Ocatvious Eating

Tortoises are completely adorable when they eat. Yesterday I pulled him out of his home to wander around a bit. I was also cooking dinner which included a large bowl of salad using a mixture of different greens, including red and green leaf lettuces, spinach and romaine lettuce. While I was cutting it up, I saved the good leafy stuff for our meal, and made a pile of the semi-wilted outer layers and thicker-stem-lower-leaf-portions. I put them on the floor by Octavious so he could munch if he was interested. He was very interested. He ate an entire leaf before I got a camera set up.

He is still a bit hesitant with us, so when ever we walk by he stops eating and sometimes shrinks back. He's improving from where he used to hide in him shell when ever we stepped to heavily.

I assume most of you wont have time to watch the entire video, the last portion is really adorable once I put down some collared greens for him. Also during the middle portion, he has a spinach leaf stuck to his foot that he had accidentally speared with his nails. He was having some issues with that leaf.

I should mention there is no sound on this video. I turned it on then finished making dinner. I edited it down afterwards.

I found on YouTube that I can stick songs to the movie. So here is some completely unrelated jazz music to listen to while you watch Octavious munch away. I was trying to find some good epic sounding monster ravaging the city music, but I couldn't fins anything I liked. So now there is jazz.

(can anyone tell its the last week of classes, and I'm doing everything in my power not to go crazy?)

Easter

Easter Time! Which means dying things! This year Gordon and I dyed eggs and I dyed my hair too!

I also hid the Easter Candy (that we got the night before) which Gordon woke up early and tried to find. I didn't think I hid it well - I wasn't intending for it to be hidden at all - but it took long enough for Gordon to find it, that I was able to eat some too. 

After church we made a delicious Easter lunch Breakfast Wreath (I love breakfast food all times of day). 

We were going to take a Sunday afternoon walk with the weather warming up, but somehow we ended up taking a nap. (I also love naps)

For dinner Gordon treated me to some lovely BBQ chicken and sweet potato fries. He is an amazing cook. I enjoy his food. We planned a large green salad to go with our dinner - not pictured.

Please note the length of Gordon's beard. It is his pride. For my pride, my plants have really popped up, soon I will need to clear a bit of yard and plant them! 

Plants and Crafts and Home Making

Below I have pictures of Octavious' home and some pics of him enjoying it.

 

 

I painted this on some cheap water color paper with some acrylic paints I've picked up. It was fun to use some creativity. It might be hard to see, what it is a ray of light falling on some small dark spindly saplings. Our table cloth is underneath.

 

 

I also made this large twelve pointed star dream catcher. I've decided that I really like twelve pointed stars. I feel they carry a lot of symbolism. They contain the star of David, and the only way to create a repeated simple star pattern with twelve points is to count to the seventh position to connect the lines. (seven is some times symbolized as the "whole" or "perfect" number). The star has some really cool places where they cross each other. This forms four beads in the center and twelve beads surrounding that. I was working of this project during LDS General Conference, which may have influenced my noticing of numerical symbols.

 

Another exciting development in our home is our starter garden and herb window garden. I have little decomposable starter pots that are currently sprouting carrots, peas and spinach - soon to sprout the squash and beans as well.

In my herb garden I have thyme and chive sprouted with basil, parsley, cilantro, and I'm drawing a blank on the last one, in a window box. I am excited to be soon able to cook with fresh herbs and eat from my garden come fall/late summer.

 

Side note: Leaves fall in August here, and there are no bill boards. I hadn't realized this last one until some one mentioned it in class today.

Our New Home!

I really hope this video works. If it does not, I have it posted to youtube, and I did make sure that it worked there. The youtube URL is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15BcLGS6XR8&feature=youtu.be

I took this video about 10:00 pm last night. I am in comfy sweats, and I think I look lovely.

As you can see out the windows, we are still frozen over here in Fairbanks. You can also see our view - it is of the surrounding forest. It is beautiful.

New Friend

This is a quick video of Octavious. He is very cute!

He is so CUTE

He's getting bored by pictures but my enthusiasm is not dimmed yet!

