Jarett loves Eclipse. Unfortunately for him, but fortunately for the cat, the feeling is not reciprocated. When Eclipse is around, the whole world stops so that Jarett can observe and talk to the cat. Sometimes we can convince the two to play together.

Movies: Part Dos

full length movie

Do forgive the unbelievable number of videos and the lack of history on them. They're in chronological order. I figure they speak for themselves, and I'm doin' darn good to get them posted at all. Ah, the progress.

**Stay tuned, folks; another post with another half dozen videos soon to follow!

Spring Creek

It has been quite warm up here. The temperatures and humidity levels have been comparable to Ga. We decided that Jarett was finally old enough, and it was hot enough outside, to make a "tubing" trip down Spring Creek. We live less than a mile from the park, so we packed up the Jeep and headed for the water. Jarett got a free ride while we had to run after him and keep him from floating away. He had a great time for about 30-40 minutes, then we came home and he was completely worn out.

Getting ready for the float trip.

Just hanging out.

Showing off the thunder thighs.

Heading for the rapids.

Floating off into the sunset.

Great memories.

Shuai Ge

Chinese lesson: shuai ge (pronounced sh-why guh) means "handsome guy." Here's ours as of late:

One man's trash, another man's smoker

I was sitting at work one day about a week ago, thinking about how much I love meat. I thought about how great it would be to get a smoker so that I could make some really tasty meat. I had tried to convince Amber many times to let me buy one, but we never really had the money for it. I realized that there were several 5 gallon solvent cans sitting by one of the doors at work. They had been there for a couple of years and I figured nobody would miss them. They were about the size of a smoker, too, so I thought I'd try my hand at making my own. I drew up some plans and talked to a buddy at work about it and we decided that it should work. I grabbed a couple of the cans and went home. After cleaning them, I cut the tops out of the cans and cut the bottom off of one. When stacked, they formed a nice smoke chamber. I originally thought that I would fashion a tray for charcoal and all of the other things I would need, but in the end I got lazy and decided that propane was the fuel of choice. Once stacked and loaded, five hours later we had a smoked chicken. Amber agreed that it was "real good." An approving vote. Today we had some friends over and put the smoker to the ultimate test: RIBS. They were even better than the chicken. I had moved the smoker onto a small propane stove to smoke the ribs, rather than on the side of the grill which I did with the chicken. As we cleaned up tonight I discovered a perfect circle of charred grass under the smoker, but I'll deal with it to have ribs that good.

Camden da Man

After buying some lovely impatiens on Saturday, I came home to plant them around our mailbox and realized my pots were all busted up. Nice. My thoughtful and ever-inventive hubby offered to make me a little raised bed around the mailbox. After a surprisingly short amount of time, a little hack-sawing, digging, leveling, drilling, and an awful lot of sweating, it was done. To celebrate, we went out and bought vincas to plant in it. They look so happy! (The impatiens went in the planter boxes on the patio.)