bugs, rainy days, and cookies?...

yesterday on the way down to the house in enfield, we stopped at the coos county extention office....i had a weird bug i wanted identified....there have been many of these bugs hanging out around my house and some other houses and places i've been lately, and i finally caugt one and took it out to be identified...it's a western conifer seed bug...relatively harmless, i think...but it's amazing how many of them i've seen this year.... this is what they look like, although the coloration has been known to vary slightly...you can google image them and see what i mean...some have more brown than this one here...

they're harmless, just kind of a annoyance for those folks who aren't overly fond of bugs...they're classified as stink bugs, as i learned from this website here...(it's also where i got the image...)

of course, the county extention office is also home of the county's 4H operations...usually the first (or second??) week in october is their yearly fundraising endavor...this equals sales of cookies and candy bars...

cookies and candy bars that don't get sold apparently get returned to the county office....i happened to notice some yesterday, and got very excited because the lady at the extention office told me i could buy some if i wanted....

the selection wasn't the greatest, but they had my favourite and my mom's favourite, so really, that's all that mattered... :-)

also, i bought a few of the candy bars, too....

i miss 4H...i was a member of it for ten plus years, starting before i could really be considered a "cloverbud" ... maybe when things settle down in my life some, i'll consider being a 4H leader...

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yesterday it rained almost all day...the whole trip to enfield was rainy...some parts were terribly windy as well...and during some parts of the trip, the visibility was so poor that i really had to strain my eyes to see much beyond the front of the vehicle...

what is usually a 2 to 2 & 1/2 hour trip took almost 4 hours...i was so glad to get to the house in enfield, and to be safe, warm, and dry....

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today is the fall family gathering...my brother joe will be here with his (grand)son, joshua...who is just the most beautiful little boy, and who i absolutely adore...joshua's mother passed away after a long battle with cancer, and so joe & ruth (my sister in law) adopted him...he's a great kid, and i love him so much...i'll try and get a few pictures of him on here one of these days...

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today before the gathering, i need to run out to west lebanon and grab a few things at borders...(is there such thing as a "quick stop" at borders?...today there will have to be....) i need to get a new copy of anne lamont's "traveling mercies" ... i seem to have misplaced (or maybe loaned out??) my copy, so i need another one...

i also need to see if they have a few books that i've been looking for...the phantom tollbooth for one...mayra hornbacher's "wasted" with the PS, because i'd really like to know what happened after the book was published....and apparently she wrote a novel called "the center of winter" which seems like it may be good reading....

i also think i'd like to get the DVD of a prairie home companion, but it's slightly possible that wal-mart carries it and may have it for a little less....

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anyways, i should go....i've gotta get ready to head out to west lebanon and then mom & i are cruising down to springfield to get my brother joe & josh....ruth has the car for work, and joe would like to come today, so we're gonna go get the two of them...

aww, joe has this awesome dog named shasta....she is a chocolate lab and she's almost constantly smiling...she just loves life...it'll be nice to see her again...

she's the only dog we've had in my house that didn't get in a fight with my cat, sox...sox wanted to let shasta know she wasn't welcome...shasta just ignored her...for a whole week (we dog sat when joe & ruth went on their honeymoon...) ... it was great!!...sox would growl, and hiss, and make all these sounds...and shasta would just look at her like "what are you complaining about?..." but then she decided to just ignore the cat all together...sox eventually learned that shasta wasn't going to hurt her, and that she just had to accept the fact that shasta was there....

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have a super day, everyone!!

-ramona anne

one good thing that happened today: well, it's too early to really tell, but i know i'm gonna love the gathering...these things are so important to me...i greatly value my extended family....