Random Public Library Moment

I wish I had a camera handy for this one. But I didn't, so description will have to do.

We've got a bulletin board in the children's area of my library that we use for a kind of question of the month that kids can answer and post. For example, in April the bulletin board looked like a baseball field, and kids wrote their favorite position on a baseball. This month we have big, tall multi-scoop ice cream cones, each paper scoop bearing a favorite ice cream flavor.

As I was posting a few new entries, I noticed a smartass scoop that someone had snuck in. Their favorite ice cream flavor? "My Boobies".

See, that just doesn't make any sense. They should take a lesson in public smartassing from the person who added another one a few days later: "Bootilicious". At least that one is uses a hip-hop influenced reworking of flavor nomenclature. What that flavor would mean for Baskin Robbins, I shudder to think.

Yes, I'll eat them in a park! Yes, I'll eat them close to dark!

My wandering gypsy friend Dawn is in town, and Friday we made plans for the evening. After a nice walk outside, we thought we'd try a random little Nigerian restaurant. Why? Well, why not, but also, Dawn is the undisputed Queen of the Happenings Book. And this little hole in the wall place was in the Good Book.

We arrived at around 7:45. It was an hour before the posted closing time, but we had to get takeout since the owner apparently had somewhere else to be. One menu item was Yams with fried egg, tomato, and onion.

Fried egg and yam?

Would I? Could I?
In a car?
Eat them! Eat them!
Here they are.

As a matter of principle as a children's librarian, that's what I ordered. Plus, yams sounded good. And as it turned out, we didn't need to eat them in the car; there was a park complete with picnic benches not far away.

When I opened up the container, I was surprised to find a certain lack of...orange.


I had no idea that large, white, and mostly tasteless was an option for yams, but there they were. So no, Sam-I-am, I do not like Nigerian yams that much, but the rest was good. Apparently the local squirrel population isn't really down with big white yams either. A little beggar was loitering, so I threw him a small chunk. I had never before in my life seen a squirrel forcibly spit out food and run away. I'm serious. I think his bushy little tail was even flicking at me in disgust.




The bottled beverage you see is called Malta India, which our all-too-brief hostess described as "kind of like root beer." Yeah, not so much. If there's such a thing as malted molasses, we have now tasted it. Not horrible, but....hmm. Kind of what I imagine third-world sarsaparilla would taste like.

Our next stop, and really the goal for the evening, was a random little independent film festival, but by the time we got there the watching short films part was over, and a Q&A with the filmmakers just isn't quite as interesting when you have no idea what they're talking about. But on the upside, I did get to meet my favorite boozing robot in the entryway, so the trip wasn't wasted.

Pea pickin' and Canon crunchin'

A few weeks ago, Katie and the girls and I went up north of Alexandria to get out of town, to take the girls on their first overnight in a tent, and for the pea picking weekend at Ploughshare, our CSA farm. We had a great time picking oodles of delicious peas and sharing a pot luck lunch with other members, but then it started to rain. And rain, and rain, and rain. We decided to scrap the camping with one infant and one toddler with a cold and check into a hotel in Alexandria instead. I don't know if I've mentioned this here, but two-year-old Lucy has a steel-trap memory that puts the rest of the family to shame. About two thirds of the way back to Alex, she once again proved her superior recall: "Leesha's camera?" *gasp* Oh no! I think I left my camera on the roof of the car when I was buckling her in! Sure enough, it was nowhere to be found in the interior.

The next morning, we headed back to the farm for one last attempt to find it before heading back to the Cities. Neither we nor the quartet of blonde, tanned little farm brothers on bikes had any luck. Just as we were giving up and heading out, Katie spotted something on the turnoff to the "main" road.



Yes, she had found my camera. Most of it, anyway, spread along the side of a 50-foot stretch of country road. Alas, the memory card was not one of the pieces we found, so my cute pictures of pea pickin' were lost. And strangely enough, even my extended warranty did not cover encounters with the business side of multiple 4x4's. Obviously, I got a new one, because I've discovered that I really like having a camera handy. I won't say need, since that's a strong and overused word, but it's a priority. So Rest in Peace (Pieces) little Canon; you done right by me. I will try to remember the good times we had in Hawai'i, and not my final vision of you as road kill.

Big Island ending, abridged

All right, that's it. When a friend emails and asks where my new blog is, and can she see it, since I obviously have abandoned this one (that last part was unwritten but rightly implied), it's really, really time to do something.

Where were we? Oh yes: a sunny Wednesday in late March. Here's the quick and emphatic version of the remainder of my unblogged trip.


Petroglyphs. Cool! Too bad the carver caught someone on the commode.



Walk like an ancient Hawai'ian! do, dododo, do do dodo do do, dododo, do



Local beer sampler!



Sunset from halfway up Mauna Kea!



Look out!



Thursday:

White sand!


Black sand!


Tikis!


Turtle!



Yoga cabin!



Yoga chickens!



Cool lava is cool!



Hot lava is even cooler!



Friday:

Volcanoes National Park in the rain!



Kilauea spewing!



Sulphur protection or incompetent Wild West double stick up? You decide.



Flowers in a caldera!



Big slothy fern fiddleheads!



Lava tube!



Entrance to bonus lava tube with no lights!



Really dark!



Friday:

Lava trees!



Lava tree worship?



Lava attacks!



Sea arch!




Saturday:

Natural sauna cave!


Easier in than out!


Nut tour!



Chocolate tour!



Final packing and leaving!


Well, that's it. Good times, good times.

At last I've wrapped this up. In my next installment: the recent demise of my camera on a lonely country road north of Alexandria.