Castle Mischief

February 18, 2012 - ARGH

2012-02-18T10:51:00.000-06:00

Having issues with Gallery2.0 at castlemischief.com and I've been wanting to make room within my hosting limits so I'm in the process of editing older posts to nab the images off of my Picasa Web album. There may be some older posts with missing image files. If you see that don't send me an email or leave in in the comments just know that I'm working on it. All the pictures of our adventures and mishaps (with the exception of half of 2006 and all of 2007 and 2008- working on that too...) and can be seen here if for some reason you can't find them somewhere else.

-Matt

February 10, 2012 - Birthday Girl and Dead Nettle Tea

2012-02-10T13:37:00.003-06:00

First things first: my beautiful, creative, and super smart baby girl turned 14 today.

Happy Birthday, Chan-Chan

To avoid becoming too reflective and to stave off the urge to sing a few bars of "Sunrise, Sunset" here is Esther in her toboggan and funny shirt.

Super effective

And now on to the tea...

I've been wandering around the yard looking for something to turn into tea. I recently collected a bagful of dandelion leaves to dry and put in the tea cabinet. While I was on the ground plucking weeds for the tea pot it occurred to me that we have an insane amount of these little purple flower things that look like teeny-tiny orchids. I know I've been told what these things are called so I asked the wife and she very patiently told me (again) that they are dead nettle.

Off to the Google I went in search of some validation for my desire to turn this little weed into tea! I found people with plans to put it their pancakes and frittatas, plenty of evidence for its use in salads, and more than enough examples of it being made into tea.

Dead nettle fresh from the yard, pluckity-pluck

As I've been doing with all the wild herbals, I placed the plants on a black pizza pan and let them dry in the oven at 170° for about an hour, or until dry and crunchy.

Right out of the oven, crunchity-crunch

Then, using pure brute force and no actual tools, I grind them all up with my bare hands. Brutal. Remember when you were a kid and the most fascinating thing you could do with your time was to mash dead leaves in your hand until they were powder-fine? Yeah, just like that, but in a bowl so I don't waste anything.


No, officer, not that kind of weed

Then it goes into the tea kettle with some just-barely-boiling water. Green herbs tend to make bitter tea if you steep them in water that's been brought to a rolling boil. The resulting brew is earthy in smell and flavor and really needs some sweetener (honey works well). When I say "earthy" I mean it smells like a hole that you've dug in the ground. The fresh plant has this same smell, only much stronger. The tea is more subtle and little bit minty.

Dead nettle is purported to have all sorts of healthy properties and benefits. I'm just drinking it for the taste and joy of taking in something that would normally fall to the lawnmower and came from right outside our door.

Other pictures of birthday girl and dead nettle tea preparation can be found in the gallery here.

February 5, 2012 - Rush Creek, Bankhead National Forest

2012-02-05T18:56:00.002-06:00

Esther and I set out today, sans kids, to find something new in Bankhead National Forest. We didn't have a specific spot in mind but she wanted to see a waterfall if possible. Luckily, there's a series of geocaches that have been placed near many of the waterfalls scattered across Bankhead. I punched the nearest one into the GPS and off we went.

The cache we were seeking is called "Bankhead Waterfalls Series # 14 Hidden Cove Fall". Parking is located on the side of the road just below were it crosses the creek. The bridge was covered with moss and ferns.

We headed down the clearly marked trail and set off in search of splishy-splashy and, I guess also cachey (forgive me).

First error in judgement- started off on the wrong side of Rush Creek. No problem. We realized this after arriving at a point directly east of the falls/cache and just kept walking along next to the water. The winter has been incredibly mild and all the plants and trees are either budding or on the verge of budding, if not down-right blooming.

When it became apparent that following the creek was only going to result in a gradual climb and the waterfall now somewhat behind us we decided to wade across the creek and start hunting on the other side. Esther was much better dressed for this in her fancy new zip-off-leg pants. She suggested that I should ford the water in my undies, but I disappointed her by merely rolling up my jeans and making a go of it.

Esther: Woodland fashionista.

Let's just take another look. *swoon*

Once on the other side of the creek we promptly decided to walk in a direction that was not towards the falls, but indeed in the opposite direction! We could hear some sort of falling water feature nearby and headed towards it at full speed! But first... WITCH'S BUTTER.

Watch it wiggle, see it jiggle...

The detour paid off with not one, but two waterfalls that we hadn't even been counting on seeing! (High-fives and knuckle-bumps commenced.)

The next hour of hiking contains what I like to think of as "the part that didn't happen". We did not wander along the top of a giant bluff with sheer rock walls of twenty to thirty feet in height. We did not crawl under, around, over and through (yes, this) mountain laurel, holly bush, saw briar and cedar. We did not walk around in a big giant circle only to backtrack and climb down the bluff right were we climbed up it. I know these things did not happen because I have no pictures of them (regardless of what the GPS track log may indicate.)

We finally found the correct route but due to continued resistance from the brush and faced with having to cross and re-cross the stream to reach the falls we called it a day and headed back towards the van.

Esther got hungry along the way, and well...

I did find another nearby cache and we did both take a handful of pictures, so the day was not a waste. Oh, and also we burned collectively enough calories to summon roughly four Whopper Jr. combo meals from the unassigned proto-matter of a new universe in another parallel reality.

The album of my pictures of the day are right here: CLICKY LINKY!

The track log: PUSH BUTTON!

Esther's blog of the same event but with touchy-feely girl perspective and pictures of me: MASH THIS LINK!

January 29th, 2012 - Welcome Falls

2012-01-29T17:51:00.000-06:00

We took a little trip down the road to a local water that's tucked away on private land (but still gets its share of visitors nonetheless.)

Welcome Falls

We walked for about a half mile down the creek and took pictures along the way. The water made for a great backdrop to a beautiful day to be outside.

A few other pictures, including some of initials carved into trees, can be seen here.

Oh! Almost forgot. The strange flapping creature that I found in the woods yesterday followed us here!

January 28th. 2012 - Back in the Woods

2012-01-28T23:13:00.009-06:00

Just another hike back to the cliffs again in our very own woods. Nothing too exciting. I did see some strange wildlife...

But that was about it. Took a few more shots of the stuff growing in the cliffs and a few of the creek. The rain has the creek up now and we hope to get over to a local waterfall tomorrow, so more on that when we get back.

A funny thing did happen with Jessie on our way back through the pasture. Jessie found a patch of dirt were a fire ant mound had once been and started digging. This must have been the best smelling patch of ground she's seen all week. Once she got a nice hole of sufficient depth she stuck her head in the ground and put her nose right against the dirt and just started breathing long and hard, snorting up the scents of the earth.

Much snuffling and snorting.

Dirt. So good.

She went on like this for a while, digging then inhaling the smell of the dirt. It looked to be part communion, part therapy, part pure animal joy.

TO CHINA!

Pics from the hike, including a video of Jessie, are here.

January 14th, 2012 - Hurricane Creek

2012-01-14T12:00:00.004-06:00

I've already said much about Hurricane Creek Park, in my previous post so this will mostly be about the pictures. We did, however, manage to find a new corner to the park or, more accurately, just outside the park near the railroad tracks that run along the east edge. A massive tunnel allows the creek to flow under the tracks and with some careful maneuvering we were able to get a closer look.

Column for a long-gone railway bridge.

I made mention a few months back of a cable car system that you could ride up and out of the canyon to the park office. Here are a few shots of the platform and the tracks.

The climbing wall at the office has recently been expanded on and now nearly covers the deck.

Other pictures from this trip are viewable here.

January 11th, 2012 - New Schedule

2012-01-11T12:00:00.001-06:00

The new year starts with me working a new 9/80 schedule; an alternating five and four day shift that gives me every other Friday off. This also means working eight nine-hour days and getting into work a little earlier. I'm sure this won't be quite so harsh in the Summer months, but right now I'm up before the sun and home after the sun. This moon-set was the last thing I saw in the sky outside our bedroom window before heading out this morning.

December 31, 2011 - Post-Gig Asian Energy Drinks

2011-12-31T23:00:00.000-06:00

My gig on the 30th was the last for the band I've been drumming with for about the last year or so, "Southbound Junkies" and, reportedly, the last for that band ever. It was a long night and when I was finally dragged out of bed on this, the last day of the year I needed a little boost in the form of some of the energy drinks that followed us home from the Far East Market (that I've talked about more than once now).

These two drinks represent the two schools of thought in Eastern energy drink philosophy- overly sweet liquid lolly-pop and strange fizzy malted dark mystery beverage. "M-150" has the first category covered and the second is exemplified by "Hyper Malt".

First up, Hyper Malt. This bottle would prove difficult to open...

Whatta you mean, no twist-off cap?!?!

Not effective.

Then this happened.

I'm suspicious and not very optimistic.

Not good. Not horrible, but not good.

Esther does not want.

Final verdict: thumbs down. Not as bad as some of the stuff we've brought home (see: white gourd drink) but just not very enjoyable either.

Moving on: M-150...

Sweet...

...brain crinklingly sweet...

CHOCK FULL OF ZINGY DIABETES!

Esther was not as enthused.

Final verdict: thumbs up with reservations. It's just too darn sweet to drink more than once a week. Daily consumption would turn you into a walking vat of hummingbird nectar.

But did they wake me up? Well, I was a little perky afterwards.

Other scary pictures of us drinking dragon juice can be found here.

December 29, 2011 - Coosa River Annex and Mount Cheaha

2011-12-31T20:48:00.000-06:00

Today we explored the ruins of the Coosa River Annex. This site, formally affiliated with the Anniston Army Depot, was once used to store various munitions and explosive ordinance. Dotted along the grid of roads are several trapezoidal-shaped buildings that were designed to contain explosions and located far enough apart to avoid chain-reactions.

One of the "igloo" from the outside.

Interior of the "igloo".

The acoustics inside the buildings are "bouncy" and "slappy". It was like living inside a guitar amp with the reverb turned up to 11.

Alternating wood/metal layers of the door.

I don't know if earth was placed on top of the buildings as part of the original design or if falling leaves and pine needles accumulated over time and and eventually created enough soil, but there are trees growing on top of all the storage buildings. We did not see any indications that root systems were breaking through the roofs and ceilings.

Full-sized pine trees on the roof.

During its operational period train tracks led into the annex and up to raised loading docks.

What remains of the rail system.

Loading dock ruins.

Now you might ask why we were here, but the answer should be obvious- the place is eat up with geocaches. As of our visit there are 31 traditional caches located through the site. Some are simple hides in the trees but others incorporate the ruins and the decommissioned structures.

