Mountain top swinging

Fishing at Wintergreen

My fishless streak continues. But we were fishing in a pond that probably had more golf balls than fish in it. So I don’t feel so bad.

I’ve gotten very mixed information from the staff here on what the fishing situation is. There is supposed to be a stocked stream somewhere but no one seems to know where. The Orvis-endorsed fly fishing school that uses it is run by some outside company so I guess that’s part of the problem.

So anyway, not being able to find a trout stream, we went down to the resort-owned lake at the golf course in the valley. There were supposed to be bass, panfish, crappie, carp, and some trout. That’s according to the teenage girl running the boat rental stand. I kind of doubted it and saw no real signs of life. We fished for maybe 1.5 hours and gave up.

On the way back up the hill, we stopped at Devil’s Backbone Brewing Co. for a growler of hoppy red ale. I asked the bartender what he knew about local fishing and he gave me a lot of pointers, some very close to our lodge. He also offered to let me park in his driveway and fish at the stream behind his house. I left with a growler of beer and some handwritten notes he made me. What a super guy.

Which brings me to a larger point – I kind of love this area and the people here. They have all been really nice and everyone just sort of seems happy to be alive. You don’t get that in the DC area. We’ll have to come down here more often.

I don’t know what’s going to happen with the fishing. I really want to get out on the James River but, despite how close we are, this might not be the trip for it. Georgie is kind of hard to watch while the other person is fishing. I usually get up about 2 hours before the girls so I may try a spot that the bartender told me about on the other side of the Blue Ridge Parkway in the morning.

I had entertained the notion of buying the most basic, Wal-Mart model of fly rod and trying my hand at fly fishing but I may wait on that too. I watched a bunch of fly casting videos on YouTube this morning. I get the basic principles of when you need tension and when you release and that kind of thing. It seems like I could just go figure it out. But maybe the last thing I need is one more thing to be frustrated about when it comes to fishing.

Georgie is asleep now. This afternoon will be playground and aquatic center time. Then it’ll be time to break into that growler.

On our way to Blue Ridge Mountains. Booked room, packed, and got oil changed, all this morning. Aaron will work a little tonight, free night off. Back Sunday!

On our way to Blue Ridge Mountains. Booked room, packed, and got oil changed, all this morning. Aaron will work a little tonight, free night off. Back Sunday!

Thursday, July 29

Just one photo from today, from the playdate. Georgie and I also went to a Goodwill and got some great bargains, and I bartered and got the price down on several items. We got a end-table/book-shelf (Aaron and I didn't have anywhere to put our books), a magazine rack, a cute two-step stool for Georgie (and the top shelf is also a little storage drawer), 2 glass containers with snap-on lids for Aaron to take his lunch in, a celadon Beehouse teapot that Aaron can use at work (only $1 and looks brand new), a Fisher Price 2-level (very small) barn with hooks that I think her toy fence will fit on so the fence can go out from the barn, a brand new (still in package) felt story toy (for $2), and a framed illustration of a bird.

Tuesday afternoon

This afternoon we had a playdate at the apt pool of one of the family's in the playgroup. Here's some photos from when we were waiting outside.

Tuesday, July 28

This morning we went to the Natural History Museum. We were going to meet another mom and her 2 kids there, but there was some miscommunication so we missed them. It was a fun outing nonetheless. Georgie was excited to see the big (taxidermy stuffed) animals at the museum, and the little (cuddly stuffed) animals at the museum shop ... especially the stuffed fish at the shop; she didn't want to hold fewer than 4 of them at a time (and would get a little angry if she couldn't get all 4 in her arms).



4

Sunglasses

Some Sunday night sunglasses fun.

And here's a little peekaboo-type hilarity from earlier in the day:

DNS issues resolved (sort of)

This is going to be a boring post if you are looking for pictures of Georgie. But I'm hoping someone out there knows more about DNS settings than I do. If you know anything about DNS settings, you know more than I do.

For almost 2 years, it's troubled me that when our URL is entered without a third level domain (i.e. seiferthobbins.com instead of www.s-h.com) it redirects you to a no-longer-existent 3rd level domain - wedding.seiferthobbins.com. I created that sub-domain back when we were getting married and started a registry online. I long ago deleted it.

The problem is I have never been able to find where the re-direct setting is again to change it back.

Now I doubt very many people are clamoring to seiferthobbins.com and being thwarted in their attempts to find us, but it bothers me nonetheless.

Our site is a simple Blogger blog, but, just to keep it interesting, we bought our own domain 2 or 3 years ago. I bought it when Google Apps came out and use that service for the site. That way Nikki and I have our own email at that domain and nice features like shared docs and calendars.

The domain is actually registered through enom, who has one of the crappier interfaces for managing a domain. Actually it looks like "real" customers have a nice interface, but Google Apps customers have a very barebones, useless interface.

So the problem is that I can't find where the URL pointing is even happening. Neither the Google Apps dashboard nor the enom interface have any indication of it.

Every few months I try in vain to find the lost tab where I set this up. Today though I actually thought of a workaround -- a URL redirect from wedding back to www. This is totally stupid but it works. If you go to seiferthobbins.com and look quickly at the address bar, you'll see that you are being first redirected to wedding.seiferthobbins.com, then to www.seiferthobbins.com.

Thankfully no one is paying me to administer this blog, or I'd probably be replaced.

Anyway, if you've ever been in this situation and you're reading this, please let me know how to fix it for real.

p.s. Again I make no claims at knowing anything about DNS, so if my nomenclature is inaccurate, please forgive me.

Friday, July 24

From this morning's playdate. One of the highlights from today: Georgie pointing to one of the girls' shirts and saying "heart" (there were hearts on the girl's shirt), saying "ball" (Georgie was holding a ball), and then when the girl told me she wanted "Georgie throw ball," Georgie pointed at herself and said "Georgie." Very exciting moments for the parents of a new talker.

She also spontaneously went up to two of the moms (on different occasions) and gave them hugs. Very sweet.

(She likes to climb so much ... I had to tuck in her dress for part of the time so it wouldn't get in the way. A trick I learned from my SIL Katie.)

Wednesday and Thursday, July 22 and 23

At yesterday's playdate, we brought tubs of water outside to a (shaded, for the most part) sundeck for the kids to play in with their toys. They loved it.


Here are some photos from today's walk (we got rained on, which felt nice because it was muggy).



Here's Georgie, conducting some experiments.

My fishing spot

Vintage Georgie

A few more pictures from yesterday. My friend Aislinn gave me some of her clothes from her childhood for Georgie. Yesterday's dress was one of them, a vintage 1970s.

Tuesday, July 21

Today we mostly played at home; Georgie has the slightest cold, so we're waiting for her to get over it. Maybe tomorrow.



Milk mustache. This raised-eyebrow look is a new one (taught to her by Aaron, I think).