blackwater national wildlife refuge

life is sure super busy for me these days! i haven't been able to use my mac in the rabbits' room for several weeks now since i was always do-do-do-do-ing things. fridays are usually my free day so i tend to spend several hours on my mac but the past three fridays, i had plans so i wasn't able to blog. weekends are always bad since i always spend them with my sweet petey doing fun and not-so-fun things (house chores, etc.). today is the exception...peter's working on upgrading his '73 BMW R75/5 getting it ready for a trip this summer.

anyway, three fridays ago, i went to blackwater national wildlife refuge with ken, a deaf friend of mine who lives about 30 minutes north of where i live. we really enjoyed ourselves! we went for a drive on the wildlife drive and we pulled over quite many times to check out the animals. we saw ospreys, bald eagles, delmarva squirrel, pelicans, geese and carps. i'd love to visit this place again soon!

photo credit: ken samson
(he used my camera several times...hope he had fun using it!)

delmarva squirrel

osprey!!!
photo credit: ken samson

bald eagle
too bad i don't have a 800mm lens for my camera!
it's about $12K for one...i don't think so...at least not right now, ha ha!

osprey cam
you can find it at:
http://www.friendsofblackwater.org/camhtm.html

would you believe that we saw this bald eagle this close?!?
nah, we stopped by the visitor's center and saw this stuffed eagle.
it was really huge!!

inside the visitor's center, they have two tv monitors...
for osprey cam and eagle cam, a live feed for each!!
i wish it was like that on the internet, oh well.

osprey cam

a new quote

it's time for a new quote for my blog!

i saw this quote in "my life in france" by julia child and i LOVE it!! it was thérèse asche, a close friend of julia who said it:

"Une maison sans chat, c'est la vie sans soleil!"

in english:

"a house without a cat is like life without sunshine!"

this is true for me!!

saw the first osprey of the 2010 season!

this morning i went to the gym and had quite a workout and after that, i decided to go for a drive around the area where i live. i was hoping to see an osprey. i went to the nest that i always saw a few of ospreys on it last summer. i stopped to take a look at the nest and unfortunately it was empty. but i told myself that it might be a little too early and they will come very soon. then i drove like 20 feet or so and on the other side of the road, there it was...sitting on the utility pole! i was so thrilled so i pulled over again and stared at it for a long time, ha ha! i took a picture of it with my blackberry. of course the picture quality stinks but hey, it's better than nothing.

osprey!!

oh my gosh! i just found out that blackwater national wildlife refuge in cambrdige, maryland had their first osprey sighting of the 2010 season today at 5:05 pm! yay! so that means ospreys are starting to come here. i looked for them this morning on the way to work and this evening on the way to home but nothing. last summer there were 3 ospreys nests on route 50. i saw the ospreys almost everyday last summer and i really enjoyed looking at them. the nests are still there so hopefully all of them will be in use again!

gotta love the dark mask across the eyes!

check out the osprey cam if you're interested!

"my life in france"

hi all!

i finished reading "time was soft there" last sunday night and that was an awesome book! i really enjoyed reading about the author's experience working at shakespeare & comapny. when i went to this bookstore last fall, i had no idea that it was like until the author talked about it. i must have overlooked several things and one of them was the folding beds. there were authors, poets, etc. that stayed there for a limited time because they could not afford a place in paris. they needed a place to write and it was the perfect place!

anyway, for my next reading, i had several titles that i wanted to read but wasn't sure which one to choose from. hmm? until holly mentioned that she just bought "my life in france" by julia child and i thought it was the perfect choice for me so she and i could talk about it!! thanks holly! :) i just downloaded the book to my kindle last night. i started reading it last night at starbucks while enjoying my chai tea latte and it made me miss paris so much! i was able to recognize some places because i had visited them. the way julia described the french food at the restaurants she and her husband, paul went, it made me so hungry while reading! i just finished chapter one last night and am very excited to read chapter two, hopefully tonight if i'm awake enough, lol! one of the neat features with kindle is you can highlight a word or a sentence or even a paragraph. with chapter one, i already highlighted 14 different items because it was for the two reasons: my favorite parts of the book and i wanted to check them out online. one of my favorite parts is:

As we sat down, i heard two businessmen in gray suits at the next table asking questions of their waiter, an older, dignified man who gesticulated with a menu and answered them at length.

"what are they talking about?" I whispered to Paul.

"The waiter is telling them about chicken they ordered," he whispered back. "How it was raised, how it will be cooked, what side dishes they can have with it, and which wines would go with it best."

