The Rocky Top Summit

Last Wednesday marked the final class of “Designing for Human Behaviour”.  The class was great; taught by the amazing Dave Deppen and based around A Pattern Language, the bible of good design and pretty much the basis of how our world needs to be built.  The book is by Christopher Alexander who is Mr freaking Badass Genius himself.

The class was excellent and both Mike and I took away untold amounts of knowledge and ideas and resources and great friends.  SFIA is pretty special, I have to say.

It culminated in a final meeting at Rocky Top where we shared our final projects: our most healing spaces we could design and/or describe.  We then played Pattern Language Sharades and had then made merriment.  It was sweet and thanks for all who made the evening a wonderful success.

Steven shares his healing space (and later some of his Wine Country Ale homebrew!)

 

Next week: Adorable Oufits!

Just kidding, I hope.

So yeah, like any new pet, the photos have been ridiculous and the chickens put up with it like a kid at his first birthday party(theirs will be Jan 15th 2010 and yes, there will be photos and cake and ice cream if anyone wants to swing by).  The two red ones are New Hampshire Reds, the jail bird and the crazy one of the bunch is a Wyandotte and the motled little girl is a black Sex-link, so named because they can be sexed at birth by their color, unlike other birds.  (Don’t google ‘sex-link’)

They are wandering around Rocky Top most afternoons grubbing on the greens and bugs and stretching their wings.

The Reds are Keniston and Rusty, after Wolfeboro hotspots.  The other two have yet to be named.  Ideas?

Kenniston in front, Rusty and Wyandotte behind

 

Friendly Nieghbors

The rains are not he only things to have arrived this weekend at Rocky Top.  The animal kingdom has been getting excitable around here recently. Normally the only issues are the deer eating the garden, the raccoons getting frisky, the possums who live under Meridee’s bathroom and the thirty or so stray cats that the neighbor feeds who leave landmines all over the place and attack the birds at our bird feeder.  This weekend has been particularly fun filled however.   One of the squirrels who hangs out by the kitchen figured out that he could get into the birdseed bag through the cat door.  Our cat is immortal, but also very old and apathetic.  She poses no threat and was probably more annoyed than anything when this started happening.

Then yesterday one of the bigger posse’s of wild turkeys came down out of the park to christen our neighbors roof (perhaps karmic retribution for all the times I’ve cleaned cat shit off of my shoes).