Another Super Sunday...no bowl...

Ben and I got to work on the FEGHA Project again early this morning, attaching doorknobs, looking for homesites, and affixing the doors once suitable sites had been found (Remember:Location, Location, Location).


I like taking delayed-action pictures, so below you will find a gratuitous "team-effort" shot, although we did work well as a team on this project...


What you may not know is that placing a Fairy Door is the easy part in inviting the magical creatures to come and live with you...luckily, the hard part is taken care of by the Fairy, Elf, or Gnome Family that comes to live with you (much like with Habitat for Humanity, where people have to help build their future home)...once the door is in place, the enchanted beasties build the home behind it, and will live there forever...

One of the FEGHA Homes will be located within Gail's hot-tub (all of us can use it, but I'd be lying if I called it "ours")...


Another one will be built into a beautiful white pine near the rabbit and quail barn (pay no attention to the fancy composter of pallets behind the tree, I'll fix that when this year's quail herd/pod/posse arrives)...


The last door that we placed today went on the side of a huge rock in our driveway that Ben loves (he picked this and the other FEGHA homesites)...we discussed it, and hope that a gnome family comes to this one, as they are better suited to the hard work of excavating a home out of a glacial erratic...


After the Fairy Door project was taken care of, Ben played on the computer for awhile, he is all about the Orisinal and Poisson Rouge edu-websites these days, favoring them above the Noggin or the Nick jr. sites he typically enjoys...I like these sites...they are fun and interactive and learning oriented, rather than the passive entertainment that TV tends to offer...


We had a picnic lunch out of the deck...bologna sandwiches all around before heading out for the afternoon...


I headed out to hide a couple more geocaches for an upcoming CITO (Cache-In, Trash-Out) event that our local group holds every year to clean up as a way of giving back around Earth Day...between hiding the new caches, we stopped off at 2 of Ben's favorite playgrounds...he had, of course, a great time...


I like the picture above because it turned out very interesting-looking and captured Ben's "playground happy" perfectly (I'm praising Gail here, not myself, she took the playground pics)...I like the picture below because it shows one of the cool things that Ben does in every playground that we visit...he gives most elements a "run-through" (not all, some intimidate him, and he promises to do those "next time"...), and then tries them out in a way that wouldn't occur to me...just to see if it's also fun...


While I went out to place the last of 4 geocaches that I hid this weekend, Gail and Ben went to our meeting place, the playground in Gabriels, to wile away the time until I arrived there...he had fun...


I mention geocaching and GPS frquently in this blog, you can find out about geocaching by following the link at the beginning of this sentence, and I found a great little video explaining GPS technology, which I am attaching at the end of this blog entry (just below)...click to play the short video...

Spring Sprung...Finally!!!

Mom and Ben went to the playground in Saranac Lake this morning while I wrote some IEPs at home...it's amazing to see the difference in Ben's coordination and bravery increase each time he goes to the playground...


He ran all over the place, climbed up, slid down, and had a fun time...


We had a major snowstorm on Monday, and it got up into the 60s by Friday...today was in the 70s...


Ben loves playing on the slides, both up and down...he also has a blast on the balance elements...


At home, we worked to transplant some seedlings that Gail and Ben had planted while I was out West into some larger containers...peas, tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, beets, herbs, radishes, and lettuce...we're still about 6 weeks from frost-free, so they'll live inside for the time-being


Ben and I then did some contract work for the FEGHA (Fairy, Elf, & Gnome Housing Authority), making doors for future homes for the magical creatures who live in our woods, and all over this part of the world...I'm not entirely sure why, but Ben was happiest working in the warm and snowy afternoon in a t-shirt, boots and Power-Rangers underwear...Ben is seen below waving off the camera, as our work for the FEGHA is done on a confidential basis...


We had a fun time painting the doors to the Fairy-Houses, and will post follow-up blog entries as the occupants move in...


Another glorious day in the best place in the world!!!

Blah!

What a yucky day!

