The other night Ingrid and I were talking about really obvious things that are amazing. I forget what things specifically that we were talking about, but this morning (as I flip through my Flickr uploads) I am reminded of another yet another obvious, amazing thing.

Spiders

If for a moment you can put your fears aside, please make an effort to appreciate what spiders do.

Spiders secrete silk from an organ on the underside of their abdomen called a spinneret. The large majority of spiders have 6 spinnerets that “move independently and in concert to build webs.” Most use those webs to catch their prey (with sticky and non-sticky threads that they maneuver with ease, sensing vibrations), but some spiders “fish” with a sticky “capture blob” of silk on the end of a line, and some even create trapdoors. Typically spiders “prey on insects and on other spiders, although a few large species also take birds and lizards.”

Upon capture, spiders inject their prey with venom, then “they liquidize their food by flooding it with digestive enzymes” because their “guts are too narrow to take solids.”

Here is a fantastic specimen that I noticed in the shed.

The complexity and scope of the web is had to capture in one picture. The dome that you see there is supported by dozens of smaller lines attached to the wall, some going almost 2 feet up.

Notice where the ends of the legs tug on the web. :)

Info source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider

Once again, Jim Kunstler hits the nail right on the head.

President Obama had better turn his efforts from pretending to re-start the revolving credit rackets to overseeing the comprehensive re-simplifying of American life. I think he has a few weeks to turn his rhetoric around before the political mischief begins for real, and the aggrieved classes start shooting things up and burning things down. These classes really do need something to hope for, and something to work at, and something to occupy their attention besides their grief over the massive losses in their lives. But none of that energy will be focused beneficially unless they hear the truth… that there really is no going back to what was before.

From The Free and the Dead on kunstler.com.

The babies are dead, we are in mourning.

It wasn’t too long after I arrived at the Attleson Farm (almost 3 weeks ago) that Sylvia spotted the hummingbird nest just outside the kitchen window. She had noticed an adult bird flying to the same place on the same branch the past few days, and then she put 2 and 2 together. We got out the ladder that evening and had our first look up close.

And I filmed a little video, too.

They are so precious.

Since then we’ve been monitoring them on a daily basis. Mostly we just watched from the kitchen with the binoculars, but every few days we busted out the ladder (usually when someone visited who hadn’t seen them yet) and had another close inspection. A lot of people that were seeing my hummingbird pictures on Flickr couldn’t really comprehend how small they were, so the next time we set up the ladder I brought a quarter with me.

Slowly but surely they started getting feathers and their beaks were getting longer. We started seeing 2 little beaks sticking up from the nest when we watched them through the binoculars.

They were actually starting to look like birds, but it was still hard to imagine them ever being able to fly. And only a few days later, we could even see their heads sticking out from the nest.

It really was amazing that they could fit in such a tiny space: siblings, about ready to leave their nest behind and fly around the world drinking nectar from flowers. We knew that we didn’t have much time left with them, we knew that soon they’d be gone, but we weren’t prepared for it to end like this.

:(

I’ve been using MediaFire as my general “online file storage” location for a little over a year now, and I really like the cut of their gib. It’s well organized, you have lots of control, and the free account covers most of what the average user could ask for.

The only real limit that I’ve encountered is the “maximum possible upload size per file” of only 100MB. It doesn’t happen that often, but it gets in the way every once in a while. Recently I came into some money, so I decided that I should just pay the $60 (for a year) and see if I could actually make the Pro Account worth it.

In the process of upgrading my account, I chose to pay using Paypal. After agreeing to their Terms & Conditions I was redirected over to Paypal, sent them some money, and then redirected back to a “success screen” at MediaFire. But when I went to upload a file larger than 100MB, everything was still as if I only had a free account. I hit back a bunch of times, trying to find the “success” screen and I found this in it’s place:

Paypal sent us back some invalid data! Please contact support@mediafire.com immedaitely [sic] regarding this issue or try to use a credit card. (-144)

I emailed support@mediafire.com asking what was up, but the email was sent back to me saying that there was a failure trying to send it. I was at an impasse. Do I try to contact them through some other means, or do I just submit my payment again but with a credit card? I really did not want to pay them twice.

Just as I was thinking that, I got an email from Paypal saying that I a “recurring payment has been created” with MediaFire. I checked my paypal account and, sure enough, I was charged $59.70 by MediaFire for a Pro Account, but I sure as hell don’t have Pro Account features enabled on my account.

