March Madness and the end of an era...

Yikes!! March Madness!! I am biting my fingernails for the Bruins vs. the Spartans right now...I am SO excited that we can watch all the NCAA games online for free (is this for real!?!?)!! College football season was frustrating trying to find UA games at times... I filled out a bracket with the Idaho contingent...we'll see how I do (not well). I seem to always need to take UCLA all the way if they are in it...sigh...

cripes, as I write this it's a 1 point game with 4.4 seconds left on the clock...if UCLA loses my bracket is useless and I wallow in last place (which I think should earn a prize really)...

anyhow, the "end of an era" title is in reference to this:

sadly, the end of my xtratuf boots....but!

the birth of my xtratuf clogs:

So I got my xtratufs as my first real "job" out of college - a fisheries observer in Alaska (Whew! UCLA wins by a hair!!!)...it came about after a few attempts at biology jobs in So. Cal. that didn't pan out. I decided I would work as an observer, make money, save up, and eventually move to Seattle and get a fisheries job there. Long story short: Train in Anchorage for 3 weeks, fly out to Dutch Harbor for my first assignment, seasickness, seasickness, seasickness, better, bleeding ulcer, seizures, fly to Anchorage to fix the bleeding thing, then back home to the LBC. All in all my first and only assignment lasted only a week.

Although the observer thing didn't pan out, at least I got a pair of xtratufs out of the deal. They served me well in Seattle where they kept my feet dry during rainy walks with Hannah. Then in Idaho they kept my feet dry during snowy walks with Hannah. Here in Alabama, well, they could still be useful, but the truth is, after 8 years of use, they were dying on me. It's technically my fault since I walk weird. I seem to dig in with my left inside heel in some odd fashion, and wear out that area in ALL of my shoes...the xtratufs held up for a good fight, but proved no match for Chau's inner left heel. It became painful to walk in them because my burro of a left heel would rub up against the exposed rubber. I ignored the pain for as long as I could. Yesterday, while running in and out and up and down stairs while pulling shoes on and off, I had enough! It was time to rebirth the xtratufs, taking guidance from this website...

Remember how I've been longing for a firepit?? I FOUND ONE!! It's perfect!! and it's perfect in the fact that it was FREE...I repurposed a concrete pipe fitting that I found.... somewhere...and made it into a firepit...well, I set it down on the ground of our brick patio and deemed it "a fire pit"...I've been eyeing it for a few months and it has gone ignored and even had a bunch of weeds growing in it, so I feel justified in relocating it to our backyard...

also, I named our beds - floyd (new short one), edgar ( the new-ish one I moved to the back) and bruce (the original)...the names just came to me while I was sitting outside yesterday...

Also! (again) I transferred out beer to the glass carboy for secondary fermentation. Photos forthcoming on this one - my camera was on the fritz and I had to use my phone camera...

:)

More pics HERE!