Monday, March 15, 2010

Pottery!

I took a pottery class this spring, and while I'm certainly no expert, I think I actually made some pretty decent (small) pieces, considering it was my first time!

There are three more in my office (a flower pot and a cup and a worm pinch-pot, don't ask), but here are my favorites...




And one more that I love the shape of but unfortunately the glaze didn't really work (at all).


Yay!!! I like art.

Treat time at the Zoo

This isn't a normal activity here but sometimes it's just funny to tease the animals....
Who said cats and dogs are that different?


North Carolina

I went to Wilmingon, North Carolina for a conference last week. It was a good conference and my talk went pretty well, but the most exciting thing is that spring is in full swing there, and the air smelled like ocean, and it was gorgeous. I miss the ocean.

For those who like pickles, we drove through Mt Olive, the "Pickle Capitol", where there are lots of pictures of pickles.

The boardwalk in Wilmington...

Campus at UNCW...


It finally stopped raining and we got to see this!

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Our Dog and Her Sticks

It's no secret to the people on our road that Shasta loves her sticks; there's a steady stream of them left on the roadsides whenever there's no snow and she can grab them. What many people may not realize, though, is that she ONLY grabs the sticks on the way BACK from a walk...I'm not entirely sure how she knows, but pretty much everytime you start heading home from a walk, she grabs a stick and starts tearing it apart. This happens in the summer...



Fortunately, the beatings are only a threat to your ankles or knees...

She also does this in the "spring" when you're 6 miles from home in the snow..

*sigh* That's our girl!

Deer beds


The deer really liked the trails we were on too!

Red Buds!


Spring is in the air!

A Spring Break Gift

Thursday was an early spring gift in central PA-50 degrees and sunny when we were forecasted to have pouring rain. Since the motivation fairies saw fit to steal the wheels off my motivation wagon anyway that day, I pounded through my science work, strapped on the Camelback, my orange windbreaker, and headed out on a hike with Shasta!

All good hikes should start with a snack. Mine was cheese. Shasta's was...well...I'm not really sure, but it was probably something I didn't want to know about anyway...

The streams in the Gap were flowing great that day and the sun and snow was beautiful!

We hiked along the Mid-state Trail, along the ridge top. Shasta was particularly intrigued by the smells coming up from the south...I was more concerned with the four foot snow drifts we had to slog through...nothing quite like dropping thigh deep when you hit a pocket under the crust.

We reached the end of our hike at the highway outside of the next town over. Which was between 5 and 6 miles away...To paraphrase Calvin's dad "Ahhh, the crazy hedonism of a Thursday afternoon!"



Our walk out was fun and exciting...the walk back was muddy and cold :) We walked home through a power line cutout, which the day before had been snow, but now was ankle deep mud. After playing some "Posted sign Hide-and-Go-Avoid" that involved popping up and down the ridge a couple times, we eventually made it back to the trail from home. And my shoes lived behind the woodstove for the next two days to dry out. All in all a good day (not the least because the dog slept for the next 18 hours :)

Sunday, March 7, 2010

The taxman cometh...

Ahhh, tax season. That wonderful time of year when I try to stare laser beams into the computer in the hopes that the refund will increase...
You can almost see the smoke...

Pretty snow!


We had a gorgeous snowfall the other morning; I love living in the woods!

Cuddle butts!


Beyond the foot touching, we now have full-blown cuddling (though I believe the cat may have been drunk at the time and didn't realize what she was doing)

Stream Macroinvertebrates!


For the class I've been teaching this semester we did a stream quality assessment using stream invertebrate populations. I'd forgotten how much fun it is to ID aquatic insects! These are some drawings I made for my students!