The middle of April and we are living in a snow-globe. After playing inside for much of the day, Ben and I decided to head out for some geocaching despite the snow/rain/sleet/ice-pellets falling outside. A friend of ours recently hid one about 2 miles from our house so we headed out with gear and clothes appropriate to the day and activity...

The cache is hidden near the Jackrabbit Trail which wanders through a big chunk of wild country between some roads that run near our home. Some of the trail runs along a power-line and is pretty open, some runs through deep woods and is like a deer-path; all of it is beautiful and a great place to walk and see lots of wildlife...

Since this was the first time I had used my GPS since returning from the Southwest, I was getting some funky readings from the compass (it had acclimatized to the level of declination out there which is about 30 degrees different, so it was giving me erratic readings). The remedy for this is to calibrate the GPS and compass, which involves telling it to do so, and then turning slowly in circles until it tells you to stop. A minute later, I was getting a clean reading (it took me to within 3 feet of the geocache), and Ben was looking at me strangely...he was also looking in the woods worriedly as I had been whooping loudly, "Crazy Ivan, Crazy Ivan" while spinning...

The cache was exactly where my GPS said that it would be (3 feet is a perfect reading, given the vagaries of communication to and from satellites of my machine and the machine of the person hiding the cache), and Ben was excited to search it for goodies. This is a cache designed specfically with kids in mind, and is filled with toys. For the occasion, Ben had gone through his own toys and selected a couple of pristine toys that he was willing to trade (we like having him pick his own trade-items, and making fair trades)...

I did the obligatory "push-n-dash" photo, which in this case involved my balancing my camera on a fallen and snow-covered tree, setting the time, composing/focussing the shot, pushing the button, and running through the knee deep snow around to Ben in a couple of seconds without disturbing the camera in the slightest...it's an art form that ordinarily evokes larger smiles from the people I am posing with than Ben gave this time around...

On the way back, Ben navigated. I customarily mark a waypoint at my car, so that if I get turned around in the woods, I can use the GPS to get me back to it. I marked a point out of habit, even though this walk was very easy; and when I asked, Ben was eager to help us get back to the car. I helped him get through the screens on the GPS, and select the, cleverly name, "CAR" waypoint, and off we went. He did a great job, not looking at the screen the whole time, as many GPS-rookies tend to do, but just checking every so often to make sure that we were going in the right direction...

Spring must come soon, despite the 20" of snow we are supposed to get tonight, and when it does, Ben will continue to take a more active role in our geocaching adventures...

Las Vegas Baby!!!

Sometimes, one of the great things about living in the Adirondacks is leaving...

I met my sister Sarah in Las Vegas for along weekend, and we had a spectacular time!!!

We played lots of Blackjack, stayed up too late, and enjoyed cocktails in some of the best, and worst, spots in town...

One of the highpoints of our visit was a visit to the Las Vegas Hilton, and more specifically Quark's Bar and Restaurant, which is a Star Trek themed eatery...

An integral part of enjoying your visit to Quark's is a full immersion in the food and drink experience...we had a lunch made up of the Smorgasborg (which is a mixed group of appetizers) and the Holy (onion) Rings of Betazed, along with 2 of their high-powered cocktails...a Warp Core Breach and a Borg Sphere...


Mmmmmm...you can really taste the warp core breach...


Sarah was only too happy to be assimilated by her Borg sphere...


Quark came by to check on us partway through our meal...he was happy to pose with Sarah at first...


...but got a little grumpy when he realized we weren't going to pay him for the pics...it's a Ferengi thing...


Next we ran into a very tall Andorian...


We also found one of the Gorn, a lizard-y species from the original series...


One of the real finds of the day was a Klingon female warrior...


We had a great time in Las Vegas overall, and a really super visit to nerd-Graceland...

Spring Geocaching Outing

My geocaching account is setup to send me an email whenever a new geocache is approved within 50 miles of my home coordinates, I like fresh geocaches...I found 3 new ones yesterday, 2 of them I was the "First-to-Find" (FTF)...Part of it is competitive, but another part is the added challenge of finding a geocache that nobody else has been to before...your not 100% sure that it's there, that the coords are accurate, there's no herd path leading you to the cache, etc.

