Category Archives: WV

Peppermint patty day!

WV

Holy cow is it ever windy today!  As I write this, it is still dark out which means it is normally quiet.  Today though, the wind is howling through our doors and making an incredible racket.  It almost sounds like a buzz-saw running outside.

I understand that we are to have gusts as high as 40 mph today and our hilltop gets every bit of that.  We are the next mountaintop over from the airport where they measure those sorts of things.  It’s funny but our trees show the wear from the years of being on this windy hilltop too.

I wish it was that warm outside!

I tried to take Ginny out but she would have nothing to do with that!  I guess she’ll cross her legs all day!  Anyhow, when I step out into wind like that, I always think of that commercial that played when I was a kid…”When I take a bite out of a York Peppermint Patty…”  Today is going to be a York Peppermint Patty sort of day!

Boots!

Adventure, Nature, WV, ,

We are soon to be country folk.  We’ll retain our city-slicker-ness during the week as we both work in the city.  But come the weekend, we are putting on our boots and headed to the woods!  Being city-slickers, we didn’t have proper boots.  How can we be country folk without boots?

Oh no, that cannot abide!  I got new boots last week so we would not be wet-footed-greenhorns!  I was a bit torn about what style of boot I needed.  I have steel-toed rubber boots and I have cowboy-esqe boots.  I have boots with fluffy insides and I have boots with sparkles.  Well, no I don’t.  Anyhow, I figure that running shoes would not work in the woods and I plan to be in the woods and in the fields and generally outside on this property!

Emily actually got her boots at the beginning of winter.  I think she looks hot in her boots.  They are water-proof and snake-proof and termite-proof.  The are so-many-things-proof that I decided to get an identical pair…only mine were half off!  Anyhow, our boots are identical…even in size!

We are ready now.  I got my boots and I got my canvas coat and I got an itchin’ to get outside and enjoy…being outside!  My boots have much work to do in the coming few months!  I have high hopes for these boots.  I am offering up a challenge to my boots.  They gotta be tough.  They gotta be rough.  They gotta be awesome!  Don’t make me break out my sparkley boots!

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…

The call came at 5:15

Thoughts, WV, ,

That’s 5:15 in the morning.  Or maybe it was even a tad bit earlier.  I am not sure.  You see, I was ASLEEP!  Oh, I complain and all but I am thankful that the school system uses an automated system to call everyone when school is cancelled.  We live in the armpit where WV, KY and OH all join so if we had to watch the scrolling thing on tv, we end up waiting a long time for them to roll back around to WV schools.  Did you like how I used armpit there?  I am not sure how else to describe it.  Let’s just say that border area is a really nice smelling, freshly cleaned (and maybe even shaved) armpit.  Maybe like Sandra Bullock’s armpit or something.  Anyhow, it’s a weird boundary so everyone in all three states watches the same tv stations waiting to see if their school is cancelled.

Ok, back to the call…the call came in at 5:15ish.  Emily normally gets up at 5:30 so she wasn’t too messed up by the call.   I tend to get up an hour later.  It works well for us.  Today, however, when she has the chance to go back to bed, she kept bugging me to haul my butt out of bed early and get out the door so she could go back to sleep.  Snow days for me mean that I get up earlier than normal.

Of course, Abigail was up (because the child never sleeps in) so it was sweet when I was getting ready to walk out the door.  She grabbed onto me and said, “do you have to go to work?  Don’t you get a snow day?”  She really didn’t want to let me go.  That’s pretty sweet and almost worth the pain of being run out of the house early by my wife.

We’re having a pretty good snow right now but I suspect we are nothing compared to NYC and Boston.  Once again, I am glad I live in West-by-God-Virginia!

Guns…and dogs…and trucks

Adventure, Family, Fun, WV, , ,

Sounds like a country song doesn’t it?  You know, we lived in Nashville for 10 years or so and came away from the experience with a real interest in country music.  We like most sorts of music really, but country was only added after being around it for so long.

