Category: Photos

Viking Hut in National Botanic Garden (Ireland)

The first day we were in Ireland this past summer, we focussed on getting sim cards for our cell phones. We found a small electronics shop on Grafton streets that quickly outfitted our phones with a telephone plan. We also had the obligatory lunch at a pub where I ate fish and chips.

Our second day, we took our phones and our umbrellas to the National Botanic Garden, where I took this photo of a reconstructed Viking house.

Happy Birthday Rion

Today, Rion is eleven years old. He was born to a mother who was in the Pikes Peak Humane Society foster program eleven years ago. We adopted him two months later, and this photo was taken the day after he came to live with us. The first few weeks he spent the nights in a crate on the bed so I would be able to take him out when he got restless. I used the orange quilt over the crate so it wouldn’t be too drafty for him.

Looking Back – Childhood

Finding the photo of my Grandmother’s house made me decide to look for a reasonably current photo of the house I lived in between the ages of seven and sixteen. I couldn’t find one on Google Maps, but Zillow had a recent listing of the address when I entered it.

I almost didn’t believe it was the same house we lived in. There is a lot more landscaping, and the porch now has a rail and steps. The interior is a lot different as well since some internal walls have been taken down to open up the floor plan. It also now has a finished basement with a mother-in-law suite.

What I found most surprising is how much smaller the square footage was than I expected. I remember it as being so much larger than this, probably because we had moved into it from a tiny ranch house in Rockville, Maryland.