I'm feeling kind of low energy today, so here's a couple pictures from my weekend. 

This is Relic. He's some kind of mastiff, my parent's back neighbor's replacement dog for the heroic Ronan, the husky/wolf protector of my sixteen year old self. I miss Ronan, but Relic is a good dog. 

Just to size those lion paws: that's the thickest part of my thigh, and I'm crouching. 

My brother, waxing his bowstrings. He shot a little buck with that on Friday.

My neighbor dug this up in the woods behind my house. It's incredible--I didn't realize my little part of Manassas saw action. But that's a hotchkiss shell from the Civil War. I don't recognize the other shell, but I'm just learning about matching Civil War shells to their artillery pieces, so... 

This is a really incredible piece: a piece of fossilized coral that turned to agate several hundred thousand years ago and then, a mere few thousand years ago, was found and shaped into a scraper by an American Indian. My friend Andrea hunts a particular river in Georgia which is known for these kinds of artifacts. On Sunday, she gave me a little box of some of her finds as an early birthday/Christmas present. They are incredibly lovely: scraps of deep blue, white, and amber or crimson.  You can still see the coral polyps along with the knap marks, or could if this were a better picture. I might post a few more because I like them and they make me happy.