Meanderings

2012-02-15T19:43:00.001-06:00

Meanderings tonight.

Gertrude is finally going to have her calf.

She started bagging up a couple of days ago, so we’ve been trying to get some calcium into her. It comes in a tube similar to a tube of caulk, with a gun like a caulk gun. The directions are to put the tube into the cow’s mouth so the gel is squirted at the back of the tongue. Yah, right... I ended up with most of it all of me, and even inside my sleeves.

So this morning I tried putting a dollop of it inside a slice of bread and folding it over. It worked fairly well the first time I tried it, but then she caught on. A couple of hours later Christian and I both attempted it again, and we got more in than came out. The trick is prying open her mouth (I sure am glad cows don’t have upper teeth in the front), shoving the ball of bread as far back into her mouth as I can, and then after all of the sandwiches are gone, follow up with a piece of plain bread so when she spits it out, it’s just the plain bread. We got almost a whole tube in her today (half of what she should have). Hopefully, tomorrow morning when I go out, a nice health cow and calf will be waiting for me. Then the fun really starts, as you can see from this photo, she’s going to need milking out for quite a while until the calf gets older.

I got some cute photos of Suka the other night teasing Christian with his monkey, trying to get Chris to chase him,

Obligatory bird photo, I do like these guys with that flashy red head,

I’m still having fun making murrini,

And some new beads that I’m listing tonight,

2012-02-08T08:51:00.001-06:00

What goofballs! I gave Suka a rawhide chew, he got distracted and set it down. Pip promptly stole it. I gave Suka another one. Not good enough! Pip was guarding her chew, growling and glaring at Suka. Suka laid on the floor with the chew between his front feet and stared at Pip. Pip left her chew and came closer to Suka, so he went back to chewing. She sat there watching him until he finished, then went back to her chew. Here’s my Suka, saying ‘more, more!’

2012-02-06T18:22:00.003-06:00

A nice sunny day here, above freezing, and nothing to complain about being it’s Feb. 6, and my amaryllis are blooming! Such huge, colorful flowers. This is a Minerva,

And this is a new one I picked up from Bachman’s, Paris,

And some beads I just finished cleaning and photo’ing, just need to get them listed,

And I’m still on a murrini-making kick,

It really is amazing how putting clear over them (the ones on the right side are encased with clear) can really bring out the colors.

2012-02-03T22:12:00.001-06:00

I don’t keep too many beads for myself, but gosh, I think I’m keeping this one,

2012-01-25T19:17:00.001-06:00

I love orchids because the blossoms last so very long, but I love amaryllis because they are so very, very bright and vibrant. Here’s a couple that I have blooming right now,

Some new beads,

I’ve been getting away from making the big hole beads, trying to get out of my rut, and have been getting back into the small beads and focal beads,

I love, love, love Dark Aurae, but it’s so hard to work with sometimes. I really like getting the green shimmers, but it’s such a touchy combination of oxygen/propane, it’s really hard to get, so mostly I end up with just the blues. But they look pretty too!

2012-01-24T18:05:00.000-06:00

Two years ago today David collapsed and we called the ambulance. Two days later, he was gone. It seems like a lifetime ago, so very, very long ago.

2012-01-21T17:30:00.000-06:00

I am in a rut, and I need to make some changes, except I don’t know what to do. There are lots of things I’d like to do, get back into drawing/painting, genealogy, needlework, sewing, quilting, jewelry, maybe even pottery, but there’s this inertia built up like a brick wall.

Maybe I’ll go wash some dishes instead...

2012-01-19T08:38:00.000-06:00

BRRRRRR! We’ve got the January temps, -15° with -25° wind chill. Still no snow to speak of, we just got a light dusting last night. This is not good for the plants.

2012-01-15T17:51:00.002-06:00

It’s really sad to see how an American business like Sears go downhill. I usually buy my large appliances there, and have tried using their website. Their website must have been designed by a community college drop-out, it is just so bad. A couple of months ago, I wanted to buy a couple of things that were on sale. It wouldn’t give me the sale price in the cart, so I called their customer service to find out how to do it, only to be told that I could order it over the phone. So after reading the part numbers to her, and giving her my Sears card number, then she needed me to spell out my name and address. At that point, I told her ‘that’s why I order online, so I don’t need to do all of this!’ and hung up.

So yesterday I got an email about the Sears Craftsman Club sale. I want a router, and they had one on sale. Went to their website and open the flyer and spent 10 minutes trying to put it into the cart to order it. Seems the only way to do that is to click on the little words ‘Member Price,’ not the photo or name of the item, which would be the logical way to have it set up. So I get to the item, and instead of being $99.99 like in the flyer, the member price is $107.99. No wonder they’re not doing well.

That was my peeve of the day.

I’ve been getting bored with making beads, so have been playing with making murrini again. Murrini is laying down layers of colors on a rod of glass, then pulling it out into a thinner rod, then nipping it into slices, which then gets melted onto a bead. Here are some of the better ones,

This is a bead with one of my favorite Double Helix’s murrini,

and I really wish I knew what glass they used in this murrini!

ETA: This is one TALENTED lady! Her name is Cynthia, http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=glassactcc&_armrs=1&_from=R40&_ipg=&_trksid=m37 and http://www.etsy.com/shop/Glassactcc/. She makes such a variety of beads, and they’re always just gorgeous!

2012-01-11T08:21:00.000-06:00

It’s raining. January 11, yesterday it was in the 50s in the cities, no snow, and now rain. It’s just unsettling.

2012-01-09T08:48:00.000-06:00

Meanderings all over the place today!

Did you know that you can have your bank account closed down if you make more than six withdrawals from your savings in a month (or statement period)? I thought at first it was some kind of scam when my credit union called me and warned me (when my check goes into the bank I transfer most of it into the savings, and then it automatically puts money into the checking if needed), but after I got off the phone, I searched on the Internet, and yes, it’s a federal law that was made after the bank collapses prior to the Depression. For whatever reason, the government has decided to start enforcing it.

Our non-existent winter continues. It’s like we’ve gone from October to March, no snow, and in the 40s. I went shopping with my sister Friday, and there was a tree in a parking lot that was starting to bud. Just crazy, crazy weather. It’s contrary to my nature, but I’m actually hoping for snow. We really need it. The birds are enjoying the warm weather, though. Here’s a couple of photos of one of my favorite visitors,

Believe it or not, I’m keeping my eye out for another puppy. Suka is over a year old now, and he is such a playful dog, so he picks on the cats and the little dogs. We’ve been having problems with Pip, the long hair chihuahua mix, attacking the other chihuahua, Squeak. Poor Squeak! She’s at the bottom of the totem pole. The other day, while they were outside, Pip tried going after Squeak, and the only reason Squeak didn’t get beat up was because Suka grabbed Pip’s tail, so Pip went after Suka instead. Well, he just loves teasing her until she chases him! I brushed up on a few Dog Whisperer episodes and have been putting Pip on her back and holding her down when she tries going after Squeak, and that is really helping. Just have to stay consistent with it. But we’ve decided we need to find another big breed dog so Suka has someone more his size to play with him. I’ve got my name in at Petfinder for a Newfoundland, Pyrenees or Great Dane cross.

