Archive for the ‘animal encounters’ Category
Well, summer is over. I was off work all summer, and really luxuriated in the laziness of it. I took a photography class, and posted some of the pictures on the photography section on day 1 of class, day 2, more from day 2, my favorites from day 3, and then some extra pictures from class. The cool thing about taking the class was that our time was devoted and carved out specifically for taking pictures and editing them. We spent all day every day photographing and editing pictures. You have to spend the time in order to get better. Another great thing about the class was its location. We were in Northern California on the coast near Mendocino at the Albion Field Station, which is owned by Pacific Union College. The coastline is wild there, and we were camping in a little valley on a river/estuary, so there was wildlife galore. There were deer passing through camp daily, osprey overhead, owls next to our camp each night. It was awesome. We were very tired by the end of the week because we started photographing a 6:30 every morning, and we weren’t done until 9 each night. Long days, but pleasant. It was cold there too. We were there mid July, and I don’t think that it got above the 60s every day. I never took my sweatshirt off. Here is a picture of our camp.
Then there is boating on the estuary.
Finally, Here are the cabins that were for rent to camp in. You still had to bring your own sleeping bag and linens, but you got a bed and shower.
So, after our lovely trip to the wilds of Northern California, my daughter had surgery to have her tonsils out. We then spent a lot of time at home recouperating and I spent more time on the computer with my pictures and editing software. I decided to list some pictures on Etsy, and made cards and bookmarks out of my pictures. It has become quite a hobby.
Here is a sample of some of my cards.
I also love this picture that I messed with and made more like art. Here it is in my shop.
Now I am back to work, and I have not completely organized my house like I was planning to do when the summer started. I wonder if my house will ever be completely organized or is it important to always have that to strive towards? I completely ignored my therapy blog once I took the photography class this summer. Now that I am back at work doing therapy, I will have to start updating the therapy stuff again. It seems that life is going to be very busy for a while. Looking forward to Thanksgiving break and Christmas break.
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Here is a picture of our new pet eating his dinner of baby mouse. It is so cool. I had no idea that you could buy the baby mice frozen. Such convenience.
Ok, I vowed that we would not be getting any more pets. I think that two dogs and two guinea pigs are plenty of work for the average family. I guess that I am now eating my words. We now have a new pet king snake. It is my favorite type of pet though in that we caught it in forest, and we will set him free right back where we caught him when we are done having him as a pet.
Here he is right after he was caught.
Here he is with my dad holding him.
And here he is in his temporary cage until we get the larger aquarium cleaned out for him.
We went to the tide pools today in Laguna Beach. It was beautiful. We had just started looking at things when I saw this little guy in the water.
He is a little sea lion pup. He started to come up on the rocks, so we just sat down and watched him and took pictures.
He was washed around on the rocks a bit by the waves.
He slowly worked his way higher and higher on the rocks.
He eventually got to a comfortable spot and lay down to take a nap. He was shivering and exhausted. We hung out for a long time to make sure that nobody bothered him. 
He slowly dried off. 
He was so close to us. It was a really precious moment. 
I hope that my new son Fred finds his biological mother today. I am very worried about him and feel a special bond to him. I felt bad when I had to abandon my new son there on the rocks, but I know that it is the best place for him. I hope that me guarding him while he slept and got his energy back will make it easier for him to find his mother when he is ready to go back into the water. Be strong young Fred, and stay away from sharks.
The Guinea pigs have a nice big cage in the family room, which you can read about here and more recently here. I thought that it might be nice for them to have a big cage outside so that they could enjoy the out of doors without fear of being eaten. I also wanted a safe place to put them while cleaning their indoor cage, and figured if they spend part of the day outside when the weather is nice, that will be less poop and pee in their inside cage. It took me a couple of weeks to make the whole thing, and I made it out of the same material as the indoor cage, the cubes and coroplast, but I put a roof and coroplast sides on this one. You can find the cubes
Here is the finished cage.
Here is the cage while I was working on it.
Here is Puddles going down the ramp.
Here is Shasta.
It was fun to make, and I wish that I had taken more pictures of the process. Quite a design masterpiece if I do say so myself.
It turns out that My Husband did not have to go anywhere. He will be deployed somewhere at some time, but we don’t know when or where (which is very typical of the navy). I am going to try blogging and share things that I have worked on, am into, etc. If I get into a habit, then when B is sent away, it will be easier for me to do it.
Let’s start by saying that we got two guinea pigs this summer. They are very cute little creatures, and they squeek whenever they hear my voice (they always want lettuce). The girl is black and white and her name is Shasta, and the boy is tortoise shell, and his name is puddles. Here are some pictures.
It turns out that guinea pigs require a lot of space as they are very large rodents (compared to hamsters and rats). We adopted them from someone near us off of Craigslist, and they came with a cage made of cubes and coroplast. I made a bigger cage, and did some decorating to store all of their equipment under the cage. I used a lot of black spraypaint. I am also proud of the bins on the shelves under the cage as they are just clear plastic bins, painted with a plastic primer, then spraypainted with a paint called hammered in bronze. I thought that was a great idea. Here are pictures of the cage layout. The first two are the original cage, and the next two are the new cage.
An interesting guinea pig site is guinea pig cages. lots of information Here is another post about guinea pigs.
My next project was our alcove. It is used as a craft center, backpack area, bills area, and general catch-all space. I suppose you could call it the command center of the house. It is always a cluttered mess, but I got it organized. Let me see if I can find a before (should have thought of taking one), and I definitely have an after.
I could only find an after. Sorry.
