First of all…. I saw the coolest thing over at Yahoo today.  You’ve got to read this article.  Now, here’s a little disclaimer.  This may not be for the faint of heart.  Remember, my educational background is the in the medical arts.  Folks working in healthcare tend to see something and say "eeeeww" followed immediately by "how cool is that!".  You’ve been warned.

Now…. you’ve got to read this !  I’ve never heard of this.  The article has a definite "eeeew" factor but  also a very high "how cool is that" factor.  Cool as in interesting, not cool as in "cool that this happened to you".   OK, I’m rambling.  You have to read this!

Moving on…..

I took another picture of the socks.  Sans blurriness (sorta).

This is the Peaks ‘n Valleys pattern from this book….

I’m still working on the FPS but it just isn’t that much fun.  I can do all the things needed, so the ick is no longer about the techniques.  It just takes a long time and I want to do other things.  Basically, its no fun.  I’ve thought of various way to describe the lack of fun….

It is no fun
It is lacking in fun
It has not met its assigned fun quotient
It is 3 standard deviations below the mean of fun
It is fun-impaired
Fun? It has none
It is fun deficient
It is fun challenged

Time to shut up and keep knitting.  I’m still on Tier 4, I’ve completed 2.75 diamonds of Tier 4.   It takes me forever to do just one diamond and I really just want to be knitting something else.  Anything else.  Doll clothes for fashion concious toddlers, hairnets for cats, mugs for muggles, bandages for lepers (thanks for that one, Lorette), ANYTHING. 

Moving on again…..

AG and I had a bit of an adventure today.  We went to the post office to ship an order (something that AG has started talking about every day.  "Go to Post Office?"  "Mommy awda (order)?") Afterwards we were going to run to Safeway, stop by walgreens and head back home.   But en route to Safeway I got the itch to go explorin’ just a bit.  So we just kept driving up 410 toward Mt. Ranier. 

Since our trip was spontaneous, we have no photos.

First we drove up to the look out for Snookum Falls.  I had  never seen the falls when the water flow was high.  Beautiful.  After this we turned around and headed back to The Dalles.

AG loves The Dalles so we headed over to the campground and walked along the John Muir trail.  Anna Grace loves this little trail.  Well, it obviously hadn’t been open for very long because it wasn’t cleaned up yet.  The trail had extensive damage from the winter storms and last year’s flood.  At one point there was a huge Western Hemlock blocking the path. The tree was at least 6 feet in circumference and it had fallen across the trail.  But there was space underneath.  So AG crouched down and walked under and I had to do the hands and knees thing. 

While at the river, guess what AG wanted to do?  Yep…. throw rocks.  I joined her in her favorite sport and I think I’m starting to better understand the appeal.

After we spent a bit of time there we headed back toward Enumclaw.  Just before we reached Greenwater I saw this huge animal on the side of the road.  Traffic was almost nil so I just stopped in the road.  There were 4 young elk (but they may have been a moose , not sure) eating grass by the road.  One of them was right by the road and they were huge.  I say they were young because nobody had any horns or any hint of horns.   And they were not the least bit afraid.  I was less then 4 feet away and they just kept eating.  Very cool.

Later today I want to do a little internet searching on moose vs. elk to determine what they actually were.

Well, must go.  Toodles.