Annie's Blog

Took the kids to the airport on Wednesday last week for their annual trip east to visit the grandmas. First stop is Omi’s farm, or as Eric likes to call it “Dr. Doolittle’s Wonderland Adventure for Tarbox Kids.” Maggie is keeping us updated on her blog–it’s an incredible thing to see pictures of the kids in near real-time. I can almost see them growing.

And so far, knock on wood, they’re being nice to each other. The dynamics of siblings change so much when the parents aren’t around. People keep asking me how I can stand to be without them for so long (Eric and I won’t see them until July 26 or 27), but it’s so worth it to me to see them start to talk to and play with each other–and be nice to each other. Why is it that most siblings seem to be hardwired to fight with each other?

Eric is back from Boy Scout camp at Mt. Potosi here in Las Vegas. It’s not a very popular camp (it’s high desert, which means not much of the always popular water sports except for what you can do in a pool). And there’s not much in the way of trees…but it’s beautiful up there, and quiet. And you can see the stars, something that just doesn’t happen very often in the Las Vegas valley because of light pollution. It’s only the very brightest stars that we can see, and the occasional passage of the space station. Speaking of light, have you seen some of the “light maps” that are available? If you look at the U.S., the light pollution and population density are pretty striking.

I’ve been riding my scooter lots lately–this week I’ve put another 46 miles on it, and that included a trip to the Fresh and Easy to get the week’s groceries for Eric and I. With a backpack and the milk crate on the luggage rack, I was set to go. I don’t think I’d want to try to bring home ice cream on the scooter though. The temperatures in Las Vegas have been hovering between 105 and 112 degrees farenheit, which makes riding the scooter very similar to riding a roller coaster in your clothes dryer.

OK, back to the grind. I’ll try to get my act together to post pictures of the scooter, the socks I finished, the spinning I’ve been doing on a spindle, and the two new socks I’ve started (one mindless, one not).

And a reminder–don’t forget Deadliest Catch tomorrow night! This season is a real nail-biter for me…It’s a little not right how addicted I am to that show and the boys…

First off, a quick BAT/KAT update–while I haven’t been walking or taking a bicycle (for pete’s sake, it’s 7:00 pm, and the outside temp is still over 106 degrees F), I have driven my truck less than fifteen miles all week and instead, put over 50 miles on my scooter. And when I drove the truck, I combined trips and got everything in one stop–(gads, I hate Walmart). Managed to get 60 lbs of dog food, 20 lbs of catfood, 4 oz of dry fish food flakes, and the week’s groceries, plus a new scuba mask for Luke and two seven-inch zippers for a craft project for later this week. Not bad.

And I’ve now got two roma tomato plants, three basil plants, two new zuchini plants, and some volunteer cantelope from one I cleaned. Everything seems pretty happy in spite of the heat, and should thrive assuming I can keep Booker (the dog) from chewing all the leaves off the zuchini again. I sprinkled the plants with cayenne pepper, which I hope won’t hurt them, but should keep Booker at bay.

Blech. I use an ergonomic keyboard at work, and typing on the standard one at home is a royal pain in the tuchus. I need to find the camera cord anyway, to show off my latest FO. More later in the week.