Mistress Mary, Quite contrary,

How does your garden grow?

Mine is doing nicely, thank you. :)

My bulbs are coming in now and I think that some of them worked very hard at multiplying last summer.
We still have 15, count 'em, 15 bell peppers.
And 16, I know it's crazy, tomato plants. The are all doing very well, although the tomatoes are ready to be move up a pot size. They are getting rather tall and want to lay down.

I am super pleased though, since there is at least one plant alive in each peat pot. Which is much better than we did last year. I think we might be getting the hang of it. Soon it will be time to plant the rest of the early seeds. Hopefully this weekend we will have time and can get some yard cleanup done. The flowers need to be weeded and the lawn mowed, although I need a new mower for that, since ours gave up the ghost last year. The only problem with that plan is that it has been cool and windy and grey for the last few days and it is not nice to work outside when it is not nice. Oh well. Later!

All right already

So shut up already, Chantel :)

No really, I have been getting nagged by my office mate about how hard it is to stalk someone online when they never post new blogs. Silly child.

I haven't posted recently for 2 reasons. One is that I am not very exciting and the other is that I keep forgetting to get the pictures I want to post off of my camera.

So, for a brief, pictureless blog, I will give a summary of what is up.

This weekend is game night! Yay for many people and food and entertainment and such. So far we have a total of 9 people, which is great and hopefully there will be at least three more than that. Shane has always wanted to try having multiple tables playing different games during the evening, so people can try more of our giant selection of games. Including the 6 or so new ones in the last three months. It's not an addicti...wait, never mind.

Other than that, I went to the taste of home cooking school last night with Chantel and got many yummy recipes and snack ideas, at least two of which will be used for dinner tomorrow. I also went to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry last week with a teacher friend of mine as a "chaperone", sort of anyway. It was nifty, with a big t-rex skeleton and a planetarium and lots of neat exhibits.

We also letterboxed for the first time this year and found all four of the boxes we went after. I think that might be a record for us. :) It was a gorgeous day and I will get some pics from Nikki for that.

Other than that I am obviously working hard and keeping busy with some new miniatures for a wargame that my husband enjoys. You buy tiny (2-4 inches) pewter miniatures, put them together, and paint them, and then fight long battles on the plains of some imaginary place. Sure nifty!

I will do my best to put up another post tomorrow or Sunday with pictures and info on my seedlings and flower garden (already tons of flowers!) and maybe even recipes of the tasty things I will make for dinner for my friends.

A picture post

These are the first of the seeds we planted for our garden this year. 16, count 'em, 16 tomato plants, in 7 different varieties (yes, we are nuts, no, I am not quite sure there will be enough tomatoes for canning). The round ones are green bell peppers. :)

This is my shamrock plant, which I am showing off because it is happy enough to bloom. Yay!

Tiny green points in my bulb garden. These are snow iris.

Flash on weighing day. He is 5 months old now and I think he is getting bigger, but I need to start measuring him more carefully to be sure :)

I baked an apple pie with some of the apples that I froze last fall. Shane thought it looked pretty and told me to take a picture of it. It tasted pretty good, too.

We visited my parents at Christmas and drove over to the coast one day. The waves were coming in and the sun was shining through the clouds. I loved this picture.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

