The Extended Birthday Weekend

I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July. Here it was slightly pre-empted by Jay's birthday celebration which began with homemade blueberry pancakes, finished up with a Nintendo DSLite and had many stops along the way.

The food highlights included blueberry pancakes, biscuits and gravy, cotton-candy ice cream, pizza, shrimp, edamame and this:


A little slice of deliciousness known as homemade coconut cream pie.

After fueling up with pancakes, Saturday afternoon was all about the bike ride. We rode down to the Ferry Pond and into a peninsula of sod fields. First though we had to take a detour:


(My New Trek F 7.2)

Jay scouted ahead at the dead end.


(Bear? Bugs? They're both scary.)

The detour was necessary because the road to The Meadows was flooded due to the excessive amount of rain we've been getting lately. The words "stalled front" and "continuous downpour" have been uttered innumerable times by the forecasters this month. Since our detour required a detour it was back to the large puddle for us and like the nameless Enterprise crewman I was the first to attempt the crossing but not without some encouraging words from Jay:

"What's the worst that could happen? You could get wet and I'd get a laugh."



Biking can be taxing so we decided to hit the ice cream store in Old Wethersfield, a place that reminds us of Stars Hollow (if it weren't fictional).


(Aren't our bikes cool?)

And Now for the Women

It's raining rather hard here this evening and is predicted to do so for the rest of the weekend. This means lots of photo posts for you guys! Aren't you excited?

In case anyone is curious: these photos were all taken with a Canon S2 and were balanced etc. with Picasa 2. A vast majority of the computer ninja-ing has been done by Jay and also included a noise reduction program by the name of NeatImage.

The photos were taken at Pat Robertson's barn (no, not THE Pat Robertson) in Crandall, Indiana on June 3rd of this year. This was my first gig as a wedding photographer and was an extremely stressful, pleasant, and rewarding experience. I hope you enjoy the photographic evidence of The Day Nate and Kate Got Married.

Let's Begin With the G(B)room and G(B)roomsmen

Photo Exhaustion

After taking about 4 gigs of photos in the space of 3 days, I am definitely suffering from camera fatigue. At one point in time my face started to spasm because I had been squinting throught the viewfinder for so long.

I got back into Connecticut on midnight and have been trying to move back into my normal schedule. Last week was probably one of the worst weeks for me to miss workwise. I have parent conferences this week and am a bit underprepared to say the least. It's also my planning week. It's all about the improvising until Friday.

As far as the pictures go, I have decided to take at least a twenty-four hour breack from them. Hopefully, I can get myself into a good place with my various work/housekeeping responsibilities that I can do some editing and get some pictures posted shortly.

Even though I am physically exhausted my vacation gave me a mental and spiritual boost that will hopefully get me through this week in good shape. I'll post more later but I need to go make some puppets.

Back Home Again, In Indiana (Almost)

It's birthday trip time. Last year my birthday vacation was spent moving Jay and all of our stuff to Connecticut from Dallas. This year I find myself in Louisville, Kentucky.

Today, I got to see my nephew for the first time. He is much cuter in person than in his previous appearances on this blog. This trip also marks the first occasion when my niece Emilee called me by name while running to give me a big hug. Last time I got out of the car she was a bit confused and called me Mommy.

I've been travelling since about 6:30 this morning and have been in aunt-mode since my arrival. I am a bit weary to say the least. My best aunt move today was entertaining a very tired Emilee with some homemade bubble solution. Blowing and popping bubbles helped to distract her from her cranky mood.

I'm going to bed to rest up for tomorrow.

A Sock Confession

I did not make the Sockapaloooza deadline. I wasn't anywhere close to making it. Between my wrists hurting and my chronic case of procrastinationitis, there was no hope for me. My sockpal did not suffer from these same shortcomings and I recieved my socks in the mail days after the deadline.

That yellow package was the wet cat tail in the middle of the night that makes you shoot out of bed to make you check to make sure the toilet seat is down. Or more simply put it was a clear motivation for me to get my socks finished. I decided that I was not allowed to see my socks until I had finished my required pair.

I forgot to tell my wonderful sock pal of my plan so I'm sorry Dierdre for any stress I may have caused you by leaving this key component out of my plan.

My plan hit a bit of an annoyance because Jay couldn't deal with waiting. The annoyance went something like this:
"Come on open your socks."
"No, I have to finish my socks."
"Well, I'm going to open your socks."
"Please don't."
(Jay leaves room with package. Comes back.)
"Wow, your socks are cool. Do you want to know about them?"
"No, I don't. . . . Are they cooler than the ones I'm making?"
"I don't know they might be. You should look and see."
"Please go away."

I finished up my pair this Sunday with minimal damage to my wrists, thanks in part to regular doses of aspirin.

Sunday evening I was able to reopen my socks and this is what I found:


Jay was right. They are pretty awesome and they match most of my favorite fall clothes.

Zissou is quite taken with them as well. He couldn't keep himself from biting, nuzzling, and pawing at my feet.


These are the socks that I made and sent to Texas, after trying at least three different patterns and as many yarns. Once I correctly finished my first heel on the second try and completed my happy heel dance, knitting these socks was a blast. Hopefully, I can make some for myself after giving my hands a few days rest.


And a close-up of my stitching.


Thus ends the saga of the socks.

Zissou's Midterm: Does Not Play Well With Others of the Same Species

When we met Zissou at the shelter he was living in a cage. The woman explained that since he was new to the shelter, he had to do his time before he could be allowed to mingle with the rest of the feline population. This sounded like a good policy to us and he seemed to be such a sweet cat that we had no reason to doubt her veracity.

Recently we've been thinking that she wasn't being completely honest with us. First of all, there was the partially healed scratch on his chest which upon closer inspection turned out to be a bite-like puncture wound. Most recently there has been this: