Lodging...fancy-fance

So, this is where we stayed in Kissimee...pretty swanky.

Space Shuttle Discovery launch

We were lucky enough to be around when the shuttle was launching, although we were about 40 miles away. It was still incredibly bright and larger than the size of a big sunset. We did not hear anything, but it was still quite an amazing thing to witness in person.

It was neat to see how the colour of the fire (?) changed as the fuel changed (according to my bro).

This was about the last visible point before it was too difficult to see. It seemed to fly away horizontally rather than straight up. I'm not sure why...

Gators!

An everpresent danger in Florida...

Blue Spring State Park - Orange City, FL

Manatees are also called 'sea cows'. They are basically slow moving balloons with sealion-like faces. These are one of a few protected species left in the world. They come up about once every 5 minutes for a breath of air and spend the rest of the time eating plants and sleeping...sounds healthy and relaxing.

The day that we visited the park, there were over 130 manatees counted.

What is the opposite of phallic? This is the source of the spring...it is probably about 10 feet wide and 70 feet long.

more Florida

H took this photo of the shells...I love it and took a few more on my film camera. My dad says she has a great eye for photo composition and I agree!

This is so cute with the little footprints...there were a ton more all over.

I totally love the Scion xB. So boxy...so fuel efficient.

FLORIDA!!!!

Marine Rescue - there were many HUGE turtles. Apparently some of them can reach 8 feet long and weigh 1300 pounds, although most here were only about 2.5 feet long!
















Stick insect that was just hangin' outside the marine rescue place.
















We had the opportunity to drive on the beach and go for a walk. It was birsk (about 8 degree C), but that was a whole lot better than home...








We saw this jellyfish on the beach too...one of the tentacles was about 5 feet long and bright blue!

water flower

One of the plants in our aquarium has been blooming lately.....neat!

Just some old pics that I love

A Cerambycid (Longhorned beetle) from a vacation we took with my parents and my brother a while back...

















A teeeeeeeny little bee. It was really only about 6 or 7 mm long.




















Yes. I love coffee. Especially while on vacation as we were here.

















Just a pic from our old garden on a nice sunny day. 

The Museum!

A while back, Brian and I took the kids out to the Museum...they had been working on a lot of changes and WOW was it nice. The kids had a great time.

Korean delegation and our family/friends weekend brunch

Last week I gave a presentation to a visiting delegation from Korea (South) on the work we do in plant quarantine. They were quite happy with the content and also asked many many many questions. It was somewhat akin to a horrible interview held in a language other than one of your choosing.

I guess they were pleased since they offered (and I took it!) a present. It is a really nice travel manicure and hygeine set. Nice case! I'm pretty pleased.

We went to brunch at a new restaraunt near home on the weekend. It has great food, a nice atmosphere and friends of ours know the owners! They even has story reading that the kids tried (relatively successfully) to listen to. Check out The Branch!

WORK! and crime in the country

ARRRRGH! Work is silly busy. We've got all these short term, emergency projects, plus we are hiring students, plus the normal madness that is our everyday jobs... I'm feeling a little stressed today. I had a little over a hundred messages in my email today. CRAZY.

On my way home a couple of days ago, I passed a police cruiser and the two (!) officers looked me over pretty completely. When they passed, I noticed that they were putting on the brakes every 100 feet or so. I didn't think much of it until I crested the next hill and got on the brakes to avoid two police cruisers. There was a van off the road that looked like it had 'mis-negotiated' a T-junction (i.e. didn't see the stop sign while going extremely fast). It was up to the axles in mud. The two police cruisers near it didn't look too impressed with the situation.

Then, when I get home, H tells me that she saw another officer standing at a corner of two roads looking up and down them with binoculars. Not a good sign.

So, after dinner, H went to work and I took the kids with me in the car to see if we could talk to some police. Of course, you can't get a number to call a REAL person. So, I ended up finding an officer. He was quite nice and gave me a full run down of the situation.

So, the provincial police chased him up one of the major highways, he escaped onto the road where he crashed and the airbag nailed him in the face. So, he has a cut below one of his eyes. He gets out and runs about 2 kms through a muddy field and tries to steal a truck. It stalls and the woman that lives there runs out and asks what the crap he's doing. Well, he offers her a hundred bucks to drive him across the city and she, of course, declines. She calls the city police and they are STILL looking for him.

The good (?) news is that the police did not have any reason to think he was dangerous. Anyhow, I told a bunch of neighbours and then paced around nervously all night long and didn't sleep that well either.

H said there is a message from the police on our voicemail. I hope they know some good news...

