What are you doing new years eve?

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Decorating for Christmas

~ A Photo Post ~

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Forest Jobs and Recreation Act ~ Plea for support from Montana Wildlife Federation

The following is a copy of a letter forwarded by the current President of the Montana Chapter of the Wildlife Society.  I am sharing it here as an invitation to review the draft in order to form an opinion (based on your own review).  I've not researched it yet, but wanted to share it sooner than later regardless of what I eventually find I feel about it.  Please read on and follow the links!

Dear MWF family and Friends.

As you all know, the Montana Wildlife Federation has been a long time supporter of the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act. We were supportive before it was introduced, and we continue to support the enhanced version that is currently introduced. FJRA has long been promoted as a jobs bill, and we certainly agree with that, but at its heart, this bill is about elk and trout, and those of us who wrack our brains and bodies searching for them.

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Big Mountain, Danny On Trail, 2007

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Transparent Canoe Kayak---I WANT THIS!!!!

A friend of mine just posted a link to this on facebook.  I can't stop looking at it.  I'm posting it here because...well, you'll see once you've looked at it for a minute.

I thought for a second, "yeah, it's not THAT great...." but then I just couldn't stop staring at it thinking of all the awesome things I could do with this and all of the first places I'd go.

The coolest thing in the world....I want this!

I really can't remember the last time I looked at something and want to own it this badly.  Even cameras and scopes.

Man, this is cool!!!!

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My lovely armadillo

A couple of nights ago, I dreamt that my porcelain armadillo holding a bear bottle was destroyed.  I was very upset about it and I saved the pieces, even though it was not salvageable.

I'm not sure why it's so important to me or why I've kept it for so many years or why it suddenly appeared in a dream.  I know that several room mates over the years hated it, and that my husband would rather not have it in the living room (although its no longer an issue, as it's not what I'd pick for front-room display, plus our current sitting room is pretty small, so there's not a lot of 'extra' space).

I forgot the dream until I was cleaning yesterday and suddenly remembered how upset I'd been in the dream.  I was so glad to see it that its temporarily on a visible shelf.  I think I will make him a santa hat and put a wreath around his base and he will be a Christmas decoration this year.

It's odd that I had such a sudden fearful dream about a possession that shouldn't be so valuable to me.  Maybe its subconsciously linked to selling my Subaru recently (my first car) which I'd had for about the same amount of time.  Or maybe its not meaningful at all.  The only 'deep' association or image I have of an armadillo is the one in Rango that crosses the highway and makes prophetic and meaningful statements about "the other side".

I'm sure there's plenty out there to choose from, but this is the first thing I found when I googled armadillo totem (http://www.linsdomain.com/totems/pages/armadillo.htm):

Boundaries, Protection, Empathy Armadillo wears its armor on its back, its medicine is part of its body. Its boundaries of safety are a part of its total being. Adjust your rhythms and senses and you will know what is safe and what is not.

Armadillo teaches you how to protect yourself and when to let your defenses down.

And here is an armadillo very similar, if not identical to mine on ebay for $100 (pictured above), but I'm not selling mine: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lone-Star-Beer-Advertising-Chalk-Statue-Armadillo-Texas-/270814660613?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f0dcfc805

And a taxidermied armadillo with a lone star beer (not a fan of this one) also on ebay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lone-Star-Beer-Advertising-Chalk-Statue-Armadillo-Texas-/270814660613?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f0dcfc805

I think if there was a deeper meaining, it was a combination of keeping my armadillo (literally speaking), learning to protect myself, and the Rango clip about the other side ("we each see what we need to see").

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Montana Halloween, better late than never

This year was fun.  Very cold, but I was able to trick or treat with Greg and the kids.  They made this great pumpkin together, and I had almost roasted the PERFECT pumpkin seeds when I burned them.

And Greg dressed up for a party we went to.  He morphed into a palentologist because Christopher suggested it and got reeeeaaaaallly excited about the idea.  I was Fiona, but I hadn't put the ears on yet in this picture.  Plus, being green with cheap makeup is bad idea, so I didn't.  So I'm day time fiona.

