Shenandoah River State Park

Spring is here! We've had really nice & warm weather all week, and luckily it held up for the weekend. It's definitely time to get outdoors, but it's still that precarious time of year where there's not a lot of greenery or flowers yet. The thing to see was water, but instead going for the usual waterfalls, we checked out Shenandoah River State Park. It is conveniently located not too far off of I-66 near Front Royal, and you can avoid the hefty National Park fee that is charged elsewhere in Shenandoah. The park is small, but it has about 9 miles of hiking trails to satisfy most hikers, and there are numerous campgrounds for overnight stays.

Since Brad & I are both ridiculously out of shape from having done squat all winter, we pretty much took it easy with a picnic by the river, and an easy stroll along the Cottonwood Trail. We also took the short hike up the Wildcat Ledge for a nice view. (Although I'm not sure you'd see much if there were leaves on the trees.) The Bluebell Trail we wanted to take was closed, but I reckon it would be beautiful come mid-April with the flowers. The view from Cullers Overlook is also worth a stop.

Luck & Karma

Do you believe in luck? Even though I believe more in science than religion, I must admit I do think it is possible for someone to be "lucky" or "unlucky". I know a few people who just seemed absolutely plagued with bad luck. They are very nice people, and smarter than the average bear, yet everytime I talk to one of these friends, something horrible is happening in their lives. Whether it's a financial woe or some sort of health crisis, it amazes me that these friends encounter one bad luck after another. Some take it in stride, and others wallow in self-pity. Why me?... they ask.

This is where karma comes into play, I think. If you consider yourself a good person now and feel like you consistently have bad luck, you probably did something awful in your previous life. There's probably not much to do about it except to continue being good and hope that your next life is much better. If you're really good, maybe by the end of your current life you will get to have some good experiences. Then again, is it possible that luck is just statistically distributed amongst human kind? If I took a poll from a sample population and ask them to rate their goodness and their luckiness, would it show the two are not correlated and that the ratings are uniformly spreadout across the sample? Who knows... but I am not taking chances. I don't want to come back in my next life as a penguin (have you seen the movie the March of the Penguins?)

As honorably as I live and as hard as I work in my life, I still have a hard time feeling like I deserve the good luck I have had in my life. I never expected my life would be so full of adventures and that I would be as successful in my career as I am. I haven't really done anything that would be considered very generous or kind. If anything, I'm an independent soul looking out for myself mostly (I blame this on having grown up without parents around). So that's why I think I did something good in my previous life that made the last 20 years of my life pretty amazing. (My childhood was a bit of a blur.)

If there is such thing as luck, I guess it doesn't run forever... especially if you marry one of those unlucky souls. Yes, my husband is one of them. Anything and everything that could possibly go wrong seemed to have gone wrong since our union. I blogged a bit about it in my Snowmaggedon post. In may cases, even if I feel something did not turn out so good, I can usually see the positive side of things. For example, the downturn of the housing market is probably a way for fate to trap me in my job, which is actually pretty darn good, instead of letting me turn into a traveling bum only to realize being a bum isn't so great. Yet, I can't seem to see the positive in all that's been going on lately. There has been too many you-gotta-be-shitting-me moments that I could have done without. It can't possibly be the cost of marriage.

I read somewhere that you should not surround yourself with people who attract bad luck since it is something about the person that attracts it. My husband confessed recently that he's had bad luck all his life even though he doesn't feel he deserved it. That explained a lot, but what to do about it now? Can my good luck eventually win over his bad luck? Some people say you make your own luck, so marrying into bad luck is my own doing in that case. But will I be able to change our luck? It is more difficult to change the course of two people than just myself. I love my husband, but it's a tad worrying....

Basics of Chainsaw Handling

Here are some basics of chainsaw handling I found off of the Red Cross website:

• Carry the chain saw with the engine off.
• When bucking up (cutting) a downed tree: Place a plastic wedge into the cut to keep your chain saw from binding up. They are available at any chain saw dealer and sometimes come packaged with the saw.
• Never cut when tired or alone. Never cut around children or pets.
• Use a chain saw from the ground level only, not on a ladder or in a tree.
• When felling a tree, keep everyone at least “two tree lengths away.”
• You should have a preplanned escape route that is a 45° angle from the projected direction of a falling tree. Make sure there is nothing that could trip or stop you from making a quick retreat.
• When picking up heavy wood debris, get several helpers. Bend your knees and lift with your legs, not your back.