Saturday, March 31, 2012

3-31-2012

I'm not at all upset by the fact that all of my Saturdays are pretty much devoted to my long run, but I am aware that it makes this blog a lot more boring. Other than running, we went to a bunch of random places for Inspector Nicole to look around at things.

Friday, March 30, 2012

3-30-2012

I haven't really specifically written about it, but long story short is I can't hold my liquor anymore. All this running has really affected my body mass, and if I even attempt to drink the volume of whisky I would previously...well, let's just say that Nicole doesn't like carrying me home that much. As a result I've started drinking fancy beers instead of fancy scotches. Beyond the supposed physical benefits (of not being a slurring mess), the design and packaging of beer bottles is a lot cooler than scotch bottles. Instead of long Gaelic names that I can't really pronounce correctly, I get to hang out with dudes like this little owl after work. I'm pretty sure that 50% of the beers I've purchased were some how related to the picture on the label.

Thursday, March 29, 2012

3-29-2012

To celebrate Nicole's last day at her job, I made her Sexy Bikini Bear. I'm just going to come out and say it. Sexy Bikini Bear is pretty creepy.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

3-28-2012

In a transcendentalist attempt to simplify her lifestyle, Nicole has decided to throw away all her clothes and embrace nudism. As such, she will only be pictured on this blog from the shoulders up or on very very dark nights from now on.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

3-27-2012

I know I've been posting a lot about cupcakes recently, but its only because our kitchen has been looking like this a lot recently. Nicole managed to accomplish a fancy machine trifecta today and used her fancy espresso maker, fancy mixer, and fancy George Foreman cupcake grill to make more fancy coffee cupcakes than we know what to do with.

Monday, March 26, 2012

3-26-2012



Blood sacrifices to the trail gods.

Sunday, March 25, 2012

3-25-2012



I've been waiting for months to take these pictures.

These two hid under a leaf.
I almost squished this one.
I never thought I would be so happy to find something that looks so weird.
Really weird.
Don't eat this kind.
Sitting under a palm tree.

Hopefully there will be a lot more pictures like these coming soon, so get ready.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

3-24-2012



I don't have any pictures from my 13+ mile long run this morning, so you get to look at a picture of my cats. I will say though that this training run was within three minutes of my half marathon race time from last year. I credit Nicole chasing me on a bike for my performance.

Friday, March 23, 2012

3-21-2012



I escaped work early today to go sit on a patio with this little bear. It's important that I take her to a good lunch every once in a while, because a glass of wine, cupcakes, and a pickled egg for dessert are the kinds of candle lit dinners she like to make for herself.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

3-22-2012



One of Nicole's birthday presents this year (does it count as a present if you bought it for yourself?) is this George Forman-esque cupcake maker. She can now turn out twice as many cupcakes in half the time. Please refer to yesterday's post.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

3-21-2012



I'm nearly positive that Nicole is conducting a scientific experiment to see how fat she can make me no matter how much I run. She's winning.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

3-20-2012



This is a self captioning photo.

Monday, March 19, 2012

3-19-2012



I suppose this is probably a vote for wearing socks. I still don't want to.

In other news, Nicole managed to squeeze in an extra day of birthweek+ and talk this lady into buying her yet another birthday dinner. I wonder if she can keep this up until next year.

Sunday, March 18, 2012

3-18-2012



All I ever want to do is be outside. This snake is lucky because he'll probably never be stuck inside of a building in his whole entire life. Granted he and his friends have to worry about being eaten by giant birds all the time, but plenty of snakes life a perfectly good life and get fat and happy. I think I want to be a snake. Speaking of life and death, I saw the turtle life cycle today from start to kind of smelly finish.

I also saw Nicole complete a present opening marathon to finish off the end of birthweek.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

3-17-2012



This St. Patrick's day, I ran trails, ate festive junk food, watched Nicole buy an entire Anthropologie store for her birthday, and had corned beef sandwiches for breakfast and dinner. Hopefully I'm not too hung over tomorrow.

Friday, March 16, 2012

3-16-2012



This little Asian man that we found on the street looked malnourished. So we made him buy us dinner for Nicole's birthday.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

3-15-2012



This is kind of big, life altering news. I got Nicole a puppy for her birthday! Actually I kind of just made him. But he winks at you if you flip him over. In other less significant news, Nicole quit her job today and we were almost murdered by a lightning bolt that struck about 100 feet away from us. What were we doing tempting Zeus in a thunderstorm you may ask? Well I'll tell you.

We actually do it every year so I've posted about it before (3-31-10 and 3-18-11 and 3-20-11), but it's salamander season! You can generally tell when it starts because these little buggers start peeping and won't shut up. So yeah, every year we go to look at the spotted salamanders and frogs when they go to lay their eggs. I've posted a lot of pictures of us picking up and wrangling them in the previous posts, so this year I tried to get more of them swimming in their natural habitat since they were the most active I've ever seen them tonight. Then we almost got struck by lightning in the woods. The end.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

3-14-2012



These are birthday shoes. Ready to party. And by party I mean smell ice cream cake with Sienna, eat really good food, and watch an animated movie about cats. Happy birthday, Nicole.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

3-13-2012



What's a birthdayweek without cake right? Rumor has it that this cake was interviewed on Oprah and costs over $150. That would give just these two slices a street value of at least twenty to thirty bucks right? This cake might cost more per ounce than many recreational narcotics.

