Winter Wonderland

Trees semi‑ghostly

White snow atop the branches

Tips waving in the wind

Standing in white mounds of fluff

Backgrounded by a nearly as white sky

A bright red cardinal flies by

Wind picks up, throwing branches wildly

Snow falling onto unsuspecting walkers by

Such is a winter wonderland

Copyright Dec 1997 Cynthia Piper

Baby Cat whoops dog...

When we got Teddy, thank yous go to whomever dumped him and don't do it again, we figure he was with dogs more than other cats. He made right up to our dogs, didn't trust the cats. LOL I sometimes think he THINKS himself a dog.

Here's a scrap page I made of Teddy and Sandy playing together. I'm PRETTY sure if you click on the picture you can view a larger image of it.

:( Sad sad...

Corel bought out Ulead, along with PhotoImpact and the Ulead video program. Now.. Corel is shoving PI out the door and will no longer be making updates to PhotoImpact. They do still have boxed versions of PI X3 for sale and downloads. When the boxed version is all gone the download version will still be available. I LOVE PhotoImpact, ok... I LIKE it a LOT, better than PSP or PS. So much easier to use.

Here is the link to the Corel PhotoImpact page if you want to purchase the boxed or download version or the upgrade.

PhotoImpact

Mom and Home

Mom is here for the summer and she usually goes home in October. She has her doctor's appointment towards the end this year. So, I browse the internet to book her flight. Dick, my brother, called up and said... don't come home yet!! LOL They have their house up for sale and you KNOW when the house is up for sale you clear out stuff, put stuff in storage cause you don't want STUFF in there. Doesn't matter if you are still LIVING in there, STUFF has to go and you live with the bare minimum. So most of Mom's stuff is in storage and most of Dick and Pat's stuff is in storage and they keep storing more and more. STAGING! Wonderful term for getting a house in order so it can sell. Keeps the occupants on their toes "can we come show the house at four this afternoon?" SURE! and it's three so you scurry to pick up, dust, sweep, get things spotless again. And of course, no personalization in the house, you want the people looking at the house to imagine THEIR stuff in there by not seeing YOUR stuff in there.

Am I rambling yet???

ANYway... we get to have Mom here for longer! YAYAYAYAYAYA Denny and I are happy about that. I get to beat her at Rummy some more! LOL And turn about is fair play cause she's been known to clean my clock in the game, too. LOL

Hominy Flakes!

Where did they go? Who took them and forgot to bring them back?

I LOVED hominy flakes and would just love to find someplace to buy them. Does anyone make them any more? I've Googled, I've Binged, I've Yahooed. I've found recipes using hominy flakes that were printed in a 1906 cook book. And do you think younger generations even KNOW what hominy flakes might be? They're clueless. LOL

hmmmmm... I suppose I could slice hominy, dry it, store it, and then when I am in the mood for hominy flakes cook some up. LOL or not.

Independence Day 2009 Part Two

Ok... so the first is below this, guess we either watch them backwards or start at the bottom Independence day post to see them in order. LOL Here's another video of the fireworks.. I did try to put more than one video in one post, but it didn't work.

Independence Day 2009

We had a very nice day, indeed! It was overcast most of the day, which was quite all right by all of us; it wasn't unbearably hot. Seth and the crew came over and Donna came over and we cooked out, hamburgers, hotdogs, chicken, had potato salad and three bean salad and baked beans and watermelon. ymmmmmm.... The kids, Seth and Collin, shot off bottle rockets and Livi just thought those were great, along with the sparklers and the butterflies >?<.

We went to Ward for the fireworks around 7:30. Weren't sure how Livi was going to take them; every other year she screamed from fear, but this year she is a big girl, she turned 5 in May. She adored them. She thought they were awesome; and we agreed whole heartedly. They were awesome.

I took videos with my digital camera so am putting them up here to share. You can hear Livi in the background declaring how great the fireworks are. LOL

Computer going wierd..