"Wine?" I said. "At lunch?"

oh my!! i laughed at this part! but this was when they were in paris in 1948 so i guess not a lot of people knew this about french people? anyway, that's it for now-bon appetit!*

*at the end of the introduction part of her book, julia child said this so i'm doing the same thing, heh!

my first dutch oven! & julia child cookbook

i had been wanting a le creuset dutch oven for a while now. when i saw "julie & julia" i was tempted to get one so i checked around for the best price. i'm sure you know that they're expensive! anyway, i found out that williams-sonoma was selling a 3.5-quart oval dutch oven for $129.95! a saving of $125! i thought about getting one right away but for some reason this idea was put on the back burner.

when i went to whole foods last thursday to do some grocery shopping, my meat guy (heh! he knows me and my husband) suggested that i sample the corned beef that they had cooked for the customers. i tasted it and, wow, it was very delicious! i asked him several questions about it and ended up buying a package of corned beef. the recipe stated to cook it in a large heavy pot or a dutch oven. i knew it was the right time to get a dutch oven. i was really hoping that williams-sonoma still had the special on a le creuset dutch oven. good enough they were! peter and i went to the store yesterday and bought a red one! i have always wanted a red one. a very traditional color, you know? i'm very excited to use the new dutch oven tomorrow when i cook the corned beef for dinner!



after i saw the movie, "julie & julia", i went out and bought julia child's cookbook, "mastering the art of french cooking". it's an incredible cookbook and there are plenty of recipes that require a lot of butter, yum!!!

the recipes in this cookbook were used in the movie, "julie & julia". there was this recipe that julie made and i'd love to do it soon now that i have the dutch oven, yay!! the recipe i'm talking about is boeuf bourguignon! a beef stew in red wine with bacon, onions and mushrooms. it's going to be a great learning experience so we'll see what happens!

notice the name, simone beck? i wonder if i'm related to her in any way? that would have been so cool, ha ha!

spring's definitely around the corner and cats!

can you see the green grass growing?!?

love this picture--the leaves are green and dead
stalks are tan, good contrast!

enjoying the warmth of the sun!

it's too frickin' bright!

practicing his pose for the playcat magaine, heh.
i'm mean, i know, but you have to admit that it's funny!

awesome movie!!! the holiday

before we watched "the da vinci code" on the dvd, we saw the preview of "the holiday". i was puzzled as to why i never saw it because i really wanted to see it. it wasn't captioned but i could tell that i would love this movie. immediately i added it to the netflix queue and it arrived on wednesday. my thoughtful husband said we could watch it that night.

i'm a sucker for romantic films!! and i don't write a summery of a movie or book very well so i have copied and pasted the plot from www.imdb.com. the red words are my comments.

Two beautiful women, Amanda Woods (Cameron Diaz) and Iris Simpkins (Kate Winslet) both find themselves at the end of failed relationships just before Christmas. Amanda decides to take a two week vacation and surfs the internet. She meets Iris online, and they agree to swap their homes for the holidays. swap homes, what a fantastic idea!! only if my house is on the water then i'd be traveling all the times. Amanda lives in Los Angeles and Iris lives in the countryside of Surrey, England. wow, what a gorgeous cottage!! i'd LOVEEEE to stay there but unfortunately it's not real. :( Even though they now have a change of scenery and want no contact with men, they are both still depressed and lonely. But things are about to change when Iris' brother Graham (Jude Law-sigh...drop dead handsome!!) drops by Iris' house and meets Amanda. On the other side of the world, Iris meets Miles (Jack Black-a funny guy!! loved the part of him in the videostore--don't want to ruin by saying what he did) a film composer. Romance is in the air and sparks are about to fly.

i so love this movie! my heart melted when amanda discovered something about graham that he didn't share with her on their first few dates. he had a good reason why and it was one of my favorite parts! i still have the movie and didn't want to mail it in case i want to see it again. i definitely will buy the dvd and add it to the collection of my favorite movies.

kindle

last fall i started to read more books and i had heard about kindle but i wasn't sure if it was what i needed so i decided to do more research. barnes and noble's nook was already out so i compared both of them and i decided that i liked kindle the most. one of the reasons is because it has been around for a while and the bugs had been fixed while nook was brand new and people who received it had problems with it already. so i wanted to start off with a kindle and see if it is something that i would actually use. so i added it to my christmas wish list hoping that santa claus would get me one, heh.

late morning on christmas eve, we were getting ready to leave to visit my family in pa. we were in the rabbit's room (my office/hobby room where shadow and tann-tann used to stay in) and peter told me that marsay had something for me. marsay was next to the scratching post and he was sniffing at the wrapped box on the floor. peter told me that he didn't know what the cats got for me, ha ha. anyway, i picked it up and opened it. good enough it was a kindle!!! peter wanted me to open it before the drive up to pa so i could play with it but i told him that it had to be charged first so i could not use it yet. but when we came back home, i went straight to it and charged it!

