Category Archives: Thoughts

Dirt Road People

Thoughts, WV, ,

We have started talking to some of the folks who live around our property in the woods and they are absolutely wonderful people.  One neighbor and I were talking about the view from atop our mountain.  He talked with a sparkle in his eye about when he first came to the ridge.  One view and he said that he felt like he could never leave.  It’s funny but that is pretty much the exact same reaction I had.  There is something about that ridge that leaves me in awe.

The view is incredible for sure but there is something else that makes it special.  Driving up there is a lesson in roads.  We start on interstate, do a little time on nice paved roads, then move on to a “paved” road, and finally dirt.  Our road is not dirty or sort of like dirt.  It is plain and simple a dirt road.  When I was a kid, there were lots of dirt roads around home.  Lots of people lived on some dirt road or another.  It seems like most of those dirt roads have since been paved and I think the pavement took a little something away from those roads.

Dirt roads are a different world.  Maybe it’s about being someplace simpler or maybe it’s reminiscent of old times.  Of course, maybe I just like playing in the dirt.  Either way, part of what makes our ridge special is that dusty old dirt road.

The neighbor and I were talking about how the world works and he said something along the lines of, “it doesn’t matter what happens ‘out there’.  We are just dirt road people and things just make sense up here.”  I am sure that is a paraphrase but it’s the absolute truth.  Regardless of what happens, “out there”, dirt roads just make a lot of things make sense.  While we are not full-blooded dirt road people yet, I like to think that a big part of my heart is up on our ridge and that I have a “dirt road person” inside of me ready to bloom!

Our woods

Adventure, Awesome, Family, Fun, Nature, Thoughts, WV, , , , ,

We spent our time at the property on Saturday walking in the woods.  Our plan was to walk more of the property line as we still haven’t seen the entire place.  We did hike the better part of the boundary and discovered all sorts of excellent things!  Except for the constant chatter of kids, the sounds of the woods were magnificent.  Actually, the chatter wasn’t so bad either as the kids were having fun.

When I was a kid, hiking in the woods was not high on my list of fun.  I played in the woods a lot but plain old hiking wasn’t good for me.  I was so surprised that Isaac and Abigail walked the entire 2 miles in the woods with only a small handful of complaints.  Incredible!

We did walk the better part of the lower edge of the place and saw all sorts of beautiful flowers and animal tracks of all sorts.  There were too many deer tracks to even keep track of but the kids tried to identify every print they came across.

That's Abigail's finger...she's the brave one

We spooked a turkey and saw the biggest centipede the kids had ever seen.  We found just a little bit of poison ivy and a lot of slippery moss.  Squirrels barked and birds announced our path through the woods.  All around us was noise but it felt like silence.  It was marvelous walking in our woods and this weekend was the reason we bought the place!  I am absolutely positive that my blood pressure is still lowered because of it!

Maple blooms

Bees, Nature, Thoughts, ,

Last weekend when we had our first false spring, the maples really showed their stuff and bloomed beautifully.  The bees were out and about and desperate for an opportunity to stretch their wings and look for a bit of fresh nectar to eat.  Many folks fon’t know that maples have floral blooms (I guess as opposed to fungal blooms?)  Blooms on a maple are super tiny and most people  just think they are the beginnings of leaves on the trees.  Anyhow, with the warm weather and blooming maples, the bees were out in full force.  Tons of bees were dragging back all sorts of pollen also.  Pollen is the protein source for bees and early protein usually means that the queen can start ramping up egg production as soon as the weather stays warm enough, long enough.

Some beekeepers find it necessary to add pollen patties about this time of year to prime the queen for early egg production.  Of course, early eggs mean early bees which usually makes for a strong colony when the honey flow begins in a few weeks.  With so many maples so close, we do not need to put pollen into the hives.  I have been into the hives this time of year and sometimes there is so much pollen that I worry the queen won’t have room to lay.

Look closely at all of these pics…the yellow stuff on the bees’ back legs is pollen!

Anyhow, the bees were out and doing their thing and I, as always, decided to hang out near the hives and stick my nose into the doorways so I could smell the smells of the hive.  Unlike a few weeks ago, I managed to avoid being stung.  I love summer plenty but I think I might just like this time of year more than any other time.  This is the time of year when stuff starts to come alive again…including me!

