. I should actually be working on that presentation, but you know it's just hard to turn the computer on when you have off work. I actually have found myself more likely to work on the weekends than I am to work on a holiday - it just seems far more unacceptable :)

So, one fun thing that I did get accomplished, which I've had sitting on my to do list for weeks is to make up an invitation for my Birthday Build with Habitat for Humanity. I'm quite impressed with myself for finally getting to it :) And I'm pretty happy with the little invite, not back for 20 minutes worth of work. All those chicken picture making skills are coming in handy in other areas of life! (you know one of these days I'm really going to have to tell the full chicken story)

The weekend wasn't all work and no play, however. Brandy came down Friday night and we spent the better portion of Saturday...ok, all of Saturday, scrapbooking and eating. It was glorious. And I'm caught up to March 2007 in my scrapbook! Yippee, perhaps I will actually be able to start cropping things that occurred in the same year soon :) While we cropped, Sandor started making us a website for our new business. We've determined that scrapbooking is far too expensive for our budget laden lives, so we will start scrapbooking other peoples pictures (assuming they want us to), and then using the profit to buy stuff for our own scrapbooking. Hey, it's worth a shot, right? So, Sandor has begun the process of making our website, which he is doing an impressively good job on, by the way. www.build-a-memory.com if you want to check it out.

Well, it is now time to wake up the poor pup and crate her so I can head out and run some errands. Thankfully the rain has stopped so that will make errand running far less annoying!

Swimming Babies

Ok, this pictures is worth a blog post. I mean, come on, it's adorable! Jason and Holly took Ellie to her first baby swimming class last night. She did quite well according to dad, although apparently was not completely interested by the whole head going under water thing, but that's why you start them early. Having taught swim lessons in the past, it is far better for a kid to not be scared of the water and learn how to swim early rather than making them scared of the water so they don't jump in when you aren't looking and then try and teach them how to swim later. Anyway, I felt this needed to be shared with the little world of blog readers that check my spot because Ellie is looking super cute in her swimsuit!

The Land of Pets

Another excellent find by Ad of The Gates of Academe and Agricola fame. And so very, very true. I figured that it calls for a picture of a rare moment in the Szivak zoo...peace amongst the animals...


DOG DIARY

8:00 am - Dog food! My favorite thing!

9:30 am - A car ride! My favorite thing!

9:40 am - A walk in the park! My favorite thing!

10:30 am - Got rubbed and petted! My favorite thing!

12:00 pm - Lunch! My favorite thing!

1:00 pm - Played in the yard! My favorite thing!

3:00 pm - Wagged my tail! My favorite thing!

5:00 pm - Milk bones! My favorite thing!

7:00 pm - Got to play ball! My favorite thing!

8:00 pm - Wow! Watched TV with the people! My favorite thing!

11:00 pm - Sleeping on the bed! My favorite thing!


CAT DIARY

Day 983 of my captivity.

My captors continue to taunt me with bizarre little dangling objects. They dine lavishly on fresh meat, while the other inmates and I are fed hash or some sort of dry nuggets. Although I make my contempt for the rations perfectly clear, I nevertheless must eat something in order to keep up my strength. The only thing that keeps me going is my dream of escape. In an attempt to disgust them, I once again vomit on the carpet.

Today I decapitated a mouse and dropped its headless body at their feet. I had hoped this would strike fear into their hearts, since it clearly demonstrates what I am capable of. However, they merely made condescending comments about what a 'good little hunter' I am.
Bastards!

There was some sort of assembly of their accomplices tonight. I was
placed in solitary confinement for the duration of the event. However, I could hear the noises and smell the food. I overheard that my confinement was due to the power of 'allergies.' I must learn what this means, and how to use it to my advantage.

Today I was almost successful in an attempt to assassinate one of my tormentors by weaving around his feet as he was walking. I must try this again tomorrow -- but at the top of the stairs.

I am convinced that the other prisoners here are flunkies and snitches. The dog receives special privileges. He is regularly released - and seems to be more than willing to return. He is obviously retarded.

The bird has got to be an informant. I observe him communicate with the Guards regularly. I am certain that he reports my every move. My captors have arranged protective custody for him in an elevated cell, so he is safe. For now. ...

Interesting Reading

I get a newsletter from my undergrad, St. Mary's College, and I used to just trash them figuring there was all academic mumbo jumbo that I didn't have time to read about. Well last year I was bored one day when I got it so I sat down and actually read through the thing and ever since I've been amazed by how many articles I actually genuinely enjoy. So, I received another lovely installment this weekend which was focused on the anthropology department at my school. By the way, I am highly partial to liberal arts colleges - look I'm even learning stuff about areas of study I'd never have given a second thought to years after I've left school.

So, the cover article was called 'What Our Lawns, Toys, and Yellow Ribbons Reveal About Us' and was about research on of the professors, Dan Ingersoll, has done on 'anthropology of everyday life'. It was quite intriguing overall, however, what I found most interesting was the history of lawns. He said that "lawns were originally a medieval lord's way of signaling his wealth. Normally cattle and sheep kept a pasture in check. Through having humans rather than livestock trim the pasture, the lord exhibited his wealth in two ways: he showed that he could afford to pay humans to cut his grass, and he showed that he could afford to take land out of production. Later, the aspiring members of the middle class imitated the aristocracy by acquiring their own lawns. The final result is what we have today." How crazy is that!

