green onions

We're going camping together for the first time tomorrow. It's 9:48 p.m. and I'm cutting up green onions. The onions aren't going camping, I need to freeze them. If I don't freeze them they'll go rotten in the refrigerator, I've seen it happen before. The carrots and beets will keep until we return. I'm also in the middle of doing three loads of laundry. And I've got to inflate the air mattress to make sure it hasn't any holes. At some point I need to go to bed because I have to get up for work at 5:30 a.m. After work we're driving from L.A. up to Fresno to stay overnight in a hotel. Then we'll get up the next morning and drive up to Kings Canyon and put up the tent.

But first, I need to finish cutting up the onions for freezing. So they don't go rotten. I'm so tired, I want to go to sleep right now. I haven't had any dinner yet. I should just eat the onions. I wonder if this has ever happened to anyone else. O Great Spirit, don't let me go to the dogs tonight.

A week in Illinois, part 3

As our two year anniversary was near our recent trip to Illinois, for a present Nicole's pa and his lady Dixie arranged for us to have an overnight in a bed & breakfast we found. There are a passel of pictures of the place but I also have this video, so I slapped it up there to save time.

And this is my first video on the blog, I'll make them shorter in the future.

A week in Illinois, part 2

We moved at a pretty slow pace in Illinois. What activities we did were performed slowly. We slept about ten hours each night. One evening we drove over to Oglesby to have dinner at Sam’s Pizza. Sam works the front, his mom makes pizza dough in the back.

If I were a photographer I’d share pictures of the abandoned cement factory that we pass on the way to Oglesby. In the right hands it would be an interesting study.

The moon was coming up over the pastures and cornfields on the way home. Passed by some cattle, evening grazers enjoying a little dinner. They had tiny phosphorescent eyes that glowed in the dark.

My brother-in-law Brian has been working on a green flame paint job for his car. Brian is Nicole’s brother and I took a picture of them with the car. When we sent that photo to Brian I wanted to be in the picture with them so I pasted myself in.

When anyone is home at Nicole’s pa’s house, their dog Jane is allowed to come inside. If no one is home she has to stay out in her pen, otherwise she whiles away the time indoors shredding things, chewing stuff to pieces.

One night we went to dinner at a steak place with Nicole’s pa, his girlfriend Dixie, her son Nick, my brother-in-law Brian and his wife my sister-in-law Tracy. My steak was overly seasoned, but at this place you pick your own piece of raw meat out of the refrigerator (visible in the background) and cook it yourself on the big grill. When folk asked how I liked my steak I said, “It’s perfect! A real professional job. Next time, if you like, I'll cook yours for you.”

Later back at the house I snuck out of bed and got a snack when I was supposed to be asleep.

A week in Illinois, part 1

It’s very easy and very difficult to describe rural Illinois in June. It’s green and beautiful and flat. It just is. Nicole’s pa’s house is in the middle of miles of farmland, out of every window you can see it sprawling every which where. The sky and the weather were unbelievably nice.

There’s a tree in the backyard that I took a picture of in the winter and now you can see what it looks like in the summer.

After the street passes the house it becomes a gravel country road. Nicole and I took the family dog Jane on a walk on the gravel road and we all had a good time. Walked down the road a piece. It goes along for quite a long way. We passed a good deal of young corn, it’s springing up all over the state. Far down the road it looks like there’s a kind of farm house, but we never got that far down the road. Jane had nearly run herself into a lather so we turned around and went home to relax.