Egg Hunt

 

Happy Easter

At 2am... okay 1:58 but who's counting?

Now, why in the world would I be up at this hour anyway?

Well, it's like this. About a half-hour ago, I came jerking up out of a solid slumber... (or was I in a dream and it just felt solid?? Not quite sure on that front) ...hearing my 7 year old doing things she shouldn't in the middle of the night.

So up i got and off did trot.

It seems that upset tummy she had before bed finally caught up with her... and there it was, lying on her bed. Next to her, under her, on top of her.

It's always been my job to get up with the kids at night. My radar goes off when it's time, and it's a duty I don't take lightly. It's one of the greatest benefits to parenthood (and no... I do not say that sarcastically). Sometimes, when a kid is sick for days at a time, it does get old... but it's been one of the times when a parent can bond with a kid like no other time. When you're sick and someone is there, to make you feel better, that's always a good thing!

There's nothing like leading a child to the bathroom to finish their barfing next to the throne, while you go clean up their bed. In this case, there was so much on the bed, I pulled bedding, pillows and all, up and tossed them in the tub. Then I laid a new blanket down, and another... and she already had an extra pillow, so I got her set up.

And then I went and checked on her. To find, indeed, that she really did lay back down in it. That is, it was not only on her face and body and neck, it was also well pressed into her hair.

So off we went to the other bathroom, and I turned the shower on, adjusted the temperature, and got her into it... washed her hair out... dried her off, got her in new bedshirt... and off to bed... till Round 2.

Now, Round 2 was nothing. She made it to the bathroom with no problem. There was only a little anyways. So I got her up and put her here in the easy chair with me. A few minutes later she was snoring, so I said, you ready to go to bed?

"Uh-huh..."

So off we went. About the time we got there, she says, "I think..." I could see it in her eyes, so, "C'mon"... and back to the bathroom again. This time, it was very short-lived. Only a retch or two and back to bed, with a trashcan alongside.

Experience tells me she's probably done now. But I am wide-awake for the moment. I thought I'd take this quiet moment to wish you the happiest of Easters, too... May yours be as full of spice and adventure as mine!

Spring is Springing

Yesterday, it was in the upper 70's. It was a beautiful day to go out and about. I went down to the park at lunchtime, and snapped a few photos. This one... shows things pretty well. Just the faintest bit of greens beginning to show, here and there, but still, many bare-branched trees mixed in, everywhere. Give it a month, and this photo will look nothing the same.

 

This picture, taken at the same park, shows a more advanced view of springtime.



I ended the day with a 4.5 mile walk with my seven year old daughter. When we left the house, there were a few brooding, low-hanging clouds, and ... I forgot my camera. We went on, as it was already past six, and by the time we were halfway, it started to rain softly. We sheltered for a few minutes under some fir trees alongside the road, and the shower did not last long.

Soon we topped the hill we had been climbing, and started down into an open area... and saw the rainbow, stretching from hill to hill, with our valley between, arching high over our heads, perfectly defined. And, as we walked, we began to see a double-rainbow, dimly but clearly visible above one end of the primary, and barely visible above the other end. At this point, we were still a mile and a half away from home, and camera, and by the time we had gone a little ways, the rainbows were already fading from view.

So no pictures, of that, but still, nice day, all in all.

Filling Icetrays with Honey

Disclaimer: Unless you want to be bored by a recollection of a personal bout with flu, you can stop reading now.

Last week is a blur now.

That is, I remember the highlights. Sunday, April 2nd, as the kids were heading to bed, I hopped in the car and drove a couple of hours up the road to perform a disaster recovery test for one of our customers.

What's that glazed and confused look for? Okay, a DR test, is where we take a customer who has a "critical" computer system - that must be up 24x7 (or very near to it) and pretend that a sprinkler went off above it (or the building burned up, or something).

They perform regular backups which are kept at some remote location, and when the disaster happens, they are recalled to a new computer center, and we recover their systems to that new system, and bring them back up. At any rate, I got to my room about 11:15 or so, and didn't quite fall asleep till maybe 1:30.

Then I woke up at 5:30 and started my day. That evening, I took a nap from 6:30 or so for maybe an hour, got up, had supper, returned to work, got back to my room at about 11:30 again, and was asleep around midnight. Then up at 6:30 and ... so on.

Only Tuesday, we had our 9am call, the customer was satisfied that everything was good to go, and sent us home. Only, you see, there's this project back here I've been working on, and a meeting a 1pm for that project, so I returned to work by 12:45, went to the meeting, and pretty much ended the day on schedule.

Wednesday, I came to work, but I was just beginning to feel the pain. I worked, and got a lot done, but... by Wednesday night, I bedded down with a huge headache. I shook it off, thinking, I'll sleep this off in no time.

A little after 12, I woke up. The headache was beginning to spread.

A little after 2, I woke up. I was burning up, curled into a ball, I stretched out, and the cold blankets made me shudder with chills. But back to sleep I went.

A little after 4, I woke up. Ditto the after 2 comments, except I got up and found some aspirin, and I was beginning to ache from head to toe.

After 6, when the house started stirring, I found some Tylenol, and dozed waiting for it to kick in. I don't think it ever did. I told my daughter, before her and Mom left, go get my phone, I don't think I am going to make it into work.

Next thing I knew, it was 10:45. I got my computer turned on, and promptly dozed back off again. When the new mail chime would sound, sometimes I'd rouse myself a little - and I honestly tried to complete a report that should have been done the day before, but..... somewhere around noon, I forced myself into the kitchen, fixed a sandwich and a glass of milk, kept taking Tylenol.

By 3:30, my son got home, I reminded him he had chores to do, and promptly I was sound asleep. And by 4:30, the phone rang. I cannot remember who, or why, but my son instantly gravitated to my side - "Can I play on the computer?" I reminded him, again, of his chores. "I did them." What about the bathroom in there? "I did it." I looked at him questioningly, and he said, "You were snoring."

So I stumbled into the office, and logged him on the computer, and crashed again.

I think, other than bathroom visits, that was pretty much my day. I hurt all day long, from head to toe. Friday, I took some Advil flu and headed to work, and got my numbers taken care of and sent to whom it needed to be sent, and talked to them on the phone and made sure they understood it.

And generally, plodded throughout the day. Friday night, I was exhausted, and crashed out. At 12:30 my daughter called from her sleepover asking for someone to come and pick her up, so up I got and fetched her.

Saturday - worse than Friday, but not quite as bad as Thursday. I had a cycle going Saturday morning. My wife had gone to work, my kids were downstairs playing games, quietly. And, I slept, in bits and pieces. I'd sleep, hard, for a few minutes, dream a crazy dream (the same one, every time), wake up with a start, sweating all over, stretch out, freezing with the chill of the blankets, roll over, and start again, 3 or 4 times an hour, from the wee hours, until the phone rang at about 10:30.

At that point, I rousted myself out of bed. I stumbled into the other part of the house, called the kids up, and collapsed in the easy chair, for a while. My wife got home in the afternoon, and took my daughter off to a scouting even a short time later, which left my son and I home alone. We started a movie, but I found I couldn't hang with it, so I went back and crawled into bed a little after 3 - telling him not to let me sleep past 5.

He called me at 5, and by 5:30 I got myself up out of bed, and when everyone got home, actually ate a meal for supper, and watched a movie, and by 10, was ready to collapse again. Sunday, I slept till 10, but it was a more restful sleep. I still woke up with a headache, but the body pain at least, was gone. I got up, and we all worked together on a breakfast. Biscuits, and chocolate gravy, and bacon and grits. I didn't eat a lot, but ... at least the appetite was there.