So, I went over to support.mediafire.com and submitted a ticket explaining my situation. It’s been about 24 36 hours and I haven’t heard a single thing back from them. I know that that’s not that long (that), but in this day and age you’d think I would have at least got a “we’re looking into this” message or something. And it’s not like this is hard to fix, just go in and manually flip the “Pro Account” switch.

While I wait for MediaFire to get their shit together, I’m doing the last thing that a brand new paying customer should be doing: looking around to see what the competition has to offer.

In an effort to fully explore all the Vegan Strawberry Shortcake options for Nate & Ingrid’s wedding, we have to be open to all possibilities. So far we’ve tried your typical Wacky Cake, Vegan Shortcake, Vanilla Almond Wacky Cake, and last night we experimented a bit more.

Lemon Vanilla Wacky Cake

(for a 8″ square/circle pan, double this recipe for a 9 by 13)

Sift together into the pan in which you will be baking the cake:

• 1 3/4 cups flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Mix the dry ingredients together with a fork, making sure to get an even mixture. Then make 4 wells (some big, some small, and some just right) in the dry ingredients. Pour one of the following ingredients into each of the wells (respectively):

• 1 tablespoon vinegar
• 1/3 cup oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 teaspoon lemon zest

Then pour 1 tablespoon of lemon juice into 1 cup of cold water and pour that over the whole thing: mix well with a fork. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 35 minutes… until a toothpick comes out clean.

LEMONY!!!!!!

Gregg Attleson is a fan of BuzzFeed, which led him (and indirectly me) toward the Pringles Banner Ad I tweeted about, and then toward a story about a color optical illusion. Usually I’m not a big fan of color illusions, being colorblind and all. But this one was different:

How many colors do you see?

Don’t scroll down all the way. Take a second to study the image.

I studied the image very well before I answered. I made sure that I wasn’t being fooled. There are 4 colors. Wrong. Only three. Seriously. If you’re on a Mac right now, bust out your trusty DigitalColor Meter and prove it to yourself (or just check out the details on the original post). The illusion works even if you’re colorblind, which was really cool to me.

But the really amazing part came when I clicked through to the original site where that image came from: Akiyoshi’s illusion pages. Click that link and take a minute to poke around. Don’t worry, I’ll be right here when you get back.

* * *

It was fun, wasn’t it?

Now, I know these are just silly color illusions, but that website (although not the best looking in the world) has to have thousands of illusions. It’s unreal. It feels like I could never look at all of them even I looked at 20 a day for the rest of my life. Crazy.

My family has been making Wacky Cake for a quite a few years, but for some reason we always make it chocolate. In an effort to try out all possible options for a Vegan Wedding Dessert, I took a cue from Sylvia and went with the Vanilla Almond. It just came out of the oven and it smells delicious!

Vanilla Almond Wacky Cake

(for a 8″ square/circle pan, double this recipe for a 9 by 13)

Sift together into the pan in which you will be baking the cake:

• 1 3/4 cups flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Mix the dry ingredients together with a fork, making sure to get an even mixture. Then make 4 wells (some big, some small, and some just right) in the dry ingredients. Pour one of the following ingredients into each of the wells (respectively):

• 1 tablespoon vinegar
• 1/3 cup oil
• 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 1/2 teaspoon almond extract

Then pour 1 cup of cold water over the whole thing and mix well with a fork. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes… until a toothpick comes out clean.

YUMMY!!!!!!

I got an email from mint.com this morning notifying me that my account would be deleted due to “inactivity” unless I logged-in again soon. I can’t blame them. I mean, it’s been at least 6 months since I’ve used their service. I decided to buck up and login, just to see if they’ve added any new features or some shit.

I logged-in, and all my info was way out-dated, but then everything refreshed: BING! I scanned the page quickly and noticed something strange and out of place – my American Express card that I canceled almost 3 months ago had a balance of $80. Huh? But, “I canceled that card almost 3 months ago,” I thought. I went over to americanexpress.com and checked my balance there: sure enough, $80 in the hole.

WTF

I really did not want to call American Express and deal with their bullshit at 8am, but I also didn’t want this hanging over my head. The first guy I talked to went by the name of Chris, I think. He asked me what was up, and I explained the situation.

Back in April I decided that it was time to cancel my Costco American Express card. It had served me well in purchasing a Canon Rebel XTi from Costco, but with that paid off (among other things) it really wasn’t serving any purpose anymore. I called AMEX and they were all like, “Oh, but you have a $90 balance on that card right now.”

