Now with more eagles.

Lou expressed some concern that the eagles being fed are being habituated to being fed by humans, and thus mucking about with the natural order...

I was initially concerned with that myself, but after seeing it in person, I don't think it's much of an issue.

The feeding lasts only a few minutes, no bird gets enough food for a full meal, much less enough to keep him alive. It's a snack. The birds all look healthy and well-fed, and none of them are being fed enough that when this woman doesn't show up they will be in trouble.

In other news, it's so cold our snow has frost. Hoarfrost, that is.

It is supposed to warm up to 3 degrees by tomorrow, and by Saturday it is supposed to hit 20. Zach leaves Friday to head back to Tucson. It has been too cold most of Christmas break for us to go do stuff outside -- skiing and tubing are not fun in subzero weather.

The hoarfrost on everything is really thick, because it has been too cold to even begin to melt, except for at the tops of trees that have sunlight hitting them all day, like in this picture along Ship Creek. Ship Creek is also much more frozen over than it is when it is not so damn cold out.

Willow trees look really cool with the frost covering them:

Sunday. Cold and Cool.

The cold part...



The cool part...



Sundays in the winter a woman feeds bald eagles in the VFW parking lot in Eagle River. The eagles start showing up about five minutes before she pulls up, opens the back of her Jeep, and starts tossing out meat scraps.



It's amazing. There were probably 30 eagles there today, all flying around waiting for their chance to get some meat. It reminded me of seagulls around a fishing trawler. Others were hanging out in the trees, waiting.



And bald eagles are huge. Amazing. We were about twenty feet from them, they flew almost right over us. So completely cool. (And cold. We were standing outside in twenty below weather. Even the eagles couldn't completely distract us from how cold it was.)









This is a different species of eagle, I think, but I don't know what kind of eagle it is.



Also, Zachary asked me to mention that Jessica is a terrrrible texter. I don't know what this means. Sorry, Jessica.

2008 parto tres.

Yes I am a member of the Spanish speaking population who wing it by tossing the random "O" on the end of words I don't know.

Like this...Si, Yo amo membero de la espanol populationo...

You get the general idea. Really I think I should move to a place where people don't speak English. It would be very much less embarrassing. Except when I wipe out. I was in Prague, which is called Praha in whatever language they speak in the Czech Republic, the scene of a classic Julie wipe out. And where they don't speak alot of English, which was great, because we could talk without fear that people would overhear and call Child Protective Services.

Unfortunately falling flat on your face is one of those universal language things...

We were at the Karlstein Castle, outside Prague, at the top of a big steep hill. Because that way there was comic relief when invaders fell down that big steep hill. Or else it was some really forward thinking people who knew I would someday show up and provide the entertainment for an entire terrace of Europeans having lunch.

We had toured the castle, which was completely awesome, by the way, and as long as they installed central heating, hot and cold running water and internet access, I would be happy to move right in. I am so a Gothic girl.

We were walking back down the steep steep hill, on our way to a traditional Czech lunch (which was soup and some sort of meat and potatoes and very delicious, even through my haze of humiliation...). I had neglected to notice that there was a rounded gutter running along the edge of the road. Bad plan.

Because I stepped into that gutter, completely unaware that the gutter was there. Which means the ground was a good four inches further away than I was expecting. Since I was facing downhill, steep downhill, I went down hard. Face first. I cannot emphasize enough that it was a steep hill, and when I fell, I fell downhill. Which means I ended up on my hands and knees, and my butt was higher than my head. Lovely.

The children were immediately concerned, because I happened to be carrying the bag with their new pewter dragons in it, and I could have damaged their dragons. (They call me mean. I think it's a totally two way mean street happenin' at our house. They made me mean. I was totally sweet and loving and non-sarcastic pre-kidlets. Really. It's true. Ask anyone, except, well, maybe Mark. Ask any complete stranger that met me on the street, briefly, pre-kidlet. They would totally tell you I was not mean in the teeny tiny slightest bit.)

I stood up, looked up, and noticed there was a very full terrace of Europeans having lunch right there. Twenty feet away from where I had just eaten pavement.

So I took a bow, and then went on around a curve to dig around and find bandaids, since I had scraped the hell outta both hands.

This didn't happen this year. It's not at all part of 2008. It is completely beside the point, but what the hay. It's not like there are blogging rules, right? And even if there were blogging rules, I think we all know I suck at following arbitrary rules and have a tendency to go wildly off topic at the slightest provocation.

