Month: August 2013

  • Saying Goodbye

    Xanga is taking down this platform in an hour. This has been a comfortable place for me, filled with memories; I'm going to miss it. Goodbye, Original Xanga.

    I hope to see all my friends on Xanga 2.0 sometime in the next few days.

    #WeAreXanga

  • I got my letter!

    I've been re-reading the Harry Potter books. In fact, I just finished the last book of the series last night. It's kind of hard to resurface back into the real world after being immersed in that world for so long. I have the same problem after reading Tolkien (any Tolkien, not just The Lord of the Rings trilogy). As I finished each book (and around the middle of the last book), we watched the corresponding movie. So yesterday evening I finished the last book and last night we watched the last movie and I went to bed with images of Number 4 Privet Lane, Diagon Alley, Platform 9-3/4, the Hogwarts Express, Hogsmeade, Godric's Hollow, The Burrow, Number 12 Grimmauld Place, Shell Cottage, Malfoy Manor, the Ministry of Magic, St. Mungo's, The Forbidden Forest, and of course Hogwarts flitting through my head. I may have even dreamed about some of those places, but I took an Ambien last night so I don't remember my dreams.

    This morning I was lying in bed after slowly and reluctantly awakening. I grabbed my Bible and read my chapter for today (John 4), then reached for my Kindle and checked my email. And there was my letter. It may not have arrived by owl post, but I was almost as excited as an 11-year-old receiving their first letter from Hogwarts. My letter was from John. (Do you see the symmetry?) I filled out the form and will soon be standing on the platform waiting to be transported to a magical new place - Xanga 2.0. Like an 11-year-old headed to Hogwarts, I'm excited and a little nervous, and a bit sad about leaving behind this place with which I've grown so familiar. Hopefully, there will be many old friends waiting for me at the new place, new friends to be made, and some version of a Marauder's Map to help me figure the place out.

    I hope to see many of you up at the castle!

    I wonder how I would have written this post if I'd been reading about Harry Dresden instead of Harry Potter?

  • You know you're in a quality eating establishment when...

    ... you walk in the door and all the regulars are sitting at the bar loudly comparing their probation officers. And when I say loudly, I mean top of their lungs, yelling over each other. I can't really say with any authority that they are regulars since this was only our second time in that particular establishment, but that's the overall impression I got. Anyway, @Bookmark61 and I were trying hard not to laugh at the topsy-turviness of  lawbreakers googling their probation officers to "see what kind of person" they are.

    Once they tired of the probation competition, they began shouting about dirt bikes and engine sizes and what was legal to drive on public roads and the arguments made to law enforcement about the subject.

    This was followed by a shouting match about the virtues of various dogs. I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess they were all hunting dogs. And probably all mutts, which I must concede are the best kind of dogs.

    And then the wedding party trooped into the bar in their froufy turquoise dresses and black tuxedos with turquoise shirts. Except for the groom who was in white, and the bride who was wearing black. It was a pretty dour looking group so the wedding must not have lived up to expectations which, considering the hole in the wall they walked into for the wedding-party-only reception is pretty sad. Because of the way the bar staff was scrambling, and the fact that they called in reinforcements, we were unsurprised to find out from our server that the bar was not expecting to host a 20-30 person reception.

    I left our server a generous tip because the whole thing was pretty entertaining, and I have a feeling the wedding party probably stiffed her. Plus, the service was great and the food was as good as we remembered it from our previous visit.

    I love small towns!

    P.S. Today is @Bookmark61's birthday!

  • Silenced

    I've had a rough week. I know, it's only Tuesday. I'm talking about last week and this week. It all started with a pain in my neck on Monday of last week. Since I was talking to somebody about Windows 8, I assumed that was the source of my pain. By Monday night I was not feeling very well and by Tuesday morning I knew I was sick. On Thursday I woke with no voice. And here I am still with a pain in the neck, still coughing, and still not able to speak above a whisper.

