Roadie

Well, I had an eventful weekend...

Sat. riding at River Valley, this time with the book club girls + 6 of Necole's friends. We had a group of 15 total so no cantering. :( But it was fun anyway, and I got to spend some time with my girl Robin... isn't she pretty?

Just to get a visual of a 17 horse trail ride (we had 2 guides with us). You can't even see the beginning of the line. It was a ridiculous number of horses.

After riding we took off for Necole's for pizza and fun. Got home about 2:00 after rocking out on Rockband.

Sunday on the way to meeting mom & dad found a kitten in the middle of the road. On hwy 10. Stopped the car in the middle of the road and called him, he came running. Poor little guy must've been so scared. If they didn't stop he would've been killed, no question. It's a busy road.

Got him home and called me to come take care of him. He has 2 little marks on his coat where the hair was singed off, but not all the way down to the skin, thank goodness. Also has a respiratory infection. He's wheezing a bit and will have coughing fits. We think he might have crawled up into a car engine and that's how he got the singed fur and ended up on the road. Who knows though... He was also super hungry, took a chunk out of my hand when I was scooping out some cat food. I think he'd been without food for a couple of days.

He's feeling better today, got an appointment with the vet for tomorrow. Probably will need to go on antibiotics for a while, but that's ok. I think he'll make a full recovery.
We're calling him Roadie for now. It's cute and it fits. If you had a band he'd totally haul your gear for you and handle crazy fans.

Think we have a few leads on people who might be able to give him a home. Will have to wait and see how the vet visit goes. I'd love to keep him but with the 2 antisocial girl kitties we already have, it probably won't work out.

He's such a sweetie though. Will NOT let you out of his sight. Cries if he's away from people and just rubs all over you. He's sleeping on my lap right now his head rolled off the side of my leg. Adorable! I can't get over how tiny he is.

Last Call

Ahh Duluth. City of my soul.

I truly love this place. It's where we would take our family vacation in the fall before school started. Château Lavoux, where you fall asleep to the sound of lake Superior crashing on the rocks and have your morning coffee on the deck overlooking the lake.

Hawthorne Suites (now just called The Suites) in Canal park. Enormous rooms in a converted warehouse, pool where the loading dock used to be.

But most of all I loved the hiking. We must've hiked up and down every river along the north shore from Duluth to Grand Marais. My favorites have always been Tettegouche, and Temperence River. Although Devil's Kettle is amazing, Cascade is beautiful, Caribou is just a great walk, and everyone should see Gooseberry and visit Castle in the Park at least once.

This trip we got back to our roots, sort of. Just the immediate family and just a weekend trip. Up on Saturday, home on Tuesday. Ok so that isn't a traditional weekend, but still, our trips lately have been 7-9 days.

It was amazing to go back to all the old places and find them pretty much exactly the same. Rock doesn't change much, even in a decade.

The difference came in our after hours.

Irish car bomb. Offensive name perhaps but oh so tasty! Half a glass of Guinness, a shot of half Baily's half Jameson. Pop it in the beer and drink it fast. Like an alcoholic milk shake.

This was at Green Mill in Canal Park. I highly recommend the bar in the evening, Chris the bartender is the best I've ever met, plus we had great conversations about brain tumors, the ability to cross ones eyes and books.

We also tried Old Chicago- noisy and not so much fun. And an Irish pub further up the hill- great atmosphere but horrible specials. The Long Island has SPRITE in it (blech!)!

So Green Mill became our jumping off point for other shenanigans. Like walking across the lift bridge to find out if the other side was, as Kip asserted, Wisconsin and not an island. Katie and I both knew he was wrong, but the most fun was finding a small hotel, getting the guy to unlock the door and asking where we were. Yeah, it's still Minnesota and most definitely an island.

Also saw a big ship go under the lift bridge at about 10:00.

Gorgeous with the bridge all lit up and the moon shining down.

We got to go out to Castle in the Park where the Gooseberry river empties into the lake, and Katie found this amazing little spot where you can sit just above the waves and soak in the sun. The words Kay's Cove were carved into the rock. I love the ancientness of this place.

At the mouth of the gooseberry we stopped and set up the camera for a pic.

Also got one at the lower falls in Gooseberry.

