Andy and Darcy’s Blog

It’s camping without camping!!

We’ve had two bonfires so far, and it is awesome! I am just a lazy camper. If I can go out into my backyard, make smores, and sit around a campfire and then go back inside and sleep in my bed, then that is a good deal for me. One night we even made hobo dinners in the oven before we had people over for the fire.

I’m still catching up…

At the end of September we took a road trip to Topeka, Kansas, to stay with my grandparents and see my relatives at the September, October, and November Birthday Party Extravaganza. We also got a chance to see my sister and Jon’s new house in Lawrence, where they have recently relocated. And there is one more significant thing that happened during our visit…we tried grits for the first time. So read on for the highlights of our trip in pictures.

Kristi and Jon’s new house.

It’s a party.

Grits. They are good for you.

As I started reading the Hunters of Dune, I thought it was just a sequel to Chapterhouse. I have just reached the end, and I now know that the term ’sequel’ is not a completely accurate description. It is a sequel involving all the details that went into the Dune prequels. The entire original Dune series is complete in itself, and the new Dune books are more like a wrapper series.

I enjoyed The Hunters Of Dune, and I have enjoyed all the new Dune books. I can’t really discuss my feelings about this book because no one I know has read it. But I had really liked the ending of Chapterhouse, and I just don’t see how that can be done again.

The real reason I’m writing is to tell people this: If you haven’t been keeping up with the saga, this book is not a good point to jump in.

As I read over this post, I wonder why pictures of Iowa lack vibrant color…

Earlier this month we drove to Topeka. I can’t drive a stickshift very well (and that may even be exaggerating my limited talent) so I didn’t drive. At all! For most of the trip, I looked out the window and took pictures. Here are the sights of Iowa.

These windmills are so cool. There are fields of them in northern Iowa. And you may be able see in the picture that they’re putting up more. We saw several propellors go by on trucks. They were huge! One propeller was the length of a normal semi. Kudos to Iowa for their support of renewable energy.

As you can imagine there were lots of farms in Iowa. And they are rather interesting to look at.

And there were lots of pastures and crops. Andy asked a good question during our trip: Why is a combine called a combine if its purpose is to separate? Let us know if you know the answer to that.

It’s hard to believe that someone put up this awesomely ugly slgn that you can see for miles away. Unfortunately, it may be the most memorable thing on our drive through Iowa.

And just one more thing…this gas station is not native to Iowa, but you could consider Iowa an introduction to the land of humorous gas stations.

That’s it. I’m so sorry — I didn’t get a picture of the “Hogs Don’t Vote” sign. It is quintessential to Iowa. Maybe next time.

Here are some pictures of our fall colors. The fall colors are hard to capture here. There are many different varieties of trees, and they turn and lose their leaves at different times. It’s easy to find a lot of green trees with a touch of yellow or red or you can find a bunch of trees without leaves with a few red or gold trees leftover. I know there are some places where there are a few glorious days of brilliant red and gold. But ours is nice too…I guess it lasts longer here! So here’s what I have.

This is a picture I took as we were driving at the end of September.

Here are some more pictures we took in early to mid October.

And here’s a picture of the small maple tree in my yard as well as some leaves that fell in front of Adam and Amber’s house.

It’s possible that there may be more to come…but that’s what I have so far.

On another side note, I see that this is not a list. Oops.

Buckthorn is a scourge. I spent half a day on Tuesday removing buckthorn from Quarry Hill. Several people from my department went. There were some experts who used chainsaws to hack and slash the buckthorn plants (or large buckthorn trees). And we put the buckthorn branches into large piles that were for the wood chipper (they don’t burn it…odd?)

They have a “plan”. I say this with reservation. Step 1 was remove all the large buckthorn (this is feasible). Step 2 was to removal all the small buckthorn plants. They don’t have an action plan for Step 2 yet. But if you live here, you need to stay on top of your buckthorn problem.

What do we have against buckthorn? It kills everything else. It was brought over from Europe because it makes great hedges. Other plants keep buckthorn in check in Europe. But it has no predators here because every part of this plant gives animals (and humans) a stomach badness problem.

When we got done, there really wasn’t much left other than some mature trees. There was very little undergrowth, other than small buckthorn plants. The other bad things we piled up were honey suckle and grapevines. Bad bad bad. But not as bad as buckthorn.

On a side note, I haven’t been keeping up on my blogging. Obviously. So for the next few weeks I will be updating with lists of stuff I have done over the past month. Keep your RSS feeds tuned in here.

Shards of Honor by Lois Bujold. It was a space romance. I wouldn’t read it again, but it was pretty good for a space romance.

Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper. Very kid-oriented, although I understand that the rest of the books in the series are more grown up and that this book contains crucial information needed to continue reading.

Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants by Ann Brashears. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that was captured so well by a movie. It was remarkable. Lena had a younger sister that wasn’t in the movie, and that was the only difference I saw.

The Dark Frigate. I didn’t really enjoy this. I don’t like maritime adventures, the book was rather dated, and the accents in this book were really hard to read. And for a child’s book, there were lots of characters to keep track of. This was a book about pirates and it didn’t have any of the following things….yarrr, avast, matey, Davy Jone’s locker.

Candide by Voltaire. This is a comedy, and it must be translated so if you’re an English reader, the text will always be readable. I think Voltaire may have been the Douglas Adams (plus an element of political satire) of his age. The book is outrageous, scatter-brained, and loosely connected. Eh.

The Secret Garden. Gee, the last time I read this all my pre-conceived notions about India were from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom…how embarrassing for me. It was still good after all these years.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Huckleberry Finn’s pap is psycho-crazy.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. There are many things I like about this book. One thing I like is that it takes less than 2 weeks to walk across the county of Oz. Another thing I like is that the Wicked Witch of the West is much less scary. There are no broomsticks, surrender Dorothy’s, or crystal balls in this version. The thing I really like is at the end where it is NOT all a dream.

This is for everyone — not just my mother. She’s the one who wanted the detailed explanation, though.

Here is our compost apparatus. It is a plastic trash can with a locking lid from Home Depot. We drilled holes in the bottom, sides, and top every so often. To turn the compost, just turn the trash can on its side and roll it around.

We keep a bag of grass or sawdust (from untreated lumber) to add as we throw in kitchen scraps. We only put non-meat food in the compost as well as coffee / coffee filters and tea bags. You need to keep the right balance of grass/sawdust and food scraps or it will start to smell bad.

I hope this helps!

Well, I’m finally reading the “last” one, if that’s what it truly is. I thought Chapterhouse was a magnificent ending, mostly because I felt completely perplexed after reading it. For years I have wondered whether I really got Frank Herbert’s point. There was one moment in the old Dune saga in which Leto II mentioned that the Bene Gesserit almost understood it. And I have ideas, but I never really definitively understood what “it” was.

Frank Herbert did not plan to write a sequel to Chapterhouse. He had thought of it, but when Chapterhouse was written the sequel wasn’t in plan. So Brian Herbert had no notes to work by, which is very disturbing. He tells us this up front. It didn’t give me a good feeling about the book. This happens to be my favorite series so there is a lot at stake here.

So as I began to read, right away I noticed that the Hunters of Dune takes place only 3 years after Chapterhouse. If you look at Frank Herbert’s pattern, you’ll notice that the length of time between books increases exponentially as each book in the series progresses. The Hunters of Dune should be like 10,000 years (or more!!) after the Chapterhouse. Am I right?