Fall is here

Although I'm a warm weather type of person, even I get tired of the Texas heat eventually. Days like yesterday and this morning are a beautiful, welcome change. Yesterday started out about 50, with a high around 75, gorgeous and sunny. Just a nearly perfect day. This morning it's about 60 and absolutely cloudless with the sun just beginning to come up. It's supposed to cloud up and rain again later, but we'll see. This is Texas after all. The ability of people to predict the weather drops pretty low out beyond about half a day.

One of the reasons I'm so delighted to see the sun is that it's been raining here. Day after day after day of rain, for weeks. We've had an occasional day of sunshine in about the last month and clouds and/or rain the rest of the time. I'm seriously over all that gloom and wet. And yes, we've been drought-like for a while so it's needed and good for us, etc, etc. I'm just really tired of it. I like Texas because of the sun. If I wanted unending rain I'd move to Seattle.

The trees have finally begun to change color. My peach tree has dropped about a third of it's leaves, but most of them are still green, probably because we haven't had any cool weather until recently. Yesterday was probably our lowest temp so far, around 50. Luckily the grass has slowed down so I won't be mowing much more this year.

Last week I broke down and called a plumber. I've had a swampy spot in my front yard near my foundation for a couple of months, and I've been spending some time in denial, convincing myself that it was due to all the rain we've had. But it was getting increasingly swampy and this month's water bill arrived. The usage was higher than in August when I was watering to keep the grass alive. So I called the plumber. I was really afraid that this was related to a foundation problem, because I've noticed some cracks that I've been keeping an eye on. So I was worried that they'd have to dig through my foundation to find the leak, and maybe repair the foundation. Luckily, they found a leak after only digging up under the shrubbery in front of my house. They replaced the leaking pipe/valve and left me with only a muddy patch in my front lawn where the swampy area was. I felt sorry for them because there was so much ground water there from the leak that they were digging though soupy mud and having to pump water out of the hole occasionally. Now I'm waiting for that area to dry up from all that water. Continuous rain isn't helping it dry up. I guess I'll be totally convinced that the problem is fixed when that area dries up. Who, me, a skeptic? Well maybe.

Yesterday I was at Lowe's for some stuff and ended up talking to a guy about new carpet and ceramic tile for my house. I've been wanting to do that since I moved in, but there's always something else that needs to be done first. And that's still true. I need to have the foundation checked before I have work done on the house. But since I broke down and called the plumber, maybe I can get into a groove and call someone about the foundation. Plus, I figure that if I have plans to replace carpet and tile, it'll force me to do the foundation first. So I started planning yesterday. The only question I have right now is: WHY ARE THERE SO DAMN MANY COLORS OF CARPET AND TILE?! Oatbran? Hacienda Tan? Goldwash? You're kidding, right?

This is going to take some time, figuring out what colors I want. Plus I want to replace the counter tops in the kitchen first, which means more color decisions. But if I don't start somewhere, I'll never start. So yesterday I started learning about carpet and tile. I figure if I can pick those colors it might help me decide on the counter tops. And given my lack of decisiveness for this type of thing, I'll have plenty of time to get the foundation checked and finish cleaning out the garage before any of the work will start.

The garage has to be cleaned out because I'll need it as a place for the cats to stay while the house is being worked on. I've been working on the garage slowly over weekends when I have time. So far I've taken 10 large bags of trash out of there, and I'm still working on it. Who knew I had so much junk in there? A convenient dropping place for stuff I guess. But it needs to be clean enough that the cats won't pull anything over on themselves or poison themselves with stuff that's in there.

Wow. They were right about the clouds. Even though it was completely clear at dawn this morning, it's now completely overcast. Too bad. I was hoping for another day of sunshine. I suppose I'll have to wait a while.

Anyway, that's all for today. I'll keep you posted on the renovations and repairs as they go.

The critters

So the week I started back to work from vacation I caught the flu, and was out pretty sick with it. Luckily, my immune system was up to the challenge, so except for some difficulty getting a voice back, I'm well again. I'd like to know here I picked it up, though. I knew I shouldn't have done that last round of mall shopping.

I did say that I would post pictures of some of the small animals I saw on my vacation, not just bird pictures. This post is for that . . . to post a few pictures which are mostly of squirrels.

This first picture is of one of the small rock squirrels that were up on the top of Angel's Landing. Usually there are LOTS of tiny chipmunks up here, but this year they were not around, just the small rock squirrels.