After making a handful of cache finds we moved along the road, grabbed a bite to eat and stopped by Cheaha State Park. This is the same place that the kids and I visited back in December 2010.

Boardwalk to the Bald Rock overlook.

Us in March 2008.

Us in December 2011.

We watched the sunset from the balcony of the lodge restaurant.

On the way home we stopped to watch the light show at the First Baptist Church in Glencoe. They've got a pretty cool set up- tune your radio to a specific station and watch the syncronized light show dance all around the church.

Here's the complete gallery of pictures from our busy day. RIGHT HERE!

December 28, 2011 - Grass Jelly and Bankhead National Forest: Kinlock, Pine Torch

2011-12-31T13:10:00.000-06:00

Today starts with an introduction to yet another Asian drink with slippery jelly things in it. World, meet Grass Jelly Drink from Taisun, Judging by a quick video search, this stuff is commonly selected as "strange new thing to record a video of me drinking for the first time."

Grass jelly looks to be ubiquitous across Asia. It's just one of the many food products that are created from some process that results in something that you can watch both wiggle and jiggle. There's a picture on the can itself, but here's our sample poured into a glass.

Esther was the brave one for this round. The grass jelly itself doesn't have so much a distinct flavor as it does a texture. The liquid portion of the drink she described as "restaurant sweet tea." I think this will resonate more with folks from the Southeast US than other parts of the world. We tend to HEAVILY sweeten our iced tea (about 2 cups of sugar to a gallon is common and 3-4 is not unheard of). Restaurants will tend to mess this up by letting the tea sit too long with the bags still in it. The result is over-sweet, over strong tea the color of 4-month-old motor oil. Now take that and toss some mostly tasteless (but not completely unpleasant) cubes of Jell-O and you get sort of an idea of what's in in the can.

Esther, bless her heart, always smells first.

Point at the can. Good girl.

Maybe not something we'll snag at the market every trip, but not as strange and inexplicable as the Hawthorne Berry Drink I had the other day.

That out of the way, we traveled to the Bankhead National Forest in search of pictures, adventure and geocaches.

First stop, Kinlock Shelter, a rock overhang used by the local Native American tribes for thousands of years.

Petroglyphs or graffiti?

I didn't find the geocache that is hidden near the shelter, but I did locate one at the nearby Kinlock Falls. This is a great example of why decommissioned ammo cans are one of the most popular containers of choice for caching. The cache is sitting in the water, but every thing is nice and dry inside thanks to the rubber seal and tight-fitting closure system. These things are designed to keep ammunition functional in all manner of harsh conditions so keeping a log book and some swag safe is an easy task.

Ammo can, I love you, never change.

Kinlock Falls.

I have no idea who these people are.

We hopped back in the van to head to another historical location in Bankhead and then... this happened:

Ladies and gentlemen, the future of our planet.

...but somehow we pressed on and arrived at Pine Torch Church, the oldest standing structure in Bankhead Forest.

More pictures from our trip can be found here.

December 27, 2011 - Shortest Post Ever

2011-12-31T10:56:00.000-06:00

This is fruit pudding. It is good. Eat it now.

The End.

December 26, 2011 - Rockets, Mogu Mogu, and BAWANG!

2011-12-28T20:37:00.001-06:00

Months ago, the boys and I went to the Space and Rocket Center after dropping off Esther at the airport for her exciting scouting trip out west. Today we revisited with both the women. The dinosaur exhibit from September is long gone, but the core collection of aging attractions are still there. Considering that we got in again for free thanks to our partner membership, it's hard to complain too much but as I've said before, the place is in need of an update.

One of the newer attractions that the kids usually gravitate towards is the climbing wall. (Climb a wall- just like the astronauts!) I gave the hardest route a try and a picture of me just before I fell to the ground to my certain death can be found over at Esther's blog entry for the day. The kids did much better than I.

We made the standard walk among the empty shells of rockets and aircraft in the back lot. Both the centrifuge thingy and the shoot you up into the air thingy were closed due to "inclement weather". Oh and Esther and I managed to take nearly the same picture, as we are prone to do.

From there we took a more leisurely stroll inside the Saturn V building.

At this point I'll mention that I'm listening to Casey Affleck's reading of Sex on the Moon, by Ben Mezrich. So I was more than a little pleased in finding a display for an actual lunar sample. I'm always more than a little skeptical when the Space and Rocket Center labels something (case in point, the A-12 Oxcart parked outside that's written up as an SR-71 Blackbird) but I did a little looking around on the internet and found that the sample is indeed legit and identified as "Sample 12065" which means that it's the 65th identified sample and that it came from the Apollo 12 mission. Based on the size of the rock (about that of my fist) and the information in the book, I'd put the value at something near... a few years in federal prison.

Take me, you know you want to. I won't tell.

Somebody put memorial bananas on Miss Baker's monument.

But the real excitement of the day was during the ride home and the obligatory stop at... FAR EAST MARKET! I think it's officially an addiction at this point. We stocked up on mochi, noodles and Mang Tomas All Purpose Sauce.

And now I give you: MOGU MOGU brand drink! In not one, but two flavors!

Strawberry!

Lychee!

I'm sure most of you have some passing knowledge of what a strawberry is, but I'm just as sure you have no idea what a lychee is. Well, I'm here to help. Lychee (also known by a handful of other names, all of which sound like somebody trying to spell "lychee" without spell-check or perhaps with head trauma) is a fruit found across Asia, the sole member of genus Litchi in the soapberry family. What? Soap? Huh? It's a little pink fruit. If pink were a flavor, it would taste like the color pink. If bubblegum grew on trees there would be a botanical arms race to hybridize lychee and the bubblegum trees for world domination. Learn more here.

A common theme I've noticed in the Asian fruit drinks (and aloe drinks for that matter) is the use of something floating in the liquid that is kind of chewy and slippery. Like swallowing tadpoles made of pure sweetness and good. Mogu Mogu uses this as well. Reading the ingredients in both of these I saw that they both had something called "nata de coco". Could this be the source of the gummy droplets that hang in a colloidal suspension inside the bottles of sweet yummy juice?? As luck would have it, YES! Nata de coco is made from fermented coconut water and forms a thick jelly-like food. YUM!

But how does it taste?!?!?!

Fermented coconut water = pure joy.

Need I say more?

Another food we selected from the shelves of Far East Market was this bag of... Well. I'll tell you what it is: corn nuts. But what is it called on the packaging?

BOY BAWANG

Esther enjoyed the BOY BAWANG. *snicker*

...and good night folks!

More pictures can be found here.

December 25, 2011 - Unfamiliar Drink Product of the Day (X-Mas Edition)

2011-12-25T12:11:00.001-06:00

Merry Christmas!

Today's beverage adventure centers on the mysterious magic of Carabao Energy Drink. My extensive interweb research into the word "carabao" tells me that it's a subspecies of water buffalo. If in the USA "Red Bull gives you wings" then I guess in Thailand "Carabao gives you bad-ass martial arts skills" or something. The buffalo skull on the can has a little red bird on it, so maybe they are trying to evoke "gives you wings" thing without being to obvious. Although, looking at the sugar content it might be "Carabao- gives you diabetes!"

Buffalo wings... gives you wings... get it?

~~Jake~~ some random stranger I found lurking about our house was nice enough to try the stubby little can of Thai energy.

~~Jake~~ some stranger barely able to contain the energy in one hand.

Although later I would question the wisdom of giving what amounted to a Matrix-style Kung-Fu download to some random person that had wandered into the house, it was his awesome mustache that would ease my fears and ultimately give me reason to trust him. Any man willing to spend that much time and focus on growing such a remarkable lip ferret would no doubt possess the discipline to control the forces of raw physical power that were surely contained within the aluminum can. Standing back a bit, I watched him imbibe the mystical potion.

Alas, my camera was ill-equipped to capture on film the super-sonic blur of motion as ~~Jake~~ the stylish stranger ran from the house to defeat the forces of evil across the county. As he sped away on foot I could just barely make out the words, the sound of which was distorted by the Doppler effect...

"Tastes cherry-licious."

A poll of the other castle-dwellers in regard to the actual flavor of Carabao Energy Drink resulted thusly:

"Melted lolly pop."

"Sugarly. Like if you drank the can and never brushed your teeth, your teeth would all fall out."

And a silent "thumbs up" from Esther, as she was talking on the phone at the time. I think her response pretty much summed it up.

Sadly, Jake was not to be found and I was unable to gather his impression of the mystic buffalo juice.

Other pictures, including the color of the drink (similar to buffalo pee!) can be found RIGHT HERE.

December 23, 2011 - Unfamiliar Drink Product of the Week! (UDPoW)

2011-12-24T10:48:00.000-06:00

Today's Unfamiliar Drink Product of the Week is a double-shot (see what I did there?) of liquid beverage greatness! I'm back from another journey into Far East Market and I have things in bottles and cans.

First up: the aptly-named "Aloe" from Paldo. Next to the Paldo brand it says "since 1984". When did we lower our standard for "since year X" labels? I remember 1984. Compare this to Barq's Root Beer "since 1898" foe example. But I digress...

Chan was very excited about the Aloe drink. She really liked the Aloe Vera King that returned with me on a previous venture. Her level of appreciation is evident by the fact she let me photograph her with a towel on her head.

Chan contemplates the non-solid awesome of Aloe.

The major difference between Aloe and Aloe Vera King is the color green. This is more like the Green Lantern and the other is more like... an Orange Lantern. Yes. In most other ways it is the same- taste, strange slime globules of squish, the way it slides down your throat like slugs on a wet leaf, etc.

Overall Rating- thumbs up!

Mickey sprung to life and tried to get some Aloe!

Next: Yeo's White Gourd Drink.

Your first question should be, "white gourd, what the heck is that?" And my answer would be a direct quote of me reading the Wikipedia article on winter melon. It's also called ash gourd or fuzzy melon. Take a few moments to giggle at fuzzy melon then keep reading below.

Nước Bí đao, indeed.

There's only one way to describe the taste- cool liquid gingerbread. Yes, gingerbread that's light on the ginger. Almost like a snicker-doodle cookie. At first, Esther was very much taken with the flavor...

Check out my can!

...but later on she complained of feeling unnaturally full and burpy. I think her exact words were "get this devil juice away from me and my children, you bad, bad man." Ben said it made him feel like he had eaten too much celery or cucumbers at one time.

Overall Rating: at the end of the day, thumbs down. :(

More exciting product images as well as the ingredients of these two drinks can be found RIGHT HERE!

