The Longest Wait For A Hug

Today was good in many ways. But work-wise, today was very bad: stressful and exhausting. I arrived home, however, to find this on the kitchen table. (Left there by my Mom, who found it.)


Inside: a very pretty card.


Can you read the date??? (Click to enlarge.)


And this is what my Great-Grandma Brunotte sent me today. She even knew to wait 25 years until I really needed a hug. Thanks Grandma. I love it, it fits, and I'm gonna wear it too.

The Strolling Of The Heifers

This weekend Mom and I went to see Brattleboro, Vermont's answer to Spain's running of the bulls: The Strolling of the Heifers

It's a festival celebrating (of course) the stars of the local dairy industry, as well as local vegetable farms. Saturday's festivities kicked off with a fantastic parade, then were followed by both a Dairy Fest and Green Expo.

We got there early (an understatement, trust me) enough to get good seats on the parade route. It was, as you will see, a fantastic parade. (I'll make these small, since there are so many, but click to "embiggen" them.)

While we waited in anticipation for the stars of the show, we had entertainment from this lovely fairy, sprinkling "Dairy Dust" everywhere.


Ahem. I think that's a bull, NOT a heifer.

Here they come!!!










For babies who are too small to walk:

This is Edna, my favorite:


Another Kathryn! Isn't she lovely?


Don't forget the Poop Patrol!


A "big thing" for Janie.

Advertising. You are doing it right. mmmmmmmm ice creaaaamm...

If you haven't had enough parade, here is a video from the local newspaper, The Reformer.

But wait! There's more! The rest of the parade to come in my next post. (You'll note I did not say "tomorrow"...just in case I don't.)
:-)

Watch. This. Video.

Damn.

Let's Go To The Zoo

I've found one of the advantages of dating someone with kids, is that you can get them to take you fun places "for the kids' sake." This works especially well if you make suggestions in front of the children in question, as said parent would look mean if he said "no." And this is how I got to go to the Rosamond Gifford Zoo in Syracuse last weekend.

As an ex-zookeeper, and someone who has seen a little of the best and worst that American zoos have to offer, I have to give this particular zoo very high marks indeed. I was really pleasantly surprised at what a nice zoo Syracuse has. Mom tells me that years ago this was a typical "bars and concrete" zoo, but that has changed and I didn't see any evidence of the old cages. Each exhibit was very natural and appropriately sized for the animals.

The zoo was nicely spaced out, and perfect for little kids - there weren't any long walks with no animals to see. They also had a rather large collection of animals, including a very nice indoor bird room that we could walk through.

I didn't take a lot of pictures, but here we have a pile o' lemurs:


Some yakety yaks (don't talk back).


Penguins! (Humboldts)


And don't we all have days when we feel like this guy? That's a very relaxed Spectacled Bear.


At the close of the day, we find here a very happy little boy, completely enthralled by the elephant in the background.

Say what you want about the controversies surrounding zoos, but I don't know of any better way to get kids to be excited about animals (and saving them) than to put them right up close to a real, live elephant.

Green is...

HOPE


SOCKS

SILLY

Yup, it's me.

The model:

Tattoos, Tardigrades and.....stuff

Holy crap I've been gone a long time. Hold on a minute...I think I have a note from my mother somewhere....

--Ahem--
"Please excuse Wendy from her blog. She has been very busy and doesn't like cold weather.
Signed,
Wendy's Mom"

What? Not convincing enough?

OK, in all seriousness, February and March were not good months for me in some respects. I discovered a few years ago that I suffer from SAD and this year it hit me hard. Just when I was feeling better, the switch to daylight savings time knocked me on my ass again. So that's my real story - I've been sleeping a lot and eating things I shouldn't.

BUT, I have managed to get into a few little things and I'm still knitting happily away.

In the "very good news" department, this merganser duck managed (**finally!**) to find herself a new drake. And that's all I'm going to say about that here. If any of you want more details, feel free to email me. :-)

I've recently been sort of obsessively searching Google Images for tattoo pictures, and I stumbled across this very awesome blog. Any science geeks out there will surely appreciate it:

Carl Zimmer's Science Tattoo Emporium

Be sure to keep clicking the "next" button at the bottom of each page. One of my faves is the tardigrade tattoo. Tardigrades, aka, water bears, are some of my favorite creatures. The only bad thing about a water bear is that he's too small to hug and squeeze!