naming my hound dog

he was living next door just on the other side of the fence, but tall enough so i could reach over and pet him. he had to be the softest dog ever. so i petted him and talked to him for a few days. i knew i loved big ole hounds after sean found boss (a great dane/hound mix) in tahoe and he came to live with us and go everywhere we did. he's still the best dog ever.
so finally the neighbor appears at the fence one day and says, you know i'm fostering him right? well, that was all it took. i knew in my heart in that moment that he would come live on the other side of the fence soon. for a few days i hid my excitement so as not to upset my boyfriend and his current dog. but then aubrey indicated what an awesome dog he thought the brown dog in arva's yard was. so i wrote a note and left it on her front door that we wanted him. then i endured the numerous non-stop phone calls and personality of the very pushy dog rescue lady (who only wants to find good homes for pets i know), filled out the applications, and opened the fence gate and invited him over. actually we did a test run a few days earlier to see how our pups played together and they got along famously from the first moment.

they are both brown and white, but in opposite places and he's tall and she's short, he's a boy and she's a girl, so they are sort of negatives of each other.

after a few days, we reached the 'what do we name him?' stage, i wont even say what silly name the rescue folks had given him. it was clear he needed to be named for his color, reddish-brown, the color of tea in the south flanked with freckled white legs. for a few days i mulled over boring brown derivatives and then switched tactics to naming him based on his personality. he was so laid back and easy going, and just lumbered around like your best friend in summers after school was out, who was always up for anything and everybody wanted him along b/c he was so easy to get along with. charlie or eddie or henry came to mind. so we thought, yeah charlie, its fun to walk out in the yard and say hey charlie, come on in. but the first time we tried it, he was interested in a squirrel or something so we had to call him a couple of times and like all parents who call out both your names when they really mean it and want you to come, we found ourselves saying charlie, charlie brown! yeah, charlie brown, that's it. so his name is charlie brown and it really suits him. yesterday he tolerated all the toddlers in the park hugging on him and of course, they loved his name. its one month ago today that he came to live with us and we are the lucky ones. you're the best charlie brown!
addendum: at one years old and change, we cant leave old shoes lying about, but if we do at least we get to say good grief charlie brown.

mine and gabriel's music

thanks to the other blogs i read, i found this cool mixed tape site and made one for my old friend gabe, whom i credit with exploring and building my musical tastes after college. if you want to make some of your own, as it says below it's mixwit. i warn you the site is addictive, you'll see.

maplover's road map

next destination: triangle of couer d'alene, idaho; bend, oregon; banff, canada later this summer. and next year i'm thinking croatia, or bhutan, or amsterdam. odd assortment perhaps, but recent reading has reminded me of places that were worthy of moving up the list. "Fly Solo, The 50 Best Places on Earth for a Girl to Travel Alone" by Teresa Rodriguez Williamson rated places according to a unique scale she created called CAWS celebre. CAWS assesses these 4 criteria: culture, activity level, weather, social scene. give it a try.

fun dog days at work

yes, its true, i know the identity of spike, but i'm sworn to secrecy. i've seen him at georgia basketball games and witnessed his accidental deflation, the quick switch in front of fans where he inverts inside the costume and walks on his head, and a mean half-court and at times backwards shot. yep. but on this day he simply stopped in the ILA office while making his rounds and showed us some dawg love. we got a few ear wags and head butts. go spike!

georgia's aquarium

we wrapped up athens' elementary school spring break in atlanta at the aquarium just as all of atlanta-area schools got out for spring break. luckily there are lots of fish to go around. chris and the kids got up close with the fish while deedee and i rested on the benches. they have plenty of places to sit/rest all throughout and especially in the ocean voyage back room where they have a whale shark feeding show.
you need at least 4 hours to get through all of it, which includes a snack at the cafe, and then contrary to the safety rules posted everywhere i recommend blinders for the gift shop conveniently placed between you and the outside world.
luckily you can pose with deepo, the mascot modeled after the orange garibaldi fish, just before running the gauntlet. and for those of you who arent sure your little girls like fish, dont worry, they have pink ones!