December 19, 2011 - More Far East Market Goodies

2011-12-19T20:59:00.002-06:00

Esther met me today after work for a 3 mile walk on the greenway to earn points for our wacky insurance program. Think of it like an insurance RPG. You earn points, you gain levels. So yeah, we were grinding for levels just like all the kids playing War of Warcraft except by being outside and moving our butts around. (Not that there's anything wrong with WoW or MMOs in general. I spend plenty of time grinding for favor in Dungeons and Dragons Online.)

I have to admit it was pretty cool seeing all the work-people in a not-working-place wearing their not-at-work clothes on the greenway.

After the walk we returned to... FAR EAST MARKET!!! Esther wanted to grab some goodies for a get-together at the house tomorrow as well as the non-hot version of banana ketchup. Things kind of got out of control at some point and well, we went a little mochi crazy. More on that later. Look at me! I brought my phone inside the store and took pictures with my fancy-man camera app!

Here are just a few of the things at the market:

Ohhhh yeah. The BIG FREAKING bottle.


Jars! Full of what? I don't know!

Food! Frozen!

Yes, that's a fish in a jar. Did not buy.

Ah... good old pandanus. Wait, what?

Because I know that you're wondering what I'm wondering... pandanus is a plant that kind of looks like a palm but is not closely related to a palm. The leaves, flowers and fruit is used for...

You know what? Just read the Wikipedia article. Here it is. Right here. CLICK THIS LINK.

Mochi

Some mochi jumped into our basket and came home with us. What is mochi? (Hint: click link.) What's mochi like? It's soft. Very much like the apricots we bought recently. Soft like a baby's butt. Soft and powdery. Imagine a fresh clean baby butt covered in fine powdered sugar, now shrink it down to the size of the palm of your hand. That's what a mochi feels like. All similarities, thankfully, end when you bite into one.

What does mochi taste like...?

The flavor made his hair explode.

She can "stop anytime she wants".

Safe for braces!

Rock star approved!

They're unbelievably good. Sweet, but not sweet like most American candy. The outer texture is like uncooked dough and the filling is slightly chewy like fig or dates. Flavors differ- green tea, taro (CLICK), red bean paste, etc. You know, stuff that nobody puts in food in a place like Minnesota, for example.

NEW STRANGE BEVERAGE OF THE WEEK! (This may have to be a recurring event on the blog.)

On the left is "Yeo's Chrysanthemum Tea Drink" that Esther chose on our last trip to the market and repeated the act again today. Me, being the brave soul that I am, purchased something new and different. I'm calling this "hawthorne berry drink in red can" because I'll be damned if I can find the name of it in English anywhere on the product. If you happen to speak the language printed on this can, please respond in the comments section and tell me the proper name for this unique liquid.(Banana ketchup hiding in the back.)

But what does it taste like? I had a sip. It was... familiar yet I was unable to put my finger on it. I passed the can to Esther but she would not put her lips to it, exclaiming "this smells like an ashtray, I am not putting this in my mouth." Which is how she describes barbeque sauce. That's it! This cool, refreshing can contains the flavor of cold barbeque sauce. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It just seemed out of place. It has plums in it. It's because of the plums, right?

I want to like you, but your flavor is stolen from another foodstuff.

In other news, the crossvine tea experiment is coming along well. I dried some of the leaves we collected over the last week in the oven last night and brewed a pot of tea this morning. The flavor is mild, but sweet, almost floral. I'd like to make it a little stronger, a little more potent so I'll do some research into that soon.

The collected leaves before drying.

Dried leaves, crushed.

A few more pictures are hiding out in this link right here: CLICK ME BABY!

December 18, 2011 - Mung Bean Noodle and Playing with Fire

2011-12-18T17:55:00.000-06:00

This is sort of a continuation of yesterday's entry about the food we bought at the Far East market on South Parkway in Huntsville. Esther cooked up the banana spring rolls (so very good) and also this:

What is this, you ask? Noodles. Magic noodles made from BEANS. That's Asia for you. Ketchup from bananas and noodles from beans. These are mung bean noodles before being cooked.

I'll come back to the noodles but first...

I like wasabi. That kick in the face of pain and awesomeness when you get just enough. It's no surprise that I also like dried wasabi peas.

Something else that I also really have deep emotional ties to is Sriracha Sauce, commonly known as "rooster sauce". One of my favorite websites has a cartoon about rooster sauce that I agree with on an atomic level. Go read it right now: Dear Sriracha a.k.a. Rooster Sauce - The Oatmeal.

Second to my beloved rooster sauce is banana ketchup and wouldn't you know it, I grabbed a fresh bottle last night.

If you know me, you know where this is going. There's only one logical conclusion here.

WASABI PEAS + ROOSTER SAUCE = FLAMING NUCLEAR NIRVANA

From upper left clockwise: rooster sauce, banana ketchup, wasabi peas


OMG THEY'RE TOUCHING!

The banana ketchup is not as hot as rooster sauce and slightly sweeter. It didn't really alter the wasabi experience. The spoonful of rooster sauce is another story. The wife was nice enough to capture the following sequence as it happened:

Here comes the airplane!

Ah, yes *munch* *munch*

Hmmm... yes, that's quite spicy but nothing I can't han-

SHAZAM!

It feels like Chuck Norris just kicked me in the sinuses.

Yes. I cried a little.

When I finally pulled myself off the floor and my vision cleared, the noodles were ready to eat.

By themselves they are kind of tasteless. The texture is chewy to say the least. Different from any any spaghetti or Italian pasta and nothing like ramen or even udon noodles. It wasn't bad by any means, but it was missing something...

That's more like it!

All the pictures here.

December 17, 2011 - Pillows, Wade Mountain, and Banana Catchup

2011-12-18T11:32:00.000-06:00

Esther and (to a larger extent) I needed to go out into the woods and take pictures of something. It's really that simple. She's had a few day trips with the kids but I haven't been in the trees and the leaves anywhere near as much as usual for this time of year. Also, I haven't been really geocaching since October. This past year has been tight due to increased fuel cost, braces payments for the kids (well worth it) and our normal level of camping and hiking has suffered for it. A quick look at the statistics tab of our geocaching profile page tells the same story.

Before setting out for our ultimate destination, there were a few diversions and pit stops to make along the way. First we stopped at Old Time Pottery and shopped for cushions and pillows.

It's like millions of grandma's couches cried out at once...

Thousands of pillows and cushions were there for the picking- all of them hideous and none of them a matching pair. Somewhere a vast vault of poor pattern choices from the last 100 years has been unearthed and the unholy reams of fabric have all been made into pillows that are being sold to the unsuspecting customers of Old Time Pottery.

I couldn't stop looking at these. I don't know why. Maybe it's the crazed look in the mother's eye. Maybe it's the wild wind blown look of her hair and dress.

From there we made a stops at the library and Kroger to pick up a meal of bread, Super Hummus, and Zevia root beer. Food secured, we pointed the van onward.

The destination: Wade Mountain Preserve just north of Huntsville. Wade Mtn. is part of the Land Trust of North Alabama. I've found a few different "portal" web sites for it but the one with the most current map and information is the Land Trust page for Wade Mtn.

We hiked about 5.25 miles over roughly three hours of slow walking, stops for pictures, plant identification (crossvine and more witch's butter!) and geocaching. Here is the track log of the hike.

The first geocache hunt of the hike provided a good example of what to avoid when selecting a cache container. These look to be somewhat waterproof and sturdy, but the plastic tends to break on the hinge and then the whole thing falls apart. The top half was attached to a tree branch so the bottom, including the log book was on the ground below. You can see were a previous finder tried to patch things up with tape of some kind. The right thing to do when you find a cache in this condition is to leave a "Needs Maintenance" log when you log your find at geocaching.com to let the hider know what happened. Emergency repairs are appreciated, but contacting the owner and flagging that cache will allow the mechanisms in place do their job.

These things happen.

The trail is usually covered in snail shells among the karst topography at the top of the hill.

Esther tries to remove the deadly brain parasite.

Dew on Lamb's Ear

We stopped at our usual picnic spot on the rocks overlooking the Devil's Racetrack Trail. See the silver thermos in the picture? Esther picked those up from woot.com. They are Stanley Utility travel mugs and did a great job of keeping tea that I made around 10:00 AM warm until around 2:30 PM. Even better, they never dripped a drop into my backpack during the two mile jaunt to the rocks. We're both very happy with the purchase.

What? Product placement too obvious?

Esther cursing me with her woman magic.

Due to the storm damage from way back in Spring (see previous blog entries) a large swath of forest near the parking lot and trail head was felled either by the storm winds and tornadoes or in the clean-up the following months. The last cache of the day isn't as well secluded as it might have once been and it looks like some non-cachers have found it. The last online log was the find on 11/1/11, the finders later in November may have stumbled upon it by chance.

Hike over! There was a message from the boy about needing to resupply his pizza stash so we made a second Kroger stop on the way home- but got derailed when I remembered that Far East Market on South Parkway was supposed to carry banana catchup. More on that later. Among other things, I picked up some aloe vera drink and Esther grabbed some ginseng tea.

Juice fit for a King, ha!

CAN YOU FEEL THE POWER OF ALOE?!?!?

How was the aloe drink? Quite tasty.

Also: mushrooms.

I can haz 1-up?

PORN CRACKERS!!! I mean, PRAWN CRACKERS!

YES. Catchup from BANANAS. Crazy. Cray. Banana catchup (ketchup, whatever) is so awesome it has it's own Wikipedia article. (No relation to banana spring rolls, also pictured.)

The product of a tomato shortage during World War II, this stuff is so unbelievably good it's almost as good as...

Daddy doesn't play favorites. You two be nice.

We also scored some apricots! They are so soft, they look and feel like little baby butts. Esther loves them.

Wrapping up the whole day with a big pot of cabbage, okra, peas and tofu soup. The tofu at the Far East Market was about half the price as we usually find it.

Gallery of images from the day.

Other Wade Mtn. trips:

November 25, 2011 - Hike Back to the Cliffs of Ruth

2011-11-25T18:10:00.002-06:00

Having no desire to feed the beast and fight our way through mobs of pepper-spraying shoppers, we took a two-mile hike back into our own woods to see what, if any, we could identify from our informative hike earlier in the month. I've been picking dandelion and wild lettuce in our own yard for tea ever since the hike but I wanted to find something a little more "exotic" to brew.

