Member Photos

[Napoléon]

Whoa, sorry this is so big... sheesh.... I am too lazy to shrink it so just deal!

Don't worry, I'm used to having pictures of little boys taking up my screen

[Shell B]

Oh, for fuck's sake.

[Napoléon]

Oh, for fuck's sake.

Something I said?

[Heather]

Don't worry, I'm used to having pictures of little boys taking up my screen

And backkkkkkkkkkkk down the hill you took us! LOL

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Ok, I am a posting freak tonite.... Here's a pic of me and my best friend that I should be out drinking with right now but nooooooooooooo she'd rather put up a Christmas tree! LOL

I am on the left.. she has her eyes closed but is actually quite sober at this point... didn't last long though as it was her 30th Bday.



Hubs is to my left with pink shirt on and black pants...


AFTER picture (as you can tell in my eyes.. sheesh). Ironic as I said, "I wish we woulda taken some pictures outside..." Apparently, we did, though I didn't remember this picture... I like this pic more for the skyline as it's a horrible pic of me.

[thesummerqueen]

I went to the Battlefield today. It's been a loooong time since I went tramping around there. Used to be dad, a hard army yank, would let us have a run there with the dog while he'd try to regale us with military strategy.

The place would be almost desolate if there weren't tours and hikers and the traffic on the roadways. It's miles of hills covered in waving grasses, until you hit the patchwork of forests that continue on into the Shenandoah mountains.



I came up on this marker:


and then I went down into the tree line myself. It was like being inside a bowl, and you have to try to charge over the lip without quite knowing what was there.


It's different because it's nearly winter here now, but in the summer this place is a stifling area to hide in. Even in late fall the bracken can be difficult to move through and in a hot, humid month, with wool uniforms and full gear and still air inside the trees it can get murderous.


Stonewall Jackson's monument in the far distance up the hill


You crouch down in the grass and you see how men were able to sneak around fields or crawl around maybe undetected - as long as it was a month where the grass was living and the rain hadn't matted it down, it would ripple in the wind and no one would be the wiser for the movement.


The house on "Henry House Hill"

Henry House Hill is a location near Bull Run in Virginia. Named for the house of the Henry family that sits atop it, the hill begins near the road of Centreville, Virginia, after Warrenton, Virginia, to the today's U.S. Route 29, the Warrenton Turnpike. It is a slow, constant rise toward the south over a length of approximately 730 meters. This hill was an important site of the battles of First and Second Bull Run (also known as First and Second Manassas) in the American Civil War. The battle raged on the north side of the hill in predominantly open grass country; the south side was relatively closely covered with trees. The hill received its name from Dr. Isaac Henry, who lived with his family in a house on the plateau of the hill. On July 21, 1861, the house was inhabited by his widow, Judith Carter Henry, and their two sons. The 85 year old woman was bed-ridden and unable to leave the house. Mrs. Henry was mortally wounded when a projectile of the Union artillery crashed through the bedroom wall and tore off one of her feet and inflicted multiple injuries, from which she died later that day.

Their graves


Maybe because I'm used to sweeping Gone With the Wind type ideas, the cramped interiors of Civil War era houses always amuse me. How did women manage in those hoop skirts?

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Old bayonets...and a reflection of my trusty chucks...




So I'm trying to get pictures of some of the instruments used in artillery, and dude behind the display looks like he's straight pissing in the waterfountain.

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Then we move to the other side of 29. First, I'd like to introduce you to the intersection that stole most of my life when I lived here:



Guaranteed at least 45 minute wait on a good day. Hour and a half on a bad evening.

But here at the intersection is the famous Stone House that was turned into a field hospital. In the lower left hand corner you can see a big dude taking pictures. This is a displaced Person of Wal-Mart. When I went to take pictures of the front of the house, he was bent over with his ass hanging out of his pants. He also mistook my car for his (they were both silver, but his was an Asian make and mine is a busted Ford coup so...).





Looking back across 29 where I had been:


Also, went to dad's - horses, dogs, football, old farts reminiscing about their college days (it was the OSU vs Michigan game. And then VA tech slaughtered UVA [smug look] I love my Hokie boys).

[thesummerqueen]

Snuggles after a long day

[The Grand Nudger]

Infantry charged artillery on that deathtrap? Fix fucking bayonets hooah!

[downbeatplumb]

Snuggles after a long day

That is one contented looking cat.

[Violet]

It's your personality, Sae. If you thought it was funny to run around the forums calling everyone the N word, you would be likely to get banned. However, to my knowledge, no one has been banned for joking.

