It's All About the Shoes.

I make a concerted effort to keep content here to primarily activities at the Chicken Ranch, and by the inhabitants of the Chicken Ranch, but my dear male readers, if you will excuse me a minor foray into pop culture and fashion...

Can you imagine a more perfect shoe to wear to see Sex in the City 2...filmed in Morocco, set in Abu Dhabi??? You know, I couldn't either. :)
No working on my silly paper for the evening, a girls' night out, dinner and a movie, purple high heels...AND THEN, to get this fortune in my cookie? I'm pretty sure the cookie knew about the shoes. ;)

It was a hell of a day at sea, sir!

Fire, Baaaaaaaaaaad.

With my husband's federal employ comes the opportunity to return to something he really loves doing: wildland fire response. It was one of myriad reasons why he left his former awesome employer for his current awesome employer. So, while we'd hope there would be no wildland fires this summer, if there are, there's a great likelihood my husband will be called to leave his desk job and go serve as GIS support for a fire team. As such, he was issued new fire gear. This is a fire shelter? Mostly its a fire-resistant blanket. As my fireman says, "its to try to keep you alive, not comfortable."

Here's the tent and gloves he was issued. He didn't set it up, but I bet he's not as happy with it as he is with his Big Agnes tent. He loves Big Agnes.

Such fancy white leather gloves. Really? White? Seems silly to me. Course no one has asked to go fight fires, now, have they?

Why do they make firefighters dress like Ducks? Hee hee! More fire-resistant gear. I like the green fire-resistant Nomex pants...but I'm a bit suspicious of the yellow puffy shirt. And you'll agree, few people besides my sister can really rock yellow -- especially a soul-less daywalker. I mean redhead. At least it matches the hard hat. Go Ducks!

Hopefully you won't hear tales of some black widow in large sunglasses using her bad habits to start a forest fire, all accidental-like, just so she can have the remote all to herself. I kid! We went to the old-timey candy store here and I just HAD to get the candy schmigs...they are the greatest homage to American marketing EVER.

Fun 'n Musk Ox 'n Guns 'n Zebras 'n Duckblinds

After brunch, we had only a few hours. What to do, what to do...I know! Let's go screw around in Cabela's! We can ponder the taxidermy...

Musk Ox... Musk Oxen? Either way, really weird looking. And of course, musk ox is filed under "among the grossest things I've ever eaten." Course, that was Northern Canada musk ox. Maybe Greenland musk ox is better. [yeah right.]

[Cue Homer Simpson voice]

Oooooooh..... Guuuunnnns....

If she had been wearing the SparklePants I could have posted this on a hot-chicks-with-guns site. Maybe next time.

Next up, fun with perspective. Wait! Gun and SparklePants on the back of this stuffed zebra!! Even better!!!

I don't want to ruin the fun, but guess whose kids are getting an insta-duck-blind for Christmas!?!

Couples' Retreat!

Yay! My friend came to visit, my friend came to visit!! Hee hee! Stacey was able to find care for her brood, carve a weekend out of their busy schedules, and hop a quick flight over to Boise to visit us! So sweet! In honor, we dressed in the colors of the Chicken Ranch. No! Purely accidental. ;)

It didn't take long for us all to get into relaxin' mode. And there were LOTS of magazines for the Quiet Magazine Time. Including "National Geographic" and "Fly Rod and Reel" for the boys!

The girls went for a much-needed visit to an awesome spa, while the boys went explorin' and then battled each other at UFC on the XBox360, or some other such boy nonsense. I'm always pleased when a boy has to use my pink controller for such endeavors. :)

We took a taxi cab downtown for a couples' dinner out, where we cheers-ed our 32 years of friendship!

Then back home for more magazine time. These are the SparklePants Stacey treated Idaho with. Such fun!
Then a bit of sightseeing and up the hilltop for brunch. It rained cats and dogs on Saturday, which yielded snow at higher elevations! Such a fun little vacation weekend! Thanks for visitin', friends!

One Weekend of Spring!

Well, we had one lovely weekend of spring. So we used it to do our twice-yearly yardwork. Turns out, even a heavily xeriscaped yard needs some attention. Bah! Tho my husband really does do lovely work.

He's also REALLY good at the most treacherous weed-eating and raking EVER.

And I've been meticulously attending to my rhubarb crop, caring for it, water, fertilizer. HAH! No! I love this rhubarb plant!! I do nothing and rewards me handsomely!!

Maybe if you people did yardwork more than once a year, you wouldn't have EIGHTEEN bags of debris.

My husband even hung our new sun shade up for a hot minute! Then took it down when the rain started.

