Clouds

The moon was big and bright as I was headed home tonight. Stopped at the lake and took a few photos.



Do you see an angel in the clouds? Or maybe Batman?

True Lies

When I got home last night, I guess the power had gone off and my VCR did not record the season premiers of NCIS and The Unit as I'd planned. Well, I did get to see the end of The Unit, but I didn't have anything recorded to watch. I'd even watched my soap daytime drama after work online.

When JudyA did the Mission:Organization on my living room a few weeks back, I went through all my VHS tapes and tossed most into a donate box but kept out a few. One that I remembered enjoying and kept and have been thinking about watching was True Lies, LINK, starring Arnold Swz. and Jamie Lee Curtis; Bill Paxton as the sleazy used car salesman. I'd forgotten what an action movie it was. A nice escape from reality movie. Seemed like just the ticket last night.

Two Years Tomorrow

Well, thought I'd get this one out of the way today so tomorrow can be all about Martha's birthday instead of Gene's D-day. I paid to keep his website up for almost two years, but the time came to let it fade into cyberspace. Today I removed the link to the past website which was on my blogroll. His old blog link is still there though. I don't like to go there very much because his last entries were about the hurricane coming. I was going to post a photo of him in this entry but can't seem to find it. So this avatar he used will have to do for now.


Gene's Avatar.

Today I spilled a big ol' coffee onto my desk, my keyboard, my lap, my blouse, the floor. And it was a big ol' cup of coffee. That wiped out the morning trying to get that all cleaned up. My boss kept coming by and calling me Coffeebean, Juan Valdez, Mr. Valdez. Juan, and finally Juanita. Sheese. I was already distracted anyway and then had to go and spill. Just have had a hard time concentrating. Who knows, maybe it's subconscious and things will be better after tomorrow.

(A Later Spill Note: My boss dropped a 2-inch stack of papers that "spilled" on my office floor. A co-worker dropped her purse and almost the entire contents "spilled" in the floor. Whatever electromagnetic forces that were ebbing and flowing and vortexes coming and going, I guess there was a big Spill Magnet happening in my office today.)

I've been trying to do some house cleaning on my photos. I finally got all the photos downloaded off my camera. I had so many on there, I couldn't take one without deleting one. And it holds LOTS of photos and video. I still haven't gotten it all into my Flickr Account. That could take a while, and then there's the labeling and tagging, etc.

This afternoon, a former student worker of mine, RyanB, stopped by to say hello. He is now the Operations Manager for a major venue in a major metropolitan city. Sporting events, concerts, etc. Always nice to hear great success stories.

Sadly even though it was time to remove a link on my blogroll, I am happy to say I got to add a link to a friend's new blog. I'm looking forward to some superb randomness from her entries.

Well, this week is an exciting week for a TV junkie like me. So many series premiers. Last night I was going to watch Chuck and Heroes but reception was terrible. Thank goodness they post the episodes online now. Which is good for me since there are shows I want to watch on networks I don't get on my little vintage tv antenna. Those would be Lost and Ugly Betty.

Are you busy watching tv, too? What have you been waiting for this season?

Flowers From Deb

Flowers From Deb, originally uploaded by Ms. Judy.

Deb came by my work and brought me flowers last Monday but I was gone out of town and missed her. They called me while I was en route/driving so I could talk to her. Here is a photo of her talking to me with my flowers. I hate that I missed her! I'm almost never gone! (That is the door to my office behind her.)

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Exploring Flickr Pictobrowser

Here is an album through my new Flickr account of a wedding I went to this summer. Please let me know if you can view it.

This Saturday Is Cooler Than Last

I woke up around 7:00 this morning. Eienstein must have heard me stirring because he came upstairs, jumped on the bed, and started meowing. A lot. And loudly.

Opened up the house when he finally talked me into coming downstairs and feeding him. Really great weather. Clear, cool, low humidity. Not so quiet this weekend, though. Off in the distance, there were some serious heavy machinery sounds. Although I wasn't hearing the cracking sound of timber coming down, I still wasn't sure what it might be or how close. I didn't think it was that close, but decided to walk the property line anyway.

Haven't done that in a while and it was time. Needs to be done with some regularity to make sure the neighbors are keeping within their boundries. One neighbor (now moved) was clearing their land years ago and ended up cutting down some of our trees. And another time, they were burning and ended up burning some of our property! Now that'll piss you off!

Walking the six acres is a little bittersweet. Gene found this property and put our move here in motion. He'd moved into my place and we did need a brand new place in which we shared equal history.

