Saturday

It's been a rough couple of days around here. Alice came down with some kind of virus this week and has been out of commission for a few days now. Viv has a cold and a snotty nose. As far as me, I've demonstrated my first ever food allergy by getting a wicked case of hives after eating sushi tonight.

We also did a bunch of yardwork today and we're putting our winter garden in tomorrow. Broccoli, cauliflower, collard greens and romaine lettuce in the front garden and we'll seed the back garden with spinach. Our tomatoes are also starting to produce again now that the weather is getting cooler. Maybe I'll put some pics up of that tomorrow.

Just some pictures

Nothing much new to report. Viv has a bit of a cold and a snotty nose but I'm pretty sure she'll pull through.

Ouchie

It finally happened last night- Viv caught the cat in a grouchy mood. To be fair, she had been smacking him with a plastic bottle before he finally got fed up and gave her a whack on her left hand. Fortunately for Lunar he didn't actually hurt her but he did scare the bejesus out of her. She cried for a good 10 minutes about it.

Fizzle

So, TD 10 turned out to be diddly-squat. It cut up through Pensacola last night, and the weather here was sunny and beautiful. We took Viv on a walk around the Quarter today and stopped at Central Grocery to grab a few things. For those of you that don't know, and that's everyone that isn't from or doesn't live in New Orleans, Central Grocery is the birthplace of the muffaletta. It's Italian meat, cheeses, and olive salad on a large sesame seed focaccia-looking bread. Anyway, Central Grocery's muffaletta is on the Today Show's "5 best sandwiches in America" list. They have some deal up now where you can vote for the best one, so go to the Today Show website and vote for this sucker. I really don't like olives and even I have to admit the thing is damn good.


Here's some N.O. craziness we saw today:

Grrrr

Invest 93 just got it's act together and became tropical depression 10. It's not supposed to build much in strength, but then again it wasn't supposed to get organized enough to become a depression. At any rate, it's looking to be a wet and windy weekend for us.

Street Car

Viv took her first ride on a street car today:






We're still watching the depression in the Gulf but it doesn't seem to be doing a whole lot at this point. Hopefully it'll just be a bit soggy and breezy this weekend.

Update

Invest 93:


Tropical Storm: Tracking Map : Weather Underground

The GFDL model has it building to a Cat. 1 and hitting us sometime late Friday/Saturday.

Disturbance

Meet Invest 93, just forming in the Atlantic:

Peas!

The weather here is finally starting to give us a break from the heat and we've decided to let Viv learn to start feeding herself on the back porch. She seems to believe it's more of a pea flinging contest than a meal but as long as she's having fun and eating at least some of it, Al and I are alright with it.

We've also decided that we need a simpler and faster cleanup method for her than running a bath and going through those motions. So, we hose her off afterwards.

Now, I can already hear the screams and cries of horror from you bleeding heart types so let me assure it's all done humanely and with Viv's consent. For some reason, she finds getting rinsed off by a gentle stream from the hose to be absolutely hilarious. I soak her down and she's laughing her tiny little ass off the whole time.

We also had her out for her first ride in the new bike trailer yesterday but no pics yet. I'll take some tomorrow morning and put them up soon.

Teeth teeth and more dang teeth

Viv appears to be attempting some kind of dental record for teething. I've seen alligators with fewer teeth. She has pretty much all of her canines and incisors already and a fair number of molars have emerged, with more on the way. This, of course, puts her in a great mood.


In other news, Pod and Laura are in town. Apparently they don't feed Pod up in Virginia and he's always determined to eat every last roast beef po-boy in town when he's here. As a result, Al and I have felt a bit gorged for the past few days.



I found these in a planter on our back porch this morning. I was gonna comment on them, but everyone can probably see where I'd go with it so I'll leave it up to you.

Monkey Time

We've moved Viv's playset into the house since it's too damned hot to be outside. I don't know a lot about kids since I haven't been around them much until recently. However, I'm fairly sure that 1 year olds aren't normally able to climb up a slide. Not Viv though, she's kickin' ass and takin' names (and climbing slides).

First Saint's Game

Tonight was the 1st Saints game and Viv was dressed appropriately. I'm writing this at the start of the 3rd quarter so I'm not sure yet if the outfit helped or not. The ball is something I won last night at my first run as captain of the boat I race on (along with some champagne and a few other odds and ends). We ended up 3rd of 11 boats, which I was pretty dang happy with for my rookie run.

Camping

This past weekend we took Viv on her first ever camping trip. We stayed in a cabin in Legion State Park in NE Mississippi. The park is quite nice, and barely used as far as we can tell. In two days of hiking around the park and exploring, we didn't see a single person on any of the trails. The park itself sits right on the edge of Tombigbee National Forest and is about 15 miles from Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge. The Refuge is 48,000 acres encompassing old-growth pine, shallow cypress swamps and lakes, as well as several thousand acres of natural prairie. Viv got to spend quite a bit of time outdoors and really enjoyed it. We'd like to make another trip back there soon and haul the bikes, Viv's trailer and the canoe with us. I'm thinking we might need to get a larger vehicle at some point to accommodate all of this :)

Anyway, on to some pictures with a bit of narration-

These three are just from a rest stop on the way up, traffic was pretty awful getting out of town then we got caught behind an overturned fifth-wheel camper on I-55 near Hammond.





Lake trail at Legion:




The view from the front of our cabin:



Another from the Lake trail:



The next group are a bunch of pictures of Viv in the cabin.










Alice at Woodpecker Trailhead in Noxubee:



The last round of pictures are various flora and fauna we found: