A Day Of Travel

5:29 am, Medford, Oregon:

I rounded a sharp curve in the middle of my drive to Medford this morning and saw bright, shiny stars ahead of me. It shocked me because on the other side of that curve, I couldn't see more than two dashed center lines ahead of me in the center of the road. Most of my two-hour drive this morning was through dense fog, which just added to the fun of driving US Highway 199 along the Smith River.

I pulled out of our driveway at 2:50 and I was very glad for that 10-minute cushion when I realized that the fog was NOT going away as I got further from the coast. I always have an out-of-time experience when I travel for a full day, but usually, the sensation sets in much later in the trip. But when the world closes to a car-length of visibility with a wall of white all around you, time doesn't mean much. Except that I had a plane to catch, of course.

(So I spent time in Denver, but it went really fast and I didn't get a chance to open the computer. The flights were both on time, which made things easier.)

8:13 pm, Arlington, VA:

I keep thinking it's really, really late, but then I look at the clock and realize that it's not late HERE and Darcy and Michael might not even be home from work/preschool back at home. Crazy. I'm trying to stay awake long enough to be sure I'll sleep straight through the night.

I stopped at the conference hotel when I got off the metro (after the shuttle and the train and the other metro) and spent a little time at the meet and greet. There was a small group heading out to Adams-Morgan for Ethiopian food and I was very, very tempted to go with them, but I'm too tired and too traveled-out to get back on the metro.

I was forgetting that most of the people at this training would be farmers' market people, but it seems like a good group of folks are here. It will be fun to hear what kinds of projects people are funding with these grants.

Day Two Has Followed Day One

I am packed and ready to head off to Washington, DC, for a USDA adventure! Ok, so probably grants-management training won't be all that adventurous, but driving to Medford at 3 o'clock in the morning will be!

A few weeks ago, many of you were kind enough to sponsor Darcy's spins around the Trike-a-Thon course at her preschool. It was complete madness -- 20+ preschoolers on bikes, trikes, and scooters! Here's a small taste of the fun:

Darcy is styling in her Very Hungry Caterpillar helmet. She (YOU) raised a lot of money and she had a blast cycling around with all her friends. They spent the week before the event learning safety rules for riding. I'm not sure that they listened very well to the "watch where you are going" rule. I know Darcy didn't! I have very cute video, but I have to figure out how to massage it for Blogger.

Thank you all for your contributions!

Day One: Where Did It Go??

As previously mentioned, I have decided to participate in National Blog Posting Month, requiring me to blog every day during the month of November. It has not been an auspicious start being that it's almost nine o'clock and I just now remembered that I need to blog today!

I spent more time than I like to admit trying desperately to make travel plans to Washington that make any sense at all. I gave up. They will not make sense. I will drive to Medford at 3 in the morning on the way there. I will change hotels on the last day of the training so that I don't have to take the Metro to the airport at 5 in the morning on the way back. Now I just have to hope for a cancellation at the training hotel so I can actually have somewhere to sleep that doesn't require a commute.

On the other hand, I also got to talk to my community about a project Michael and I have been a part of for a few months. Preschool and childcare options around here are limited in both quantity and quality. Darcy loves her preschool now, but there are parts of it that don't work for us. We've been working with a group of parents to start a new preschool (that should open in early 2011) and two of us described at a public meeting how this came to be -- in other words, how this community of parents became organized to actually solve a problem we see in our daily lives. It was part of an evening of celebrating "early wins" in something called the Building Healthy Communities initiative. The future Little School of the Redwoods is considered a win!!

And that's my blog post for today. Most of the other 29 -- with any luck -- will include what you really come here for: pictures of Darcy Jo.

Hold On To Your Hats!

The deluge will soon begin. I have (perhaps foolishly) signed up for NaBloPoMo, otherwise known as National Blog Posting Month. It started as a tie-in to NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). I was briefly considering participating in NaNoWriMo, but decided that November was busy enough without contemplating writing 50,000 words of fiction! And since I learned last night that I'm headed to Washington for the second half of this week, I'm glad I made that decision.

I figured I could handle NaBlogPoMo a little easier than the novel, so you can look forward to new blog posts EVERY DAY in November. I'll do a little catching up of our lives in the beautiful redwoods.

We spent part of today in the redwoods, as it happens. I'll save some details for November (see how I'm already thinking ahead?), but the park opened its first new trail in a decade this morning with a dedication ceremony near the plaque commemoring Lady Bird Johnson's dedication of Redwood National Park and a ribbon cutting at the trail head. We didn't join the inaugural hike because Michael was a shuttle driver, taking folks back to their cars if they weren't hiking either.

Wish me luck and check back every day in November for exciting new blog posts!

In Which I Bring The Pretty

I got chastised this evening for not updating the blog more regularly. It's a fair criticism. Life has been busy and the blog has suffered. But because recent posts have featured such lovely creatures as slugs and sharks (which I actually love -- the sharks, not the slugs) and because I know I'm going to post pictures of the slug buffet that is our front yard these days, I thought I'd throw in some pretty pictures.

I used to think of fuschias as potted plants. Really, I thought of them as hanging basket material and not much more. But in Crescent City, they become trees. I've had one blooming since before we bought the house and it is currently loaded down with flowers. I have at least three different kinds growing in the yard, but the white-centerd ones are the most prolific. They hardly look real:

I also inherited three or four more fuschias that are in large pots. They were waiting to be transplanted into the ground, but the previous owner never did it. She said that she always took end-of-season hanging planters and put them into larger pots for a while before putting them in the ground. So I just need to figure out where I want them and I'll have a whole fuschia forest!

Shark Attack!!!

As you may know, Darcy's current obsession is with all things ocean. We play fishy games pretty much non-stop at home, and she had my cousin Tina, her friend, and me all "growling like barracudas" with her a couple nights ago. It's fish, fish, fish all the time.

And so she loves going to our (very small and overpriced) local aquarium. Often. She went with Betty when she was here. And then last week, her preschool took a class trip there. And she's already anticipating going with my parents when they visit starting this weekend. Oh, and she had already been there three times before the aforementioned trips.

One of the highlights of Ocean World is that you can pet sharks. Darcy never has, but she talks about it a lot. She pets the starfish and has touched the anemones, but never the sharks. She will, however, hang out in a great white shark's mouth:

She doesn't seem too concerned about Michael's well-being, does she?

Slug Fest (And I'm Not Talking About Punches Or Hard-hit Pitches)

No, I'm talking about the slimy beasts that are among my least-favorite of all the animals. I'm trying to learn to like them, but I can only muster a sort of horrified fascination. Here they are, in all their glory.

Ah, banana slug courtship rituals. So beautiful. I just wish they weren't on my house.

This is a very big banana slug. Even for banana slugs around here, it's pretty big. Just so you know that I'm not being hysterical about this, I took some pictures for scale, too.

See? It looks big next to Darcy! Who loved it, of course, and tickled it with her tickle-grass. It retracted its antennae, much to her delight.

It's even big next to Michael's head! Isn't it nice how we include the very big slug in family games? We're very hospitable to them. I don't love them, but since "we're completely surrounded by slugs", as Darcy trilled happily this morning during her pre-departure slug survey, I'm trying to get used to their company.