Meet Chester

This is Chester. Say "hi," Chester.

Chester and I have a bit of a difficult relationship, though I think it's one of mutual respect nevertheless. Here he is eating the birdseed that is in a "squirrelproof" bird-feeder, meant specifically for goldfinches.

He and I have spent many a moment staring each other down through the kitchen window, him thinking, "is she gonna get out the stick again?" (that I poke him with), and me thinking, "you better not go for my feeder right in front of me, dude."

The Double Barrel

Seville has been an expert nose-picker for some time now...

But this special skill emerged just the other day...

... he may have been smart enough to stop when I pointed the lens at him, but make no mistake, Seville didn't come up with this idea on her own (thanks, daddy, for the valuable life lesson).

Technological History/Nostalgia

I begin by conceding the randomness of this post, both because of the subject matter and because of the infrequency of my contributions to this blog of late. I showed up at my office this morning and had this thought (fleshed out below), but it's too "monday morning" to go try and talk to anybody in the office about it. So here goes:

I pulled out this mini-cassette player I have in my office because I may need to record part of a meeting later today. As I rewound the cassette to the beginning, I pulled it out to make sure I had rewound it to the beginning of side A. Given that I don't use the mini-cassette player frequently, I had to remind myself that with mini-cassettes, side A is fully rewound when the left reel of the two reels is empty, unlike regular cassettes where the right reel is empty (when looking at side A). (As a side note, I confess that I had to double-check the spelling of "cassette" because I use the word so infrequently anymore.) I've never understood why cassettes and mini-cassettes don't use a consistent format, but that's neither here nor there at this point. The bigger realization for me was that generations of people will soon have no idea how to use a cassette tape.

These people won't instantly appreciate the ability to queue to a particular song based on viewing the relative thickness of the brown magnetic tape on the left reel and the right reel of the cassette. They won't know the pain of seeing your favorite cassette getting eaten by the tape player only to salvage it through the art of tape splicing. I'm waxing nostalgic now. And sounding oldish. I will stop (accompanied by the sound of a mechanical click as I depress the button on my mental boom box) and get back to work.

I Can't Help Myself

I am indulging in yet another post of frivolous pictures. But there's a reason, I swear! (other than the usual, "ooh, isn't Seville cute" reason). I just got...

The Best Mother's Day Present Ever.

Seriously. I have been forewarned never to expect something like this again, and understandably so.

Behold, the work of my new mother's day present, the Nikon D40 SLR 6.1 megapixel camera:

Hikin' The Red Rock

Jared & Skye as "just friends", Zion, April 2004

I always hanker for Southern Utah in the spring. Jared and I did our first backpacking trip together there (in the picture above), before we were dating, and every year since we talk about going back. I always think it should be an annual event, but you know how things tend to come up. Anyway, 4 years later, we finally made it happen. We bounced around quite a bit, and went to four really cool spots, 2 of them National Parks:

Little Wild Horse Canyon: one of the coolest slot canyons you'll ever hike (coolest I had hiked anyway). We hit this on a Saturday, along with about 57 Mormon Scout troops. Once I got over the lack of solitude and the pre-pubescent teen to adult ratio, it got kinda fun squeezing past each other and seeing how people responded to the greeting, "howdy." Seville pet every dog that came through too, which was quite a few.

Goblin Valley: really amounts to a walk in the park, but a seriously breathtakingly weird lookin' park. I wonder how many sci-fi movies have been filmed here (at least Galaxy Quest).

Horseshoe Canyon: is actually part of Canyonlands, but detached from the rest of it and hard to get to by a long dirt road through the desert sage with many unmarked forks, turns and cows (actually, I bet the cows are marked, but not so drivers can tell). Horseshoe Canyons boasts some of the best ancient Native American Petroglyphs and a couple dinosaur tracks. The hike is well worth it without them though.

Capitol Reef: might be my new favorite National Park. There is so much stunning scenery and crazy rock formation to hike through that by the end of our stay there I practically had visual stimulus overload. Definitely a place to go back to, since we barely scratched the surface there.

See the rest of the adventure below. Or click HERE to go directly to the online album and see 'em big on your screen.