Anyway, I got an email last night at 10:45 from the geocaching.com computer, notifying me that there was a new geocache hidden along the trails of The Wild Center, a nearby natural history museum...I thought that it would be a fun walk for a spring morning, and that we would likely be the FTFers...

When we got to the Wild Center, the Little Old Lady greeting people at the door saw our attire (boots and geo-pack) and preemptively informed us that all of the trails were closed due to ice...I asked her to expand on her warning a bit, and she had lots of dire details about pack-ice caused by snow-shoeing people and our springtime warm-day-cold-night syndrome, and was told in no uncertain terms that the ice was like a sheet of glass (but wet and hard and with pokey-things sticking up in places)...

We were bummed out, but had some fun poking around the museum for a bit...there's a live otter, and other exhibits with live beasties and stuff to touch and smell and play with...but when push came to shove, we decided to try our luck and chance the consequences (figuring that we could always turn back before the outing reached Donner Party stage)...

It was certainly slippery in a couple of spots, but the Little Old Lady at the front door (and whoever printed the dire warnings in the daily museum activities flyer we were handed on our way in) operates using an entirely different formula for risk assessment than geocachers do...it was fine...


It was a lovely walk on a lovely day through a mix of forest types and down, eventually, to the Raquette River...on the way we saw deer prints aplenty, as well as some other tracks that looked like fox...

There was a cool set of boardwalks towards the end that took us over marshy ground to the hiding spot of the geocache and some wonderful observation platforms that projected out above an oxbow of the Raquette...

We found the cache in short order, and found that some friends of ours, Shane and Doree, had gotten there before us...we suspect an incursion under cover of darkness with headlamps and ninja suits and dramatic music...we inspected the cache contents, made our trades, signed the log, and replaced the cache in its hiding spot before enjoying a snack and drink in the sun on the observation deck...

We pose for geo-photos be saying, "Geocache" instead of cheese, and Ben sometimes gives the camera a battle face...this was one of those times...we enjoyed granola bars and raisins and warm water (in the winter, I fill my camelbag with hot water to prevent the tube from freezing...it wasn't really necessary today, but my habits don't shift as quickly as the seasons up here in the ADKs)...

On the way back up we saw a great tree with numerous huge holes made by a pileated woodpecker and now overgrown (ingrown) with moss...we made it back to our car alive, drove into Tupper Lake proper for a lunch at McDonald's, and stopped at Shaheen's on the way out of town for a large piece of beautiful cow-flesh for dinner...

Ben's taking a nap, I'm on Spring Break for 2 weeks, I'll be heading West in a couple of days to wallow in turpitude of some sort in Las Vegas with my sister, and I may go do some maintenance on a couple of my nearby geocaches this afternoon while the weather holds...it's supposed to turn rainy and grey tomorrow...

Warning: Topic Shift...stop reading now if you don't want to know what we did last night...

Yesterday afternoon, I began my Spring Break with a precision strike on 3 geocaches...one that had been taunting me from under the snow for a while, and 2 that were brand new and picking at my competitive nerve endings...I found them all (YAY!!!) and made it home in time to pick Ben up from school at the normal time...when Gail got home, she proposed going out for supper to Desperadoes, the superb mexican place in Lake Placid...I one-upped her by adding a movie to the evening ("Meet the Robinsons")...the movie theater in Lake Placid, the Palace Theater, is a great old building where you pay $6 for a movie ticket, and can get a tub of popcorn for 75 cents...

We all had a great evening overall, and great food at dinner, and Ben enjoyed the movie (it had its moments, but all things being equal, I would rather have had sand in my eyes for the entire 90 minutes)...on the way back to the car, we walked to Starbucks (new last year, and the only one in 60 miles) for big and fancy coffees to end the evening...

So far, it's been a great weekend!