When I was in Redmond last month, we were taken on a beautiful Lake Washington dinner cruise. Tonight, I am going on a Lake Champlain dinner cruise. It has been raining all summer but today just happens to be sunny beautiful and 80 (well that’s what it looks like from in here). Lake Champlain is the nation’s 6th largest lake! It is 120 miles long and 10 miles wide at it’s widest point. There is a bike route around the lake …. it is 363 miles. Lake Champlain is also one of the most historical lakes in the country. Many battles were fought here during the revolutionary war. Benedict Arnold was the captain of the historic fleet of 1776 and the Philadelphia , brought up from the lake bottom in 1935, now sits in the Smithosonian. The lake itslef is a treasure trove of sunken battle ships as well as other boats throughout history. If you’re curious, here is the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum which does some fascinating work.

Yes you read that right. A 4th of July tradition in Bristol VT (which is the closest “real town” to where I live being 12 miles away) are the pre-parade Outhouse Races. SInce we used to live much further away, this will be the first time we have watched them. Apparently the rules are they have to be human powered and there has to be someone sitting inside (a “rider“) and there has to be a door (“for privacy, of course“)! The above link has the actual rules.

Rather than a big lawn to mow, we have about 1.5 acres in front of our house that is a field with wild flowers. It’s history is that it was a big field with an old house down closer to the road. Ten years ago that house was removed and what is now our house was built further back. The original owners wanted “lawn, lots a lawn”, so they let people from all over town come dig up the wildflowers to transplant

at their homes and they turned the beautiful field into a lawn. Much to the chagrin of the neighbors, the owner mowed about 4 times a week. He loved his lawn. Then he sold his house to the next owners about 5 years ago. The first thing they did was dig up  a swath of about 10 feet perimeter around this area and seed it with wildflower seeds from the Vermont WildFlower Farm . So right now the lupine are at their peak and the Sweet William (dianthus) and early phlox and flax as well are all over. It is phenomenal. I tried to take pictures but it just doesn’t capture what is really there. So I walked around the path with my little digital camera on video and made a few videos. They might make you sea sick as I’m walking around and it’s not very still. And it still isn’t really very good but the best I can do. too bad the previous owners didn’t do one – he is an emmy award winning filmmaker for National Geographic. Or maybe I can get Eric King to come and do it? Heh.

And turn off the sound – it’s just the wind hitting the camera. These got saved as QuickTime videos – I have no control over that.

The first one is (egads) 17MB and lasts about 3 or 4 minutes. The second is the tail end — about 2.2 MB. Also they don’t seem to stream very well. I think it downloads the whole thing first. No way my folks can see them on their 56K dialup!

This is very typical for Vermont. Rich and I had planned to NOT WORK today and go play outdoors : hike, bike, or even paddle. However the forecast this morning said rain throughout the day. It is now 3:30, 60 degrees (brrr) and overcast so that would have been okay for a hike or a bike ride, though with the Lake Champlain water temp at about 53 and no wetsuits, paddling would have been out anyway. Regardless, it never rained. I’ve been in front of the computer all damned day. Aaach.

All of my neighbors saw the bear wandering around here yesterday but I missed it. And I’m the one who works at home in front of a hug set of windows. We don’t have garbage pickup so maybe that’s why he was at my next door neighbors and across the street but never here.

It’s just a yearling – probably pushed out by mama – “go find your own territory” and apparently poses more threat to my bird feeders than to my cat but I think we’ll just keep him in for a few days (and put the bird feeders in the garage).

When I lived in the Hudson Valley (NY State/Southern Catskills area) I was friends with the “bear guy” from the Region 3 NYS Fish & Wildlife Dept. He’s the guy that would get called any time a bear was where bears shouldn’t be. Usually to just tranquelize it and move it back to the mountains.

Having moved to this house in August of last year, spring is now a time for discovering what types of plants and flowers are around (planted or wild) and birds as well. In the past week I have found a few varieties of trillium on the Beane Trail behind our house, rhubarb in the old veggie patch (which we just tilled up in order to reclaim), zillions of lupine in our front yard/field/wildflower area, so many many types of flowers coming up around the house and a beautiful pair of Baltimore Orioles on my walk with Tasha this morning.

June 8th, Capitol Plaza Montpelier, VT

This event is hosted by the Vermont Information Technology Center and the Vermont Commission on Women.

More info here

I have been trying to get in touch with ANYONE from this conference about possibly participating as a panel speaker or something. If anyone has a contact, please let me know.

Just a reminder that, thanks to INETA, Tim Huckaby speaks at Vermont.NET tonight.  We are gettingn a preview of his TechEd 2004 talk on Architecting and Building Smart Client Apps with .NET. Here are all of the details! www.vtdotnet.org

Tim took great advantage of the trip east. He and his wife spent the weekend in my favorite town in Cape Cod, Chatham and are now on the road to Burlington. I suggested a quick stop in Quechee,VT to check out Simon Pearce.

Then they are staying in a beautiful B&B in downtown Burlington.

I’m a little envious. I think I want to do the same trip!

Deer scat looks like a pile of raisinettes. Moose poop looks like a pile of Milk Duds (well more the elongated, like Peanut M&M’s).

I have been seeing a lot of Milk DUds in the past week. In our front yard and in the woods behind our house.

It was funny to see Dave Burke’s post this morning about seeing a moose while driving in So. Burlington. (Dave lives about 1/2 hour away from me here in Vermont). It is that time of year for sure.

My closest moose encounter was a few years ago when Rich adn I were hiking up on the Long Trail (that goes from the southern end of VT to the Northern, along the Green Mt.). THis was just a day hike though. The access trail where we were is an old logging road. Not 5 minutes out of the car and a female moose came out of the woods on to the trail and started heading up in the same direction. She stayed in front of us for about 20 minutes and did not care about us at all. She stopped to munch on some grass and pee along the way. We however were pretty nervous. It was rutting season (mating). We kept trying to scare her off the trail. THe problem is that if a male moose wanted to get to her, he would literally just run us over. They are extremely dangerous during rutting season. They are enormous animals and quite powerful and I have heard some pretty scary stories. I knew that I did not want to get in the way of a horny male moose. Was I looking over my shoulder? Absolutely! Finally after about 20 minutes, she went a different direction and we continued on up the trail.

It was really wonderful to be able to really watch this moose so closely for so long. To study her body and her movement.

thanks to Korby Parnell, I am close to making my dream of marking the Microsoft campus with my presence come true…

It’s a Mad River Glen tradition. They have a wall filled with photos of MRG stickers stuck in places all over the world.