utenzi

I'm back in North Caolina again. I left my parent's place around 8:40pm yesterday and arrived back home at 12:30am. It was a little windy but otherwise a pleasant drive. Today, while at Wal-mart reprovisioning my larder, I picked up a few bargains in the Christmas area. I love these two mugs. They hold 16 ounces which is perfect for hot chocolate and they were 50% off which dropped them from $1.50 each to just $1.50 for the pair! That's a bargain for such cute penguins. I also got a couple of rolls of wrapping paper, some gift tags, tissue paper, "holiday" scented candles, and some neat Xmas lights that look like bells and have 25 different holiday music selections that play while the lights twinkle.  So cute! (and only $6 on sale) Even with those low prices I managed to spend over $80. Mostly on food, of course. Why I don't weigh a ton, I don't know. I actually lost weight over the holidays. Before Thanksgiving I was around 218, before Xmas I was 210 and...

It's kinda spooky realizing just how much exists beneath the surface impressions that we readily perceive. In the case of the photo below, the revealed "lurkers" are the remnants of a forest that's been buried beneath the surface of Lake Hartwell for generations. This area of SC and GA was flooded back in the 1950s to provide the area with hydroelectric and nuclear power as well as a dependable source of water for drinking and recreation... but that's a different story. The drought that this area has been experiencing for well over a year now has caused the water level to drop as much as 21 feet below normal. Right now it's 15.5 feet below full pool. Having water levels this low means that things are revealed that haven't been seen in generations. This includes small things like arrowheads but also large things like house foundations, roads, and bridges--plus lots and lots of trees like the ones in the picture above. It's weird and more than a little ...

Mister Squirrel, why does your tail look so much like a corn cob???

I have two kayaks here at my parent's place. One is for moving quickly and the other is a very stable fishing kayak. Since the water is so low, many stumps and other obstacles are lurking around wanting to tip me over so I've been using the fishing kayak. The problem is that it's a lot more effort to paddle that one and it's killing me. However despite that figurative dying from the paddling, the dying that the title refers to is my camera. It had a brief bath today in the lake and the next few pictures looked like that one to the left. Not good, huh? After that the camera wouldn't retract the lens for a while. It was just sitting there dead and looking like Pinocchio with its lens all the way out. Fortunately it finally fired up and was able to shut down properly. I guess it's not good for digital cameras to take baths. Especially in really nasty clay filled water. The poor thing looks a little like a blackened clump of clay right now. I'm going to give ...

Another Christmas celebration come and gone. The Church-thing on Christmas eve wasn't the best service I'd been to. The soloist in my parent's congregation is getting a little old and while she sure does still have volume---to the point of hurting everyone's ears---her control is fading. It was like watching a train wreck---and nobody wants to see one of those. :-) She kept missing notes and having flat ones. And the new pastor at the church was VERY long winded and kept going on and on about some silly story that everyone's seen on the Internet a dozen times (as well as in that short book back in 2001 ). Something about getting two baby Jesus' in a manger package and a mom that was obsessing about the extra figurine. Fortunately, after getting some of our money, the pastor let us all go back home. *whew* That religious stuff just isn't my cup of tea! And after a little bit of drama and one person storming out of the house, things settled down and ever...

Today, after opening presents, we went out on a arrowhead hunting expedition. Sound like fun? Since the lake levels are so low due to drought, shoreline is exposed now that hasn't been seen since the lake was first flooded. In the picture above you can see what the terrain looked like. Lots of stumps from trees that were drowned when the basin was flooded in the middle of the last century. In the picture below, you can see part of our expedition party: my father, brother and two of my brother's sons. And in this final picture you can see the closest thing to an arrowhead that I could find. It's got a similar shaped point but otherwise fails to look much like an arrowhead. Oh, well. I don't think I'd have the patience to be an archeologist.

I guess "way down" isn't quite accurate since I'm just in South Carolina, the Palmetto State, but that is a little further south than North Carolina, where I live. About 260 miles further, in fact. I usually make the trip at 3am so I can avoid the traffic but this time I was too tired, and instead slept a few hours and left at 6am. *whew* Holiday traffic starts early! I'm visiting my parents who usually are well stocked with cookies. Witness the evidence to the left. This makes visits very, very pleasant since I can put away prodigious amounts of cookies. Christmas is tomorrow and I wish one and all a merry Christmas--unless, of course you don't want one of those in which case you're perfectly welcome to have a merry December 25th instead. Just ignore the presumptive birthday celebration of a certain Galilean Jewish rabbi of ancient vintage. I think I'm going to go take a nap!