Wow.

This is the building I called home when I lived in Barcelona.

Cool as shit.

non-post.

Back from the homestead. It was a quick but wonderful visit. Time for bed.

The Friendly Birdy Island

"Aunt Stew, you're spilling your beer!" 6-year-old orange-headed nephew. Gotta love a guy who knows what's important, hm?

Mom and Pedro gave me their old camera, so I took a bunch of photos. Unfortunately, the light was rarely right. Here are the best of the bunch. I didn't edit.

Pearly-eyed Thrasher*



Black-faced Grassquit*

'
Black-necked Stilts and White-Cheeked Pintails*.


Zenaida Dove


Lesser Antillean Bullfinch


Bananaquit!! (definitely the best bird picture I got)


Ruddy Turnstones

Green-throated Carib



*Lifer this trip!! (Also, a female American Wigeon and Caribbean Coots)

Other birds: Gray Kingbird, Antillean Crested Hummingbird (so tiny), Common Ground Dove (also tiny!), Brown Pelican, Magnificent Frigatebird, Brown Booby, Common Moorhen, Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs, Sanderling, Spotted Sandpiper, Great Egret, Snowy Egret, Cattle Egret, Green Heron... I'm probably forgetting a ton. Ah well.

Oh, and check out this delightful surprise I found next to a beach bar!





(Yes, they were tasty.)

Sunscreen off season is pricy.

Who in their right mind gets an international flight that *leaves* at 6 a.m.?

Oh, me. Right.

SO! Saturday at 3:45 (yes, in the morning OMG), I'll be driving out to the airport, hopefully having a seat assigned, and jetting off to Sint Maarten, and well, Saint Martin also, via Miami.

Hm. Last time I went it must have been on my old blog, which has since vanished into the ether. Argh. Ah well, the first sinnoticiasdetstew lives on through the wayback machine. Or at least I hope it does. I've somehow lost the URL for that old blog. Anyone else have it? Wow. Argh. I just found the old link and the blog is GONE GONE GONE, do you hear me? ARGH!!!

It's OK though. Sad, but I'll get over it.

Cause I get to BIRD again. Yay Antillean Crested Hummingbird!



Male Antillean Crested Hummingbird
Originally uploaded by Alexander Yates

Camp

There's a whole lotta campin' going on.

Last weekend I made a trip up to Lake James State Park with a few friends. Rained like crazy Friday night, and got a bit chilly Saturday night. My hair still smells of woodsmoke, even through four washings.

This is my s'more face:



I also managed to trip on the fire pit grate while trying to walk around it. Fearing that I'd land face-first in the fire (nice alliteration, eh?), I managed to throw myself in another direction. In doing so, a chunk of my epidermis ripped off my left palm. It was a clean separation that exposed a 1"x1"x1" (approx.) triangle of dermis. No bleeding, but man did it sting.

It's healing, but I fear a nice red scar:



I'm working this Friday and Saturday evening facilitating a youth group retreat. Around a campfire. They're gonna see my s'more face, and I'll end up smelling like beef jerky for another week.

VCL. Oh. MY!

Yesterday I got back from Georgia, where as per usual I visited Jamie and Nemoid. Georgia is my default road trip. I have people I love there, it's relatively close by, and I always enjoy myself.

In that respect, this trip wasn't any different. So many things are the same from visit to visit, only changing a bit in the details. Jamie got a new freezer since I last saw her. The garden's bigger. Karen has a new car, and her children have reached new developmental milestones. Jamie, the s.o. and I trade stories about plants, wildlife, food and soil. Karen and I laugh about old times and catch up on the new ones.

It was just as perfect as it always is.

BUT! The overarching theme this weekend was not one of calm and expected happenings. Nope. It was a weekend of firsts. First time I've been stuck in traffic so bad that we turned the cars off entirely, going only two-ish miles over 1.5 hours. First time I've ever dropped my binoculars 8 feet onto a hardwood floor and knocked the optics out of alignment. First time I stepped with sandaled feet into a fire ant nest.