I’ve been bringing my amaryllis bulbs up from the basement to join the ones that I’ve bought (like I really need more! I’ve only got a couple dozen of them already.) As much as I like amaryllis, my favorite indoor plant has to be the orchid. The flowers on them last so long! Here’s one that’s blooming right now, and a couple of Christmas cactus,

I’ve opened a shop on Zibbet. It’s another online market place like Etsy and Artfire. Artfire has been very disappointing. Last year, they closed down all of their basic shops, so between that and the sellers who left because of the way it was handled, they went down from 80,000 to 15,000 shops. Traffic to Artfire (and my sales there) has fallen drastically, and now they’re setting up a new policy, the Artfire Assurance program (which they will be charging another $12 a year), where they will guarantee a product for 60 days. That may be OK for Amazon (whose return policy they likened it to), but that doesn’t translate too well to a handmade venue whose sellers carry things like soap, candles, custom made jewelry and clothes, not to mention bakery and food items. As one person put it, she would hate to see her fudge after 60 days (they originally were going to offer 90 days). They’re losing more sellers because of this policy.

My favorites out of the last batch of listed beads,

2011-12-28T09:24:00.000-06:00

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!!!!!!!!!

2011-12-26T08:05:00.001-06:00

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.

2011-12-10T17:08:00.002-06:00

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!

2011-11-23T20:41:00.000-06:00

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!

2011-11-22T19:36:00.001-06:00

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

And here he is smiling,

2011-11-21T09:57:00.001-06:00

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

2011-11-20T17:34:00.001-06:00

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.

2011-11-16T07:45:00.000-06:00

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.”

2011-11-10T15:35:00.002-06:00

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.

2011-11-08T19:07:00.000-06:00

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, :)

2011-11-01T17:25:00.001-05:00

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.

2011-10-31T20:15:00.002-05:00

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.

2011-10-29T18:06:00.001-05:00

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.

2011-10-22T17:59:00.001-05:00

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!

2011-10-11T18:38:00.001-05:00

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.

2011-10-05T20:31:00.002-05:00

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.

2011-09-27T07:22:00.000-05:00

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.

2011-09-24T07:52:00.000-05:00

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!

2011-09-21T18:11:00.002-05:00

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,

2011-09-13T08:00:00.001-05:00

A big sigh of relief… After 3 days of 90°, a cold front has moved in, and it’s a lovely, refreshingly crisp 49°. I love it!! I just wish it would stay like this another 3 months, but it’s not going to. We’re going to get frost tomorrow night, so I’ve started moving my plants indoors. Now comes the struggle to keep them alive until next spring.

Some new beads from me, a focal with silvered ivory and silver murrini (I just wish people liked to buy them as much as I like to make them), and a sheeny, shiny big hole bead.

2011-09-05T19:55:00.000-05:00

I’m making my own cottage cheese tonight. OK, I have an admission to make, I had no nap today, and I’ve been zipping along on Red Bull. I LOVE Red Bull. It’s 8 p.m. and I’m not in bed. :)

Anyway, I felt hungry for cottage cheese, but what I have is expired. I’ve got rennet tablets, so I figured I’d give it a try. Headed to the Internet for some recipes (too disorganized and didn’t know where my back to the basics book is). Amazing what you learn on the Internet (Did you know that you can freeze buttermilk?!?). I came across a recipe from Alton Brown,
Ingredients
1 gallon pasteurized skim milk
3/4 cup white vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 cup half-and half-or heavy cream
Directions
Pour the skim milk into a large saucepan and place over medium heat. Heat to 120 degrees F. Remove from the heat and gently pour in the vinegar. Stir slowly for 1 to 2 minutes. The curd will separate from the whey. Cover and allow to sit at room temperature for 30 minutes.

Pour the mixture into a colander lined with a tea towel and allow to sit and drain for 5 minutes. Gather up the edges of the cloth and rinse under cold water for 3 to 5 minutes or until the curd is completely cooled, squeezing and moving the mixture the whole time. Once cooled, squeeze as dry as possible and transfer to a mixing bowl. Add the salt and stir to combine, breaking up the curd into bite-size pieces as you go. If ready to serve immediately, stir in the half-and-half or heavy cream. If not, transfer to a sealable container and place in the refrigerator. Add the half and half or heavy cream just prior to serving.

I cut it in half, and am at the sitting at room temperature right now. Got another 15 minutes.

Fall is here, and I’m enjoying the cool temps. It was a two blanket night last night, nice crisp cold air coming in through the window. What a relief after all of that hot muggy air. I’m just taking it one day at a time and not even thinking about what’s coming next. As the Bible says, don’t worry about what’s coming tomorrow, sufficient to each day is its own badness.

PS: Next time I’ll try the 12-18 hr. recipe which uses rennet tables. The vinegar method leaves the curds the consistency of ricotta cheese. I like my cottage cheese with large curds.

2011-09-03T19:42:00.000-05:00

I don’t understand the big draw of this “Extreme Couponing.” I’m watching a show on TLC, the shopper’s overjoyed at how much she saved. What did she buy? Dozens of bags of Cheetos, packages of Poligrip, containers of yogurt with M&Ms, cases of pop, dozens of deodorants. Another one, 134 boxes of couscous, 93 bottles of hot sauce. What’s the sense of it?

It certainly doesn’t promote healthy eating. Yogurt with M&Ms?!? Boxes of Snicker Bars and Snicker Eggs? Nice and healthy! Instead of buying 10 packs of Snapple Ice Tea, even if it’s free, they’d be better off buying a box of tea bags and some cans of frozen juice.

Watching this show, and the time and effort these people put into it, dumpster diving, spending all night organizing coupons, it seems to be a form of obsessive behavior, like hoarding. One woman spends up to 70 hours a week couponing! Gosh!

I think it’s a shame that the television executives take advantage of people like this.

2011-08-19T09:31:00.001-05:00

Want to see how your tax dollars are being wasted, the inhumanity of the Bureau of Land Management, the power of the cattle and sheep ranchers, who insist that the wild horse population be decimated so they can run more cattle and sheep on public land? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObXB0Wq3nRE&feature=share

Did you know that tens of thousands of wild horses are warehoused at public expense because they’re being rounded up off of public lands. There was a law passed in the 1970s to protect the wild mustangs, to guarantee their traditional ranges. The BLM has been fencing off those ranges, and restricting water access. Why is a government bureau free to break the law? Go to http://www.thecloudfoundation.org/ and read some of the politics involved.

2011-08-18T19:19:00.001-05:00

I have a bald blue jay, no kidding. I’ve seen him now for some months now, and have to shake my head every time I see him.

2011-08-13T08:42:00.003-05:00

Meanderings all over the place today.

http://artisancraftpage.com is a digital cork board for artisans, handcrafters, and handcrafting supplies of all kinds, and for the month of August, all ads are 50% off. So that’s $50 for an ad that runs until 2014! All proceeds go to the Artisan and Glassworkers Legal Fund.

For anyone who has seen the latest Wyoming Chamber of Commerce tourist ads, with the wild horses running, if you want to see wild horses, you’d best get out there fast. The BLM, at the urging of ranchers running thousands of sheep and cattle on public land, have been for the last dozen years decimating the wild horse herds from California to Montana. The ones that can’t be adopted are farmed out to ranchers who are paid to feed them, and others are sent to government holding facilities to live out the rest of their lives. Wild horses are dying in the roundups and are illegally being sent to slaughter houses in Canada and Mexico. An interesting article here: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/08/the-quiet-war-against-wyomings-wild-horses/243286/

Someone on Lampworketc. posted the link to this website, http://dearphotograph.com/. Funny and so terribly sad.

The Baltimore Orioles are back, winging their way south now that the babies are all grown up. Such gorgeous birds, I just can’t help snapping more photos of them.

