Family & Amish Friendship Bread

It was great to see everyone over the past couple of weeks. Mom & Dad & I were just talking about what nice visits we had with each of you. The first weekend was Steve, Klya, AJ, Ursula, & Thomas. We had great weather, visit, and crabs, with an endless array of Thomas-isms to keep us entertained. Steve had the best photos and he's a much faster blogger than I am, so he's already posted the highlights but I had to add this comical Thomas shot.

Keith & Dan's visit fell on a date very close to Dan's 13th birtday so we celebrated with some balloons, some cutthroat rounds of Pool & Rumikub, topped off with ice cream cake. Kyla, you'll be glad to know the Amish Friendship Bread torch has been passed within the family. The 10th day, which is a magic day in the world of Amish Friendship Bread for those who aren't in the know, fell during Keith & Dan's visit. I made my AFB loaves and passed on one of the starter bags to Dan with the directions. Wish I had some right now!

In between the siblings, Ken & Sharon came up for a couple of days. It was great to see Ken looking so good and to catchup on the Harrison/Callaway happenings.

To round out a great trip, and discourage them from ever coming back again, I dragged Mom and Dad berry picking at a local farm. We got 10 quarts of black & raspberries and they're sitting, frozen, in our freezer right now, awaiting my return. Yummm...

Ripe Tomatoes

Q: How do you know when a tomato is ripe?
A: When the raccoons steal it, chew on it, and leave it in the driveway.

For the first time this year we actually have some tomatoes in our garden. Nice ones. I seem to have a choice, though. Pick them while they're not ripe, or find them halfway eaten in the driveway when they are.

Iris Lady Does Mosaics, Too

We had a planter built into the deck years ago that we recently decided was going to rot things out. As a result, we cleared the dirt and watering out of it not too long ago. That left a big empty box on the deck, and a big project ahead to make it look like we planned it all along. One thing led to another, and the next thing I know Dara has a major art project underway -- an iris mosaic. Here is the work in progress, above. We have some people coming over to the house on Sunday, so like old architecture school days of yore, she's pulling all nighters to get it finished. I'll post another picture when the masterpiece is in place and becomes the visual anchor point for the deck!

Symbol of Love?

I suppose this is old news for you Virginians, but I thought it was funny that the new ad campaign for "Live Passionately," a variation on "Virginia is for Lovers," turned out to feature a gang symbol:

But, apparently unbeknownst to tourism officials, the gesture is used by the Gangster Disciples, which the FBI calls “one of the most violent of four African American gangs that hang out on the South Side of Chicago.”

Oops.

North East Passage

Since we had the excuse of Mom and Dad being there, Kyla and I converged on the Kuzma mansion in North East, along with A.J., Ursula, and Thomas. The weather was beautiful and the humidity was low, so we spent a lot of the day outside on Saturday after the typical 6AM Harris family start, enjoying the stunning setting. Ursula took off back to Harrisburg in the early afternoon, her first night away from Thomas since he was born (hence my lack of pictures of her.) In other news, we learned that she and A.J. will be putting all that great parenting skill to good use again in April when little Stevie is scheduled to arrive. (Might as well put in a good word early on the name, which I might add works well for a boy or girl.)

There was a bass tournament going on, and Missy and Mike's dock is clearly on some map of bass fishing secrets of the North East River. After being aghast at the bass boats circling inside the pilings, we understood why when we witnessed a good 15 incher being pulled out and iced away. Those fishermen were all on a mission, though. None of them stayed put longer than maybe 15 minutes. A.J. and I decided that if we had pulled such a fish out of there, we would probably have stayed for days hoping for a second one.

Here are some pics...

Grandma and Kyla show off their relaxation technique.

Thomas shows off his patented belly flop.

Aunt Missy gets in on the action.

Uncle A.J. gives Kyla a crab picking lesson.

Here's a combination you don't see together very often.

Off the Wall

I've done quite a bit of international travel lately, and probably for the last 4-5 trips I get the "special" treatment at US customs. This usually consists of the guy scanning my passport, leaning forward to look at his computer screen, followed by a frown, followed by a few mouse clicks, followed by more frowning, and finally some cryptic mark put on my entry paperwork. The cryptic mark translates to: search this guy's luggage later on in the process. They're all trained not to tell you anything, so no amount of nice guy kidding around will pry loose what they've seen. Still, it's been pretty obvious the last few times that they don't think there is an issue, since when I get to the luggage search, they just type a few more things and send me on.