Well, it works for Star Wars anyway, for me...whatever.
Anywho, I have been gone for so long that I am not sure if any of you are still bothering to check on me...other that Chantel who is so good about reminding me of how lazy I am. I have been busy and lazy and all those other good things that come with life.
Shane and I are well, and Flash is doing great. He is growing and eating and loving his box. We have planted a lot more grass and lettuce and he just wanders around and munches away. We also have a new roommate, my friend Autumn, who will be staying with us for a few months. I am really enjoying having her around. We have been best friends since kindergarten and it is great to be able to spend more time together.
She also teaches a yoga class at a local dance studio that I have been attending for the last couple of weeks. It is great, but I am not in good shape and not very flexible, so it is quite a workout for me. So, HA to all those people who say that yoga is not exercise. HA, I say.
I have been spending my winter working on my crafts and relaxing. I am working on getting better at knitting and am still doing ATC's when I have to time and creative energy. I also like to kick back after work and just relax. Work is starting to get really busy right now, which is nicer than having nothing to do, but still tiring.
We are going to be starting our seeds for the vegetable garden soon. I bought a bunch of tomato seeds, as well as some beets and peppers, from this great website that sells heirloom seeds and it turned out that they were out of one of the varieties we wanted, so they sent us two substitutes, plus a whole mess of other samples, including lettuce, more beets, radishes, zucchini and another tomato. I think we are planting 7 or 8 types of tomatoes. Yes, we are crazy. No, they will definately not go to waste. We love to can, as you may have noticed, and it would be great not to have to buy tomatoes. In addition, I got a food dehydrator for Christmas, so there will be tons of drying experiments. Yay! (Bethany, I look to you for good ideas and advice)
Other than that, life is just normal. We are going to the (really late) holiday party for Shane's work this weekend, as well as a friend's baby's 1st birthday party. Another friend is having a Pink Papaya party next weekend and there are several of my friends going to that, so it should be entertaining. As the weather warms, we will be getting the garden and yard tidied and ready for the season.
Overall, life is normal and good. Yay!

Meet Flash!

I have a tortoise! I have been very neglectful in not letting you know about him sooner, but I have, as usual, been busy and tired and gone and working and all those other nagging little things I call a life.

At any rate, his name is Flash and he is a Leopard tortoise. They are the 4th largest tortoise in the world, so he will someday be a foot or so long and weigh around 60 or 80 pounds. :)

I know, I am crazy, but Shane and I loved the idea of having a tortoise as a pet and we thought about it for over a year before we actually made the decision. It is a big decision, because when I said someday, I meant in thirty or forty years. Flash will outlive us. Leopards can live a hundred years or more in captivity. Yes, I said a hundred. Wierd isn't it. Kinda like having a parrot, but way less noise and irritation.
We built him a little home, which you can see in the second picture, but it turned out that the guy at the store and even some of the online people who keep tortoises are wrong. They all say that a little area is good for the tiny babies. It makes them feel more secure. All it made Flash feel like was an escape artist. Within a couple of weeks, he was pacing the walls and seeing if he might be able to climb out. So, we built him a much larger box, about 3x4 feet, which he loves and roams about it all day long (you can see him over in the corner...tiny).

He is still sleeping in his little box, since the temperature in the other room gets too cool at night and we have a space heater in with the little box. Also, the little box with be his traveling home. When we go visiting for more than a day, like for Thanksgiving or something like that, we will take him with us. It is kind of like having a baby, since he has a certain amount of gear that we will have to bring along, like his light and his trays of grass to eat. I know, I am crazy. :)

Anyways, I just wanted to show him off to you and tell you how adorable he is. He is really young, so he behaves just like a baby, sleeping and laying under his light and eating and having a bath and sleeping some more. Hmmm...sounds sort of like me, too...anyways. Thats all I have for now.

A Murder Mystery Birthday

Now that I am finally finished writing about my cruise, I can tell you all about our Murder!

Our cast

My friend Nikki and I have birthdays that are only four days apart in mid-October. Last year we had a joint party and invited everyone to dress up and come and play board games. This year we got the idea to be a little more structured. We hosted a Murder Mystery. Neither of us had ever hosted or even been to a Murder Mystery, so it was a little challenging.

First of all we tried to pick an easy game. We went with a Wild West mystery, since the costumes really easy to put together, and the plot seemed fairly simple. We made up a list of our friends and got the invites sent. After a few casting problems, we had enough people and everyone had their character info.

dancer, bounty hunter, saloon owner

We had the party last Saturday and it was a bit crazy getting all the clues together, finishing the cleaning, and getting the house set up, but we ended up having awesome costumes, lots of yummy food, and a really great set up with a dining room/bar, casino, and lounge. We made chili and cornbread with lots of other snacks and deserts for the party and everyone showed up within a half hour of the start time (with some of my friends, this is a major accomplishment).

