Pictures

Bonsoir!

Time for a biggish, mostly pictures, less-snarky-than-usual-because-I-have-not-been-drinking post methinks. So I had some visitors. Picture bomb!

Kate and Ell in the caverns!

Joke is on us because Kate is gorgeous.

Elliot is a bit nervous underground.

And I think she plays with her hair when she's nervous.

Or she prepares to become She-Hulk. 

Hurry and take the photo before it caves in on us!

Great shot, terrible coloration. My camera was on some sort of super color effect mode accidentally.

Elliot is sort of happy it is time to go!

I love people in period attire! They had a tent with a fire and a bunch of uniformed soldiers, generals and a band, where they waltzed. Awesome!

We also saw a bear. Yes, a bear. A mother effing black bear just ambling somewhat slowly across the divided highway. It was so cute. I didn't get a picture because I was too busy squeeing, so here is a picture of a bear that is not nearly as cute:

That is it for pictures, which kind of sucks, because we did so much other cool shit that it would have been awesome to have documented! We ate lots of delicious food and we also went to this crazy place called Wilson's Wild Animal Park, where there was almost no other visitors and we were able to get up close and personal with some baby lemurs, a lion, and we got to hand feed some adorable baby deer. It was the unexpected winner of the weekend. Took a stroll down by Hawksbill Greenway, which is a little paved path by a creek in a bird sanctuary in Luray, and saw Pirates: Band of Misfits which was also surprisingly entertaining. Overall a superb weekend with great company and many wonderful surprises that I am pretty sure got my sister hooked on Shenandoah Valley.

Then, I had a sort of grouchy week. A lot of driving all the time, averaging about 200 miles on my car per day for back and forth to my new assignment area, not to mention spending hours and hours in the car, was really putting a damper on my chipper carpe diem attitude. Also, it was in the 90's and raining almost all week. And I broke out. And my landlord charged me $500 extra for rent to make up for the taxes, and I realized I needed a passport, birth certificate or social security card to get fingerprinted for my pending West Coast licenses, none of which I will have before I get back to NH on June 23rd or 24th. So, week was not quite going my way. Until.......

Mom's fix everything. She was dedicated to having a totally relaxed, no stress and worry free weekend away. And that is exactly what we did, slept in, treated ourselves to delicious dinners of Indian food and Southern cooking, and we went to Shenandoah National Park/Skyline Drive, a scenic drive that takes you south on the backs of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I had only been up on the drive once quickly when I first arrived, but this was much much nicer. I cannot believe I haven't been going here every weekend and just laying in the grass and staring at the wonders of life, such as...

 This dead tree, all alone on the edge of this scenic vista. Nice spot, mom!  We stopped at the gift shop, where I purchased bird and tree identifier booklets, because I'm always looking at that shit and wondering why I don't know more about the shit that I see hundreds of times a day. All ya'll visitors and friends who I will be seeing this summer, get ready for some knowledge dropping, bird spouting, leaf identifying bad assness. Sounds super intimidating, right??

Anyway, mom and I tried to get to the caverns on Sunday, but when we got there, there were about 700 people in line, standing outside in the sun on the pavement. It would have been at least a 2 hours wait, and we decided to scrap it and head to Winchester to go the gardens I've heard so much about.

Photo op on the way, this lovely little farm with the Shenandoah just out of sight. I love the exposed rock cliff and the mountains. Pretty much everything looks like this here.

Gardens at the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley

I died here. Over and over. It was like that effing Secret Garden movie except minus the snotty little disabled boy (is that the right movie?) plus an obnoxious Lora chasing animals and flower petals, dreaming about all of the weddings I could have here. 

 Some sort of flowering onion plant. Dude, why don't they sell the onion with the flower? I'd be eating that shit everyday. Thanks, Macro filter!

 This reminds me of the scene in Wizard of Oz where they get effed up in that field of poppies. Even though they aren't poppies. Or in a field.

 Hey! Ducks! DUCKIES! Come here!

 Rose garden is preettty

 Hey Geese! HEEY! Why do they always run? I just want to rub my face in their feathers hear them honk. Does that make me a creep? Well eff you geese, I think you are the creeps. All honky and scratching your beak with your webbed foot.
Wait, what?

Ew. Weirdo. Get out of here!

Here, bear! Dinner time!