Octavious is not impressed.
Please note: my mouth is inches away from his shell, I played with perspective.

Those are pictures of our new Russian Tortoise that I've been talking about.

Campus

Campus has some unique peculiarities. Some are unique to Alaska that I've noticed on campus more than anywhere.

Crows. I am used to those everywhere. Ravens. I am not used to those everywhere. There are little to no crows here. They are all ravens. And they are as common as crows back home in Wisconsin. I feel like quoting Edger Allen Poe almost constantly.

The water on campus tastes like carrots. The university has installed BRITA water purification stations around campus. They are very handy.

They don't salt roads up here. They use gravel. Which provides a lot of traction on the ice - which is everywhere always. As the snow and ice melts the walk ways and roads are heavily covered in gravel from all the many layers over the winter.

Somehow even here people wear mini-skirts. To combat the cold they wear heaver versions of leggings and knee high fur boots. It still doesn't look overly warm at -20 F

I went to a really cool lecture on glaciers and how the mountain glaciers are expected to respond to the changes in weather that have been noted. To sum up her may great points: everything will flood while the glaciers rapidly melt, and then there will be drought when there is nothing left to melt.

I'm currently taking a really fun plant class. We are clipping things and what not for various reasons and playing with plant hormones and stuff. I was talking to my lab instructor about rooting hormones and to put a long story short I have some New Zealand Cheesewood bush cuttings in rooting hormones growing in my windowsill at home. :D

So this video is me talking to the camera briefly while walking around campus I think I state the date on it as March 7th 2014. It originally had sound and does when I play it on my phone. I'm not sure if the audio works here.

I also have these videos I had taken earlier this week of campus via the shuttle. The sound wasn't great when I took it. Mainly the sounds of shuttle being load with a lot of white noise. I put this up because a lot of people have been asking abiut what it looks like up here and what I see everyday. I will post campus shuttle videos a but later once I get those figured out.
Thanks on letting me know the last video doesn't work. Does this one?

Sorry About Vidoes/Pictures

Hey guys
I'm not able to upload pictures or videos currently. Sorry about the hassle. I'll hopefully find a way to get them up. I've heard uploading them to youtube first may work and then to embed the from youtube. I will try that as soon as I have the videos with me where there is internet and I have spare time.

Another picture I will soon be adding is off the newest addition to our family. We have adopted a Russian Tortoise named Octavious. He is very sweet.

NEW HOME!

I am not entirely sure if this video is functional. It is a quick tour through our new home. 

If this video doesn't work I will upload some pictures shortly. 

Our place is so nice! It is only two miles from campus, and as we are trying to get more excessive into our daily routine we are starting to walk to and from campus. When we get bikes we will bike instead. By car, our drive is five minuets. 

I live just barely out of the city and over a hill. We don't get the city lights instead we get lovely trees on all sides. It is gorgeous. 

To assist in productivity Gordon and I have decided not to get internet at our new home. We have found we use it too frequently for unnecessary things. We want to spend time together when we are home. That's what we tell our selves, but really its because we're cheap. We have had some late nights on campus using the internet to finish papers in time, but otherwise I think it is more productive for both of us to physically be in a study area while studying than trying to study at home with distractions. 

It snowed again today. It has snowed a good 4 inches last night and is still snowing now. It looks really beautiful. Our old snow was browning from the gravel and salt. The new snow makes everything crisp and lovely. 

This time of thaw and freeze the locals call the "breakup." this year it has started very early. Last year they still has snow when the kids were being released for the summer.

Speaking of summer we're both signed up for some summer classes - mostly on line to not interfere with summer jobs. We are both applying for summer jobs and hoping that everything will work out for our summer trip plans. 

Its getting bright out. We keep finding ourselves eating dinner at 8 and thinking it is 6. The sunlight outside is confusing us. We have invested (aka looked at a thrift store), in some heavy curtains in our room that helps keep the sun out.

We are otherwise fairly boring. I painted a picture yesterday. And my husband almost pushed me off the bed last night. I had to be an acrobat to secure some bed space.