We here at Intrigued just wanted to take a quick moment to extend our best wishes for a very Merry Christmas (or related holiday event) to all or wonderful readers!
It’s that time of year when we shut the lights off and close the office doors for a few days so we can enjoy this special holiday with family and friends. Hit the jump to see a few more warm tidings from our staff!
Continue reading Merry Christmas and Warm TidingsThis is the time when we here at Intrigued drive over to our corporate NAS farm, badge in, say hello to our office staff (that didn’t see us coming and go into hiding hehehe), navigate to our holiday section and pull out some appropriately themed photos to honor the holiday. So, in keeping with longstanding tradition, I bring you some Wild Turkeys for your after dinner wind down enjoyment.
Okay, so at least that was the plan. Truth is, the Turkey folder was empty. I quickly recalled my last sighting of Wild Turkeys came courtesy of a rainy day at Benson-Rio Grande Valley State Park. Linda was the one who actually found them as she was biking around the park. Needing the check, I walked up the road and without thinking about the holiday ramifications, snapped a few shots of wet Turkeys with my cell phone and crossed that species off the list. I thought about using those cell shots for this post before quickly realizing how that would crumble the devious facade that Bri actually knows what he’s doing behind the glass.
In my defense, based on a quick look back at previous year’s topics, this isn’t the first time I’ve had to break with tradition – which, I guess, kinda calls into contention the whole concept of tradition. Last year I brought you Quail (link here), and a few years back had a Vulture stand in (link here). Not sure what I was thinking there, at least the Quail is considered a game bird. Anyway, as you have already noticed, this year at least we went back to something that looks closer to the wild variety of the cuisine likely gracing many Stateside dinner tables.
Fear not, there is a reason for this particular series, simply hit the jump to read about my madness, err, thoughtful selection
Continue reading The Silent F’s in ThanksgivingWith heavy hearts we had to say goodbye to our beloved Benji today. He was actually a gift from us to Linda’s Mother (Dorothy) for Christmas back in 2008. We thought it would be a nice way to keep her company since the passing of her husband. She was so excited, telling everyone we were getting her a puppy that year and already had his name picked out before got there!
Benjamin (Benji) Barton
12/4/2008 – 11/21/2024
Hit the jump to see a few more shots of this happy-go-lucky puppy.
Continue reading We’ll Miss You BenjiWelcome to our favorite day of the year! It is no secret we here at Intrigued enjoy the Halloween season. Although this holiday is continually under attack by the corporate Christmas greed, we will continue to push back and treat this day in all its haunting glory. Our Halloween related heavy lifting actually comes several months earlier as we prep and build out the annual Haunted Trail. We have found the weather is more cooperative at the end of September and allow us to bypass all the conflicts that seem to collide later in October (HS/College football, World Series, band competitions and, of course, other Halloween gatherings). The bonus is we get to extend the season’s festivities. Probably best of all, we get to sit back, stress free and enjoy ourselves on the actual day. As we do not get any trick-or-treater this far in the country, we head out for a nice dinner and then spend the rest of the night searching for (and rating) Halloween displays – an excellent way to get great ideas for next year’s trail.
Have a hauntingly good day, don’t eat too much candy, scare your neighbors and maybe catch a good horror show to cap off the evening. More importantly, continue to celebrate the day or it won’t be long before we’ll be seeing artificial Christmas trees in the stores at the start of the month – oh wait, we already do @#%@#%$@@!
Just to help set the mood, I grabbed a few shots from our trail to share. Apologies as I have not had time to properly process them yet. Hit the jump to enjoy!
Continue reading Happy Hauntings!
In a previous post I noted I was knee deep in digital bits trying to get everything transitioned to both the new computer platform and probably more tedious, resetting all the backups/trackers/counters etc. for 2024. The latter feels like I am back at work crunching numbers and traversing through spreadsheet cells. Didn’t really enjoy it back in the grind and certainly have better things to do now that I am not getting paid for it. However, it “has” to be done (wink). It is a nice way for our Intrigued staff to quickly see all the great things we did all year and I know they like to reference it in their end-of-year performance reviews. Truth is, I forgot to publish the 2022 Blog Summary last year. The end of the year was a mess and didn’t want to put my still whining elbow through the countless hours poring over the tracking documents. We just gave the staff all “exceeded” and then picked up the end of the year extravaganza bar tab. Win win I say! (especially for the legal department who are apparently a bunch of lushes). Decided to go ahead and get the 2023 summary done while dealing with PC downloads and file transfer wait times… and yes, my elbow still hurts.
2023 was an in interesting year for sure. Brad and his staff (Jan and Allyson) were old hats by then and regularly cranking out new adventures from their travel filled year. My Intrigued photo queue went ANOTHER year behind thanks to numerous trips to the likes of Texas, Las Vegas, Alabama and Florida. You have to give me some credit though as I was able to get a lot of the new tins out in record time (and now I have 21 new lifer birds from our recent trip to Arizona to add to the backlog – I am sure there are worse problems to have hehehe). We hit our self-imposed quota of at least 6 posts a month and reached all new levels for reader engagement (kudos to our great readers for sharing in our adventures). Still amazed by many of our fellow bloggers that are far more prolific. The birding front was wonderful as well. Hit the 400 lifer plateau and The Average Year (link here) was a huge success. In 2022, both Ron and I came up short on our 300 species goal. 2023 a completely different story. Both cresting over that mark setting even higher goals for this year. Brad also came in strong and will undoubtedly be moving into the Small/Medium Year bracket for this year.