The party was really great. Everyone got into character and as the clues were revealed, everyone investigated for all they were worth. In the end, we found out that my husband was the murderer, but that he was not going to get in trouble for doing it, since the victim had secretly been a criminal. Shane even got to apply for the bounty! I call that pretty sweet. :)

the solution

Our Anniversary Cruise - Part 2

We visited 2 towns in Alaska and 1 in British Columbia on our cruise Itinerary and saw 2 glaciers.

The first place we stopped was in Juneau. As Alaska's state capital, it had some neat buildings and some cool history. The ship was docked about 20 minutes walk from downtown (yes, Juneau has a downtown, it's not that small.) so we decided to walk in rather than taking a shuttle or the bus. Partly this was to avoid the HUGE line of people waiting, partly for the exercise, and partly because we were attempting to not spend every penny we had ever made during the course of the vacation. Once we got into town, we wandered around and made our way past the Courthouse to the City/County museum. It was a really neat little museum, with info on the gold rush, traders, and political history. Also, they had a huge chunk of the little building devoted to the local basketball team. Apparently high school basketball for them is what football was where I grew up (stands to reason, since it is indoors). When we were leaving they gave us a certificate celebrating Alaska's fiftieth anniversary as a state, which was signed by the governor. Very nifty.

Alaska State Capital Building

After the museum we walked past the governor's mansion, which was really pretty with a very nice garden, and onto a little park at the edge of a residential area. Cope park is a nice little park that runs along Gold Creek, at whose headwaters gold was first discovered in that area. We went there to try to find a letterbox, which we were unable to find. It was still a great walk through town and a really nice park. After that we went back to the downtown area and wandered through the shops. Shane bought me a really pretty necklace made of white quartz with gold veins through it as an anniversary present and souvenir. Once we were done in town, we grabbed a shuttle up to the glacier. Mendenhall Glacier is about a half hour out of town and you can easily walk to the base of it. We did not hike around to the glacier, but we did take a bunch of pictures and hike some of the little nature trails near the visitor center. After that, we headed back to the ship and went to the buffet for a late lunch. We kept it light, since it was only a couple of hours until dinner time. It was really neat and really weird having a set time for dinner. Normally we just kinda eat when we are hungry, but it was not really that hard for me to adjust. I just made sure not to eat too much too late in the afternoon. Since dinner usually took between an hour and an hour and a half to finish, there was plenty of time to eat all the food I wanted. :)

Mendehall Glacier

We were in Juneau on Sunday and on Monday we went to Skagway. Skagway is really focused on the gold rush and the tourist trade. There were tons of tours available, so we chose one that would take us up the White Pass Highway, the main route for the gold rushers. We crossed over into Canada (my first time in Canada, ever) and stopped to see some great scenery and a really cool cable suspension bridge. The driver told us lots of stories about the rush and also lots of really bad (and funny) bear stories. He kept us entertained as he drove us back into Alaska and to the last part of the tour, where we got to try gold panning and see a gold dredge. It was really neat to see the inside of a dredge that had actually been used in the Yukon and we even found a little bit of gold in our pans that we got to bring home as a souvenir.

Gold Panning in Skagway

Once we got back to Skagway, we wandered through town and looked at the shops and a cool little museum devoted to the gold rush at the National Park Service office. When we were finished in town, we walked back to the ship and again had a little lunch before resting for the afternoon. Shane took so many naps on this vacation that I am surprised he needed to sleep at night. He basically dozed whenever we were in the room for more than a few minutes. The bed was super comfy, which was awesome, since I have gotten spoiled by my sleep-number. We saw the show after dinner and Shane hung out in the casino for awhile before bedtime. We had to get to sleep early on Monday, because Tuesday was the day we were going to sail to a glacier and we would be there by 8 in the morning.