Tulip Poplar

This was the find of the trip- crossvine or Bignonia capreolata. Identifiable in the spring by its yellow and red trumpet-shaped flowers. The common name comes from the cross-shaped pattern that can be seen in the cross-section of the thicker stems. This is recommended to fight off fatigue and for sustained energy without the side effects of caffeine. I'm currently sipping a mug of tea that I made with it. I'm going to have to play around with the amount of leaves in the tea and how long and hot I boil them. The batch that I made isn't very strong to taste and I've read several accounts of it being called "sweet".

Crossvine

Crossvine Leaf

Here we see Esther taste-testing something she found on a rotting branch. (She did not actually taste it. Don't do this. Ever.) Surprisingly enough, this appears to be an edible fungus known as "witch's butter". So there's a really good chance that it wouldn't have killed her. Of course, I could be wrong.

There's always room for Jell-O

Most of the household was recuperating from yesterday's Thanksgiving meal and could not muster interest in the hike, but Ben joined us along with all three of the dogs. Little Dog was very excited to be running with Big Dogs. There was some deer chasing and much barking; a big day for Little Dog.

Zephyr and Ben

We stopped for a while at what we call the Cliffs of Ruth- named after the aunt that raised my mother here on the property. The cliffs are a sandstone outcropping at the top of the hollow that are filled with the exoskeletons of spiders and scorpions, the occasional bird nest and empty snail shells.

The Cliffs of Ruth

These are some kind of mini-speleothem growing in the nooks of the cliff wall and ceiling. They look like crystallized broccoli florets. These are very small, the big one in the foreground is about a quarter of an inch in height and the crystal formation on the end about an eighth of an inch across.

"Cave coral"

In several spots along the cliff oakleaf hydrangea can be found growing right on the sandstone, their roots dangling through the cliff.

Oakleaf Hydrangea

All the pictures from our trek can be seen here.

Pictures from a New Year's Day 2009 trip to the cliffs (with hot chocolate):

January 1, 2009

November 5, 2011 - Medicinal Plants Hike with Darryl Patton

2011-11-06T09:40:00.000-06:00

Today's hike was down into and back out of Little River Canyon near Fort Payne, Alabama. The hike was lead by Darryl Patton, an ND as well as a Master Herbalist with over 25 years experience with the plants in our area. Before taking the Eberhart trail down into the canyon we walked the new boardwalk at the Little River Canyon parking area and also made a stop at the Lynn Point overlook.

Darryl explaining the connection between sweet gum and tamiflu.

We were encouraged to take notes and Chandler took this to heart, filling up a few pages in her notebook of information on the plants we encountered. This was useful for the adults when it came time to write our blog entries...

This is crossvine that Darryl pointed out to us at the overlook. Apparently, I need to swap this out for my energy drinks. He described it as "better than ginseng" when it comes to getting your metabolism up.

Here, Darryl explains the antibacterial properties of raindeer moss. Soaked with hot water, this can be applied directly to a wound.

This is a plantain (not to be confused with the banana-like plantain). From all accounts I should keep this handy for the next time I wander into poison oak.

It was a great day to be in the canyon, for the leaves alone. The hike and the information were a huge bonus.

Darryl delivering more wisdom.

Here we learned about wild lettuce the sticky natural latex in the leaves and the "opium-like" effects of its ingestion. Recommend as a sleep aid.

The hike was very informative and I don't have the room here to detail every single species that Darryl pointed to and gave us a litany of uses for. I've placed some of these links in the text above, but here's additional information about Darryl and his books:

Darryl's website: http://thesouthernherbalist.com/

The Wikipedia article on his mentor, Tommie Bass: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommie_Bass

Link to his book at amazon.com: Mountain Medicine: The Herbal Remedies of Tommie Bass

***

After the participants in the hike disbanded and went our separate ways, we visited the nearby Welsh Caves near Mentone and Desoto Falls. The kids followed me via belly-crawl into the farthest room of the caves. Esther and I camped here in the early 90's together so this is a special spot for us. The four of us emerged covered in the fine dirt of the cave floor.

A little further away from the final room, I manage to fit all of them (including Esther) in one shot. The cave is a great spot for sitting and lounging.

Esther, scaling the near-vertical path back out of the caves like the mountain-lion-woman she is.

We also hopped around on the boulders at Desoto State Park.

Gallery of images here.

The tracklog of the hike here.

Of Hauntings and Ghosts

2011-10-23T12:14:00.004-05:00

First a bit of background. The house we live in now is the same house that I grew up in. It belonged to the aunt that raised my mother. The core of the house was built in the 1930's and added on after the fact through the years. When my wife and I were first married we lived in a single-wide on the property (we took the wheels off and everything.) We moved to Tennessee after living there about three years and returned to Alabama to live in the old house.

The old stories:

Dad was taking a shower here at the house and heard a woman's voice. He thought it was either my mom, my aunt (her sister) or both of them. There either was a conversation or not a conversation because the water was running. Bottom line; he gets out of the shower and nobody is there. Mom and my aunt have been next door the whole time.

There's another one from dad, about one of mom's long passed relatives sitting on the foot of the bed telling him to take care of mom.

My sisters, years ago, reported seeing a woman in a yellow dress in the house.

October 15, 2011 - Green Mountain

2011-10-18T19:21:00.004-05:00

This past Saturday was family hike day. The location was a trail in Huntsville, on Green Mountain. I've seen this trail called the "Old Scout Trail" the "Logging Road Trail" or just "The Trail That Meets Up with the Powerline Trail". Rather than try and give directions or describe the route I'll just post a link to the tracklog of our hike here.

I can't really complain much about 6.5 miles round trip, as far as progress. The trail was a little weedy in a few spots and fallen trees from this past year's storms cross the path but the gnats were few and far between, the temps mild in the shade (except under the powerlines) and everybody was in a good mood.

I had been hoping for the fall colors I saw the last time I was here, back in 2009, but we just aren't far enough into the season this time around. Here are pics from that short hike I took all alone. We did manage to find some oranges and yellows here and there...

Ben found great joy in hurling these at my head when I wasn't looking.

...but just not in the leaves, except near the tops of the trees.

Last update it was Jake that wasn't in the pictures, this time around it's Ben. Jake and Chan were busy recording video for their various projects and even helped me find a geocache that belongs to a themed series that we've all thought are really cool. I'd say more, and if you really want to you could figure it out from the tracklog, but trust me, this one's worth the surprise. This is the somewhat spoilerish of a pic of them at the cache, but unless you know of the series you probably won't know what they're holding.

Here's E's collection of stuff that she gathered up for her own picture.

Here's the powerline trail that runs down toward Green Cove road. You can't see our house from here, but you can see my workplace and the Tennessee River.

More pics, including the grumpiest little monkey and unknown flowers can be found here.

October 8, 2011 - In the Weeds with Rhythm

2011-10-18T18:49:00.004-05:00

I've had this need for a while now, this idea, that I should take my drums out into the pasture behind our house and set them up and just play in the field. It occurred to me that this might make for a decent photo-op. So I did.

Esther took pics of Ben, Chan and me out in the grassy nothing, banging on drums and doing other things. Jake was invited but arrived as I was taking down the set. He's a busy guy. Things to do. E's pics of the drums in the weeds start here and then show up here and here. This was a learning experience for us both- I had a few ideas as far as what I wanted but neither of us have any real practice photographing musicians or drummers (see what I did there?) I managed to pull out a few shots that I thought were okay.

First he steals my hat, then my drums...

Esther got Chan all gussied up for the shoot.

Pics are keeping time over here.

September 25, 2011 - Hurricane Creek

2011-10-01T11:03:00.000-05:00

The weather is finally starting to change to align with the calendar. It's hiking, camping, getting-outside-and-seeing-things season. October is just around the corner. We made a quick drive to our favorite local park for hiking and creek splashing, Hurricane Creek Park. We managed a 4.5 mile hike around the outer-most trails accessible to hikers. There are few other bike-only trails that extend up the northern paths, but I've never brought the required equipment to check that out.

Gears of a bike hanging from a rack on the porch.

While walking under a shaded portion of trail, in the shadow of a cliff, the kids spotted this little dude. He (she?) looks to be a ringneck snake. My reading tells me that these are usually nocturnal snakes, so seeing one around noon was a treat.

An earthworm's worst nightmare.

Here is my cell phone next to the snake for scale. He could have fit in my hand with plenty of room to spare. We assumed that this must be a very young, recently hatched juvenile, but I've learned that the adults only reach about 10-15 inches, so perhaps it wasn't as young as we first thought. They produce venom from something called a Duvernoy's gland. This is used mainly for capturing food and rarely as a defense strategy. When accosted by predators they usually turn the tip of their tails up and expose the bright red/yellow underside. We never saw this snake do that so I guess he wasn't very concerned with our observations and picture taking.

This is perhaps our most favored feature of the park, the Twilight Tunnel. It's not a cave but a crack in the canyon wall that formed when a large chunk of stone fell slightly away from the main structure. It's about 60-70 feet long from end to end. The trick is to let your eyes adjust and enjoy the light that filters in from the openings overhead and further down the passage. I co-hid a geocache in the tunnel that is extremely difficult to find- I had trouble locating it two years later!

Esther near the western end of the tunnel.

I discovered a fact about millipedes that was unknown to me. Here's a millipede from the front:

Here's a millipede from the back. Notice the tiny little millipede BUTT CHEEKS?!?!

Restraint order pending.

It's not a hike in the woods unless somebody gets injured. This trip's victim was Jake. All I know is that there was some splashing and falling and dropping of water bottles and he banged his shin up on a rock. Here we are looking over the damage while Jake tries to dry out his sock. It was a pretty good ding, but he hasn't mentioned it in days. At the time there was much to do about limping and hobbling along with the assistance of a walking stick, but by the next morning... not so much.

Many years ago there was an incline cable cart that you could use to exit up the hill back to the office. I never got to ride it and the chances of it being repaired are pretty slim, but the tracks and the cart are still there, waiting patiently.

More pictures of this hike can be found here. Below are the pictures from previous visits to the park.

March 13, 2011

February 5, 2011

February 6, 2009

September 5, 2011 - Addendum

2011-09-16T10:35:00.001-05:00

Our fortunes from the Chinese buffet:

September 5, 2011 - Anniston Museum of Natural History

2011-09-11T20:29:00.001-05:00

Esther was out in the Wild West doing her thing, seeing new things and we, the great unwashed, were stuck in the cultural black hole of the universe under a leaky sky watching the grass grow before our very eyes. We could have just stayed at home and endured, but we all needed to see something other than computer screens and the digital corpses of our enemies strewn before us (lamenting of the women optional).