By suppertime, there wasn't much appetite, but I did eat a half cup of soup, then later, off to bed, and starting the week over now. This morning, up and out at normal time - with a big headache again, but none of the rest of the Nasties. The headaches could be from too much sleep - although come to think of it, last night I had a lot of trouble even getting to sleep. I woke up a couple of times, all tangled up in the sheets.

I think, once I did finally drift off, I must have tossed and turned a lot, because I'd wake up, with the sheet pulled up over my shoulder, wrapped around my fist underneath me. It took some degree of awakeness to figure out how to untangle myself from that mess.

But, anyhow, I seem to have survived the flu.

Onion Snow

onion snow
n. Chiefly Pennsylvania

A light snow in late spring, after onions have been planted.

I heard this term for the first time a few years ago, when I moved here to central Pennsylvania.

Today we had our 'onion snow'.... Or, I hope it was the onion snow. That is, the last blast of winter... We woke up to a nice coating of snow over everything, but by the time I had arrived at work, there was almost none left on the ground - as the ground was a bit too warm for it to stick.

Unfortunately, I was running very late, and didn't have the possession of my senses enough to grab my camera on the way out the door, so I have no proof of this event, but I am telling you truly, there were onions everywhere.

Catching up

So... I try to keep up with folk's blogs, but I tend to get behind... especially when I have been swamped at work, as in the past couple of weeks.

Anyhow, I was catching up... and stumbled across this... I have a 12 year old son, but I now have an insight into his future:

I am beginning to sense a pattern.

This sounds and looks like exactly the sort of thing Jeremy will someday be doing......

Spring has Sprung

This past week, it finally creeped up into the 60's and even on Friday as high as the 70's. Along about Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, I heard from my front porch the sound of frogs peeping and creaking.

I think spring has sprung, finally!

This first photo ... I stopped and had my son take it. It was nothing more than an attempt to capture the reddish hued buds on the trees .. a sure sign of impending springtime.



I went just a little farther down the road, and spotted this willow - the first true green that I've seen (not counting evergreens of course).



The farms around here have been tilling and spreading manure - and the air is ripe all around, but still... the weather's been beautiful and the fields are all turning green, except the ones that have been turned...



And after I took that shot, I looked back towards where I had come, and it seemed as if the sky were glowering over the church. No storms followed this sky, it was just a passing moment of the day.



For the first time since the fall, I was able to get the oil changed in our cars this afternoon, and a few other odds and ends of projects that needed to be done have at least been started. It's nice to be able to escape the confines of the indoors without having to wear a heavy jacket!

Only one problem with all of this......... Supposed to be back in the 40's by mid-week. Hopefully this too will pass quickly.

Driving to work Part 2

Amazingly enough, today, exactly one week after my first trip to town where I met up with the cows, I saw more. Or rather, I suspect they were the same two cows as I saw last Friday, but....

It appears they found some funny weeds or something, when they crossed that fence. Perhaps, the grass REALLY is greener on the other side.... At any rate, boy, they were messed up!

This picture says it all.

--------------------------------------

Actually, I was reading up on "freebie applications" on the internet, and there were comments that if you did not want to pay for the rather expensive Adobe Photoshop application to manipulate photographs, that the GIMP program does the job, for free.

I downloaded it, and was playing around with it. It's got a ton of options - more so than any other 'freebie' or "lite" graphics package I have played with - and to me, was a bit confusing in that respect. However, with a little playing around with it, I could begin to use some of the more advanced features.

And yes, they have documentation available for download - but documentation is for .. other people (grin). Actually, if I have time, I will download the documentation too, and see what I can learn. In the meantime, if anyone's interested in an interesting freebie graphics program, here's the link to this "open source" application.

http://www.gimp.org/windows/

There's a ton of other interesting freeware applications out there these days, including full anti-virus suites that do a bang up job (try AVG Free or Avast both free for home use, anti-spyware applications (including Microsoft's own new Windows Defender for XP), Microsoft-Office like packages such as OpenOffice.Org's OpenOffice.org package (yeah that was a play on words).

Another interesting program is "Google Earth". You can view satellite images (recorded in recent times - not real-time) of most of the world, and more heavily populated areas in fairly fine detail. Where I live, more rural, you can see the valley and the swaths of color where the cornfields and other crops and trees are grown, but in a city environ, like where my in-laws live in Baton Rouge, or my friend in Oklahoma City, you can see cars parked in the driveway of their house. Also, "famous regions" (i.e. Eiffel Tower in Paris, Grand Canyon in Arizona, etc) are shown in fairly good detail. The catch with Google Earth is that you really need to have a high-speed internet connection and fairly good graphics card to be able to get the benefit of the program.

Here's an "editor's pick" of 101 useful freeware applications: http://www.pcworld.com/52516

Many of these have corporate sponsorship, as it's deemed a way for companies to open doors to new customers. If you like the free product, maybe you'll tell your friends, and sooner or later someone will upgrade to a paid version. So, if you're interested in any of these products, Google them (or use yahoo search, or MSN search, etc) and enjoy.

That cow sure did.

Driving to work

Living in central Pennsylvania, I would never have thought that this would be a commonplace event. After all, Pennsylvania was always "up North" or "back East" or "Land of the Yankees" when I was growing up. That is, it was always a part of that big city that is the East Coast.

I even went so far as to say I'd "NEVER" move to a big city - then proved myself wrong by moving into three different state capitals, including Oklahoma City which is a pretty darn large city when you take in all the metro area, too. But I had always managed to stay south of the Mason Dixon line, and in the central time zone, till around 2000, when I moved up north.

So, now I live here. Sure, I live on a paved road, but across the road, right up the road, behind us are acres and acres and acres of corn and other things, like soybeans, and other stuff. Not very far - within sight of our house - is a pleasant pig farm (that is to say, a somewhat malodorous one when the wind is blowing wrong - but otherwise, not too bothersome).

And oftentimes, I take a shortcut to work that for a mile or so is gravel. I get off the paved road a little. And, on Friday, I went this way, and had to stop. There was something blocking my way. My camera had been in the truck overnight, and didn't have much charge left in its battery, but there was enough charge for one photo.

The Tree

I said in last night's post that sooner or later I'd learn how to take a picture of something besides sunsets. On the way into work this morning I spotted this tree. It's not the prettiest tree ever, but it DOES have a touch of character, I am thinking. I have one friend, more adopted big sister than friend, who is half-Druid in her heart, and she "gets" trees.

This one is for her.

 

Grocery Trip

Tonight, my son and I drove into town to get some groceries, and it happened to be along about sunset. I couldn't stop myself from pulling off, and snapping a few pictures. It's getting late enough in the year that I can no longer take a picture of my favorite subject, the Lutheran Church in Powell's Valley from the main road, and get the sunset behind it - the sun sets too far north now.

However, there's a side road that goes down past the cornfields... We pulled off, and climbed the rather steep bank to where there'll be acres and acres of corn in a few months, and took quite a few snapshots, while the church stood there and posed for us. Of all the pictures and different angles I took, I think I liked this picture just about the best.

My son said, it looked like I was taking pictures for the church - showing how God himself was shining his light down on the church and highlighting it for all to see.

After we left the church, and headed on toward town, I had one more occasion to pull off and take another couple of pictures. There's a farm, where we can buy fresh brown eggs pretty much anytime we want (which is what the sign in the middle-left of the picture says).




One of these years, I'll figure out how to use my camera for something other than the occasional sunset shot, but for now, that'll do. I suppose sunsets have always been my favorite natural thing to photograph, even since I was a teenager and won a blue ribbon in the county fair back home for a picture of a sunset, with a small cedar tree in the foreground. I had my flash on, and the bright green foliage, with the reds, oranges, yellows and purples of the sunset in the background - it has endured as one of my favorite all-time photos. Maybe, someday, I will scan it in and post it. But for now, this will do.

