Domesticated

After 17 years, it was time to get a new washing machine. My old one worked, but it really liked to go on walks - so much that I had to leave the laundry room door open if I really wanted to get my clothes back.

So...I went shopping and found a great front loader. I'm being good to my clothes and the environment.

I am enjoying doing laundry again - as all the blankets, towels, pillows (and my clothes) now know well enough. It is so much quieter, I have to listen carefully to know when it is done.

Hazardous to Humans

Today while drying my hands in the men’s room at work I glanced down into the trash can and could read part of a label that had been torn off a bottle or box of some product. In bold letters it proclaimed: Hazardous to Humans and Domestic Animals.

I really wanted to learn more, but did not want to be “that guy” caught rummaging through the garbage in the men’s room. I’ll probably have this job for a few more years, so that’s not a reputation I want to carry with me.

From the edges of the label I could see, it had obviously been torn, so I’m not certain I could have even learned the name of the product it boldly warned me about.

Was this something the custodian was spraying around my desk?

Is it the reason I no longer have wood ants crawling around the window but have a lingering cough?

Is it the sweet-clean concoction they mix in the mop water?

All I know is that it is something used in the building and it is something Hazardous to Humans and Domestic Animals.

Which leads me to wonder:

Does that mean it is safe for wild animals?

Does appropriate disposal mean pouring it into the creek or down an open sewer with direct drain to the river?

Maybe tomorrow I’m going to be “that guy” who demands the custodians open up their secret stash of products so I can read all the labels to put my paranoia aside – or make it worse.

Enchanted Rock

Sunday afternoon, my friends Clint and Chex invited me to join them on a hike up Enchanted Rock about an hour and a half outside of Austin in the Texas hill country. It is outside a "crafty" town called Fredericksburg. If you ever want tons of German food, good locally brewed beer, or some of the best wine made in Texas, visit Fredericksburg - there are always bed and breakfast places to sleep.


Above is Clint heading up the trail with Enchanted Rock in the background. The hike up the granite slab is a climb of about 325 feet in a remarkably short distance. Because is is dome shaped, it can be rather deceiving - just when you think you are at the top, you take a couple steps and realize there is much farther to go.


We have had an unusually wet May in the hill country, so there are plants one doe not normally expect to see, like ferns growing in every spot a spore could get a grip of some soil. The lichens on the rocks made them some fantastic colors as can be seen in the picture above. Everywhere one turned, there were more little surprises of color and combinations of plants as is seen in the picture below. In it you see a mix of daisies, prickly pear cactus, and fern, as well as some hardy grasses which have sprung up.

Frog Sex - or lack thereof

He frog.

She frog.

Extinct tree frog.

Apparently women’s hormone replacements which get peed out are polluting the world water and causing frog embryos (tadpoles) to change sex…into mostly sterile females.

Who knows where Al Gore will go with this!