Okay, so now it's winter for sure

See?



But first, flashback to Thanksgiving. Mike and I went to New York (and went Israeli folkdancing in Seattle on the way, which I miss), visited family and old friends, walked around,


The Cloisters


George Washington Bridge

ate lots of food with lots of lovely hosting- and visiting- family members,





and then took a jaunt up to Boston to see more lovely friends and family (with a stop in New Haven on the way, for more sights and old friends). In Boston we even got taken for a cool walk along the 3 mile Freedom Trail through the city (which tells the history of the revolutionary battles in the area), which was interesting in terms of seeing just how concretely the old Boston is embedded right into the heart of the new Boston.



Meanwhile, back in Washington, well, it's been snowing. La Nina years, which this one is, are supposed to bring a lot of snow to our part of the country, and so far it seems to be the case.




Remember Mike is 6 foot 4.


This is my car (below too).



With all this winter weather, we have been discovering neat things about our house. First, the ability to heat up tortillas on our wood house-heating stove.



Second, inspired by bagel-baking cousins in Boston, the ability to make-your-own bagels (but not on the wood stove... yet).



Third, the ability to hang 35 pumpkins (from this year's garden) in an elaborate setup involving chairs and lots of weight (this was after we tried hanging the hammock of pumpkins from ceiling hooks, which soon pulled out of the ceiling). The pumpkins are still going soft faster than we can eat them, though, which has prompted a lot of emergency-this-pumpkin-needs-to-be-cooked-right-now-please-take-it (!) pitches.



In animal news, we've got a visiting goat in the yard for a few weeks. His name is Cody, boyfriend of Frosty and Gigi. He has blue eyes, which are apparently prized, but really are a little freaky. And interestingly, he turns out to be a really nice buck. Maybe it's just that he's older than Ed was when he was a buck, but he's just nowhere near as aggressive or break-down-the-fences-y as Ed had been. He smells like a buck and has buck behaviors, mostly when there's a doe in heat, but he's basically really very manageable. So maybe our previous buck experience was really just an Ed experience.


Cody the buck


Setting up the pens to keep the two groups apart (so Breezy and Dublin, of summer c-section fame, don't get bred accidentally)

"Wait a second, don't you have enough goats already?" you ask, "Why are you trying to make more?" Yeah, we do have (more than) enough, we cannot really handle any more permanent additions. But somehow there's something about continuing to push a little and learn things -- like weaning and milking, neither of which we've been great at so far, and then, yes, selling kids too.

Good in theory, you say, but you haven't sold any kids yet. True, the first kids we had (Gigi & Ed) were, well, the first... and the second kids we had (Ernie & Bert) were bottle babies, i.e. way more attached to us (and us to them)... Presumably if we have a few babies all at once (and we know that Frosty can deliver normally, so likely Gigi her daughter will be okay too), we can separate them from the moms after a couple of months like you're "supposed" to do, and they can keep each other company until they're old enough for us to just move forward and try Craigslist -- after all, there are probably lots of nice (human) kids who would really like to raise a backyard (goat) kid or two. It's interesting, though, having babies is clearly part of the does' normal existence -- so, is it weird that they don't get to do so unless we allow it? Not that a "farm" type atmosphere is an uncontrolled natural environment, but...



Meanwhile, work has been super busy for me. Because it is winter and no one is growing anything, growers have time to talk, and time to send employees to large large meetings where they listen to a whole day's worth of presentations by people like me (see previous years' meeting circuit).



Yakima is my most common destination, but I'm also due this year for Portland and then California 3 times, the first of which was San Diego last week. It was particularly funny, actually, a meeting of the national Entomological Society of America, with 3200 bug scientists descending on a hotel/conference center resort turned mini entomology city. With bug presentations late into the night, and a bug trivia competition, and a student reception sponsored by chemical companies (I wonder if this is one of the few fields where you study something primarily in order to kill it) that was surprisingly like a college keg party. Odd.

But it did give me the opportunity to see some old friends from grad school, and to give a presentation with colleagues that I normally just see in Washington, and to be at a meeting where it really didn't matter to me whether or not I went to any talks. Again, surprisingly fun -- whatever talks I went to were a bonus cultural experience, and the rest of it was just a sudden magic transplant to a world of palm trees and 60 degree days.

Meanwhile, we head to Spokane today to go see Yoni the bro play carillon for the weekend. Probably when we return, it will look like this:



Updates to follow! (eventually) :)