You know I'm not a big fan of our feathered friends, but I did like this fellow. :)

Uhhh.

You know the soothsaying magic fortune telling machine in the movie "Big." Yeah. I don't really use the weird little analog vending machine in the breakroom much... Maybe four times in my life? And trust me, it does have all the normal colors of M&Ms. So you remember the shot of this strange Duck vend?





Uhh... Go... Broncs?

Strange little vending machine: I hope you aren't telling me to become a Michigan Wolverine. 'Cause that just ain't happenin'.

Week 7 Draws to an End! HALF WAY DONE

Wow! And with that, Week 7 is over. Week 7 iteration of paper turned in! Can you believe its the half-way mark? I even had the luxury of walking to work this a.m.! I live like a queen!

What we have been calling the "week off," should really be called "the week of reading." Now that I have gathered all these sources and written this framework, it turns out I have to actually peruse these materials. Yuck!

I've been able to mostly function on about 5 hours of sleep a night, and I've been working about 35 hours a week, but STILL. It's been a lot... Mostly I lose my train of thought a lot. And can't remember much of anything lately. But I have 80 pages completed! Whoo-hoo!

There was this one really low point, around 2 a.m., when I was lucky enough to find a leftover Taco Bell taco in the fridge. But didn't want to run the microwave and wake the rest of the family. So happened upon the genius idea to warm it slightly... on my desk lamp. Best part? Worked like a charm.

And guess what! While I was in Eugene, my sweet husband got the door glass replaced!! Yay!! We do have yardwork on the docket for this weekend... I'll keep you informed.

The Hagg

So... last minute decision. Really, am I going to make much progress from 5 to 9 p.m. when my paper is due each week? Naw! Spellcheck that bad boy, submit it, and head off to the Merle Haggard concert, just 3 miles down the road! Tix were still available the day before the show! I think the Hagg looks better in black and white.
Likewise, these cute boys look better in sepia... dirt road color! Great people watching at this show. Instead of the usual urban professionals that usually populate the more mainstream shows (ok, us!), this crowd was primarily the old-school, saw-the-Hagg-in-the-seventies group, and hat-wearin' young men who looked like they just jumped off a horse or a tractor. Clearly, the gear of the evening was Carhartt.
Carhartt.

Carhartt.

Ooh... another cute boy in Carhartt. ;)

My two favorite sound bites of the evening were my husband watching a young couple walk by and muttering, "Yep... nuthin' says 'country' like a teenage girl with a chew in." Then after the Hagg whined some more about the cold, he started one of his songs, and about 15 seconds in he stopped the band and said, "Wait, can I do that again?" One of the drunk broads on the blanket behind us yelled "That's what SHE said!" Really, if you can't be juvenile at a Hagg concert, where can you?

Marmotry!

A couple folks have asked about this season's marmotry! I have been sitting in the stands reading research materials for my paper, and not shooting the Marmots... and the season's nearly half over!

My fave Marmot up to bat.

He makes it to first...!

Then, thanks to "Pigtails," he makes it to second...

The Marmots did not win, but they did their furry rodent best.

Spring Game!

So the final event on our conference agenda was attendance at the Spring Game at Autzen! It's just a scrimmage (green against white) but it was actually broadcast on ESPN this year!

We watched from suite...OK, from the president's suite! He even stopped by to chat up the chapter leaders, and even told me he had a great time when he came to Boise for the game last fall. Oh, the schmoooze. ;)

The band, the cheerleaders, the Duck... it was just like a real game... except without the opponent.

The halls to the suites are lined with the giant team shots from over the years. More than a few had been take by NSP, the small Beaverton sports photo company where my husband worked for years.

Through the course of the weekend I learned that the Arizona chapter leader (right) is the nephew of a guy I work with... and at the game learned that the fellow on the left is the guy I work with's older brother! I threatened blackmail with top secret information that could only have been dispensed by an older brother. Trepidation ensued.

SUCH a fun weekend break! Suite viewing really is the way to go. Go Ducks!

The Fam Visits Eugene!

Don't be jealous... I was rockin' this sweet ride during my brief visit to Eugene.

And guess what! The fam graciously came to visit! So lucky! I'm pretty sure Mom has more Duck gear than I do. I LOVE this yellow sweatshirt! Dad puckering outside of Prince Puckler's ice cream. :)

Sister being silly in a phone booth. We took a bunch of family shots, but I realized upon return to Idaho that for once, the pix weren't in MY camera!

When people who live in Boise, Hillsboro, and Nehalem are wandering around a retail center in Eugene on a Sunday morning, you'd expect them to run into friends from Hillsboro. Yeah. Sure. That's not CRAZY...