    I went to the doctor today. She said it's not bronchitis and it's not strep throat and I should keep doing what I'm doing, drink some warm liquids, and stop trying to whisper. That's why I try to avoid going to the doctor. Half the time I end up paying to be told to keep doing what I'm doing, and add something I don't like. I don't like warm drinks, but I stopped at the grocery store on my way home and went down the coffee and tea aisle. I thought maybe I could find some kind of herbal tea that doesn't taste like tea. None of it looked good so I got three boxes, hoping I'd find one that I can choke down. I tried the pomegranate tonight. It still tastes like tea. I doctored it with lots of honey and it tastes like nasty tea with honey in it. I think I managed to drink about three tablespoons of it before giving up. Next I'll try the lemon and ginger. I'm not optimistic. To me it's like drinking warm cough syrup slowly. Yuk.

    I know people have bigger problems, but it's my blog and I'll whine if I want to.

  • Sunday Catch-up

    It looks like another beautiful Michigan summer day outside. I've been as far as the back porch trying to get Boo's attention. It's pretty easy for him to ignore me since I can barely croak out a whisper for the 4th day in a row. I've had a nasty cold (I refuse to accept that it is anything worse because as soon as I do I'll start feeling even more crappy than I already do) since last Tuesday. Actually, it hit on Monday afternoon with a sudden, acute pain in my neck, but since I was talking to someone about Windows 8 at the time, I assumed it was caused by anger and tension. Since Tuesday I've been single-handedly (or single-nosedly) keeping Puffs tissues in business. I sincerely hope somebody else can take over that burden by the end of this week. I've been kept pretty busy coughing, sneezing, blowing my nose, popping cold pills, whispering, slurping down Jello, and sucking on throat lozenges, cough drops and hard candy to help ease the pain in my throat. I have not drunk Bushmills, @bricker59, because I'm already so light-headed I really can't afford to add alcohol to the mix. But I do have a partial bottle and I will use it if I get desperate.

    This stupid cold came at a bad time. Not that there's ever a good time to get a cold, but I had plans for this month. This month is 31 Days of Geocaching and I made a commitment to myself to find at least one geocache every day. There are several new ones not far from The 'Duh that I was saving for this month and I've been picking them up, plus a few that are further out as I feel up to it. Yesterday I asked @Bookmark61 to drive me to a park about 12 miles away. I was too light-headed to drive, but managed the easy walk in the park to find the two caches hidden there with only one stop to catch my breath on the way back to the van.

    On Thursday, even though I was sick, I helped out an elderly friend who is selling everything she owns and moving back to Grand Cayman where she was born and raised. I had committed to working a four hour shift at her garage sale and took a box of surgical masks and a pump bottle of hand sanitizer with me. I'm sure I looked pretty silly wearing the mask, but everyone who stopped by the garage sale should be grateful.

    Yesterday was supposed to be a fun day spent hiking and geocaching with @murisopsis and @OldDogSparky on a hiking trail up around South Haven. Then we were going to come back to my house and Brett was going to grill sausages and I was going to let Mark and Val test the pie recipe I created for the village pie contest next month. I had to cancel the outing because I don't want to get Mark and Val sick, and I don't have the strength for hiking at the moment. I still had a half-dozen pears that needed to be used, though, so first thing this morning, before the day wears me down, I made my Captain Morgan Spiced Pear Pie with streusel topping, using the homemade pie crust recipe I found online. The pie just came out of the oven. I made a small change to the recipe so I hope I can taste it well enough to tell if it's an improvement. I baked the leftover scraps of pie dough and tasted them (sort of). It was very flaky crust, so I've got that going for me.

    And that's about it. I've been reading, resting, coughing, sneezing, garage selling, geocaching, making Jello, and baking a pie. And those are just the highlights; I didn't go into every detail of my week. You're welcome.

  • Fordson Tractor

    @Bookmark61 and I stumbled upon some old tractors not long ago. There were orange Case tractors, green and yellow John Deere tractors, and one little gray tractor with red wheels.

    It's a Fordson tractor. Fordson was made by Henry Ford & Son/Ford Motor Company from 1917 to 1950.

    This one has a crank starter and is probably one of the earlier models made between 1917 and 1920.

    I loved the wooden plug in the gas tank. Looks like a field repair to me.

    Just thought I'd share.