Plus the buying as opposed to renting thing. He was right on that one. With all the money worries there can be, having six acres and a cabin paid for makes the 35 mile commute to work worth it. Property and taxes in my work-town are way more expensive which I rediscovered when thinking of moving closer to work after Gene died. Would not be able to find comparable amount of property there for the price. And I do like that buffer zone of land from the neighbors.

It's nice having your own woods to go walking in, too. He enjoyed walking the property more than me. I just realized that today I didn't look for the housesite we picked out for our someday-real-house we dreamed of building. Had my mind on finishing up and getting back to the house. Besides, real shoes would have been a better choice than flip flops for walking in the woods and I knew my coffee would be ready when I got back.

I thought the racket would have lasted all day but didn't. It quit before i even finished the circuit around the property line. Why would they fire up big machinery at 7:00 on a Saturday morning if they weren't going to try to get in at least a half a day's work? May have to drive down that direction later today to see if there's some big construction going on.

I Was Born On A Friday. Perpetual Calendar.

LINK

Summer's Over In The Morning

Autumnal Equinox
More dark than daylight coming up!

In the language of science, an equinox is either of two points on the celestial sphere where the ecliptic and the celestial equator intersect. For the rest of us, it's one of two times a year when the sun crosses the equator, and the day and night are of approximately equal length.

At the autumnal equinox (Sept. 23, 2007, 5:51 A.M. EDT), the sun appears to cross the celestial equator, from north to south; this marks the beginning of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere.
Link (from Infoplease.com)

Photo Storage Sites

I've got to move my photos from my Yahoo Photo Albums. I don't have too many there but don't want to lose them. Yahoo bought out Flickr and I can move them there. But the problem is that I already have a Flickr account and it is at it's limit for a free account. So do I go ahead and buy in? Do I create a second account there or somewhere?

I originally started the Flickr account so I could link photos to my blog. But now since Google bought out Blogger, I can just add them in there. But I don't like how it thumbnails them in the blog. Plus I'm approaching my free limit there, too.

When I used the Flickr link, I could make them a more generous size. Granted I haven't explored if it is possible to make the photos larger in the post using the Google feature, but that's another issue. Either way, sounds like it'll involve some HTML.

Suggestions of best places for photo storage online? I'm know there are tons. Snapfish, Shutterfly, Pixagogo, etc.

Have you ever ordered one of the hard cover books from your photos? They look like they could be great gifts.

Have you thought about how we put all our family snapshots online now? When we kick the bucket, the link to those photos will gone when we're not around to keep paying. No going through the photo albums left on the shelf or finding a shoebox full of photos of great-grandma, cousin Oscar when he was a babe, etc. stuck back in the corner of the closet.

This became very evident to me when I was trying to keep Gene's website alive in cyberspace. Not having the login/password to the account prevented me access. Now I'm thinking that I should pick one photo storage site, keep everything on it for years to come, and leave the username/password with my important papers for that inevitable day.

Speaking of technology. I tried to play a recently-given-to-me CD in my little clock/radio/cd player and it didn't work. My sister who had one just like it had told me that hers quit working. I got out an old CD and it worked. Just goes to show you that technology is changing fast. A new CD recorded this year doesn't work in a player from less than five years ago. But the CD does work in my computer so I did get to enjoy it right away.

UPDATE:
I bought into Flickr.

But I Digress

Today it just seemed to make sense to write out my entry on paper and then type it in. Normally I type and go back and change and edit and fiddle getting it just right. The laptop gets hot, makes noise, disconnects.

So as I was writing I got off on some tangent and wrote "But I digress." I scratched that out because what is a blog about, but digression? I can digress anytime and about anything I want to. It's my blog. If you enjoy a wordy rambling about nothing, you are in for a treat today.

This is that first day. That cool-reminder of the crisp ones to come. Turned off the air conditioner and fan and opened the door. As soon as the refrigerator cycled off, it was completely quiet for a minute or two. No distant traffic, no dogs barking, no birds chirping.

Gradually, distant traffic picked up and other country neighbor sounds emerged. A few birds decided they had something to say. But for a couple minutes there, it was so quiet it almost hurt my ears.

Have you ever been in the desert during the hot part of the day when every little skittering thing hides in the shade of the nearest pebble? You've never heard nothing sound so loud. That kind of quiet is painful. Old Westerns portrayed the grizzled prospector mumbling and yammering to themselves as they wandered around. I'd always thought it spoke to their loneliness, but now I think it has just as much to do with giving your ears something to hear.

So it's a nice quiet weekend morning here in the country. That was one of the points I kept coming back to during the big "moving-to-town-after-Gene-died" debate. It's been thirty-seven years since I've lived in a regular city neighborhood. I just don't think I'm ready to do that until I have to. Having a couple of neighbors within sight if I took a notion that I wanted to catch a glimpse of their house through the trees is fine with me. Close enough but not too close. I'm much less alarmed by critters than crazy people wandering around during the night anyway.