I thought the pics were especially nice so I hope you enjoy my bees (from afar) as much as I do!

Closed!

Awesome, Thoughts, WV,

On Monday we signed the closing papers for the piece of property we bought (yeehaw!  Past tense!)  We have bought a few houses and been involved in a few other real-estate related things.  This is the first time we have done a transaction with absolutely no realtor involved.  And you know what…the process is not scary at all!

The previous owner put out a post on a message board I read, saying that she had some land for sale.  I saw it and emailed her (it’s cool that I already knew her from blogland…just didn’t know she was selling property).  We went up to visit and walked around the property with her husband.  My kids hung with her as she made apple butter.  They got to stir the big kettle she had over the fire and play in her yard where the turkeys gobbled to offer their greetings (or were they asking us to rescue them?  Not sure on that one…)  We took home some apple cider and a few days later discussed the deal we wanted to make.

After some time, we got back together when it was time to finish the deal.  I wrote up a sales contract all by myself.  Since I wrote it, I was able to have a little fun.  For instance, when you write a contract on a house, you usually say that you want the blinds, lights and toilet seat to remain.  There wasn’t anything like that on the property but I did lay claim to any indian arrowheads that are currently on the property.  No one cared…it was legit!

We worked with a banker and a closing attorney and they handled their details without any hassle at all.  So, on Monday, we decided to meet the sellers at a mom-and-pop restaurant in the nearby town and have breakfast.  Have you ever done a real-estate deal where you get to hang out with the other party?  I don’t know why the transaction of real-estate always seems to be built up as a contentious mess where the buyer and seller have to be kept apart.  I know it isn’t always that way, and I know that some deals are ugly, but being pals and eating breakfast before the deal was just plain awesome!

Anyhow, after we signed the papers, the sellers gave us 2 dozen eggs, fresh from their chickens and we headed to the property (in a downpour) to walk around.  I grew up in the country and had forgotten what rural sounds like.  In the rain, as I walked into the woods, all I could hear was water running in a stream.  I could not hear a single car or radio or another single person…only the woods.  I found deer trails and thickets and some awesome places for a zip-line.  I think I found a spring and a few places for a treehouse.

Even in the rain, I could not have been happier.  This whole deal was so simple and pleasant and I already love the place.  The deal is closed and I can once again lay claim to being a (part) country boy…

Sign of a fine romance?

Fun, Thoughts,

I thought I was pretty hip and still somewhat aware of what is going on around the “cool scene” these days but apparently not.  I was walking through a local grocery store last night looking for a bag of potatoes or a new cheese slicer for Emily’s Valentine’s Day present when I walked past a sign.  I cruised right on by until my brain finally registered what my eyes saw.  Do you ever have that double take thing going on in your head?  So I circled back around and decided that this blog, ever a bastion of freedom, culture and honeybees, needed to report on the new face of romance for this year.

Behold:

Now this is a G-rated blog so I won’t say too much more.  Instead I will leave it to you folks to make of this what you will.  Instead, I will just remind you of some of the other interesting signs I have seen around.

I would also like to report that we will no longer have to just cut the cheese around our house…we can now slice the cheese!  Happy Valentine’s Day!

Tea for two

Thoughts

I was reading my friend Granny Sue’s blog the other day and she had a great poem about coffee and tea.  I drank a little coffee in college and now and then afterwards but never was I much of a fan of tea.  It was not something I could even choke down.  I am not sure what really got us started but Emily and I have been drinking a cup of English breakfast tea every evening the last month or so.  I have really our tea and we both really look forward to our new tradition.  I sort of feel all grown up and stuff.  Grownups drink tea in the evenings and grownups talk about important things while they drink their tea, right?

Has anyone else ever noticed that adults are really just old kids?  I surely do not feel any more mature or any more prepared to be an adult than I did when I was, oh…13 or so.  It’s sort of a funny realization I guess.  When I was a kid, I always held adults in high esteem…like it was a special privilege to make it to adulthood.  Surely adults got a special membership card or access to a secret library of adultiness.  Surely adults must be some special sort of creature, right?  I mean, adults drink tea.

Let’s see if the banker sees his shadow

Nature, Thoughts, WV

And now, ladies and gentlemen, is the time you have all been waiting for…the announcement of my big surprise.  Well, let me preface this by saying this is undoubtedly more exciting for me than for you.  But humor me, ok?