Good night.

Alien Cow Abduction

So the headline read:

Alien Cow Abduction.
Aliens are brittle and need milk. Please help them.

Actually, it wasn't a headline, but rather, an ad displayed in my Google Adsense code after my last post. I could not help but click the link - it was the first time I've laughed out loud in days. And, it was worth it, if you're into that sort of thing. Check it out.

Speaking of Adsense - this has been an 'experiment' of mine over the past year or so, and one of these days, I'll write a review of the service, and how it has or has not met up to its expectations, and why the heck it is that my site has this commercial aspect to it when I am writing for the joy of writing. Let's just say, that I won't get rich quick anytime soon, but if you feel like clicking on an ad, or performing a search using the searchbar at the top of the page, I may get a few cents added to my account.

I am by no means saying you should make your default search engine be the searchbar on my page (although it might make my year's worth of earning's top a dollar if enough people did... (last time I looked my balance was at about $.95, I think)).

Anyhow, I am getting away from my topic, which has something to do with flying cows and space aliens, I fear. If the link above doesn't work, go to

http://www.planetinneed.com

Enjoy!

Oscar the Grouch

No, not from Sesame Street...

Oscar, you see, is a cat.

For a long time he's lived in our neighborhood - a mostly outside cat, owned by neighbors (if it can be said that any cat is owned by humans. It might be better to say that he owns the neighbors). He was always particularly unfriendly, but liked to have handouts, and would, once in a long while, even let me touch him if I put a bowl of food under his nose. But normally, he'd bite and scratch and fight and try to get away if you attempted to pick him up or anything of the sort. He has been the ultimate "grouch".

He's lived here for a couple of years, and we've had that neighborly relationship, where he comes and goes, and sometimes we don't see him for days at a time. This past December, the first couple of weeks were bitterly cold, at least in the single digits, even if not in the negatives.

I was afraid for Oscar. His family would let him in, but he was NOT an indoor cat, and he'd be ready to go out again, soon. They'd let him out when the parents were at work and kids at school. At that point, my wife was not working, and so I let Oscar come into our house.

He made straight for the basement, and went and hid out there. Our litter box, for "Lucky" (the three-legged, one-eyed, tailless, mangy furball that normally lives here) was in the laundry room, upstairs, and the food, as well. So, we arranged a second litterbox for Oscar, and a bowl of food, and he was quite comfortable just 'hanging out' in the basement.

His family came back and got him, but a day or so later, he was back at our door, so I opened it and he went straight back to the basement. I had some projects to do down there along about then. It's a mostly unfinished basement, one big room, but it's divided by a huge set of bookshelves I have erected over the past couple of years, and one project involved shelving up a few hundred books (many of the kids' books, many of mine from over the years). And as I'd work down there, I'd murmur softly to Oscar, and gradually some of his fear went away.

One day, I put my hand under his belly, and lifted him up to a table. He didn't know how to take that, I think, but put up with it. And over the next couple of weeks, we'd do this again. One day, I carefully picked him up, and carried him to the top of the stairs, to the main floor, and by the time we got there, he was pawing to get down, but he did let me get him that far.

We also have a dog who lives indoors, a small Llaso named Molly. Molly is a fairly calm dog, but she tends to be too close when Oscar is around, so anytime I'd handle him with her around, he'd revert to his wildness... which is part of the reason why the top of the basement stairs seemed to be a "problem area" for him. But, still, we got there.

One evening, I brought him up to my bedroom, and put him up on the bed. Everyone else was away in the house, it was just Oscar and I. I stretched out and started talking to him... and he started purring. A little while later my wife bustled in, moments later followed by Molly and Lucky, and Oscar scooted.

Too loud, too busy, he couldn't hang with that. He was back in the basement in moments. But for 10 or 15 minutes, he had stayed... A few days later, we did this again. When the crowd crowded in, he lasted a little longer this time. And gradually, over the next few days and weeks, Oscar has gotten to where he'll hide, either in the basement, or the bedroom, and when I come home in the evening, he'll make his first appearance.

He'll come rub around my legs, and if I sit in my chair, he'll climb up on me and start his motor to running. A few months ago, I had no idea that he had such a pur-engine... but it's alive and well. And at night, when I lay down, if he's inside, he'll come climb up into bed beside me, and if I pay him the slightest attention, he'll start purring loudly... closing his eyes, kneading the blanket with his paws.. and if ever I've seen happiness and contentment, I see it in him.

One day, a week or so ago, I had opportunity to be home alone for a few hours. I had some work that I needed to get done, and so I sat in my easy chair, perched my work laptop in my lap, and went to work. A little while later, the old Grouch came in and jumped up beside me, and eventually curled up and went to sleep.

There's a comfort there. This world sometimes seems difficult and often I feel out of tune with my surroundings. It's nice to know, even when I doubt myself, that this creature that's been a loner for so long, sees in me the companion he has perhaps craved for a long time. It was a nice, peaceful day. My son was home, but the victim of a sleepover with too little sleep, so had gone to crash out for a few hours, so it was just me and Oscar... sitting there in companionable silence.

A pair of Grouches.

Cold Weather

So last week I started developing a cold. The weather was kinda nice, a little warm. But by the end of the week, I was sneezing, fit to be tied. Another guy who works here tossed a box of benadryl capsules over the partition, and I took one, and survived the day. Friday, I was a little better, but not so's you'd notice.

By Saturday I was on the uphill swing. It was in the 70's Saturday, and I sat out on the back porch, my feet propped up on a table, in my short sleeve shirt, soaking up the sunlight, working on some leftover work-work (not home-work or, I mean, not 'around-the-house work' but really work-related work (yes, I do occasionally do something while at work, and on occasions have been known to bring it home, too)).

Saturday night it cooled a little, might have even showered (I've slept since then) but Monday was another beautiful day. Monday night it rained, and yesterday was overcast, a bit, and chilly, in the 40's, and I took a picture on the way home (refer to the prior post). And last night... last night, or rather, this morning, it snowed. It was only a dusting, but still... snow, none-the-less.

And so I sit here, typing away, my throat is already feeling scratchy again from this latest round of changes to the weather patterns... I feel the head beginning to clog. Sooner or later, I am sure, I will end up having to share a sneeze with those around me (yes, I know how to cover). On the positive side, in amongst the dusting of snowflakes in the flowerbed this morning, was a crocus, just beginning to open up. Won't be long now, I am hoping, till warm weather is here to stay.

This "cold" weather stinks, whether it's 30's outside, or 80's... I am ready for some sense of stability and a few less sneezes and sniffles and scratchy throats. Luckily, for me, someone replenished the office candy jar this morning - and dumped in some sweet tarts. There are those of us who think that is the bestest medicine. If you gotta take pills, make em pink, purple, green, and yellow. (just gotta green, yellow, and pink, in that order).

Yas

Yet another sunset (Yas).
(Okay, a little while before sunset)
Powell's Valley, Pennsylvania.
March 14, 2006

 

Reading

When I was small, Mom would read to me and my brother, at naptime - if not every day, then at least, frequently. With my Mom, you could never tell what the tale would be.

It might have been a classic, from Robinson Crusoe to Around the World in 80 Days, a western by Zane Grey or Louis L'amour, a science fiction novel by Andre Norton. Okay, probably no romance, but there had to be limits somewhere. You see, she loved a good story. A well-written tale.