I really do have to get beads listed tonight. I’ve got 4 bags in the drawer and the kiln is just about full. I’ve been on a roll the past few days making beads. I made 11 this morning! Maybe it had something to do with Chester having to go out at 5:30 this morning. Here’s some that I just listed on Artfire:

2011-08-12T16:16:00.002-05:00

The 8 Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers:
1. Effective bloggers are prolific
(Uh, when did I blog last?)
2. Effective bloggers are concise
(Yup, that bead is a shimmering blue.)
3. Effective bloggers are analytical
(Analytical? What's that? I had to look it up to get a concise definition: (of a language) characterized by a relatively frequent use of function words, auxiliary verbs, and changes in word order to express syntactic relations, rather than of inflected forms.)
4. Effective bloggers are lifelong learners
(OK, one out of eight isn’t bad.)
5. Effective bloggers are focused and consistent
(Where did I put my glasses?)
6. Effective bloggers plan ahead
(What's for supper? Oh, I have to make it?!?)
7. Effective bloggers are persistent
(Oh, those weeds will go away when it snows.)
8. Effective bloggers are self-starters
(Ree of Pioneer Woman had a recipe for making iced coffee concentrate. I have a gallon jug in the fridge. Does that fit the definition?)

I’m finally starting to get over my bronchitis. The steroids helped, I don’t sound like a rusty old steam engine anymore. Now I just need to get rid of this cough. Our weather is helping, it’s cooled down a little bit, and the nights are getting cooler so I can open the windows. In paradise (my paradise anyway) it’s always going to be between 50° and 70°.

Our health care system leaves a little to be desired, to say the least. Lukas turned 25 last month, so in June Medica sent out a form for his doctor to sign verifying that he’s handicapped so he could stay on the insurance. Christian dropped the paper and the envelope off at the clinic and I assumed that it was filled out and sent in. Then last month I got the new card without his name on it! I called the doctor’s office and they didn’t know anything about it. I called Medica and they said they’d send out a new one and as soon as they got it he would be reinstated without lapse of coverage. Got the paper, Christian took it to the clinic and told them to hold it, and he would pick it up. They had it done by the next day, so I sent it off to Medica with delivery confirmation. They got it the 23rd of July. I called the next week to make sure they got it, and the guy I talked to said that it needed to be reviewed and it would take 2-3 days. Reviewed!!?! He’s been on Medica for years, they paid for some of the operations he went through to keep him out of a wheelchair, and they’ve paid for the ambulance to take him to the emergency room for seizures.

Monday Christian went in to pick up Lukas’ seizure medication, and he’s not covered!! $93. So back on the phone with Medica. The lady I talked to tracked it down to the enrollment department, but there was no one there to talk to (this is at noon), so she said she would follow up and let me know. At 4pm I called again, and she tried getting a hold of them, but they had already left for the day. Huh, talk about banker’s hours! She called the next morning to let me know that she was still following up, but the guy who was doing the reviewing was in a meeting. A few hours later she called to let me know that she talked to the guy and Lukas is back on the insurance.

It’s really simple, health care should not be a for-profit industry. I was reading in the Consumer Reports about doctors and hospitals pushing for heart tests that are not necessary, and a story about how Medicare is spending so much more money since for-profit hospices took over the market. Seems they get patients from nursing homes into their hospices, and then when the 6-month limit is up, they return them to the nursing home. What a crooked system!

End of rant.

My sister has been nice and has not bugged me about listing while I was sick, but she warned me my vacation is at an end. I wished I liked selling the beads as much as I like making them. :) A couple of whispy, shimmering beads in my Etsy store.

2011-08-03T16:39:00.000-05:00

What the heck?!?

I went down to the cities today for an MRI on my shoulder, and stopped off at K-Mart to buy a HEPA air filter to see if that won’t help with this bronchitis (the antibiotics didn’t do anything, and I’ve been on steroids since Monday, and can’t say that it’s helped much). So I got home and got it out of the box, and at the bottom of the box is a car insurance quote, dated Jan. 27, 2010. It has the guy’s name and address, his birthdate, work number, home number, his email address and all of his wife’s info.

I’m kind of aggravated with K-Mart for selling a returned product without at least marking it down! And why is this guy’s insurance quote still in the box?!?

2011-07-30T17:03:00.001-05:00

My dog is such a character! He likes to take paper under my desk and shred it. Grabs a mouthful, rips it off, grabs another mouthful, rips it off…

And not just paper,

It keeps him occupied!

My bronchitis continues to drag me down. Antibiotics didn’t do anything for me, I replaced the window AC unit in my bedroom because I thought maybe mold was aggravating my lungs, but that didn’t change anything. The next step is steroids. I’m considering it.

Another 90+° day here. Hot, hot, hot! I feel bad for the people down south, who put up with this every summer! I made 2 beads this a.m., and called it quits. Just too hot to sit at the torch. I’m in a mental and physical funk, with no energy to try to get something done.

2011-07-23T17:37:00.002-05:00

A meanderings post, all over the place…

I’ve been sick for the past week and a half with bronchitis, so between that and the heat, I haven’t been getting much done outside. My flower gardens are being over run with weeds, and I don’t want to take any photos because I’m ashamed of all of the weeds. We had more storms come through this morning and dump more rain. I wish I could send some of this rain to Texas. Minnesota this summer has been more like Florida, hot and steamy.

I am so sick of coughing! Lukas is too, because my bedroom is right next to his, so he gets to listen to me all night.

I upgraded to the newest Mac OS, Lion. I like it, except for the fact that Microsoft hasn’t kept up with the drivers for my keyboard. So now I’m trying to type on the generic Apple keyboard, the flat one that doesn’t have room for these big hands. I really liked the Logitech ergonomic keyboards, but they quit supporting Macs, so I switched to Microsoft. But until they release an updated driver, I’m up a creek. I ordered a Kensington from Amazon, but it’s not ergonomic. I wish Apple would make a decent keyboard!

Last night it was too early to go back to bed, even to just lay and play solitaire on my iPad, so I cleaned a batch of beads. I was up to 5 bags in my drawer, so I figured it was time. There were way too many ‘blah’ beads. I get all of these ideas in my head of different colors to use, but too many of them turn out to be not-so-spectacular. I need to change my bead making habits. I’m getting more and more limited in my time at the torch by my shoulder. I have a torn rotator cuff, and the doctor said there was nothing that can be done for it, although I think it’s time to get a second opinion on that. It aches so bad, sometimes I find myself clenching my teeth, and that can’t be healthy for the rest of my body!

Anyway, to get back to beadmaking, I think I need to concentrate more on color combinations that I know will work. I’ve been too willy-nilly, just all over the place. So maybe by being more disciplined, there will be less ‘blah’ beads. My favorites, the blues and greens,

And my all-time favorite glass, Dark Aurae,

2011-07-19T10:05:00.001-05:00

We have a storm coming through,

Unfortunately, it’s not going to cool us off any, only make it more muggy. Tomorrow it’s going to be up to 95-100°. As my sister says, it’s still better than snow.

2011-07-13T09:58:00.001-05:00

Awww, that was so cool! A daddy Baltimore Oriole came to the feeder and grabbed a beak full of grape jelly and then fed it to one of his babies.

Here’s Papa,

Here’s one of the babies. Papa grabbed a beak full of jelly and went and stuffed it into the baby’s mouth, who was sitting on the shepherd’s hook screeching.

Talk about doing the splits!

2011-07-01T18:15:00.000-05:00

We’re having a heck of a storm right now. It got up to 99° today, and a cold front is moving in. The trees are whipping and getting lemon drop size hail. Stuff is coming down with some force; it hits the deck and bounces 3’ into the air. Nature is impressive.

