the Franc seal of approval

If you need to know if you made the right decision buying your living room furniture, I would be happy to lend you my Franc (pictured below).

With his special skills in catnapping, light sleeping, drowsing, and snoozing, Franc is uniquely qualified to offer your furniture the Franc "Fattycakes" Kovach seal of approval. Seeing how completely he relaxes on our couches makes me (jealous that I work full time to support his habit) confidant I bought the right stuff.

In unrelated news, there are still backpacking pictures forthcoming. Our internet was down for a while, and we've had some other projects to tackle.

Advice for backpackers

The weather reports were spot-on this past weekend while we were backpacking. Isolated thunderstorms? Exactly: isolated to wherever we were hiking. Picking along the soggy trails, I came up with this handy formula we can all use on our next camping trips:

1. Check the weather. Pay attention to the percent chance of precipitation each day.
2. Add those percentages. In our case: 30% Saturday + 40% Sunday + 30% Monday = 100%
3. Multiply by three. From our formula, we now know that there is a 300% chance of thunderstorms over the weekend.
   
4. Pack accordingly - and with a 300% chance of rain, bring your best attitude.
   

When you're backpacking, it's hard to decide how much to pack. You want enough for just-in-case, but not so much that you carry extra weight all the way there and back. So you wrestle: Do you take the extra socks? The extra long sleeves, for if it rains? What about that heavy tarp? 300% chance of rain says, "Yes!"

Abe was the one who bought the duck's back covers for our packs, the one who wouldn't negotiate leaving the tarp at home, and the one who told me "you need rain pants!" and came home with a child's pair that's still too long. And he was right.

(Pictures to come.)

Camp out

A word of advice: If it's only Monday, and you have a lot to do, do not furnish your living room. The previous owners of our house left behind some furniture, including the World's Ugliest Couch. So until this week, I can't say I've sat in the living room more than once. Until this week... when the World's Ugliest Couch went to Goodwill, and we went to Ikea.

Now, my top priorities are:

1. Nap on the sofa.
2. Nap on the armchair.
3. Nap on the loveseat.
4. Oh, yeah. Going to work.
   

Unfortunately, my priorities haven't exactly aligned with reality. Instead, our gear for our upcoming annual "walk in the woods" backpacking trip has taken over the living room.

from left: my husband, the unabomber, my Dad (man of the hour, on his Father's Day backpacking trip), my Mom
not pictured: deadly wild ponies, me