She didn't go for a lot of foul language or smut - but instead enjoyed tales written by authors who could entertain you without all the "extra" stuff that a lot of writers lean on to sell books. That's to say, if there was language or other - as long as it wasn't overdone - she'd accept it and move on (although we didn't get to hear it).

As an adult, I favor these books. That is to say, pretty much anything that's a good tale and is well written. My all-time favorite authors include Mark Twain and Louis L'amour (a couple of weeks ago I finished The Walking Drum again - one of my favorite all-time books), and sci-fi authors like Isaac Asimov (although, truth be told - he wrote much, much, much more than just sci-fi). One author I like - that my Mom does not care for - is Piers Anthony.

He isn't the traditional "clean" author. His tales do not typically dwell on "smut" - although I've read at least one short story that is nothing but - but there's still a fair dose of it in some of his books. I am currently starting book 3 of a 5 part series (that I read many years ago) called Bio of a Space Tyrant. The main character is Hope Hubris. He's a pretty decent guy.

I mean, he was responsible for the deaths of his parents, he allowed very bad things to happen to his sisters (including trading one into slavery). Oh yeah, back to his parents, he had very good reason to eat one of them (gruesome - but we must remember that sometimes things happen beyond our control - and what are we to do?). And he killed, personally, his beloved, his girlfriend, the one he was to marry the very next day - she was even in her wedding dress for rehearsal. All of this - before his 16th birthday.

Yet, Hope... really was a good guy. He really, really was. Despite what some folks may say about his actions. Or at least, that's my humble opinion. Of course, I am only starting the 3rd narrative in his autobiography - there'll be two more yet, once that's complete. So maybe I'll find some reason to change my opinion - but so far... so good.

It's interesting to me (if I try to be detached) that I can "like" this character despite all the things he has done. Many times in our lives, we are put into a position where there's no right answer, so we choose the left one. Hopefully, it's not the wrong one. But just because we may have to do things, does not necessarily mean that we're evil people. We are simply human.

Like Hope.

One of my guiding principles in life has been... "Where there's Life, there's Hope".

Hope survived... he lived through Hell... but he went on to make the world a better place. I hope that someday I will be judged for the seemingly few good things I did, not the glaringly bad things. I will make mistakes - I will make decisions that some regard as unfavorable - even terrible - but I will also never do things with cruel intent, no matter how it may seem at the time.

Hope Hubris made mistakes. Serious ones. Some of the things he did - he had to do. He had to make decisions - choose between evils - and persevere - and eventually his world "righted" itself and became a better place. It was not through inaction that this happened, but through his choosing to effect positive change on the world around him.

Where there's Life, there's Hope.

Aerodrome

The Langley Aerodrome A looked just like an airplane out of some Jules Verne-based futuristic movie. It was actually built, and they attempted to fly it - twice, before giving up. The last time it was attempted was just days before the Wright Bro's historic flight.

My 'panorama' shot, below, does not do this bird justice. It WAS a cool looking aircraft, with two sets of wings, fabric covered, and fabric covered propellers.

Air and Space Museum

This weekend, we went to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum near Dulles Airport outside of Washington D.C. I have already shared one picture from the trip - here are a couple more.

This first picture is the Space Shuttle Enterprise, with me underneath. I kinda have a headache now from picking it up with my head.

A back-side view of the Enterprise.

Some things from the "space toys" display.

And, there were a ton of different sorts of airplanes. I have one that I took several pics of that I need to merge together - like a panarama shot. But for now, I'll stick with a simple one, the Pepsi Cola plane.

 

First Blog

I've been doing this blog thing for a while now. In the beginning, I took a generic template, and gradually modified it to fit my own wants. For me, the basic template does most of what I want, so I don't get too crazy with modifications - however, some people end up doing away with the generic templates and completely create a layout from scratch. This article is geared more toward someone wishing to set up a blog for the first time.

A few of my annoyances were:

1. Templates

The generic templates usually have some sort of "Edit-me" link lists. Getting rid of these can be overwhelming if you aren't a "programmer" and/or do not know the basics of html editing (or, perhaps, do not know what html is).

After you login, and go to Blogger Dashboard, click "Change Settings", and choose the Template tab, it brings up a form full of strange text. Scroll down through it till you get to something like:

< href="http ://news.google.com/"> Google News < /a >
< href="http ://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=110"> Edit-Me < /a >

Simply change the text news.google.com to example.blogspot.com and Google News to Example, and the second (and third, etc) to whatever you want them to be or delete them all.

The end result might be:
Example
Another, sorta, blog site

Changing other settings, or adding other "code" into your template is easy enough. At first, it may appear overwhelming, but after a bit of playing around, you'll learn what does and does not work.

Just remember - when working with templates... Use the "Preview" button first. It may save you a lot of grief if you accidentally delete part of the page or something critical (yeah - been there, done that).

2. Spam comments

These annoyed me more than anything, when I first started. Having comments is great - but if left "wide open" you will find some posts get "spam" comments - that is, some generic message that says "Great job on your blogsite. Visit my page at www.iamtryingtosellthings.com (or whatever).

The simplest thing I have found to reduce them is to turn on "word verification". This may be found by going to the Blogger Dashboard, clicking on "change settings", then go to the sub heading of "Comments". There are several defaults here that you might wish to change, including the word verification.

Another nifty new option is the "moderation" feature. With this feature, all comments will be emailed to you for approval before being posted to your blog.

Besides the preventative measures above - if you do happen to get spam comments, or other offensive or inappropriate comments on your blog, you can delete them by viewing the comments, and clicking the little trash can icon at the bottom of the post. Note that you do have to be logged into blogger as the owner of the site to see the icon.

3. Visitors

How do I know who has been here to my site? There are no "built-in" tracking mechanisms for tracking visitors to your site, but there are a couple of good freebies out there that can give you good statistics, including the popular www.sitemeter.com (just go there and register - they'll provide you the code to paste into your template, or even push it into your site for you once you provide login credentials), or the lesser known www.statcounter.com (which has a lot of nice features, too, including invisible counters - seen only by you). There are a lot more providers out there, but those are a couple that I like.

To get a sample of what sort of data you might get with these, click here to see this page's detailed visitor information.

Smithsonian Dog Doo

We spent several hours Sunday at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. My son spotted this gem among the various displays, which included NASA's Space Shuttle Enterprise, the World War II airplane "Enola Gay" and many other interesting things.

Maybe, later, I will post some more "appropriate" pictures from the trip, but for now, this will have to do.


 

Sunset

A few days ago, on the way home from work, I stopped and snapped this picture, just down the road from my house.

Escape

I went and talked to a rock today. And a tree.

I drove up the gravel road through the state forest, up to the top of the mountain and a little ways down the other side. There's plenty of trails through there, and in one place, a picnic area. It was to this place I went. I parked, got out, and walked around a little, spotting a marked trail heading into the woods. It was a half-mile, it said.

I figured that'd do. I started walking off down the trail, stopping at the edge of a swollen stream. The recent rain has turned this trickle into quite a stream, and it followed several paths through the woods. There was quite a roar as it spilled over a fallen log.

I started along the creek, following the trail and realized I was just headed back to camp, so I turned back, and in doing so, spotted another, unmarked, trail, going on into the woods a little ways. This I followed, till I came to a tree that had fallen over the creek. I climbed onto this and walked over the log and across the creek, and found another trail there, this one marked.

I do not know where this trail would have led, but I did follow it for a ways, until I came to a couple of very large rocks, much larger than I, with the trail between them. A tree had fallen over the rocks - not a large one, but still, it was there. I climbed up and sat on one edge of rock, and.................

relaxed.