2011-06-27T20:57:00.001-05:00

An eventful day today. I went out to water the vegetable garden this morning and saw a big brown lump laying out in the pasture. It was a cow. Cows do not lay all the way down unless they’re dead, so I asked Christian to go out and see if she was dead. He came back and said she was still alive but she was just laying there making little grunting noises.

I went out, saw mucus hanging from her rear, and realized she had milk fever. Milk fever occurs mostly in dairy cows (which is why I’m phasing out of them and into a heritage dual purpose cow); when a cow has a calf, the body pulls calcium out of the body to put into the milk and milk fever occurs when too much calcium is pulled out, which shuts down the muscles, and the cow can die. I was flabbergasted, since she had just started bagging up the previous day or two, and I thought the milk fever had come on before she calved, which hadn’t happened before.

So I called the vet (none of the local vets treat livestock anymore, there’s more money in cats and dogs), and had to wait almost two hours for him to get here. So I would go out there every 15-20 min. to see if she was still alive, and try to pour a little bit of water in her mouth, and to chase the vultures away. There were two of them just floating around and coming in every once in a while to see if there was something there yet for them. I finally put up a couple of sticks and put a sheet over it to cover her up a little bit.

The vet came and said there was still a chance for her, and asked if I realized that the treatment could kill her. I said yes, I knew, but she would die without it. So he stuck a HUGE needle in her neck and hooked up a calcium drip. He put a liter of calcium in her. She started to come out of it a little bit, but still wasn’t moving much after that. He put on his long sleeve gloves and put his arm in to check on the calf. I was flabbergasted again when he said, ‘There’s no calf in there.’ She must have had it in the middle of the night. So we started looking for it, tromping around the pasture trying to find it. Cows hide their calves, and the calves stay there until momma comes back. We couldn’t find it, so went back to Sally and tried to get her turned over. After some pulling and pushing we accomplished that, and she was laying up in a more normal position. So we went back to hunting for the calf. Couldn’t find it, so headed back to Sally, who had in the meantime recovered enough to get up on her feet and go find the calf. The vet had walked right by it, it was hidden under a pine tree. I think he was expecting it to be black like Dex (papa), but the calf (now named Chuck) looks like a Jersey like mama, so he blended right in with the dead pine needles under the tree.

So Christian carried him back to the barn while I paid the vet, and 15 min. later we went out to check on him, and he was gone, along with Sally. So this evening we took the truck out to try to find them again, and after a half hour of walking Christian finally found them. He got Chuck up into the back of the truck and he and Sally are safely locked up in the barn. Now hopefully, they’re still both be safe and sound in the morning.

Photos, Christian and Chuck in the truck with Sally following,

Chuck and Sally

Gertrude, Sally’s daughter and hopefully the next one to pop, checking out Chuck,

Christian threw some hay into the barn, and some of it landed on Sally’s horns. Goofy cow didn’t even try shaking her head to get it off, so he had to go in and get it off of her.

Meandering photos, a wall cloud that went through this morning. That thing was really moving fast!

I have a rose-breasted grosbead pair hanging around,

And here’s one of my big goofball dog, Suka. He’s getting to big to fit in the recliner. The other night he was sleeping with his butt on the arm rest. Here he is sleeping with his head on an old swivel chair.

2011-06-17T08:52:00.001-05:00

Well, we got the invisible fencing put up around the dog run. I ordered it after Suka dug out and caught his 6th chicken.

I have to say, I LOVE IT! I can keep the doggy door open all day and not worry about him getting out.

Right now, he’s running in and out the doggy door with his stuffed raccoon. He is so funny, he will take all of his toys outside, then the next day I’ll find them all piled up in the same room. What a goof!

I really do need to have my nephews build a gate big enough for me to get the mower in there. There’s poison ivy coming up all over the place, and I need to get it mowed down.

We’ve had really pleasant weather, right now it’s misting and 61°. Just a nice day, warm enough to go outside barefoot. I’m enjoying it, because the heat will be moving back in soon enough. I’ve still got to get my pumpkins and squash planted! But I have gotten all of the bulbs (3 big Rubbermaid tubs full) that I saved from last year planted, now I also have to get the new ones that I bought this spring out into the ground. Such a slow poke!

Random pictures of the day:
My baby Suka, sunk down into the recliner with his bone,
I loved the way the sun’s rays were shining through this rainbow,

And a couple of bead photos that I really, really liked,

2011-06-10T15:46:00.000-05:00

A sunny 68° with a nice NW breeze and no bugs. It just doesn’t get much better than this.

2011-06-09T07:13:00.000-05:00

From the roaster to the freezer. My outdoor thermometer read 104.7 in the shade day before yesterday. Right now it’s 52°. A 50 degree drop. I’ll take it!

2011-06-06T17:15:00.000-05:00

99.6°. This does not bode well for the rest of the summer, since this is just the beginning of June.

I do not handle the heat very well, to say the least. Christian picked up a couple of window air conditioners (our central air is 15 yrs. old and just can’t keep up with the heat anymore). We put one in my bedroom, and I’ve been escaping there after I do the exercise bike. We tried putting the other one in one of my studio windows, but my ferret-proofing halted that midway. I’m going to have to use the Sawzall to cut some boards to fit that in. I just think I might wait until my nephews come up and let them do that. It’s too hot to do anything right now.

And in the meantime, the weeds are overtaking my flower garden. They don’t care if it’s hot, sigh.

Suka got out of the dog pen again and killed another chicken, a hen of course. He couldn’t go after the roosters! I’ve got way more of them than I do hens. I ordered some invisible fencing from Amazon and we’re going to just put it along the fence to keep him from digging under it and getting out. If he wouldn’t kill the chickens I would just let him run, since he stays up around the house and barn. Big stinker!

2011-06-03T18:07:00.000-05:00

Yuck!! 93° today. In a perfect world (for me anyway), it would never get below 32° or above 75°.

The weeds are overtaking my gardens, and I still don’t have all of my bulbs planted. REALLY need to get busy!

2011-05-23T10:27:00.000-05:00

AGLF’s May Random Bag of Glass Fundraiser sale is on now, http://aglf.info/special.html.

There’s a limited supply of bags for lampworkers and jewelry artists!

2011-05-20T11:54:00.001-05:00

OK, ready for a funny story?

This is about my latest contact with Windstream Communications, our telephone and Internet provider.

“10:59 a.m. 24th call, called broadband tech support, speeds still 1.5mbps or lower, paying for 6mbps since May 11, put on hold. Tech answered 11:10, said it wasn’t put over to 6mbps yet, and he didn’t know why the other techs didn’t do it. After a couple of minutes, he said to do a speedtest, and it was over 6mbps! He said if I had any more problems call static ip dept., put in phone number, and not as a residential customer.

25th call, Called to try to get a refund on the slow speeds and the 175 outages we’ve had since I started keeping track on April 4. Got transferred, explained I wanted a refund, she said I was sent to wrong office, transferred again. Told the rep. I wanted a refund for all of the outages and slow speeds, put on hold. He came back on and wanted to know if we would like to combine our telephone, internet and cable TV. I laughed and asked if he was out of his freaking mind. I think he was a bit offended, even after I explained the 175 outages, and no way did I want my television service through a company with that record. He issued a credit of $64.

2011-05-19T07:29:00.001-05:00

Internet went down again last night (thanks, Windstream Communications), for the 175th time since I started keeping track in April. They last anywhere from a few minutes to 17 hours. I just love to listen to their recorded messages when I’m on hold (last night I was on hold for over a half hour), talking about Windstream being able to meet your business solutions and their ‘blazing fast high speed internet.’

Ha!!

