the town of or

Bill McKibben quoted on NPR: "The average American family uses more energy between the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve and dinner on January 2nd, than the average Tanzanian family uses in the course of a year."

We put out a hummingbird feeder, and it was found in about 15 minutes by the birds. They're going through a cup of sugar water every two days. Here's a visitor we saw today.

Ben spent a few days this week down in L.A. clearing out his grandfather's office (his grandfather passed away last year, at the age of 96). Living through the Great Depression caused Grandpa to be a bit of a packrat. Many things had 50+ years of dust on them. Some of the funnier highlights included:

Just returned from an amazing trip to Goldendale, WA...visiting with George Rohrbacher on his ranch. Photos from his ranch of Mt. Adams, the Klickitat River, and nearby windfarms.

On the way to work today, I shrieked like a schoolchild and almost crashed the car when I was surprised by a mouse running around the passenger side of the car. I tried to lure him out by opening the door but no luck. At the parking lot at work, I baited a trap and placed it in the car. 30 minutes later, the poor little guy had already met his demise. His last meal was organic peanut butter. :-(

The whole family rocks out to Jingle Bells on Xmas Day. Another quiet activity in the Klasky-Timmins' household:

Yesterday, Eli fell and bonked his head on a plastic toy truck in his hands. What ensued was really scary for Lisa, who worked her way through lots of blood and baby shrieks to discover that he'd knocked one of his front teeth loose. An emergency trip to the dentist revealed that his tooth had to be pulled. Our little guy will be missing one of his front teeth until he's somewhere between 5 and 7 years old, when his adult tooth comes in. He seems in good spirits and his parents have cried more than he has so far.

IslandWood's Howl-o-ween event was a success. Attached are a couple photos taken by Robert Dashiell, one of our volunteers and docents. Our kitchen team carved the funny-face and owl-shaped pumpkins.

Last night, we went to the Bainbridge Pumpkin Walk, and carved jack-o-lanterns with Jake. I carved this one in honor of a party today at Wacky Nut Horse Farm. Photoshop did it justice:

Yikes! Only one month after Eli started crawling, he appears like he's getting close to walking. It's a whole new world...