For the first time in years, I was totally alone in the woods, miles from another human being. Here, deep in the woods, I studied on things. First, as I sat quietly, my feet no longer rustling through the leaves, I noticed the wind. The tree tops were dancing back and forth, and there was a steady roar. Even without leaves on most trees - except the pines, there was still the moaning of the wind as it blew through the forest. Farther away, I could hear the water, still rushing over the log in the creek.

Closer to hand, I heard an occasional leaf rustling as some small animal scurried about. A cracking sound from a treetop where a broken branch dangled. Across from me, on the rock opposite, I studied the moss growing in large patches, a litchen here and there dotting a light green pad in the middle of the dark green forest of moss. An ant hurrying along on his business.

The old rotten trunk of a tree that had fallen, bridging the two rocks, was almost barkless now, and had a split a few inches from me, and there at the split, some beetle or other bug had burrowed a hole. There was a dampness in the air, a musty smell of old leaves left damp for long times.

I sat there and studied on things. There were no cars passing on the road, wherever it was. It was just me, and the trees, and the rocks, and God. In this February morning, when there should probably be snow on the ground, but instead is in the fifties, I looked down, and picked a tick off my blue jeans. I hate to destroy nature, but I've been taught my whole life that these things are parasites, and if you don't "take care" of them, they'll just continue to be parasites, spreading disease and weakening us. So I smashed it and wiped my hands off. And continued to absorb the sounds, the smell, the sights, and the feelings of the world around me, just me and God.

A little while later, I got up, and ... didn't want to continue that trail, because I knew I must sooner or later get back to civilization, so I started back - but wasn't quite ready to quit yet, so I found yet another trail, this one marked only by an occasional pink ribbon, and followed it on through the woods, parallel to the creek.

I was stopped suddenly by the sound of crying. It was more of a sob, and then it was gone, and then there again. I stood still, and listened ever so carefully. I could tell it was coming from above and ahead of me. As I carefully looked around, the trees swaying in the breeze, I spotted a dead tree, a few inches in diameter, that had fallen up against another taller, stronger, tree. And as the taller tree danced in the wind, the seemingly lifeless one leaned there, on it's shoulder. As the dancer swayed, the one resting on it's shoulder would sob.

It was kinda amazing. I am sure there's a little imagination involved in the telling, but it was what I saw. It was really just the bark of the two trees rubbing together, and the resulting sound was just like a sob, a cry. I told the cryer to go ahead and shed a few tears for me, because I am too proud to do for myself, and went along the trail, on my way.

A few minutes later, noticing that I was wandering farther and farther away from my parking spot, I turned back, but instead of following any trail, marked or unmarked, I just followed my instincts, and headed off through the woods. At one point, nearing the creek, I saw a scar on the trunk of an old oak tree. The scar was recent, by a few months, and you could see a groove in the freshly peeled bark where a bullet had grazed the edge of the tree.

Walking away from that, I saw a fallen log, with no bark, and, stepping on it to climb over, my foot slipped, and I fell. It wasn't so bad, really, not enough to knock the wind out of me, even. But, it was enough to make me remember to watch my step, to be a little more careful in the path I must follow.

I went on to the creek, and found a few places where I could cross the several tiny streams that now existed, since it was beyond it's banks. I crossed over without getting wet, and headed back to the road, and hiked back down to where my truck was parked, and headed home.

Super Boli Sunday

There's a restaurant here named "Your Place" - or is that "My Place"???

Anyhow, they serve pizza, stromboli, subs, etc. The billboard out front is shouting at passers by this week:

Super Boli Sunday - Buy one boli, get one free.

I just find some grim humor there somewhere. Not sure what's so funny about it. Maybe nothing is, perhaps it's just me.

Thundersnow and Flying... Trampolines?

What will they think of next?

A couple of nights ago, we looked out the back door at the lightning as a thunderstorm moved up the valley. The lighting blasted down here and there, getting closer and brighter, and the deep rumbles of thunder could be heard...

When it finally hit our house, there was a minute or two of pounding wind and rain, maybe a little hail mixed in, and then... it was a fierce snowstorm. The ground and air were warm enough, and the storm short-lived enough, that we only got a coating on the ground that was gone in a little while, but while it lasted (10 minutes or so) it was a heck of a storm.

Oddest thing I've seen in a long time weatherwise. Except. Not. That is. Well. Till I found out the "rest of the story".

A half hour or so after the storm passed over, I had to run into town to pick up my son from a school function. The time was nearly 9:30. As I pulled out of our driveway and started down the road, I noticed that, a couple of houses down, there was some metal poles and springs and things laying on the opposite side of the road. I did not want someone to come along and hit them - it was obviously from a trampoline, and the poles could have damaged a car pretty bad, even though they were flat on the road. I stopped, put on my flashers, and moved the poles and springs off to the edge of the road.

As I was stopped there, an older couple came by and stopped, asking if I needed help. I told them I was about done, and they went on. They said down the road a ways was a chair in the road - somebody must have had a big load in their truck and was losing it as they went along. I was thinking, "Man, some people... "

Except... ummm... that is, till I heard the "rest of the story" (same rest as before, coincidentally).

The next morning I got up, and was getting ready to head into work, got in the car, and noticed something odd. There was a big black object hanging from the power lines at my neighbor's house. She was standing out in the yard, in her pajamas, hands on her hips, looking up unbelievingly at this "thing".

When I drove down and pulled over to the side of the road, it dawned on me what it was. It was the remains of her trampoline. It seems that the wind gusts of the short-lived storm must have picked up the trampoline, formerly located in the back yard, behind the house, and either carried it over the house, or around it (and my bet is over because it was directly behind the house and ended up hanging directly in front of the house), and up into the power lines near the road in front of the house.

The poles and springs from the night before. They were on the opposite lane of the road from where the trampoline was dangling. This may be a bad shot, but it's an honest one - no touch ups necessary.

Rainbows

Did you ever see a "perfect" rainbow? That is, one that stretches from horizon to horizon, and all the colors are clear and true.

Know what's funny about these rainbows? They always occur when you least expect it. The day has been cloudy, and soggy, and everything is a little bedraggled. And, you look up, and there’s a ray of sunshine shining into your cloudy day, then your eyes widen with surprise as that perfect rainbow appears. You may still see a misty rain falling in the distance, but right there, is that bright, beautiful rainbow.

Now, rainbows make me think of friends, and friendship. It is not that a rainbow can be compared to a friend, but rather, the friend is like the sunshine, that shines in on your rainy day. It makes things brighter and prettier, and no matter how dark it’s been, all of a sudden, even if just for a moment, all the colors of the rainbow are brought to life. All the darkness is forgotten while the beauty of the world around is proudly displayed.

And what’s the point of discussing rainbows, if we don’t bring up the pot of gold rumored to be hidden at the end of the rainbow? The best gold, the best treasure in the whole world, is a true friendship.

Arkanese

Back when I was a little younger, living in Texas, but surrounded by people from all over the country, and indeed, the world, working in the US Air Force, well, I still talked like a country bumpkin. And I'd be teased about why it is that I "was fixing to do something" (and I looked it up in the dictionary to prove that it was a legal use of the word fixing).

Oftentimes, I would exaggerate my natural tendency to drawl and talk slowly, making it seem even more countryish than I already did. But where I had the most fun, was working on a computer system where I could send messages up to the main console for the operations staff.

I learned to adapt to my environment. Some of the older folks who worked there had system userids that were based on the 7 dwarves, such as Grumpy, Sleepy, Sneezy (the system admin person), Happy (my boss) and so on. But, some of the younger guys, like me, adapted Star Trek names. I became "Bones".