2011-05-18T20:48:00.003-05:00

My neighbor’s son, Jim, is biking to Alaska to raise money for cancer research. His blog is http://pedalingforpennies.info/. He has good reason to want to beat cancer, since his dad died from it. Wally was such a nice guy. He got a snowthrower attachment for his Kubota tractor, and would blow out our driveway with it. Just a sweetheart!

Jim is leaving Friday, and today a Kare 11 TV news reporter came out to interview him and his mom. I recorded it and posted it on youtube.

I also posted a video of Suka and I exercising on the exercise bike.

I’ve really been enjoying the Baltimore Orioles,

and I had a Scarlet Tanager! They are such striking birds.

2011-05-17T09:54:00.001-05:00

Another complaint about Windstream Communications,
Internet still down, 6:50 a.m. Called, their message still says it will be back up by May 17, 5:02 a.m. Got transferred to someone else. He tried to get through to their engineers and was unable, so he said he would call back when he was able to get some information from them.

Called at 7:30, this guy said that there were repair guys working in the area, and it should be done within the hour.

Called 8:40, tried broadband tech support 866-866-8786 opt 4, voice message says it’s for dsl technicians and please don’t give it to customers :) put on hold for a ‘network analyst.’ She asked what state I was in and put me on hold. 8:54 got disconnected. Called again. While I was on hold (9:03) Internet came back on.

I seriously doubt it will do any good, but I’ve written up letters to both of our senators, our governor and the attorney general. I’m not the only one having to deal with this poor excuse of a communications company.

Oh, and I ran their speedtest this morning, 1.5mbps. A far cry from the 6mbps that we’re paying for.

2011-05-16T20:04:00.001-05:00

Lovely Windstream is at it again. I called last week because our speeds were dropping down to below 1mbps (we’re paying for 3mbps), and they said they were installing new equipment and it would be all done by the end of the week. I switched over to their 6mbps package, hoping that after their new equipment was installed, we would maybe be able to get 3mbps. Well, the internet went down at 3:50 this afternoon. I’ve called several times, and at first they said they had an outage in our area, and they were working on it, and it would be 24-48 hours. I was a little bit pissy, I admit.

I’ve called several more times, and now they’ve got it down to a voice recording that it will be back up by 5 a.m. tomorrow.

I HATE Windstream. I wish they had never bought our phone company, with their ‘blazing fast internet speed.’

2011-05-16T09:20:00.001-05:00

When you have a business, you’re always looking for an effective way to advertise. ArtisanCraftPage.com is like posting your business card on the local cafe/coffee shop’s bulletin board. It’s $100, BUT that’s for 4 years of advertising. When you go to it, you see a little icon, but when you mouse over it, it expands into the ad, and clicking on it takes you to the website of the advertiser. The good part of it is that with all of the linking, it brings it up in the search engines.

Tom has a nice post about it and how it works.

2011-05-07T09:46:00.001-05:00

I saw a new bird today!! It’s a white throated sparrow.

The other morning I had a pair of pheasants in my front yard.

Spring is finally here! It was a horribly long winter, and I’m so glad to be able to walk outside barefoot and dig in the dirt. I planted carrots, radishes, parsnips and onions yesterday. My chickens are busy coming up to my flower gardens and digging in all of that nice, rich dirt. Time to get the fences up to keep them out.

My lilacs are starting to bud out,
johnny jump ups

and crocuses

Yes, spring is my most favorite time of the year, warm enough and still chilly enough so the bugs haven’t come out yet, although I do see a fly in my window, sigh. Time to get the flyswatter...

2011-05-02T07:07:00.000-05:00

Oh, it’s a regular blizzard out there! My driveway is turning white. Yuck, yuck, yuck!!!!!

Well, it’s official. We’ve had snow for 8 months now.

2011-05-01T08:27:00.001-05:00

May 1st, and it’s snowing. I’m tired of winter.

2011-04-27T16:35:00.001-05:00

Welcome to Minnesota in March, snow again. Oh, wait a minute! It’s the end of April!!

Can you tell that I’m tired of winter?

Well, our Internet outages have been solved. They had done something with the DNS numbers, so changing them has worked with the outages. We’re still only getting half the speed we’re paying for, but I need to work up my resolve to tackle their customer service system again.

I am going to try something new in my garden this year. We have pocket gophers, and they manage to eat most of the potatoes, so for the past few years I’ve been growing potatoes in my old water tanks. But this year I got some hardware mesh and am going to lay that down on the ground and put logs on both sides to hold it down, then fill it with dirt, lay the seed potatoes on the dirt and cover them with hay. That should keep the gophers out, and hopefully make it easier to harvest them (I hope) this fall. Sigh, waiting for a warm day to work in the garden.

Suka is SO bad! You wouldn’t guess just a minute ago he was picking on Squeak, trying to chew on her leg. He looks so innocent.

Tonight my assignment is to get more beads cleaned, and I’m going to pull out my coring tools and give that a try again.

2011-04-22T15:20:00.002-05:00

Honestly, I pity anyone who is unlucky enough to have Windstream Communications. I wish they had stayed out of Minnesota!

Here my log for the past 5 days:
4/22
Outages 11:34, 12:19, 12:34, 12:39, 12:59, 1:04, 1:24, 1:29, 1:34, 2:04, Called the 800-347-1991 (which is supposed to be the direct number for billing), it’s the same menu as the other numbers, Called and asked for a supervisor, she put me on hold, came back on and put me back on hold for a supervisor, was transferred to technical support. He said he couldn’t help me and tried transferring me to static ip technical support, (3:05, no music, just dead air. 3:10 got disconnected.) Called broadband tech support 866-866-8786 opt 4. (The message says this number isn’t supposed to be given out to customer). The guy who answered didn’t know that’s what the message said when I asked him about it. He put me on hold, 3:19. 3:23 he’s passing me on to another technician. He had me change the primary and secondary DNS numbers, and gave me another 800 number that's supposed to be business office. I did their speedtest, and we're still at half speed.

4/21
Outages at 3:26, 3:31, windstream speedtest 1.67 mbps, 983kbps, called customer service and asked for a supervisor so I could get a refund on all of the outages, she transferred me to technical support, still having latent outages, they’re working on it, he told me to bypass the surge protector and plug modem straight into wall, he gave me the direct number for billing 800-347-1991. Windstream speedtest 1.14 mbps, upload 983 kbps.
Outages at 4:31, 4:36, 4:56, 5:01, 5:11, 5:34, 5:46, 6:06, 6:36, 6:41, 7:41, 8:01, 9:51, 10:54

4/20
11:30 tried speed tests on 5 sites, windstream’s was 1.7mbps, 3:11 called, put on hold, ran speed test, 1.19mbps. He had me restart the modem, tried bypassing the router and plugging directly into modem. Blamed it on the outages. 3:24, 3:44, 3:54, 4:09, 4:14, 4:34, 5:49, 6:59, 7:04, 7:19, 8:36, 8:39, 8:44, 9:15, 9:50

4/19
6:29. Repair man came and replaced modem. He said we should be getting 3mbps, so called Windstream. Ran test, 1.61 mbps, still having outages. 12:13, 1:48, 1:53, 3:23, 3:43, 4:38, 4:53, 5:58, 6:18, 6:23, 6:28, 6:38, 7:23, 9:43, 10:18

4/18
2:36, 3:31, 3:56, 5:26, talked to Celie, she said it might be a filter for the satellite. Got disconnected, called back and talked to someone else, she created a ticket, 6700631, broadband tech support 866-866-8786 opt 4. 10:05

2011-04-20T16:08:00.005-05:00

Life is filled with frustrations lately.