egg drop

back in my day, the Easter bunny came while you were sleeping and left eggs hidden in the yard and perhaps a basket filled with some candy to use for collecting those in the yard. nowadays a giant bird, also known as a helicopter, flies over a huge neighborhood park and drops prize-filled eggs where hordes of kids are waiting to collect them. a local church and radio station sponsored it and the turnout was much larger than they expected. luckily we live nearby and got in line early and got in. it was crazy and the kids only managed to find a few eggs although over 20,000 were dropped. it was a frenzy to say the least. Madison came in second in musical chairs and nick won a widdle waddle race, it was a fun, family-oriented Easter event.

good luck masquerading as bad

at first it was startling, but then later it was more like divine intervention. aubrey sends this pix message and i rush home from work to meet the tree guy, the firemen, the electric powermen and my brother to survey the damage. he calls a tree surgeon who cuts the tree off the house within hours; then the power guys hooks our lines back up and we are back in business. within a week, though something is amiss with our water bill and we wonder if the tree falling ruptured a line. a useless assessment later from a plumber, my brother finds the small problem and repairs it. within the month, my fabulous homeowners plan sends an assessor and settles the claim and i get a new roof, new trees, new plumbing and i'm feeling pretty lucky.

vintage holidays

we do not have hording disease, we are not packrats here. nope. for every new item we bring in, an old or used one goes out. afterall, we (that's 2 of us and a dog) live in a cottage that's less than 900 sq.ft. we even subscribe to cottage living magazine for tips on how to do it well. this week our alumni association hosted a food drive in conjunction with the local holiday parade and we dropped off a bin full of cans. finally! room in the pantry for stuff we actually eat. last weekend we cleaned out the shed, and loaded the pickup truck with gems destined for a yard sale. finally! there was room to fit the no longer used, yet vintage, couch in storage. alas we did pull out a vintage aqua-green, formica dinette set to donate though. its seen better days and someone will restore it, just not us. my neighbor who runs a consignment store has promised to give it to a new family in town. aubrey must have been inspired by all the vintage things moving about because he went directly to ebay and secured a vintage aluminum xmas tree with rotating base and multi-colored spot light. its lovely and we wrapped it in an aqua-green vintage fabric in honor of the departing dinette set. i was also lucky enough to find a few early gifts for myself at the indie craft-a-ganza downtown last weekend. a lovely barrette, victorian bears for mom and connie, and the most fabulous ring. yes these are are vintage holidays.

halloween w/hamburger helper hands

you've all seen the box in your trash, okay on the shelf in the grocery store, the 'hamburger or tuna helper' product series features a giant white hand. all i know was i picked them up at the costume store to go with my st. bernard outfit b/c well, they are really big dogs with big paws. aubrey hung a black light on the porch to illuminate his white pumpkin with fog machine effects and suddenly every neighbor stopped to trick or treat at our house b/c the helper hands glowed in the black light when i opened the door which then served as a beacon to our house. several friends were over to eat fish tacos and hang out and a few took turns answering the door to the little goblins. it was a fun time. altho we offered a bowl of candy, i think we tricked more than we treated. aubrey even had to take his scarey big-mouth-guy mask off after a while b/c all the babies were crying. if ya ever dont know what to be for halloween i recommend giant helper hands.
by the way, thats tiger woods and medusa or reptile lady above; they helped with the trick, not so much the treat.

level 4 drought

it was a hot dry summer and altho cooler now, its still dry. folks everywhere are warning conserve water now before we run out. indeed we are not allowed to pull from our rivers or resevoirs anymore. landscape watering has been banned for months. restaurants are only serving tap water to guests on request, roommates are showering together, okay, well this was probably already happening, but you get the drift. we went out to our local park on the river sunday to walk the dog and check it out. yep you can practically walk across the wide oconee river on the exposed boulders. see there's some water in the bottom left hand corner of this pic. pray for rain.

