Friday, August 17, 2007

Nathaniel Manor

When searching for a house, features such as square footage, number of bathrooms and vaulted ceilings can be what some are looking for. But I have learned it is the features you can't buy that end up being the most important.

When I was looking for our first house, I knew I wanted a good backyard. First, it had to be fenced for our dog, Katie. After years of not being let off her leash, during apartment living, I just wanted her to be able to chase a tennis ball with reckless abandon.

It had to have a sprinkler system, because I wanted to be able to have my own green grass in between my toes, and we do not have the attention spans to remember to move a sprinkler around.

When we were looking at houses, I would immediately head for the backdoor to see the yard, because I knew it would make or break the deal for me. The house we ended up in is really small, but it has a big backyard that butts up against the trees of the city park.

Over the four years we have lived here, some of my favorite things I didn't know about when we made the offer to buy the house.

Besides having no neighbors behind us, being next to the city park has a lot of perks. On many summer days we can hear chants of "faster, faster, faster" from kids on the merry-go-round. We are also near the amphitheatre, which allows us to hear all the free concerts we want from our backyard. We have heard the faint sounds of jazz, rock and even the band America.







The park also has a stream that leads to a duck pond. During the spring we have had mama ducks lead their babies right through our back yard, and I have actually fed ducks off my front porch.




To the north of our backyard, their is a pasture with horses. While they spend most their days head down to the ground eating grass, we have seen them frolic, gallop and other horsey things -- sometimes they are downright majestic. But our favorite thing about this pasture is Fernando.






This is the name we have given the brown and white bull (with full horns still attached), who hangs out with the horses. Fernando looks as fierce as if he came straight from a bull fight in Spain, but the few times I have attempted to make contact over the fence, he snorts and runs away like a scared puppy. I have no idea Fernando's real name or the reason that someone would own a bull, but I think I like it that way.







One of the best features of my house comes only once a year on the Fourth of July. We don't have to worry about getting a good parking space and finding a spot for our blanket, because from our backyard we can see the city's fireworks each year.



Although this site advocates going, seeing and doing, sometimes you don't have to go far from home to do it.

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

The forest smells like Pine-Sol

We went camping last weekend, and nothing really happened -- this is a good thing.

In past camping trips, we've had flat tires (yes, plural on the same trip), got flooded out of our camp site (again, same trip) and lost car keys. So to have a camping trip where the most drama came from the fact that Erin's niece had the chickenpox, and her brother was watching her kids, was a nice change of pace.
<---the view from our campsite

While we did hike, fish, sleep in tents, sing campfire songs and, in general, breathe in a lot of fresh air, a lot of our camping experience revolves around food. Not sure what this says about us as campers, but I don't think we would do it if it wasn't for the S'mores, hobo dinners and roasting hot dogs over the fire.


The days leading up to our trip, I was excited to leave the trappings of modern life. As much as I love T.V., cell phones and the Internet, it was going to be nice to not have them for a couple days. However it only took a day for me to miss one of them.


At the beginning of me and Erin's jaunt through the woods, we found a pond with the weirdest little salamander type creatures, with feather like things on their heads. Later with the help of the guys we caught ourselves a few of them.


Here is the weirdest thing, they looked like axolotls, which are rare in the wild. In fact the only reason I know about axolotls is because they are rare and weird looking. The point is, it was driving me nuts and my fingers were itching for a keyboard to start my Internet search.

(When I got home I found out that they were baby tiger salamanders, which look a lot like axolotls.)



The salamanders and a few itty-bitty frogs where the only things we caught, proving that having license for something does not help. Even with all my fishing gear, and some of Ryan's, I was not able to even get a nibble while fishing. But a lot of the fun is just sitting out by the water, so I'm OK with that.



Ryan did catch a fish, but I was not there to witness it. My theory is that he bought it off another fisherman, to make me jealous, or to help keep my hopes up. I was starting to believe there were no fish.
<--- Erin is "impressed" with Ryan's catch
On the second night Jolynda and Matt joined us, which was great. I know we don't really rough it, but their air mattress turns into a couch-- so we are a little more rough than them.

At night there were more stars than darkness, and it was so quiet my ears had to make up for it by buzzing. The guys gathered firewood, and in general got to feel manly-- Erin and I could feel the rise in testosterone. Erin didn't have to put honey on my toes to protect herself from bears -- the most wild creatures we saw were the chipmunks and squirrels all over camp. Ryan did melt his shoes -- drying them by the fire -- but this was not a big surprise.

Overall it was a perfect trip. The only thing I regret is the fact that we couldn't have stayed just a little longer.


On a side note: for two days in the woods we take a lot, I mean a lot of stuff. If I went to vegas for a weekend I would only take one backpack, but spend three to four times as much money. But when I go camping I take 10 times more stuff.



It's not camping without the dogs, even if we barely had room for them.