22 October 2013

Pest Control Issues

Those who say they have squirrel problems have obviously not dealt with bear problems. I used to think I had issues with my squirrels, and of course the rats from our creek, but after some careful and patient work, I finally had all the varieties of birds on the right feeders, the squirrels in the corn area, and the rats just doing their normal pilfering.

Then came the bears. Not just any bears, but dumpster diving bum bears. This one is sneaking away from our detached garage with a seed covered floor and heading into our neighbor's garden.


The first encounter was Momma Bear and her adorable triplets. She had quite a path made available to her. I'm still blown away that a big ass bear and her babies can saunter through town, but there we are. The beast wrecked my $120 squirrel proof feeder and mistook my bird bath as a stool. That aside, no major damage, but I still grumble.

However, it has become clear that this is more of on-going issue as another bear decided to wipe out my carefully sorted and organised seed in the garage cupboards. Since I am in Colorado at the time of this invasion, it was easy for me to be critical of our friend who is staying there to not shoo him away. However, I suspect that the bear's younger age and smaller size would not have mitigated my hiding in the house until he had his fill either.

My rather huge issue is that I have quite the gig going for my literally hundreds of birds, ten squirrels, and creek rat, dubbed Ratty. If I keep all their wares in the garage, we see the consequences. However, leaving it in the house attached to the garage seems a bad plan since those doors are open throughout the day while working. A bear with motivation in accessing the house seems a bad plan.

So you see, we have a pest problem, and there's nothing I can really do about it except take pictures and growl about it.

15 October 2013

Themed Tours for Friends

As we have settled into a nice sized home and have ample room for visiting guests, I have started developing thematic tours of various Asheville pleasures. These include consignment shopping tours, chocolate tours, beer tours, coffee shoppe tours, wine tasting tours, hiking options, and waterfall tours. Many of these tours have been crafted as a result of experiences with friends who have already visited. For example, I have discovered that my chocolate tour may be a little intense and the sugar high keeps people up very late. Fortunately we managed to figured out that a different coffee shoppe each morning was a much better way to handle that type of exploration. If four chocolate encounters puts somebody into an altered state, God only knows what ten coffee shoppes in a row could do.....

Today was the first run of the waterfall tour, which I believe was successful. Starting out very early, we got a gorgeous view of the post-sunrise hour.


After several pull-off experiences staring across the mountain top horizon, we got to the edge of waterfall territory. While western North Carolina is flooded (ha!) with waterfalls, Pisgah National Park is especially full of them, numbering over 100. This overwhelming number drove me to find a waterfall map that saved us many errant hours of walking fruitlessly in woods for no reason. Red dots marked the less scenic and annoying-to-reach waterfalls, while the friendly blue ones drew our interest. Additionally, there were helpful hiking instructions such as "loop hike combines Buckhorn Gap Trail and Avery Creek train, passing confusing side paths and junctions".... major red flag. Thank you map! There were additionally helpful notes that identified waterfalls that could be seen from the road, which strongly piqued our interest.



This is Skinny Dip Falls, and although we were tempted to turn back after half a mile or so because we thought maybe the trail maker thought we simply wanted to get our exercise (ha!), but the sound of the roaring waterfall kept us moving. It was worth it, but pretty slippery rock trail that made us grateful for wearing proper hiking boots.


Second Falls wasn't very far from Skinny Dip Falls and was connected via car jaunt to the next pull off :) Nice little walk down, although the stairs at the end were enough to blow up lungs. Apparently Upper Falls was very close in relation, but we voted against the extra 1.5 miles.


Looking Glass Falls is one of my favourites and is in close proximity (20 minutes by car) to the other waterfalls, and many more really. This is most beautiful in winter, but always stunning ... and close to the road. Really close.

This concludes the first effort at the waterfall tour. May there be many more tweaks.


06 October 2013

Winning....Or maybe not.

Winning is not something that is necessarily a difficult thing .... I do reasonably well in sports, excelled in martial arts, won intellectual awards, and can generally work things in my direction positively. However, winning anything with Eric being my opponent is simply impossible. The best I can do with chess is stalemate, simply forget any board game that takes an iota of strategy, just double any of my best pinball scores for him, it's very tiring to fully take on his brain, and I am crushed all around in anything sporting.

For example....

Foosball.

OK, it's foosball, who cares, right? I do. Because it's just another example of being crushed by my husband. Suddenly feeling nostalgic of the "old days" with his first employer where he was an excellent foosball player (fantastic, actually), I stupidly agreed to play a few games with him at his current employer's when we were at the headquarters in Colorado.

Drops the ball.....SWAT! Score.

Really? Did you put in the ball?

Fine.

Drops the ball....SWAT! Score.

I was really excited that time. I barely nicked the ball with one of my handles.

Drops the ball....SWAT! SWAT! Score.

Wow, it took two swats for him. I'm simply dynamite.

SWAT! Score.
SWAT! Score.
SWAT! Score.

Nevermind.

Let's play something else. Such as anything else. Oh! Darts!

My breath is shallow, quick. Is it possible? Would all those hours and all those years playing darts as a kid work to my puny advantage?

YES!!!!!! The man is crushed. Destroyed. Buried.


This picture will be in my hall of records.

Annoying factors with this situation.
  1. Eric was really happy for me.
  2. Eric starts quickly learning how to score at a rate far faster than anybody else I've helped when giving technical tips.
*sigh*


04 October 2013

Here we go....

The ER visits were bound to get started. After all, Elle is six years old, and it seems that is the time kids start "experimenting" at whole new levels. Why Elle thought it would be appropriate to do a 360 backflip off of the back of the couch will always be a mystery, especially to her, but her personalised feedback of five stitches on the chin was more effective than any kind of warning I could have given.


I must say, she was possibly the bravest person ever when it came down to brass tacks and had to have almost ten anesthetic shots directly in her laceration. Yes, they certainly put on a topical before the anesthesia shots, but they were still braced for the screaming. Shockingly, nothing came except for severe shaking. It's possible that I was crumbling like an autumn leaf in the wind, wishing to God that I could take it for her and reliving my own stitching experiences, but she was utterly perfect for them. It is my guess that she had an intrinsic knowledge that moving, yelling, or talking would make the situation worse, but still.

The hospital rewarded her with with not one, but TWO cuddlies to take home :)

Sadly, the next day, she tried to flip off the chair. It would appear that this lesson applies only to the couch, and not to the concept.

Yes, many more trips to ER. I see them coming.