Life of Boomer
Amber, Zia and her mom went to Portland this week. So for 5 days it was just me and Lincoln inside because it was too hot to go outside. Not much happened around here really.
So, we'll begin this blog with a Boomer photolog. Really you can break the subjects of blogs down pretty quickly. If you're not blogging about your kids, you're blogging about your pets. If you're not blogging about your pets, you're blogging about your hobbies. If you're not blogging about your hobbies, you're probably blogging about a lot of crap no one cares about. Anyway, this week Boomer did some sleeping. In a variety of positions.
Sometimes he falls out of his box while he's sleeping.
Sometimes he loses his dignity while sleeping.
Actually, he loses his dignity every time he sleeps.
Every once in awhile he'll wake up long enough to kill something. This time he killed a small rabbit. He was happily dragging it between his legs like a lion to his lair (the flower bed) when we found him.
The rabbit was promptly dissected in the name of science. The rabbit ate clover very previous to his death, by the way.
While Zia and Amber were gone Lincoln played in his pool a lot.
And Batman came to visit at least once.
And, uh, we saw this snake in the firepit. I think it was some kind of garter snake but I don't know.
OK, enough boring stuff. Zia and Amber had fun in Portland and Zia took 150 pictures. Mostly of flowers she saw. Here are some of my favorite pictures off her camera.
Back at home, here's Zia's rodeo outfit. We managed to avoid all rodeo activity this year but Zia did get to wear her get-up to see Rodney Atkins in concert. I know, I didn't know who he was either. Heh.
While Zia and Amber were gone I finished a small painting. I did it fast and eliminated a lot of the detail work I usually do. Instead I just did flat washes. Most people probably couldn't tell the difference I suppose. It kills me to do it that way but it's the difference between 10 hours and 40 hours.
Fourth of July
OK, I haven't checked Facebook in over 24 hours. Amber and I were considering deleting our accounts but I think if I just take it off my bookmarks I won't look at it anymore. It's just become too much of a pointless, masturbatory time drain. I have pretty much everyone on my account hidden anyway (if I didn't care what you were doing in high school do I care what you're doing now?) - if you're reading this you're probably one of the few people that I don't have hidden on Facebook. So, I guess I will keep the account because people do email me on it sometimes, but otherwise...I won't be commenting on what you had for lunch or what movie you saw last night quite as often.
So, speaking of pointless, masturbatory time drains, on with the blog.
We had a nice Fourth of July. Zia spent the week with my parents and after wearing them out, they brought her back down to us. She takes hundreds of pictures on her camera and most of them are pretty good, but it takes time to sort through them all and she wants prints of almost everything (including the series of close-up images of her hair tiers). Here are a few of her pictures.
My parents and I went for a hike up to the Black Mountain fire lookout, one of three fire lookouts still in existence in the Bighorns. It was about the right length hike, even though climbing up wore us out a bit. The road to the trailhead was pretty sketchy thanks to a month of rains.
It was cold and rainy and foggy as we walked up. It cleared up a bit, but never entirely.
You can see the lookout on top of the granite stacks here.
Questionable bridge to the lookout.
The outhouse has a nice view.
We had dinner at Amber's parents'. In this picture it sort of looks like Amber is on fire.
I bought a lot of fireworks, sometimes based almost solely on the names. Giant Octopus and Death Trap were two examples. How can you pass up those?
Ian demonstrates how not to launch bottle rockets (he had a hood to protect him).
Lincoln was scared of the fireworks at first but slowly accepted them. The first one is of him waving his hands around in panic. But once he put on his special goggles (he's been taking naps with these lately), he was OK.
We bought mortar shells again this year. The Sky Plasma ones were good like last year, but we also shot some others called Golden Dragons. They were pretty but they didn't go up very high before exploding in gigantic bursts. We rained fiery debris down on the house and trees for 2 hours with those - luckily nothing started on fire. All my pictures were crap.
Sparkler mayhem (always the most dangerous part of the evening).
Amber worked yesterday but we went to the Tongue River Reservoir in Montana briefly. It looks a lot like a reservoir. The water was very high. There were picnic tables underwater.
So, there you go! These blogs always come to a screeching halt. Heh.
End of June
Here is a quick update before you have to look at pictures of all the fireworks I'm going to blow up next weekend.
It's going to be 100 degree in Ranchester today. Summer is here and we had to turn on the air conditioner (we didn't turn it on at all last year). There are lots of mosquitos outside, and, unrelatedly, the ranchers around us were finally able to cut their hay after a month of rain.
We went and cut some wood again last weekend. There is a slight conflict of interest, however, because we have to find a place where the kids can play and I can cut wood. Which usually means I have to haul the wood a lot farther than would be good. But at least the kids had fun.
Lincoln giving himself giardia, I'm sure.
Lincolm making a bridge.
And Lincoln making a "broken" bridge.
The hot weather is bringing out all the creepy crawlies. This weekend Amber killed the first rattlesnake we've seen here (alive anyway). It tried to attack her car but the car won. Rattlesnakes in Wyoming are killed on sight, as they are in a lot of places. I guess anything that can kill your children doesn't last too long. It doesn't help that they are fat and mean and ugly. This is a Northern Prairie Rattlesnake. The kids were fascinated by the fact that it was still shaking its tail even though it was "dead."
Here's a little preview of next weekend. The greatest holiday of the year!
I've been meaning to add a scan of this for months, but keep forgetting. Here is the last painting I finished, I think in May. Nothing great. Trying to stay in practice I guess.
Oh, I drove Amber's grandma and Zia to Billings yesterday and on the way home an accident happened on the interstate in front of me. I saw a big plume of dust over a little rise in the road and then came up on a trailer and an SUV that had rolled into the median. People were jumping out of their cars and trying to get into the truck through the sunroof. It was too hot to get out of the car so I just kept going. I took a picture though, like a good rubbernecker. Weird when you see something happen that will be an event that person will always remember, maybe even an event that was life-changing.
That's about it for this week. Zia is staying with her grandma so it is a little quieter today, but I will have to try and find ways to entertain Lincoln when it's this hot. I've been working on a lot of new letterboxes, but I'm starting to burn out a little on that, so I guess it's time to move on for the summer.