Our destination was the Anniston Museum of Natural History. We last visited on another sans-mom trip back on December 31, 2010. We purchased a family membership at that time and it was this membership that got us in free at the Adventure Science Center and the Space and Rocket Center.

Hello, zeeba neighba.

Ben watches the penny smusher.

We perused the gift shop and I picked up and put down many shiny things that I considered would look interesting in my cubicle. The prehistoric section that you'd normally walk through first was shut down due to renovations and so we had to walk through all widdershins. The boys were ahead of Chan and me and were looking at something in the display with a strange sense of wonderment and amusement. This is what they saw:

Um... yeah.

Clearly these are labeled as "clay dolls". And yet clearly they are what can only be described as testicular fetishes. Something was going on in the Amazon River Basin back in 1946, but I'm not quite sure what.

Having just finished listening to the audio version of American Gods, by Neil Gaiman, I had to linger in the Egyptian section just a little longer than usual.

Mortician to the gods.

Jake described this as "Wolverine's adamantium-skulled house cat".

Ben, always willing to pose for anything.

Remember the raft trip we took back in June? I mentioned that the kids were practicing hold their butts out of the water to avoid being bitten by gar. Here he is, in person, the great fresh water bitter of butts himself:

Place buttocks here.

Something about this display makes me laugh. It's like the antelope-thing is saying "where's your fancy bi-pedal stance and tool-making skills now, monkey boy?"

Here's the obligatory "hey, put your head in that" shot. Looking back I made Jake do it the previous trip.

When you put a coin the in the giraffe is laughs. The kids forgot about this and they all jumped. Worth the nickel.

Here are two flowers whose names Esther might not even know.

The birds of prey trail outside the museum has these cool tiles on the archways that mark the entrance/exit to the trail. For some reason, I really like these. There are several with the tracks of wild animals, some with smalls sculpted representations of the animals themselves and others with the leaves of native plants.

The birds are in shelters that shade most of the sunlight on a clear day and this was nothing of the sort, so I only have this one good shot of the Great Horned Owls huddled in a corner looking like ticked-off cats.

After the museum I took the kids to one of the local Chinese buffets, as a treat. The funniest thing that happened there was me accidentally eating frog legs. Now I never have to do that again.

Finally, Ben vs. Jell-o.

All the pictures from the day can be seen in my gallery here.

September 3, 2011 - U.S. Space and Rocket Center

2011-09-08T16:32:00.004-05:00

This past Saturday we sent Esther on her way, up in the air, upon wings of steel and aluminum to scout out the great wastelands and unknown vast nothingness of the Wild West.

Be brave, boys... be brave.

(sniff)

And then we went and had some fun at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center!

Could be some circa 1960 high-tech control panel, could be the controls for the sprinkler system!

Funny story... a couple of years ago I was helping give a customer at work a tour of our plant and the guy giving the tour pointed to a large, round piece of equipment at the back of the test lab and announced, "and this is the centrifuge NASA used to test the effects of a high g-force environment on the monkeys Able and Baker. We bought it at a yard sale a few years ago." Sure enough, there's a small plaque on it. Which leads me to this picture:

Flight capsule for Able/Baker.

New to the USSRC is the traveling dinosaur exhibit.

Cast from the actual fossils of "Sue" the T-Rex. (Actual non-fossils of Ben and Jake for scale.)

One of the cooler things to play with in this section were the dino-simulators. Here's Jake playing as a triceratops that's just encountered a heard of peaceful herbivores. He was eaten by a T-Rex five seconds later. Ben managed to fare better. He actually KILLED A T-REX with his little pointy horns, laid eggs, covered the eggs, ate a plant, drank water, and POOPED. The game prompted him to POOP. To our horror, he did so on top of his freshly lain eggs. Oops.

Jake laments the lack of rocket launcher and the ability to jump.

Minor complaint about the dino exhibit: none of the staff was checking receipts to see if anybody entering the that area had actually paid the extra cash to check it out. It cost the three of us $40 to play the games, see the replica of Sue and not much else. We could have just walked right over on the standard ticket (free in our case for our partner membership at the Anniston Museum of Natural History.)

We also walked around and looked at the rockets that have been there since before I was born. We also rode the G-Force (centrifuge ride) and Ben and I did the Space Shot while Jake recorded video from the ground. Sadly, not much has changed over the years. The Space and Rocket Center is in tremendous need of a fresh coat of paint and and update of their attractions. The G-Force is nothing more than a "Gravatron" like you find at county fairs across the nation- there used to be a two-tier centrifuge that incorporated a projected film on the ceiling of your "travel through the solar system". The current machine, like the Space Shot, makes not even an attempt at being educational. The idea seems to be, "get spun around and feel 4x normal gravity, just like the astronauts!" and "get shot up into the sky... just like the astronauts!"

One last complaint and then I'll shut up.

As you can see from the interstate there is a large, cool-looking, black plane parked out front. All the promotional literature calls this an SR-71 Blackbird. But it's not. The plane is an A-12 Oxcart. They look similar, but they are not the same aircraft.

NOT a Decepticon jet. NOT flown by the X-Men.

More pictures from the day are available here, including artsy-fartsy macro shots of bits and pieces of aero-space doo-hickys.

August 28, 2011 - Guntersville

2011-09-04T13:20:00.000-05:00

This weekend was our last chance to get out of the house and move around before shipping Esther off to wild west. The air felt cooler and there was much hopefulness and promise of adventure. Our destination was Ellenburg Mountain (mountain in the loose southern sense of the word) near Guntersville. Finding the trail head and navigating several closed access roads slowed us down at first but soon enough we were hiking through the woods.

This is a nut. Also pictured: an acorn.

As we worked our way up the hill it became clear that the storm damage from this last spring was still very much an issue. Uprooted trees were interspersed along the path and places the trunks of the fallen have been chainsawed through to allow passage.

Jake prepared to pounce on any unsuspecting prey.

The weather was not playing nice either. The sun was hotter than advertized and in the shade gnats swarmed around our faces. There was a breeze coming off Lake Guntersville but it never seemed to be within reach, always blowing through the treetops and not providing us much relief.

There are a smattering of geocaches up on this hill, but the storm debris blocked our access to most of them and the few that were in reach didn't interest me enough to look for too long.

The hike wasn't a complete bust. We were together and we were out in it instead of inside away from it.


Jake ponders the edibility of his siblings.

Ben, forced to smile under threat of a beating.

Chan digesting something she found laying on the ground.

We tumbled down the hill and relocated to watch the sun set over the lake.

Chan and Jake preparing their new nest home.

More pictures of the day can be seen here.

August 16,2011 - A Cartographer am I

2011-08-18T17:09:00.003-05:00

On Tuesday we dropped of That Girl One for play practice in Hartselle and set out with the boys and our cameras to find things in the downtown area. As I have been doing for a few weeks now, I logged our mileage with the Google Tracks app on my phone. This has been great for monitoring our fitness goal progress but I also wanted to play around with the “My Places” feature of Google Maps and somehow work it into the pictures we were taking. I could have turned on the geotagging feature on my phone’s camera, but I opted to use my more versatile dedicated camera and manually geo-locate the images on the map.

Here’s the resulting Back-Alley Tour Guide of Downtown Hartselle. I didn’t intend this to be a “walk this path, see these things” literal tour guide, but more of a reference of the path we took and to add some sense of the footprint of the area we wandered through.

I think there’s some potential here. I plan to fiddle with this idea a little more in the future.

Here’s the gallery of the pictures, with bonus Chan’Thulu pic at the end.

July 31, 2011 – No Water For Swimming, More Cake

2011-08-02T10:09:00.001-05:00

We ditched Jake (The Master of Come-Backs) to give him some time in the man-cave with somebody not related to him that would not drive him up a wall. There is a little bit of testosterone-fueled up-wall driving going on these days. Having grown up in this same house, but under the harsh, cruel majority rule of estrogen, I’m a little unprepared. I’d like to say that one is crazier than the other, but honestly I can’t tell. Angst is angst. All I can do is record as much as possible to show to future girlfriends and wives at the “So You Want to Date my Son” Power Point presentation that I’ve been working on.

After tossing Jake out of our slow-moving open van window on the side of the road, we went in search of a water hole to drown in. Summer is a bee-otch. Summer in the Tennessee Valley is a really fat bee-otch in a tube-top drinking Milwaukee’s Best while she watches NASCAR in a deer-skin-covered Lay-Z-Boy with a busted recline lever. With apologies to Don Mclean, we drove our Kia the creek, but the creek was dry.

On a normal day I’d be standing in four feet of cool blue-green water to take this shot. Not so much today.

I did see this Eastern Hercules (Dynastes tityus) beetle. This is only the fifth such beetle I’ve ever seen in this area. All I’ve found have been dead, or close to death.

We found a pool of water but there was no stream feeding it and it was full of baby gar. Anybody with any sense knows that gar live for one purpose: to bite off your ding ding. We did not swim in the pool.

There was some unfortunate business with a flat tire on the Kia as we left the creek. I changed it for the may-pop spare and drove on home (Sunday in Alabama = no tire store open). Sadly, the day was not what we had envisioned but there was…

MORE CAKE! I baked Esther a birthday cake with awesome chocolate-on-chocolate action. She ate the whole thing, all by herself and has not recovered yet.*

Happy Birthday, Esther!

A couple more pictures are available for viewing here. But no flowers that I don't know the names of because Summer in North Alabama sat on all of them and they are dead.

*Not really.

July 30, 2011 – Food Day: The Foodening Part IV

2011-08-02T10:01:00.000-05:00

Well, the day started out with Esther taking That Girl One to see a local production of Little Orphan Annie while I stayed home with Poke and Prod, the Mutually Assured Destruction Twins. All was fine until Jake discovered a piece of glass with his foot. Eventually I managed to dig it out. Ouch.

The girls came home soon after that and we jumped in the van for The Foodening. Lumpia with pork and Chicken Adobo. I was also introduced to Banana ketchup. Not merely the sauce from a banana, but something more like Rooster Sauce. This cartoon very accurately describes all the reasons I love Rooster Sauce. All of these things were both awesome and yummy.

Then from out of nowhere, like a pastry ninja throwing star, appeared an ice-cream cake for Esther!

A pack of ravenous photo-bombing wolves descend upon the ice-cream cake.

I have only one more thing to add…

KA-POW!

A few more pics are available for viewing here.

July 29, 2011 - Random dog pics!