Small animals are not much better at holding still than birds or small children, but I seem to have a little better luck with them. Or maybe I just try more pictures of animals, so I have a better chance of getting a few decent ones. Most of the animal pictures I have this year turned out to be of squirrels and lizards. We didn't really see any of the big animals this year except the ever-present mule deer and their fawns. No bighorn sheep, although I always keep an eye out for them. We did see a really pretty red fox alongside the road at Wolf Creek Pass, and I saw the coyote and roadrunner, but I didn't get pictures of those encounters.

The rock squirrels around the campground in Zion were generally larger than the ones up on Angel's Landing. This picture on the left above is a really fat one that was hanging around the campsite, and the picture to the right is a young one. They're kind of pretty with their spotted fur which shows up best on the little guy.

The other type of squirrel I took pictures of on this trip were the black Abert's squirrel. People also call them Ebert's squirrels, or tassel-eared squirrels. They come in different colors, but the one's around my sister's place are solid black. As can be seen by this picture on the left below, they like sugar water! This one was drinking from this hummingbird feeder about 30 minutes after we got it refilled and rehung one afternoon. They have long tails and tasseled ears and spend as much time around the bird feeders and drinking from the birdbath as the birds do. I was surprised to see them drinking from the hummingbird feeder, though.

The last picture is of a whiptail lizard. These things were all over the Zion campground area this year, especially a whole slew of little tiny ones everywhere. They have long blue tails and are all female. They reproduce by parthenogenesis. They're also very fast, so pictures are tough, but this little one liked this small patch of grassy sunlight enough that she hung out long enough for a shot. Of course this is taken from a considerable distance, but you can see her pretty well.

Vacation birds

This post is a little bit in honor of my bird-fanatic friend. I've only relatively recently started taking (attempting to take) pictures of birds, and I blame her. Birds are really hard to take pictures of with a digital camera. Kind of like my grand-niece now that she's walking. You get the perfect shot and by the time the camera takes it, she's across the room. Birds are like that ...no concept of 'hold still for the camera, please'. I do have a few pictures of the birds I saw this year on vacation, so I thought I'd post them.


The first picture is looking down off the side of the trail at Angel's Landing at a pair of peregrine falcons. This picture was actually taken in 2003 when we were out there, but I saw the falcons this year too. I just didn't get close enough to take a picture this year. It's cool that they nest around Angel's Landing. Pretty much the only year we haven't seen them was last year when we saw the condors.

Two birds that were kind enough to hold still for the camera were this green-tailed towhee from the campsite at Bryce and this young western bluebird in the campsite at Zion. Both birds were foraging around the campsites so I had time to take pictures. I will say that I have 'several' pictures of both birds, and these are the ones that came out best. Neither bird really wanted to pose for me in full sunlight so the pictures are darker than I would like, but I think you can see them. The towhee has a red crest and green back and tail, and the little bluebird has a red breast with blue wing and tail feathers. This young one still had some speckling on the head and down into the back and breast.


The rest of my bird pictures are from my sister's place in Colorado. She has bird feeders and birdbaths which attract a fairly nice variety of birds, including this downy woodpecker on the right and this white-breasted nuthatch on the left. The woodpecker was interesting. It kept flying back and forth from the bird feeder to the tree. I've never seen a woodpecker interested in seeds in a bird feeder, but this little guy kept going back and forth and back and forth. I actually have a picture of him flying between the two, and multiple pictures of him on the tree trunk, but this bird feeder picture came out the best.

My sister also hangs out thistle sacks so she has quite a crowd of finches that aggregate. They jockey for position on the thistle sacks and then visit the birdbath, where they have a nice bobbing and drinking session. These four little guys looked like they were doing an alternating dance routine since their bobbing was nicely timed.



Anyway this is it for my bird post. I'll try to post some critter pictures next.

Vacation .... end *sigh*

Hard to imagine that this vacation is almost over. Three weeks goes so fast when you're playing. I'm incredibly glad to be able to take three weeks at a time, though. I really have time to decompress from work. I wish I could say I don't think about work at all, but I still randomly check and clear emails from work. At 20-50 emails a day there, three weeks worth would take me days to wade through if I didn't clear them at least a few times while I'm away.

It has been a great vacation. This is us at the top of Angel's Landing. The picture was taken with my camera perched on the ground, the timer set and us at the cliff edge a little lower down. The timer gives you 12 seconds to get into place. My sister was a tad nervous about me running for the cliff edge after pushing the button, so she's got a hand out to stop me if necessary. *laughing* The image of her actually trying to prevent me from going over is a little scary though. It was cool, windy and gorgeous up there.

