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Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool Festival.

Friday, October 24th, 2008

Last weekend I went to the Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool Festival. I heard there would be bunnies and llamas and alpacas and punkin’ chunkin’, I just had to go. So my mom and I took the two-hour ride up to Rhinebeck, NY. The weather was gorgeous, the leaves were changing and it was just so durn pretty. And lookit – I took pictures.

Right in the entrance you were greeted by a pen with two lovely rams with spotted noses and pretty horns.

Then immediately after that, there were lemurs! I know! I was surprised too.

Ring-tailed lemurs, three of them hanging around a heat lamp:

And a brown lemur who looked slightly deranged and sleep-deprived, but I think that’s just how they look:

And a super-Qte kangaroo sunbathing.

Mmm, tasty sun. Do you see the pouch-hole? It’s a lady roo.

Then there’s the food booths, all kinds of predictable and unpredictable fair options. I had just had brunch (I really freakin’ love a good Bloody Mary. It’s always a good day when you start with alcoholic gazpacho.) so I passed on pretty much everything offered, but they had deep-fried dough, baked potatoes with a myriad of toppings, ice cream, caramel apples (okay, I TOTALLY had one of those, SO worth it), sheep cheese sellers and this booth, which clearly sold a little of everything.

Well-painted signage, too. My favorite are the two signs inside the booth, one for pickles and one for cappuccino. It reminded me of one of my first dates with Cricket, when we went to the Museum of Natural History (“the wacky evolution museum”). We had toured it and needed lunch so we went to the cafeteria and I learned an important thing about Cricket, which is that he liked to dunk food items into other food items regardless of what either of those items are. We get lunch and Cricket gets a slice of pizza, some garlic knots and some raspberry coffee. You can tell where this is going. Garlic knots right into the coffee. I was like, “O …kay, that’s an intriguing flavor combination.” Meanwhile a greasy garlic film is forming on his coffee and I’m considering dumping him right there, it was so gross. I didn’t and I’m glad I overlooked his strange dunking fetish. But when I saw the pickles and cappuccino signs right next to each other, I thought perhaps if Cricket was there, he would consider that an excellent dunking situation. Moving on.

Shortly after the food options was the fiddling competition. Really. I have pictures. Look, fiddling.

Waiting for their turn to fiddle.

More kids waiting for their turn to fiddle. I had no idea there were this many fiddle-playing aficionados in upstate New York.

And then, sheep. A great multitude of sheep. Come meet some sheep. This one had cool horns.

Different angle on horny (tee hee!) ram.

These are sheep getting judged for whatever sheepish (snork!) qualities the judges look for. I also learned sheep hate being judged.

They make a shrieking “BAAAAAHAA!” noise and try to kick, they are not all poised like show dogs. However, outside the ring, they can imitate lap dogs.

Awww. That’s Sue. Sue the Sheep. She likes to sit on her owner’s lap and just hang out. Isn’t she sweet?

Every farm that was there got a pen, and you could hang a sign telling people who you were and what kinds of sheep you bred, wool you had, etc. Most signs were just big vinyl ones, but this one was different and charming.

And this one made me want to give the owners of the farm a big underpants wedgie.

Then we moved onto the llamas. Big, fluffy llamas. Here is a llama peering at me through clothing made with his fiber. He’s an inquisitive llama.

But some llamas are not as bright. This llama was staring off into the distance. See how his mouth is full of hay? He’s not chewing it. Just, you know, blankly staring. Holding hay in his mouth. I would like to think that he was thinking about something very important that required all of his brain power, but I’m guessing he was listening to the breeze gently flow through his empty head.

There were alpacas there too, but I forgot to take pictures of them. Just imagine a smaller llama with a cushion of fluffiness on their heads. That’s what an alpaca looks like. There were also some rabbits there, angora and lionhead rabbits, and they were just delightful. I was so busy petting them that I forgot to take pictures of them. I found some on the internet, though.

Lionhead rabbits:

Angora rabbits:

And did I mention there was some wool at this thing? Oh, there was wool.

Rooms and rooms of the stuff.

WOOL. TONS OF WOOL.

By then, Mom and I were tired, so we headed out and on out way back to the car, we saw the kangaroo again. And the little joey was poking its little joey face out of the pouch! Everyone standing around melted like sno-cones in the sun. So precious.

