Final Post for Summer 2011

White Travelogue: A California Wedding Story

 Jenny & Dan
August 8, 2009

Lisa, Dan, and Bob

Father & Son

Happy 2nd Anniversary Jen & Dan !

Public Service Announcement No.2

By way of our continuing effort to bring you timely and oh-so-educational public service announcements, DKG has kindly provided the following information:

There have been one or two recent sightings of a wild cat at the Dog Park that some believe was a mountain lion (also called "cougars"--and not the kind you see at Nordstrom's in search of younger men); others suspect that it was a bobcat, since those certainly have been spotted elsewhere in the neighborhood. 

For your edification, and to help stave off boredom and defer imbibing, we present to you a few tips to help distinguish between these two species:

1. Although an exceptionally large adult male bobcat can approach the same size as young female mountain lion, typically bobcats are much smaller in size.  Bobcats average from 15 to 30 lbs., mountain lions 75 to 150 lbs.  We know this because DKG took his bathroom scales around the subdivision, weighing every wild cat he could find (and kicking the domestic ones for good measure).

2.  Bobcats have stripes and spots; mountain lions are a uniform tawny gold color (although, as young cubs, are spotted for camouflage).

3.  Bobcats have short, "bobbed" tails (hence the name), rarely more than a few inches long; mountain lions have much longer tails, sometimes nearly half the length of their torsos.

4.  Bobcats have tufts of long hair/fur on the tips of their ears (which gives them the illusion of being pointed), and along their checks.  Mountain lions have rounded ears and uniformly short fur all over.

5.  And finally, bobcats sometimes answer to the beckoning, "Here, kitty, kitty, kitty . . . I have some tasty Costco cat treats for you," whereas mountain lions frequently respond to "Please don't munch on my puppy; here is a tasty deer carcass, instead."  Both species, however, answer to the business end of a well-aimed 30-30.

To further enhance your viewing experience, here are two short videos presented by the Arizona Department of Game and Fish, complete with warm, cuddly creatures in the wild and soothing mood music:

Both species, while snoozing or waiting to pounce on prey, lie within the canopy of trees.  It wouldn't hurt to look up, now and again, while enjoying the new benches at the Dog Park.

This concludes this important public service announcement.  We hope it did not reduce you to a catatonic state.

No Place Like Home

Another successful Watervale vacation- plenty of morning hikes, afternoons spent swimming in the big lake, and sparklers on the beach at sunset. But despite how much I love our annual retreat to northern Michigan, it is always nice to be back home in Arizona.

This year I was extremely pleased to arrive home with very little dirty laundry, only a small pile of sandy socks.

That's right folks, while in Michigan I perfected Macon Leary's shower-with-your-clothes-on laundry technique.  (Macon Leary is the travel writer in Anne Tyler's novel, The Accidental Tourist.  Fun book, if you haven't read it, I highly recommend it.  Maybe you've seen the movie.  Macon is a depressed travel writer and hires a flakey dog trainer to train his out-of-control dog.)

During our Watervale vacation Jimmy and I use to argue about who was driving into town to do laundry, until I put a bottle of this in our shower ...

Welcome Home Patty !

By the first of August ...

  

    the invisible beetles began

    to snore and the grass was

    as tough as hemp and was

    no color–no more than

    the sand was a color and

    we had worn our bare feet

    bare since the twentieth

    of June and there were times

    we forgot to wind up your

    alarm clock and some nights

    we took our gin warm and neat

    from old jelly glasses while

    the sun blew out of sight

    like a red picture hat and

    one day I tied my hair back

    with a ribbon and you said

    that I looked almost like

    a puritan lady and what

    I remember best is that

    the door to your room was

    the door to mine.

Anne Sexton

Lisa Explains Brain-Damaged Males

Since we started off with a bird theme at the beginning of this blog, I want to add a few tidbits for local birdwatchers:

These pictures are of peach-faced lovebirds that were nesting a couple months ago in the saguaro at 103rd and Charter Oak.  They are not native to Arizona, coming here from South Africa by way of an aviary owner who set his flock free.  They can be seen all over the neighborhood in the spring, traveling in groups of 15-20.  They squawk as they fly, and when in trees they sing, a distinctive sound once you have heard it.  They survive well in this dry climate, and especially love many of the other plants that have been imported to Arizona.

