Light with Ice and Curls

Sunday was a beautiful day here in the Tennessee Valley. In the later afternoon as I was diligently working away on the next issue of the Huntsville Grotto Newsletter, and then I got distracted by the light play off my grandmother's glass mobile and the window and the shadows were just so beautiful I had to take a picture of it...

And then today for some reason I decided to go curly. Well I guess I decided to go curly on Saturday night because I left the curlers in for 24 hours, and when I took them out this morning I decided to document them - because I curl my hair like once every... oh... every 7 years. I can even tell you the last time I curled my hair was for the opening of HUE Design at the new office - which was in 1999 or 2000? So since I curl my hair once every seven years I figured it deserved a pic.

Fat Tuesday

Have you had your King Cake today?




We have!

Blast From the Past #32

Its funny the items you find tucked deep inside the corners of your wallet, isn't it?
These fortunes are from - July 3rd, 2006, as noted on the backs.
Top to bottom - my Mother's, Father's, Paul's and mine.

Ledbetter Saltpetre

Some photos of Ledbetter Saltpetre Cave and our (Randal, Paul & I) search for Gray bats today. There's a quarry going in a stone's throw away from this beautiful cave, and finding an endangered species is pretty much the only way to stop the quarry from going in. We're still on the look out.
The entrance waterfall - for scale, follow the log to the bottom left corner and into the next photograph.



Ice at the entrance
A couple little bats hanging out together.

A small piece of the Superformation.
This fern is a cousin of the hearts tongue fern.Ice collected on a tiny little stick at the bottom of the waterfall.

Watches & Grapes

After a beautiful hike up Green Mtn this morning, so that Paul could fix a weather station, we ran over to the Post Office - I got a package from my folks and it had a hysterical little gift for Paul and I. It was a great set of matching fake Movado watches my Dad found at a flea market. Mine was plain Paul's looked like this:

Then we visited the Jaycee's Collectible Show. It was small - but very interesting. I love rooting through someone else's old junk. I'm not much of a collector of fancy items - I don't go for flowery china, or dolls, or other normal dust collectors... I go for odd items. Let me give you an example: I have a parking meter lamp. And its very cool. I love really old light bulbs - the kind that are hand blown... those are WAY cool. I have a few antique fans - they all work and are the kind that you could probably cut your fingers off or shred something you didn't like in the fan blades because they're totally exposed! Big fan of really old leather history or geography books, especially the ones with marbled pages - but I really go for the illustrations - with those incredible engravings on that heavy cotton paper. And of course I'm always on the look out for different silver jewelry and letterpress type. One day I'll own my own press.

So anyway, we perused for a few hours, and spoke with a few of the dealers. I found a pretty beat up carbide light - but it was beyond fixing, and they wanted $24 for it so I didn't get it. I did find an old sewing book with lots of illustrations, a few gifts for people that I will tuck away for future birthdays, and then we found this cool vintage table cloth - a souvenir from Alaska. The same gal had these grape hot pads too; they're made out of bottle caps believe it or not. I think this is an item that falls into the category of "its so tacky its cute." So its now adorning our little kitchen table along with cool "new" Alaska table cloth.

Rumble Rumble Rumble

Saturday Morning, - about 11 am or so - Jimmy and Andrew going around the curve in the road and eventually down to...
the entrance of Rumbling Falls, which is where I am with some of our gear.

Here's some freaky gypsum/possible aragonite formations? (I'm no Geologist!) growing straight out of some mud.

Here's a photo I'm borrowing from Andrew's photobucket site to show you how much there was. This passage was incredible - just like snow. So gorgeous! Andrew's go some nice photos in his photobucket - be sure to check them out too.

And here's another beauty that I'm borrowing from Andrew too.

And here's my nicest macro shot of the formations.

Early Sunday morning, A very muddy Nathan, already, setting up for his shot in the Rumble Room. See the tiny lights in the background? Those would be a few of the 15- 3 watt LEDs that he and Jimmy would set up to take the phenominal photo that premiered at the Huntsville grotto meeting tonight.

Nathan timed his entrance and exit on his watch at 15 hours 25 minutes - so by the time you tack on Jimmy also climbing out and then the rigging and derigging of the entrance - you've got a 16 hours Rumbling Falls trip.

We've Been "Slushed" On

Something exciting finally happened on Thursday - so no Blast from the past for me this morning! I'm here to report straight from the slush of Alabama - at 5:42 am! Snow was a pretty big wish - and we sort of got it this morning - but in the form of lots of pretty slush that makes me want to have a snow cone.