Mom Comes to Visit

I thought I'd tell you about my mom's visit to North Carolina a couple of weeks ago, and give you an update since its been a little while. Mom arrived on a Wednesday night. Allen and she and I went across the street to Cinelli's and were wined and dined. The next day she and I drove down to Cedar Island and rode the ferry to Ocracoke. We took in the last concert of the season from Molasses Creek, a famous local bluegrass band, and stayed in this great 1950's era cottage (we got an off-season rate!). Next day we toured around the village, hung around the beach, found some shells in the dredge pile at the north end of the island and took the ferry up to Hatteras to see the lighthouse. We ate at Howard's, of course, and introduced mom to blackened fish and hushpuppies. On Saturday, we met Allen's mom and went out to Chapel Hill to eat at Mama Dip's. MMMmmmMMM! We also toured the arboretum out there before coming back to town to check out the state farmer's market. At some point we toured around Historic Oakwood, too. The following day we saw the art museum, the arboretum at NC State, and the rose garden. We also irritated the internet into coughing up a cached page that contained a picture of my mother's birth parents on a Navy ship heading for Japan. Unfortunately, all that was cached was the caption, not the picture itself. But we ordered a copy from the National Archives. We also discovered that my mom's paternal grandfather was likely a three term congressman from Maine. He's got his own wiki page. Interesting stuff.

I'm leaving this afternoon for Houston, and I've got a to do list as long as my arm. I'll write more from there, later in the week!

Wyoming-Colorado Trip

Hi! I've got the pictures from my Wyoming and Colorado trip, as you can see. We were there the first week of August. You can figure out which is which, but these are pictures of my good buddy John hanging out with us at Veedauwoo recreation area near Laramie; my beautiful sister and my two adorable nieces in my mom's kitchen; Lake Marie, one of the most beautiful places in the world; and a couple of mountain goats that we saw on Mt. Evans in Colorado. I was really pumped about seeing the goats. I've only ever seen them through binoculars before! They are remarkably cute animals. Other things that we saw? Fossil Butte National Monument, Grand Teton National Park, we floated down the North Platte River with my friend Eric, visited Lake John, Colorado to collect rocks, and explored the Cache Le Poudre Canyon, also in Colorado. We got back very tired, but having seen a great deal. Allen got altitude sickness on Mount Evans, so we'll know better than to only allow ourselves seven days to adjust. Next time we will try to spend at least 14 days at high altitude before we try to summit a 14er. My step-dad showed us beautiful slides of some of the mountains that he's climbed. Perhaps next time we'll go backpacking in the Wind River Mountains. Just as pretty as Colorado, less well known, and not quite so high!

Kitten

Hi everyone. I wasn't going to write my first entry until I got to Houston, but something newsworthy has happened. Yesterday I spent four hours trying to coax a tabby out of the hedge outside my apartment. She swindled me out of a whole package of tuna, but she wouldn't let me catch her! This morning I went to the tractor supply in Knightdale and got a humane squirrel trap. Bated with another pack of tuna and set under the hedge, the kitten was caught in about 20 minutes. She's very skinny, the poor thing, and she's got fleas and perhaps an eye infection. She's also very affectionate, cute, and has good house manners! She and I are going to see the vet tomorrow, to see what we can do to fix her up. My adult cat, Titan, doesn't seem to care for her. I'm keeping them apart, in case she's sick, anyway. We decided to call her Cory (short for Albacore). If Titan doesn't come around by the end of the week, we'll find a more hospitable home for her. If he does play nice, we are going to keep her; she's a complete treasure!