Dale went to a hot rod open house waaaaaaaaaaaaay back in March. And here are the photos! Click on any one to make it big and pretty.

Fog.

Grand Rapids.

Grand Rapids.

Waaay back in February my cousin Randy came to visit and brought his sons Colton and Jack! They are great kids (and welcomed their new little brother Matthew this summer). While they were here we took them to Shedd Aquarium and the Museum of Science and Industry.

In April we painted our living room (after having a hole in our ceiling for two months that our crap-ass landlords wouldn’t take care of because the former owners were in bankruptcy. To celebrate having a ceiling we painted! And it looks ADORABLE (in my humble opinion).

I love the red wall. But I also love that I broke with tradition and made a bold color choice! Red, yellow/green, and dark blue. And it works, very weirdly. I used my color wheel!

 In May I turned 39 (*gasp*) and wrapped up Year Two of Graduate School! Only one year to go! I had to make a poster board presentation. Had never done that before and mine turned out bee-yoo-ti-ful! I did it on Frank Lloyd Wright’s Home and Studio.

Dale has had a busy summer, to say the least. He’s been building a huge photography studio. This is what it started out as! This is what it looked like back in May when he purchased the materials for the build out.

Dale’s pretty handy! He built an infinity wall. This is the bare bones.

In June my dear friends Sarah and Betsy came to visit. And I got the bright idea to dye my hair red. And it turned pink. For real. I had read dye all over my skin so I had had to hide it with a scarf. Might be the last time I dye my hair while drinking wine with friends. Might not be! Life is short. I’m thinking blue hair for my 40th.

While the girls were here we went to Ravinia to see The Go-Go’s. Rebecca P. tagged along and that was fun! And, as always, it was a feast!

We went on an architecture tour and went to Navy Pier to get some Ryba’s Fudge. We were fudge girls together in 1993! Which makes me 87 years old.

Throughout the spring Monty and Bela continued on being adorable. Blurry because it was taken with my camera phone.

We had a few other adventures, too, but I don’t have good pics of those so it’s my loss. And yours. Sadness. More updates to come…

]]> http://www.dale-murray.com/oakpark/2011/08/what-the-hell-have-we-been-up-to.html/feed 0 http://www.dale-murray.com/oakpark/2011/07/transformers-3.html http://www.dale-murray.com/oakpark/2011/07/transformers-3.html#comments Thu, 07 Jul 2011 19:48:01 +0000 Rebecca http://www.dale-murray.com/oakpark/?p=685 Continue reading →]]> Dale and I have big plans to see Transformers 3 this weekend! I love me some disaster movies but we’re actually excited because we watched the movie being filmed right outside our office windows all last summer.

Here is a link to the gallery of photos that Dale took from his office; if I can find mine I’ll add them later.

http://dale-murray.com/transformers/

We weren’t expecting to see Grizzly bears, particularly not up close. We pulled over to a rest area because it looked busy and would probably yield an animal sighting. However, since Dale and I are dopey we thought everybody was looking up at two giant birds mating in the sky. We started at them until they flew out of sight and then looked around, realizing that was but a side show to the main attraction.

Located just down a slight slope from up–and quite near an outhouse–was a mother Grizzly and two cubs. To quote Dale, “That’s a motherf*ckin’ Grizzly!”

Indeed! And she was rooting around the ground, looking for food for her cubs. I was pretty transfixed but also quite nervous. Occasionally, the bear would pause and turn to look at the crowd. Not afraid of us but just to be sure we were staying put on the hill. Needless to say, I was staying put.

Frankly, I was calculating the odds. At one point, the bear pushed her paw into the largely frozen ground and dug a huge patch of dirt up with very little effort. I knew enough to know that I could be that patch of grass and I basically turned to Dale and said, “That was cool but I’m out.”

I ducked back into the car, behind the crowd. Dale, for his part, was calculating the odds as well.

He watched the bear closely and opted to stand behind a man who had a leg brace. Surely the bear would take the low hanging fruit first, yes?

At some point, the bear came closer and Dale booked it back to the car. Apparently his calculations had been off. The guy with the brace was safely in his car well before Dale got back to ours.

At any rate, it was amazing to see the bears up close! They were adorable and beautiful and pretty seriously majestic in size and presence.