Apparently Costco had charged me (without giving me notice) for a yearly membership on 1 January 2009 and then, since I had no idea I had been charged for that and therefore had not paid it off, AMEX charged me late fees for a few months. I guess that makes sense.

I told AMEX what was up: that I didn’t want the Costco membership and that I did not know I had been charged for it and that I wanted to cancel the card. They canceled the card and told me to call Costco and ask them to refund the membership fee. Upon receiving the refund from Costco, AMEX said they would refund me the late fees and everything would be hunky dory.

I called Costco and they refunded the membership fee, no problemo.

That was on April 7th.

Fast forward 2 1/2 months, and I’ve still got $80 on this freaking card. Chris (my current “representative”) told me that there was no record of my phone call on April 7th. He said that he needed to ask me some questions to “make sure he understood what was going on.” I told him the entire story again and then he transfered me to Account Services.

Chris hands-off the baton to Jessica, who tells me that because of the recent “activity” on my account, American Express had to cancel the card on June 3rd. Say what? How can you cancel a card that has already been canceled? She then looks into some dark corner of my file and finds a note (that apparently Chris couldn’t find or didn’t have access to) with all the details of the call on April 7th, including the fact that AMEX said they were gonna cancel the card and remove all late fees.

She puts me on hold a few times, and then comes back to say that they’ve “been having this problem a lot lately.” What, the kind of problem where you cancel someone’s card because they asked you to but you don’t actually cancel it and then after late fees pile up you cancel it (again) for them? Yeah, that kind of problem.

Jessica hands-off the baton to Dorothy (back in Customer Service) who removed all the late fees and officially “cancels” the card for the 3rd and final time. Dorothy was a real sweet heart.

Apparently I’m going to get a statement in the mail regarding all of this. We’ll see.

Why does Twitter Search suck so much? Really. Why is it one of the worst search engines out there these days? I still have aspirations of releasing my own Twitter Archiving Solution (although I haven’t worked on it much the past couple months), but every time I use Twitter Search it motivates me even more toward that pursuit.

Today I saw a tweet from my good-old-buddy-old-pale @mcrashelle, asking if anyone had any suggestions on a cheap but effective digital camera to buy. I’ve been pretty happy with my PINK PowerShot SD1100 IS, and I knew that I tweeted about it at some point, so I thought that I could probably just reuse the bit.ly link therein.

I fired up Twitter’s Advanced Search and put in a few parameters: the KEYWORD I was looking for (pink – the color of my camera), and my USERNAME (elisfanclub). I hit enter, and guess what it found… Jack & Shit. Honestly, I knew for a fact that I’d tweeted that word at least a couple times in the past few months, but it wasn’t finding anything.

[side note: now that search finds the tweet that I posted after doing all this research.]

But then I thought that maybe I needed to put in some DATE parameters so that it will know to look back more than like 5 minutes. I went back to the search, and said that I wanted it to look as far back as March 1st (because I knew that I bought my camera during the first week of March when I was in Hawaii). I hit enter, and guess what it found… ERROR! [You did not collect all of my Breh-awns!]

This isn’t the first time that Twitter Search has sucked, this isn’t the first time that inputing a date into the Advanced Search breaks everything, this isn’t the first time that I’ve had to go back through my timeline, page by page, to find the tweet that I’m looking for.

Oh, and would you look at that, there it is…

My Coolpix 7600 [http://bit.ly/jO5n9] died last night (after like 4 years!) so I bought a PINK PowerShot SD1100 IS [http://bit.ly/UiCgV].

- 4:53 PM Mar 2nd from web

Seriously, Twitter. You need to get your shit together.

On the eve of an exciting adventure (building composting toilets for my brother’s wedding), I sit here at Mapps Coffee & Tea off Cedar Ave S in Minneapolis, messing around on the internet, waiting to take the train to Wisconsin tomorrow morning. The train will take me to La Crosse, WI, where Ingrid’s parents will pick me up. It is then that the adventure will truly begin.

I’ve never actually built composting toilets before, but I’ve spent enough time around tools and lumber and intentional communities to know that it’s not as hard as you’d think. You dig a whole, you built a few seats, and ba da boom ba da bing!

I plan on taking a lot of pictures and video (and writing everyday in my Green Brain), but I’m not so sure about the whole “internet” thing in Gays Mills, WI. I’m gonna try and post as often as I can; hopefully I can document this thing as it goes. I’ll simply update this post with the most current info and I’ll add a list of the dates below, so be sure to check the list down there to get the last and greatest. You can also check my twitter feed or simply take a peek at the sidebar widget over there.