Gotta love the cyber age and the computers. I fell in love with computers the very first time I set my eyes on one. HAD to have one. My first was a Commodore 64. Didn't have any programs for it... couldn't afford one! LOL My mom and dad sent the kids a game for it for Christmas... I can still hear the music, Ode to Joy. Don't remember the game, but I remember the music. LOL Hooked it up to the tv... had Ahoy magazine and typed in program codes from there. I worked on one for a year... ok... not that long at all, but those hours it took typing in that little program sure seemed like a year. Hubby got home from work that night and I hauled him upstairs to show him the computer. Typed in "run" and voila! It didn't work. It had before! But not this time. So... when I went through the coding again the next day I found a small program inside the program I had typed in and I had no idea how it got in there. Maybe I typed in two programs while typing in the one. It's a definate possibility.

Next computer... yes! 286 souped up to 386, 1 mb RAM, 40 mb hard drive, DOS shell 5, or maybe I upgraded to that from 4. That's it. No Windows, no mouse, and what was I going to do with that huge hard drive!??!?!?! I'd never fill that up! I did get an AOL diskette, for windows, and called AOL and they sent me one for DOS. And on the story goes.

My computer now is acting a tad on the wierd side. When I use my graphics program and make a selection with the selection tool, it stops, just cuts the selection off. When I click on something once with my mouse, it opens it up instead of dropping down the menu. I will have to keep on checking on this, maybe it's my program! hmmmmmmm... That just cannot be.. no no... like that program... don't want to uninstall and re-install if that is what the trouble is. oooohh... sugars. It is acting a little wierd with other programs, too, but not so wierd as in the graphics program.

I've run a virus check, no virus, I've run adware stuffs, cleaned that up, still wierd. ahh.. yes... I'm using Chrome and there were my favorite tabs/shortcuts/bookmarks whatevers at the top of the screen... they aren't there any more. AND.... I have Google Desktop in my toolbar and when I click on it to open it up... it won't do it. hmmm... will have to do some checking up on a lot of things. I did back up my files, just in case. And it was time, since it had been a year ago since I last did one. I was on my last disc, and the computer quit reading my disc. That could be dirty again. Need to get a can of air and see id that helps. Mayhaps I will end up doing system restore to an earlier time, like before things started acting wierd. :)

I have a love/hate relationship with computers.

Conversation with a Three Year Old

One day the electricity went off during a storm while we were living in DeKalb and Seth and his crew were over at our house. Collin just wasn't quite getting the jist of no electricity at first. I listened to his conversation with my son, Seth, and wrote it down. I thought I had lost this, I searched everywhere I could think of, and then a few months back I was cleaning some boxes out that were still in the shed and there it was! I was so thrilled. LOL

____________________________________________________________________

Conversation with a Three Year Old

“Can we see the fountain work? Where does the water go?”

“We can see it work when the electricity comes back on.”

“Can’t we plug it in?”

“We could, but it still won’t work ‘til the electricity comes on.”

“The electricity went out? Why?”

“Yes. The wind is blowing so hard it maybe blew a power line down somewhere. Maybe a tree fell on it.”

“Oh. Will you play race track with me on the Play Station?”

“We can’t. The electricity is out.”

“The Play Station won’t work? What about the TV?”

“No, it won’t work either. The stove, the refrigerator, TV, computers, nothing will come on without electricity.”

“The lights, too?”

“The lights, too.”

“Oh. Is the ball game on?”

“It might be, I can’t tell.”

“Why?”

“Why did I say it won’t turn on?”

Cause the electrincity’s off?”

“Yeah.”

Copyright: May 2003, conversation between Collin Hargreaves and Seth Piper

Fuuurrrrbies

Once upon a time, a long time ago in the present, there lived a family of two-legged tall walkers. They had a home built of wood cut from trees with holes cut in the walls so they could see the out of doors. There was green grass around and some flowers poked through the green to liven it up, some.

"What the dickens is this?" cried one of the two-legged tall walkers to the others, pointing to a whisper of grey fluff floating on the floor. "It surely is a lovely gift bestowed upon us by some unseen something. Let's get it and put it into a safe place, a treasure chest!"

"Yes!" cried the others. "Into a treasure chest this fluff stuff goes!"

"But what shall we call it?"

"Let's call this grey fluff stuff fuuuuurbies." suggested one two-legged tall walker, and they all agreed. Fuuuuurbies it became.

They soon set about searching about for more of the grey fluff stuff fuuuurbies, because it was just as light as air and could float. And SOFT! But they still didn't know where the fuuuuubies came from. They looked high and low for the fuuuuurby bearer, but were clueless as to where this bearer of wonderful gifts was.