So every once in a while, if you were an operator, you'd see a message from Bones telling you "Pleez du XXX - thankee" or some nonsense like that.

And so was born Arkanese. I am not sure if I coined the word, or my boss, but either way, when I'd start being a little silly, I'd tend to write things the way they sounded, instead of the way the true dictionary says they should be spelled. As an example, I am going to finish this article the same way.

Affer a while, mi wurk got bettor an bettor, an eye trully did bekum a sertifide peefessunal. I wuz edumacated. i figger eye culd bekum a PHD butt I ain't shur how 2 spill thet. Sidez, thay sed i hed 2 gradeait frum twelvth grad, an mi skool bak in Arkansaw ony wint 2 tha 8th grad.

Eye'm glad i wint in2 tha Air Farce cuz thay taut me to wurk on puters all da longg. an its a gud job 2 hev eksept whin thangs brake.

Will, eye'v rammbuled enuf 4 2day. gess i'd bittr git bak 2 wurk.

Playing with our food

Aren't we taught not to play with our food? It seems like when I was a kid, I'd get in trouble for "playing" with my food. Now, not all of us are like Randy in "A Christmas Story" who is encouraged to eat his food like a little piggie.

In fact, I'd say most of us would have gotten into trouble for it. Reminds me of the time when I was supposed to eat something, and didn't really want to... and when Mom left... some of it would disappear (there was a roll of butcher paper in the corner of the dining room with a plastic cap in the center. You could hide small bits down in there... seems like that might have led to an even worse punishment, but it's all kinda grey, now).

But I digress. Since moving to Pennsylvania, I've seen some pretty amazing things. They grow corn here, in a good year, by the millions of acres. Pumpkins... big, huge pumpkins - jack-o-lantern type as well as "neck pumpkins". But, I am not talking about vegetables, right now, but butter.

Yep, butter. Last weekend, I went to the Pennsylvania Farm Show. It's like the Arkansas State Fair, back home, but only the expo exhibits, rodeos, farm animals and the like. One of the "center pieces" of the show each year, is a "butter sculpture". Now, this guy... Plays with his food (and is compensated for it, to boot). I will post some pictures of this butter sculpture, but first, some facts.

2006 Butter Sculpture
1000 pounds of butter, donated by Land O'Lakes
Funded by PA Dairy Farmers
Tribute to: Progress in PA Dairy Industry
Case Donated by the PA Dept of Agriculture

This is a front view of the Milk Wagon, with two men carrying a crate with ice cream.

This is a back view of the Milk Wagon and ice cream crate.

This is a close up view of the wagon, from the back.

A close-up shot of the ice cream crate.

Another close up shot of the ice cream crate.

Front Teeth

Ever wonder... how to put back in those two front teeth, if they were to get busted out during some unplanned "event" such as a barroom brawl, or when your wife decides she's had enough and slugs you really good and hard, right there in your mouth.

Well, this is a way, I reckon, to accomplish this task, just in case no dentist or oral surgeon is around or you decide to just take it upon yourself to fix it up. Please note that this is not FDA nor doctor approved, and hasn't been tested (as far as I know).

It just came up in a conversation, and this seemed to be the logical place to write down my thoughts concerning it.

First of all... We all know that all the ills in life can be fixed with baling wire and bubble gum, and maybe duct tape or WD-40. I am gonna add to this super glue - it has it's place, too.

Take a piece of duct tape, ball it up on your tongue, and put your thumb under the tongue and push upwards... in the moisture of the mouth, this might not be the most effective stickum there is, but it's temporary anyhow... it should be nuff to keep the tongue out of the way for the more important part of the procedure.

you can then take some clothes pins, if available, and pin them to your upper and lower lips, forcing them out away from your gums a little - again so the stickum won't glue something accidental.

then when yore tongue and lips are safely out of the way, open up the super glue ... squeeze about half a tube on each of your teetn, and cram them back up into the cavities from which they were removed. be sure to hold them in place for a few minutes. maybe a wadded up paper towel would do the trick but be careful to get rid of the excess as paper towels glued to your teeth might not be the pleasantest tasting stuff in the whole wide world.

Joining the Air Force

Don't know if I ever told anyone exactly how it was that I ended up in the military, but it was a story. I started to say, interesting, but I suppose that all depends upon the perspective. There's probably quite a few of you that could care less why, or how, or when... so it might not be interesting at all. But, it's a story.

As a teenager, in small town America, I was the baby of the family, and my older brother's had gone off long before I hit my teens. One of those married and started a family. The oldest joined the Navy right after high school, and pretty much had made a career of it. The married one, at some point, decided he needed employment and training pretty bad, and he went and joined the Army.

My Grandfather, long before, had been a GI in World War II. My Dad somehow missed out - I think he was "flat footed" - and graduated right after WWII, and so missed the Vietnam draft because by that time he was a little too old. But still, I had several "military" connections.

The Sailor in the family did well... He got schooling, training, saw the world. He'd go back every so often for more training - he was stationed in Pearl Harbor for a few years. The Army brother ... well, his career was shorter, and pretty rocky. I suppose the Army has a reputation for not being "nice" to people, and .. well, at one point, he went AWOL for a while to avoid being seperated from his family. It effectively denied him the opportunity to re-enlist, but other than that, it was mostly just a slap-on-the-hand punishment. Still, for me, a negative view on the military.

But back to my teenage years. My Father died when I was 14. My brother just older than me, and I, well, we did what we had to do to keep food on the table, and my Uncle moved in with us, as well. Between us all, we managed to keep the lights on and life went on.

None of us had a lot of money. Mom was partially disabled, and couldn't really work, and Social Security gave us some income, but I am really not sure how we made it through those years, to be honest. But one thing I was sure of, I would never, EVER, be Government Issue (GI). One thing I knew - was that a GI was actually property of the United States Government. This is true - you sign on that dotted line - you belong to Uncle Sam.

At graduation time, I was 5th in my class. I had a scholarship to the University of Arkansas, which was some 150 miles or more from my hometown. I also had no car. I had worked weekends and summers for a long time, but had not saved much of anything - as any extra money tended to go into books and cassettes, and not to the future.

So, I decided college could wait. I'd go to work full time at the place where I was already employed part time - a quartz crystal mining company. It was right down the road from our house, less than a mile - and I could walk, or ride with my older brother, if I needed to.

I worked in the cleaning department, where we'd take the large chunks of rocks, with sandstone bases, and clear quartz points clustered up and growing out of the rock, which would be totally covered in thick, hard, red clay mud, and clean them. First would be a carwash type sprayer, just knocking off the worst of the mud. Then we'd put them in large trays and lower them into large vats full of oxalic acid, which would help dissolve the mud and allow the crystals to come out looking much prettier than they had first appeared. As an additional workload, I inherited my duties from when I had been a "weekend" employee, which was using the lawn mower and weedeater around the owner's house, the warehouse, and the retail outlet and campground on the back end of the property.

The owner was one of those guys who was the nicest guy, nicest neighbor in the world, when he wanted to be, and the biggest a-- .. ahem, excuse me, let me change the wording here a little bit - the biggest jerk in the world when he was so inclined. One afternoon, he came and got me from the cleaning area. He was hot. Very, very angry. It seems he had gotten on his big John Deere tractor, attached the bushhog to the back and started cleaning up around the fields around the property.

Around his house, a kit-home log cabin, was a picket fence. My job, or part of it, was to keep the yard mowed. Off to the side, beside the picket fence, was a steel-sided storage shed, wich a bunch of odds and ends in it. It faced the road, and then, back behind it was the edge of one of the fields that I mentioned above. When the owner was cutting the tall, tall grass in that area, outside the yard, back behind the storage shed, it seems he forgot that at one point a well had been drilled there. A water well.