Sounds pretty sucky, that part. But it really wasn't that bad. I used the downtime in the car to clean it out, and the delay inspired me to let down my hair and buy cheap beer in cans in order to crack one open upon arrival, before I'd even opened the trunk. The binoculars miraculously fixed themselves over the course of two days. Right after the crash I had double vision through the eyepieces, but when I looked through them as I was leaving, the images had become one. I felt a certain pride at finally having succumbed to and survived fire ants.

Fire ant bites are rite of passage for southerners, don't you think? I only ended up with about 20 bites, thanks to multiple factors--not least being Jamie's s.o.'s quick reaction as I ran into the house shrieking "FIRE ANTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Thanks for that, s.o.!

Welp, I'm making a short story long, again. Ah well.

The biggest first of all was on Saturday. See, when I asked my Georgia friends if they were going to be in town, Jamie encouraged me to come on down, with the caveat that she had plans in Atlanta for part of the weekend that I was more than welcome to tag along to.

That's how I found myself at a multigenre convention. Oh yes. Not *just* Trekkies. Not just comic-book collectors. Not just Dungeons and Dragons LARPs . Furries. Anime. Fairies. Wizards. You name it.


Fandoms of every sort wended their way around and through the three adjacent hotels that hosted DragonCon this weekend.

Here are my reactions, in brief:

• Wow.
  
• Everyone's either naked or overdressed.
• Hm. There are a lot of good-looking people here. That doesn't fit into my head.
  
• Am I supposed to recognize the characters people have dressed up as?
  
• Why would anyone go for a full-body plush or rubber suit in Atlanta in the summer?
• You know, that guy's creepy. So's that girl.
• Who has this kind of *money* to spend?
  
• The health department needs to have a table here with condoms.
  
• I wonder what all those Clemson and Alabama fans are thinking right about now?
• Does not compute
• A lot of people seem to be either fainting or puking in here right now. Not me! Cookies please!
• Most women's costumes rely on a corset, it looks like.
  
• Bad corsetry signals: breasts pushed so high they fold over on themselves. VCL under spandex.
• The Utilikilt to corset ratio is 1:1 (Holy CRAP that Utilikilt video's wrong!)
• I lack the background to understand any of the concurrent sessions here.
  
• Zombies.
• Poor kids in their strollers.

Check out the photos I took. Some of the costumes are obvious, but others left me entirely clueless.

BTW? Definitely worth the $50 entrance fee.



**************
Edited to add:

I forgot another first!

DURIAN! DURIAN!

I survived it! Basically imagine sweet taste combined with burnt hair/emerging BO. Unfortunately, I also ended up with Durian burps, which hold none of the sweet and all of the stench.

A day at the farm in Ionia. More of my favorite things.

Welcome to my aunt and uncle's 250 acre farm in beautiful Ionia, Michigan, home of the Ionia Free Fair.


The farmhouse is real old. It's kind of not my style on the inside, and I wonder if there are hardwood floors under the carpet. The well water is very very full of iron, which is difficult to get used to drinking.

The barn is really old, too. I love it. Blue silos rock.

Flower mix of goodness.

Oh, my, how cute?!

Uncle Evan. Over the course of my life they've had normal farm crops (wheat, soybeans, corn, etc.) and always animals. The best ones in my opinion were the angora goats. I mean, look at how cute the kids are! Evan and Linda used to have huge numbers of cattle for beef, but now they just have about 14 head that they breed for stud. One roan got out of the barn while I was there, which was very exciting. Aunt Linda and I had to chase the poor cow back before it decided to cross the street onto someone else's farm. Evan's not in the best of health, but he still spent the day spreading manure. Like I said, the farm is 250 acres, but Evan rents about 175 of them out to other farmers. The rest is for pasture, hay, and maybe grain.


Steer. Soon to be MEAT. Less than a month, dearheart. Enjoy it.



I wish I had gone up in the hayloft yesterday, but here's a shot of where the cattle go to feed once they've had their fill of pasture.