2011-08-02T08:54:00.000-05:00

This is our little dog. Sometimes she’s our simple dog. The other day while mowing the yard she was our GRASS IS SO COOL dog. Mowing the yard is like The Best Thing Ever… for her. It provides her with grasshoppers to hunt (and presumably eat), wet grass to lie in, and provides her with an ecotone between the high grass and the mowed grass- which really just facilitates the grasshopper hunting and wet grass wallowing. Brothers and sisters, it’s all about the wet grass.

I found this the other day and I think it very accurately illustrates the diet choices of our three canines.

Andertoons Other Cartoons

July 7th, 2011 - Nashville: All the Other Stuff

2011-07-08T18:47:00.001-05:00

One other stop we made while in Nashville was at the most awesomest of toy stores, Phillips Toy Mart, off Harding Road. This place is every but as incredible as I remember and then some.

Here's Esther in a rare moment of PINK-SPLOSION!

Chan skipping through the Playmobil isle (yes, they had the same set we saw at the museum earlier in the day.)

Speaking of Playmobil, here's the super cool display above the front door.

Ben checking out the bendy guys while Jake scrounges up a new set of dice from the random dice bowl.

Then there are the pictures from random moments or when we were in transit.

Pill bugs off the Natchez Trace.

The Everybody else but me in the car before we got to Nashville.

These and a few others can be viewed by clicking here.

July 7th, 2011 - Nashville: Fannie Mae Dees Park

2011-07-08T17:47:00.000-05:00

But first, a bee! There used to be a geocache right under where this bee is.

Fannie Mae Dees Park, also known as the "Dragon Park" is located in the West End section of Nashville, not far from Vanderbilt University. It's prominent feature is the enormous sea-serpent-like dragon covered in chipped and cut tile in a multitude of designs and images. Depending on how you count your dragons, there's actually more than one- the large wyrm that stretches the length of the "pool" and one or two other smaller beasts.

This was a favorite of ours when we lived here. Honestly, the dragon has looked better. The blue that predominates the scales has faded somewhat and there's a large section missing on the right side of the main dragon's head. It's a little sad. I don't know if it's the result of neglect or outright abuse but I hate to see the big guy in such sad shape. Still, most of the features are present and even a new-comer would be able to appreciate the work that wnet into creating and then maintaining the mythical creature.

I'll link to the gallery of all the images, but here are a few of the details on the dragon:

On especially hot days, there's nothing better than a spray from the cooling nose mist of the yellow dragon!

The park also contains an impressive playground area that is getting a little small for my kids. Maybe. Some day.

And finally, the happy couple.

The link for all the other pictures of the dragon is right over... here.

July 7th, 2011 - More of Nashville

2011-07-08T15:36:00.000-05:00

Historic Union Station as we drove into Nashville.

I'm blogging out of order, but we actually started our day with a quick run through the Nashville Library. (Parked in their garage, $2.50 for about four hours, after validation inside. Just one of the perks of having lived here and knowing a trick or two.) The Nashville Public Library system is what all library networks in the South should aspire to. I love this building, the efficiency and effectiveness of the workers, the shear amount of books and resource material available.

Just outside the entrance to the children's theater: big giant head.

Home of Buttercup, the mouse in the children's section.

View from the window, again just outside the theater.

Pictures just outside the Tennessee State Museum and the War Memorial Auditorium.

View looking down Deaderick Street, with the statue behind me.

War Memorial to the left, Tennessee State Capitol Building to the right.

Turning a near 180 degrees, looking down Capitol Boulevard towards the Nashville Library.

Snapping turtle detail on the doors to the library.

The kids standing at the marble stack of books outside the library.

Top of the Customs House and, across the street the Hume-Fog High School.

Now, take a look above the glass of the entrance to Hume-Fog High School. See the supports under the ledge of the second-story row of windows? This is just one of the little dudes that hangs out under there:

Next we drove over to the Parthenon. We did not pay the $24 for the whole family to get into the interior of the Parthenon to see Athena (this trip; we have seen her in the past) but we did walk around the park a little and take pictures outside the building.

Chan taking a snooze in the multi-directional park bench.

Lion detail on the doors to the Parthenon.

Griffin on the upper corners of the building with lion spout below.

The kids walking along the outside between the columns and the outer wall. (Is that a satyr running off in the background? I think so.)

All the pictures from downtown Nashville, the Library, and the Parthenon can be viewed here.

July 7th, 2011 - Nashville Tennessee

2011-07-08T14:29:00.000-05:00

Nashville again? Yes. You can't do all or even most of Nashville in a day and it would take months to get the full range of flavor the city has to offer. More importantly, Nashville has so many things to do for FREE. North Alabama could learn a ton from the learning and arts opportunities that are readily available in the greater Nashville area for under $10 a person or less.

The main destination of our trip was to the Tennessee State Museum and specifically the Egyptian Relics, Replicas, and Revivals in the changing gallery. Admission to both the Museum and the Egyptian exhibit are free, but the Egyptians wonders are only in town until September 4th.

The museum features many artifacts and items from the early history of Tennessee including its fair share of "jars and bowls" to an armory of Cival War era swords and firearms. I tend to take pictures of what catches my eye as opposed to what has the most historical value, so with that in mind... I thought these were kind of cool.

Here we see a depiction of the Great Bass Drum Massacre of 1815. You see these people? Yeah, they're running away from the bass drummer. As well you should, people of 1815... as well you should.

This a small plaque on a bench made by David Crockett (king of the wild frontier). Crockett's hands touched this wood. There was a sign nearby that asked people to "please" not touch the bench. What kind of a cruel thing is that to do? Why place something of cultural and historical importance within arm's length and then ask people not to touch it? The bench practically begged to be touched.

See this? This is an actual mummy. This isn't from the traveling Egyptian exhibit and this isn't a replica. This is an honest-to-goodness dead person. I got to see this FOR FREE. Thank you, state of Tennessee and city of Nashville for reminding me how much you rock. This is said to be a 3,600-year-old Egyptian mummy brought to Tennessee in 1860.

There were several hand-crafted quilts and other pieces of art on display.

This is called "Atlas" by Jess Jones of Smithville, Tennessee and is described as "Digitally printed, artist-made paper and vintage map, with signatures, in abaca paper and found papers, with waxed linen."I rather like it. It appeals to my love of maps and old diagrams.

The following are replicas from the visiting Egyptian exhibit. (I did take a picture of some of the actual relics using my zoom, but decided not to post those because I thought that seeing them in person was the better experience. So go see them. Did I mention it's free?)

This guy was at the entrance to the "Revival" section of the Egypt exhibit. I want this in my bedroom. Esther may object. I really should have checked to see if they had miniatures in the gift shop...

I think it looks like a giant Stikfas minotaur. Who wouldn't want that?

PLAYMOBIL!

This next painting freaks me out. Warning: scary baby alert! It's wearing eye-liner and has what appears to be a shaved head, four o'clock shadow and a double chin. I think this is the Antebellum version of those Facebook apps that combine your picture with that of your romantic partner to show what your hypothetical children would look like. I have no idea what that is in its hand- it's semi-transparent hand. I'm also assuming that this is a female child in a dress and not a male child in some dress-like gown.

More up from our day in Nashville in a bit but for the time being you can check out all the pictures from the (FREE!) museum here, including two of our children in the stocks.

July 5th, 2011 - Paint

2011-07-05T20:28:00.002-05:00

Esther and I headed into Cullman with That Girl One to get some paint to start/finish a couple of projects around the house. We were briefly distracted by a trip to Hobby Lobby.

This picture says everything I believe about US politics.

Esther found something that she felt a particular attachment to as well.

From there we moved on to Lowe's and the Aisle of Endless Colors that I love so much. I could be all angsty and negative and say that the paint aisle for me is a perfect illustration of the culture of excess we live in, but I won't. Choice is good. Esther chose "Blue Phlox" for the new house paint.

Here we see Esther pondering the subtle differences between BLUE#26445 and BLUE#26446.

We stopped at a couple of furniture stores to see what the current thinking is in bat-shit crazy prices for sofa and loveseat combinations. Let's see... new sofa and loveseat or a bionic arm that shoots a grappling hook? New sofa and loveseat or enough gasoline to power the Death Star? Tough choices.

The second floor of a furniture store in downtown Cullman that I remember from my youth. Haven't been here in about 20+ years. Not much has changed.

A short while later we had all the trained monkeys busily toiling away with Blue Phlox covered brushes.

I'd like to add that Phlox is one of the few flowers that I can, most days, identify on sight.

A few other random pictures from the day can be viewed here.

July 4th, 2011 - Continued

2011-07-05T19:47:00.000-05:00

I think Esther has this whole corn on the grill thing down to a science. I can't think of a better way to cook corn on the cob. There's no need for additional buttering, you just peel open the foil and munch away. I messed around with some curry and Rooster Sauce, but you can't get much better than butter (or butter-like substance of your choice) and a few simple seasonings.

The guinea pigs are thankful for the roughage to nosh on.

We also blew a few things up in the name of independence- less this year than the last because our big scary wolf-dog has developed a real freak-out response to the louder rockets. Esther wrapped his mid-section in an ace bandage (not as crazy as it seems) and we put all three of the beasts inside the house while we did our level best to set the pasture on fire... for FREEDOM!

All the pictures from the 4th can be viewed here.

July 4th, 2011 - Speaking of Travel Bugs...

2011-07-04T14:11:00.000-05:00

We like our Travel Bugs and Geocoins to travel the world and collect pictures and visit the places that we've never been to as our proxy selves. Sometimes, however, things happen and a Travel Bug goes missing in action. Maybe they get left inside a backpack that is lost in the bottom of a ravine. Perhaps they are thrown out the window by a mischievous little brother. There are even some folks that have taken it upon themselves to find trackables and keep them with the intent of never returning them.

Sometimes life just throws you a curve ball (Ha! Sports reference!) and the Travel Bug you picked up last week in a cache is somewhere in the rubble of your wrecked car or lost along with all your belongings in a house fire.

The point is, Travel Bugs are subject to Murphy's Law times ten. How many other things in your life do you purchase just to leave in a plastic box in the woods in the hopes that another like-minded soul will find it, pick it up and move it to another box in the woods within a reasonable amount of time, over and over again? The very raison d'etre of a trackable is to become lost and never seen again.

But reincarnation is an option...

When you purchase a Travel Bug “dog tag” you get two physical metal tags. The second tad has the word “COPY” written on it but is otherwise identical to it's twin brother. This tag is like the green 1-up mushroom in Super Mario. If your Bug finds itself sucked into a black hole you can bring it back to life with the COPY tag.