Anyhow, back to the point – guns.  The other two things came right out of my stream of consciousness.  Sometimes I get going on something and I can only tell I have gone off on a goose chase when I see others’ eyes glaze over.  It’s quite maddening really.  See, there I go again – off on a tangent.  So, guns…Isaac got a .22 rifle from Santa (sounds like a country Santa doesn’t it?)  He had been asking for a pellet gun but Santa figured he would outgrow that pretty quickly.  I know some folks might find it horrifying that Santa brought my son a gun but we are in WV and it is a part of the culture around these parts.  And besides that, I grew up in a similar culture so we’ll absolutely know how to properly use and care for a gun.  Rats, another tangent.

Last weekend we found a break in the weather and headed to the rifle range in Kanawha State Forest.  I had always heard that a person should not shoot there unless they are pretty well drunk, and it’s been a long time since I was there.  We took a chance though and found it in full use and very well managed by the folks who were shooting (i.e. it is not managed by anyone other than whoever happens to be shooting).  Everyone did a great job and we had a great time shooting.

We shot some at a paper target but really enjoyed the spinner target Isaac also got from Santa.  It was a lot of fun…until Isaac shot it right at the pivot point and filled the fulcrum point with lead – heck of a shot really.  Anyhow, Isaac now has his first gun and we had a great time shooting together!

Don’t jump! Just fly!

Fun, WV,

A few weeks ago, right before Thanksgiving, we had a paper airplane flying contest from the roof of our building.  We have done this a few years now and I, of course, aways win.  Well, I won this year anyhow!  That may seem like a small feat (considering how awesome I am) but this year’s competition was stiff.

My entries...

You see, it’s all about the rules.  Here are the rules:

<crickets chirping>

Simple, see?  It’s all about the rules.  I had several entries (which is well within the rules…see above).  One guy shot his plane from a paintball gun (and though appearing impressive, it can only be described as fail).  One guy threw a box top as far as he could.  Several folks had “engineered” planes and several had old fashioned detention-earning planes.

We set up a windsock so that participants could properly prepare for field conditions.  Let me tell you, atop our building, it was windy!  Anyhow, as usual, several planes ended up in the nearby trees while others crashed immediately into the building.  Like a rocket, my plane (well, one of the four) just eased out of the gate and cruised onto an impressive victory…it was effortless!

So, I also produced some prizes for various categories as well.   Windshield washer fluid went to the plane that cleaned up (except I could not give the prize to myself).   The…uh…plane with the most fail got milkduds.  The plane that opened up a can of whooping on others got  matching pair of can openers.  Not only do the planes make for a lot of fun, I also get to heap on a huge pile of trash-talk.  Just as a precaution, I always stand back plenty far from the edge.  I’d hate to think my fellow fliers might want to test the effects of gravity on the mouthy one of the bunch…

We took a walk

Family, Nature, WV,

As a family, we’ve been walking in the woods lately.  There may be more to say about that later, but for now, I have just enjoyed being outside and seeing what we can see.  Abigail and I took a walk together the other day.  We sort of just roamed around and skipped rocks in the river and talked and saw all sorts of stuff.  Abigail was super interested in seeing the heavy machinery at one place we were walking, but at the same time, she was terrified it would be illegal to get near it (and maybe it was?)

Isaac spooked a deer right beside him on one walk.  It was only a few feet from him in a hay field and I think he wanted to chase it down just to chat.  I suspect he was excited enough that he might have kept up for awhile.  Outside stuff is just amazing, especially when you’ve been away from it for awhile.  We saw fish and chestnuts and spiders and trees that were probably larger than any the kids have ever seen before.

Abigail was so into this...she wanted to carry it home but I thought Emily might not appreciate our wonder

My work has been stressful lately, but these walks have been so refreshing.  I need to escape technology and it doesn’t get any better than walking in the woods with the family!

Purple fingers

Canning, Food, Nature, WV, ,

It seems like this time of year finds our fingers all sorts of different colors. It really just depends on what we’re picking at the time. Last night was no different really. A co-worker of Emily’s has a bunch of grapes growing at her house. She has picked a ton and canned/preserved them every way she knows how. That’s where we come in. The grapes are still plentiful so she gave us a bunch of them…and there are more to pick so we are hoping to be able to go and harvest a bunch more. It’s hard to beat real concord grapes I think!

this is just a portion!