Today in Ottawa I got a little more insight into it. When you leave Ottawa for the US, they have US customs in the airport in Ottawa. Very handy, because you can arrive at the domestic terminal in the US. Same customs people, though. Same routine, but this time I got pulled off to a side room to wait. Visions of strip searches were dancing through my head. After a bit, a customs guy comes out, takes my passport, goes into another room, and then comes out and says, "You're all set Mr. Harris." I ask, "Is this just common name syndrome, or what?" "Not really," he says. "Is there anything I can do to stop it from happening?" I ask. He says, "I put an override on it, so as long as you have this passport you shouldn't have any more problems. It was just too off the wall what was being reported."

I suppose I was perhaps tagged as the illegitimate son of Osama Bin Laden or something.

Down on the Range

My friend Josh happens to have been a marksmanship instructor in the Marines and kindly offered to teach me proper weapons handling and how to shoot. This weekend when he came up to visit he brought his gun and we went to range today. Apparently those Daniel Boone genes run true, I'm not a bad shot afterall:

Twenty-One

We went with Garrett and friend to see Avenue Q today in San Francisco. Believe it or not, they enjoyed it. I guess it only goes to prove that raunchiness can overcome a strong aversion to musicals when you're twenty-one. Because we were at a matinee, the crowd was a bit older. The blue haired ladies behind us were saying "I don't know what this is about, but I heard it has a lot of vulgarity." Her friend responds, "Oh, we've heard all the words before." Having seen it in London with Kyla and Dara, I'm thinking: "But have you ever seen fornicating puppets." A good time was had by all, even the ladies behind us.

Hooked

Rather than wait for my next reading list compilation, I thought I'd tell you about Hooked: Pirates, Poaching, and the Perfect Fish. I bought it because I was attracted to the idea of a non-fiction cop-and-robbers story on the open ocean. The story follows the chase of a fish poacher from Australian waters halfway around the globe, and the subsequent trial when they are finally caught.

The story was quite interesting, but what was a surprise to me was how much I learned about the issue of sustainable fisheries. The fish these guys were after was Chilean Sea Bass, a made-up marketing name for the Patagonian toothfish. I don't consider myself to be a major whale hugger, but I am going to be looking long and hard at the fish menu from now on. The story covers the "discovery" of the firm white-flesh fish, and the importer's struggles to find a market for it here in the US. Once it caught hold, it took off like wildfire. With the demand established, and no effective enforcement in place to check the equivalent of industrialized maritime clearcutting, entire worldwide populations of this fish have been wiped out. All this would be unnecessary with some controls in place, since after all, the fish can reproduce if they're being caught at a rational pace. The deck is stacked against them, though, and the bad guys have all the advantages in this battle, no question.

In hindsight I have to say I would not have picked up a book about sustainable fishing. Now you can enjoy the book and learn something new at the same time, too!

Vacation

Time for a little R and R. We are heading down to Oak Island for a week. I don't have any plans other than exercise, fish, read, and eat lots of fresh seafood. I may try a round of golf with Dan and Uncle Bobby if I it doesn't cut into my other scheduled activities. Kirsti will be taking some time out for her mom and dad early on but plans to fall in with Dan and I by Tuesday. After vacation things begin to get a little more exciting with Dan's fall baseball season and our redskins season tickets, of course I have to defend my division championship in fantasy, my team this year is The Manassas Badasses, I hope I can live up to the name. We are all looking forward to a visit with Mom and Dad at Missy and Mikes. I hope Mike will have time, between his recnt involvment with PETA and the Hilary campaign he has got to be busy.

Too Much Information

I thought this NYTimes article, by someone obsessed with her home value and the proliferation of online information available to feed her obsession, was funny. She lives out here in Mill Valley and talks with a Stanford prof about the wisdom of tracking home value this way.

“Oh, no! Oh, my goodness, I have to tell you to stop right now,” said Baba Shiv, an associate professor of marketing at Stanford University. “You are being completely irrational. This information can end up having a negative effect on your life.”

A lesson that could be applied to a lot of things.

Steven's dream come true

I could not resist posting this for my wonderful, crazy spouse.

Map o' Matic

I keep reading about how online mapping software, when coupled with easy-to-use tools, is transforming the world of plain old maps. So, when I noticed that Flickr has added "geotags" to pictures, I thought I'd try it out with the set of photos from Missy and Mike's visit. Click on the picture above to see the map on Flickr.

That also reminds me, since I was poking fun at Mike in my previous post, of an incident on our hike early in the morning on Mt. Tam. After 2.5 miles of fire road, with a steep downhill at the end, we came upon a firehouse and a road. I had the map. "Hmm. This just doesn't seem right to me," I say, stopping to look more closely at the map. At that point we look up and there is our hotel in front of us. Yes, I still have a finely honed sense of direction, and I managed to demonstrate it for them.