The googlie eyes were for a turkey we were simultaneously making for Christopher's family assignment while carving the pumpkin.

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More thumbnails

Just a few more from the same myspace album....at least I will have them backed up somewhere this way.  They all make me smile.  Some of these ones are coming up even smaller.

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"Plaroids" from thumnails

I discovered the poor quality of the pictures I saved from my old myspace account when I uploaded them into a free photo editing site called picnik.  So I played with them anyway and ended up with these, which I think are kind of cute.

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Thumbnails of old photos from the great outdoors

I will hopefully either find the originals of these photos when I have time to search my older computer and/or I will be able to figure out how to download more than a thumbnail from my old myspace account (which I opened this morning for the first time in years to see if I still could).  Although in the mean time they are posting bigger than thumnails on here.

    

   

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Coupla' videos from Vegas

"Kids in Vegas" part one was posted in my turtle medicine blog (here) because I walked more than 3 miles that day, which means I'm on my way to being able to run.  Part two was also posted there (right here) with a little more information about that day, but I'm posting the part 2 videos here, because I didn't get the second part of part two to download at the time.....so here they are together.

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"So you want to live in Montana?"

"It is too late, I have already accepted the job and am moving to Montana"
"Do you own a horse? 
"No"
"Everyone in Montana owns a horse....."


"WTF is an aboniable snow man"

Greg read an article about this and was just chuckling while he watched it.  Apparently the creator has a sister who works at Starbucks in Great Falls and made this to make fun of her and it became more popular than his previous creations.

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Saved a blue belly (?) at a wedding

This was late  Saturday night, after Cheryl and Miguel's wedding, but I didn't keep my internet connection long enough to post....

This afternoon, at a wedding reception, my table-mate was down on the floor in her heals and dress trying to keep a little lizard under her party favor box.  But he kept sticking his head out the sides.  I couldn't keep his head under, either, so it was much easier to grab him.  It was really cool that so many guests wanted his picture....that's what kind of a crowd it was.  He's very little and I don't know what he is (these pictures were taken  by Katie with our friend Judy's fancy camera...Katie took amazing pictures all night).  I saw a bigger one outside after pictures, but decided it would not be appropriate to dive into the bushes in my bridesmaid dress to catch him.  I seem to have slid through butter catching the little one, but luckily that was also after pictures.

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Beautiful (noxious invasive) weeds

When I post pictures of my yard and the empty lot next to us, they almost always show at least one species of invasive weed.  The former owners of our house kept that acre to build on later, and our weeds mostly occur adjacent to that lot, as it has just about every local problem weed species. 

When we were considering buying the house, the owners said they would be maintianing thier lot and that we could play on it whenever we wanted.  Unfortunately, it has only been maintained by other neighbors who were willing to help her out and/or thought they were helping us out (which they were, I just wasn't happy because it felt like they were being taken advantage of, given that they all had major health problems while the former owner made six figures on her un-kept promise to maintain the property). 

I don't mind the tall grass (except for all of the extra mice we get when it goes unmowed all summer) but the property is full of invasive weeds.  Pretty terrible ones that we would be actively abating if we found them on national forest lands (I even got grants in three areas to help get rid of some of these same species).  The hawkweed was beautiful the first year we lived here (orange-red flower in the photo above), but this is a LOT of hawkweed. 

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Browns and yellows in my yard, October 2011

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Pinks and Purples in Glacier, Sept 2011

Pebbles in McDonald Lake at Apgar, Glacier National Park

Kintla Lake, Glacier National Park

Katie, Avalache Creek above the falls, Glacier National Park

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Underwater Oahu photos

These are what came of the underwater disposable camera my friend Jenni gave me in Oahu as part of my birthday gift.  I posted about the trip in my Turtle Medicine blog in this post, this post, this post, this post, *this post, this post, *this post, and this post.  This is Jenni snorkeling followed by fish we saw followed by the couple that helped me try to get my sunglasses back, followed by turtles.

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Teakettle shrowded in clouds (view over 24 hours)

This was a week or two ago.  I looked out the window and saw this cloud cap, which Katie also saw from school.








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