'N words that come to my mind:

Nipples.
Knickers.
Knockers.
Nudity.
Knives.
Naked.
Nose.
Norris.
Napoleon.
Nappystain.
Nimrod.
Nobody.
Noose.
Moose.
Caboose.
Noogie.
Noggin.
Noodle.
Nosejob.
Nodule.
Nob.
Nomnomnom.
Nookie.
Nifty.
Nice.
Telegram.
No.
Nada.
Nyet.
Naggawagga.
Naga.
Nippy.
Nap.
Tim Burton.
Nocturn.
Nocturnal Emission, Daedric Prince of ugly things.
Nelly Furtado.
Night.
Natu.
Nidoking.
Nidoqueen.
King Nido.
Queen Nido.
And their son Barney the Nidosaur. Cousin of Bulbasaur, he who does not give a fuck.
Nubile.
Nananana. Nananana. Heeeyaaayaaay. Goooodbye.
Nana Banana Montana.

And I'm just getting going!

Why... what N word were you thinking of?

[thesummerqueen]

Since I'm poor but like going places, I've been trying to pack sight-seeing into every trip I make to the Manassas area (as evidenced by the Battlefield pictures above). On my way back, I hit Skyline Caverns - a place I hadn't been to in 16 years. Last time was for a friend's 10th birthday party. I still have the geode slice I bought.

Anyway. I apologize for the horribly shitty camera quality. My Sony did NOT like the lighting conditions, no matter how I tried to adjust for it, then ran out of batteries just as the guide was going to take a picture of me (coincidence?) so I switched to my Palm Pre. The Pre actually did better as far as lighting went, but can't zoom or focus very well.

The caves were discovered in 1937 by a retired geologist who saw the nearby sinkhole and went mucking about to see if there were any caverns. He found a ledge that was partially submerged in Virginia clay and mud (one of the most glorious back-breaking soils) and had 13 men help him clear it out until they broke into the caverns, which were otherwise clear except for a portion I'll get to later.

Many of the passages bore evidence of the inland sea that used to cover the area - I confess I didn't have my notebook out to copy down what the guide was saying so I don't know how many millions of years ago - but the weathering was pretty.



I struggled a lot with the white balance and exposure of my camera on a lot of the formations because the lighting threw a lot of things into sharp relief, and they are hesitant to use white lights due to moss growth, which normally wouldn't happen in a cave. On the second picture, G+ keeps trying to get me to tag various portions as a person - even the great god Google suffers from pareidolia at times.



Now this 'little' guy, which was actually wider than me and almost as tall (not a huge accomplishment) and which the park service allows you to touch, actually fell from the flat spot featured in the second picture, then was moved by water to its current position. Again, I don't remember the time frame she stated.



The "American Eagle" formation


Now, I just want to say something here. I walked into these caverns still "reeling," so to speak, from the idiocies of the dinosaur thread. And most or all of you know by now that when I talk about the "glories of nature" I'm usually referring to beautiful living green things - beauty that is impossibly ephemeral compared to what was going on down here. The pictures below are hardly spectacular, but let me lay the scene.

The guide turned off the lights in order for us to experience true "cave darkness" - a black so impenetrable it produces an instant twinge of helplessness and fear. Humans weren't meant for these places. It's impossible to experience even through movies, which still are lit in some way to show vague shapes of formations and any creepy creatures inside. In true dark, you would go blind from straining your optic nerve, and mad from disorientation. Any creatures down there have no eyes - they are blind.

And then the lights come on again and you see columns that resemble anything from the Parthenon to melting wax to dripping ice cream. Ribbons and draperies of impossibly thin stone hanging from every surface - finer than the most delicately carved marble in Rome. Splatters of calcite that lay like lace and cobweb over the rock face. Stalagmites that look like crouching creatures and gnomes. Faces worn away into the rock. Huge cliffs of stone overhanging open spaces, suspended by seemingly insufficient portions of their anatomy. Hollow structures of rock that gong when you hit them.

If it hadn't been discovered, water would still be inexorably seeping and dripping and winding through, carving it away, shaping it and smoothing it, building shapes and wearing away others, and no human (re: God's "chosen") would ever know. The time frame for it to happen is so unfathomable, so out of comprehension and makes you feel so tiny and insignificant, it's no wonder YEC's would cling to the comfort of a 6,000 year old earth.



Stay tuned for the follow up with the portion that had to be dug out. I'd finish it in one go, but the site only allows you to post 10 pics at a time.