Random Lunacy

So, not too long after she joined our household in 2007, Numfar started "guarding" me while I was taking a shower. She'd sit on the counter between the shower and the door, with her back to the shower... and would stare at the door the entire time I was showering (I even posted a photo of her doing her guarding thing last year). If I closed the door, she'd come sit by the shower and chatter at me the whole time. And it's funny, because I found that if I close the bedroom door, but leave the bathroom door open, as long as she knows the outer door is closed, she'll be all relaxed and chatty. Or if she knows rackham is in the bedroom, then everything is fine too. So, I really do think she thinks she's guarding against something.

Our other cat, Zoë, hasn't ever shown much of an interest in the shower, aside from occasionally being fascinated by the falling water. Except for the last few months, when she's started taking up a guard station on the floor between the shower and the door, mirroring Numfar's stance up on the counter and staring at the door the entire time I'm showering. And yeah, it becomes a bit creepy after awhile. This morning, they were both on guard duty and then, simultaneously, just stopped. Zoë suddenly got up and went to sit on the bottom shelf of the towel rack and, at the exact same time, Numfar turned around to face the shower and started chattering at me. As if whatever threat they perceived had moved on. Creeeeeepy.

Crossposted from my Livejournal.

Every day for about the last week, this little wasp would start buzzing around behind my monitor. It would spend a bit of time near the window and then would gradually drift into the kitchen and I would invariably lose track of it. To be honest, I wasn't entirely sure if it was the same wasp... I sort of assumed it was, simply because of the size (it was quite tiny, to the point where I wondered if it might be one of those other insects that just look a bit like wasps) and the fact that it was almost regular as clockwork, showing up in the same spot every day. I rather suspect it came in through an open window or door at some point (I did check around to make sure we didn't have any coming in through the walls, since I've had that happen to friends in the past).

The first few days I tried to catch it... tossing a dish towel over it then going outside to shake it out, only to discover the wasp was nowhere in the towel and, of course, it would show up in the same spot behind my monitor the next day. Finally, I tried swatting it with a dishtowel and even managed to hit it once, but not badly enough to seriously injure it (I managed to catch a glimpse of it stumbling around on the floor, but by the time I got to where I could try to grab it, it had flown off again).

Then today, I spotted it again... on the Ikea Billy bookcase next to my computer, basically to the left and slightly behind my monitor (where it kept appearing every day). It was nosing into one of the unused pre-drilled holes in the side, then it turned around and backed into it, very obviously settling down for a long summer's nap. Yep. I'm pretty sure I really HAVE been seeing the same little wasp and that it was making itself a nice new home in the "cave" it found in the bookcase. rackham grabbed a piece of duct tape and covered over the hole (since we didn't have an easy way of getting the wasp out without one of us being in danger of getting stung) and we figure we'll give it a few days then hopefully clean out the remains of our dear, departed indoor wasp friend.

I do sort of wonder if we hadn't figured this out, would we have ended up with baby wasps popping out of the bookcase someday? And it had never occurred to me that a wasp might take up residence *inside* a house without ever having a way to get outside.

Crossposted from my Livejournal.

3/14/15 9:26 (I'm not going to even try to post this at exactly Pi Second)

Although only if, you know, you live in the US where we write out dates in one of the least intuitive ways we can (this is why I generally write out dates when I can (as in 14 March 2015)).

We've got at least one Geocaching event we're attending today (yay, special Pi Day souvenir!) and we're planning on finding at least one puzzle cache (yay, another *different* special Pi Day souvenir!).

I'm also thinking today might be a good day to donate blood, assuming the blood center isn't slammed when we stop by. Um, not because it's Pi Day, but just looking at the timing, it'll give me plenty of days before Origins Game Fair so I can donate blood there, too (and so I can easily get in my goal of donating four times this year).

I usually just add them to a mash with other roots and that works okay... or I'll add them to soups, but seriously, if I just use them for that sort of thing, it's going to take forever to get through them. Does anyone have any favorite recipes that might help us use up our overabundance of parsnips a bit faster?

Crossposted from my Livejournal.

I realized the other day (after having several people comment here and on Facebook) that I hadn't actually mentioned that rackham got a new job! ( For those who don't remember, he was laid off back in mid-September... )

Because he's been leaving so much earlier than he did with his old job, this last week he's been going to bed rather insanely early (okay, 10pm, which seems insanely early to me... and is quite a switch for him after all the late nights during his "time off"). And, strangely, my sleep schedule changed almost immediately... from going to bed around midnight to going to bed around 2am (I think it's because he's going to bed early enough that it's not triggering the "Oh yeah, it's late!" in my brain and I keep doing what I'm doing until I realize it's after 2:00). OTOH, I feel like I'm getting a lot more done than I have for the past few months (in part because Rackham has been great about helping out around the house... so things I usually do were getting done by him). So, we're still adjusting to the new normal, but it seems to be working out pretty well!