Here are three Bugs that I've recently given a second chance at life:

Original release: “Castle Mischief Racing Spoon 'Prince'”

We had this great idea to release five measuring spoons as Travel Bugs- one for each of us- and see which ones would rack up the most miles and travel the farthest. Two of these were stolen out of the first cache they were placed in and never seen again. This taught me something: I don't like the idea of representations of my kids, even plastic spoons, being stolen and collected by some jerk. It kind of bothered me. The saying is “never release something as a Travel Bug that you can't bear to lose forever”. Well, I didn't like the idea of losing little avatars of my wife and kids.

Re-release: “Jeep Shmeep – Blue Toyota 4-Runner”

Several years ago there was a promotional release of special trackables in coordination with Jeep. These ran for a few years with a different color of Jeep each year. The promotion is long gone but I can't help but notice the popularity of Jeep vehicles among other cachers. Well, I've never owned a Jeep but I did have a red 4-Runner. This re-released Travel Bug is a blue Matchbox version of that same Toyota.

Original release: "The Keys to Castle Mischief"

Every castle needs a big rusty ring of keys to unlock all the doors, right? That was the idea here. At some point in its history the dog tag and the ring of keys were separated and that pretty much means the death of a Travel Bug.

Re-release: "Bell-Head the Panda Ninja"

If our fictional ring of keys for our fictional castle were to come up missing they needed a fictional bandit to abscond with them. This was a Taco Bell kid's meal toy that is kind of a knock-off of several other lines of PVC figures available on the market. I thought it was cute and I've been hanging on to it for a while, knowing that I would be attaching a dog tag and sending it out into the world.

Original release: "Roll the Bones - A Rush Tribute"

I'm a reasonably large Rush fan (i.e. I don't own a Rush shower curtain but I do have several CDs and concert ticket stubs). This was a set of three dice (one for each of the members of Rush) and an actual dog tag in the shape of a bone with the lyrics from the song by the same name had a goal of traveling to a town in Canada that is seen by many as the birthplace of Rush. It never crossed the US/Canadian border.

Re-release: "Darth Vader's Tricked-Out Ride"

This started out as a Happy Meal toy of a Star Wars TIE fighter. Not the "classic" TIE fighter but the one like a certain Lord of the Sith tries to shoot Luke out of the sky with in Episode 3. It's like the standard TIE with a ground effects package and a bitchin' rad spoiler and "Type R" sticker on it. You know that when Vader saw it for the first time he was like all "oh, that one is mine. Don't make me force choke you for it."

Feel free to click the links to the trackable pages and add these to your watchlist if you're a cacher or simply check back in with them if you're not.

Happy caching, and have a safe and happy 4th of July!

June 15, 2011 - Geocoin Review: "Cache at Night"

2011-06-16T21:33:00.000-05:00

Howdy-do!

I'd like to tell you a little about a new Geocoin that I recently acquired. What's a Geocoin, you say? Well if you've clicked the links that I provided in the word "Geocoin" or if you are a geocacher you already know. For those of you non-clicking non-caching people that are still reading, here's the short version of it:

There are these things collectively called "Trackables" that some people put inside geocaches for other people to find and move to a new cache. When you find a Trackable item you log the find using a unique tracking code that is written on the Trackable itself. A record of your activity is stored in your profile on geocaching.com. You can embellish your log with additional details or your experience during the hunt and pictures, just like you can with the online log for the geocache itself.

Now, Trackables are divided into two main categories: Travel Bugs and Geocoins. Travel Bugs resemble a military dog-tag and generally look the same. Sometimes folks will attach things to the chain that runs through the Travel Bug dog-tag and sometimes they will attach the dog-tag itself to an item and release that, but the shape and size of the thing is usually the same as is the icon that is pictured on your profile- a bug-shaped barcode looking design that is also present on the tag itself.

Geocoins are everything Travel Bugs are but come in a near-infinite range of sizes, shapes and icons. Most are designed by other geocachers. There have been fully functional sextants, multi-piece puzzles and stained-glass pieces of art.

The coin that I'd like to show you today is more of a more traditional design in that it is very "coin-looking" but also has some other rather cool features.

This is the front side of the "Cache at Night" Geocoin available from cacheatnight.com. As you can tell by the name of the coin and the website, the focus here is on Geocaching in the dark of night. The artwork on the "heads" side features a very Scooby-Doo-esque spooky tree complete with owl silhouette and a cresent moon hovering in the night sky above. At the base of the tree is the classic ammo can container, a favorite choice of geocachers world-wide. On the trunk of the tree is a white dot that represents a "fire tack" that is often used to guide cachers who seek special night-only geocaches with their reflective surface. The words "Grab A Light and Cache at Night" flank the two sides of the tree.

On the "tails" side of the coin is a flashlight surrounded by some cartoony eyes, again like you'd see on Scooby-Doo or around Halloween. The spot-light from the flashlight is focused on the coin's unique tracking number (which I have edited out in this picture.) At top is the required "Trackable at Geocaching.com" that you can expect to see on every Geocoin.

Now here's the cool part. The two images below were taken after shining the light on my cellphone on them for a few seconds. I used about a 3 second shutter and the aperture open to 3.4 but I have not cranked the color up in Photoshop or anything like that. I'd say these represent well what they really look like in the dark. The shine off the "tails" side is particularly bright due to the amount of phosphorescent material.

Of all the details on the coin, the eyes on the back look really great when they glow.

The coin has a really nice heft to it. It's about the size and weight of two silver dollars stacked on top of each other, maybe slightly heavier. You can see the webpage for my coin and the icon for it by going here.

June 13, 2011 - Dungeons and Dragons Nerds

2011-06-15T21:07:00.003-05:00

Here we have a room full of nerds playing Dungeons and Dragons. Specifically, 2nd Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.

See that Player's Handbook there on the table? Lots of memories were made with that book. Can you spot the Dungeon Master in the group? That would be my boy, standing up in front of his friends, using his imagination and his brain. Those kids- those are the socially inept home-schooled kids I keep hearing about that are stuck at home all day and never get out and never have any friends.

Notice the obvious age differences in these kids. Remind you of anything? Possibly the age differences of your workplace or adult social group...? Check out how the girls are playing with the boys (and one girl left early).

These are Dungeons and Dragons nerds and I couldn't be more proud to know each and every one of them and call two of them my sons and one of them my daughter.

June 11, 2011 - Shoal Creek Canoe Run (or, A Tugboat am I)

2011-06-12T20:24:00.001-05:00

Esther is pretty good at coming up with last minute plans. She's really good at making plans months ahead too, but that's just not how things worked out this weekend. So this Saturday the thing that she set us out to do was canoe down the Shoal Creek in Tennessee. We've been canoeing before. Most recently, Esther and I paddled around at the Chattanooga Nature Center during a visit last October. As a family, we've paddled 9 miles on Bear Creek in Alabama. This was to be a 10 mile trip for the five of us- two in a canoe and the other three in tubes. All indications were that the current would be rapid enough to keep us all moving downstream at a nice pace.

The day started out as most of the rafting/canoeing trips I've been on start- packed into a 1970-somthing era Ford or Chevy van with total strangers. I don't know where these vans come from. Most vehicles this old have simply ceased to function and it's not as if they are collector's items. They come from a time before the "mini" van and the air-bag. The air-conditioners never work, the side doors have to be slammed shut and most of the head-liner reverted to its constituent elements during the first George Bush's term in office. They are beasts of burden with FOUR bench seats in the back and if you're lucky the windows will open so that a little air not smelling of good 'ol boy can get into the cabin.

We were dropped off about 10 miles upstream of Iron City, Tennessee. Oh, I almost forgot! Zephyr, our loyal Mop-Headed Jack-Weasel, came along for the ride.

I had no idea what to expect as far as how Zephyr would deal with the whole "being on a boat" thing. Our two big dogs love riding on a pontoon, but Zephyr has pretty successfully distinguished herself from the other two dogs. I don't think they really acknowledge that she's an actual dog. I think, in their minds, that she's more like a cat that has suffered a head injury. I'm happy to report that Zeph did really well on the open seas.

We made a handful of stops along the ride in the first four or five miles. Early on we stopped so the kids could do a little cliff diving. Or something similar to cliff diving.

Here the kids practice their best "Gar Defense Posture". The trick is to keep everything you value out of the water and hope that the gar doesn't jump up and bite you on the butt.

Check out the grass up in the tree above the kids here. This is an indication of the height of the last really good flood to come through here.

Notice the rope? I'd say that about 9 of the 10 miles we tugged the kids down the creek. According to my GPS, we were going about 1.5 mph in most places and about 3 mph in the rapids. The word "rapids" is used loosely in this case. These rapids would not cause you to, for example, spill your drink if it was balanced on your head.

Esther, one half of the tugboat engine crew, took a break and enjoyed a little float time while Jake endured my incessant orders to "paddle left!" and "paddle!" as well as "keep paddling!" and the ever popular "don't stop paddling!" These orders were usually followed by the qualifier "or I'm going to send you to public school!"

Here is little Zephyr hiding in the shade of Esther's seat. (tee-hee)

Even I had the opportunity to float behind the canoe. Chan pushed her skinny arms to the point of near-exercise in an effort to pull my carcass down the creek. Here we see her on the verge of collapse while mom continues to strain against the inertia of my massive bulk.

...also I was standing in my tube and dragging my feet across the bottom of the creek. I was pretending to "ski" across the rocks. But don't tell them that.

Here's a picture of a flower that even Esther did not know the name of. They were growing in stands in the shallows of the creek. I learned that copperhead snakes apparently really like these flowers because on my way over to take this picture I flushed a large one out. It scared me and I said a bad word. The same bad word I always say when I see a snake.

Here's Chan looking like she's just about heard enough of whatever is coming out of Jake's mouth. I have no idea what was going on back there.

This is Esther trying to flirt with the captain of the tugboat. As if.

After a long day on the creek we wrapped things up at happiest place on the planet.

Esther even let me get a small coffee.

More pictures of our day can be seen here.

May 29, 2011 - Cooking With Fire

2011-05-30T14:10:00.000-05:00

We hardly ever grill. We just don't eat that much meat anyway and most of that isn't the of the "throw is on the grill" variety. No steaks, no pork chops, no chicken slathered in juicy herbs and honey-based goo. We're more of the ground-turkey-for-taco-salad and deli-sliced chicken and turkey folks. Sure, I'll eat red meat or chicken off the bone if it's offered, but around the house, not so much. But hey, it's Memorial Day weekend and well, everybody else is doing it. So we warmed up some chicken franks and turkey sausage on the tiny grill and, for karmic balance, some Boca burgers too.

