Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Workin' In The Rain

Another late start to work today. We've got some digging to do at the work site and it was decided to rent an excavator for the day instead of breaking our backs with the shovel and pickax. The rain and wind, along with the temperature, the past two days hasn't exactly been a treat either. Yesterday, when I walked out the door the temp was 39! I took the heavy gear to wear for the morning. Here's my socks after work on Monday - my leather boots are only waterproof until they get wet, so it didn't take much more than an hour in the rain to soak my feet for the entire day. No, my socks are not usually yellow, they are brand new socks and as white as can be. Laura washed them and they are back to being white. Monday, the high was 48, so the rain and wind wasn't a welcoming addition to being down on the ground planting trees all day. Thankfully today we are looking to make it into the 60's so that will be a comfortable environment for working.

This weekend I bought a new camera for my sister, and I have been taking pictures with it like crazy. All the pictures on my blog today actually we taken with her camera... Well, technically it's my camera until she pays me for it, so until then I will enjoy it! No, actually I am learning all the bells and whistles on the camera so I can give her a quick 'how-to' when she gets it. I took it to Pub-Quiz last night and took some pictures. I usually play cards and talk with everyone while we answer questions. Last night we finished 9th, which isn't too impressive, but we had our second highest score with only 5 people (Laura and I included) so we were happy with our finish. We aced two rounds and got all 10 questions right, and we nailed 9 out of 10 songs in the music round!!! I owe one of the songs to dad for letting me listen to his "Three Dog Night" cassette tape when I was young - I never thought that would come in handy! ha ha! The music round is usually my favorite round because they are songs that most people know, or have heard, but usually have a hard time getting the artist of the song.

And, as usual, I sported another hat for the evening. Here's one I inherited from grandpa, the County Weed & Pest District. I look a little tired after my day at work and being out until 11:00 p.m. racking my brain with trivia questions.

Tonight, we play a double-header at Ultimate Frisbee. That will keep me busy for the evening, and a little more tired than usual, but I am excited to get out there and have some fun. We are dressing up with a theme tonight - it's "Wedding Night" for our team. A couple on our team got married over the weekend and we are dressing with a wedding theme tonight. Laura and I made a trip to Goodwill and I bought a tie and nice slacks, which are about 6 inches too short (for good comic appeal), to wear for the games tonight. I will be sure to get some pictures, I am sure we will really be a big hit!

I'm off to work now. Until again

-=Nolan=-

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Killer Boots Man!

It's another late start at work today. We've got all sorts of things happening right now, and nothing seems to be happening at the correct times, so we have been hit and miss with work for the last few days. It's nice to have that paycheck in my pocket and make a few bucks to pay the bills. Gosh, it's come to the point where a small loan is needed to fill a tank of gas, so the working paycheck is what we need!

Thinking of what I need, I have been in need of a good pair of boots. No, not work boots or hunting boots. I'm talking cowboy boots. Yeah, imagine that, I WANT a pair of boots. Well, not just any pair of boots, I have a specific look I am wanting and a comfort level so I can wear them and walk normally. It's hard to find a size 13 boot though, and it's harder to find a pair of boots that are a bargain and fit my specific desire. I've been telling Laura since Christmas that I need a pair of boots, and I think she is starting to agree. I've got my hat, and just the other day I bought me a western style shirt for $3.00. So a pair of boots are next in line.

While I'm in the market for a new pair of boots, I am going to sport my collection of hats. Granddad had a hat collection and that's where a lot of mine have come from, but I have been slowly adding to it with my own flavors and styles. Here's one of my most recent additions I picked up at Wal-Mart for $1.00. Last night to wore it out on the town for Pub Quiz and got a few laughs as I strolled around.

I'm going to try to wear all my hats and have a picture taken with them. That should keep my sister, a cosmetologist, happy because I need a hair cut really bad!

...My phonecall just came to head for work so I am out the door for a hot day of landscaping. Until again

-=Nolan=-

Monday, May 14, 2007

Montana Spelunking

No work today, so I am spending some time at home getting the garden prepared for planting and enjoying my extra long weekend. Before heading outside though, I thought I should get some photo's uploaded from our weekend trip.

We've been making long trips all over the Northwest and passing by the things to see nearby, so we decided to head to Bozeman and see the Museum of the Rockies on Saturday, camp Saturday night at the Missouri Headwaters - which is where the Missouri River starts and Lewis & Clark camped before heading into the mountains - and then Sunday going to Deer Lodge and visiting the old Montana State Prison.

We left Missoula at 6:30 a.m.m and stopped at the Missouri Headwaters around 9:00 to check out the camping, since the campground was nearly full and rather small, we decided we would try to find somewhere else to camp. We rolled into the museum around 10:00 and started out with the King Tutankhamen (King Tut) exhibit, which is on display over the summer. The exhibit is pretty impressive, and there is a lot of information to go along with the display. The exhibit takes up two rooms and included replicas of his chariot, sarcophagus, and mummified body. We spent the rest of the morning checking out the King Tut exhibit and watching a planetarium show before we returned to the car for sandwiches.

The afternoon was the highlight of the museum by far though. Why? Because the Museum of the Rockies has lots of dinosaurs to see! Here's a triceratops and the largest T-rex skull discovered.There's a lot of cool skeletons on display and we really enjoyed seeing all the dinosaurs. I've been fascinated by them. The picture at the top of the blog is outside the museum and is a bronze skeleton of "Big Mike." I don't know about you, but that thing is big and I am glad they are not still around!

