Marching Bands and History, Yay!

Yesterday Matt called me at work and asked what I was doing that evening. Well, I had an exciting evening planned: take out the trash and recycling, wash dishes, and make a grocery list. (I know, I live on the edge!). He asked if I wanted to go to a marching band contest in the next state (12 miles away). We both enjoy marching bands and were in them when we were in high school. Actually we both attended a national marching band contest in Indianapolis when we were in high school but didn't know each other then. (Neither of our bands were in the contest, we just went to watch and be impressed).

Anyhow, we went and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The bands all did a fantastic job. Before the competion, they had the participants of the color guard summer camp perform. Little girls (5-8 years old?) did a routine to Miley Cyrus. It was so cute!
However, the bands were great. The one that I enjoyed the most had a Spartacus theme to their show. The color guard all wore tunics and started the show in "shackles." About half-way through the show, one of the drum majors walked up to a guard girl and "killed" her setting off the slave rebellion which had to be coming at some point since Spartacus led a slave rebellion in ancient Rome before being betrayed by pirates (Never, never trust pirates, even if they look like Johnny Depp!) Next thing you know, the guard members all have spears and shields. Using their shields, they form a testudo, Roman defense trick to protect all members in unit by creating a "tortoise" shell with their shields. I clapped for the testudo and suddenly realized that I was the only one clapping.

Yes, I clap for historical accuracy. I can't help it, I'm a nerd. Well, as you might know, the slaves/guard were defeated by the Romans/band but it was still fun. The end of the true story has all the slaves crucified on the Appian Way because they all claim to be Spartacus and aren't willing to give him up to the Romans. Well at the end of the show, the guard was in the back of the band with their arms outstretched like they were on crosses. I hope someone else got the reference but I did! And I again clapped for historical accuracy.


None of the other bands had historical themes but I enjoyed them too.

Did I mention that we once had a dog named for Spartacus? Sparky was the best dog......

Weekend movie recommendation: Spartacus starring Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier, and Tony Curtis. Very good!!!!!!

Baby animals everywhere!

Well, not quite everywhere....

Here's the story. About three months ago, we noticed a bird building a nest in our carport. Mrs. Robin nested and nested and didn't seem to mind the cars pulling in below her. After a while though, we noticed that she seemed to be gone. I was afraid that she had abandoned her nest. Last night, however, I noticed at least two hungry birdy mouths popping up from the nest. So now we have baby robins in our carport. Yay!!!!!!!

And, our neighbor across the street has a puppy. Matt and I thought we saw a puppy in their yard but we weren't certain. Last night, Rob, our neighbor brought over their 6 -week old rat terrier Sammy. Who is adorable!!!!! Rob let me hold Sammy (worst idea ever because I didn't want to give him back!) and Sammy proceeded to cuddle on me, nibble on fingers, and in generally be a puppy. So cute. Sammy weighs probably about 3 pounds. Rob said that they have a cat but their cat doesn't mind Sammy. At this point, our cats outweigh Sammy by about 3 times, so I would actually be worried for Sammy that Gus "The Chunk" Cat would crush Sammy.

So Matt and I had the dog discussion again, with the continued consensus of "not right now"....
I'll keep trying to teach the cats to play fetch (actually Gus does kinda fetch, sometimes, when he wants to (he is a cat after all)). Both cats do roll over, wag their tails, and both play dead (or maybe they're just sleeping since being a house cat is HARD!)

Gardening, yay!!!

The long-awaited pictures of Casa de Lee

Our tomatoes behind our house. This year I cut back on the number of plants. Last year we had 19, this year, only 12. (I freeze the tomatoes and can them once I get time. Last year I made chili sauce, "Mer"inara, and just chunks) We also have a pepper plant and two plantings of beets.

(And, how in the heck do I rotate a picture on my blog? Does someone know?)

This is the back of our house. Our garden is right at the base. We added the little border and cleaned up the area for our garden.

Matt's potatoes did come up. And a squash or a pumpkin, we're not certain yet. I think we have some of each which is what you get from a compost pile.

Matt's "Victory Garden" also known as Mac's hangout. We have become a foundling home for poinsettias. I think you can see them in the picture. We have about 12 around the house. Most come from the bank after Christmas and a certain husband of mine can't stand to see the plants thrown away. So enter these scrawny near death plants and I think, "Ok, I can stand have a house full of poinsettias since they are so near death. They deserve a decent place to pass away." Oh but no, that's not the case. After about 2 weeks under Matt's green thumbed care, they thrive. And thrive. And grow into huge healthy plants that completely take over our back room. Oh, goody......

And the front of our house completes our backyard, front yard tour. I hope that you have enjoyed your trip around the Lee household. Please watch your step and pet the kitties as you leave. Thanks for coming!