Also, I wanted to add that I saw a woman there with a baby boy, and the baby boy was sporting the most delightful hat.

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=16012273

That’s the baby, and that’s the hat. Go buy it for everyone you know. The hat, I mean.

And this woman has a video blog about 2006’s festival (which looks identical to this year’s festival) I recommend you watch it.

http://letsknit2gether.com/2006/11/01/episode-005-nys-sheep-and-wool-festival/

Posted in Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, Nature, Stuff | No Comments »

Margaret Cho and St. Francis of Assisi.

Monday, October 6th, 2008

Big weekend, folks. BIG. Lots of stuff. On Saturday night I went to see Margaret Cho live. She’s a standup comedian/author/performance artist/mainly standup comedian who was coming through Radio City Music Hall on her “Beautiful” tour. (She has a wonderfully designed logo for it, BTW.)

I haven’t ever seen her live because by the time I got into her work, she had gone all performance-artsy and I wasn’t terribly into that. But “Beautiful” was lauded as her return to her standup ways, so I thought, “Jolly good, I will go to that.” And it was terrific. Margaret has been doing standup since she was sixteen, and at 39 she’s a professional. If you’re wondering why I’m not quoting any of my favorite parts, I took a vow not to use foul language on this website, and Margaret’s raw. I quote her regularly in my daily life, but not here, oh no. However, I will link to some YouTube clips of her previous shows and if you would like to see those, you are welcome.

Margaret Cho 1

Margaret Cho 2

Margaret Cho 3

She has a great deal of body issues and weight fluctuation, which you can see in this selection of clips. Also, she does a phenomenal impression of her mother which has become a staple in her act. But “Beautiful” was excellent and her opening act was Liam Sullivan, a young man who has become famous amongst a portion of the population for making very funny internet videos where he plays multiple characters. The most famous is where he plays Kelly and sings the song “Shoes”.

Shoes

That song will get stuck in your head and remain there, dormant, until you pass a store that sells shoes. And then you will sing it and curse me and Liam Sullivan, and then I will laugh the laugh that evil characters laugh when they’re being evil. MWA HA HA.

Summary of “Beautiful” show: Excellent. Go see it if it comes to your town. Or watch it when it (hopefully) comes out on DVD.

On Sunday, I got up early and when to St. John the Divine for my annual church visit for St. Francis of Assisi Day. I love St. Francis of Assisi Day. You show up to church at 9:00 and they open the doors at 11:00 for services. People bring their pets to be blessed. You primarily see dogs, but you also see cats, birds, lizards, tortoises, hermit crabs, etc. It’s quite a menagerie. And even though St. John the Divine is an episcopalian church and strict about many things, they have the most crunchy granola service ever. There’s dancers in the aisles and songs for Brother Sun and Sister Moon. Snorth noticed this in the program:

Communion will given at the front of the church.
Gluten-free wafers are available for those who request them.

Gluten-free wafers? CRUNCHY. Will Birkenstocks and hemp grocery bags also be available? How about Dr. Bronner’s soap? ‘Cuz I’m running low on that.

Near the end of the service they have the Procession of the Animals. They bring a variety of creatures into the church and they are blessed and then are led out. It’s the piece de resistance of the service. I took pictures of the whole service, but they ask you not to use flash photography because it startles the dogs and other animals, so all my pictures are at best blurry and at worst modern art a la Rothko. I will attempt to show the better pictures and point out the finer details.

First, walking to the church, I was disturbed by this appalling use of quotes.

Scramble “eggs”? Umm, what precisely are you scrambling back there in the kitchen? I’m not sure I want to eat your “eggs” for my breakfast, thank you very much. Gonna pass on that.

This is what the whole church looked like. Owners and their beasties. Beasties getting into fracii (plural of fracas) with other beasties. The service was peppered with barking.

In this picture there are people dancing while one woman holds a punchbowl with a goldfish in it and two men have long poles with streamers swirling around them and the 200-person chorus sings along to whale sounds. I am not making this up. When I say crunchy granola, I MEAN it, dammit.

Now, we begin with the procession. It is always led by a big spectacular bird of prey, usually a golden eagle. Here is a picture of the man carrying the golden eagle.