And another saguaro-nesting non-native species is the European starling.  (Someone brought every bird mentioned in Shakespeare's plays to America.  The starlings seem to love the USA!!)  They have been ingesting hormone tainted earthworms which have caused brain damage to the males.  This has made them more attractive to the females, as the females pick their mates based on the male's song, and the brain-damaged male starlings apparently sing quite an exciting song.  Hum . . . what does that say of male rock stars?  Or are the females also brain-damaged?  

Your neighbor, Lisa

White Family Travelogue: A Swedish Wedding Story

Freja and Lars celebrate their first wedding anniversary today.

Their wedding reception was held in a medieval castle Örebro.  

At the reception, Freja and Lars kissed after people clanked on glasses.  They stood on a chair to kiss, which allowed all the guests to see.  A funny Swedish tradition, if the bride leaves the room, all the females line up and kiss the groom.  If the groom leaves the room, all the guys line up to kiss the bride.  Then one time, for fun (not the tradition) both left the room, and all the girls lined up to kiss the bride's father.   

At one point during the reception, the friends of the groom (in Sweden, neither the bride nor groom have attendants) picked up Lars and cut off the toes of his socks.  This is not tradition, but since Lars is from a small town in the South of Sweden called Klippan, and the Swedes all know English, it sounded like clip, so they cut his socks.

                                     

They had a nice powerpoint slide show/roast of the couple, much like what we had seen at Canadian weddings.  Maybe it is because half of Sweden immigrated to the Great Lakes region in the 19th century.  Many people, including me, representing the American guests, got up to tell a funny story about the couple.

Lisa, Freja, and Bob

It was a very beautiful wedding.

The End

Diane Travelogue: Fairy Chimneys

Fairy Chimneys

The Fairy Chimneys are in the Cappadocia area of Turkey.  It was once the heart of the ancient Hittite Empire, then a Roman and Byzantine province. The landscape is riddled with numerous ancient cave dwellings and subterranean honeycomb cities that were a refuge for the early Christians during Roman persecution.  Many are still in use today, having been passed down through families.  I was lucky enough to visit one family's home, which was quite modern and comfortable inside, including flat screen TV, etc.

 

Travelogue: A View of Paris

Jardin du Luxembourg

Evening stroll in Paris.

Notre Dame (no, not the football team)

The other "Ball and Chain".

Paris in April (and in pink, evidently)

View from the Eiffel Tower

Chateau garden along the Loire River

Versailles Palace through a window frame

Say "cheese"!

Chateau d'Ambroise

A French dog is a shopkeeper's best friend

Smokey Eglise de la Madeleine

 

Kelly & Jacques
"Pillow Talk" at the Paris apartment.

Travelogue: Bob & Lisa in China

The Whites traveled to China the fall of 2008, avoiding the Olympic masses, but enjoying all of the tourist amenities set up for the games.  Below you can get a glimpse of the Great Wall through the polluted air.

The second picture is from the beautiful mountain retreat near the Li River, called Yangshuo.

 The third is Bob, the newest terracotta solder in Xian.

The fourth is us with Pat and Duane Thoms (Bloomfield) at the world's largest McDonald's at the Olympic village in Beijing.  Do they have American takeout in square paper boxes?

The last picture is of Bob on the way to Yangshuo after a tainted meal of Peking Duck.  You cannot see how green his face is, nor hear the special sound effects of his retching.

Diane Travelogue: Gorillas in the Mist

These are Ugandan mountain gorillas (found also in the contiguous mountains of Congo/Rwanda/Uganda).  There are also lowland gorillas in some other African countries.  We hiked 3 hours up and back to see them.  It was a family of one silverback male (picture), 3 mature females, and several teenage boys and girls.  At one point, I was standing in the way of one of the young females so she just rushed by, brushing against me in the process.  Nobody had the presence of mind to get the picture!

 

Today is my birthday

I will be ...

getting up early, and hiking through the woods,

across the dunes,

where I will pose for a picture with my husband,

or maybe sit in the early morning fog with my sister.

Or maybe sit quietly, and
wait for a bald eagle to swoop down low
and wish me a happy birthday.

I will definitely run down the dune and
splash into the water.  Swim if I feel like it.

Walk back to the Inn for breakfast,

where I will chat, and eat oatmeal scones,
and receive birthday greetings.

I will sit on the porch and hear everyone's plans for the day.
Big beach or little beach? Read or bike, or maybe a nap ?  

The girls and I will most likely choose
 the big beach (Lake Michigan).

The day will end with sunset and friends,

and a birthday run down the beach with my sister,
waving sparklers and laughing,
until one of us falls down.
(usually me)

The End