We’ve been having problems with our internet going out for almost a month now. It gets into streaks where it goes out every 10 minutes. Thanks, Windstream Communications, for buying our telephone company and screwing things up. I’ve called multiple times over the past 3 weeks, and I just get the same-old, same-old, ‘we’re having intermittent outages in the state of Minnesota.’ They shouldn’t be buying up smaller telephone companies if they don’t have the infrastructure to handle it. It’s such a laugh to listen to their messages when I’m on hold, ‘lightning fast internet speeds,’ hah! We’re supposed to be getting 3mbps, we get half that. I tried complaining to the Public Utilities Commission, but they don’t handle internet services. They suggested that I contact the Attorney General. That’ll be my next step.

Winter just won’t let go here. It was snowing again this morning, and our birds have all left. I still get a chickadee occasionally. I can just feel the lack of sun stripping everything away. I want to be outside in the warm sunshine, digging in the dirt, planting seeds.

I have to take the truck in, something’s wrong with the steering or something. It shimmies and shakes when you get over 45mph. More money down the drain.

My back and shoulder hurt! I have arthritis in my spine, and something’s wrong with my rotator cuff. I don’t know what, the doctor didn’t say, just that there’s nothing that can be done for it. Except pop more pills, which makes my stomach hurt.

Glass! When I first bought Amy’s storm tutorial, I made a green stringer and didn’t write down what glasses I used in it. People have been snapping them up, the stringer is all gone now, and I can’t duplicate it.

I tried 4 different combinations this morning, and none of them are like the original. It seems like half the beads I make are just so un-inspiring. The colors don’t come out the way I expected them to, the dots are off, the beads are lopsided.

End of whining.

A couple of beads that did turn out,

I think what I need to do is discipline myself to making more beads that I know I like, and less time on experimenting with color combinations and stringer combinations.

And talking about glass, what do I do but buy more glass!! Like I really need more.

What I really need to do is clean all of the beads that I've got stashed in my drawer and get them listed.

Well, at least I’ve still got flowers blooming. Here’s one of my amaryllis,

I lost some orchids this winter, so when I was down in the cities last week, I had to buy some more,

Next year if I have all of my ducks in a row, I’m going to have my greenhouse and back deck torn down, and put in a new deck with a bigger greenhouse, with real glass/plexiglass instead of plastic. It’ll be big enough that I can go out and sit in a chair and soak up the sun even if it’s too cold to go outside.

Oh, and here's my little puppy, growing way too fast:

He's still a big baby, though, no matter how big he is. Christian accidentally stepped on his foot the other day, and Suka pee'd himself.

2011-04-06T21:12:00.000-05:00

This dog is a MENACE with that cone on him. I’m going to be all black and blue from him running into the backs of my legs with it, and he does NOT fit under my desk with it on. Or at least he and my feet don’t fit under the desk with it on. It’s been 50-50 on who gets the desk today. You know, it’s really hard to type on the computer when you’re sitting 2 feet from it.

2011-04-05T10:55:00.001-05:00

I took Suka to the vet this morning to get netuered. I don’t know who was more traumatized, him or me. I had to walk out the door and listen to his scrambling to try to come with me. I felt like I was abandoning my only child.

The vet just called, and said he came through it just fine, and he was awake and a little groggy. She said to come pick him up at 3:00.

My house is awfully quiet without him chasing the ferrets, or picking on Pip, and running in and out of the doggy door and slamming my studio door open.

ETA: Here’s my baby, home with the cone.

And here he is, sitting and slowly leaning back, and back, and back until he almost fell over. LOL, think he’s still a little groggy.

2011-04-03T20:41:00.001-05:00

Do you ever get the feeling that I like flowers? Here’s my studio,

Some of these amaryllis are from seeds that my Mom grew after she cross-pollinated some of her amaryllis. They’re about 12 years old now, and this is the first year that they’ve bloomed.

Silly pets photos, my nephews have been building drawers for my glass cabinet for me to store all of my glass rods in, instead of having them out in the open collecting dust. Here’s the fur babies helping Mark,

They’re just so darned much help!

Here’s Pip on one of her favorite spots, the back of the recliner,

So tired!

And here’s the big goof who’s going in this week to get fixed. He’s using his teddy bear as a pillow while chewing on a bone,

He decided to bring all of his toys into the foyer the other day. I came in there, and there were teddy bears and squeaky toys all over.

2011-03-23T21:19:00.001-05:00

And to think that just yesterday the snow was almost gone. Now we have drifts 2 to 3 ft. high. Sigh, spring is coming, spring is coming, spring is coming. If I repeat it enough, it’ll happen.

I don’t think the birds are going to be getting much food off of this feeder,

Yup, spring is coming...

2011-03-21T21:43:00.001-05:00

I love hyacinths, the colors, the scent, the petals, but especially the scent. I have one pot sitting on my printer to my right, and another to my left. Heavenly!

The sandhill cranes were out in the pasture today, and calling down by the river. I would love to be able to go south when they gather for the migrations. It must be quite a sight.

Here’s my resident Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers,

2011-03-17T09:31:00.002-05:00

It’s been difficult to write for the past week. It’s been horrible to see the videos from Japan, with the loss of life, and so much destruction. But my sister reminded me that it’s uplifting to see pretty pictures, so I’m back with some.

This bright boy has been hanging around for the last couple of day.

I wish the camera could pick up the metallic shimmers in these beads. They just gleam!

Spring is on the way. It was over 50 yesterday, and the snow is melting. I had a flock of Canadian geese fly over, and a sandhill crane. I cracked my bedroom window a bit more last night, and could hear the cranes down by the river. I am so ready for it, it’s been a long and hard winter. We had over 80” of snow this winter.

2011-03-08T19:32:00.003-06:00

Christian took Suka to the vet today to get his shots. Suka is 5 months old now, and weighs 50 lbs. He is such a wuss! Christian said when the vet was listening to Suka’s heart, Suka put a paw on Christian’s lap, then his other paw, then he jumped up on Christian’s lap. And then when they did his nails, he piddled! What a baby! Here’s a photo with Christian (yes, I know my son looks like a lumberjack. He’s waiting until it warms up, then he’ll shave it all off and get a haircut).

He’s grown so fast! Here’s a photo of when we first got him,

Last night he was on the bed with me while I was reading, and Christian came and was wrestling around with him. Suka wagged his tail, and it thumped against the pillow, and he stopped and looked at his tail, like ‘what’s making that noise?’ Hilarious!!

Yesterday morning Peaches, the cat, must have been trying to get in through the doggy door while Suka was outside. I was sitting in my studio, and I heard her screeching, then she scrambled through the doggie door with Suka after her. She jumped over the half door of my studio, Suka banged into it (it’s has a screen door spring to keep it shut so the ferrets can’t get out), the door slammed into my cabinet, and I was thinking ‘that door is going to slam shut and wake Lukas up.’ Well, Peaches turned around and ran back through the door, and it slammed shut on her tail. Well, at least it didn’t make as much noise that way. Poor cat.

This is video of Suka playing with BB, the ferret.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avm4a2Z1_hU

I started some peppers and tomatoes, and have been dreaming of spring and warm sunshine, and no coats or shoes (I’m just a hippie at heart, hate to wear shoes). We have a snowstorm moving in tonight, but at least we won’t be getting the foot of snow that they were forecasting earlier.