Soon their treasure chest of fuuuuurbies was beginning to fill up and the two-legged tall walkers discovered these furrrrbies seemed to multiply rather quickly and were rather difficult to capture. And they still couldn't seem to find the culpret, errr... the gift bearer anywhere, although they looked high and low. And their treasure chest grew fuller and fuller of the furrrbies and they furrrrrbies were beginning to be an agravation rather than a treasured gift.

"These two-legged tall walkers were silly," thought the furrrrrby bearer. "They go about doing this and that and try to capture the furrrrrbies and they will never be able to capture it all," he laughed.

About this time the really tall two-legged tall walker looked over at the four-legged short walker and thought... "that four-legged short walker is dressed in stuff that is similar in looks to the fluff stuff furrrrrbies. I must go check this out further." And over to the four-legged short walker he went. Low and behold, that four-legged short walker was just COVERED with the fluff stuff furrrrrrbies! As the two-legged tall walker ran his hand over the four-legged short walker some of the furrrrrbies floated from the four-legged short walker and soared through the air and lazily came down into a spot of sunshine on the floor.

"Ooooohhh.. how about that," said the tall two-legged tall walker. "Our fuuuuurby bearer was here and we didn't know it. Not that he was here all that long, just long enough to give us a treasure chest full of fuuuuurbies. Now... what to do with them all!"

After the tall two-legged tall walker let everyone know who, or what, was giving them all the fuuuurbies, they tried to figure out what to do. Finally they decided. They stuffed the fuuuuurbies in small bags, washed it in the washing machine in hot water and dried it in the dryer in the hotest setting and then dumped it all onto a table and felted the furrrrrbies and made hats out of them and sold them on eBay.

Moral of the story? If you want to make millions of dollars on eBay, get yourself a cat and make hats from the fur!

Traveling!

Tomorrow I gotta pull out the suitcase and get things ready to go. Angie and Brian are driving up from Texas on Wednesday and Thursday morning we're heading up to northern Illinois for Emily's graduation from Northern Illinois University. YAYAYAYYAYAYYYY :)

I am so looking forward to going... but the DRIVE!! I'm becoming a homebody but I do still like to go places. Maybe it's just the fact I don't like unpacking. Packing is fun... unpacking is... welll... LOL not quite so fun. Love to visit, love to get home, don' t particularly like putting things back away. I'm lazy.

Gotta remember to take the camera. I'm going to stay with Mike and Sheila and the boys in Mt. Morris and on Mother's Day we're all going to church and then out to eat in Polo. I KNOW the food at the restaurant we're going to is good. I know the owner, Howard, and he is an excellent cook. And the desserts!! mmmmmmmmm..... I know who makes them, at least the pies, his mom, Flo. :)

Monday we'll be driving to Indiana and then head back on Tuesday morning. Wednesday morning Angie and Brian will be heading back to Texas. oohhh... driving driving driving. WHOOOOO!! Break out the pillows and take lots of breaks to stretch the legs!!

Dish Washer Detergent

You've seen advertisements about how much better the "expensive" cleansers are in the dishwasher than the less "cheap, only nothing is cheap any more" expensive cleansers are. How much better they clean. How they don't leave a film or spots or stuffs.

Well... I'm here to tell you... LISTEN to those ads! At least that part of them. It's TRUE! I always by the less expensive dish washer detergents. Last time, next to the last time, I bought a really cheap brand, and I through it away and started washing my dishes by hand! That's how bad it was. LOL They never came out clean looking. They looked like they had scum surrounding them; plates, glasses, cups. I have clear glass cups and plates; they were not clear after washing them with this soap. I thought, silly me, if I use MORE with the washing, but no... that just made them filmier quicker. I through it away and got Cascade. LOL

Lesson learned.

Exercise in Futility

"What is this exercise?" you ask. (I asked for you, just in case you didn't ask.)

This particular exercise in futility is digging out granddaddy grass. This grass's root ball has been well ensconced in the earth since the beginning of time and has absolutely no intention of being removed now, especially by me.