Followed by a dromedary with a festive wreath on its hump. All the animals had a festive garland or wreath or buttoniere on them in some way. More about that later.

Here is a reindeer. He was grumpy and didn’t want to be there and gave his volunteer handler a hard time, dragging her this way and that, tossing his head with that delightfully impaling-able set of antlers. Naughty naughty reindeer.

The browny-black blur you see there is Marvin the Sheep pulling a wagon. The wagon had an extremely old tortoise on it. They put the tortoise on the wagon and then decorated around him with all manner of greenery and flowers, but it made him look like a Thanksgiving turkey surrounded by potatoes and carrots.

The internet, bless its heart, has a picture from last year with two smootchy beasties that were here this year as well, Marvin the Sheep and Thumper the Bunny.

Awww. I loves me some Marvin and Thumper.

Now, normally they don’t get too exotic. It’s basically farm animals with some honeybees in a glass case and maybe a boa snake and an iguana for good measure. This year there was no cow or horse, but they went way more edgy. See that thing in that woman’s arms? That’s a kangaroo joey.

And the kicker for me? A fennec and a gibbon. And not just any gibbon. A BABY gibbon. OMG.

Because they’re royally hard to see in my pics, here are some references to why I grabbed Snorth’s arm and started muttering in tongues. Tongues of CUTENESS.

Here’s my pic. Aargh.

Note the sawdust on the floor to absorb weewee. Very conscientious. Maybe if I zoom in a bit…

Better? No? Okay.

Afterwards there’s a fair outside with adoption areas and food and activities, it’s very nice. There’s a raptor booth and since I am such an owl fan, I always stand in front of it with my mouth open like I was just hit by a pan in the face. Mainly because of the Malaysian Eagle Owl with big orange eyes directly in front of me.

My favorite owl of all time is the screech owl, a wee owl that screams when upset and looks like a rotting bit of tree. There was one in that flowery container up at the top. I asked to see him and they graciously took the box down and brought him close to me. And, unfortunately for him, he was directly in the sun.

ISN’T HE ADORABLE? He has tufty fake ears and a tiny beak and tiny feet for killing even tinier things, oh, I love him so much.

I intend to go again next year, so if anyone has a better camera that takes good pictures in the gloomy dimness of a church with objects moving around, I would greatly appreciate borrowing it for that day so I can actually get some decent pictures of the procession of animals. Thanks ever so muchly.

Posted in Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, Nature, New York | 2 Comments »

Ruby, Fishies and Other Fishies.

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

1. I work with Nelly and Nelly has a dog, a maltese named Ruby, who came to work a week ago. Ruby is a lovely little fluffy thing who plays with you and wiggles her butt stub masquerading as a tail and is generally all kind of sweet. But being at work all day is boring, so she spent most of her day chillin’ in her carry bag, looking like this:

What could it be? Perhaps a large hairy white muffin? And then you’d say, “Hey Ruby…” and you’d get this:

So cute! I did that about sixty times.

2. I was visiting Neenernator this weekend and, as usual, being unable to do anything but watch her totally rad fishtank. She has a Jack Dempsey:

JackDempsey.jpg

And an albino pleco (suckerfish):

AlbinoPleco.jpg

And a festive variety of other fishies (those are my favorites). She also has two lumpy iridescent blue fish, a male and a female. We were looking at them on Saturday and we noticed the female’s fins were shredded and thin. I expressed concern that it could be fin rot, and then the male sauntered up and started chomping on the lady bluefish’s fins. Just chewing on them with his teeny-tiny teeth. I was like, “Wha…?” and Neenernator said, “Yeah, that’s how he courts her. See all the scars on their faces? They bite each other’s faces and hang on and drag each other around the tank.” This has to be the worst courting ritual EVER. It’s way worse than the schoolyard prank of shoving a snowball down the back of the shirt of the girl who interests you. What do the fish do in the wild? Does a male saunter up to another male and say, “Look over there. She that fish that looks like Frankenstein’s monster, who can’t swim around because her fins are like wet toilet paper? Aww yeah. She’s my girl. Gonna make a great mom one day, if I don’t gnaw on her and make her all mangledy in the baby-making parts. Because that’s love, dawg, that’s love.”