2011-02-25T18:55:00.001-06:00

It’s no wonder I don’t get any work done. I posted a couple of videos of Suka and the ferrets playing tug of war with a stuff toy and a piece of plastic, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvUrKB6-M-8

When I empty a bag of ferret food, I leave it on the floor for a couple of days for the ferrets to play in. Suka wanted to get every last crumb in it, and then couldn’t get the bag off of his head. When I called him to get the bag of of his head, he ran into the desk. Sorry, but I was laughing so hard I was crying.

I love Dark Aurae! I just wish I could get more of it. This is Dark Aurae on pink glass. The only difference is the oxygen/propane proportions and the amount of time flashing it in the flame. What you don’t see in the photos are the shimmering metallic glimmers of the glass. They’re just gorgeous!

2011-02-15T20:12:00.001-06:00

More flower photos, a gorgeous rich velvety red Gilmore amaryllis,

And some more beads,

2011-02-14T20:22:00.003-06:00

Lots of pretty flower pictures tonight. I’m getting the spring bug. We’re had really warm weather the last couple of days, and the snow is melting.

Christian thought if he held up Chunk by the amaryllis, it would give a better idea of how huge these blossoms are. Chunk had other ideas, like chomp!

The other Peacock Blossom bud has opened,

And a gorgeous Red Lion,

Another shot of the Minerva, or it this a Gilmore? I didn’t label the bulb.

The red-bellied woodpecker came back,

Stupid pet photos! This is Chunk flying through the air trying to get into the garbage can (he jumped from the litter box bucket),

And here’s Suka in his new snow box. He outgrew the other one. He does love his snow!

Bead photos,

And thanks again to Amy, AK Designs, for writing the tutorial on how to make these beads!

2011-02-11T08:02:00.000-06:00

Life with a puppy:
6:30 a.m. Puppy yawning loud enough to wake the whole house,
6:35 turn on hallway light so I can dodge any wet spots on way to let puppy out
6:40 tug of war between puppy and me for my bra
6:45 break up fight between Pip and puppy for sqeaky toy
7:00 break up fight between Pip and puppy for sqeaky toy
7:20 get puppy off of cat
7:25 separate ferret and puppy because ferret grabbed puppy by the lip (don't feel bad for ferret! It's revenge for puppy dragging ferret around by the tail.)
7:35 puppy knocks over dust pan & broom trying to chase cat

2011-02-08T22:27:00.000-06:00

I had a very unsettling shock. As I’ve mentioned before, we’ve been getting the old farm house cleaned out over the past two years because it’s falling down, and it was time to get in there and save what we could. A lot of stuff we just put in rubbermaid boxes and put in the trailer house or I bought them back and put them in my basement. Yesterday when I went down there to get some more amaryllis bulbs, I grabbed some small boxes and bought them up to look through them.

One box had sympathy cards from 1949, and it took a while to figure out they were from when my older brother was born. He was born severely deformed and live just a short while after birth.

The next box I opened was much worse. There was a billfold and a bank book, both charred, and a small box with charred coins and metal buttons and clasps. They were from my Dad. He was killed in a farming accident when I was 14 months old, out plowing and the tractor turned over on him and caught fire. My mother never went through the billfold. There were still photos of my two older sisters, his driver’s license, and some half burned papers still in it.

All I can think about is how horrible it must have been for Mom. She deserved so much better of a life than she had, and it’s my firm belief that she will get that life after the resurrection.

2011-02-08T21:35:00.002-06:00

Another frigid day today. My fingers were just numb after coming in from doing chores. If I were rich, I’d have a heated barn, and a heated garage with a skid loader for hauling hay. In my dreams, sigh.

Goofy cat photo, Peaches and S.C. sitting on the posts staring at each other.

My amaryllis bulbs are just gorgeous this year! Here’s another shot of a double petaled one,

And this one is a Minerva,

And this one is the Minerva beside a HUMONGOUS Apple Blossom. The Apple Blossom measures 8 1/2” wide! And both of them have another blossom stalk coming up.

I love working with glass, but it gets so frustrating when I don’t take notes. I did this Galaxy stringer, but I can’t remember what glasses I used!

And here’s a couple of pretty Dark Auraes,

I wasn’t sure what to call this one, Wood Grain maybe?

2011-02-01T17:50:00.006-06:00

January is done with (not that February is any better, with snow and frigid cold NW winds). I’ve really been in the dumps, and while I’ve been making a lot of beads, it’s been perfunctory. I’ve been trying to get beads done for the AGLF Random Bags of Glass, but at $5 a bag, I’m not going to make $15 beads. And that has left me uninspired. Uninspired, and in the dumps.

I’m watching Al Roker reporting the weather from Chicago. They’re getting the weather we had over the past couple of days, and then it’s heading east. Everyone, except maybe southern California, has got to be so tired of this winter.

And what is with people? A woman in Minneapolis tried mailing a puppy?!? And on the news this morning a woman sent a video to Dr. Phil showing how she punished her 7 yr. old by making him drink hot sauce, and by giving him a cold shower. Dang! What’s wrong with washing the mouth out with soap? At least that way you get clean teeth (voice of experience there). :)

Flowers, flowers, where’s all of my flowers? I want flowers!!!! These are two of the bulbs I bought online last fall.

My nephews were up Sunday. They got the chains put on the snowthrower, but it was so cold today, I just called and had the driveway plowed out. They also got my doggy door put in, but again, it’s so cold, I have to keep it closed.

Suka is a typical teeny bopper, lots of energy in between his naps, and a pest. He picks on Squeak, and the cats, and here he is bugging Chester,

And here’s the Stupid Pet Photo, Pip relaxing on her favorite spot, the back of the recliner,

That little box on her collar is the neatest invention for anyone with a yappy dog. It seems to work best with smaller dogs, the bigs ones tend to just ignore it. It has an audio sensor, and when the dog barks, it sprays out citronella. When she’s got that on, she doesn’t get into those frenzied barking streaks.

Oh, gad, the windchills just west of us are already down to -30°.

I HATE WINTER!!!!!

ETA: I’ve been hoarding my Dark Aurae because it was an odd lot from Double Helix, and while they said they would probably have more when they did another run of Aurae, that was months ago. I’m down to 11 rods. Whahhhhhh!!!! I LOVE this glass, and this is why,

ETA: My sister came up last week and we did some more digging into our genealogy, and traced our Dad’s line back to our great-great-grandfather, who was born in Germany in 1806. He and his wife and kids immigrated to the US in 1858, and he died 2 years later of the fever. Our great-great-grandfather on our Mom’s side was born in 1821, and immigrated with his wife and 4 kids in 1867, and died 4 years later. Life was hard on the men back then.

This is my Mom’s grandparents, Wilhelm and Wilhelmina,

Here’s a family photo, my Mom is front center, mid 1920s

My Mom,

And after her Dad died of a heart attack at age 51, she and her brother did the farming.

2011-01-25T08:18:00.000-06:00

I am superwoman!!!

I double mopped half dozen BIG puddles of puppy diarrhea and still did 11 minutes on the elliptical.

ETA: Oh my gosh, I’ve got goofy cats. Peaches was on my kiln desk, which is against the windows, making weird noises. So I went to look at her, and there she was, looking at a blue jay on the ground outside. She was practically drooling in anticipation.

2011-01-24T21:30:00.000-06:00

This time a year ago I was in the emergency room in Monticello saying goodbye to David.