We didn't do quite as much hiking as usual this year, but we were also a little more laid back than usual. We actually didn't get up before dawn every day. That's pretty much unheard of for me. I'm usually dragging everyone out to get our hikes started early or to break camp and move to the next place early. The weather was cool this year though. In past years it's been necessary to start hikes that early or we bake during the day. Temps in Zion and Arches can be brutal. This time though, instead of 103-107 degrees, the temps in Zion peaked out at about 86! Nice. We had a small amount of rain in both Zion and Bryce, but we have a canopy that works great as protection from both rain and sun.

Of course, since it was cooler in Zion, it was also cooler in Bryce, so I was COLD. Usually I am a little cold in Bryce anyway because it's always significantly cooler than Zion due to it's elevation. This year, especially coming from the Texas heat, I was cold. This picture is me bundled in more layers than I usually am at Bryce. It didn't hit freezing at night, but the night temps were in the high 30s, low 40s, which is colder than I like it. So we slept in until after daybreak (snug, warm sleeping bags!) and hiked later than usual. The Bryce hike is down into the canyon, so of course coming out you have to climb back out of the canyon. It's often brutally hot on the climb out, steep with little shade. Even starting later this year, the climb out wasn't bad. It was still steep of course, but the lack of shade didn't cause us to feel like we'd have heat stroke before we made the top. It's amazing how much difference that temperature can make.

I continued to see lots of wildlife on the trip. We didn't see condors this year in Zion like we did last year, but we saw the peregrine falcons that nest around Angel's Landing. This picture is a small rock squirrel that was hanging around the top of the trail at Angel's. Many large relatives of his were hanging out around our campsite. We also had the usual assortment of lizards, including a whole bunch of small whiptails and a large collared lizard hanging out on the trees around the campsite.

Due to time constraints, we only hiked the Delicate Arch trail in Arches, and we skipped Capital Reef park this year. Both parks are totally awesome (well, all four are awesome, actually), but we just had to decide what we had time to do. We had time do shopping at each place, which is a "must". I am an avowed shopaholic, so it had to fit into the schedule.

At the end of the trip we went back to Denver and took my grand-niece and her parents to the Denver Zoo. It was great fun, as was staying with them in their new house. I'm not sure if I've ever been to the Denver Zoo before, but I must have been small if I have. It's very impressive and really needs a lot of time in order to see everything. We saw quite a bit and most importantly, we got to spend time with my nephew, niece and grand-niece. Waaaaaay fun.

Vacation . . . Start!

Yay! I'm in Colorado, chilling at my sister's place. We'll leave for Utah tomorrow, but she's working today so I'm being a slob and simply enjoying not working. I'm also checking all our supplies for the 100 millionth time. Who me? Anal retentive? Obsessive-compulsive? Of course not! I just like to be prepared. Right.

I thought my i-pod had somehow fried on the drive up here and was going to be very sad, but after some back and forth it seems to have managed to revive itself. I wouldn't have been totally music-less because I brought a bunch of CDs. My sister doesn't have an appreciation for my anime music on the i-pod, so I brought 'normal' music for her. I would have been a tiny bit distressed to have to listen to only 'normal' music on this vacation. Luckily, that seems to have been averted, although I'm fairly nervous about plugging the i-pod back into my car system.

I ran into a fair amount of construction on I-25 in Colorado. That's normal though. Summer + Colorado = road construction/repair. It's a given. I did get to take a scenic tour of Walsenburg since they had I-25 closed there and detoured traffic through the city. I had to laugh though. All the "expect delays" signs had me worried. I forgot that this was semi-rural Colorado. Their delays can't hold a candle to big metroplex delays for construction or wrecks. Plus it was mid-afternoon on a weekday. I took a scenic tour, but I wasn't really delayed much.

I've already gotten to see some interesting wildlife on this trip. In the Texas panhandle I saw a roadrunner adult with a young one come across the road. In Colorado in the Wilkerson Pass area a coyote ran across the road in front of my car. And of course here I've seen all sorts of deer with spotted fawns. For a basic city-girl, these are fun wildlife to spot. I'm looking forward to seeing more on the rest of the trip.

My sister's place is an ideal place to chill. It's so beautiful and scenic, and yesterday was one of those perfect days. Gorgeous, without a cloud in the sky, warm enough at this altitude that even I stayed in the shade. Partly that's because I burn easily at this altitude, but also it probably was upper 70's here yesterday. Quite a change from 100+, so of course I had my jacket handy to slip on when the breeze came up later in the afternoon.

I'm finally getting into the swing of being on vacation. By the time we hit Utah it should be real to me, although I'm already thoroughly enjoying being lazy. I'll try to have pictures the next time I post.

