here we see the infant blissfully engaged in its natural habitat (the living room)…
wait, it’s spotted our camera man….
oh god! it’s going after him!
run! for god’s sake man, run while you can! it’s about to pounce!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!
while the loss of our cameraman is tragic, just look at that magnificent beast…
i’m at serious risk of turning this blog into a showcase for baby pictures. frankly, i haven’t had much on my mind lately, i avoid the news like the plague and work has only been mildly irritating. no more baseball either, and i don’t follow any other sports. i suppose i could talk about house hunting, but that’s not terribly interesting either; nor is there much one can say about it, till it’s done.
instead, i’ll write about adventure! we took young macduff for his first hike on sunday, in shenandoah natl. park. okay, his method of hiking is to be strapped to one of us (perse, in this case, since i had everything baby and parents could want in my pack), but it was a hike nonetheless. the little guy makes getting going a bit, well, challenging. because, of course, he wanted food and change just after we left the house. as in, at the CVS 3 blocks away where we stopped to get some snacks. and then again at the trailhead. then again when we stopped for gas after the hike. just something to get used to, i suppose. we used to be fairly punctual people, perse and i. honest.
still, it was great fun to get on a trail and get the boy out into the woods. we took the short loop to the summit of stony man (only 1.6 mi), cause we got a late start and it was on the cool side for the 2/3 of the family. i’m beginning to think i may not adjust to the relative warmth down here (not necessarily a bad thing), but at the summit it actually felt like november. not that i’m complaining (okay, i was complaining in the summer and during that ridiculous heat wave in october. but not now.); i just have a predilection for weather on the cooler side. brisk air and a nip on the tip of the nose. melville wrote that some part of you must be cold in order to feel truly warm, and i agree with him. we got some great views from the summit and got to see a bunch of deer and two black bears on the drive out. actually, we couldn’t avoid seeing the first bear, as some dipshit in front of us stopped in the middle of the road to let passengers with cameras out. that was irritating, but then the dipshit stayed stopped in the middle of the fucking two-lane mountain road. not even an attempt to pull off onto the shoulder. who the fuck does that? the second bear we saw after dark, on the post-feeding drive out. he had just finished crossing the road. that was cool. deer were not so cool, cause they are everywhere. hell, i nearly hit a stag driving to pottery class, which is in adams morgan. they’ve become like squirrels, except much, much worse if you hit ‘em with your car.
a nice fall getaway, for an afternoon. even still some nice foliage. and macduff can claim to have summited his first peak at 3 months. he was even awake for that part. i think.
