Road Trip: Follow The Frog!

Check out some of the travels of our friend, Frog.  Below is a sampling of where our little buddy has been so far.  Many more photos of Frog and text descriptions of our travels yet to come.  Enjoy!

The hotel in Coralville after we packed up the house

After day one of driving, Sioux City, IA

Chillin' with the Presidents

Yup, we're in North Dakota now

Mooooove over, Iowa!  The World's Largest Holstein Cow lives in  New Salem, ND!

Theodore Roosevelt Nat'l Park

...Didn't I see you on a Mountainside?

Hey, buddy!  Anything good in this state?

Turns out, there is!

This is the view from our campsite at Glacier.

Looking for friends near the campground

The main road through the park on our way out.

St. Mary Lake in Glacier

The Great Jettison: Sweet Hobby, Man!

Another wonderful gift that we simply couldn't hold on to.  This was our wonderful Weber grill.  Cooking utensil for many a cookout.  It lived happily in the back yard, safe and covered, for the last four years.  

This grill has cooked meat, vegetables, and, most recently, housed the ceremonial fire burning all the vital documents I had scanned but didn't want to take the time to shred.  Look for the charred remains of insurance statements, doctor bills, student loan promissory notes, and other gems in the photo with lid off!

The buyer was very interested in the grill, even with the condition issues it was suffering.  This person had a great hobby, one of the coolest I've heard of since "documentary film collecting."  This person collected, restored and redistributed old Weber grills!

What a cool hobby!  He described the porcelain lining that is nearly indestructible, even when the coating is burning and peeling.  What I saw as a dirty old grill, he saw potential in a shiny restored gem.  Someday I hope to have an hobby as cool as those of the people I have met since my craigslist crusade.  Maybe I can show up as a nameless character on someone else's blog.

Well, I guess I need to find something to do with my time in Ireland!

From the Yarn Basket: In Case My Nerd-osity Was Ever in Question

I took on this knitting project as a way to thank and say goodbye to my thesis advisor. As you may remember, my thesis research centered around small microinvertebrates called rotifers. They are graceful little animals that swim around in pretty much any body of water you can find. They are called rotifers, or "wheel-bearers" because they have ciliated structures on their heads that they use to sweep food into their mouths. I used them to study the evolution of sexual reproduction because some types of rotifers reproduce exclusively asexually, while other types can use sexual or asexual reproduction. That's probably enough science for a post that is supposed to be about knitting, so I'll leave it at that. the important thing is that I studied these critters for the better part of six years, and to thank my advisor for all of his help and support, I decided to make him some stuffed animal versions.

The Great Jettison: Big Comfy Somethin'

This takes the grand championship for craigslist hits.  Maybe we priced it too low, but we were happy to have the quick sale and at-home pickup.

Besides, we had (that's had, mind you) another soft place to sit in our old love seat.  We got a lot of questions like "It looks great in the photo, what's wrong with it?"  The answer, of course, was "nothing."  We just are surprised by how much things on craigslist are marked up.  Used upholstered furniture should not be sold at premium prices, right?  Who knows what kind of shenanigans are going on in someone else's used couch.

Even though we were nice to it and kept it in a clean home, there is no telling what kind of risk a buyer is taking with an item like this.  What if we had bedbugs?  Roaches? Scabies?  Horrible rashes?  Athlete's foot?  Huge amounts of filth and garbage on the couch?  We didn't and don't, but it makes me shudder thinking about it.

Scabies aside, it was comfy and squishy for us during our entire occupancy in this home.

Moving out Thursday!

Watch for the Frog

Hey buddy!  Going out on our road trip, we thought it might be cute to have a trip mascot.  Most of our "trip-mascotey" things were packed up by the time we thought of this idea.  The last piece we had was this unnamed frog figure on the fountain.  After living(?) so long on our fountain without a name, it felt uncomfortable assigning an artificial name to this little guy(?), so we just kept the name we had used:  Frog (that's with a capital "F," thank you!)

Keep following to see where Frog ends up!