Full disclosure, I did not pay $150 for this cake. I don't think I would ever pay $150 for cake. Maybe for a ton of cookies, but definitely not just for one cake. No, I got these two slices for free from work.

Monday, March 12, 2012

3-12-2012



We started little bit of early celebration already this weekend, but today is the official beginning of Nicole's birthweek. She's turning two.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

3-11-2012



After breakfast, nap time, and second breakfast, Nicole and I went wandering in the woods to look for shed deer antlers. We found its whole head but no antlers instead. We did find our first butterfly of the year though. And some skunk cabbage, some very tiny bubbles, and a babbling brook. I'm sure I'll be back to take more pictures at this place since the weather is getting so much nicer. Here's another picture I like for good measure. It's kind of crazy to think we were hiking in the snow a week ago and now it's almost too warm to wear a jacket.

Saturday, March 10, 2012

3-10-2012



I did this in one month and one day short of one year (4-11-11). This is kind of a big deal for me right now. I fully intend to make this amount of mileage minuscule eventually, but I'm pretty happy with it currently.

Friday, March 9, 2012

Thursday, March 8, 2012

3-8-2012



The tops of my lap can assure you that these hooks are even sharper than they look.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

3-7-2012



Today is the type of day that would be good for an afternoon nap in your car.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

3-6-2012



Our cat Mushroom is more of a "hang out and take a nap" kind of cat. Probably because whenever she wants to play, she gets beat up by our other cat Sienna. So actually getting a picture of this is pretty much like photographing bigfoots mating in the wild.

Monday, March 5, 2012

3-05-2012



I love every single aspect of shooting real film, except for waiting to get it developed. I always want to see my pictures right away, and my ocd doesn't like when I'm behind on my blog.

Sunday, March 4, 2012

3-4-2012



Fact #1, I hate winter and being stuck in the house watching TV.
Fact #2, I'm a total nerd about nature.
Fact #3, I like going places were people aren't supposed to go. I pretty much look at "No Trespassing" signs as an open invite to find all the cool places that must by default be awesome since someone doesn't want you to go there.

With these facts in mind, being invited on an all access, v.i.p. hike though normally private areas of a local arboretum is pretty much the greatest thing that could possibly happen this weekend.

I didn't even bother listing it with the other facts since I'm sure you already know if you're at this blog...but Fact #4 is that I take way too many pictures of everything all the time. I've been trying to be happy just shooting digital pictures recently since film is so expensive/takes forever to process blah blah. But today is special, so I loaded up one of my favorite 1970's 35mm slr's and let myself shoot real film. Since I had to actually pay for every shot, I'm posting a ton on here so I can look at them whenever I want and pretend I'm in the woods.

People
People in the woods
We walked though a stream
Walking though streams can be sketchy.
The icicles are melting.
I like trees
and waterfalls
all kinds of waterfalls.
Nicole likes waterfalls too, but I was glad that she didn't fall into the water
I want to live here
Footwear choices are important when you're walking though water
I want to live here too
We climbed a lot of stuff
I didn't climb this
This would be crazy to climb
I already want to go back to this place
These tress are looking down at you
I guess most trees look down at you since they're tall
This one is going out of his way to look at you though
I went out of my way to change rolls and look at this.
I don't really have an explanation for this.
We started with hiking sticks but left them in the woods cause they were actually harder than helpful to use
I'm taking a shower here in the summer
This just looked interesting
Killing icicles
Loving icicles
Not sure how to explain this one either, but I approve
I'm not sure I approve of whatever this is.
They're supposed to look like this.
This is a waterslide
I liked how this picture came out

So after a day full of nature, we went to the most opposite of nature possible. I still had a few shots to use up, so I took pictures of drinks. It's too bad that we drink beer and martinis now, or else I could take shots of shots. That sounds cooler. I'm fond of going to bars on Sunday nights. It makes me feel like I used up even the very last bit of my weekend.

Saturday, March 3, 2012

3-3-2012



I've posted more than a lot of times about how susceptible I am to food-based television advertising. Well I'm glad to say that I'm not the only one. Since we scheduled plans to watch The Lorax tonight (highly recommended), Nicole thought it would only be right to go get the Dr. Seuss themed breakfast items (if you consider a pancake in an ice cream cone a breakfast item) at Ihop. As always, she was right.

Friday, March 2, 2012

3-2-2012



Did you know a group of turkeys is called a "rafter" or "gang"? Have you ever seen a gang of fourteen wild turkeys waiting for the bus before? Or maybe this should be a "why did they turkey cross the road?" joke.* By the way, turkeys can fly. I never really thought they could, but I saw it happen today.

Update:
After a poignant conversation regarding hand turkey drawings, destiny, this post, and fate...all signs pointed towards a turkey burger for lunch. There's no sense in fighting it.

*No turkeys were harmed in the making of this blog post...um...at least not before lunch time.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

3-1-2012



It's still well over a month away, but I'm already gearing up for mushroom season. Seriously though...someone please block my ip address from being able to access any and all online sales.