On the flip side of that good news, the race season took a serious hit thanks to the “Root of All Evil” adding the first DNS (Did Not Start) to my racing career. Even though I religiously continued all the therapy exercises while on our trip, it is still not recovered and likely heading back to therapy next week for one last ditch effort before having words with the surgeon. Unfortunately, there were some truly sad times within the extended Intrigued family as Brad and his family lost a beloved family member. 2022 brought a lot of sadness to Linda and I and having our friends go through similar difficulties less than a year later was heartbreaking.
2024 is still young, but shaping up to be a great year. Now in our 17th year of blogging on our Intrigued platforms (The Mothership and its younger sister site Wildlife Intrigued). Several ’24 trips are all lined up (both Linda and I as well as Brad and Jan) – looking forward to bringing you the stories and pictures from our experiences. Hopefully we can continue to grow our presence and always looking forward to the reason we put the work in – to engage our wonderful readers, hearing your feedback, getting your take on our tins and truly learning together.
A few quick shout outs. A big thanks to Linda who has to put up with me (I really am a handful). She is my secret weapon – trip planner, financial wizard, nourishment provider, injury soother, bail provider (just in case hehehe) and truly a bird whisperer. Ron continues to push me on the birding front, dragging me out into the field, helping with those difficult IDs, keeping me posted with opportunities showing up on the birding forums and willing to throw himself in harm’s way to protect me (well, that is what he says…but I’ve seen him run screaming halfway across a field after seeing a Tick). Brad and his team have been a big help in keeping this blog from being work – also does a good job of catching my grammar/syntax errors. In my defense I was forged in the shape of and speak the language of a “coder”. To our staff – you continue to be the best and to all our friends out there spanning the globe, buckle in, 2024 should be a fun ride.
Well, it is time to look back on ’23 and bring you the performance stats. If you are curious about the details, hit the jump to see the 2023 Life Intrigued blogs stats and accomplishments (Mothership and the Wild side).
Thanks again to all my readers that keep us committed month after month. Cheers Everyone! (that is a dry toast of course as the year end extravaganza ran us out ha).
Hi folks, are you up for a night of frights? In the last post I covered some of the prep that goes into bringing our haunted trail to life. It is definitely hard to express just how much work is required to pull this off year after year, but one thing is for sure – I have no idea how we were able to do this while I was still working!! All those years leading up to retirement, I was thinking how much easier the Halloween event was going to be with all those extra hours. I have NO idea where those supposed “extra” hours went as once again we were scrambling right up to the start to get everything in place an operational. The only thing that really matters though is through the invaluable help of amazing people…we got’er done.
Our friend in haunt, Paul, did make our annual teaser video. Feel free to watch that walkthrough and then we’ll take a more static look at the trail after the jump.
Hit the jump to take a closer look.
Continue reading Haunted Trail 2023 – Night TremorsWe are beginning to believe that Arizona must be cursed in some form. As I’ve commented on previous posts, we were supposed to start our migration south right after Christmas. Sorry to say that didn’t happen. Two years in a row we’ve tried to make it there and for an equal amount of times – stymied. Fingers crossed this is only temporary this year and we’ll be on our way soon – last year we had to outright cancel our December trip out there. Decided to use the unexpected time to do a little tidying up around the Intrigued Headquarters. When the staff is away, the boss gets to play ha. The office is quiet, no spreadsheets that need filling out, no requisition approvals, the performance reviews are all wrapped up and thankfully no post holiday party legal issues to smooth over. Figured it was a perfect time to for a little after Christmas haunting.
Yes, it is time to finally get the Haunted Trail 2023 recap out of the way. These are mega posts and although the trail is the highlight of the year, I dread the work that goes into getting all the pictures ready for the post. Clear your browser image cache ‘cuz we are gonna fill it up again. Hit the jump to see all the work behind the scenes that is needed to put this event on every year.
Continue reading Haunts to Eleven – The BuildEveryone here in the Intrigued family would like to extend a hearty Merry Christmas to each and all! We have had a wonderful year here and that is entirely due to all our wonderful readers.
Hit the jump for some more merry good cheer!
Continue reading The Intrigued Family Wishes You a Very Merry ChristmasThe day we look forward to every year has finally arrived and we are giddy with excitement. Some kids grow up looking forward to the more traditional December holiday, we here at Intrigued celebrate the orange and black. The heavy lifting is already done for this season as we hold our haunted trail around the beginning of the month to avoid conflicts with the rest of the parties/events that are scattered across this month. As a result, we get to sit back, relaxing around the flaming pumpkins while watching the ghosts and goblins dance about the place. We wish you similar happiness in whatever manner you choose to celebrate the dark hours.
To help get you in the mood, our “partner in haunt” Paul has already put together our promo video from our recent Haunted Trail. It is impossible to bring you the expansiveness of the trail, but Paul does an excellent job of giving you a feel for the frights and fun to be had in the spooky woods.
Note, if the embedded video will not play, here is the direct link to it – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1FMpBNo3dk
Hit the jump to see a few more of our Halloween scenes to get this holiday kicked off right
Continue reading Happy Haunters’ Day 2023!Okay, this is getting absolutely ridiculous. It is now 9 months since our annual Haunted Halloween Trail event and I still haven’t published the traditional walk-thrus. I am constantly reminded of this every time I try to make a reference to it in a post and I’m unable to find a link to it. Well, that procrastination ends today. Being open and honest we just got back from a 4 day agility show in Michigan. Translated – 20 minutes of activity during the runs and then a whole lot of waiting around in between. A perfect time to plow through the heavy load of images and get the posts prepped for publish. All I need to do now is add some word decorations and we are good to go…without further delay, here is the first of a haunted three part series – the prep and build.
Hit the jump to read all about how this mess above all comes together for our epic haunt.
Continue reading Haunted Halloween Trail 2022 – Prep and Build
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