A Duck-Filled Birthday Weekend

Longtails, harlequins, loons, and more. We went with a small group from the local Bird Club to New Jersey for some waterfowl madness. And boy were they out there in full force off the jetty at Barnegat Light. There were some exotic varieties, and they were very close to us. Quite breezy, but a sunny day in February nonetheless!

 

  

  

Not a bad way to start off one's birthday weekend.  And we sure were lucky on Sunday too...another beautiful day for seeing the sights and taking a drive.

Making a Retreat

The snow is gradually making a retreat from Lancaster County's roofs, streets, and sidewalks. Today had a nice combination of sun and steady temps above freezing to hustle the melt along. Kinda gives you some hope for spring, doesn't it.

Oh wait, was that a forecast for wintry mix next week? Uggggh....

Biggest Snowblower I've Ever Seen

This morning, we awoke to the sounds of machinery outside. And what you see in the picture above is the biggest snowblower I've ever seen, attached to a Borough backhoe. The street crew was going around clearing out some of the giant piles of snow on the street corners from the previous days' plowing. Fortunately, it cleared out several parking spots in our neighborhood, which were much needed after the 30" or so we got in the last week. Even though it still looks like a mess in that picture, it is a far cry from how things looked a few days ago...

Back in the Blogosphere!

My return to the Blogosphere starts tonight with a few pictures that sum things up. Above is shot from Cumberland Island, GA taken on our latest mini-vacation to southern Georgia and Jacksonville, Florida. Traveling and being outdoors are big parts of our life, and we are fortunate to be able to get around quite a bit. Although my wife, Amy, is quite the photographer I try to take some shots along the way myself (when I remember my camera).

Case in point, our day on Cumberland Island was one of the most unique in our travels. For starters, one can only get there via boat...so the ferry dropped us off in the morning and we were on foot from there. Over four miles of rambling around this historic and natural island led us through swamps, across the beach for a mile plus, and onto the ruins of the Carnegie mansion shown above. What a place!

Woodworking and mathematics are a couple other things that keep me busy in my spare time. The dice table (still under construction, of course) is a nice mix of those two hobbies...I wouldn't have the table without sawing and drilling, and there wouldn't be much of a need for it without an interest in numbers, probabilities. As a wise man named Warren Buffet said once to a certain extent, one only needs to know addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and how to calculate a rate and risk. Fortunately, both games of chance and woodworking require only that level of math :)