• June 18th
• June 19th
• June 20th
• June 23rd
• June 28th
• June 29th
• June 30th
• July 7th

Today was the first full day of work, and it felt great. I got up around 7am, had breakfast with Gregg & Sylvia (I had Muslei and some homemade Kombucha), and then we went over some preliminary plans regarding the composting toilets: how big, how long, how deep, how far, etc.

After we’d taken that as far as it could go, Gregg and I went over to the Pfitsch’s to dismantle their chain-link dog kennel: it’s going to contain the solar showers! We brought all the pieces back over to the Attleson’s and put it back together, then strung up a tarp around 2 sides to give some privacy. All done!

Just as we were finishing up with that, the rain started and we went inside. I helped Sylvia prepare strawberries for the Wedding [Strawberry Shortcake] Cake and then it was salad time! I love salad time.

After lunch, the rain gave way to some beautiful afternoon sunshine. Gregg and I began sanding the front door of the house, the door to the milk house, and the east wall of the milk house, prepping them for painting. We busted out the red scarlet paint and got that shit rolling. In no time we had 2 orange doors and 1 orange wall.

Orange? Woops.

I think we determined that everything just needs a few more coats. I’ll let you know how that all turns out. Hopefully it won’t be a repeat of “the pink wall” at the Dukelsons. While the paint dried, Gregg and I strung up some twine for the runner beans, and then it was time for dinner: fried rice with garden broccoli and pickled beets.

After dinner we tested the Wacky Cake (with strawberries on top) outside on the picnic table. The fireflies and lightning were in full swing, it was beautiful. Just as we were finishing our cake, the rain started sprinkling. Then, from a ways away, we heard a strange noise approaching. It got louder and louder, and then we realized it was a massive wave of rain coming directly toward us, the tin roofs warning it’s approach. We jumped up and ran inside, the drops were huge and crashed into the roof over our heads, and then it stopped not more than 10 seconds later. Then it came again, and harder than ever.

As the rain petered off, I retired to the shed for bed. I lied awake for hours, watching one of the most impressive lightning storms I’d ever seen: sky-filling flashes that didn’t stop for hours. At one point I just had to go to sleep, but I didn’t want to.

June 19th

Today was a rainy day. Today was a lazy day.

Gregg and I spent most of the day drawing up plans of the toilets. First we started with pencil & paper and eventually ended up on the computer. We started with one idea, dropped that in favor of a different one, and then ended up going back to the original one by the end. I think we’ve got a really solid thing going. Now we just need to get the lumber.

Other than that we hung out and enjoyed the humidity and the cats. A few hours after lunch the sun came out for a bit so we finished up the painting on the doors and the wall. Everything seems to be rounding the corner from orange to red.

After a delicious whole wheat pasta dinner (with garden fresh asparagus), it was off the movies with Gregg & Sylvia. We saw the new Star Trek (at the Blaine Theater in Boscobel), which I really enjoyed, but I did have a few problems with it:

• The fight scenes were too close, confusing, and dizzying.
• There were about 1000 too many lens flares and other moments when a large portion of the screen was obscured by a very bright light. I mean, it’s a cool affect, but I think Abrams just went a little overboard with it.
• Spock’s mind meld with Kirk and the resulting narration that ensued was just plain-old bad story telling. I mean, what actually happened to Spock with the time traveling all that was really cool, but the way he just up and narrated for like 2 minutes felt very out of place and forced.
• And what was up with Pike’s wheelchair at the end? Isn’t this the future? Couldn’t they have just stuck him with one of those crazy needles and called it a day. At the very least the wheelchair shouldn’t have had any spokes or axles.

Other than that, it was great!

After 3 days of clouds and rain and humidity and storms (which I loved), when I woke up this morning I was so glad. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the breeze blowing through the shed was nice and cool. Ahhh!

I had some rhubarb on toast for breakfast, and then Gregg and I went to run a few errands. We dropped off some trash and recycling at “the dump,” and then went over to Red Maple Farms to see Kevin about getting some lumber for the toilets. He’d just recently built a beautiful straw bale house using wood from his land, and he had some extra Poplar lying around. We checked it out, poked it, looked at it, and said we’d get back him.