And then he went onto point out that our front lawns are very different from say, Kongo culture where they value grassless swept-earth front yard, WHICH Brandy and I were cracking up about when we were looking through her and John's pictures from Uganda because she was telling me how their neighbor used to always have their kids ripping up all the grass and would tell Brandy and John that their yard was messy (which we could only assume was because it had grass in it)!

AND, trimming lawns with symmetry traces back to 18th century England, where humans are "imposing our will" upon nature by overcoming the "wild, unordered, and unpredictable" nature. So much cool stuff that you wouldn't learn if you only paid attention to your little slice of the academic pie! Yes, consider that a sales pitch for liberal arts schools.

Oh, and I was happy to find out (also thanks to the little River Gazette) that my undergrad is 1 of only 17 colleges in the United States that is purchasing green energy at the rate of 100 percent! Way to go SMC!

Poor Julia

Maia and I were bored last Friday afternoon at about 4:30, so to entertain ourselves for the last 30 minutes of work we decided to torture Julia just a bit more about the whole wedding thing. What resulted was a grand piece of art on Julia's office door...


We especially loved the little Julia heads we meticulously placed on every wedding dress we cut out. We had various sized Julia heads laying out on my desk so we could match up the correct sizes (or close to anyway) with the correct dresses. It was hilarious...and kinda creepy :)

This was the bit of torture we worked up last week - I never actually posted it with the easy cheese pic

A Day in the Sun

Days at work like yesterday remind me of why I love my job! We headed out to the newest DNR property to look around and groundtruth some locations for trails and educational trips that will take place once the 4000 acres are opened to the public. It was an incredible place! It's awesome walking on a beach that no one else is on and wandering along trails through the woods. We saw hawks, enormous great blue herons, some overwintering Monarch butterflies (this became the joke of the afternoon once we started seeing double digits of butterflies you generally never see this time of the year), bobcat tracks, deer tracks and trails, and heard tons of birds (me not being the birding expert meant I cannot tell you what they are). Remembering that we are in fact keeping some of these places natural instead of housing condos is a nice reminder to keep the faith that what we are doing will one day make a difference!

the beach - incredible how many shells there are on a beach when there are no vacationing massess picking them up!

Maia listening to the ocean :)
me on the random swing we found

all the girls

some pictures of the driftwood and trees on the beach

some of the more historical places on the plantation - this is an icehouse that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places - we thought it looked more like a church!

see what I mean by this place is enormous! this is one side of the huge pond in the middle of the property

as always I'm a sucker for pictures of live oaks

Three Beautiful Things

So, a while ago I mentioned my aunt had found this blog where the author listed three beautiful things from that day. I decided yesterday that I need to start doing that at least every so often, and so to kick that off I will start with today (yes, I've got three things already!)
1. the way Kaylinn tucks her little head in my neck when she jumps on the bed in the morning
2. my window totally covered in fog when I step into my office - it looks almost like I'm in a cloud except you can see the tiniest bit of water at the bottom
3. the smell of saltwater - it certainly is hard to be annoyed with work when you get that smell everyone morning

For those of you who have never visited my office, this is a nice aerial of it - not a bad place to be

Social Commentary

A website was sent to me this morning that shows Chris Jordan's current work. It's an interesting commentary on America as seen through images that portray specific quantities of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. As quoted by the website 'The underlying desire is to emphasize the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.' I would be very interested to see the series in person because I can only imagine how much more impact they would have when you see them at their correct scale. One that I found particularly disturbing: two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every 5 MINUTES! The image is actually 60 x 120"

zoomed in on the picture:

Makes you want to go out and buy a Nalgene...or it should anyway.

Tax Cuts

I may have voted in the Democratic primary, but this little joke Ad posted on Agricola is darn on point. Sorry hard core Dems, tax cuts are one place I definitely stray to the 'dark side' as it were. Which is why I will never claim a party - I'm just not that attached to either of them.

Our Tax System Explained: Bar Stool Economics

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that’s what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve. “Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.” Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free.

But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’

They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28% savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

“I only got a dollar out of the $20, “declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,” but he got $10!”

“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I got”

“That’s true!!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!”

“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!”

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

Easy Cheese

Apparently some people think that we government workers don't do any work. Well I'm here to tell you they are wrong. Take today for instance...ok, don't take today. Today Maia brought in the Easy Cheese left over from SuperBowl snacks and I assisted in decorating her crackers for her while we looked through the wedding magazine on Julia's behalf (Julia is not so much a wedding kinda girl, but she's getting married so we are assisting in making her as irritated as possible with the whole wedding experience). oh stop judging us and look at our beautiful creation!

Walker World

Sorry for being MIA last week - there is all sorts of drama in the Walker world, which hopefully will be resolved this week. In other Walker fun, my aunt and uncle are going to be adopting a sibling group from Ethiopia and are hosting a World Party in March to support their efforts! It's going to be quite fun and anyone interested is welcome to attend, so if you want to join the fun check out their website!