Pre-Vacation

That's not quite true. I'm actually in my vacation, rather than pre-vacation, but I'm busily running all the errands and doing all the chores necessary before a camping trip so it doesn't feel like vacation yet. I've been so busy that it's a good thing I have a couple of days free before taking off for points north and west. Yesterday I had all the maintenance work done on my car and did massive grocery shopping. I also dragged out all the camping/hiking gear, packed food boxes and just generally amassed all the stuff that needs to go with me. I'm taking more cold-weather clothes this year since word is that Colorado has been cold in the mornings already. Cold for this warm-weather person anyway.

Today I plan on accomplishing three main tasks: 1) doing major yard work. The grass in my yard is LONG, but I've put off mowing until today because it's going to have to go for two weeks now. So I'll be struggling to get it mowed and edged today (temps are still close to 100!) 2) get the topper installed on my car and the car packed except for essentials and ice chests. This will be the first year I've put the topper on by myself so we'll see how that goes. It's not particularly heavy ... just awkwardly bulky. I want to leave early in the morning, so I'll do as much as possible today. and 3) get the cats set. Really good cleaning of the cat boxes and extra attention for the cat kids. Addy started moping as soon as I started pulling camping gear out, and has been sticking to my side like glue. And of course, Zoe's eye started weeping last night. Zoe has periodic allergies in her eyes and one or both will start weeping and get all red and inflamed. Plus her little face is all dirty from the weeping. It usually resolves by itself, occasionally needs eye drops. Naturally it would start this right before I leave. I met with the pet sitter, and she should be fine with the cats. She didn't actually get to meet them because they disappeared while she was over. Not her fault. My cat kids are schtizy anyway, and I also had three door-to-door sales people ring the bell during the time she was here. Of course the cats were nowhere to be found.

So it's 6:00 am and I'm waiting for it to be light enough to start mowing. I had planned to sleep a little later this morning since I'm planning on getting up really early tomorrow, but I was awake at 4:50 am. That's about 20 minutes later than my alarm usually goes off, but I really intended to sleep later than that. It's hard for me to sleep late. I'll probably start mowing around 9:00 am, rather than when it gets light. That'll give all the responsible neighbors time to get up and be gone for work. Damp morning grass isn't a problem because it's been so dry here. Any moisture in my lawn is pretty much due to me watering. I hope we get some rain while I'm gone or my lawn and shrubbery are going to be drought-stressed.

This is a picture of part of the trail from the first hike we plan to do, Angels' Landing. It's one of my favorite hikes, partly due to this section of trail. It's almost more of a climb than a hike, what I like to call a scramble. They placed chains strategically to help you with the steep and slick places. It's really fun, but definitely not a hike you want to do it you have issues with heights. We've seen nesting peregrine falcons along this hike and last year we saw condors. I'm hoping to see the condors again this year.

Okay, can't get to reminiscing about past trips. I've still got a fair amount to accomplish before this one, and it's light enough to let the cats out and start some things. I hope to post during the trip, but if not I'll definitely post when I get back.

Yo!

To say that I'm behind in my blogging would be an understatement of epic proportions. This summer has been even worse than I expected, as far as time to blog. It's a week into August already!

This picture is my sage out in front of my house. It's been blooming this week because of the soaking rain we got last weekend. It seems to bloom randomly, but usually after a dry spell followed by a good rain. It's gorgeous when it's covered with these purple blossoms, and the honeybees love it. It's usually covered with them as well.

I taught my last biochemistry lecture this last week, so next week is the final exam and then I'm done. I've already even figured out all the grades, minus the final. After this next week I'm on vacation for three weeks and I am soooooo ready. It's been a long and busy summer, and I'm more than ready for a break. I'm headed back to Utah and Colorado. I haven't even started thinking in terms of vacation yet .... what I need to take, what I need to buy, food supplies, camping supplies, etc, etc. I'm not planning on leaving town immediately though. I'll have a couple free days to get my act together. Usually I go to Utah first and then hit my sister's place in Colorado on the way back. This year I'll be going to Colorado first to pick her up. We'll head for Utah for some camping and hiking, then come back and visit my nephew, niece and great-niece in Denver. It should be amazing fun.


I've been searching for a pet sitter. My friends who usually keep an eye on the spoiled cat-kids are both going to be out of town the same time I am. The cat girls are too old and set in their ways and schitzy around strangers for me to board them for an extended time. I have a week left to find someone I'm comfortable with leaving my house and my cat-kids with. Wish me luck.

Anyway, not much of a blog but better than nothing. I'll be working on getting back to this more often.