Back at the homestead, Sylvia could not seem to stop picking strawberries. It seems like every time I see her she’s got a bucket full of fresh-picked strawberries under her arm. So, as usual, I had a handful. I really can’t ever get sick of garden fresh strawberries. Mmm mmm.

I fixed up some guacamole & bean dip (with Red Hot Blues) for lunch, and then we rolled out to La Farge for the Chautauqua! What is a Chautauqua, you ask? Well, the Wikipedia article on Chautauqua says that it is:

an adult education movement in the United States, highly popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Chautauqua assemblies expanded and spread throughout rural America until the mid-1920s. The Chautauqua brought entertainment and culture for the whole community, with speakers, teachers, musicians, entertainers, preachers and specialists of the day. Former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was quoted as saying that Chautauqua is “the most American thing in America.”

In actually this wasn’t technically a Chautauqua, but it was a bunch of people on a stage singing, telling stories, playing banjos, playing the spoons, doing ventriloquism, and all kinds of other crazy shit. It was actually really cool, but I’d say it was a bit more for the kids than anyone else.

But the coolest part was that the event was held at the Kickapoo Valley Reserve, which was spawned from the failed La Farge Dam Project. It’s really crazy. You should click on that link back there and do a quick read, but if you don’t want to I’ll sum it up for you real quick like:

They wanted to build a dam and create a reservoir, so they forced a lot of people to leave. They started building the dam. Then realized it was bad for the environment so they stopped, but they’d already kicked all those people out of their homes. Twenty years went by and no one did anything with the land or the unfinished dam: mother nature reclaimed what was rightfully hers. Now all that land is a reserve.

We drove back to the house around 5pm and then went back over to Kevin’s to get the lumber. He helped us load it up in his truck. I rode back with him to the Attleson Farm and on the way we talked about his life and mine. We might hang out some time in the next couple weeks. Kevin’s pretty cool.

For dinner we had a delicious Robin & Eli specialty: brown rice (with Braggs and Sesame Oil), peanuts, and spinach. Mmm mmm. We followed it up with some Vegan Shortcake (with strawberries, of course) for dessert. It’s so hard to decide between that and the Wacky Cake… I guess we’ll just have to make both of them again.

June 23rd

After sleeping in a bit (8am) I spent my morning on the phone with American Express. All I wanted to do was hang up wet clothes on the line and finishing digging the hole, but I had to straighten some shit out.

Anyhoo, I got that all straightened away by about 10:30 and went back out to The Hole. I spent almost the entire day yesterday in that hole: digging and sweating and digging and sweating. The Humidity (with a capital H) has really set in around here, so it’s kinda hard to be outside and not be sweating. The good news, though, is that I did about 75% of the digging yesterday, so I only had to dig out one more layer before lunch. And, I did it. The Hole is done, all 80 cubic feet of it.

While sitting at the table eating lunch, Sylvia noticed a hummingbird that kept flying back and forth to the same point on this one branch of a tree just outside the window. Gregg busted out the binoculars and, sure enough, that hummingbird was sitting on a nest. The exciting thing was that the branch hung down relatively low, so we know that we’d be able to get a ladder and do a bit of spying.

They are like the cutest things in the whole world. Keep in mind that the opening to that nest is about the size of a quarter. Seriously. Cute as cute can be. And it looks so awesome, covered in moss or lichen or something with that soft fluffy interior. A freaking hummingbird built that thing with it’s mouth and it’s feet. When was the last time you built something completely out of materials found in nature using only your mouth and your feet?

Anyhoo, I spent the second half of the day in the Shed with Gregg. I got pretty zapped by the sun and humidity in the morning, so it was a nice to chill in the Shed because it’s significantly cooler in there. We’re doing a bit of re-wiring to put 2 power outlets on each end of the barn (as well as a flood light on the east end) for Wedding (and future) uses.

After dinner I helped Sylvia with some gardening. A storm was rolling through to the south and brought a bunch of cold air to the farm, so I was more than happy to hang out outside. I was responsible for snipping off the garlic scapes (flower pod): it makes the garlic more better because the plant puts more into the garlic and less into the flower.

They are beautiful little twirly tendrils, and it was a real shame to cut them off.

We also had a great sunset tonight, once the sun got clear of the clouds.

June 28th

Yesterday was a very exciting day: we actually got started setting the foundation for the Popple House (poop shed). We already had the floor frame stitched together, so we used that as a guide for level. We found 6 sturdy rocks and started digging holes, pounding the dirt, and setting the stones.

