Christmas tree

Well, friends, now that I am done with my Thanksgiving posts, I get to move on to Christmas.  I've been wanting to show our Christmas tree for a while.

We went fake, which I really thought I wouldn't do, but it was such a good deal we couldn't resist.

We don't have much in the way of decorations, and it doesn't smell like Christmas.  Which at first seemed like two big problems.  But at the checkout line they had cinnamon-scented pinecones.  We tied ribbons around them and put them on the tree.  Looks like a decorated tree, smells like Christmas.

The only other ornament we have is this beautiful piece that Mom gave us last year.

Near the end of the 19th century, Wilson Bentley was the first person to photograph a single snowflake. He was fascinated with them. Over his life, he photographed over 5,000 snowflakes and never saw two that were the same (which, as far as I know, is where we get that little factoid that no two snowflakes are the same). This ornament is crafted from one of those pictures. It is a beautiful ornament that Kate and I will have on our tree every year.

Merry getting ready for Christmas!

Thanksgiving: Apocalypse

Well, in case you didn't know, John and JaNae met up with Kate and me for a Thanksgiving at Niagara Falls.  There are a couple of other posts about the trip.

It turns out that Niagara Falls is a ghost town during November.  Tourists just don't want to come when it's cold, it seems.  Now, when I say "ghost town" I want you to understand that it was so empty we were wondering if the world had ended.  After dinner on Thursday, we walked over to the falls.  No one was on the streets.  No other cars, no other people.  As we walked, we passed a creepy building that was blaring Christmas music out of a staticy speaker.  It was spooky.

When we walked a bit father, we saw a strange display of a bear holding four flags.  American, Canadian, UK, and what I can only assume was the Flag of the United Post-Apocalyptic Wasteland.  It was a green flag with a yellow mushroom cloud in the middle.  A little farther and we saw a bear holding two little cubs...and stomping the head of a third.  It was weird.  They look like they were supposed to be cute instead of terrifying.  Which made them even more terrifying.

The next day we decided to do a bit of exploring.  The spooky building was a bit less spooky in the light of day, and it even said they had a free observation deck for you to look out over the falls, so we decided to go in and check it out.  And it got even more spooky.  It was a completely disorganized array of T-shirts, food stands, and abandoned equipment.

I want it noted that we weren't somewhere we weren't supposed to be.  We didn't sneak into the employees only section.  This was the store.

Thanksgiving: The Aviary

Like I said in my main Thanksgiving post, John, JaNae, Kate, and I went to an Aviary while we were in Niagara Falls for Thanksgiving.  It was super-fun.  This post will be pretty light on the text, I just thought with all the pictures I should break it into its own place.

 Pirate wife!!!

The first part of the aviary was a reptile room, where you could touch all the animals.  This was a fun little iguana named Fernando.  He was very slow and just sort of walked around and sat under his heat lamp.

 One of the staffers walked around with a giant snake.  It was really big.

 There were two turtles who just wanted out of their enclosure.  This little guy just kept trying and trying to scratch his way out. 

 After the reptile room, we went into the small bird room.  This is the only picture from the small bird room.  I liked this one because it looked like a coloring book picture of a bird that a 3rd grader colored.  Purple, yellow, red, everything.  Just a bunch of colors.

After the small bird room and a nocturnal bird room (no pictures...it was dark) we went into the big bird room.  Both big birds and a big room.  This bird was huge and he just sort of sat there up near the top like he was king of the world.

At least, he looked like the king of the world until this Phoenix flew by (maybe it wasn't phoenix. It was hard to tell).

I tried to get a good picture of this one, but he was tough to get.  He was a really pretty green and black.  I've got more pictures below.

And that's about all we got from the aviary.  Fun!

Alloy of Law

Well, I said it somewhat in jest, but it turns out Brandon Sanderson described this book pretty much exactly the same say I did.

Thanksgiving!

Hello there, dear readers. It's Cyber Monday Eve [as usual, when I mention the date in a post, it actually took me 4 days to get back to writing this, so it's not Sunday anymore], and I'm back in town after a nice Thanksgiving trip to see John and JaNae at Niagara Falls. So, here's what happened.

Actually, for some of the story to make sense, we have to start early. Last Saturday. Kate and I had a pretty fun day- just enjoying ourselves and a nice day off. Kate was having problems with her eye, though. It was hurting and kind of blood-shot all day. No bother, we thought. Just a weird contact thing or some such small problem. It got worse and worse through the night, and eventually we went to the ER early Sunday morning. Long story short, everything was fine. The contact scratched her eye up a bit, so she is on strict glasses-only orders for a week or so while it heals.

So, Wednesday comes around. Kate has to go to work, but she can't find her glasses. If she wears no glasses and no contacts, she can't see. But she can't put a lens in her right eye because it's all scratchy. And she can't just wear one contact, because that messes with your vision (or so I hear). So, my dear wife being very resourceful, she just puts a contact in her left eye and gets an eye patch to put over the right.

(artist's rendition)

So, after work, Kate and I headed off to Niagara.  It's an hour shorter to go through Canada, so we headed off to the land of Poutine and kilometers.  Crossing the bridge from Michigan to Canada was an ordeal.  There's a 4 dollar toll just to cross the bridge, which felt kind of excessive.  The lanes were really narrow and there were trucks getting really close.  It was stressing me out.

When we got to the border, the border patrol guy asked Kate if she was smuggling parrots into Canada.  Ha Ha! Pirates!  After a very long drive we got back to America.  The American border patrol was way less fun.

We got to the house in Niagara Falls late Wednesday night.  I took a few minutes to get Grandma Payne's rolls going, since they rise overnight.  Thursday morning, John and I got up and went to Walmart for some last minute things, then started making dinner.  We made some Dad Payne stuffing (butter, onions, bread, sage, and no other ingredients) and got everything cooking.

Grandma Payne's rolls, for those of you who don't know, are baked in a muffin tin.  You put three balls of dough in each cup and they rise together and form beautiful pull apart rolls.  Like this:

But Kate and I only own one muffin tin, and we forgot to ask John and JaNae to bring more, so we had to improvise.  We had a pie tin that we were going to use for pie later, so we figured, why not make a bunch of dough balls and put them in the pie tin?  I did this, and it sort of turned into a giant roll.

Pretty darn tasty, though.  Here's the whole spread, giant pie-roll and all

It was a heck of a Thanksgiving.  After dinner and before pie, we walked to the falls.  While the walk itself will be part of another post, I thought I should try to post one of my terrible pictures of the falls here.  These were all taken on my iPod since my camera died recently.  (Thankfully, I found a good one on Black Friday so I'm back in business.)

The next day, we went to an aviary on the Canadian side of the border.  It was really close and we were able to just park on the street on the American side and walk over.  The place was really neat and I think deserves its own post.  So, till then!

Internet Fame pt II

Well, dear readers, I find myself internet famous again. Here I am on the "Blog" of unnecessary quotation marks.

Efficiency! I love it!

see more There I Fixed It

(Yes, I know this is a gag- there are two bags in there. Just let me have my laugh.)