Grandma and Aunt Linda pick some strawberries. I came home with more vegetables than I know what to do with. And a pressure canner! And a ton of rhubarb seeds! And onion sets! Lots to do today. I might take the beans home in my suitcase and process them at home with my new pressure canner.




Isn't she lovely? Born 1919. Grandma kept telling me that if I was tired I should take a rest. There's another photo on flickr of her that I couldn't get to rotate correctly on my computer. It shows Gram's beauty even better. An added bonus is that you get to see a monster beet.


What a fantastic day.

Rand (om)

• I got up at 5 a.m. for the third day running!
• That makes me an early bird!
• I like birds!
• It's going to be migration in Michigan!
• Coffee is a great way to wake up, but when that's not available, tea tastes good, too!
• You can spend your 4-hour layovers at the Cincinnati airport with free wireless!
• And beer! (Not free.)
• I saw Emily last night!
• She gave me presents!
• One contained the phrase "Brass Cupcake!"
• Also: "His finger looked like an uncooked enchilada"!
• I can't decide whether the exclamation point goes inside or out of quotes in the above two points!
• She also gave me a companion piece to FOJ and Paster of Paree Mary!
  
• There are a lot of cool things coming up for this buhcayshun!
• Like Grandma!
• And seeing the skinny Daddy!
• And snugglin' the boys!
• And Stella Bella!
• And maybe a rendezvooz with an old friend!
  
• A dog will be part of the household when I return!
• I'm mildly dreading the transition from living alone to being bombarded with people and talking!
• I get to
  

OOPS FINAL BOARDING!

So remiss!

Ugh. I guess for now the epoch of daily posting is in remission. Part of that is because I have new tales to tell and want to give them justice.

I took photos of my garden to post, but it looks like they're not wanting to upload, dammit. Oh, wait, at least one of them did. Rock on. Patience, Stew, patience. (Blogger is apparently playing hard to get.)

Shortly I'll be leaving for the Queen City for the weekend, where I'm going for an almost-family reunion. My friend-since-10th-grade jj, her parents, her sister(s?), aunts, uncles, cousins, and me. Oh, and NOT least, jj's two children (of which I've only met one), her husband, her sister's new babe, and her sister's husband (neither of whom I've met either).

I'll be taking them some gardenous bounty in the form of a couple of tomatoes, cukes, plums (from the community garden), plum jam (same, but I processed it last week), and peppers. As you can see below, the eggplant is not yet ready, but isn't it looking nice? The beans are behind, because I planted them way late. That's fine, though, because there's still plenty of time for them.

Now for the pix, which did eventually upload. As you can see, however, some of my edits didn't take for some reason. Bizarre that they didn't save as rotated.

Anyhoo:

One of my eggplant plants.

Corn! And maybe zucchini. Something in that family, anyway.

Tomatoes. One of many varieties. The first to ripen were the sungolds, as I mentioned before. The second is the Cherokee Purple. This is either Better Boy or perhaps Pink Beefsteak.

Hydrangea. I got this plant about 6 years ago, and it was a baby in a 6 inch pot. (Note the fig tree behind it.)

One of the zinnias. Gorgeous color, isn't it? Cosmos and swiss chard beside it.

Misleading photo of a summer squash. It's only about 6 inches long. Perspective. I'm guessing it will be good to eat in a few days when I return.

My tomato/pepper/cuke/eggplant/marigold bed.

I wish my camera took better close-ups. It's from about 2000, though, so whatevs.

Waiting to leave

Isn't he a handsome guy? A good friend, too. I've had a fantastic almost-week here in DC, mostly due to the company. Yes, Toby Toberson was a highlight, as he let me snuggle him half to death and loved it. But Marc, well, Marc was the best part. He's a fantastic host, and really easy to share living space with.

Other features: good eats, good drinks, afternoon naps, crosswords, and of course walks both with and without the Tobinator.