Once we had the 3 stones in front set, we laid the frame back down and checked the level. Surprisingly enough, we got the front of the thing perfectly level on the first try. Boom diggity!

Everything was going really well, but then the Trench Goblin showed up and demanded some poop. Unfortunately I didn’t have to poop, and neither did Gregg, so the poor guy went hungry. If only he knew of the shit storm that is coming his way.

In the end the Trench Goblin didn’t disturb us too much and we were able to set all 6 foundation stones. The frame sits pretty damn near to perfect level, so we’re all ready to start setting posts and screwing shit together. This is starting to get exciting.

We also had another opportunity to visit with our nesting friends.

And we got a sweet view of the moon from Gregg’s telescope.

June 29th

Today was an awesome day. With most of the annoying stuff behind us (digging the hole, preparing the lumber, setting the foundation, assembling the floor frame and bents [vertical sections], etc), we got to spent the whole day putting everything together! It’s the fun stuff, it’s the exciting stuff, it’s the stuff that makes you feel like you’re getting stuff done.

So, that’s what we started with this morning. You can see the floor frame in the background and all 3 bents in the foreground. Our design called for about 4 inches of clearance from the very bottom of the floor frame to the ground. So our first step was to jack up the floor frame 4 inches so we could set the bents in place and screw them in.

With the floor jacked up and as level as possible (on uneven ground), we set in each bent one at a time: leveled it (vertically), braced it (diagonally), and screwed it in place along the floor frame. One at a time…

With all three bents in place, we added the overhead crossbeams on the front and back, once again double checking that everything was plum square. At that point the only thing left to do was sit back and admire the beauty. It sure was quite the shit shack.

That, and take pictures of Monarch Caterpillers.

Oh, and baby Hummingbirds.

And then… FIRE CLOUDS!!

And on top of all that, Sylvia made some fantastically delicious homemade strawberry sorbet for dessert. So tangy, so tart, so sweet. Mmm mmm.

Today we put the roof frame on the Popple House.

Need I say more?

First and foremost we need to wish Ingrid a Happy 29th Birthday. We got up super early (8am) and the Attleson’s had some crazy foreign pancakes, but luckily I made American Pancakes to even it all out. They were delicious. And then tonight for Ingrid’s Birthday treat we had watermelon cake with blueberries on top (it’s really just half of a watermelon with some candles in it, but it was still delicious).

But we also have to wish ME (that’s right, me) a Happy 3rd Twitter Anniversary. Uh huh. Three years ago yesterday I tweeted my very first tweet. It’s pretty unbelievable that it’s already been 3 years, and I’ve already tweeted 3,400 tweets as of this blog post. Crazy.

But what I really need to do is catch up on what’s been going on around here. It’s been a busy week since I last posted, but this’ll be quick, don’t worry.

Rewind!

The past 2 years I have celebrated the 4th of July Seattle-style at Gasworks (here and here). I’ve grown very accustom to that tradition, but I still had a wonderful time this year with the Attlesons.

We went to the local community party at The Regnery’s house. They throw a big potluck party bash every year (with their own fireworks), and it was actually quite a bit of fun. I was surprised to see how many people I actually knew at the party. There were people there that I didn’t know were gonna be there, and they recognized me and called me over to chat. I actually felt like I was a local. Weird.

Here’s what I did most of the time. If you watch closely, you can see me chattin-it-up on the right-hand side of the frame.

Then I went to see what the small-time fireworks crew was up to. They let me hold them, it was pretty sweet.

And I wrapped it all up with this beauty.

The next day the baby hummingbirds died, so I mowed.

Gregg and I have continued to be very busy with the Popple House. Everyday we shave off a few more items from the list. Everyday we are reminded that no matter how much you plan, you’re never going to think of it from every angle until you’re standing there actually looking at from every angle. It is only then that you realize (oops!) you hadn’t thought of it from that angle.

But things are going really well. Yesterday (after putting the tin on the roof, back, and west side the few days prior) we started working on the thrones. It isn’t a big job (size wise), but it is a detailed job, and it involves lots of placing and replacing of the pieces. This is what I did all day.

And here’s what I ended up with.

Today we finished the rest of the thrones. At this point you can actually sit down on a toilet seat and poop into a hole, with all the comforts of your flushaway. We’ve got a few more finishing touches to put on the Popple House: sanding, staining, and stringing up some “shower curtain” style doors. We should be wrapping up the entire project in the next couple days.