I See Lots of Soup in My Future

If I wasn't feeling the fall fever yet, this picture has definitely done the trick.

It's like squash heaven.

Dad just sent me this (rather blurry) picture of the squash he and mom just picked from their garden. Those are twenty glorious butternut squashes, which can only mean one thing. . . my freezer had better be filled with delicious butternut squash soup pronto.

So. Excited. For. Fall.

DC Wandering, Friends, and TOTEM!

A few weekends ago, my friend Jason came down from the Big City to visit me in the Capitol City for the weekend.

Love this guy!

I met him at Union Station and we proceeded to walk around the city a little bit... it was only his second time in DC, so he was excited to see more of the memorials/important buildings.

Side of the Postal Museum

First we tried to go to the postal museum, which is conveniently located next to Union Station. I've been there before and I found it fascinating (although my a weird obsession with stamps may have had something to do with that). Unfortunately these plans were foiled by the smoothies we had only partially finished, because drinks are not allowed in the museum.

The building that houses the museum is very cool though. It's also a real post office, so we looked around a little bit, and I managed to snap a quick photo of the ceiling before we left.

I would love this to be my post office!

Then we started walking towards the back side of the Capitol building. I'd never realized you could get there so easily from Union Station. On the way we saw this cute little squirrel "sleeping" on the side of the road.

RIP poor little squirrel.
Now you won't be able to chew anyone's fuel lines.

I've never seen the Capitol building from the back before and it was beautiful! There is so much more to it than I ever realized! We walked around for a little while before heading back home.

The Capitol from the back

The Capitol from the front/side.

Then on Saturday night we saw TOTEM, a Cirque Du Soleil show! We were joined by Jenny and Mik and my friend from school, Jamie. Totem was probably one of my favorite Cirque shows so far (I've seen two others, Kooza and Ova).

The show is sort of an evolution/nature based one, so there were lots of "animal" acts and Native American things and then the introduction of science and technology a little at the end via an appearance by Charles Darwin. There was one hilarious scene where they recreated the monkey to human evolution picture. There weren't as many terrifyingly dare-devilish stunts in this one as there were in Kooza, but there was so much cool artistry and the acts were just fascinating, that I didn't feel like I was missing anything.

Jason, Me, Jamie
and the TOTEM frog man!

The Cirque logo was projected onto the ceiling and it looked very cool.

Check out the TOTEM trailer below... The Native American ring dancers were one of my favorite acts!

Speaking of Heaven...

I finally managed to upload the pictures from our trip up to Vermont and I'd say that these reflect a little slice of heaven too. 

While we were there, we went up to visit my brother's new digs in Burlington. It was pretty amazing up there... We went to some delicious restaurants and hung out in downtown Burlington, we also did the Ben and Jerry's factory tour (yummm!), beer tastings at Rock Art Brewery, visited the Lake Champlain Chocolates factory (although we were 20 minutes too late for the tour), and just generally had a good time as a family!

Check out the scenes from Burlington...

Lake Champlain at sunset

Mitchell works right off the lake, so he sees this every day.
Officially jealous.

He can also walk here from his apartment,
so he can get here pretty easy.

Mitchell's work home (kind of)

Ben and Jerry's Factory
Flavor Graveyard!

Glad none of my favorite flavors have a headstone here yet!

A Little Slice of Heaven

My parents are currently ensconced on a balcony at 5,000 feet altitude somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains... or as my mom called it,  "heaven."

Check out the views.

Are you jealous? Because I am!

A Little Meal Time Humor For Your Tuesday Afternoon

{via}

I was going through my old emails today and I found this little gem from my amazingly articulate father... Enjoy!

Dearest Melissa,

It has come to my attention that I have not the slightest idea what you would desire to tempt your pallet while you dine at our humble table.

Only you can remedy this fearful dilemma. The cats have made some suggestions but I've tried to explain that you have never gotten into a diet of fresh insects, rubber-bands, and other assorted things they find delectable.

Please help solve this towering imbalance in the universe.

With humble anticipation,

The Bearded feeder of the flock (do cats come in flocks?)

I Never Thought I'd Actually Go Looking for Dishes to Wash!

There is something new in my life that makes dishwashing probably one of my favorite things ever.

Pear Ginger Dish Soap 
 Orla Keily for Method

I picked this dish soap up at target the other day, partly because I thought the packaging was adorable, partly because I had a coupon, and partly because I was intrigued by the thought of pear-scented soap.

Best. Decision. Ever.

It smells amazing and officially makes me want to do the dishes all the time!

In a completely unrelated (but strangely so) incident, I was perusing some of the blogs I read on the very rare occasions that I have free time, and I came across this umbrella...

Cross Hatch Stem Minilite Umbrella

...which I'm officially completely head-over-heels in love with. As in if I had $49 to spend on an umbrella, I would have bought it about 5 minutes ago. Guess who's website popped up when I clicked on the link? Orla Keily's!

If I had another large wad of cash around, I'd invest in these too... an awesome laptop case and this adorable mug.

Quilted Acorn Print 15" Macbook Sleeve

Scribble Multi Stem Mug

How Cool Are These Little Guys???

So it's a well established fact that while I'm all about words and punctuation at this stage in my life, I'll always be a science nerd at heart. So imagine my excitement when I stumbled across this crazy awesome picture that a friend of mine posted on Facebook!

a water bear, courtesy of a scanning electron micrograph and Nature

How incredibly adorable is that?? Is it weird that I really want to hang this picture on my wall? I'm smitten.

This guy is seriously tiny and has been deemed the hardiest animal on Earth, thanks to its ability to live in sub-zero temperatures, solar winds, and the vacuum of space! Cool. To learn more about them, check out this super interesting article from Nature.