3. Speaking of fish, I hung my deep-sea fish paintings in my apartment. I really don’t like to hang my own art in my own place, it makes me feel arrogant (“Only MY art is worthy of MY walls”) and self-centered. But my momma loves the fishes and she wants to see them all the time, so I did it. And here they are, in all their fishy glory.

Posted in Apartment, Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, My Art/Design/Business, Stuff | 2 Comments »

The Happening, Back to School, and Nudibranches, oh my!

Friday, July 18th, 2008

1. I saw The Happening, the new M. Night Shamalamadingdong film. (Side note: who here cannot stop thinking of “The Bloodening”, the fictional Simpsons horror film, every time they hear that title? Just me? Okay.) For anyone living without the benefit of the internet, newspapers, television or semaphore, The Happening is what happens when plants have had enough of humans and their crappy destructive ways. They release a pollen/spore/icky airborne that causes people to kill themselves (in super-creative ways, a guy runs over his own head with a combine). I know I’m supposed to be rooting for the humans, but I was, well, not. If I was a plant, I would be testy about humans as well. While this was not M. Night’s best film, he sure does know how to increase tension with creaking branches and rustling leaves. I came home and said to my houseplants, “If you don’t start nuthin’, there won’t be nuthin’, k?” Gotta keep an eye on those houseplants.

2. I was at Target the other day and they were all kinds of hawking back-to-school supplies. I realized at that moment how blissful it was to not care about going back to school. I went to school for seventeen years of my life (kindergarten, 1 through 6, middle school, high school, college) and I do not miss it one bit. If I want to read the collected works of Bloom County and Foxtrot all summer, I can. I don’t gotta write no paper at the end either. Oh, and when I was a kid my mom would make me go to summer camp, so I would have to get up early every day anyway. Now, I get paid to do that. Oh yeah. Being an adult rocks.

Now don’t get me wrong, I still take classes periodically in various programs so I can be a better designer. But it immediately causes me to make more money, which I can then spend on books which contain pictures of Opus the penguin wearing a sun hat. Kids? Stay in school. So that you can earn a decent living so you can buy a computer and only read blogs if you want to.

3. Every time I think I’m a crazy wacky artist coming up with crazy wacky ideas, something comes and knocks me off my crazy wacky pedestal. National Geographic ran an article on nudibranchs. What’s a nudibranch, you ask? Here’s a description:

A nudibranch is a member of one suborder of soft-bodied, shell-less marine opisthobranch gastropod mollusks, which are noted for their often extraordinary colors and striking forms. The suborder Nudibranchia is the largest suborder of heterobranchs, with more than 3,000 described species. The word “nudibranch” comes from the Latin nudus, naked, and the Greek brankhia, gills. Nudibranchs are often casually called “sea slugs”, a non-scientific term which has led some people to assume that every sea slug is a nudibranch. However, while it is true that nudibranchs are very numerous in terms of species, and are often very attractive, there are numerous other kinds of sea slugs belonging to several taxonomic groups that are not very closely related to nudibranchs. A fair number of these other sea slugs are colorful and thus are even more easily confused with nudibranchs.

Nudibranchs that are toxic often have rather festive coloring and horns and feathery things and a variety of other components to convince you that they taste like reheated poop and may also kill you. Here are a few of my favorites from the NatGeo article:

I don’t care how creative you think you are, you cannot top this. I will never make anything that interesting or fascinating to look at. And I’m alright with that. And you should be too. Let’s all hug.

Posted in Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, Movie and Book Reviews. Possibly With Spoilers., Nature, Stuff | 1 Comment »

WALL•E and some snippets of Israel I forgot.

Monday, July 7th, 2008

Quick summary of WALL•E: I started weeping ten minutes in. At one point I turned to my sister and said, “Schindler’s List was less depressing than this.” The pathos, the pathos is thick, my friend. You’ll empathize your heart right out of your chest. Go at your own risk.

There are a few shots from Israel that I forgot to share in the previous posts. Please to enjoy uncategorized pictures.

It’s a bird in a nest made from mud and poop! The birdie’s looking right at us! Isn’t that cute? The bird wasn’t more than six feet from my head. I was very happy.