So, I bought the farm!  Wait, I mean I bought a farm.  Well, technically it’s not a farm…yet.  But I will be moving my bees there and it will be the beginning of a farm.  We are buying 30 acres of raw but beautiful land not too far from Charleston.  We’ve been in this process since the end of September and things are just now beginning to move forward.  Emily says she is curious whether the banker will see his shadow and retreat back into hiding or let us close on this place in 6 weeks!  Phil didn’t let me down this year and I have super high hopes for the banker too.  Actually, he is a great guy and the snafus are not his fault.  Anyhow, we seem to be moving forward very well now and I think we are rounding the corner to the finish.  I am sure that something could still go wrong, so please, find a bit of wood and knock on it for me!

We are actually buying the land from a former blog friend turned real-life friend, Granny Sue.  It turns out, she is cousins with one of the guys I work with. As you might guess, since this is raw land, we will be on it a lot doing whatever we can to make it functional for our use.  I see plenty of projects in the coming months/years.  That means lots of pictures (mainly to show the insurance agent when he asks how I got that car stuck up in that tree.)  So, here are some pics, pre-car-in-the-tree!

These pics don’t really do it justice…It’s WV land so it has hills and hollers and flats and bottoms.  This really is a beautiful state and I am proud to (almost) own some of its best parts!

I am pretty excited!  I suppose I might have hyped my surprise a bit.  No babies or anything like that for us…

On how I did surgeries

Thoughts

In my last post, I mentioned that I had performed surgery.  It’s a somewhat interesting tale that may make you wonder about me a little more than you already do.  Ok, so where to start?  I entered college pretty sure of myself.  I wanted a job that made great money and was intellectual and all that crap that high school seniors think is important.  I also had no interest whatsoever in dating or romance or ever having a girlfriend, so electrical engineering seemed right up my alley.

Within weeks, it was clear to me I had no idea what college was all about though.  I didn’t want to be an engineer and I didn’t mind the idea of a date now and then.  The first semester passed (and I shall speak no more of it here) and I knew I did not want to be an electrical engineer.

I met Emily during the first week of an honors philosophy class we both were taking (I also learned I did not want to be a philosopher).  We weren’t anything but acquaintances at that point.  I was minding my own business in the library during finals week, probably studying for that very class, when Emily and her friend came over and sat down.  Emily declared that I had studied enough and invited me to her dorm room for some hot chocolate.  I didn’t like hot chocolate but she was far too cute to let a little hot chocolate come between us.  It took 6 months of drinking hot chocolate before I finally worked up enough courage to kiss her.  Well before that, however, I knew I wanted to hang out with her more…so I decided to become a psychology major!  Yeah, if you know me, you know I don’t like people that much…not a smart move.  Anyhow, we graduated with degrees in psychology and prepared for graduate school.

We ended up at Western Kentucky University (we called it Western but they frown on that now) where I studied retinal physiology of zebrafish.  The neuroscience program was technically a part of the experimental psychology program which was technically a part of the  regular psychology program so I was legit.  I wrote software to do the data analysis and drive the data collection mechanisms which we used to study fish eyes.

I really thought I liked that a lot so after finishing at Western, we decided to head to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN.  I enrolled in the PhD program in neuroscience at Vanderbilt where I studied brain anatomy and physiology in rhesus monkeys (and other creatures to a lesser extent).  The work I was doing was pretty sexy and unusual at the time.  Most anatomy and physiology work requires a short future for the animals involved.  They are always treated humanely at Vanderbilt, but it required an extreme commitment from the animal subjects.  My lab, however, was unusual in that we did surgeries to implant sensors in the monkeys’ brains and then woke them back up and did various tasks on which we had trained them.  They had long and nearly normal (lab animal) lives .  While they did their tasks, we could collect data from the sensors.  Truly, it was amazing work!

As I mentioned, the sensors were implanted in the brains (and eyes…I did not mention that) of the monkeys.  As students, part of our training was learning how to do both types of surgeries on the animals.  We used a sterile, human-grade operating room with human-grade tools and all of the “stuff” a surgeon would use on people if ever there was a need to put eye and brain sensors in a human (remind me…there is another story there).  Monkeys, of course, have many similarities to humans so it truly was an amazing experience but incredibly terrifying.  Every surgery we did was so stressful and I didn’t even have to worry about a human life or any sort of litigation.  Ok, I digress.