In modern times - for those of you on city water with no idea what this means - when a well is drilled, a white (usually) pipe about 5 or 6 inches in diameter is placed down the well shaft to keep it from caving in. Usually, this comes up a few inches to a foot or two above ground level and is then capped off, with a removable top so that access may be gained to it if the need should arise. The pipes carrying water up are then inside this white shaft, and usually exit it below ground level and carry the water to the well pump, which might be located in a wellhouse or the basement of the house, or something similar.

At any rate, here he was, mowing away and whacked the top right off of that well cap with his bushhog. And, he came to get me. Yep. I'd been working there on weekends and summertimes for about three years, and one of my additional duties, as I described before, was mowing and weedeating the yard. However, since he hit the wellcap in the edge of the field - well - that was my fault, you see.

I should have had the foresight to go out there with the weedeater, and cut a wide swatch around that wellcap... then put some kind of pole up there, by it, and tie a brightly colored ribbon to the top - so he'd be sure to miss it. He told me all of this - I should have done each of those things. Down to the red or orange ribbon on top of the tall stick.

Yep. In those three or four years, I had never done this. So, him hitting that well was MY fault. Well, sir, it got me to ponderating on this business of working, for barely above minimum wage, at a dead end job. Now, it was like drugs. I am not saying anything against folks that want to use drugs. More power to 'em. But when I was about eleven, it dawned on me that I was a smart enough feller that I didn't need to be tempted into drugs. I had seen folks that had their brains fried from a little too much weed. There's no way I'd ever be that guy. So I stayed away from it. There's no pull, never has been.

Well, this was like that... Why was I, this smart kid, 18 years old - a bright future ahead of me, somewhere, working here, at a dead end job with no hope for a brighter future - no hope for training. Perhaps I'd make enough someday to buy a cheap car or truck but still... I needed to do something different.

That little voice started nagging me - maybe the military isn't so bad after all. I mean, I had done very well on the ASVAB when it was given a year or so earlier - and I kept getting all these flyers from recruiters in the mail. Finally, I started talking to people.

I talked to my Navy brother - he said, knowing what he knew then, he'd probably have gone into the Air Force - perhaps better training. Talked to my brother who had a short-lived Army career, and he said if he'd do anything over again, he'd probably have done the Air Force - they were reputed to have the best facilities, best food, best girls. I talked another friend who'd been in the service at some point, and he mirrored that thought.

I'd ask every person I met who had some military connection - and almost everyone agreed - "Go Air Force" - whether because basic training is easier, or for a hundred other reasons. Almost everyone. There was this one guy - who kinda sealed it for me - who told me, "Well, I was in the Air Force, Security Police. If I was to do it again, I'd go in the Marines. I wanted to tote a big gun...." I said, "Thanks" and walked away, thinking, "Uhh... Yeah, right." Where was this guy working? In the grocery store stocking shelves.

So, I went to the recruiter, who sent me to the MEPS (Military Entry Processing Station) in Little Rock, and I did another test, and the Air Force guy there said, "What do you want to do? You did well enough, you can pick anything you want." I had no idea, so I said, "What do you have in computers?" And, there was a Communications Computer Systems Operator with a 3 month wait, but a 6 year enlistment with E-3 out of basic training, or a Communications Computer Systems Programmer job with the same requirements, except about a 9 or 10 month wait.

At that point, I didn't even know how to turn a PC on. Other than the old Apple IIe's that were in the library at school, or the Tandy's in the tech room, I didn't know anything at all about computers. I did know that I didn't want to wait almost a year, and 3 months - wow - that sounded perfect ... Time to "clean up", relax, work out, do nothing, or anything, or whatever I wanted.

And 3 months later, I was in, and the rest, as they say, is history. I do not regret joining the Air Force. Turns out I was an operator for about a year, then moved into systems management and, well, basically, I do the same thing today, fifteen years later, but on the "outside". I am paid well, and work in a decent environment. I've been with my company for 8 years already, after doing six in the Air Force. Still work with computers, day in and day out.

And now, once in a while, when I cannot sleep, I get up and type boring stories into my computer and post them to the net for anyone in the world wide web to read.

Note: It was pointed out to me that I had already told this story, in a similar form right at about a year ago. It is a post entitled Government Issue. It's all right - you ramble enough, sooner or later you'll repeat yourself....

Church at Sunset

I've gotta say... I love this country where I live. The people here are friendly - like back home. The country is great - like back home. The sunsets are spectacular, like back home.

Pennsylvania is at the same time the farthest from home, and the closest to home that I have ever lived as an adult. The farthest, in miles, but the closest, in many other ways!

Here's the church on Powell's Valley Rd, taken tonight at sunset. Enjoy!

Quote of the Day

From a customer's email signature block:

"Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for they consider you crunchy and good with ketchup."

Lost

I'm alive, just lost.
Pardon me for the moment.
I'll be back, soon.

Changes

Looks like a nice day out today. Betcha it’ll hit about 84-85 degrees by 2pm…

My bones been cold so long, I think I’ll just go stretch out in the sun somewhere, leaning on a big old oak tree, and soak up them rays, filtered through the branches and leaves. Maybe I'll read a book, or simply sit and watch the ducks down on the river, splashing around, or the squirrels, playing and chattering up in the treetop. The flowers are getting purty again, too. I can almost see the grass growing - it's been shooting up an inch a day at least, for the last week or so.

It will feel good to be warm again. But I do like the winter and the snow. This is just the first of those pangs of wishing for something I cannot have taking over. Give it another two months and I'll be saying, isn't this ever gonna end? But if it weren't for the periods of coldness, we wouldn't much appreciate the warmth, now would we?

I suppose we all have that pang of dissatisfaction, in some form or fashion, all too often. We're given beauty and life and can't quite be satisfied with what we've got. I bet in the springtime when things start getting green again - it'll be raining too much. And in the summer, when everything is growing like mad, it'll be too hot. And the autumn... Well. I bet it'll be perfect. Just for a moment.

Then, it'll be gone.

Christmas Wishes

I am sure my one fan (if he or she is not, in fact, simply a figment of my imagination) would probably like me to post something meaningful. I have all the good intentions to do so.

I will again be writing meaningful content (okay, meaningful to me only - but take what you can get). Someday. But for now, I'll just post another picture.

I'm glad I started bringing my digital camera along with me on my daily trek into work. There's been some nice shots lately. Today's is from last evening's sunset atop Peter's Mountain (a good place to take a picture almost anytime!)



At any rate, the title of this post is Christmas wishes. It's not Christmas yet, but just in case I get away and don't get back to this, I do hope each and every one of you have a very Merry Christmas (or, if you prefer, a Hootin' Hollerin' Happy Holiday).

Appalachian Trail on Peter's Mtn

One of the things I really like about Pennsylvania (and western and northern Arkansas as well), is the wonderful people who live here. The other great thing is the natural beauty that surrounds us each and every day. In the springtime, here, it's the fresh green on the trees... Summertime has stripes of land where corn and other crops grow like crazy, and fall has the autumn colors, and winter... Winter is finally here.

This morning, driving into work, I crossed Peter's Mtn between Halifax and Dauphin PA, where the Appalachian Trail crosses, and although overnight the temperatures in town had risen to higher than freezing, on the mountain, it was still cold enough at sunrise to have ice coating all the trees.

I thought it was beautiful, and took these shots while I was driving along.

Cold

This morning on the way to work, they said the temperature was 4 degrees. A few minutes later, however, it had warmed up to a right balmy 5.