I did get one patch removed, knowing and knowing well, that it will grow back as the season wears on. I know I didn't get WAY down deep enough (center of the earth may not have been deep enough and I certainly wasn't going to dig that deep), so, the futility. It looks nice now but will be back and make life for the flower garden grassy. Another plot of grass, I wasn't able to get all of it to be unseen on top. Sooooo... I just chopped it down as far as I could and covered it with the mulch I had waiting in the bags for when the grass removing chore was complete.

It looks nice out there in that little garden now. The mums I planted last summer are coming up and I think they really are the mums, not the weeds that LOOK like the mum leaves. The cannas are coming up nicely. I did split a couple and move them to another spot. They are so pretty when they get their growth and their bright red flowers bloom out. aaahhhhh... :)

Even with the exercise in futility done today, I know the cannas will hide anything that comes up behind them. YYAYAYAYAYAY

WAKE up!

Crouching in the tall grass, stalking the unsuspecting critter, the orange cats moved cautiously. His prey knew nothing of what was coming, he was sound asleep. Closer, the orange cat comes, closer...

CLANG! ROWLLLL!!!

What the.....

As I jump straight up from a sound sleep I look to the direction the racket is coming from, the window where Fluffinator is.... was... sleeping peacefully, and an orange cat hanging on the outside of the screen trying to pounce on him, both cats roaring out their battle cries at each other. So I get out of bed, walk to the window, flick the screen with my fingertips, and shoo the cat hanging on the screen away. Fluff, in all his re-found majesty and huff from being so rudely awakened, jumped down, went to the other window, and returned to his mode of peaceful slumber.

Who of you likes HGTV and such stations?

I do. I'm hooked. Have been for quite some time, now. And to think, back in the early 70s I was hooked on soaps and TV in general. I would watch TV from the time I got up in the morning till I went to bed at night. Now, I watch shows, but it's is noise a lot of the time, turn on the music.

But I do like the home repair/remodeling/fix-it-up shows. A person can get a lot of ideas there! I don't see Decorating Cents any more and I like that show. I don't see Christopher Lowell Show, either, and Carol Duvall, and Trading Spaces. Love those shows. When Trading Spaces lost Paige Davis it just wasn't the same, and then she came back and I caught a few of the shows, and now I don't see it listed on there at all with new shows, and it's hard to find a re-run, too.

On the Christopher Lowell Show I had seen an idea for a family room with computer stations in the middle with floor to ceiling book cases and each computer station was kinda like it's own little work station/lounge but there was also TV and couch and chairs and it was just cool. I keep telling hubby about it and that is what I would like to do in our family room. He can't picture it and I can't find it on the web anywhere. I also would have to make the book cases and I'd need to get new computer desks and oh... RIP OUT THIS CARPETING!! ewwww... I'm gonna go search the web, again, to see if I can find it. I'm SURE it was on the Christoper Lowell Show.

(inserted after search)
Well, I haven't found that, but I did find the Christopher Lowell website.
http://www.christopherlowell.com/


I loved the Carol Duvall show, would watch it every chance I got. SO many ideas for crafting, clay work, scrapbooking, card making, jewelry making... all sorts of stuff. Sometimes I can catch a re-run from an old show. One time they had a chat after the show and I went online to the chat room and it was great. I even got to ask Carol a question and she answered it.

I think the networks ought to bring these shows back! YES YES YES How about you, what do you think?

Wee got a Wii !!

Yes, wee did. And it is fun. Seth and his family were over Saturday and we played baseball, and golfed, and helped Dora rescue the Snow Princess, and and and... I didn't do well. LOL

Then we added Wii Fit. ohmy... It isn't hard! But... if you're outashape like me... lol It did call me a couch potato on a couple of things. TRUE!! Or, perhaps, desk chair potato. I'm getting a little better at the balance ones. I've done a couple of yoga exercises and did pretty well with those. The strength ones... pushups.. woa... Gonna have to work on that one. LOL I had to do the 'sissy' pushups and I wasn't good at THOSE. I liked the aerobics ones. The Basic Step is cool and the first time I did the Advanced Steps I was sooooo lost. LOL I did better today. I get tangled up when I add the clapping to the steps. Never could walk and drink pop at the same time, now it's extended to stepping and clapping in time to the music.

