Bathrooms (cont.)

Bathroom Construction Progress

Aug 4, 2006 - 15 Photos

The work continues. Cabinets are in. The walls are ready for painting. Maybe one more week?

Burning River

Burning River Festival - 8/12/06

Aug 17, 2006 - 5 Photos

Saturday Nicki and I went to the Burning River Festival on Whiskey Island not very far from downtown Cleveland and on the shore of Lake Erie. There were a lot of environmentally friendly exhibits. But we spent the most time talking to an eagle from the Cleveland Natural History Museum. Since we were so close to Cleveland we did dinner at the Great Lakes Brewing Company - one of our favorites. Really nice afternoon and evening. Nice to get away.

Bathrooms (cont.)

Bathroom Construction Progress

Aug 4, 2006 - 9 Photos

Keeping everyone up-to-date on the bathroom construction. I've added a few photos showing what has been done over the past week. The good thing is that I'm getting into a good getting-up-for-school routine. That was okay last week as I was having my tech workshops starting at 8:00 AM. And this week I'll have an opportunity to get a little ahead with the school tech work as I'll be forced to rise and shine earlier than I would have voluntarily chosen. Even Nicki is starting to get weary of trips to Home Depot and Lowes - closed them both down last Thursday evening. They do stay open until 10:00 PM in case you need to know.

Eagle

Old Woman Creek

Aug 2, 2006 - 12 Photos

Yup, that's an eagle. One of several Nicki and I observed at the Old Woman Creek National Estuarine Research Reserv. For the fuller story go to Kayaking Across America or for the rest of the photos click on the eagle above.

Bathroom Renovation Progress

Bathroom Construction Progress

Aug 4, 2006 - 4 Photos

Work has begun on two of our bathrooms. I'm experimenting with a new photo service by Google (Picasa for Macs). Just click on the above photo to take you to an album of bathroom photos. The photo above shows Sam inspecting the work. She is looking at a hole in the floor where the linen closet once was. She can see the stairway going to the floor below. The photo is better in the album. I think the dogs are a bit perplexed by this whole process. It doesn't disturb their nap schedule but I don't think they see the sense in events.

Westward Trip Photos

The rigorous selection process is complete. To see the complete collection of 66 photos (only 3.3% of the total taken) go to johnmemmott.com and look for the appropriate links. Included are Mesa Verde National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Zion National Park, Four Corners, Best Friends Animal Society Sanctuary, Glen Canyon Dam, Antelope Canyon, Navajo Bridge, wild animals, domesticated humans, and other attractions. It's not Ohio.

Westward Trip

So many photos - so little time. Nicki and I packed four cameras (we only really used three of them) and took almost 2,000 photos - more than one per mile on the driving part of our trip through Colorado, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada. We did some culling on the airplane ride home and have the total down to just over 900. We'll do an even more rigorous selection process and post the finalists on johnmemmott.com soon - watch for the announcement. We've already decided that for the next trip we need to take the video camera and mount it on the dashboard.

Storm Damage

Today we had a very quick wind and thunderstorm that brought down a branch on one of our backyard trees - narrowly missing our power and internet lines and dogyard fence. Horizontal rain and some small hail. Here’s the pile of branches - hopefully the city will pick them up quickly. A house just down the street had their power line pulled down and we lost electricity for a while. Our elder dog is getting very sensitive to storms and we could tell something was coming during the night - six hours ahead of the actual storm.

Summertime

Our "lazy" summer schedule always begins with watching the wildlife eat breakfast while we eat breakfast. Our birdfeeders attract a variety of animals - lots of birds, squirrels, chipmunks, and rabbits of course. We suspect a different variey of smelly animals comes out at night but so far this year we haven't actually encountered any - the dogs have reported intruders but we haven't seen them.

And there is the kayaking which brings us close to a wilder variety. But that's a different story and once gain you should check Kayaking Across America. We haven't been out as much as we'd like due to housecleaning and organizing, school tech work, and variable weather.

Alum(whatever) Weekend

If you want the story of the orange shoes try my my sister's blog. She tells that story much better. This was a good weekend with a quick audio-visual setup for Mark's presentation, a good LVCS alumni dinner that followed the usual pattern, talking by candlelight with wine on the porch into the late evening, breakfast at Dina's Sunday morning, and driving back to Oberlin with a kayaking stop on the Rocky River.