Friday Mornings

I recently changed my work schedule due to needing some extra time to grade papers and make cheese (I know odd combinations). Friday's I'm home to get caught up on everything I've let slip from lack of time earlier in the week. Things have been very busy and very stressful the last couple of weeks so I've taken an hour or so on Friday mornings to just relax before I delve into the million and one projects for the day. My routine consists of drinking coffee, sometimes knitting, and watching a TED Talk. Since I've decided to attempted NaNoWriMo next month I've been watching talks by authors that I like, looking for some inspiration. So far I've watched Amy Tan, who's a really funny lady, and Elizabeth Gilbert, who's ideas I think are beautiful. I particularly appreciate Elizabeth Gilbert's advice at the end:

And what I have to, sort of keep telling myself when I get really psyched out about that,is, don't be afraid. Don't be daunted. Just do your job. Continue to show up for your piece of it, whatever that might be. If your job is to dance, do your dance. If the divine, cockeyed genius assigned to your case decides to let some sort of wonderment be glimpsed, for just one moment through your efforts, then "Ole! "And if not, do your dance anyhow. And "Ole!" to you, nonetheless. I believe this and I feel that we must teach it. "Ole!" to you, nonetheless, just for having the sheer human love and stubbornness to keep showing up.

So that is my goal for November "to keep showing up" and writing and giving this novel in a month a fair chance. "Ole! to me nonetheless".

Boating on Lake Ontario

My friend Hilary and I won an overnight stay and boat rental last fall at the Chamber of Commerce Annual Dinner. We've both been so busy over the summer that we didn't get to use it until the end of August.

We spent the night at Pleasant Beach Hotel in Fair Haven, NY. The room was cozy but the amazing second story wrap-around balcony made up for it. It didn't help that we were trying to put 4 people in a room made for 2 and maybe a child. The owners, Bonnie and H, made us a full breakfast the next morning and it was fun to sit out on the deck and watch the boats leaving the bay for the day. We met up with a 5th friend, and headed over to get our boat for the day from Anchor Resort & Marina.

Hilary & Grant with the perfect view as we leave Little Sodus Bay and head out to Lake Ontario

Captain Andrew and DJ Jessica

Hilary & Kim catching the ray's, not that you can tell from our pasty skin :)

I love the bluff's on Lake Ontario. We anchored just off these for part of the day.

We live just south of Fair Haven and it's one of my favourite places to visit in the summer. I would love to have a cottage on the lake and imagine my excitement when I found a place for sale that we could afford. It looks so nice from the lake. The problem comes when you get closer and see that the "foundation" is made of tiny stones, crumbling mortar, and is sinking into the side of the hill. There's no indoor plumbing and part of the deck caved in when we walked on it. Oh well, it's fun to dream and it was fun to go snoop on the property and see what it looked like. It did have an amazing few of the Lake.

We took the boat back an hour early because the water was getting so rough :( When we got to the marina they were desperately pulling boats out of the water preparing for Hurricane Irene to hit. Although parts of New York suffered significant flooding and damage from the Hurricane our area did not get as much wind and rain as they had predicted. The plan is to get a group together next summer and rent the bigger boat for the day.

Fun at Taughannock Falls

09/18/2009

Lidija

Me & Andrew

The falls plummet 215 ft (33 feet higher than Niagara Falls) and the highest consistent, single plunge fall in New York State. There are a lot of interesting Indian Lore surrounding the area.

I have no idea what they are all intently watching, but it's a good "butt shot" ;)

Erika & David being silly.

Erika demonstrating her mad camera skillz.

Sunset on Grapes

Ponderings at Wegman's

I ran to Wegman's to grab a sub for lunch today and once again ran into someone I know. It was really nice to see this person as I hadn't seen her in awhile and it was good to hear about her daughter who I taught riding lessons to when she was in high school. Once we were done visiting and I got my sandwich and was heading back to work I was amused to think that I had established myself in the community when I can no longer go to the grocery store and NOT see someone I know (although I'm not so amused when they are clients). Then it hit me, this summer, I will have lived in this region longer than I have ever lived anywhere else! I will still have lived longer in Quebec, but we moved a lot there and were never in one region more than 5 years or so. This summer we will have lived in Central New York for 8 years!!! I can't believe we've been here this long. I talked to a co-worker about this and she asked if I was getting squirrelly? I had to tell her no, I think I'm ok with it. I like it here, I like knowing people and having roots to a place. Something I never really had. Well I did have, no matter where we moved I always knew I could go back to Nanny's. No matter what. But since she's died I haven't had that. I have friends that have grown up in one spot for their whole lives. They know everyone in the community and have great stories. It's always fascinated me how people could live in the same house all their life, it was such a foreign concept for me. I guess I'm starting to get a little taste of it.

New York State Fair

I was really stressed about going to the fair. It's committing to be there Wednesday through Labour Day Monday. It's a lot of prep work with the goats, everyone needed to be re-clipped. Plus we planned to stay there so we could keep any eye on everyone since it was the first time we were taking them away for longer than a day show. So that meant packing camping gear and food, we didn't plan on living on fair food all week, for both nutritional and financial reasons. Our stall assignments were right by one of the main doors and the milk room. Which was nice because we got to talk to lots of people and answer questions and dispel some myths about goats. 'It was a bad location for those same reasons, there was constantly people coming through and being beside the milk room had two disadvantages. First, the light in the milk room doesn't shut off, so we had a pretty bright nightlight every night. Second, there are psycho goat owners that milk at 4 in the morning, they made quite a bit of noise, and then our goats saw others being milked and getting their grain and thought it was time for them to be milked and would start screaming at us to get up. We've been promised that we'll be placed somewhere else next year. And I might come home one night to get a real nights sleep and a nice shower.

Overall I'm so glad we went. Most exciting is we did the one day milk test. Ivy, Catarina, Raizel and Sera all tested. Raizel and Ivy both earned their star milker status. Ivy blew everyone out of the water. She took highest protein, highest butterfat and highest milk production in the Alpine breed. AND SHE GAVE THE HIGHEST BUTTERFAT among ALL the goats that were on milk test!!! We were very proud of her. Especially since she and Alice were the two first goats we bought...out of the swap sheet.

Hurray for Ivy! Ivy making a silly face.

To fill the time between milk test times (am & pm milking) since there isn't a show that day a "goat bowl" was organized. It's teams of 4 people and you answer trivia questions against other teams. It's fun and silly and "competitive" in who's going to have bragging rights and smack talking. My team won :)

There was then two days of showing, Junior Doe one day and Senior Doe the next. We took a couple of lower end ribbons in the showing, which really isn't bad considering how big the classes were and the quality of animals that were there.

Andrew & Sera (over 3, under 4 class)

Andrew & Ivy (over 5 class)

On Sunday, now that all the stress of the showing is over there is a costume class. It's fun for the kids but also some of the adults get into it. And some adults learned that you shouldn't make a bet you can't win.

Tommy Lee & Pamela Anderson

Pretty, Pretty Princess

Farm Banner

Here's our first farm banner that we're having printed for the State Fair and future events.
Thanks to Erika for expanding on our original idea, Andrew & I were really struggling putting it together and she graciously rescued us. And thanks to our printer: Farmboy Graphics for getting it printed in less than a week and not charging us any extra.