So as cool as it was to see the giant animals? I was probably more excited about the ground squirrels. I’m a dork, I know this. It’s not news. And ground squirrels are unlikely to kill me. That helps. They are also about as cute as it gets. They are bigger than chipmunks but a little smaller than wild squirrels. We sat near a stream and watched them frolic for about an hour.

They ran and played with the chipmunks–there seemed to be a combination of playfulness and competitiveness among the tiny animal population of Yellowstone. I wanted to bring this guy home in my pocket! Just LOOK at that face!

I had so much fun watching animals that we really missed a lot of random things–like the mud pots. I seriously told Dale to keep driving. What cute animal would hang out near hot mud?.

Sleek kitty

Sidney was an unusual cat. He was lavish with his affections, insatiably curious and (often) downright naughty and incorrigible!

Merry Christmas

We were laughing today, thinking about all of his many “accomplishments” in his short, sweet life. This is what we tallied off the tops of our heads:

• Learned to jump onto and “ride” the big, tacky wicker chair we used to have all the way to the ground. He would leap up and dive into it, essentially creating a thrill ride in the house.
• Broke at least two dozen dishes and serving pieces from jumping on the counter and knocking them off.
• Had a great love of carbs and bread. This love led him to learn to open cupboards.
• Loved human food and would eat nearly anything he could get his mouth around—celery, ¼ of a pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes—you name it.
• Learned to open cupboards (so expertly that we had to install child safety locks on all of them in our first apartment).
• Commandeered a wicker laundry basket as his bed. We would eventually line it with sheepskin but it started out with a simple blanket folded up.
• Learned to open drawers—exhausted by the task he would generally sleep in them once he opened them. He figured out how to go up from the back of dressers and push out drawers; one morning I came into the bathroom to find all the drawers open. He had opened the cupboard to get to the drawers.
• Jumped out of a second story window. Twice. Also? Learned to open windows when Dale lived in Chase’s house in Michigan.
• Liked water. Sometimes he crawled right into the shower with Dale. This also made training him impossible. He was deaf so you couldn’t yell at him and he loved water so you couldn’t spritz him.
• Would drink from any unattended cup, even if it belonged to company.
• Discovered the bathroom sink fit him perfectly as a bed.
• He could skillfully maneuver my head off my pillow to claim it as his own without ever waking me up.

Sidney was incredibly sweet and maintained an incredible disposition his entire life despite having had quite a few health challenges. As a kitten he got an ear infection that left him deaf. He battled severe gastrointestinal issues and often suffered stomach distress (exacerbated by the fact that he’d eat anything off the floor, off the counters, etc.). His knees were bad in recent years and while medicine helped it didn’t reverse the issue. And, finally, he had a fast-growing tumor and cancer. He was a tough little guy with a sweet, strong spirit.

Bela watching over Sidney this morning

If you ever met Sidney you know how special he was and you know how much we
loved him. Below is a sampling of some of our favorite photos of him. Feel free to click on any one of them to go to a bigger version of the photo.

In my last post, I forgot to include this quick video snippet I took while at the overlook for the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone–it gives you my view and I thought it was pretty spectacular!

I’ve said repeatedly that we saw a lot of bison. And while we were there they were having babies left in right. It seemed like overnight there were dozens of baby animals everywhere we looked!

On the first morning in June we saw a spectacular sight–a herd of bison with a bunch of babies were frolicking in the valley beneath the road we were driving on. There was a small crowd and we made friends with some of the other lookie-loos. They told us that they were veteran animal photographers and that seeing a bison herd of this size moving rather quickly across the land was unusual.

Bison are pretty spectacular animals–the largest mammals in North America, I think. Anyway, they were making a lot of noise and grunting away across the plain.

Of course this was especially exciting because of all the baby bison that were herding with them. They are so cute! And they jump around their mommies in a very funny way, bucking and playing.

Wait for me, mommy!They were moving from one end of the valley to the other, through a marsh area.

They would move a smidge and then pause to drink.

The babies stuck close to their mothers.

An overview of the valley.

And another area, with mountains in the background.

I took a quick video of the bison as they passed.

After our bison encounter we were hopping to spot some otters in the wild. We hiked up a very, very steep hill (oy) and came to this pretty spot, Trout Lake. We’d heard this was a popular spot for otters but we didn’t see any. Otters were the one animal we really wanted to see in the wild that we did not see.