There was stunning flower arrangement in the hotel foyer. The florist incorporated these big poofy pods filled with air covered in hairy hooks. I was staring at them when my mom chimed in, “Oh, those are called ‘Old Man’s Balls'”.

That’s great. Thanks, Ma. From then on every time I walked into the hotel I averted my eyes. Couldn’t they call them “Septuagenarian’s Nards” or something not quite so… blunt?

Check out this cool piece of graffiti. Ignore the super-kawaii ninja-girl for a second. See that tree in the upper left-hand corner?

Apparently someone came at night when the streetlight was behind the tree and traced the shadow for a hour or so. How cool is that? That’s one of the few wonderful things about stucco and cement: you can apply terrific graffiti with ease. If I wasn’t so afraid of getting in trouble with the po-po, I would put nifty illegal outdoor art up in places.

Posted in Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, Movie and Book Reviews. Possibly With Spoilers., Travels - I Has Them | No Comments »

Israel, Part 3.

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008

I’m going to cover the Southern part of Israel now, where it was hot. Like 112 Fahrenheit hot. In June. When I went outside, all the fluid on my eyeballs evaporated and my corneas sizzled. It was pretty awful, especially for a rare delicate flower such as m’self, who likes to be in temperature-controlled environments with cable television. I did, however, get this nifty tan from wearing the same style of sandals for the whole trip:

Anyone who’s ever seen me in person knows what a big deal a tan is. I am often mistaken for the Michelin Man, or a portly corpse, or that Pillsbury Dough Boy ghost in Ghostbusters. Squishy and white, that’s my M.O. So a tan is news.

There is a lovely kibbutz/arboretum in the middle of the desert called Ein Gedi. It was founded in the 1950s, so a great deal of the cactuses (that’s what they specialize in) are over fifty years old. They also have baobab trees (literary reference: The Little Prince).

I learned that baobab trees have weird fuzzy fist-sized pods hanging from their branches and that cream of tartar (a thickening agent used in meringues) comes from these pods.

They also had art there. I am a big supporter of art, but this big question mark made of stone…

… looked like a big curly turd. Anyone else see that? Anyone? Big poo? Anyone?

Right near Ein Gedi is the Dead Sea, also known as the lowest point on earth. I’d been a number of times, but Cricket needed to experience this, so we went. And it ended up being one of the worst experiences of my life. Allow me to explain.

The Dead Sea is a giant crack in the middle of mountains. When it rains at the top of the mountains, the water runs into the crack with all the minerals it has collected on the way. Once the water and minerals are in the crack, the water evaporates and you’re left with a great deal of crunchy minerals, mainly salt. The water that’s left in the Dead Sea is so salinated, if you drink a small glassful, you die. The other cool thing about the Dead Sea is that you float almost right on the surface. Cricket will now demonstrate.

Here is a picture of the shore with the salt crystals.

Not only does the Dead Sea have salt, it also has hot springs and mud that is supposed to be healthy. Cricket and I went over to the mud section, which is just a place in the middle of the desert with mud in large troughs. One thing I found strange was that they had pipes spewing out water, but also showers with a little chain that you pulled. I didn’t understand why they had both. I learned later. Picture of pipes spewing:

Cricket and I wandered over to the troughs and slathered ourselves with mud:

Mmm, mmm, don’t we look so pretty? Anyway, we then baked in the sun until we were dry and I walked over to the big pipes to wash myself off. I just stepped right under them. And then I learned the difference. The water coming out of the showers was fresh water. The water coming out of the pipes was HOT SULFURIC SALTY SPRING WATER. It tasted like someone had left some hard-boiled eggs in the sun for a week, then brewed a nice steaming cup of tea with it, put some salt in it, and then threw it in my face. I started shrieking for Cricket to bring me a towel. Then I wiped my eyes and zipped over to the fresh water shower and yanked that chain like sixty times trying to get the rotten-egg taste and smell off of me. Which I couldn’t. Apparently the sulfur stays in your hair follicles, so every so often I would catch a whiff of my hair and it would take me right back. I took a photo of the list of ingredients of the spring water so that you can appreciate how much it sucked (a lot).

