Earlier this week, we took a walk down my road, in the valley along the Barton River. These pictures, which we taken the day after the walk down my road, couldn't be more different. Instead of the valley, this walk was along the ridgeline of Mount Mansfield, Vermont's highest mountain. Instead of soft meadows, a gently coursing river, and a palette ( Read more... )

Our primary source of heating in our new house is a wood pellet stove. Back in Maryland, we had a woodstove in the basement and electric baseboard heat upstairs that we resisted turning on as long as possible because it was so expensive. The woodstove, on the other hand, was wonderful, and we used it as much as we could. However, it took a while to ( Read more... )

Mount Hor has a terrible name. Apparently, Mount Hor is also a mountain in the Bible, and I suppose it was named after that; I haven't been able to find anything about the history behind the name and can't fathom why you'd name a mountain "Mount Hor" without precedent. So Mount Hor is like the poor kid in school who gets assigned a storied, ( Read more... )

I am presently on the train to New York, for the New York Tolkien Conference, stopped in Brattleboro in sight of Whetstone, the excellent nanobrewery that changes their beer menu daily. My train left Waterbury ... at 10:20, more than four and a half hours ago ( Read more... )

I will start by saying that my angst in the last post over the pictures I thought I took but couldn't find was misplaced. I did take them (ha I knew it), but my phone cut out in the middle of the upload to Photobucket, and for some reason, it uploaded the pictures at the beginning and the end first, which gave me the impression that the ones in the ( Read more... )

Monday, April 1, the day after the Grand Canyon trip, was pretty low-key. Luxor had just opened a Titanic exhibit that Bobby and I went to see in the afternoon. Okay, okay, go ahead and laugh: Titanic was possibly my first fandom, unless one counts playing Hey Dude with my sister when we were kids. The Titanic movie came out when I was sixteen, and ( Read more... )

Saturday, March 30, we picked up Bobby from the drop-off spot after he was done snowboarding and then had supper at a California Pizza Kitchen that was right across the street. The next day was an early one--our Grand Canyon trip!--so we kept it low-key that night and went to a neighboring casino, Mandalay Bay, to walk through their Shark Reef ( Read more... )

( Our First Snowshoeing Adventure )

I wasn't going to post today because I have a lot of things I should be doing in my wisp of free time. However. Bobby and I went hiking at Patuxent State Park today and, wow, what a day! We got some great pictures, and I couldn't wait to download them and share them, so here I am ( Read more... )

( Cut Because My Day Wasn't Exactly Exciting )