Treasure Hunting in the Woods

This weekend, the family and I went out for a little walk in the woods nearby to do a little treasure hunting with our metal detector.  Let me be clarify right away - we had no idea what we were doing.

Right down the road from us is a house where, supposedly, George Washington once slept, so we thought we might get lucky and find something old...  maybe some old coins, or buttons from the Revolutionary War.

Or more likely, a hunk of metal from the 1960's.

Well, first we found some deer scat.  In case your wondering, that's the official term for deer poop.

...and some hoof prints.  

I found some of this stuff.  

If I was a deer, I'd sleep on it.  It looks nice and soft, doesn't it?

We crossed a few small streams, most of the time with the help of pre-placed planks and/or logs.

...and then we dug for treasure.  The beeper kept going off.  As soon as we'd finish one hole, we'd walk a few steps and find another possible site.  Of course, most of the beeps were caused by bbs.

Our big metal-detected treasures of the afternoon were a nail...

...and a couple more nail-like things.

My son got a lot of joke mileage out of the object on the top  in the picture above.  He's 13.  

That may explain it.  

More impressive was the moss....

the views of nature...

the few, weird plants

What IS this stuff?  It look like something that might eat meat.  I suspect it's skunk cabbage, but if you really do know for sure, feel free to comment...  I see it every spring.

Placing bets on who could jump a stream and NOT get wet was also fun.

Success!!  (THIS time...)

Poking around in the water was also fun, but would have been even better if it was warmer.

Turns out the real treasure was the walk itself.

Looking forward to next time.

SOMEONE TOOK MY PEN!

I work in a very busy office.  So busy that sometimes we answer two phones at once.  It's not terribly productive to do so, because when you have a different person talking in each of your ears, it's kind of difficult to understand either of them.

While the phones are busy ringing and ringing, people are also coming up to our desks, telling us things and asking all sorts of questions and leaving notes, so incidentally, we gets lots of requests to borrow our pens, and when people borrow them, we're not always paying attention to make sure those people are also giving them back.

Before I was at this desk in this office, I was guilty of asking to borrow a pen too, and there were times I accidentally walked off with "said" pen, not realizing I took it till later on in the day, after I had forgotten whom I took it from.  No one really takes your pen on purpose (at least, I hope not) but short of tying a name tag to my pen (when they signed for their checks on Friday, I gave them all the Name-Tag-Pen, and I got about  5 comments of, "Oh, wait, whose pen is this?  Oh, it's MELINDA'S pen!"  The, "Can I borrow your pen?" question is starting to freak me out because I can go through 2-3 pens a day like this.  At this rate I'll have to get a second job to keep my desk supplied with pens.  Out of this desperation, two weekends ago, I made a few ostentatious pen covers for myself out of inexpensive ball-point pen sleeves and some Sculpey clay.

My favorite pen looks like a large piece of swirled, colorful candy.  I was doing well with the pen, spotting it quickly amongst the piles of papers on my desk, and suggesting they use the pen that's attached to the desk when they needed to borrow one, and then... tragedy struck.

"Oh my GOD, where's my PEN?"

Did you see my pen??  I asked everyone.  I searched the floor, under the papers the floor again - I scanned the room discretely... did someone take my pen?    I remembered having it when I went to lunch the day before...  did I leave it in the faculty room and forget all about it?  I went back to search for it.  Nope, not there - DAMN!  My search widened.  I asked more people.  Damn, someone TOOK my pen!  I considered making an announcement, offering a reward.  How much do you offer for the safe return of a pen?  People asked helpful questions, "Where did you see it last? at lunch yesterday?" "Yes," I answered, "it's possible I put it somewhere, I just don't know where."  Humm...  Did I just put it somewhere unusual?   Finally, I thought I really should look into this possibility.

Well, someone took it, alright.

Apparently, I took it.  It was in my handbag in my desk - I must have put it there the day before at the end of my lunch break.  So what I've learned from all of this is that you can make yourself a pen that people won't be likely to take, but that still won't prevent you from forgetting where you put it.  

Blizzard Nemo... CARnage

A few days ago, the East Coast was hit by a blizzard.  Blizzard Nemo, to be specific because now the weather powers that be have decided that blizzards should be named although, I think a bunch of preschoolers named this one. Who names a blizzard Nemo?

Nemo was scheduled to strike my area in the late afternoon hours.  Since I get out of work fairly early, my commute home was minimally affected.  By the time the howling wind and thunder and lightening (yes, that's right, thunder and lightening!) hit, the kids and I were safely at home watching television and hoping the electricity wouldn't go out (see post "No electricity, No Problem!" from 11/4/2012) but my husband's commute was another story entirely...