After five days in the desert, we went to the Southernmost part of Israel, Eilat. It’s on the Red Sea. The Red Sea has lots and lots of beautiful tropical fish, including one my favorites. I think it’s called the Pearl Boxfish, I’m not sure, but it looks like this:

Isn’t he lovely? Here he is from another angle.

I went snorkeling for the first time and it was wonderful. I love fishies and there were many of them and they were nifty.

One of the days that we were in Eilat we went to Petra. Petra is in Jordan, so we had to do the whole Visa thing with the sitting around waiting to get stamped thing. No one knows how old Petra is, but we’re thinking real old, like Old Testament old. It’s a necropolis, or City of the Dead, or Big Fancy Cemetery. You walk for a third of a mile through this little corridor through the sandstone.

And the sandstone is all different shapes and colors. I think if Walt Disney saw he would say, “No, looks a little too fake”.

So you’re walking through this crevasse, walking walking walking, and then you start to see something:

And then a little more:

And then- Blam! You are faced with a giant ornate Greek-looking building that is totally out of place. It’s called The Treasury. The more important you were, the fancier your tomb was, so this guy who was buried here must have been very important.

See those little divots carved on either side of the facade? Because sandstone is so crumbly, they carved from the top down so as not to touch what they just carved, but sometimes you need a little additional carving so the little divots are steps for carvers to climb up and do changes to the top without touching the front. Very interesting.

There were a few other tombs, some for important people, some clearly for Bob the Stinky Homeless Bedouin (just a niche in the rock, no ornate nuthin’) but the Treasury is really the piece de resistance.

That’s my trip to Israel in a nutshell. If you have any questions or want to see any more pictures, I have 475 pictures that I would be happy to share with you.

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Israel, Part 1.

Thursday, June 26th, 2008

I decided that you can go to any site on Israel and see the same photos of the same famous places over and over again, so I am only going to show pictures that are important to me or have an interesting story to go with it. And I’m breaking it up into several parts so you can enjoy it in chunks.

Most of Israel is not what you would call “pretty”, at least not architecturally. It’s all built in the Bauhaus style, and some of it is excellent examples of Bauhaus, but most buildings are merely Bauhaus-esque, and they look like Communist prison housing. The main problem is everything is made of stucco and cement, and I don’t know if you know this, but stucco and cement need a great deal of upkeep to prevent them from looking like crap. They stain with rust and mold and they crack and when you spackle the crack it never matches the original color, etc. So the buildings, while structurally sound, look terrible. Here’s an example.

My mom was born in Israel and this is the first apartment she ever lived in. She was born in 1936, so one can assume that this building is from the early 30s. It don’t look so good.

I bet you’re wondering why the street signs are in English. It’s because for a chunk of time, about 1920 to 1948, Palestine was a British mandate. So all the signs are in Hebrew and English, or Arabic and English.

Israel has an interesting situation. There are cats running all over the place. Just hanging out, being catlike. Don’t belong to anyone. Some are feral and skittish, but a couple seemed to like people and meowed at me and would sit next to me on park benches and whatnot. I made a composite image of some of the kitties that crossed my path.

Here’s another neat thing: It was the 60th anniversary of Israel, and the major newspaper printed a million and a half Israeli flags and gave them away in the newspapers so people could hang them outside their windows. The problem is they had them printed in China and apparently they didn’t explain how to orient the star in the middle. Long story short, all the flags are wrong. The newspaper gave them away anyway and people did hang them and it looked really amusing. Here is picture of both the correct and incorrect flags. The big one is the wrong one.

One day we went to Ceasarea, which is this gorgeous port town from the time of the Romans. It had several nasty earthquakes (Israel lies on a major line between two tectonic plates) and so there’s just ruins. The entire time I was looking at this well I was glad there was a grate over it, because it would have been so tempting to yell “THIS IS SHPAAAAAAATAAAAA!!” and then kick some elderly tourist into it.

I thing I found funny was the use of exclamation marks on signs. Some signs require them, don’t get me wrong:

Like that one. But then there was this sign:

Why does “Things That Will Blow Up When You Step On Them” get one exclamation point, but “Be Careful, It Could Be A Bit Slippy” get three? I would give the mine sign like, twenty exclamation points. And a big neon arrow pointing to it and blinking on and off.