Rain, Rain go away

We have had enough rain already. Honestly, enough. Luckily, we haven't had any problems with flooding like other areas have had, i.e. Cedar Rapids, IA which is completely underwater. The only good news is that with all this rain, our garden is looking very nice. Our tomatoes and pepper plants are growing well and my beets are coming up! Matt's potatoes are coming up too!!Yay!!!!!

This past weekend was our Cemetery Walk fundraiser for the museum. We have it at a beautiful cemetery here in town: rolling hills, huge trees, and nice paths. I wore my '86 wrapper for a change (everyone always wears fancy clothing when they dress up, I like to wear oldey-timey normal clothing: proof yet again that I"m a social historian.) Anyhow, when I was putting on my dress, it felt like I was slipping into an old friend. You know that feeling you get when you put on clothing that you used to wear all the time and stopped wearing, only to start again? Yep, that one. I even wore my apron ( I needed the pocket for my keys and cell phone.)

I did have to chuckle to myself though: my dress was the only one with "authentic" wear patterns. Underarms and bodice front issues. Plus bleach stains on the hem!

I'll post pictures of our garden soon and show you all our new exhibit at the museum!

Verminator!

Well, luckily, we haven't had any more mousey friends here at the museum but we did have another guest of the winged variety. Yes, a bat managed to find its way into our museum. And since apparently I'm the courageous one of us, I got to dispose of it. Thoroughly dispose of it because that was the second time today that it had tried to get into the museum. And I feel just awful. Did you know that bats not only squeak but they also hiss like a cat? I didn't.

This morning our visitor's service staff person found it attached to the broom. She simply took the broom outside and shook the bat into the bushes about 10 feet away from the front door. Then about an hour later, our executive director came to the front door and found the bat under the threshold. Not a good place. So, she used her cell phone to call me to get rid of the bat. Thank goodness for modern appliances! The bat was acting oddly, even for a bat and we decided since it apparently really liked the museum, we needed to get rid of it.

Anyhow, I still feel bad. I don't like things squeaking in pain at me because of something that I'm doing to it. (Note to self: a career option not open to us "CIA interrogator")

I even don't like it when I kill box elder bugs in my house even though I hate box elder bugs.

Such a softy...

Is anyone with me on this??

Umm, what was that?

We are officially in "school-tour season" here at the museum and I have some funnies to share with you. Now, I know that for all my intrepid blog readers, if you ever had the joy to work at a living history museum or are currently working there, you have far better one-liners than I do, but please remember that I don't have: fires, flies, chickens, or horse doo in the street to spur on some of the best visitor comments.

So here are my school tour comments, 2008:

Why do you have so much old stuff here?

You have nice teeth. I like them. (directed towards me from a middle school girl)

So which one is older, WWII or the war of 1812?

It smells like old stuff in here.

Is that a real man in the mine shaft? (it's clearly a mannequin)

I don't want to look at this junk, I want to go to the gift shop.


And my all time favorite which happened a few months after I started here:

This town is so old, it doesn't even have a Starbucks. (from a cranky 15ish year-old)

Merlock Holmes and the Case of the Kitty Prints

So, I know that some of you know what I've been doing the past few days: trying to finish painting the basement steps. We have two flights of steps that lead into the basement, one by the back door and the other in the center of the house. Well, we've had the steps pretty much primed for about a month now and I decided it was time to finish the job. So Saturday, I was painting the treads of the center steps with the white primer. Now, all the fun kitty stuff, like food, water, and litter is in the basement. I thought (ha!) that if I left one door open and closed the other, the cats could still get into the basement to their essentials. In a perfect world, this would have worked. I don't live in a perfect world. After painting a couple of steps, a tan blur rushed past me up the freshly painted steps. I, of course, shouted at him "Gus, what are you doing?" which made him run faster because suddenly "shorter, blond one who feeds me" is yelling at him. I yelled at Matt to grab Gus but he missed. So now there was white cat prints on our wood floor in the living room. I reacted in the appropriate manner: paint on floor first, cat second. Luckily it all came up with only a slightly traumatized Gus to contend with.

So last night, I was painting the same steps, only this time with the finish coat. I closed that door and left the other one open for the cats (apparently I don't learn). I had finished and was sitting in the living room. Matt came downstairs from the second floor and I asked him to go look at the freshly painted stairs. When he opened the basement door, guess who came out? A painted Gus. This time he had run up all the steps, leaving nice cat prints on all my newly painted steps. And now there is brown paint on our kitchen floor (which isn't a problem because it needs to be replaced anyhow). So we grabbed Gus and I held him while Matt cleaned his feet. Gus was a very good kitty to let us wash his feet and cut away the painted fur.

We decided that at least Gus did it in the correct order: primer first, then top coat.

So, I doubt that Gus has learned his lesson but I have: close both doors while painting and the cats can just hold it for a bit!