Chopstork

Four coati babies that Garbanzobeans was coati-sitting. They are related to raccoons, but looked to me like a monkey-dog-racoon-bear hybrid. I took these a few weeks ago. One of them has since died, sadly, but I think the others are doing fine.

Mitch’s parents were kind enough to have us over for their annual crawfish cookout eatathon. Deeelicious fun. Below are all the things Bubba forgot you can do with shrimp, except with crawfish.[This post is rated M for Mature].

“Get the f away from me” crawfish.

Edward crawfish fingers.

Doggy style crawfish.

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Tuffy McFucklebee has hereby invented the vertical jowler!!! The VertJowl™ © patent pending.

Moment of first inception.

First production run.

Also, the band Birdlips has filed an improvement to the original jowler with the addition of a fist to the scene. The knockout jowler. Unfortunately another local band Straight Punch to the Crotch failed to incorporate this improvement in their versions, even though Punch is in their name.

Birdlips’ Lindsay on a knockout jowler.

Luke and Katie decided to get chickens. Pet chickens. Not for human consumption. So Luke, Strongo, Amie, Laura, and I converted an old shed in their back yard into a luxury chicken condo. I mostly watched. Luke’s classified description:

PRICE SLASHED $200! New chicken coop! Stunning new 1 bedroom, bathroom-everywhere contemporary coop set on a quiet lane within walking distance of a chicken wire fence and cat that wants to eat your face. This sensational home offers a luxury sun splashed interior with soaring cathedral ceilings, balconies, oversized windows and gleaming pine shaving floors. The gourmet country kitchen enjoys a feeder dangling from an old nail on the ceiling. The oversized owner’s suite has a walk in old cat carrier full of the same pine shavings. This residence also has a private mailbox, no heat and no A/C. The private back yard patio offers an ideal spot for family fun and summer cook-outs. $200

Beatrice and Latifa:

Kalihari, the cat that wants to eat their heads off:

Vicky asked me to take some pictures for a Virginia Discovery Museum event yesterday. Got a couple good pictures. I am so slow at downloading, organizing, and uploading pictures…I haven’t put any others up yet. And now I’m two weddings behind on pictures, after Nathan and Corenia’s on Saturday.

…more Dule

Look at who we picked to come home with us in 3-4 weeks. She does not have a name yet.

Prepare for a barrage of puppy photos over the next few months.

Yahoo! News picked one of my VA Tech pictures for their 2007 Best of You Witness. Neat. And the Best Of is linked from the Yahoo! News front page! (It’s a tiny link over in the right column, but it’s still linked from their front page!)

Last Sunday we put couches through our upstairs window. We had to because they wouldn’t fit up the stairs. We tried. Turn them sideways. Take the legs off. Take down the banister. The stairs are just too narrow.

Really? There’s such thing as a house that won’t fit a couch? Yes, there is such a thing.

Why do the couches have to go up the stairs when they’re perfectly fine in the living room? Because we’ve had new ones picked out for the living room, and the old comfy-but-it’s-ok-if-they-get-a-little-ratty-cuz-they-got-beat-up-in-the-move ones were supposed to go upstairs where the new big TV is. But most importantly, because I’m stubborn and wanted to prove that we could get couches upstairs through the window.

Half the neighborhood (well at least five passers-by), attracted by the two 16ft ladders we rented for the occasion, came into the house to convince us that we could get couches up the stairs. Dude, if they would go up the stairs, we would have done it three months ago when we moved in. You think we’re risking our friends’ lives climbing giant ladders before we tried that? But thanks for the concern.

Plan A—a boom lift—costs a good $500, so we went with Plan B: two really big step ladders. Just push the couches up the side of the ladders, prop the top end onto the porch’s roof, and slide them into the window where someone will catch it. Awesome plan.

So we opened the ladders up for the first time. Wow, 16 ft step ladders are way bigger than I thought. Uh…Plan B might not work so well with the 2 yard gap between the top of the ladders and the roof.

If you’ve taken Error Prevention Training, remember when they tell you about saying “This is stupid,” and stopping the operation? Well, this is about when “this is stupid” kicked in. Laura and I said it out loud even. But give up? You’re talking to one of two people that believed we could get all our crap into only two ReloCubes. Did I mention I’m stubborn?

Plan C: Turn the ladders sideways next to each other right up against the house. Result: Again, way too big a footprint—can’t even fit them in front of the house.
Plan D: Stagger them. Result: The front yard is a hill; the second ladder barely keeps from tipping over.

This is stupid.

Plan E: Close one ladder and prop it against the house like an extension ladder. Slide the couches up this one while someone on the open ladder guides it. Laura’s suggestion. We were trying to avoid crushing the gutters, but it was the only option left. Sorry gutter.

Here are the results. We make it look incredibly easy, but really it was incredibly scary. Four people on or under ladders pushing a couch up to the second floor, with four people in the window blindly tugging on ropes attached to the couches … what could possibly go wrong??? Oh yeah, Dan almost getting his head lopped off when the first couch goes tumbling off to the side. Unfortunately we didn’t get a video of that, but here’s a video of the second one. And some pictures.

Thanks to everyone that came to help, even though you all told me afterward that you really just came to be entertained by a failed attempt and didn’t believe for a second that we’d actually get the couches upstairs. As with every other stupid thing we do with friends, we couldn’t have done it without you … and this probably the stupidest thing we’ve done.

Oh and thanks to Strongo who was kind enough to come over Saturday night to show me how to take out the window (i.e. take the window out for us). I would have figured it out, but it would have taken me 6 hours and I would have broken something important.