In the Zen garden, there is a pagoda. A fake pagoda, with recreated fake Chinese furniture. It would be only natural that there would also be a fake snake on the back of the chair.

 Oh. Wow. That is not a fake snake. Actually it is a 6 foot long Black Rat snake, nearly harmless and pretty skiddish. Like the snake, mom and I made ourselves scarce from the Pagoda after this sighting.

Lastly, a picture from the zen garden. Then my camera died. Another lovely weekend!Thanks to Elliot, Kate and Mom who all came the distance to see me and this lovely place I call almost home.

So much visiting has really put me in the mood for coming home in June. I am going to be driving, since I found out flying the cats would be crazy obnoxious considering it is only a 10 hour drive. I have only four weeks left in Virginia, so I'm planning some day trips and outings. Matt comes to visit the weekend before I leave, and we will be doing all the outdoorsy stuff, like river rafting and hiking. Looking forward to that for sure.

In the mean time, it is just me. Sitting around in Basye, drinking small bottles of wine through a straw, which I started about halfway through waiting for all these pictures to upload, continuing to work on getting out of the grumpy funk that has invaded Loraland over the passed two weeks. I'm thinking that all the new music I discovered today may help, including this. Which is Churchill. Love the folksy, slight country rock vibe. Repeat button abuse is happening presently. Also, the plan is for doing more outdoors stuff in the evenings after work to get rid of the too-much-driving blues. Will keep everyone posted on how that goes!

Visitors and Laryngitis... Visigitis?!

Oh, heyyyyyyy!

I'm Badd at posting regularly. I hope this joke goes unnoticed (sort of). You can thank my cousin Justin for any terrible wrestling related postings. Thanks, Justin!

So, first I was feeling very serious. Then, I was sick and whining. Now, I have company.

Three relatively bogus excuses for not blogging? Si, señor, but there they are.

This passed month, I've had my first trip home, which was way too short and spent somewhat unwisely, had a site-seeing-weekend-turned-hibernate-in-fancy-hotel-room-weekend in D.C., and have touristed with Kate, Elliot and presently, Mom. I've been practicing my languages by watching subtitled anime and German films, as well as the Spanish channel, and perfecting the art of sleeping whilest standing upright in the shower.

I'm tired, and should be asleep, but I had to get this out there before it left my brainspace and before I continued to procrastinate.

Without further ado, I bring you an updated version of: A Yank's Guide to Interpreting Common Greetings and Phrases of Virginians

1. Howryewh?
Roughly translates to, "How are you?" could possibly be a duality, meaning more of "Hello." Since often times strangers say it to you in public spaces while passing before one could possibly have the time to respond something along the lines of, "I'm doin' jus fiine, thank ye kindly. Howryew doin'?

2. Wareboutsheeat?
I have come to believe this to mean "Where abouts are you at?" However, also translates to "Where about is she at?" referring to any animal or baby, regardless of gender, a boat, a car, a truck (clearly very different from a car), a fancy television, or any other number of things having to do with farm machinery.

3. Country mile
See earlier posting for full elaboration, but basic meaning is that whatever it is, you live far fucking away from it, but it is still closer than the closest grocery store.

4. Haller, Holler, Hollow
See earlier posting again for full elaboration. Butchering of the word Hollow, used by people to describe areas in East Nowhereseville populated by hallerfolk, or the nicer version of the creepy families you think of in backwoods Appalachia.

5. Low Water Bridge
Concrete slabs thrown across deep, swift moving rivers, wide enough for one car and can withstand the weight of one car with full capacity, plus 5 adult sized human covered in their own excrement, as the thought of crossing the bridge caused them to relieve themselves.

6. Warsh
Self explanatory, and not uncommonly heard in New England, this extra "R" sounds like Thor's Hammer smashing the Allspark while he is wearing The One Ring. One of civil mind would prefer to interupt those who may use this term and use other terms preemptively, such as clean, cleanse, bathe, rinse, launder... or just to say "WASH" extra loudly with clear enunciation to perhaps bestow some wisdom upon the lesser human who was about to assault your eardrums. Is it clear that I am not a fan of this one?

I will be keeping this list updated, so watch for that, and I will definitely be posting post visiting this weekend. Probably Monday, since it will be 92+ degrees and humid. I'll be sitting inside, with a leopard print long-sleeved microfiber adult onesie on, in front of the air conditioner, enjoying my inside time.