By afternoon, it made it somewhere in the mid-twenties. Now, 10pm, it's around 18. Not gonna get cold tonight, I think.

Course, we've got weather moving in. 1 to 3 inches of snow tomorrow... ice tomorrow night, then a few more inches of snow, if we believe the weatherman!

Sounds like a fun end of the week coming up.

Belsnickle Parade

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If you ever want to hear what the "Amish" Night Before Christmas is like, there's a version of it available, just like the redneck "Night Before..." The main character is a Santa-like character called the Belsnickle.

Saturday we went to the "Belsnickle Parade" in Halifax. There was snow on the ground, and there weren't many people there to see. Our Girl Scout and her troop all dressed up in very old fashioned dresses and marched, and got a good place in the judging, winning for the troop a nice cash sum of $100.

The first picture is of my son standing under a rather largish tree, near the parade route. Just a cool picture of a boy and a tree, nothing at all to do with Belsnickles! The second picture is of the Girls Marching in their dresses, singing Christmas carols. And the last picture is my daughter, wearing a dress handmade by the assistant scout leader.

More Pictures Part 3

Peter's Mountain, with the Appalachian Trail running atop,

is on the side of the valley, straight ahead of this shot,

but you can't see it because after the snow stopped,

and the sun started to shine,

there was still fog on the mountain.

I just happened to see this and was lucky enough

to snap the picture before it was gone.

Taken from Powell's Valley Rd

12/09/2005

More Pictures Part 2

Driving up Peter's Mountain

Dauphin, PA

12/09/2005

More Pictures Part 1

Church on Powell's Valley in Enterline, PA

Morning of 12/09/2005

S. E. P.

I don't like to write posts on the fly. I really do like to sit down and think about something worth writing, write it, and check it for grammar, and spelling, and then, cut and paste it into blogger.

This all assumes that you have the time to spend. I am guilty, often, of having way too much time on my hands. Sometimes, this is a very, very bad thing, as idle hands and minds tend to get themselves into trouble. But, usually, it makes for a fairly relaxed working environment, and as "fires" need to be stomped out, I hop on them and do it.

But, today, and probably for the next few, I am going to be busy on a project. It doesn't even matter the nature of the problem, but... I'll just describe it as an S.E.P. This was Douglas Adam's acronym for Somebody Else's Problem.

In one of his books, a spaceship landed in the middle of a ball game, in England, and no one could see it. That is, it was there. But, they didn't choose to see it. Their minds blocked it. They ignored it. It didn't exist, in their perceptions.

At work, we had a problem, a couple of years ago, that probably should have been fixed, then. But, it was somebody else's problem. I pushed and pushed and pushed for a "right" fix, but, there were other priorities, other projects, and no one wanted to pay the bill, take the responsibility, and eventually it shuffled off into a corner and got quiet.

And now, people are trying to "look ahead", to create a "roadmap" as it were for work, and I have resurrected this beast, this S.E.P., because now, since it was never taken care of before, it's an even bigger problem. It's one of those that isn't a problem, until something breaks, and then, it's a show stopper.

So, my posts may be few or far between, or they may not be - don't really know. All I know is if you do spot grammatical errors, or other problems, it ain't entirely my fault. It's S.E.P.

Snow...

Just had the first real storm of the season blow through... dumped several inches ... I didn't go out and measure, but I'd say at least five or six. It's pretty much stopped now (almost 8) even though they said it would be snowing till 11.

Work is on a 2 hour delay, and the school is actually closed today. I suppose I'd better quit being lazy and go shovel some snow so it doesn't pack down into something superslick in the driveway.

Pa Snow Pictures

The first one is from the tree farm, Sunday afternoon. I don't think that was the tree we ended up getting, but by the time we got there my batteries were dead.













This one is this morning's sunrise over Powell's Valley, a mostly agricultural area where we live. This picture is from a road the climbs over the hill to the next valley, maybe three or four miles from our house.












Another sunrise picture, taken this morning, in the next valley over...

Smoke

Sometimes, when I lay in bed at night, I think up these bright thoughts... Ideas for a new story or serious thoughts that should probably be placed on paper/keyboard, and once in a while, I get up and jot them down, but if I do, I tend to be up for a few more hours. So, sometimes, I just drift off to sleep, promising myself that I'll remember tomorrow, but I rarely do. It's kinda like waking up from a dream, drifting back off - and you can't remember the next day anything about it.

I had some thoughts last night, things I wanted to say, somewhere. But now, they're gone, like smoke in the wind.

Tree Hunting

Since we've lived here, we've gone and gotten a fresh tree each year. It's usually only $20 (this year went up to $25) and the farm we go to is only about a mile from our house, and they will either let you cut it or cut it for you, shake out the needles, core it if you've got that kind of stand, and bag it in netting, and mount it on your car, all for the same price. And don't forget the free coloring books and coffee and hot chocolate.

My son was saying on Saturday that we needed to wait until there was snow on the ground to go get the tree (last couple of years have been that way!). And, we woke up Sunday morning with about two inches of the white stuff. By Sunday afternoon, when we went to get the tree, a little of it was melted off, but not much. It's finally getting cold enough that this time it actually stuck on the roads a bit, too.

At any rate, we went and got a tree, and all the douglas firs, and other types of trees he had looked really cool there, with snow resting on the "leaves". The farm is only open Saturdays and Sundays, plus it's dark by the time we get home from work here, in December (almost full dark at 5pm), so we decided to go ahead and get it. We traipsed around just a bit, but the owner gave us an idea of where some trees about the height we were looking for were, and so didn't spend hours travelling through the acres and acres of trees. Everyone has an opinion - I like this one, no that one's too skinny, the top's messed up, or there's a gap in the side. But, finally, we found one that'll do...

Unfortunately, we spent the rest of the afternoon moving some furniture around the house and doing other things, and when I went to get the stand, I noticed a fine crack in the bottom of it. I am sure it would still hold the tree, but any attempts to water it would have ended up in the carpet (which actually probably did happen, last year). It was late enough, I didn't want to go all the way back into town and try to find one.

So, I got the stand, and a largish plastic cup, took them outside, and planted the tree in a cup of water, outdoors, and tonight we'll try that one again! I guess we'll have to get it in tonight, because overnight, they're calling for another 2-4" of the white stuff south of Harrisburg, and 1-2" up where we live... so we might have a 2 hour delay tomorrow. At least, the kids hope so.

And so goes life in Pennsylvania. If I can get the batteries in my camera recharged, I'll post a couple of pics of the snow covered trees (maybe tomorrow).

High Speeds

Look out!! I may be uploading more pics and if I don't post them here, maybe I'll post a link to them! I (finally) got high speed internet hooked up.

The phone company offered a deal, packaged with our satellite provider, and the discount on Dish Network, plus dropping the second phone line, and bundling some service that were seperate before, we couldn't afford not to upgrade. Umm.... welll......... okay, then, I suppose we could have afforded not to. Rather well.

But.... Now we have combined three formerly seperate bills into one, even if slightly higher one, and have joined the world of high speed internet! Whoo hooo....

First things first... the son wants the latest updates and patches to Star Wars Battlefront, and it is downloading slowly (I think) but compared to dial up, it ain't so bad.

Web pages sure do open a heck of a lot faster!!! Including this one. And now maybe I can get more of those really cool music downloads from The Electric Key Orchestra (visit www.theelectrickeyorchestra.com). My son, the musician, thought that the one-man ability to play so many instruments (through his synthesizer) was pretty darn neat! A thanks to the owner of the website!

I haven't posted much the last few days. Left work an hour late today, and it's just been one of those kinda weeks. I will try to do better in the future.

Later.....