  • Bleh

    Last night I was driving home through beautiful cornfields, emerald after a good summer rain. Steam was rising off the road, mist was hanging over the vineyards, the sun was a perfect red ball on the horizon. I was waxing poetic, writing today's post in my head and ruing my lack of camera.

    I was exhausted after my usual hectic Monday, and my neck had suddenly started hurting, so I didn't get around to writing my ode to a summer evening. In fact, I was trying to complete some writing I've been trying to get done when I fell asleep at the computer. As I trudged upstairs to bed, I thought, "That's okay, I'll write about the corn with the little gold tassels on top, the clouds of mist suspended over the grapes, and the ball of fire sinking in the direction of the lake when I get up in the morning."

    I expected to wake up with the poem fully formed while I slept. Instead, I woke up with a cold. I should have known when I put on socks and pulled a long sleeved tee shirt on over my nightgown. That explains the pain in my neck. My head feels like it's stuffed with cotton. I only have about 460 words left on the  writing I've been trying to finish but every time I look at it my brain is too fuzzy to come up with one word. I'm not even sure what I'm writing right now.

    Why are colds so miserable? Even my gums hurt. And there are things I need to do this week, head cold or not. And my cold medicine wore off and I don't feel like getting up and wrestling two more pills out of their blister pack armor. Blah, blah, bleh.

    Thanks for letting me whine. You don't have to comment.

  • Purple

    There has been much anticipation in our backyard this summer. The purple has finally begun to show up, meaning anticipation will soon become glorious reality.

    We haven't seen many butterflies yet, but now that the butterfly bush is fully engaged, we are beginning to see some yellow swallowtails and a few smaller butterflies.

    The blackberries are ripe, huge and sweetly delicious. We don't grow enough to make jam or anything, but we can grab a few berries off the bushes for a quick snack or to toss into a fruit salad.

    The grapes have begun to get sweet and may be ready to harvest this week. I have no plans for them; I may just give most of them away this year.

    The plums are not quite ripe enough to pick, but in a couple of weeks I will probably have an abundance of sweet little plums which I will probably also give away unless I get brave and try to make plum brandy or something.

    Not all the purple is in our yard. I stumbled across this building in a tiny town not far from The 'Duh.

    Have you seen any purple lately? Post photos if you are able.

  • Roll Jennie Jenkins, Roll

    I have very fond memories of my Grandma Daniel singing to me when I was a child. I've written about Grandma Daniel before. LINK She would probably have been categorized as a hillbilly. She had a hard life, raising eight children during the Great Depression, following the cotton picking season from Arizona to Arkansas, living on what she could grow. The house I remember her and Grandpa living in was little more than a shack, with the bathroom in a separate building out back. It had once been a simple outhouse, but by the time I was old enough to have memories of visiting, it had working plumbing and a modern toilet, sink and bathtub.

    We loved staying at Grandma's house in the tiny town in the Mojave Desert. I felt like an animal who'd escaped from a zoo whenever we visited there. The wide open desert was our playground and the source of Grandma's fabulous rock collection. I loved sitting on the porch in the early morning, watching Grandma brush her long white hair right after she'd washed it. By the time she finished brushing it, the desert heat had dried it and she would pull it back and twist it into a bun at the back of her neck.

    Her grandchildren never cared that Grandma's house was unpainted and a little rickety. We never thought of her as a hillbilly, or a migrant cotton picker, or a sharecropper's wife. We had enormous respect for her because of her vast storehouse of common sense, her uncanny ability to know what was going to happen before it happened, her love for unusual rocks, her primitive paintings, and the old folk songs she sang to us.

    One of those songs was called Jennie Jenkins. You can find the lyrics here: LINK  Grandma sang it a little bit differently. The "fol-de-rol-de" chorus was a little different in her version, and the reasons for not wearing the colors varied a bit. For instance, in Grandma's version, Jennie won't wear purple, "...it'll make me burple." Because that made her grandchildren laugh.

    I've seen a lot of purple the past couple of days. I took photos and I was going to post them today, but then I started thinking about Jennie Jenkins and the word "burple," Grandma Daniel and her little house in the desert and the fun we had on those long ago summer vacations.

  • Yellow

    It seems early for this. What have you seen that's yellow this week?