We cleaned them last night and are making grape jelly with the ones we have now. Do you remember when you were a kid and even the store bought grape jelly had flavor? I have tried some recently and it seems like the grape jelly is completely without flavor. I guess it’s like everything – homemade is really hard to beat. But gee whiz, the store stuff isn’t even fit for slug bait!

Anyhow, does anyone else gather grapes? What do you do with them? I remember my Mom and Grandma canning grape juice but they always left whole grapes in the jars. It freaked me out because I could have sworn they canned eyeballs!  Oh, and don’t get me started on when they canned whole tomatoes…eeek!  Anyone make raisins or juice or wine? I’ve nibbled on wild grapes but does anyone do anything more specific with them?  I’d love to know what options I may have!

Already?

Family, WV,

Summer is officially over…well, unofficially I guess, but you get what I mean.  School starts today and I am not at all ready.  And just who on Earth starts school on a Friday?  Our county, that’s who.  It’s not that I need the kids to enjoy the freedom of summer…they live under a dictatorship anyhow.  No, it’s that the fight to get homework done starts tonight.

But wait, this isn’t about me is it?  OF COURSE IT IS!  This is my blog after all!  Well, ok, I am sad a little too because it means my kids are a bit older which means I am a bit older.  It means life is changing which is cool mostly, but also a little scary <sniff, sniff/>.

(click above to play…if that doesn’t work on your machine, try this link)

(click above to play…if that doesn’t work on your machine, try this link)

Ok, man up.  I asked the kids some questions about starting school, just like last year.  I love this part!

To the river gods

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

Last weekend we went canoeing with the kids and Emily’s aunt and uncle.  The Little Coal river is near where we all live so it is convenient and really, a pretty great river for canoeing.  Like most of the East, we have been hot and dry for quite awhile so I had pretty low expectations about the quality of the water on the trip.  I grew up in NW PA near the beginning of the Allegheny river.  It is pretty shallow and slow there so I have plenty of experience in carrying a canoe through shallow water.  I didn’t really want to carry a canoe full of my offspring over rocks and downed trees.

We threw our canoes in (actually, the kayak started down the river without us) and headed out.  The water was perfect!  My shallow-water-eyes were just flat out wrong.  There were spots that weren’t deep but in every case, there was a ton of room to navigate the river anywhere we wanted!  The last time we went on this river, the water was raging.  We absolutely could not  get out of the boats (and truth be told, probably shouldn’t have even been in the boats) and our trip down the river was speedy.  This time, we got to really enjoy the river!

There were a few “rapids” that we got to ride.  I wasn’t sure whether the kids would enjoy it but they laughed and Isaac yelled, “Caribou!” at the top of his lungs (yeah, it’s a 4th/5th grade boy thing I think).  We stopped at the end of several of the rapids and walked back up to ride down in the rapids sans boat.  Holy mackerel that was fun!  I had to hold on to the kids the first few times because they were wary, but in no time, they were itching to go on their own…we just had to catch them at the bottom!

At one point, we saw a few cassette tapes in the water.  I suspect that someones house or camp was flooded at some point as no one would just dump old Motley Crue cassettes.  Anyhow, the kids saw them and asked what they were…that’s right, my kids had no idea what a cassette tape was or why people would use them instead of cds or dvds.  That was a bit shocking to me but we had a great conversation about how life was when I was a kid (and that wasn’t super long ago…I can’t imagine if they had the conversation with my 96 year old Grandpa!)  I enjoyed telling them about sleeping in the back of the station wagon on trips and how our legs would burn and stick to the plastic seats…how we didn’t have A/C in the house  or cars and no cell phones or video games.  Abigail asked me, “How did you make it through?”  HA!  And our lives were still pretty easy compared to people before us!

Anyhow, it didn’t take long for Diva…I mean Abigail…to get tired.  She propped back in the kayak and toured the rest of the river “princess style”.  We ate lunch on the river and laughed and had a great time not worrying about a thing.  Our only donation to the river gods was one pair of old sunglasses.  They were easily satisfied with our sacrifice.  I think the river was just what we needed…and I can’t wait to go again!

Video 1 Video 2 Video 3 Video 4

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