i have been using it for over two months now and i LOVE it!! i can download books within a minute which is really great! picture this...you're stuck in your house during a snowstorm and you cannot go anywhere. you really want to start a new book because you just finished one but no new one is available. that's where a kindle comes in! you can download a book and start reading it in a minute. :)

i do still like reading hardbound books and paperbacks but owning a kindle is a green thing. no tree is used at all! plus it saves a lot of room in the house since you can add up to 1,500 books on a kindle! you can even delete some books from it and they will still be in your amazon account. if you want to read one of them, you can download it again with no charge.

i just finished reading. "the da vinci code" and the hardcover is 480 pages and the paperback copy has 608 pages. that's pretty thick but kindle is very thin and it's easy to hold especially when you are lying down on the bed!

my new kindle!

i love the built-in dictionary with instant look up on it.
you just need to move the cursor to the word that you
would like to see its definition.
in the picture, the word is , "parquet" and you
can see the meaningat the bottom of the screen.
cool, huh?

the next couple pictures are kindle screensavers
that are my favorite ones. when the kindle is not in use,
the screensaver will be displayed.

this is the first book i downloaded on my kindle.
i had just finished reading, "murder in the marais" and liked it a lot!
you can compare the kindle book cover to the actual book cover below.
right now kindle doesn't have a color display but
i'm hoping that they will change it someday!

this is the 'library' on the 3rd floor in my house.
there is approximately 265 books on the shelves and you can see
that there's no room for more books!
a kindle can hold up to 1,500 books, how cool is that??

a great cure for winter blues!

today it was sunny and in the mid-40's which was really nice and it was what i really needed!

we took my mom-in-law out to eat for brunch to celebrate her birthday. her birthday was on january 27th but with the blizzards, we had to postpone it until today. we all had a good time although i was feeling grumpy and tired. everyone noticed this and peter told his parents that i was just so tired of the winter. after we said good bye to the parents, we went to tuckahoe state park to get some fresh air.

when we arrived and went for a short walk, i was breathing in the fresh air then was smiling big! peter could tell that i was feeling much better. he said. "wow, you have turned 180 degrees!" i told him that i needed to be outside and get some vitamin d in me!! anyway, we stayed for about 20 minutes. the last time we were there, it was two summers ago and i told peter that i'd like to come back this spring because it's a really beautiful area! i didn't realize that they have a lot of short trails so we should check them out when we get a chance.

swinging, one of my favorite things to do!

do you think i can get on the tire swing?!?

pah! i made it!

i'm just being goofy! i was pretending
that i was falling down but i wasn't.

my handsome hubby!
many thanks to him for putting up with
my moody attitude lately! i love you petey!

tuckahoe lake

notice the picnic tables?
this is where we had lunch two summers ago.
i'd love to go back soon and do the same thing again!

canadian geese!

one more week of february!!!

three more weeks to the beginning of daylight saving time!

27 more days to the first day of spring, woohoo!!

another great cure for the winter blues...

will bake some chocolate chip cookies tonight. we will have them with a cold glass of milk and watch the movie, "the time traveler's wife". going to be a nice and relaxing night! :)

shakespeare & company

today i had a lunch with ken, a funny and cool dude i met two summers ago in chestertown, md. we were at the restaurant busy talking for 6 hours, yikes!! don't worry...we did eat! we talked about plenty of things. one of the things we talked about was my trip to paris and ken mentioned the bookstore that i visited. he was saying that he really enjoyed seeing the pictures of shakespeare and company that i had posted on pbase and facebook but i only added a few. i thought i'd add more here in my blog for him to see.


the store has two entrances




it's interesting that they keep the books outside...of course they have to close the cover thingy overnight and during the wet weather, i guess.

a lot of books!! gotta love the ladder!

i love this picture of the steps with red paint that is wearing off!


this is not my picture...i got it from a website.
a tiny carrel in which there is a typewriter and a chair for the use of bookstore patrons.


these pictures i took of the notes were inside in the
carrel above the typewriter.
i didn't type a note because i didn't know what to say.
the next time i go there,
i will have something prepared to type! :)


notice the open window above the door?
the next picture is what it looks like on the inside.
ahhh! only if i had plenty of time, i'd sit at
the desk and read a book!


a fire extinguisher, a great idea especially with millions of books in there, lol!
well, i guess i am exaggerating...more like thousands of books.

after checking out a couple of websites about shakespeare and company, i found this book that was written by jeremy mercer about his experience of working at this place and for george whitman, the owner of the bookstore. when i saw the book cover, i knew i had to buy it!! i just ordered it, heh. i can tell that i like the book a lot already!! :)

it could be meeko! i would have to spray paint his right hip area a little with the white paint.