Dawes Glacier

We were sailing up to the Dawes glacier in the Tracy Arm Fjords wilderness and I actually set the alarm so that we could be up in time to get some breakfast before we arrived at the glacier. We found a seat in the buffet that was right at the front of the ship so that we could watch the cliffs and waterfalls while we ate. We went outside when we were done and found a spot to sit and watch the scenery float by. There were tons of little waterfalls cascading down the sides of the mountains on either side of us and lots of little bitty icebergs floating past the ship. We were originally scheduled to go the the Sawyer glaciers, but the channel there was too full of ice for a safe passage, so the captain got permission to reroute us. This was way better than just sailing around doing nothing, but now we have to make it back sometime to see the twin Sawyer glaciers. When we had sailed as far as it was safe to go, we got a great look at the Dawes glacier. It looked like a river of ice, with it's ripples just flowing down into the sea. We did not get to see it calve while we were there, but all the icebergs in the water were really great.

The rest of the day was spent sailing out to sea on our way down to British Columbia. Of course, the weather turned again and the seas got pretty rough, but I managed to keep control of myself and took plenty of Dramamine. That night after dinner the featured show was a couple of comedians/jugglers. They were really great, but had to work really hard with the ship pitching so much in the rough water. I got quite a scare when they pulled Shane up on stage. They were juggling machetes back and forth around my husband while the ship rocked and rolled! Let me tell you, my heart was in my throat. Shane was, of course, just fine, although he was terribly embarrassed about being pulled up on stage. It was a bit of a thrill, but I would be happy never having that happen again.

We spent a whole day at sea on our way to Victoria, which was spent relaxing on the deck, playing a game of shufflegolf (I took third place and got a medal!) and just generally wandering around the ship and goofing off. We had another formal night and I even talked Shane into getting a formal portrait done while we were all dressed up. Dinner was really yummy and, of course, we had a great time with our table mates. After dinner was a production show featuring the ballroom dancers employed by the cruise line. Shane was very NOT interested, so I went by myself. I said hi to one of the cruise directors staff and visited with her for a while. The show was super and afterwards I went and found Shane and we hung out for a while and then went to bed.

The next morning we made port in Victoria, BC, which is a gorgeous city. Again we walked into town and wandered around a bit while we tried to decide what we wanted to see. We ended up starting at the Royal BC Museum, which was hosting an exhibit from the British Museum featuring artifacts from about every culture throughout history that you can think of. It was a bit crowded, since there were school groups going through, but we really enjoyed it. They even had a couple of artifacts that you could handle! I found it thrilling to be able to hold a bronze figurine from India that was many hundreds of years old. I have always been fascinated by history and archaeology, so I think we really lucked out in going to the museum that day. This was the only stop in North America that the exhibit was making.

After the Royal BC museum, we went to the Victoria Art Gallery. It was really nice, although they had several sections closed while they changed exhibits. After the gallery, we walked up to Government House, which is where the Lieutenant Governor lives and where visiting dignitaries stay. We were told by someone from the information center that over the summer a member of the Japanese royal family had visited and the Price Harry of England had been to stay for a short while. Kinda cool! The house itself is not open to visitors, but the gardens are so we spent a great hour wandering around. The property is huge and there are all kinds of landscapes in it: a rose garden, a pretty duckpond, tons of lawns, a rock garden, and even a 70 hectare scrub oak forest. Following our usual pattern we walked all the way back to the boat for a late lunch. I don't know how much I walked on this cruise, but I do know that I pretty much ate whatever I wanted and I weighed the same when we got home as when we left. That is something!

This was the last night of the cruise and we saw the farewell show and went to the little scavenger hunt/game show that they host each cruise called The Quest. I am not allowed say much about it other than it should not be attended by children, that those were some of the prettiest men I have ever seen, and that if you ever go on a Royal Caribbean cruise, you absolutely cannot miss it. It was the funniest thing ever!!

On the last day of our cruise we sailed into Vancouver, BC to disembark. It was really quick and easy for us to go through customs, since we hadn't bought anything in Canada. We grabbed a cab to the bus station and took our Greyhound across the border to Washington State. We live in Washington, so a friend picked us up in Bellingham and drove us home. It was a long drive, since we took the scenic route, but it was great to be able to visit and have dinner with him. We arrived home late that night and were very glad to be able to flop down and not have anything else left to do.

The end :)