He leaves work later in evenings, so when he began the 11 mile trip home, the blizzard had been in full swing for several hours.  He had no idea the weather conditions had become so bad.  When he first called me, it was only about 20 minutes later than he usually arrives home, so I wasn't really worried yet.  He drives a very reliable 4 wheel drive pick-up, so I thought he would be ok.

"I'm gonna be pretty late...  You should see this, there are cars stuck all around me.  I'm gonna have to turn around and go another way..."  We discussed alternate routes.  He hung up and tried a couple of them, only to get stuck behind stranded cars every time, as he told me the next time he called, about 1/2 hour later.  His truck was moving fine, but stuck cars blocked almost every intersection.

He called me another 1/2 hour later. "I'm getting out and walking soon.  I can't take this."  I started worrying.  I've watched too many survivor shows.  Don't they always tell you NOT to abandon your vehicle?

He made it to within about 1/2 mile from the house, beaching the truck on the side of the road after yet another intersection was blocked and this one was also a slight hill covered with ice.   Our neighbor was nice enough to pick him up on a snowmobile.

You should see it out there, it's like a war zone.  Stranded motorists spent the night in a couple of nearby houses.  The picture above is from Saturday afternoon on the nearest non-private road. Six cars in this direction, and another five on the other end of the street.

The neighborhood's dogs were having a grand old time, though.  Here is the other end of the street, with the husky down the road, checking out the scene...

Pretty, right?

Clearing our little road, and our own driveways took ALL DAY Saturday.  And that was WITH the use of a plow (the neighbor plows for us all) and a snowblower. 

Venturing out onto that road shown above on Sunday looked like this:  

Where were the plows?  Of course, it IS hard to plow around 11 stranded cars...  Humm.... what to do, what to do... still, we had seen heavy snowfall before and never experienced this...

But the most annoying thing was that as quickly as we unstuck someone's car, some other bird brain drove by in an ill-equiped car and got stuck all over again.  If you hear conditions are bad, that means STAY HOME!

Today we have this.

Melting, hard-packed snow with water on top.  Nice.

To prove my point that it's not so easy to get unstuck once you're stuck, here's someone's tire.  It came off when they tried to move their car.  

On the public road, the snow is DEEP and slushy.  If you are moving, you just can't stop or  you'll get stuck.  On Saturday morning there was a car stuck right in the middle of this area.   

 Look how deep the slush is... 

...and no matter which way you turn, more slush!

The best way to get anywhere is to walk.  See the walker off in the distance?

Still, by the time we finished our walk, there was a line of cars waiting to try out the road...

These all succeeded.  

But as we walked toward the house, I heard another person get out of their car.  

Stuck again.

The Little Mermaid - Showtime!

This weekend was showtime for The Little Mermaid.  The kids did a great job even with approximately 100 actors and actresses, 20 scene changes, and probably over 200 props.  Here are some highlights:

 
King Triton - he appeared manly and in charge even in a merman tail, and he loved his trident, which lit up when he "destroyed" Ariel's grotto - see the battery pack at the bottom?  The producer and I collaborated on the concept for the trident, and he put it together.

 The Mersisters sing a cute 50's-ish number called "She's in Love." 

Nothing says, "the beach" like a bunch of seagulls standing on rocks, right?

Ursula in her lair...  What are the "white things" (my daughter's friend's question).  Ursula's lair is in a whale skeleton.  the curved things are rib bones (thoroughly doused in florescent paint).  She is sitting on the tailbone.  I take credit for the tentacle design, although, not the construction - my friend who made all the rest of the costumes actually did the sewing... and as both girls who played Ursula told us, "it's HEAVY!"  See Flotsam and Jetsam in the front?  They light up, too.  My idea, thank you very much!  :-)

Ariel's grotto was a total team effort.  This started out as an entertainment unit to which I applied aluminum screening.  Then the producer sprayed spray foam insulation all over it to make it appear like barnacles and coral were growing on it.  Another couple of people sprayed with paint, and still others gathered and attached the "human stuff".  When Triton "destroys" the grotto, actors turn it around to show the back of it, which has broken human stuff attached.  By the way, isn't Flounder's costume awesome? It took over a dozen hours to sew, and was so thick in places my friend the costume designer broke at least 10 sewing machine needles making it.

Flounder and the jellyfish with Ariel on the rocks (LOL - sounds like a beverage - Ariel on the Rocks).

I consider the stage crew "my" kids and when the curtain opened and I saw this tablecloth, I just had to laugh - it was something I could see my own, real life kids doing.  But look - the table is perfectly set!

"...and Girl, you've got to pucker up like 'dis."  Our Sebastian did a pretty nice job with adopting a Jamaican accent like Sebastian in the movie.

All those animals... all those kids, not enough light!  It was hard to get this shot, so it wasn't as nice as I was hoping it would be, but you get the idea.

SO much fun! Now, go on and Kiss the Girl!