The water in Israel is desalinated, so while I don’t mind the taste, most people do and so they mainly drink bottled water. They have really cute and beautiful bottle collection boxes all over Tel Aviv.

Happy happy flowered recycling containers.

Jaffa is an extremely old city near Tel Aviv. It’s also an artist’s colony. They have these really cool street signs in the artist’s colony. Each street is named after a sign of the zodiac. And they have these lovely handmade ceramic signs stuck in the wall to tell you where you are.

So this is Sagittarius Street.

And outside #8 Sagittarius Street, this is on the side of the house. Isn’t that a charming way to organize a neighborhood?

More to come tomorrow.

Posted in Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, Travels - I Has Them | No Comments »

Remember how I said I wouldn’t be talking about owls for a while? Yeah, I lied.

Monday, May 5th, 2008

I went to visit B. this weekend and his wife D. graciously took Cricket and me to see where she works (Tenafly Nature Center in NJ). We hiked around and that was nice, but even better… There was an owl! And two hawks! And two snakes and a toad (which I got to hold, wheeee!) Here’s a picture of me holding the corn snake. It was shy and disoriented because it’s about to shed. You can see that because its eye is blue and opalescent and its colors are muted.

I also held a hognose snake named Henrietta who was just the sweetest. She likes holes and caverns, so she slithered into my sleeve and hung out there for a while. I think that was my favorite part. Cuddling with snakey-snake!

They also had an owl, a barred owl named Mitzi. Mitzi was found with a broken wing and it healed, but it’s weak and so he/she is unreleasable. I say he/she because nobody knows what sex Mitzi is. Female owls are larger in size, males are smaller and Mitzi is… in between. They’d have to knock Mitzi out to be able to rummage around in he/she’s tender regions, and birds don’t do well under anesthesia, so everyone is content to leave Mitzi alone. In the other aviary are two red-tailed hawks. The male had his right wing amputated at the elbow and the female’s left eye is damaged. The first pictures I took of my new raptor friends I took through a chain-link fence and my stupid camera insisted on focusing on the fence. The pics look kind of cool, actually.

But then D. let me get closer and I could place my camera on the chain-link fence and get far better photos. Here’s a picture of the female hawk. You can appreciate her wonky eye. She looks like a pirate. Arrrr.

And here’s Mitzi. I was tempted to sneak into the enclosure and give Mitzi a big hug ‘n’ snuggle, but I think that would be frowned upon and most likely it would end badly and I would be bleeding, so I stayed outside the fence.

I was thrilled at the opportunity to see the beasties, and the Tenafly Nature Center is lovely and I recommend you go visit it.

Posted in Activitays, Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, Nature | 1 Comment »

Little angry owl.

Monday, April 14th, 2008

My friend B. sent me a picture of an owl that he saw at a raptor exhibition. It’s a wee screech owl, it weighs no more than a candy bar. BUT YOU CANNOT CONTAIN ITS RAGE.

That glaring eye haunts me when I sleep. It’s like the Eye of Sauron, I tell you.

Posted in Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, Nature | No Comments »

The Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

Friday, February 15th, 2008

A dog won. I know, shocker. But really, it was a hoot. See, last year a standard poodle was was the winner in the non-sporting group and a poodle won the toy group. This year, same thing. That’s not fair to the other dogs who were showin’ their stuff. So people are fed up with the poodlage. My area apparently was the heckler’s section. We all rooted for anything that wasn’t a poodle. Some guy in the next section yelled, “Poodle!” at one point and the woman in front of me yelled some very unkind things about poodles back. Oh, and as you can expect, dog fanciers are insane. The woman behind me has a yorkshire terrier. She was talking about how her yorkie goes on wine tastings to different wineries and writes a blog about what wine is good. The dog. Has a wine blog. She rates wine. The dog. I’m just making sure you get this.

Oh, I tried the fair trade organic strawberry balsamic truffles and they were not great. I mean, the strawberry part and the chocolate part and even the balsamic part were delicious, but it had a creamy center and that made it too rich and gloppy. But I’d be willing to try another company’s strawberry balsamic truffles if they didn’t have a creamy, goopy center.

Posted in Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, New York, Stuff, Tasty 'n' Delicious | No Comments »

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