O-genki desu ka? Hope you are all well and doing fun shit for the three day weekend!

YOLO Bitches

So, 26, I see that you are right around the corner, shamelessly staring me in the face with your snarky gaze that says, "Yeah, so how does it feel to almost be in your late 20's?"

Well, 26, it feels fucking great! In your face, time!

Thinking about how my time on the earth is rapidly disappearing, I have made at least 5, no more than 10 "Shit I want to Do Before I Die" lists. No, not a Bucket List. A Shiwatodobedi list? Whatever you want to  call them, the aren't for me. Does it really make sense to spend hours and days scouring the internet to manifest a never ending list of things that you may never be able to do because you are broke, or scared, or the ideas are just totally unfeasible? Or worse, totally meaningless to changing your life and the lives of others? I would bet that most people get so overwhelmed by making their own lists that it seems so impossible to "live a good" life that they abandon it within a year, go back mindless day in and day out without a second thought and wake up at 50 wondering where the time went.

Well, now I'll put on my "grow older with dignity" face, which looks like Helen Mirren in my mind, but realistically is more like Boy George circa 2012 eye-poke debacle. To avoid that whole wake up in despair one day far far in the distant future, I figure, why not just do cool, thoughtful shit every day? You only live once, all. Best be getting to stopping by that book store, or donating blood, or something else every day that only takes an hour or two. Or 20 minutes. Or a weekend.

Now with that self riteous, too-cool-for-dying-of-cancer-list said, I'm also naturally kind of a lazy person. Perfectly evidenced by my visit to D.C. this past weekend, where despite that I had ambitious, museum-going, site-seeing agendas, I had a crappy start to the weekend and ended up just straight chillin', eating out and sleeping in late in my 4 star hotel room. But it was pretty nice! Moral of the story, enjoy the mishaps and unplanned plans as well. Sleeping in an insanely comfortable bed and watching The Lion King until I fell asleep is a total appreciated moment of the weekend.

In other news, I went to the midnight premier of Marvel's The Avengers in 3D. Officially there is no better movie going experience than midnight in theater 1 of 7 sold out shows filled with super geeks who have a geekgasm throughout all the previews, which included Prometheus, The Dark Knight Rises and The Amazing Spider-Man, laugh for 3 minutes when Iron Man calls Hawkeye Legolas, and nearly shats themselves when Loki gets Hulk Smashed bam-bam style. So entertaining! My love of Joss Whedon glows brighter than the unstable Tesseract. And Mark Ruffalo? Best. Hulk. Ever. No other Hulks. Nope. Don't Google that. NOPE.

Speaking of cheesy, I had cheese grits this weekend for the first time. Disliked and do not recommend grits in general. Also enjoyed some black water. And by enjoyed, I truly mean drank 4 sips and convinced myself it was giving me a stomach ache, which is absolutely 100% unlikely and is a total mind over matter thing. Why did I buy it? Because I had never seen a black bottle before that had water inside. And I still haven't, seeing as the water itself is actually black. Enriched with Fulvic Acid. Fulvic. That sounds like a sex crime committed on or near a volcano. Tastes like water, but I did feel it left me with total cotton mouth. Blegggghh. It is still sitting on my kitchen table, as I'm afraid if I pour it out it will simply burn through wherever I pour it. I went to Pangea Vegan Products on Sunday and bought everything. Best find of the weekend:

Little soy creamer packets! Makes any diner, deli, gas station coffee into vegan deeeelite.

In work news, I did lots o' nurse-y type things today. 36 staples removed from a hip, home removal of PICC line, wound vac...all in a day's work. My new service area is over an hour from where I'm living, which is a little sad for my gas tank. Will be hitting the good ole Hundy Thous on Lady Blade Runner in the next few weeks. Will take pictures of Carpocalypse 2012, as I imagine it is possible that the car may implode. Time will tell.

Leave me comments if you can figure out how to jump through Googlehoops to do so!  Commence end of post with short list of things I will do this year. Not want, but will.

1. Turn 26. Hopefully this one is a given.
2. Travel as much as possible. Ireland in the fall.
3. Seriously look further into Doctor's Without Borders
4. See family in NH and on PEI as much as possible.