If you can manage it... get a Wii! It is fun and it sure beats getting a health club membership and not using it, which I've been known to do. I walked in a bubble down the river! Of course, I didn't get past the island, I crashed. lol Tomorrow is another day.

Commander in Chief.... what happened?

No, I'm not posting about our current Commander in Chief. This is about the television series with Gina Davis.

What happened to that show? Where did it go? I loved it and so did millions of other people.

It was on at a certain time on a certain weekday night and then they started moving it around and dropping nights. I'd jump with anticipation when I saw that it was going to be airing; it was a good show. I had just been reading about how popular the show was, was the best drama of the season, had the highest viewer ratings, and two weeks later it was gone. VOOSH! Vanished.

So, who was afraid of the show that they wanted it off the air? hmmmmm? Wonder if they would bring it back where it left off if we all complained about it loud enough.

Tax Cuts and Stimulus stuffs

Hubby has MSNBC on the T and V and I heard one of the reporters ask the president's press secretary a question about whether the working class people, you know, those who don't have a lot of money, should get that because all they will do is put it in the bank and save it instead of spending it to put it back into the system where it needs to go to build it up... or whatever it is supposed to do.

What kind of statement is that? Where is she coming from? I'd say that people who don't have money and get a tax cut and/or stimulus moneies, aren't going to be putting into a savings account, they are going to spend it, rather quickly, paying bills they haven't been able to pay because they don't have enough money. That's the way it works for us, anyway. Last stimulus pay we got, $600something, paid bills and bought groceries. Not into a savings account.

I will not say I know abouth the economy of a country or anything like that... I'm really pretty dumb about it... but I know if I have bills and a need for groceries, that tax cut and/or stimulus will be going to pay bills and buy groceries. I think that is common sense.

Toilet Paper.... what a topic!!!

Just an observation I've made. You have noticed how a pound of bacon isn't a pound any more, but the price is just as high, or higher, than it was when it WAS a pound. And two quart container of ice cream that we used to buy just doesn't hold two quarts of ice cream any longer. Did the price go down to reflect that shrinkage? nope.

Now, toilet paper. We have in the main bathroom a paper holder that has no rod in the middle, it has a, we'll call it a metal knob for lack of another term at the moment, on the insides of each bracket that sticks out where one would put the roll of toilet paper. The one knob is stationary and the other is spring loaded so it can be pushed in to fit the roll in and springs back out to hold it there.

I bought a BIG package of toilet paper and found that the cardboard core was shorter than it normally is and wouldn't stay on that holder, but fall to the floor. I thought, ok... I got that big package on sale at a good price, maybe that is why it was such a good price, there was a flaw in the length of the core and paper. Next time I bought the necessity I bought a different brand and not such a good price as the first, and low and behold... that was shorter, too. Every brand of toilet paper we have gotten since, the tube has been shortened JUST enough that it no longer fits the toilet paper holder. And ya know what? The price of toilet paper hasn't dropped to reflect the smaller size, either.

I think there's a conspiracy out there! Mel was right!

Birthday Alert!

Denny's birthday is Wednesday! YAYAAYAYYA I need to get busy and make him a card. He got his present today, Command and Conquer III >?< and it works on Vista. That's what he is doing now, playing the new game.

Good grief, Denny's going to be 64. And it was just yesterday that I married him! ohh... ok... that was 40 years ago... ok.. That 40 years went by fast!! Ok... heading to PhotoImpact and making a card.

Gasoline... Now there's a topic

Last week the price of gas jumped up 30 cents. Then on Monday it went down 10 cents. Today we drove into Beebe and I noticed that the price was up 20 cents from what it went down to on Monday. I mentioned it to Denny and he said, "yeah, and the price of oil per barrel is still what it was when it was 40 cents less than it is now."

What's up with that?

It SNOWED outside

My first ramble and it's about snow. LOL It didn't snow much, certainly not enough to make even a slight dusting on the ground, but it was snow. I called Mom to let her know. She said we could keep it. She lives in Florida and it was cold enough down there when I called they had the furnace running and were dressed in warm fleece. I think, when I called, it was 51 degrees down there.

There was something else I was going to write about, I thought of it during the night. I guess I should start keeping paper and pencil by my bedside again and write them down as they come, cause when I don't they tend to disappear. LOL