I was originally only going to stay until Sunday, but then we learned that our sweet Nem was coming into town yesterday for a conference this week. So with very little arm-twisting, I stayed until this morning. We all had dinner last night at a rooftop restaurant in Marc's neighborhood, and for the first time in ages I felt at home. Emily and Marc and I all met at around the same time at the same workplace almost 10 years ago. Others from that time are no longer much in my life, but those two have staying power. We haven't all lived in the same place for years now, and life gets complicated as we get older--jobs, families, moves. So it was a really, really nice reunion.

I never much remember the sightseeing I do on trips like this. I did go to the National Portrait Gallery, as well as the aforementioned trip to the zoo and Natural History Museum. I suppose if I lived here, I'd ignore all of that--it tends to be my M.O.

Yesterday afternoon I had a small attack of the blues. I tried to stay mindful, but I knew I was going home today, to a job that doesn't pay as well as I deserve, a messy house, a lack of companionship, and not much motivation.

My reaction to being in a city was one of pure joy at first. Built-in exercise, interesting sights, seemingly HUGE numbers of hot, single men, and a whole world outside my door. But there's also a part of me that knows that even if I moved here for good I'd still be the same person. A person in a major rut.

I have to get out of it.

Awesome

So...Marco talked me in to staying until Tuesday morning. See, my sweet Nem is coming to town for a conference on Monday, so we're going out to din din that evening for old time's sake. I met both Marco and Nem when I was temping at an organization that led to my eventual job track. The agency had a big USAID contract to do work in developing countries in the area of maternal and child health. Or as Marc put it last night, "We're in the business of saving mothers and babies." I worked in the resource center, i.e. tiny library. It was pretty easy work, and fascinating to boot. I read journal articles and then routed them around to the more senior staff to see who wanted to read what. Believe it or not, we did have the internets, but dead tree was still standard.

Anyhoo...

Yesterday I think I walked at least 10 miles. By the time I got home mid-afternoon, my legs and feet were so tired I thought I was going to die. Of course I didn't. But I did have to take a nap and bunches of ibuprofen. Which reminds me, I need to put some in my backpack.

The itinerary yesterday was the National Zoo and then the Museum of Natural History. Both were full of rambunctious children with their contact information pinned or stickered to their clothes. They screamed a lot. The zoo took up a lot of time and walking, so by the time I got to the Museum of Natural History I was pooped and not particularly interested in wading through the throngs. I sought refuge in the only unpopulated exhibit: DC Birds.

Hidden away in the basement was a somewhat grisly collection of taxidermied remains, poorly lit and locked in display cases. The birds were dusty, faded and rather gross. The owls in particular were lacking tufts of feathers, and the brighter warblers were barely showing their colors.

I was surprised, however, at the sizes of the birds. None of them was as big or as small as I had always typed them. There were also a number of extinct specimens, such as Passenger Pigeons and a Carolina Parakeet. I tried my hand at IDing some of the warblers, but was not particularly successful.

Hippo, above, taken for Nemoid's sake.

Off to the Portrait Gallery.

Pant pant pant pant

Excuse me here while I catch my breath. Since last Tuesday I've worked 70 hours. I have about 20 more to put in in the next two days, and then I'm taking off for our nation's capital.

Marc will be hosting, despite the upheaval caused by the arrival of all of his sea freight just a few days ago. I'll be couching it. I love couch sleeping!

Along the way I'll try to have lunch with Michele as well as stop by Ikea. Anyone in the area have any requests for me to pick up there?

In DC I plan to take off and sightsee for once. I've been to DC a number of times, but I always seem to be enmeshed in random Madonna concerts, marching on the mall or drunken St. Patrick's day festivities that involve eggs and Guinness at breakfast time. It hasn't left much time for your general Smithsonian goodness.

OK, just got done with mowing the lawn and attempting self-surgery on a skintag-like mole that I hate. I didn't succeed. Ah well. The sound of blood pounding through my ears must have been a sign that I was crazy. No harm, no foul, and not much blood. Damnit. I want that thing GONE.

I bandaged it up, but after a recent email conversation with Ols, I'm going to find some thread and try the tie off method. If that doesn't work, there are other options.