OK, I’m not complaining, even though we’ve got a working snowmobile this year for hauling hay. This winter is a no-show so far, no snow, no real cold. It was in the 50s the other day, and there are 40s in the forecast. Absolutely amazing!! LOL, and absolutely fine by me. There is a feeling of dread, though. After all, this is Minnesota, and we’ve going to get slammed eventually. But until that happens, I will enjoy every day that I don’t have to slog through 2 feet of snow and brace against cutting -20° winds. Oh, and have I mentioned yet, the days are getting longer!!!!! Spring is on the way!!!!!!!!!

Wow, talk about a disconnect! Mr. Gingrich didn’t get enough signatures to get himself on the Virginia ballot (he lives there!), and he (or his staff) compared it to the Pearl Harbor attack.

Gosh, it’s been a while since I posted! Blame it on the cold, it’s been down to 0° a couple of mornings. Too many evenings I escape to my nice warm bed with the electric mattress pad and electric blanket turned to high with my iPad and Solitaire. Not the most productive use of time, sigh.

And still no snow, which is a mixed blessing. We got a new (used) snowmobile for hauling hay, but without snow it’s just sitting there. And while I don’t mind not shoveling, the dry weather is not good for my trees and perennials. And another bad thing, the dogs are bringing in tons of sand! Suka goes out and rolls around, and the sand just seems to soak into his fur. And somehow, it seems to end up in my bedroom, on my bed.

Talking about Suka, he’s a ball of energy, and is a bit overwhelming for Squeak, Lukas’ chihuahua. But sometimes he will slow down enough to entice her to play with him. Here he is teasing her with his teddy bear,

And she can’t resist,

It gets really funny when she chases him to get the toy. He just loves to be chased. And here he is talking with Pip,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOZOHjQAcCg&list=UUaC2ORJsoWEC9p9uvC8uGIw&feature=plcp

The big hole bead craze seems to be slowing down, although it could just be the economy. So I’ve been making more small hole beads. I love silvered ivory and the webbing it produces,

 

And thanks to a Firefox extension that lets me know when Double Helix adds something to their website, I was johnny-on-the-spot when they listed some Dark Aurae seconds. I snatched it all up, and have been making small earrings size beads with it.

Dark Aurae is still my all-time favorite glass; in person it just shimmers and shines. Speaking of which, I’m going to fire up the torch, I’m freezing!

I’m whining. My shoulder hurts, my shoulder aches, it is screaming for drugs. The last time it ached this bad was the last heat spell we had. Jeepers, it only got up in the 50s today, that’s not a heat wave!

My Suka puppy is such a character! Here he is sleeping on my bed,

And here he is smiling,

Goodbye until next spring...
And this guy looks a bit out of place.

Brrrr, it was cold out there today! 12° this a.m., and snow, yucky! But only another 4 1/2 weeks until the days start getting longer, :)

The poor birds yesterday had to dig through the snow to get to the bird feed,


And a couple of new beads on Etsy,


I’m watching the news, and have to just shake my head at our politicians. Newt’s comment on the Wall Street protesters, ‘Go get a job.’

Enough said, I’m going to go make some supper for the boys.

LOL, I just had to read this headline, “Kim Kardashian's cold feet keeps her out of Minnesota,” written by Tracy McCray of the Post Bulletin, and it gave me a good chuckle.

“Kim has a popular “reality show” on TV, which follows her life and the lives of her sisters and various warped branches of her family tree. Recently she married a Minnesota boy named Kris Humphries. Kris grew up in Hopkins, played basketball for the Gophers and is waiting to get back to work for the New Jersey Nets.

Toward the end of the summer, a heck of a wedding was staged for the cameras at a cost of more than $10 million. They didn’t have to hold a dollar dance to pay for the buffet however, because they made nearly $18 million from their TV contract. Over 10 million viewers tuned in to watch Kim’s fairytale wedding.

This is where we come in.

When it came time to set up a home, Kim just couldn’t imagine moving to Minnesota where — to hear her tell it — the locals are hicks and the poor girl would likely freeze to death....

She hadn’t heard it tends to get a bit nippy at times when you step outside the Mall of America? I guess California girls didn’t grow up reading about The Long Winter and the other fun times the Ingalls girls had.

I love winter but I do realize all the snowy outdoor activities, beautiful frost-laden landscapes and the sound of falling snow aren’t at the top of everyone’s favorite things list. It’s true the Midwest is full of snow and cold and people who aren’t like Californians, but in the end one of the oldest sayings about Minnesota has once again been proven true.

“It’s the cold that keeps the riff-raff out.” California can keep the Kardashians.”

I admit it, I’m a bird junkie... I see a different kind of bird and I get all excited. I’ve had a pair of cardinals hanging around the past week, and I really hope they stay for the winter. They are so colorful! So today is a bird post day.
A flicker

Cardinals

And as I went into the kitchen this morning, this is what I saw sitting on the fence post in the back yard. I ran and grabbed my camera and got a couple of nice photos of him.

Oh, my goodness, I’m going to pay for this later with an upset stomach from all of the grease, but it tastes soooo good!

I decided to try making corn dogs, (saving grace was the buttermilk and Hebrew hot dogs with no filler, etc), and thought, hmmm, I have a bag of cheese curds in the refrigerator, maybe I should try battering and deep frying them. They are delicious, sweet and salty and gooey! Maybe I’d better get started on the Tums now, :)

I had a flock of crows harassing a hawk this morning, so I had my camera ready when this bald eagle went by, and the crows went after him instead of the hawk.

Sometimes I think I might be just a little bit obsessed with birds and beads.