Woodstoves are the best, well the most fun anyway

So we have been using our woodstove a lot recently...the nights are getting quite a bit cooler. They have been hovering around 2-3 degrees at night time, so the house goes down to about 18 degrees by morning.

Just stick a few logs in the woodstove and let the place warm up!!! One evening last week, the family room was a sweltering 26.5 degrees...you should have seen how warm the basement family room was... yeek. It was hot.

Brian and I calculated that we likely have just less than two whole cords of firewood. A whole cord is defined as 8 feet x 4 feet x 4 feet = 128 cubic feet. We have a stack of about 15 feet long, 3 feet wide and 4.5 feet high...

Luckily oil has not been too expensive, although, fuel oil costs significantly less than gasoline. It was about 69.9 cents/L.




It's been gorgeous here lately... notice the maple is turning colours now. Most of the oak leaves have fallen from the fencerow at the back.

More farms!

I decided to use the picture collage part of Picasa...so far I love using this program. Make things much easier to post onto the blog.

So this was another farm we went to with our newly returned friends...it is a sheep and llama farm primarily. In fact, the woman of the farm is a weaver too! How exciting for H.

The llamas are 'guard llamas'...they seemed pretty tame to me, but weren't that fond of any sort of attention... The sheep at the upper right are 'wool sheep' and the lower left is a 'meat sheep'. Mmmm....lamb. Apparently they start to 'harvest' them at 6 months...poor little lambies.

 

This here is a recurring little visitor...a member of the Reduvidae order of insects. AKA the 'Assasin bug'.



















These are some red deer/elk crosses at a local farm. The deer are from New Zealand stock and then crossed with elk...not really sure why. Our friends bought some of the sausage from these deer and mmmm...delish.


This is the door of the new store and winery. I love the hardware!


They were displaying this clock inside (it was for sale)...mom and dad, I thought you would appreciate this! 

Our new killing, fungal friend

So we have been finding loads of these mushrooms on our property. I have been removing about 3-10 every other day. My mom identified them as Amanita virosa, the 'Destroying Angel' which is only the most poisonous mushroom in the world. These pcitures are of an older specimen and the younger ones are exactly as they appear on the Wikipedia site and many others. We were not too happy. Oh well, I guess we are happy that we have so much natural diversity that we can have such abberant mushrooms as this. It's just a big concern to watch the kids closely so that we know they aren't going anywhere near them.

A isn't afraid of much right now, so this is a difficult thing to convince her not to touch them, especially since all she knows are edible mushrooms, which she has decided that she loves.


 

OK, so this picture was from a while ago, but it was extremely hot that day...

A mushroom forest made of cups and bowls...

Our huge squash plant growing on the compost heap!!! This is near the back of the yard...but still lots more behind me!

A leopard frog...one of the many of the summer.

Nature and stuff

Apparently we have treefrogs out where we live! I talked to our neighbour yesterday about it and he confirmed it (he is an arbourist by the way!). This one was apparently quite big.

Yesterday, E and I went fishing down at the lake. The arbourist neighbour caught a bullfrog and his daughter came over to show us...I had NO idea they were so big. It was about 15 inches long with the legs outstretched, 8 inches with them tight to its body. It was about the size of a HUGE grapefruit and a LOT heavier.







This treefrog had amazing colouring...hard to describe...kindof a silvery-green colour. I was wondering how the heck it got way up on the deck railing...










Just a sunset!

Good mileage is awesome...

My latest mileage!!!
Assuming US gallon = 3.79L
Imperial gallon = 4.55L

31.4L - 560km = 6.907ImpGal/8.285USGal & 350 miles = 50.67 imperial MPG or 42.25 US MPG or 5.61 L/100km

34.8L - 608km = 7.655gal/9.18USGal & 380 miles = 49.64 imperial MPG or 41.39 US MPG or 5.72 L/100km

I am on MEGA-sticky street tires (Kumho Ecsta MX 205/40/17). I acheived this by filling the tank all the way up to the top of the neck and then refilling to the top again to determine volume burned. I accelerate very gently and shift at no higher than 2500 rpm. Each tank had two full throttle accelerations (For each tank: one was from a stop all the way through 1st and 2nd gear and then jumped to 5th to cruise, the second was only 3rd gear to pass a vehicle). I coast to a stop, no engine braking.

The first tank was on my drive to work which is 85% highway on which I usually maintain a speed of 82-87 kph. The second tank was a long drive to the Bruce Penninsula and I maintained the same speed and very few stops. So far I have ~1900 kms on the car! I am very impressed.

Cheers
T