There was a piece on NPR just this past week about grilling burgers and they talked about cooking an egg inside a green bell pepper. I knew I had to try this when I heard about it. Quite good. The thing is to not be concerned with the blackening of the bottom of the pepper- it's only the outer-most part of the skin that gets burned. The egg was cooked all the way through and the smokey flavor of the grill works it's way into the mix.

Here's the egg-pepper and some onions that we were pre-cooking for the pizza.

The pizza was Esther's idea. The first one was a little burnt-ish on the bottom but the second one was much less so. Instead of pepperoni she used slicked turkey sausage which really worked well with the smoke and the grillyness of the whole thing.

Couple more pictures can be found here, including Esther in her pointy hat and Kuma playing dead.

May 28, 2011 - Adventure Science Center

2011-05-30T13:16:00.001-05:00

The day started off early (as I suppose most days do) and we were out of house at 6:30 and on our way to Nashville. Nothing too terribly eventful occurred on the way up, but we did get to see the hot-air balloons floating northward from Decatur as part of the Alabama Jubilee Hot-Air Classic.

For geocachers that have wondered, this is part of the inspiration for the Alabama State Souvenir that you are awarded for finding a geocache anywhere in Alabama.

After a couple of hours of interstate driving we arrived at the Adventure Science Center and congregated near the entrance with the crowd of other geocachers. There was a quick introductory speech from both a representative of the Center and Jeremy Irish, the founder and Chief Executive hamster wrangler at Groundspeak, the folks that keep geocaching.com up and running.

Also present were about a bagillion cicadas. For those of you that think the cicadas are thick in the Huntsville area, you need only visit Nashville to gain some perspective. About every fourth cacher waiting in line at the entrance had a cicada along for the ride. Here's one that was hanging out on Chan's finger.

Once inside we wandered over to the GPS Adventures Maze Exhibit. The maze is set up to teach you about the hobby of geocaching as well as the science behind the satellites that allow us to use our hand-held and car GPS units. At the entrance to the maze you are given a card with the four different themes of the maze on its corners. There are four corresponding rooms hidden in the maze that each contain a puzzle for you to solve in order to gain access to a stamping device that will allow you to stamp a number on the matching corner of the card. Confused? It was much better explained at the exhibit. Once you have solved the puzzles and collected your stamp you can find actual GPS coordinates that match your card based on the color of the card, a compass "code" (ours was SW) and the arrangement of the four numbers on your card. From these coordinates you find a city on a map. You can then check your work and see if you identified the correct city. For the record, ours was Karachi.

The maze itself was very well put together and has weathered being moved across the country very well. With the exception of one of the puzzles we were able to make sense of them and figure them out. Luckily for us there is an optional "spoiler" panel on the locked doors to the stamp room that will give you the code you need to progress.

Here's Jake outside one of the locked stamp rooms. Throughout the maze there were facts and examples of GPS units, tidbits about the history of geocaching, and interactive displays about things like backpack selection.

One of the rooms had a display of several Trackables, including Travel Bugs and Geocoins. (All the ones in the display were unactivated and not trackable... I checked.)

After running the maze we took some time to re-visit the rest of the Center. When we lived in the Nashville area we had a membership and would come here all the time, but it's been about seven years since I've been and at least a year for most of the kids. Some of the installations were familiar but most of the updates were new to me. Among them, "Body Battle" that the kids wanted to head to first. It's a "point your laser gun at various targets" sort of thing. The participants are split into two teams- one fighting for the immune system and the other on the side of the pathogens.

We played around on a few things here and there. Most of it targeted towards kids much younger than mine, but we still had fun. They have a "moon walk" low-gravity simulation rig that the kids were pretty excited about. Chan and Ben were up first...

...followed by Jake and me. Chan took some picture of us on the rig itself, but here is Jake being suited up by the cute attendant girl.

I'm actually a little glad that I don't have any pictures of me in the rig. It was snug in places that I generally don't like to be snug in. There was a small flock of snickering mommies that had been amused by one of the dads that went up in the air before me, so I made a conscious effort to turn away from them when I was jerked up by the crotch loops. Yeeouch.

One thing that we all wanted to do was climb to the top of the Pinnacle- the very top of the central structure in the Center. Here are the kids at the very tippy-top, towering above everybody in the building.

You can see the Batman building from here!

The view looking back down the tower.

Before leaving we had to do one more thing. MINDBALL. Father vs. son in a battle of BRAIN POWER. You strap on the headbands that are equipped with contact points and supposedly you can make a little ball move across the table by increasing your brain waves. After a couple of matches with Jake (that I refuse to acknowledge as valid) we spent about ten minutes trying to out Professor X each other. It doesn't look like much in this picture, but I assure you, there's a battle going on here. A battle of MINDS.

Chan and Ben duked it out as well. Here we see Chan nearing an unconscious zen-state. Or possibly just falling asleep.

We left the Science Center and walked through Fort Negley next door. For some reason we had never visited the fort while we lived here. Also there were two geocaches hidden on the grounds.

If the cicadas were turned up to "10" at the Science Center, they were on "11" at the fort. We found the two caches and left while our senses were still intact.

Next stop, KO's Pizza. This is a pizza place/greek deli that we used to eat at two or three times a week when we lived in Lebanon. Omar's pizza and gyros are two of the five things we miss most about living in this area. Seven years since we last met and Omar recognized when I came through the door. The four of us split a large pepperoni pizza and I grabbed a falafel to go for "Boss Lady".

One last sight from our Tennessee years as we drove down the 840 towards home. The Castell Gwynn in Triune.

A ton more pictures (Wildflowers! Names not known!) of our day can be found here. Have a look.

People Blog About Me- I'm Cool Like That

2011-05-27T16:05:00.001-05:00

My wonderful, smart, sexy and downright sassy wife posted in her blog about the great chainsawing event of last weekend. I was sore for days. The day started off all "MWA HAHA I will cut you to pieces tree limb! Mine is an evil laugh!!!" and ended up all "I think I broke something important in my body place."

Also, my co-worker, the also-but-not-as-much-as-my-wife smart and sassy, Nat made a brief mention of me in her blog post during an exciting tour of her cubicle. I was on the edge of my chair. Then I fell off. It hurt. It's okay, I'm better now.

There should be some blogification happening this week after I return from a trip to the Adventure Science Center in Nashville. Why would I be going there? To visit the GPS Adventures exhibit of course! Not only is it a cool indoor maze (fun for the whole family!) but it is a Geocaching Event sponsored by Groundspeak, the people that make Geocaching.com possible (with a little help from the gabillion people world-wide that hide and seek geocaches, of course.)

I'm taking all three kids with me... brief pause... without the supervision of my uber-hot, brilliant, loving wife of fourteen years! Yes, I know, a married man let loose in the wild with no wife to guide him and keep him from tripping over random objects on the ground or spending our life savings on Transformer toys, video games and new shoes, it's a bit much to take in. Will I remember to feed them and change their diapers? How will I tell if they require fresh bedding and kibble? Just how many holes should I punch into their crates to insure they receive enough oxygen? How will I know their leashes and collars are properly fitted so that I can maintain both control and comfort?

Worry, not dear readers. I'm quite certain that there is an app for that. Technology saves the day!

No pictures today. Check back later!

May 16, 2011 – Left to my Own Devices

2011-05-20T19:32:00.001-05:00

I left the campgrounds and the rest of my family behind on Sunday night. I spent the next five days coming home to an empty house. The good news: my elf ranger is approaching level eight. The bad news: I've been sleeping all alone in The Big Bed and the house makes strange noises at night.

On Monday I took the long way home to grab a geocache and discovered, accidentally, a trail that was unknown to me. Everybody that I know from high school will remember Yellow Bluff (some of you for entirely different reasons that involve french fries...) that overlooked the school from the northeast. The “Southeastern Climbers Coalition” has purchased the land under the bluff and maintains a trail that runs along its base.

These are all the pictures that I took, but feel free to click and view them again here.

Burchfield Branch Park – Sunday

2011-05-20T19:02:00.000-05:00

After a night of warm-snuggles interrupted by coughing fits and clogged nose holes, we awoke reluctantly to do... nothing in particular. Planned activities included: something, random picture taking, something else, something maybe with flowers, probably sleeping in and eating while fighting the urge to nap.

Ben found the ski mask (something he had requested to protect him from air-soft pellets) and quickly put it to use. He reported back that it was perfect for keeping his face warm while scootering around.

At some point Jake and That Other Amos Kid engaged each other in a duel to the death with found implements of destruction (sticks). Jake is unmatched in his encyclopedic knowledge of video game fighting moves that don't actually work in the real world.

There was the “Trip” maneuver from Dungeons & Dragons Online as well as several double-saber twirls from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. That Other Kid never had a chance.

Oh yeah, I mentioned the architecture of the camping area last update. At least I think I did. Anyway, I love the lighting on the bridges. If I was to be asked to build a death-match level RIGHT NOW I'd be using these lights on this stone, right here:

I realize that some of you have no idea what I'm talking about. Those that do, I want you to know that I love you deeply.

Here are some more shots of the layout and the bridges and whatnot. I really like the way they tend to sandwich the paved roads and trails on either side of the camper pads. In most cases you can take the trail and avoid the traffic on your way to the bath-house. Esther finds the bench on the one trail below funny. It's roughly a 60' trail, but there the bench just in case your old tired butt needs a rest.

Esther and I did take a nice walk while the kids did whatever it was they were doing (more on that later) and snapped off several pictures of the wildflowers that grow on the other side of the road from the swim beach. Do I know any of the names of these flowers? Hell no.

Okay, I lied. This is milkweed. Why is that cool? Because these are monarch caterpillars feasting the milkweed. There was only a single milkweed plant in the whole half-acre patch of wildflowers and it was feeding these two fat dudes. Esther noticed them because she is cool and made of awesome. Obligatory “OMNOMNOM” here. (That little sweat-bee on the flowers has nothing to do with the caterpillars. He's just riding the coat-tails of their coolness.)

On our way back to discovering what the kids were up to (almost there) we saw another first- broadleaf magnolia flowers. Why is that cool? Because BLMs were around when dinosaurs roamed the earth. They are ancient plants. Thunder-lizards sniffed these flowers, can you dig it? Sadly the blooms were too high up to sniff ourselves. Dinosaurs have all the fun.

Thanks for reading this post... what? What where the kids doing? Playing Texas Hold 'Em.

Playing like crooked, lying, thieving, cheating, card sharks trying to win back their souls from the devil.

All the other pictures (MORE FLOWERS!) can be found here.