Today started out so grey and gloomy, but the sun peeked out this afternoon. I soaked it up! My cardinals (yes, they’re mine! I claim ownership!!) came back to the feeder today, and hung around long enough for me to change the battery in my camera and put the long lens on. Should have seen me fumbling for the battery charger one handed, hanging onto the camera with the other, and all the time watching the bird on the feeder.


I’ve got some pretty beads to show tonight. When I look at the photos, I find myself thinking I sure hope they look this good to others. I can’t see the beads myself unless I use 4.00 reading glasses, so when I look at them to list them, I’m not all that impressed with them, but when I look at the photos, my reaction is, wow! I need to make another one like that!! (That’s if I remember what glasses I used). A good example of that is this one:

 It could be Aurae underneath, or maybe Psyche... or this one:

 Kalypso, maybe?

And then if you want to get to real frustration, try TerraNova,

 TerraNova needs to be heated red dripping hot, then cooled (but not cooled to where it might break when you put it back into the flame), and then heated again, then cooled, then encased with clear, but you can’t get the bead too hot when melting the clear, because that takes away the color so you’re left with muted browns. Maybe 1 out of 10 comes out with this beautiful coloring.

I like the way the storming came out on these two,

That’s why the silver glasses get to be an addiction, there’s always a surprise waiting when you open the kiln.

Cool! I had 3 Red Cardinals come visit today, a male and 2 females. I don’t often get them up by the house, so I was pretty excited to see them.

My favorite glass is Dark Aurae, but it’s an odd lot from Double Helix, and hasn’t been made since 2009. This is Dark Aurae, gorgeous striations and colors,

I’ve been buying any new test batches that Double Helix comes out with, and I have found a combination of glasses that comes pretty close to Dark Aurae. I haven’t been able to get the blue and purple combinations yet, but I can get the lovely striations and shimmers of Dark Aurae,

 And on that note, I’m cold! I’m heading to bed with my iPad, and my nice cozy warm mattress pad and electric blanket.

What a change in weather! Just a couple of days ago it was cold, cloudy and gloomy. My poor birds had nothing to drink because the water was frozen (going to have to find the heated birdbath for them).

Today was a gorgeous day! I sure wish we had another 2-3 months of this kind of weather. The boys came up with some of their kids, and the kids went out back and had fun playing ball. The littlest one had to pet the baby calf, but he didn’t want to milk the cow. ‘Nasty!’ was his response when I asked him if he wanted to milk her. :)

Our hay was delivered today, so now we’ve just got to get the propane tank filled, and we’re going to be about as ready for winter as we can be. Yuck!!! Don’t think about it, don’t think about it!

Meet the newest addition to our herd. Just born today, and safely locked in the barn with Mama, Daisy May. We haven’t decided on a name yet, but considering it’s a bull calf, it will be appropriately named, as is Chuck Roast, who was born earlier this year.

In 24 years of working on a Mac, I’m for the first time reverting to a previous OS version. Lion (OS 10.7), in my opinion, has very little to recommend, unless you use it only for surfing the net and social networking, as in a iPhone or iPad. For serious work, it stinks. One of the new features they’re touting is auto-save and resume. If you close an unsaved document, it will automatically open the next time you open that program. In reality, it slows down opening programs tremendously, because it has to look to see if there are any unsaved documents. And it locks documents older than 2 weeks. Actually, that was the last straw for me. I have a folder of 118 photos of beads that need to be cropped and edited. I have to individually unlock each one to work on it. So now I’m copying data off of one of my hard drives, and tomorrow morning, after it’s all done, I’ll reinstall Snow Leopard. Disappointing!

It has certainly been a huge change in weather this past month and a half. All summer we had lots of rain, but then the spigot turned off in September. We’ve had the driest September on record, and today was the warmest Oct. 5th on record (over 125 yrs. of records). We really need rain, and I will not at all regret seeing 80s go away and nice cool 60s come back.

The birds certainly have been enjoying the weather, though. This one took a bath and sat in my tree fluffing up and wiggling his tail feathers; I just had to watch him and laugh!

 

 I love chickadees, they are so lively and saucy. Here’s one enjoying the water.

Continually amazed at the extremes of our ‘experts.’ Did you know that cheese is a junk food? http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-wi-cheeseheadbillboa,0,5569651.story I think these experts would be happiest if we all ate just broccoli, spinach and beans, and drank just water. Everything else is bad for us.

Winter is on its way. This morning at the crack of dawn, the guns were booming in the refuge; one reminded me of a gun on a WWII battleship, a rhythmic boom, boom, boom. Then came the geese flying over the house, honking to get the survivors rounded up to continue south. I’m not against hunting, I grew up in a hunting family, I just find it a sad fact that there are geese, who mate for life, who will be leaving alone.

I’m getting old, and death is a sad thing that’s become too familiar. I think that’s probably why I don’t watch nature shows too much any more. They’ve become too graphic, showing lion cubs starving to death, the crocodiles in slow motion bring the wildebeest down, etc. I always watched Marlin Perkins Wild Kingdom on TV when I was younger, and it was so much more fun to watch. I know that the film makers want to educate people, but do we really need to be entertained by watching animals die? I think most people realize that it happens, entertain us and educate us without the grim and gritty details, please!

Suka is so happy now that it’s cold enough for Christian to wear long pants and shirt, it gives him something to grab.

Here they are on the deck, Suka is teasing Christian to try to get him to chase him.

That didn’t work, so let’s attack!

That worked!!

It’s been cloudy and dreary here, the flowers are all dead except for the bush roses. We’ve had an awful lot of fuzzy caterpillars this year. This one is covered with dew.

I felt safe taking photos of this, since the owner is absent,

 

And some newly listed beads,