Manchineel Tree

A very cool post from Mental Floss about the poisonous Manchineel Tree.  Even standing under it during a rainstorm is dangerous.

http://mentalfloss.com/article/81958/why-manchineel-most-dangerous-tree-world

Heavy Lifting

I keep our Christmas tree up in the rafters of the garage.  Not the pine variety.  We got rid of that a long time ago in favor of a fabricated tree.  Not to avoid mess.  It still sheds needles.  But to avoid the trip, selection, return trip, and maintenance of a real tree.  I miss the smell a little, but there are pine trees near my house I can visit if I need a fix, and I can even haul some needles back if I need the smell.

According to my tree, which seems to get heavier every single year (I'm sure it is, it must be picking up something from the air or the ornaments), standing on a ladder and shoving it around on my own is not recommended.  In the past, I didn't think too much of this warning.  But this year, with the plated/screwed hip, standing on a ladder, balancing slightly backward while I gave it a shove onto the hanging planks, my leg gave me a warning that my years lofting it up there might be numbered or, at the very least, that I should heed the sign and come up with a new storage location.  I don't think I'm in any danger of breaking the hip unless I fall.  But I do suspect I'm in more danger of falling given that my leg seems to have shifted length a bit and I'm not as balanced as I once was.  It's very seldom an issue.  However, shoving heavy boxes over my head, and vigorously hopping out of bed in the morning, seem to be edge cases.  The bed statement might be perplexing, but picture hopping up and getting going before your brain and body are really ready, which is often how I get going because I long ago convinced myself half the lying around in bed issue people seem to have is just not popping up as soon as you can.  The result is a lean against the wall because my balance doesn't autocorrect quickly enough to tell me where my shoulder is in relation to the wall.  Coupled with a malfunctioning Marvin the Martian anamatronic art hanging that sticks out a few inches that I now bump into now and then, I know for a fact I lean a little when I get up more than I used to (although the odd klutzy moment in the past had me bumping it, so it's not a unique experience, only different in terms of frequency).

I notice as well that I should get entirely different people to lift my tree box, because both of those guys seem to be much younger, more coiffed men.

Passing the torch (for the tree)

This year Eryn decided she was in charge of setting up the Christmas tree.  She's familiar with the color coding scheme involved in our fauxvergreen, and she's plenty tall, so she didn't want any help. As a bonus, she's much more conscientious about bending the ends of the fronds so they're fluffed out and ornament ready.

Level one!


Getting taller.  The glasses had to come off.


The top!  She does still need the step stool.


The tree.  Not yet finalized.  I'm sure my shoddy lighting work is evident in this picture when you check out all the non-lighted gaps.  Our old lights are slowly burning out and I'm too lazy to fix them by investigating them one at a time, so I moved to some LED lights last night but didn't get enough.  Two strands was at least one strand short, maybe more.  And I still have to remove the old lights.  Some rework is necessary.  But I'm on agile projects, so this is just Iteration 0.

That large package is the very first Christmas present under the tree.  I ordered it early, so now Eryn has to look at it for a month.  It's driving her a bit nuts.

Here's Eryn at work:
and stage 2...

Morphology and Other Things

I had a few pictures floating around that I hadn't posted yet, so I thought I'd get them out here.

Eryn and I played Morphology for the first time.  You need at least four people (so teams) to play - but we gave it a test run just to understand it and see how it played.  This is the first creation done with our set.  Eryn was doing "Island".

This was my first attempt, "Seahorse".  It's difficult!  I think it's one of those things you need to wrap your brain around so you get good at the game.  But by the end, I guessed Bubble Bath, so we must have been getting better.  Either at guessing or modeling.  While we were playing in the garage, I put the postcards from the Kickstarter fundraiser back in the box and noticed one told me to "recover soon"!  That's what I get for not deconstructing it earlier.  Apparently Erik told Kate (who created Morphology) that I'd been in an accident.

A picture from the Day by Day Cafe this morning.  A bit of a celebration as I go back to work tomorrow.

I knew it, but Words with Friends proved it.  It didn't surprise me that it didn't deny it was a word, only that he's unacceptable.

Ming did his business on my driveway.  While I was incapacitated he seal coated by driveway, which was rolling up snow into what looked like cinnamon rolls of ice and rock last winter.  Took three tubs of seal coat.  So not a small job.  I'm very appreciative.  It's nice not to have my driveway crumbling to pieces, and I don't think I could have gone after it for a few more months.  Although I am going to ask the physical therapy folks if I can use my electric chain saw on the half of a maple that pitched over during the last big storm. 

Halloween's Not Quite Over

We found the second to the last Halloween 2008 geocache yesterday. After that, it's all math to find the hidden thirteenth cache. Eryn's excited, pondering what "Coughin up a Lung" might be referring to as a container. This was our third trip back to the same place to find number twelve. The first time it was dark and we couldn't find it, although I probably touched it in retrospect. The second time, I had checked the geocaching site the day before, which was too early to get the updated coordinates by the time we checked the next day (they'd moved it because neighbors were getting excited about seeing people in a park tree). The third time was yesterday, and I was sure I knew where it was, and yet still couldn't find it, even with Eryn and Pooteewheet acting as four extra eyes. So I called the other Scott over to help me find it (as I knew he'd already found it once before) and he couldn't find it either. Out came the Blackberry to check online and pulled up new coordinates. After that, it was a piece of cake. Or toadstool.

Here I am in a tree montage. Is it any wonder the neighbors' were concerned about what was going on? According to geocaching.com, they may have felt that the tree was on some sort of association property, rather than the city park, but still, it would be concerning to have people climbing around like this within sight of your windows. Maybe they're just very bad (obvious) peeping Tom's.


Eryn was also in the tree. She was excited she could get up there by herself, despite me falling off the far side and bleeding from near my ankle. Then again, that's how I knew I was in the right tree, because I lost my shoe twice, and Scott noted he'd also lost a shoe.


Scott in the tree, checking the same place I'd checked a dozen times for the first stage of the cache.


We persevered and found this guy hanging out on the edge of the lake, every near a muskrat feeding hole in the ice. Toads make bad muskrat scarecrows. Pooteewheet clomping through the brush makes a very good muskrat scarecrow.


Eryn, hoping for a prince.


Me, hoping for a princess. Maybe a British one who looks a bit like Minnie Driver, or a French one that looks like Sophie Marceau. Given Pooteewheet was geocaching with us, that might have made for an awkward situation had it worked.


It's been a long time since I touched a statue inappropriately. This isn't quite the same, but I don't think a real toad would have appreciated me touching his geocaching hole.