My room had a great view of the Irvin. LOVE The Suites. The rooms are incredible and it has the feel of the lake, maybe just because we have so much history here.

A Renaissance Day

I haven't been to the renaissance festival in probably ten years. We planned to go last year, but ran out of time. So this year I made sure to get a costume, and convinced Katie to get one too (it didn't take much convincing.). I love dressing up, it's silly and childish but I LOVE it!

That's how I ended up wearing snake skin stiletto booties, a fedora, and a miniskirt to a karaoke party, when I can't even sing. And why I gave myself Vulcan eyebrows to go to a Star Trek party even though I only knew a handful of people there. I just can't help myself!

So you know I'm going all out for the Ren fest. I found this awesome bodice thingy and got it for fairly cheap, along with a cotton crop top to go under it. Leggings from target (clearance, baby!) and a cheap piratey hat. Katie got me a fantastic silver bracelet. I got ostrich feathers from Kohler & Dramm wholesale, and the crowning touch, my piratey dagger, that I love...probably a little too much.

Katie's outfit was a costume that we added a few touches to. A felt hat from Target with the side pinned up, ostrich feathers added, along with a ribbon and rhinestone peacock pin. She got so many compliments on that hat! She also bought different leggings than the ones that came with the costume, different boots too. Add some jewelry and of course... weaponry!

She looked awesome!

So on to the festival! Nervous at first, but that didn't last long. Get a crossbow into my hands and I'm all over it!

Oh yes, the liquor helped.
Mead and wine. I think the Egyptian mead was my fav.

OH and the turkey leg, LOVE! Even better than the state fair.

Did I mention I really love my dagger?

Now, our Regularly Scheduled Programming...

SO! Fall is coming to Minnesota.

I was not prepared. Although we did get a few days warning about the frost coming so we got to harvest pretty much all of the sensitive crops before it hit.

And I have to say, it was nice not doing it in 30* freezing drizzle like usual. Plus Phia came out to help, which was AWESOME. I don't know if y'all know this; but, help is helpful sometimes.

Now we just have all the stuff that we put in weeks or months ago to dig up, like potatoes and carrots, and the other stuff, like leeks, (we have a ton!) onions, shallots, Brussles sprouts, cabbage and winter squash. Plus some misc. stuff like greens and herbs.

I just read Dreams of Joy by Lisa See. It's all about an idealistic young Chinese woman going back to China during the communist era. Super interesting, especially since I'd never read anything about what happened there during that time. Even though it was a novel it was well researched and that almost makes it better than reading real accounts, at least I can say these were fiction, not real people that were suffering. Even though real people did (and are) suffer(ing).

What I thought was interesting, and what got me on to this in the first place, is how fragile our food resources are. Even with CRAZY weather this year, (that made us buy tomatoes from other farms to can because we didn't have enough of our own) we STILL had a ton of food come out of the ground.

But, that's only because we were allowed to grow a wide variety of crops. And use our own judgement in what to plant, where to plant it, and how to cultivate it. I can see if someone else with less or no experience on our particular piece of property was to come in and try to survive...well, good luck!

Anyway if you do want to read Dreams of Joy you should know it's a sequel to Shanghai Girls.

How did this turn into a book review?

State Fair

Went to the State Fair with Katie today. I never really liked the fair until I went with Katie. I hate wandering around aimlessly in large crowds.

I like eating crazy food, seeing a billion different breeds of chicken, and paying exorbitant amounts of money for small quantities of alcohol. Ok not so much the last one...next year I'm bringing a flask. But the rest of it was awesome.

Love me some turkey leg!

My once a year corn dog was well worth the wait.

Katie even found a FREE cookie on the ground! (yeah, she didn't really eat it.)

Chocolate covered jalapenos...not great. Gave me the hiccups immediately.

Modern Game bantam cockerel. This super curious guy was totally checking out the camera.

CUTE little Serama. Cool color, I've never seen it before, like dun duckwing or something.

Sweet little Sebright hen.

Next month we hit the Renaissance Festival HUZZAH!

Type

Ok, so I'm an INTJ. That's Briggs Myers for Introversion iNtuition Thinking Judgement. Still confused? It's a personality type, you can look up Briggs Myers Type Indicator and take a free test (or several) online to find out what type you are, if you're curious.

I was pretty surprised at the accuracy of the description. It's not like a horoscope or something that could be applied to anyone and would fit. In fact it was a bit of a revelation to find out there are other people like me, when so much of my life I kept hearing how 'wrong' I was for not liking to meet new people, talk to strangers etc... I was 'supposed to' smile! Be happy! Play with that kid I just met. Yeah, no. Bright colors and loud noises never made me happy as a child, in fact they're extremely stressful.

A quick overview of the type; one of the rarest types accounting for only 1%-4% of the population, most INTJ's are male, so I'm double rare. Categorized as a rational type thinker, also known as Masterminds.

INTJs apply (often ruthlessly) the criterion "Does it work?" to everything from their own research efforts to the prevailing social norms. This in turn produces an unusual independence of mind, freeing the INTJ from the constraints of authority, convention, or sentiment for its own sake Dang straight! I don't care if it fits in with your customs or ideas, if it works, it works. INTJs are known as the "Systems Builders" of the types, perhaps in part because they possess the unusual trait combination of imagination and reliability. Both perfectionism and disregard for authority may come into play Honestly if you are incapable of being in charge, or you know less about a subject than I do, I'm not going to do things your way, I don't care what position you hold. Personal relationships, particularly romantic ones, can be the INTJ's Achilles heel ... This happens in part because many INTJs do not readily grasp the social rituals. LOL! Perhaps the most fundamental problem, however, is that INTJs really want people to make sense. People should have a reason for doing things the way they do, most apparently don't, WHY??

Anyway I found a forum full of INTJ's and the topics they discuss and the way they discuss them is just insane, it's like looking into my own brain. Here's a quote from one on what annoys you:

People who think small children with sticky fingers and a coating of whatever they've eaten in the last few hours covering their face and clothing is cute. It's not. It's gross. Please clean your offspring.

YES!!! Thank you. It's not that other personality types aren't annoyed by the same thing, but really, who would bring it up?

Who would start a thread on why humans are obsessed with hair? Or The amount of time we should spend thinking about other people.

On that last one, most INTJ's answered: Why think about them unless you are currently interacting with them? or

in general I'd take a shot in the dark and say that, in terms of what is best for both the species as a whole, in terms of compassion promoting survival of the group, and the psychological health of the concerned individual, maintaining what could be considered a healthy level of concern would be characterized by:

1.) Careful consideration of the necessity and benefit of any anxiety, the effectiveness of any actions catalyzed by the anxiety (assume the 'best' course of action was taken in light of the perceived threat).

2.) The evaluation of the risk to the thinker versus the risk to the object of anxiety. This could be broken down further to include the relative value of the individuals relative to some standard, and I'd probably say the continuation of the species as a whole, taking into account the possibility of future contributions in all relevant fields, blah blah blah, but I feel like I'm already taking this too far...

I picture this situation as a sort of hypothetical equation with dozens of variables which all represent the individual details of a certain situation.

That about covers it.

August

Well, here we are in August again. I'm sitting in my filthy work clothes, too lazy to go shower right now. It was actually not to bad out today, still humid, but cloudy, so no burning sun making life miserable.

The horses and chickies are all doing well, no one is sick for once.

Chocobo the little rooster is being a bastard to the hens, but he's still young, only a little over a year old. He will settle down and by next year should be way more mellow. I just hate seeing all the hens with their bare backs. I would make them wear jackets, but it's been too hot.

This is Lucy with her jacket. I miss her.

There are a few girls in my current flock that are snuggly, but none like Lucy and Ella were. Beauty is a neat little hen. I've wanted Sumatras for years, ever since I first saw them on feathersite.com. Reading about them I expected a flighty little bird who is half wild. Beauty broke that perception. She's so tiny but just full of attitude.

She likes to be spoken too and will cock her head and talk back. She's one of the only ones who will come to the edge of the roost and demand attention when I'm in the coop.

Went to see Cowboys and Aliens last Friday. I really liked it, although that may have had more to do with the ridiculous amounts of Kraken I snuck into the theater. Really though, booze make any movie better. And Kraken is a new fav. I mean really, who can resist such a piratey rum?

Well I digress, oh wait, can you really digress when you have no aim? Hm...