memphis in the meantime baby

aubrey bought yet another stove on ebay...but its a beauty and we got to go to memphis to pick it up! it happened to be my birthday weekend so i requested a spa hotel, good sport that i am, and agreed to go along. we lodged in mississippi and dined in memphis, tennessee. the region is full of double consonants and more towns in one area than you can imagine that start with the letters Tu. Tupelo, Tuscogee, Tunica, and i'm sure i missed a few. we checked out the town of tunica simply b/c it had a casino with real live poker rooms for aubrey, the bellissimo spa for me, and it was $200 cheaper than the Peabody Hotel in Memphis. So much for the ducks, i mean they swim, they walk, we've all seen it right?
We easily popped in to Beale Street for dinner one night at the King's Palace, took in the cocktail hour sights at the Peabody, and bought Janie more Elvis paraphenalia to put in a glass case and not actually use. The stove fit nicely in the back of the chevy silverado that we rented for the trip. And I, refreshed from a half-day at the Bellissimo spa was happy to ride away the weekend on Hwy 78. Yes, the same one here in Athens, in fact runs from Myrtle Beach, SC east of us to Memphis, TN, west of us and then some. that wraps up september and a road trip every weekend, looking forward to staying home in October.

Fall in love with georgia

amicalola falls is known as tumbling waters in Cherokee lingo. it is indeed the tallest falls east of the Mississippi. this photo is only the top of the falls. we live only an hour and a half away and usually only go up for day trips. but recently, dear old friends from DC came to town from their new homes in salt lake city and winston salem for a conference in Atlanta and we kicked off the visit with a big chill weekend in the north georgia mountains. it was grand.
we rented a big 3BR cabin with screened in porch, and all the trimmings of a perfect never-leave-the-cabin weekend. well, we did wander out once to hike the falls, not all 600 steps though, since we had some toddlers with us. it was truly the first sign of fall for the southeast. temps cooled off, we donned long pants and gasp, even socks. we built a campfire in the evenings, played board games on the porch, cooked delicious group meals and reconnected. there was a huge pumpkin patch nearby with hayrides, cider, funny corn and all. they offered wheelbarrows to haul your beasts up to the cashier. tixie picked out a nice one. we lugged home a 100 pounder and aubrey later carved it. by the time halloween came, it was gruesome. perfect i said.

isla del encanto

boy do we wish we'd stayed in puerto rico, it really is the island of enchantment. temps in georgia have been 100+ all week. although we were worried that it might be hot in PR before we went, it turned out to be doable. you could stay in the water, hide out in the rain forest, or lounge by the pool to stay cool. indeed it was a low 78 at the rain forest inn. we enjoyed the beauty of the island waters, blue flag beaches, yagrumo trees in the rain forest, and colorful vendors everywhere. we were surprised by the amount of trash on roadways and at local hangouts like behind the kioskos at luquillo beach. aubrey's favorite activity was kayaking at night in the bays to see the bioluminescence in the lagoons. we went in with kayaking puerto rico tours to learn about and feel the 'fireflies in the water'. sorry no pics. they no longer allow you to swim in the waters b/c too many folks are wearing deet bug repellent and sunscreens loaded with chemicals which kill off the microorganisms that create the glow. we were fine with that and sufficed to swirl our paddles, hands and toes to see the effect. the food chain is at work for the dino flagellates as well since the fish who often swallow them in the water glow as they swim through it and thus they are targets for much larger fish.
my favorite activity was the relaxation i achieved staying in the chalet up in the rain forest with all the flora, magnificent rain storms and greenery, not to mention mountain views of the beaches below. we were served a gourmet breakfast every morning on our balcony and not at some ungodly, we need to start our day early and so must you hour, no it was at 9am. we not only ate like kings, healthy kings who enjoy fresh tropical fruit, yogurt, wheat germ, spinach omelets, blueberries from maine pancakes and most importantly, we were in control of the coffee pot. i read 2 books, aubrey played a lot of solitaire and we both gave the 1970s edition of trivial pursuit a try; there's a lot we dont know. let me not forget to mention that we also loved the snorkeling day sail we took out to cayo icacos where they fed us an awesome lunch and we fed the fish leftover breadcrumbs, which needless to say made us very popular among the caribbean fish. its an affordable chance to get out in the ocean, over to another island and look back at where you are which is always fun for a maplover.