Our last exhibit was Picasso's ceramic work. Most people know Pablo Picasso for his bizarre paintings, but few know of his ceramic work. This was my favorite one, 'Picasso' is carved into the pot in a fashion resembling his art work, and the colors really make the piece look good.

After our trip to the museum we did some caching around Bozeman before heading west towards the Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park. We decided to stay the night and camp and then check out the caverns the next day - not our original plan, but nothing was set in stone to begin with. We brought out the dutch oven and cooked up some 'canoes' - which are just hot dogs wrapped in dough. We forgot the ketchup, but they were still pretty good even without the ketchup and I even have a few leftover for dinner today! The campground was nice, and there were not too many people around. The clouds threatened us with rain and thunderstorms, but never panned out into anything so we were relieved to not be spending the night in the rain and wind.

We cooked up some egg and sausage the next morning before making our way up the mountain to see the caverns. We took the first tour of the morning and started out with just the two of us, a couple from the Seattle area who were on their way to Lincoln, Nebraska to see family, and our tour guide Jim, who spent some time in Wayne, Nebraska. Just before we were getting ready to head into the cave, we were joined by another group and our tour group grew to 15. The tour was really nice and took two hours to go through the cave. We saw a few bats in the cave as we were headed inside and that was fun too! We went as deep as 550 feet below the surface, and the temperatures were right around 50 degrees. One of my favorite things about the tour was turning off all the lights while in the cave. I can't recall a time when I have been in complete darkness and couldn't see a thing - literally, no light anywhere! My mind started making think I was seeing objects, but when the lights came back on, what I thought I was seeing was nothing near what was there in reality. I took a lot of pictures inside the caves, unfortunately our camera doesn't take pictures very well in low light conditions so the pictures are hard to see unless I used a flash - in which case the lighting doesn't look nearly as cool as the lighting used in the caverns... but here's a few of the pictures anyway.
Stalactites hanging from the roof
Laura going down the 'beaver slide' - yes, you sit down and slide into the next room!A stalagmite coming up from the floor. Mmm, looks like ice cream!Inside one of the large caverns - standing next to the stalagmites.Headed down the long dark tunnelsIt's a tight fit - even for Laura!
I must be pretending to be a bat while I was crouching in the narrow openingAnother shot of the stalactites hanging from the roof.We finished up our tour of the caves around noon and decided to head to Butte to get some food. We decided we wouldn't have enough time to go through the prison, but that's ok because it's only an hour drive and we could save that for another day. We decided to do some geocaching on the way home and enjoy the nice weather. We made it home early enough to unpack the car and still catch an episode of The Simpson's! There aren't too many better ways to spend a weekend, especially when I can camp and do some cave exploring! We had a great weekend with the museum, camping, caching, and caving and I hope to maybe go back for another tour of the cave, I would recommend it to anyone who likes that sort of thing, it's well worth the money. Until again

-=Nolan=-

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Since work has started, I have been on the move constantly. Between work, ultimate frisbee, running, and everything else, I have only had a few minutes each day to relax. Not that I'm complaining though, all I really have to do is work, but everything else is just a nice way to get out and do something. I'm usually up by 7:00 a.m. and at work at 8. I'm home around 5 and ultimate frisbee begins around 6 and goes until dark, which is a little past 9 right now. I grab a quick bite to eat and get cleaned up before climbing into bed and watching a few minutes of news and maybe Leno's opening monologue before crashing for the night so I can get up and do it all over again.

The weather has been a real mess that past week. Last wekk we had a few inches of snow on the mountains and highs in the upper 50's, this week we are seeing upper 70's and my suntan is darkening quickly - although it's only my arms and face.

Work has been great. We worked on a rock wall for the past week and finished it up yesterday. We built the wall at a place we worked at last year - we built stone steps, a patio, and a retaining wall. The guy reading the paper, Scott, is actually sitting on the patio we built last year and the steps go down to the left. The retaining wall is on the left side as well, lining the steps. The wall was a lot of fun to build because there was no blueprint for how to piece it all together, it was completely trial and error.This morning we are meeting up in about an hour and heading out of town about 25 miles to do some work. It was nice to be able to relax a little this morning before heading out for the day, and tonight is frisbee league, so I will be running and getting plenty of exercise as it is.

Running is going well. Saturday, Laura and I went for a 40 minute run and made it about 4.8 miles without too much effort, so it's nice to know we can still cruise along at 8 minute miles when we are not in very good shape. The plan is to do a long run during the weekend and even though 5 miles isn't exactly a long run, it's a good start for a 40 minute jog.

Sunday we did some hiking south of town and did some geocaching. We actually made a quick hike out of it, and we were home by 1:00 p.m. and had the rest of the day to do things around the house and watch the end of the NASCAR race that was rained out on Saturday night.

I'm off to work soon, have a great day - it's going to be a nice one here! Until again

-=Nolan=-

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

May Day!

May first and it is going to feel like summer today. Temperatures are forecasted to reach the lower 80's, but the rest of the week will cool off and this weekend we will be in the 50's. As long as there isn't any rain, 50 is a pretty nice temperature to hike in and I plan on doing some hiking on Sunday.

Hopefully I will still have some energy to hike anyway, tomorrow I start back with the landscaping company I worked with last summer. I'm looking forward to getting outside and getting dirty again! There's just something about being outside and working up a sweat that satisfies me. Maybe that stems from my running background - if I'm not sweating then I'm not working hard.

Not much to blog about today. With work coming I am sure I will be tired for a few weeks and be blogging less, but I am sure I will have all sorts of stuff to talk about. Until again

-=Nolan=-