Carving pumpkins!

Is crazy fun :-)

Here's mine!


And Jim's. We both also carved a miniature pumpkin, and those turned out great!



And D's.

My miniature pumpkin


All the pumpkins lined up on the deck. They look great!



Happy Halloween!

More scenes from last weekend

Some more scenes from last weekend...

We went to a 5 acre corn maze. Unfortunately due to the drought the corn was very, very small. But it was still fun!


One of the featured attractions was a pumpkin slingshot!
And Jim got to eat soft-serve ice cream for the second time. With sprinkles.


Plus, they had a pumpkin patch. This made us all really happy....

Skyline caverns

My labmate D came to visit this weekend, and we explored the Front Royal area a bit. We made it to the Skyline Caverns, which were really neat to see... it's like another world, underground.

Here are some stalactites and some flowstone...


Here's a shallow pool where the surface of the water reflects the stone ceiling above it. So cool.



Skyline Caverns is most famous for the development of calcium carbonate anthodites, which look like crystal flowers. They are absolutely amazing. They formed in a vacuum chamber that was disturbed when the caverns were being explored.




So cool!

Our house, finally unpacked.

We're finally mostly unpacked! Yay!

The kitchen (behind you is the sliding door to the porch which is taped up to keep the bugs out, and the front door).



The kitchen from the living room...



The living room #1
The living room #2
It's nice! And it's SO nice to not be moving right now.

A few gratuitous gross bug pictures

This is why I'm not a fan of stinkbugs. Fortunately, although we still find pockets of them (I pulled 44 out of the backpack I haven't used since I left State College this afternoon), they've almost all disappeared, and Shasta makes short work of any that she finds.


The trashcan in our house...

Our windows...

And just so you don't think Virginia is just totally disgusting, we do have some really cool bugs.
This one hangs out by our front door.

Cape Charles II

This is the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. It's an unbelievable feat of civil engineering - it's 17 miles of bridges punctuated by two 1 mile long tunnels over the Chesapeake Bay. We came over to Cape Charles at night, in windy conditions, and the wind was buffeting the car. We could see the spray and the waves over the side of the bridge, and it was quite an experience. Going back towards Norfolk, the sea was much calmer, but it's amazing to drive on the bridge - you can only see ocean all around you, and it feels like it never ends.


By the tunnel closest to Norfolk, there's a little rest stop where you can pull off and they sell food and souvenirs, and there's a fishing pier for fishermen. We stopped so we could see the container ship going over the tunnel we had just passed through.
Me with my eyes closed on the beach of Cape Charles....
The sunset from the bed and breakfast we stayed at. It was amazing, and considering we got in on a cancellation, a fantastic deal!
These are sunken ships that act as breakers for the waves at the Kiptopeke State Park. From the Virginia State Parks website, "These ships were an emergency response to a critical shortage of maritime cargo ships in World War II. Operated by merchant seamen and a naval armed guard, they carried all types of war supplies throughout the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

The nine McCloskey ships off the park’s shoreline were sunk to provide a breakwater for the Virginia Ferry Corporation’s ferry service linking the Eastern Shore to Norfolk. Today, they provide visitors a glimpse into the past and fishermen with fishing opportunities." Very cool!

In addition to all this, we walked through a field of goldenrod in the State Park that was full of hundreds of monarch butterflies! I've never seen anything like it. Perhaps they were migrating south? It was amazing!

Cape Charles

We went to the shore two weekends ago for our very first weekend off since July 4th (without working or moving). It was absolutely wonderful. Cape Charles is on the southern tip of Virginia's eastern shore, about 4 hours away, and it actually faces the Chesapeake Bay, although you can't see the continent from the Cape, and it has an island feel- you have to take the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel to get there. I really wish we lived closer to the ocean so we could see it more often. Some pics...
Goldenrod by the sea...

There was a ton of driftwood!
Shasta found a dead pufferfish!

The infamous blue crab.
Shasta before heading down to the beach - she loved it.

A series of posts!

...are coming up.

Firstly, the cat and the dog have graduated to best friends. This is how they spend their days.

Goodbye Felix

Sadly, Felix passed away this morning, after 19 years of cricket-hunting and digging holes and generally being an awesome, gentle, and beautiful leopard gecko. He died with his head resting on a nice fat cricket, a scourge of crickets to the end. We'll miss him!

(Despite his sometimes poor aim hunting crickets, I'd like to point out that 12 crickets a week for 52 weeks a year for 19 years = 11,856 crickets).

How to make totally awesome homemade bread with no work

It's so easy! And so much better than bread machine bread. Not that we don't love bread machine bread too- but our kitchen is too small for it, so I've been playing with not needing it.

Draw 1 1/2 cup warm water.
Dissolve 1/4 teaspoon active yeast in 3 tablespoons of warm water. Add the rest of the water to the mixture.
Beat in 3 cups of flour, and salt to taste, and stir till mixed.
Cover, and let sit for 12-18 hours at room temperature (at least 65 degrees F).

After 12-18 hours, the dough will rise considerably, and will be wet and full of bubbles. Tip it out onto a well-floured surface, and fold it twice (and only twice!). Then let it rest under a pot or bowl for 15 minutes. This is enough time for you to find corn meal or more flour and wash your hands and take the dog outside.

Once you're back in, move the dough onto a cloth (not a towel) that has been sprinkled with corn meal. Sprinkle some more corn meal on top of the dough, and then fold the cloth over the dough. Let sit for 2 hours.

After 2 hours, take a cast iron pot and lid, and put it in the oven at 450 degrees. Once the oven is preheated and the pot is hot, take the pot out of the oven (congratulations, you've cooked an empty pot!) Put the dough in the hot pot, and put the hot lid on the hot pot. Put the whole hot pot and lid and now dough into the oven.

Bake for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, take the lid off the pot, and bake for 10-15 more minutes until the bread is golden brown.

And there you go. Crusty, chewy, delicious bread for maybe 10 minutes work and clean-up.