crabcakes in ocracoke

25 folks in an 8-bedroom house who take turns cooking dinner, making tea, using the kayaks, and playing tournament bocce ball makes for a nice vacation believe it or not! thats what aubrey and i just returned from and aunt connie and uncle howdy hosted us all. it was a great time at the beach and not too hot, although the same cant be said for home.
we flew up to newport news and drove down to the beach in a rental car turned 4x4 rental truck b/c they were out of cars. 'you can drive on the beach in this thing' the agent said. we never tried, we not only thought it was wrong, we were (or i was) chicken and didnt know how to not get stuck in the soft sand. plus i didnt want to be the tourist on holiday who had to phone in a request for another vehicle b/c i'd gotten the first one stuck on the beach.
we took the ferry over from hatteras and were the first vehicle loaded onto the ferry so we sat in our 4x4 and watched for land. we had the best crabcakes ever at the creekside cafe in ocracoke, the best seafood lo mein at the boardWok in Rodanthe and the rest of the meals we enjoyed right at the beach house. i read a book and just relaxed. it was grand.

summer travel rewards

we've been working hard on 2 houses and finally have a vacation lined up to reward us for all our efforts. we head to OBX with family in june and Puerto Rico, just us, in august. we even managed to use flight credits on both trips for 1 of the tickets. i've been the ultimate bargain shopper and its paid off. i invite you to check out my newest discovery: www.farecast.com. oh my gosh, it worked for me and its awesome. i had just missed a cheap fare on PR and that irked me to no end. i came across this site which watched the fare for me and advised 'wait, wait, buy!' every day until the magic day came and the cheap fare reappeared. i grabbed it and thanked the website profusely. and did i mention its free? like it should be. give a look. meanwhile, anybody been to PR and have advice about lodging? we like the sounds of the rainforest for a few days, and the beach for even fewer. oh and aubrey must hit a casino to try to find texas hold'em. but only very briefly...i hope.

beauty comes to green county

aubrey is putting the finishing touches on his remodel in green county this month and its just gorgeous. i cant bear to think of someone renting it, so i'm hoping to convice him to sell it. either that or we have a psuedo lake house now...or we can at least spend weekends there this summer, drive the 10 miles to the lake, rent a boat for the afternoon and claim we have a lake house.

meeting socrates

my nephew nick turned 10 today and he, his sister, his dad (my brother chris) and I went to see the Atlanta soccer team play for his birthday. he and madison are both rocking in the oglethorpe county league and very into soccer. so we sat on the front row of the half field line at silverbacks stadium in gwinnett, built recently for the team. seeing minor league play is so great b/c everyone is so approachable. the kids got autographs, pictures, and immediately developed not 1, but 3 favorite players! OJ (pictured below), Rodrigo Rios, and Tony McManus.
the atlanta silverbacks are in the USL not the MLS which is why i called it minor leagues. and indeed there was a little less profes-sionalism on the field than when i used to attend DC United of the MLS or world cup matches in general. we saw 2 fights, lots of fake injuries, 16 yellow cards, 1 red card, followed by a police escort off the field. i just hope the kids dont think thats what the game is all about. oh, and a penalty kick deflected by a header came right at us and the tall guy next to me stood up and caught it, at the last possible second. the kids loved that (i was a little nervous)! meanwhile, socrates, oh yeah i'm getting to that. their mascot, a silverback gorilla is named socrates. and they got his autograph too. now tell me, why is a gorilla named socrates?

all dressed up

another school year is done and we've graduated 30 more leaders. aubrey and i got all dressed up for the occasion and celebrated with them over a nice dinner. we never dress up so that's why you get a picture of it. of course, the pic is me with some of my students. i'll round one up of aubrey shortly...okay, here we go.

3rd times a charm

my 83-year-old grandmother on my father's side is remarried and living in Naples with her new husband, Rock. they swung thru athens recently on a frequent journey from FL to DC. my grandfather passed away when i was a teenager and my step grandfather passed in the last decade, but ada lou is still going strong. and grandmother loves a man in uniform, so 3-star general rock to the rescue. more power to her. i'm sure she wonders when i will begin to follow in her footsteps...

Mobile tour of homes for spring break

I spent spring break relaxing in Mobile with aunt kathy before she moves to idaho. we hit the junior league tour of homes, where we met all the lovely azalea maids. we beached it on dauphin island, ate sushi at liquid, got my hair done at studio 33, and took in the pompei exhibit and imax of ancient greece. we topped it all off with home movies from the 1950s of her and my dad as wee ones. who knew it was the original home of mardi gras?