St. George Island

The day after Thanksgiving, I went to St. George Island (1.5 hours away) to visit with Aunt Carla and cousins Daniel and Nathan. Here is a collection of pictures from that day.


Nathan and I eating icecream:
The lighthouse (newly reconstructed and placed in the center of town):

The view from the back porch of the rental house (this is the Gulf of Mexico, with a picnic hut to the right, which is next to a not-visible pool):

This is Daniel. He and his brother were happy to play online games with their friends the whole day, but Carla and I convinced them to leave the game world for a little while:

Here is Nathan. He is pausing his game for just a second to wave for the picture:

Carla and I went to Apalachicola (the closest touristy town, 10 min drive) to look around and window shop. It was a pretty town, and we found this old boat next to the sponge shop:

Exploring the beach, finding shells, throwing shells in the water:

Sunset:

Christmas cookies!

Yes, it is that time already (at least for me it is). I picked up some cookie cutters over the weekend and spent one night making the cookies and a second night decorating them. Here are some of them for you to enjoy.

Did you see the Michigan cookie with Holland marked on it?

Q: What can make a tough day better?


A: Kisses from a ferret!

Eve used to be the only ferret who would give us kisses. (She is especially likely to do so right when she wakes up.) But I think the others have caught on that I like getting ferret kisses (and it gets them extra attention), so now they have all started doing it. It is quite sweet, although a little gross when they switch from licking the tip of my nose to licking the inside of my nose.

I have something to admit...

Since we are always gone for Christmas, Brian and I have never really made a lot of effort to decorate for the holidays (at least not inside the house). This year, we are sick of that. This year, we went out and bought an artificial tree. This year, we have our tree up and decorated already. We have already started listing to Christmas music, and we are getting into the habit of having a cup of hot cocoa with mini marshmallows as an evening snack. And you know what? It is great! It makes me feel so cheery. Yesterday and today I loaded a bunch of new Christmas music onto my ipod so we can listen to it with my ipod speakers (thanks parents).

The only thing missing is Christmas cookies. I need to get some cookie cutters so I can make some cut-out cookies and decorate them. I haven't looked around for the cookie cutters yet, but I plan on getting a set that includes a star (one of my favorite cut-out shapes). Hopefully I can find a set that also has an angel and a tree. Also, I don't want the resulting cookies to be too big. I like the medium-small size so I can eat a couple different cookies.

Happy Birthday Carla!

Today was Carla's birthday. Sadly, she had to work for most of the day (Saturday is a busy day for voice lessons). In the evening, she went out for dinner with her family. After dinner, we met them at their house for some birthday cheer and cake. Here is Carla with her husband and 2 sons.



Here is some of that birthday cheer I mentioned earlier:

Here is a picture of the lovely chocolate ganache cake. We only meant to stay for a little while (Brian had more work to do, which he is working on right now), but somehow we always end up sticking around for longer than we plan. This time, we got distracted by political talk. Tim and Carla are a fun couple to talk with.

Pig Roast

Lst weekend was the anthropology department's annual pig roast. We go to this house waaay out in the country, roast a pig, have a potluck, and generally enjoy ourselves. One of the anthropologically-oriented activities is guessing the mystery meat. This year there were 2 mystery meats. So two people got an unknown (to the rest of us) type of meat, cooked it, and everyone tried a piece and tried to guess what it was. The meats this year were beef tongue and goat. Another rather odd activity we do is an atl-atl throw. An atl-atl is a device designed to help you throw a spear faster and farther than you can throw a spear alone. It kind of extends your arm so you can put more force into your throw. At least, that is how it is supposed to work if you are good at it. While some people can use an atl-atl to throw a spear pretty well, most of us have trouble keeping our aim accurate with the atl-atl. Here is Brian watching as Geoff uses the atl-atl.




This is Tim Parsons, who goes to Hungary with me. This is the only picture Brian took, so it is the only one with me in it.

Here is a closer picture of Brian, looking at the chickens in their coop. You can see his new glasses in this photo. Earlier I mentioned that I was going to wait until after the haircut to post a picture of Brian with his glasses, but he is unsure about when the haircut will happen and how much will be cut off. Since I am impatient, I am having trouble waiting without a hard deadline.

Ferrets and boxes

Just like kids, ferrets would often prefer to box to whatever came in the box. This is especially true when the box in question contains packing materials.



Above: Brussels and Chewbacca
Below: Eve

Our New Fish Fran

For his birthday, Brian wanted to get some new fish. When we went to the store with his mom, they didn't have the fish he wanted. But they ordered the fish for him, and we went to pick them up the next week. we have 2 new fish. The first is a six-line wrasse named Blennie. For those of you who remember, we had a six-line wrasse once before, but he died. So we got a new six-line wrasse and put him in the large tank with Gloria.

We then learned that Gloria is a bossy, mean fish. She drove Blennie up into the top corner of the tank and repeatedly hit him with her tail. Blennie was pretty stressed out. In fact, he was so stressed out that he jumped out of the tank into one of the filter compartments. Since Gloria was being so territorial, we decided that she needed to go into a tank all by herself. This meant a lot of work, since we had to catch all our fish and switch them to different tanks. Brian did most of this work (which included taking out most of the live rock), and it took him several hours.

The final result is that we have a small tank with Gloria living in it. The 2 firefish that used to live in the small tank got transferred to the big tank. They live there with Blennie (who is a lot less stressed out now) and our other new fish, Fran.


This good-looking purple and yellow fish is named Fran. She is a royal gramma, which sounded so much like grandma that we decided to name her after Brian's grandma. She is a gregarious fish and she is not afraid to swim up to the glass when we are peering in so she can peer out at us.

This is one of the firefish ( we have 2). They seem to be living in relative harmony with Blennie and Fran. They have these really tall dorsal fins that they flick. They are also relatively fearless and do not dart for the rocks when we walk by. (Blennie is a little more hesitant--he will hide in the rocks and then slowly emerge.)

This last picture shows one of our newish corals. It is a soft leather. It waves around quite a bit, which is a characteristic we both enjoy in coral. It is kind of like a gel tree.

The last of the Halloween pics

On Halloween, we went to a party with people from Brian's work and FSU Law alums. Brian dressed like a pirate (note the ferret on his shoulder) and I dressed like a devil.


These last 3 pics show the gourd that Brian carved. Gourds are usually placed on tables to decorate for fall, but they are rarely carved. They are actually quite difficult to carve because they don't have a lot of guts. Brian managed to carve this ghost gourd and hang him outside for the trick-or-treaters. I think it looks pretty cool.