Things are more lively and noisier now. Birds are chirping and a neighbor is hammering on something. Since cooler weather brings hunting season, won't be long until I'll hear some occassional gunshots "over there" as guns are sighted and cans are obliterated in practice and general excitement builds. Would that bother you? Seems like it comes with the territory when you grew up in a hunter-gatherer clan.

Me hunt and fish? Nope. I can fish but when showed how to clean them, I pulled the Daddy's-little-princess card and never actually had to do it. Would if I had to, but have been fortunate to not ever be that hungry.

I helped Gene skin a deer once. Hmmmm. Not my favorite thing to do but was nice to have meat during a money-crunch time. Even though I don't participate, I have family that hunts and fishes. My favorite cut of deer meat is the kind that is all nicely packaged and goes from their freezer, to a cooler, then to my freezer.

Forget what I said about a quiet morning. The people on the place east of me are running a mower or tiller or something and yelling over it.

I don't like having machine sounds going all the time. Drives me crazy. Gene always had stuff running. Like an incessant aquarium pump (I was thrilled when he quit his fish hobby). Or a bank of computer hard drives whirring. When our old refrigerator would cycle off, I'd relax not even realizing I'd been gritting my teeth.

So now that my "no-motor" reverie has been broken by the neighbor's weekend project, seems like a great time to listen to my birthday gift from KimG.

I was so excited to find it in my mailbox last night. Have been thinking lately how much I've missed getting her mixes since she moved away and had even thought about asking for one. She read my mind! And I'm doubly impressed she got in in the mail during ACL! Claimed this birthday gift was belated because her step-sister moved back from China. Perfectly understandable.

The other day I was looking back at the beginning of my blog - Ms. Judy's House of Fun. It really wasn't much fun but for about ten months. Now it's been almost two additional years since Gene died. My blog was more fun than my life but reflected life to some degree anyway.

There is a two year deadline on taking care of some of the legal stuff and I've pushed that to the limit. Just seems so final. Only a couple more official things to take care of - on one hand I want to get it over with so it won't be hanging over my head and on the other I don't want to complete the tasks and totally be done with it forever and ever. Regardless, they'll be done by the two year mark - a mere ten days from now.

But in the immortal words of Gene Standley when we once discussed losing the other, "Yeah, I'd grieve for you, but then I'd get on with my life."

Weekend Update

Dad got a good report from the doctor after all his tests. Apparantly he's feeling better than I thought. He does get tired really fast but the doctor basically said the only thing he thought giving Dad trouble is his sinuses. And he does have bad allergies (Dad, not the doctor). Really makes him miserable.

The doctor said that just looking at his reports and if he didn't see the 1917 birthdate, he would guess it was from a man in his 60's. A sixty year old with a weak heart I guess, but younger than his ninety years anyway.

His old ticker keeps ticking, and he contiues to demonstrate his big heart and it's ability to love. Yep, he does do that.

From ML's Visit In August

Happy Vacation Gals!
Marylynn's last day. At Miss Jean's BBQ on ML's way out of town.



It's All About The Food, Isn't It?
One of the many yummy meals we had during Marylynn's visit. This was a fantastic chicken liver plate right in my own hometown. You either love 'em or hate 'em, right? I can't stand gizzards, by the way.

We had great meals, spent some time just visiting, tackled some home projects, went to the city & spent the day in Ikea. Had an overall great time.

Family Bowling from July

I Love These Guys!

One Good Thing

One good thing I forgot to mention is that on Sept. 4, I paid off another credit card! Woo-hoo! Have a long, long, long way to go yet, but still determined. One of these days I hope to join the ranks of the debt-free!

Poor Neglected Blog

I have a hard time just making a quick post. It always ends up getting involved and being long and just sucking up time! So then I just don't post at all. Not too fair to those of you who are kind enough to check in with regularity.

Work is busy and been trying to stay off the computer when at home so no time to blog at work and not from home so I've gotten behind.

JudyA came to visit over the Labor Day weekend and did a Mission Organization thing on my living room and painted two of the walls. Pretty incredible difference. And another carload to donate.

Visited Dad and Martha last Sunday. Dad is not feeling great but hanging in. Being feeble is really hard for him. And also for us to see him get so tired so fast. But he's still perkin'. His 90th birthday is Nov. 3.

Was going to post yesterday, but spent the time rereading my own posts from the beginning through about the first year. Was surprised that I'd only had a blog for ten months when Gene died and have blogged almost two years since. Seemed like I'd had the blog long before he was gone.

Okay ... I really gotta quit and get busy.