On our way back down–notice the slope, people!–we stopped so Dale could take this pretty picture (and so I could catch my breath).

Later that day, we spotted this gorgeous waterfall.

It’s hard to tell how spectacular this waterfall is–but Dale has helpfully created a way! Hee! That tiny white blur above the waterfall? It’s a car driving by on a road far above it.

On our first day in Yellowstone we started at Mammoth Hot Springs. Despite it being a rather chilly day it was quite warm walking the boardwalks at the hot springs.

Steamy springs and chilly air create a ghostly cast over the water.

Another shot of the hot springs–they are literally hot. And kind of stinky. Like rotten-ish eggs, honestly.

Dead trees in the midst of the Mammoth Hot Springs. I composed this shot (and was very proud).

Mammoth Hot Springs. In the midst of the highest concentration of geothermal activity on the planet. Neat.

People walking out onto the boardwalk to get closer to the hot springs. I have no idea how the boardwalk doesn’t go bad really quickly. But then again? They probably do.

The famous terraces at Mammoth Hot Springs.

After we hung out at the hot springs we drove for a spell and found a pretty place to sit. It was warming up and we noticed that our sitting area had tons of little creatures busying about. And I spotted my first ground squirrel. I was so excited. I like the small rodents–it’s my thing. Seriously HOW CUTE IS HE?

There were easily a dozen ground squirrels and chipmunks in this picnic area–they are the park’s tiniest vultures, looking for scraps of lunch. They were very fun to watch.

Because we went in early spring we saw animals every few seconds–they were all along the sides of the road! It was really an unusual experience and from what we’ve been told you have to come to the park early in the year to see this variety up close. So we stopped for our first “bear jam”–when there is wild animal up close everybody stops to get a better look and it causes a traffic jam in the park. And I was astonished by how close some people chose to get to this small black bear. I was pretty far away and zoomed in. And then RAN back to the car.

There were a lot of molting animals and the elks were no exception. She was really pretty and just wandering by the side of the road.

Just a few minutes later we saw quite a few cars pulled over to the side of the road. We thought it might be a bear so we pulled over. But we got really lucky. This big-horn sheep was just wandering in a ravine right next to the road. It was the only one we spotted on the entire trip. He was just grazing.

Buffalo were not nearly so scarce–saw one every five minutes!

We stayed at this hotel for two nights. And we saw plenty of elk. Indeed, they surrounded the hotel all day long. They lounged on the front lawn and in front of the restaurant next door. It got so bad that rangers would have to come and bar people from getting to their cars. Elk are tolerant of people but you can’t come too close. They rule the roost at Yellowstone.

The snow was fading but still visible, depending on the elevation. Dale wants to go back in the summer so we can see the park in bloom.

Dale went to take a photo of a pretty scene and made a friend. This little chipmunk was very interested in Dale. He darted around him nonstop, inspected his bags, sniffed out his camera gear and eventually just sat near him. I was sad we couldn’t bring him with us.

It was a bit of a hike but we got to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. It was  spectacular.

Gorgeous waterfall in the midst of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.

And we ended the day with a lovely elk spotting–look at his velvety antlers.

Exciting news! And it’s on news stands! Dale shot “Tangerine Scream” (it’s the car pictured above) for Rod & Kulture Magazine (it’s the magazine pictured above). All together? That’s a photo that Dale shot on the cover of a magazine with international distribution. We’re pretty excited about it. And it’s in stores now so if you want a copy please get it now before it’s gone. We’ve seen it at both Borders and Barnes and Noble.

We were really geeked to see it in store so I snapped a picture of it with my iPhone. I was so excited for Dale I about peed myself.

For more of the photos he took you can check out his website by clicking here. There are some awesome shots. We don’t have the spreads from the actual magazine up there but the article–which is mostly photos taken by Dale!–is five pages long. Pretty incredible coverage! Congrats, Dale!

You can check out the magazine’s website–featuring Dale’s cover art at Traditional Rod & Kulture. The car, Tangerine Scream, was created by Hot Rod Chassis and Cycle in Addison, Illinois.

I’m not sure what I can share but odds are good that the photos Dale took will end up in a national hot rod magazine. We’ll keep you posted.

In the mean time, we’re school, work, school, work, smidge of facebook, and a whole lot of school book. More soon!