Really, I had no intention of telling you all about my greatest moments when I started...

Back to March 2008.

Tess was in a school play. She got to be in a big fight scene. She loved it.
Tess is the one smacking heads together.

My son's girlfriend is great. We adore Jessica. Jessica is very cute. Jessica is awesome and fun. Jessica ends up in insanely bad photographs regularly. I think it is because she is high energy and funny and very expressive, and that just doesn't always come across well in still photos.

But sometimes it's pretty humorous.

Sometimes, it's kinda scary. I took one photo, a very blurry photo that looked nothing like her, but instead looked like something out of a horror movie. The kids made me delete it.

(I did get permission, through Zach, to post these slightly unflattering photos of Jess. Hi, Jess!)

(Jessica got an award for being a super genius and doing really extra great on standardized testing.)

But don't worry, Jessica. I have lots of photos of Zachary looking less than completely handsome..

Tess's school in Tucson did a talent show at the end of each quarter. It was fun. It was charming.

I am lying. It was excruciating. Six year olds who had had twenty seven minutes of piano lessons playing "hot cross buns" and screechy violins and "interesting" five minute plays. Dancing and singing.

Two hours of torture. Torture inflicted by wonderful cute adorable children, but torture nonetheless. Great for the kids, great for them to have experience in being in front of an audience. But torturous. Like being waterboarded by Muppets.

C'mon. Tess is my third kid. I have so put in my time in recitals and school plays and band concerts and Christmas pageants.

So Tess was playing some music by Beethoven with a couple friends, on recorder. They were really good. It was enjoyable and maybe even pleasant.

It lasted EIGHTEEN SECONDS. That's right -- two hours of torture, for EIGHTEEN SECONDS of my kid playing a song on recorder that I have heard her play approximately 9.2 million times. A song I have heard her play so much that I bought her three recorder music books for Christmas. Pure self-defense.


Thor made that yellow elephant/frog hybrid in art class.

Thor and Zach in the hot hot desert sun.

my secret shame: my Mom throws like a girl.


This is my pal Jack. Jack was on the high school art class trip to Italy. He gives me this look a lot. Admit it. You are not surprised. ( I decided that our trip to Italy deserves its own recap post. It was too awesome to cram into a post with all this other stuff.)

So that's March 2008. Zachary turned 18, Abe I think finally started to heal, Mark was still in Anchorage without us, and it was hot. It may also be the month the Suburban died, temporarily, and the dryer died, not so temporarily. I don't know for sure. I remember crap happened, but I didn't feel the need to take notes. I would much rather sit through Muppet waterboarding and attempt to take the worst portraits ever.

2008 part two.

In February I drove to San Diego for a reunion with my sister and girl cousins. Had an awesome time.

Zachary finished his Eagle Scout project and had the Scoutmaster conference or whatever you call it and became an Eagle Boy Scout.

And as usual, we took photos of stuff we did and the desert. Mojo was the one to tangle with a cholla this month.

February.

the elevator ceiling at the hotel in San Diego

pelicans. I love pelicans. I don't know why.

Zach talking to his dad right after he knew he made Eagle.

cool train, great photo, but it made Thor late to school.

playing wit the macro

the entire desert is like this. pointy and mean and unfriendly and hostile and sharp. this is the mequite version of "stay the hell away from me."

such noble suffering. look at that face.

I have two favorites this time...Mojo, for all he can look all noble and regal and majestic, is really an enormous goof. the goofiest dog ever.

I really really like pelicans. they are so prehistoric, you know?

(I hope all these photos don't mean endless downloading time for anyone, or if they do they are worth it!)

2008. In Photos. Part One.

I was going to do one photo a month.

Ha.

You know me. I take hundreds of photos a month. Hundreds. Thousands, if I happen to be in Italy.

So pick one photo for each month? Not possible.

January, do I pick the fantastic desert shots? Tess's school winning "All Small and Mighty's Greenest Grade School in America?" Abe's second or third surgery? My favorite Day of the Dead shoes? Or my new glasses?

Right. I pick them all. Here's my January. In no particular order, except my personal favorite is the last and biggest one....

January, 2008


my shoes

Poor Abe. Four surgeries.

Civano Community School, Tucson, Arizona

new glasses!

driving at night

never ever ever kick a cholla. ever.

the Arizona desert. 107 degrees suck, but the desert is gorgeous. in a dusty dry desiccated way.