( On Friday, we stopped over by our old house... )

I'm feeling really happy that I didn't make the photo-a-day thing into one of my goals for the year. As you may have noticed, I didn't post any over the past few days... and that's because I haven't really had anything that seemed interesting enough. So, rather than just one more photo of the cats, I figured I'd just hold off until I did have something worth posting.

Crossposted from my Livejournal.

Spongecake. I think. It's very tasty, but the texture isn't as smooth as a regular cake. I don't think it would work very well with frosting, but suspect it would be fantastic with a glaze of some sort (lemon or pineapple, in particular) or perhaps just with some berries on it or both.

( Method to my mixture. )

( And here's the finished product. )

Final verdict: I would definitely make this one again!

Crossposted from my Livejournal.

Back around Thanksgiving, rackham and I picked up new phones... and they happened to each come with a Fitbit Flex. I slapped mine on my right wrist (where I usually wear a watch), dithered over which setting to use when it came to handedness and finally settled on "dominant" (since they're both dominant, so it shouldn't matter which hand it's on) and proceeded to go walking everywhere with Rackham, who was getting almost twice the step count I was (even though I have a shorter stride). ( Having worn pedometers in the past, I knew mine wasn't right. )

So, that was one bit of helpful surprise info... but I also started using the other function on the Fitbit: the sleep tracker. Wow. I probably like that more than I do the step counter! I've found that it generally takes me less than ten minutes to fall asleep after I put it into sleep mode (sometimes as little as five minutes, which completely shocked me). Also, I definitely do my best with about six and a half hours of sleep... and when I'm home, I wake up a lot less than I thought I did.

The other rather cool thing is that I was already using Runtastic on my phone to monitor my walking and hiking, then a month or so ago started using MyFitnessPal to monitor food and overall exercise... and all three (MyFitnessPal, Runtastic and Fitbit) will interface with each other! It makes things so easy to track! I find I'm doing more and enjoying it all a whole lot more, too.

( I've also found that it's not terribly difficult to reach 10,000 steps. )

Crossposted from my Livejournal.

I figured I hadn't posted a photo of the Trail in awhile, so it was about time I did! In actuality, I was originally thinking of driving down to Snoqualmie to get a photo of Snoqualmie Falls, but that didn't quite work out. We've been getting record rainfall around here lately and all the rivers are running quite high, meaning the Falls are pretty spectacular right now... I ran into a bit of a snag though, in that most of the roads between here and there were closed due to flooding today! (And I'm really not kidding, I could have gotten there, but only by going around the long way. There were at least three closures along the direct route that I know of.)

( So, instead I drove over to the Sammamish River Valley and went for a nice long walk along the trail there. )

Crossposted from my Livejournal.

We tried getting up early this morning and were only moderately successful... but we did manage to get out the door by 8:30, which means we made it down to start doing the Gig Harbor Cache Machine by about 10:00. For those not in the know, for a Cache Machine, basically someone spends a good bit of time selecting Geocaches in a particular area (in this case, the town of Gig Harbor, WA) and setting up a route to take you around to all of them in the least amount of time. Today's route had around 90 caches, of which we found 35, I think (we got a very late start compared to most people and actually stopped for lunch). There was a fair bit of hiking involved in today's adventure (I believe I'm up to nearly 17,000 steps) and we got to see a lot of cool things. In fact, I debated posting several photos... today's caches took us to some really neat stuff, including a gigantic, incredibly intricate wood carving (done from a huge old stump) and a gorgeous old stained glass window (made in Portland in about 1910).

In the end, though, ( the Tacoma Narrows Bridge won out. )

Oh! And an addendum to my post on goals yesterday... I forgot one!

8) Design, build and install a Little Free Library in the front yard. I've been wanting to do it since we moved in, so it needs to be done this year!

Crossposted from my Livejournal.

It was 12 years ago today that I finally bit the bullet, got an invite code from reginaspina (because they were still required at the time)and posted a lame first entry. It's changed a lot here over the years, but I still consider it my online home!

Now, onto the good stuff.

( 2014 Goals: The Followup )

And now... onto my ( Goals for 2015. )

Crossposted from my Livejournal.