My Remarkable-Unremarkable Weekend - Part 6

So Sunday rolled around and I didn't really want to leave. The garden was looking mighty pretty and lush. I made rice krispie treats and we tried out this recipe I found online for making the Friday's Jack Daniel's Glaze. Boy, was that recipe spot on. Our steaks were yummy. Unfortunately it was still unGodly humid outside, so we had to eat in the comfort of the airconditioned kitchen, but it did start to thunder and rain. It got a wee bit cooler.


Our neighbor from down the street moved out about a month ago. The new owner hasn't moved in permanently yet, so I go over occasionally to check on the wildlife in the pond. This little frog just floated there, staring at me, not really giving a hoot how close I got to him with my camera.


Then I fed the koi and they were happy. They've gotten really big, and not one of them has died since last year.


Then, as the BF and I were on the way back to NYC, we looked out the window and saw a kick-ass sunset.


What a great weekend.

My Remarkable-Unremarkable Weekend - Part 5

So after we left the goosepond, the BF and I just drove around for a while. The sky was looking mighty pretty, so I took a pic.


I was enjoying myself, even though there's no air-conditioning in the jeep right now. At least it was shady, and the windows were open and the wind was in my hair. I had new rocks and fossils, and was with my honey bun. Life's good.


Then I saw a cow. I lurve cows, because from cows comes cheese, and I loooooooove cheese. My favorite is mozzarella, which, granted, is supposed to come from buffalo, but I'm just such a fan of dairy, despite the fact that I'm completely lactose intolerant. The most tasty things are well worth the resultant gas, I say.


We went by the wake-board pond and lo! there be the geese who were conspicuously absent from the goosepond. All with fam in tow. Very sweet.


And then the sky got even prettier.

My Remarkable-Unremarkable Weekend - Part 4

The goosepond wasn't all jumping bugs and cringing flight. There was also the actual goosepond itself. Granted, it was temporarily goose-free, but that's because the goose family had gone out for dinner at a nearby wake-boarding pond. I still thought the trees reflected in the lake were pretty.



Here's me looking all ragged because on Saturday it was hot...damn hot. I was all sweaty and nasty because not only was it damn hot, it was also damn humid. I think it was somewhere in the vicinity of 93 degrees, and this is after we'd been walking around Museum Village all morning.


And here's another picture of the walkway,because I love how it looks. This is really one of my favorite places near the country house.

My Remarkable-Unremarkable Weekend - Part 3

After the rock and mineral show the BF and I went to nearby Chester, NY to the Goosepond. Here's the walkway. Pretty, right?



But then, we were suddenly attacked by a horde of jumping bugs. They were everywhere. Everywhere. I cannot reiterate EVERYWHERE enough. There was cringing.


And here's the little bugger himself. Only about a quarter inch long, but they numbered in the thousands. Honestly. And they could JUMP.


Here's a different kind of bug that we saw there that didn't scare us quite so much. I like bees 'cause I lurve honey.


As we were leaving, we were discussing the attack of the jumping bugs. To illustrate a point, the BF pretended to jump like one of the bugs. There was much laughter.

My Remarkable-Unremarkable Weekend - Part 2

On Saturday, BF and I started our day by going to one of the cutest little places called Museum Village. It's one of those history-immersion places. Crazy cute. They were having a rock and mineral show. I lurve rocks and minerals. I collect them. I will not say how much money I've spent on hunks of rock, but suffice it to say that I could have paid off a nice little chunk of my student loan.

Anyhoo...

This little beauty we got there is called Metacanthina and is a fossil from the Davonian Epoch (420 - 395 million years ago). Cute, no? It's a little ocean-critter. We named it Ernie.


Here's a closeup of it where you can see the facets in its eyeballs.


And this is a piece of Cactus Quartz. It's about the size of my fist, and although you can't see it very clearly in this picture, it's really sparkly. I love sparkly.


I also got a nice piece of peacock ore, a almandine garnet in the matrix and an almandine garnet not in matrix, a piece of white-smoke hydrothermal vent calcification and a piece of road ore that happened to have a couple calcite cubes growing in it. All in all a really good day.

My Remarkable-Unremarkable Weekend - Part 1

So, this weekend was really nice. It was disgustingly hot, and various annoying things happened, but overall, it was really pleasant. So I've decided to do a six-part photo-journal chronicling my remarkable-unremarkable weekend. It all begins and ends with a sunset.



As we're rolling along, we enter the nasty-ass marshlands of New Jersey, and the train rumbles to a stop. Nothing to worry about, I figure, seeing as at least once a day on the NYC subway the trains rumble to a stop. I figure we'll be moving in just a minute. I look out the window and take another pic.


A couple minutes later the conductor comes on the loudspeaker and says the engine has completely shut down and that he had his engineers working on it and hopefully we'd be up and running in a couple minutes. Of course there are many loud groans on the train as well as many snarky, smart-ass comments from the small group of stock-brokers who'd met over beers at the bar and who had, of course, become instant BFF's and were ass-over-tea-kettle. I took another pic.


The conductor came back over the loud speaker and said there was no way the engine was going to get fixed, and that he'd radioed in to his supervisors back at Secaucus Junction and that they were sending out a rescue engine to tow us back to the station where they'd have "alternate equipment" waiting for us. I took another pic.


A half hour later the "rescue engine" arrived and took a good ten minutes to couple up to our train. The stock-brokers had by this point threatened to riot and to take hostages. They were calling it the e-train, because it'd get to its destination e-ventually. They thought they were hilarious.

We got to Salisbury Mills an hour after we were scheduled to arrive. I was cranky.

Vanessa's Rules by Which to Live: Rule #4

What to do when your immediate supervisor is a passive aggressive spawn of hell:

Pretend their subtly implied insults don't exist. Let them go right over your head. Just smile dumbly, nod, and go about your business. Not only will this make you look good to the Head Honcho, but it will infuriate your immediate supervisor, all while not once providing them any ammunition with which to either write you up or terminate you.

It won't be until after you've usurped their control of the office that they'll realize you're not a dim halfwit, but an evil genius.