I eventually decided I did not like monkeys any more than I liked people so I ended up leaving Vanderbilt and monkey research.  I did like writing the computer software that we used at Western and Vanderbilt to collect data and drive the machinery.  Upon leaving Vanderbilt, I enrolled at Middle Tennessee State University where I earned a masters degree in computer science.  I am much better suited to this gig…I get computers and they get me.  It really is where I needed to end up, even if it was through a roundabout path.  The coolest part is I still get to spend lots of time with Emily!

A day off

Thoughts,

Does it get much better than a day off in the middle of the week?  And now, don’t take this wrong, but I have the day off…alone!  I don’t want to have all of my days off alone, but every now and then it surely is nice!  So, what to do today?  I am currently in Panera eating way too much sweet breakfast food!  Panera is my favorite place to eat.  It’s not that it’s an amazing place or anything.  It’s good but it just seems to hit my palette just right…that and free wi-fi.

I have to take Abigail to the orthodontist this morning.  That will take an hour or two and I enjoy hanging with her as she waits.  She doesn’t get nervous but I am certain that she would rather be in school.  Now, Isaac, on the other hand….I think he would rather get teeth pulled than be in school.  It’s funny how different kids can be.  Emily and I are both the oldest in our families and were/are high-achievers (are you allowed to say that or is it arrogant?  Oh, like I care).  Usually younger kids are a bit more “flexible” (though both of our siblings are high achievers too).  With Isaac and Abigail, it’s the opposite.  Isaac wants to do as little as he possibly can to get by while Abigail cries if she misspells a single word on a homework paper.

It’s so nasty outside that I may just go home and work on the house after I return Abigail to school.  I think that is what I like most about days like these…I can do anything I want.  I suppose I am pretty thankful for my life too.  I am pretty thankful to have been given the ability and the opportunity to do many different things.  Related to the surprise that I mentioned yesterday, I was talking to a friend who is a part of the surprise.  We were talking about things that used to seem hard until we learned what “it” really required.  She said, “well it isn’t surgery”  I sort of laughed and replied that I had done surgery…several times in fact.  You may think I am full of it, but I have in fact performed several surgeries in real operating rooms with real anesthesia and sterile instruments, etc.  You’ll have to wait for another day to hear that story though.  Pique your interest any?  I hope so!  See you tomorrow.  I have goofing off to do today!

It’s been busy…but with what?

Thoughts,

We have been pretty sketchy around here lately.  I haven’t found myself into any interesting projects.  I haven’t gone anywhere too unusual or done anything interesting.  I haven’t even licked a bell in weeks.  I can’t figure out what we have been doing actually.  Work is pretty typical.  We have started writing iPhone apps which has been interesting.  I have been writing computer programs for quite awhile but I have to tell you, as polished as Apple’s final products are, their software development tools are an atrocity!  That’s all I have to say about that…  But what else have we been doing?  The kids are into some things but not a crazy amount of stuff.  Oh well…

We have been working on something else since the end of September too.  Well, really we have been mostly waiting since the end of September.  I still want credit though as I have been stressing and irritated through a large part of that time trying to make things happen.  I can’t share any details yet, but when it happens (and it appears that it will happen soon), I will have tons to write about and I am SOOOOOO excited!  Piqued your interest any?  I hope so…

Though I typically hate winter, I noticed that the only saving grace of the season is once again available in stores…Cadbury eggs make life worth living in the winter.  This is one time when I am glad marketing folks jump the gun on holiday preparations.  I also like Reese’s peanut butter eggs.  I would take a picture, but…well….I already ate my peanut butter egg.  Anyhow, does it get any better than this?

The magical medicinal magnificent Cadbury cream egg!

There is not too much else going on friends.  We are still alive here in West-by-God-Virginia and are diligently preparing for the next big mess of snow and ice and what-not-signs-of-the-apocalypse.  We got milk and eggs and bread last night (so we can make french toast if we get trapped in our house, of course) so we will make it through!  I hope all is well in your neck of the woods!  And don’t forget…Ground Hog Day is only a week away!