He had gone to the bathroom about 6 p.m., and when he came out he just stood there, unable to move. Christian and I got him into his chair and called 911. The ambulance came, and instead of getting him to the hospital (they couldn’t even get a blood pressure reading on him), they stood around waiting for another ambulance that had a special gurney that lifted up and down. I rode with them to the hospital, and sat and cried and prayed. After a couple of hours they decided to transport him down to the cities, but being we were in the middle of a bad snowstorm, they couldn’t call the helicopter, and they wouldn’t let me ride down with them. So I said goodbye to him. I don’t know if he heard me, there was no sign of it (I found out later that his heart quit on the way to the hospital and they had to do CPR on him). I called my neighbor and asked her to sit with Lukas while Christian came and picked me up. Throughout the night I talked to my sister-in-law, who went down there to be with him and called me to tell me that he was hooked up to machines, and he wouldn’t want that done, and then the doctors, one wanting to try to find out what had bought this on (did he drink rubbing alcohol, or takes some drugs, etc.), another one telling me if he wasn’t hooked up to a kidney dialysis machine he would die, and the night nurse telling me what they were doing with him.

The next morning I talked again to the main doctor, trying to figure out what I should do, if I should come down and have him taken off the machines or wait. He held out hope that there was a chance of recovery, so I waited. Again that night, I was told he was going downhill, but when I called the night nurse, she said no, he was holding his own, but then at 4 a.m. she called and said the tests were coming back worse, and that it was a matter of time. I told her I would have to wait until daylight to come down. I have developed eye problems, so I have to wear prism glasses to see to drive, and headlights fracture into dozens of lights. So the next morning I went to the hospital and requested they take him off the machines. My sister and David’s sister and her family were there, along with David’s two children from his previous marriage. We all stood around his bed and watched the heart monitor. That was the most difficult time of my life. I held his hand and felt it getting colder. It didn’t take long, 20 minutes? The monitor beeped slower and slower, and then it started picking up and going faster. There were those brief moments of hope, that it was all wrong, he was going to be OK. But then it stopped.

We all left the room while they removed the machine hookups and then they asked if I wanted to go back and say goodbye. I went in, and saw him laying there, and I couldn’t do it. I left the room.

David died of septic shock. He had an infection that went into his bloodstream and shut down his organs. Over the next weeks and months I felt so guilty for not just calling a doctor and somehow making him go, instead of just trying to get him to call, or even let me make an appointment. By the time he consented to let me make an appointment, it was already too late.

We never had a funeral for him. I couldn’t do it. A friend suggested having a memorial service for him when the weather warmed up, but I didn’t do that either. I still miss him, and it still hurts.

2011-01-24T09:05:00.001-06:00

Etsy is becoming VERY user unfriendly, at least as far as the seller goes.

Up until now, Etsy has had forums, Announcements, Site Help, Business Topics, International, Ideas, Bugs, Critiques, Techniques & Materials, Teams and Events, Promotions, and Etc. You could browse the threads or search for specific info. Well, Etsy has announced that they’re closing the Forums and if you want to discuss anything, you have to join a Team. This is part of Rob White’s announcement, “International and Techniques & Materials are two incredibly broad topics which we have decided are best served not with umbrella teams created by us, but as a myriad of individual communities in which community members can take part. ”

Unless you join, you won’t be able to see the posts. So if I want to find some information, say, about coral, I would have to join a beading team, a jewelry team, and maybe I want information on setting coral in silver, so join a metalworking team and a PMC team, and then maybe a marketing team. Then I would have to search each team’s posts to find any information. Right now they have over 1,100 teams (and that’s before migrating the forums!). Sounds like a colossal waste of time. My personal opinion is that they’re tired of getting bashed in the forums, so they’re shutting them down.

2011-01-23T07:42:00.000-06:00

19.3° below zero, and still dropping.

I WANT SPRING!!!!

2011-01-21T09:56:00.002-06:00

-22.5° this morning, sigh. I am so tired of the cold. On the bright side, I saw a 29° (above zero!!!) in the extended forecast.

The chimney guy came yesterday and looked at the chimney. He said there was minimal damage, but he’s going to write up an estimate on getting it relined and if I have the money this summer, I may do that. He also said we could get flexible rods at the hardware store in Princeton so we can clean the flue from the bottom instead of going up on the roof, so Christian is running up there today. He said the chimney was almost clogged, and because our stove is so old, it’s not airtight and that makes for more creosote buildup. But I refuse to replace it. This is the stove that my Mom’s family used to heat their house when she was a kid. It’s a lovely wood-grained brown enamel, and it is just so toasty warm.

I got another bunch of test glasses from Double Helix yesterday, so I’m off to see what I can get them to do. I sure wish they would make another batch of Dark Aurae. It is my most favorite glass, but it’s an odd lot, so they may never make another batch. :( These are a couple of beads made with Dark Aurae. Getting the green is a hit-or-miss, it just depends on the oxygen-propane proportions and how long I flash it. There’s no telling how it will turn out, which makes it more fun.

2011-01-19T18:20:00.001-06:00

I sell my beads on Etsy and ArtFire. When ArtFire first started up, I signed up for it. It wasn’t the fact that it’s cheaper to sell on ArtFire, it was because of the direction Etsy was taking. In 2008, even when shown evidence of fraud, they chose to ignore it. There was such an outpouring of indignation and people closing their shops, they finally had to pay attention to it.

Then there wwere the $2.99 Chinese ‘sterling silver-cored’ beads, in the Handmade section. Handmade, sure, in a ‘family’ factory. Sterling silver? More like white copper.

Then there was the article on the Etsy blog from Temple St. Clair about how coral should be banned from jewelry, disregarding the fact that there are coral beds that are sustainably harvested throughout the world. Temple St. Clair is a big name jewelry designer. Not a jewelry maker who makes her own jewelry to sell on Etsy, but a jewelry designer whose lines sell at places like Saks and Target. Why was she even on the Etsy blog?!

Then there’s the rape card debacle. A seller by the name of ‘youstupidb****’ (you fill in the letters, I refuse to type it out) opened a shop, selling cards showing a line drawing of a woman crouching in a shower with the words ‘congratulations, you got bad touched.’ There were other cards congratulating people on having a Downs baby, and having AIDS. This was Administration’s response to complaints, “I understand that some items on the site may be upsetting. The themes of this shop could be considered controversial, and I can see how they touch very personally. Etsy hosts a diverse global community with a very broad range of sensibilities, as well as a wide variety of artistic expression. Etsy does not control the content provided by members, and we do not pre-screen content before it is posted on the site. You may find some things to be offensive, harmful, inaccurate or deceptive.” The story finally got picked up by CNN, and Etsy removed the listings.

Etsy has every right to allow repugnant things like the cards to be sold. But I question my place in an organization like that, whose standards seem to be at lowest level of decency just because people have the right to say what they want.

2011-01-19T08:57:00.001-06:00

I saw a new bird today!! A red-bellied woodpecker. According to my bird book, they’re supposed to move south for the winter. Silly bird! What’s he doing here?

2011-01-16T07:30:00.000-06:00

6 a.m., Suka jumped up on the bed and stuck his cold nose in my face, 6:30 Lukas got up to go to the bathroom. Luckily he didn’t step in the pile of puppy poo by his door. While he was in there I put the dogs out and mopped up the puppy pee in the foyer. Got the puppy poo cleaned up and Lukas back into bed, took a shower, went back into my bedroom and grabbed the drying rack (I hang rugs on it to dry instead of running them through the dryer) before it fell on the floor (Peaches the cat was up on the top rung, straddling it, and jumped off when I came into the room). Sat down on the bed and kept Suka from jumping onto my lap. Got dressed and started the coffee and the wood stove. Put Suka and Pip outside because they were chasing each other up and down the hallway. Let them back in. Got my coffee and went to my studio, filled the ferrets’ food and water containers, kept Suka from grabbing Chunk’s tail, go closed Lukas’ bedroom door that the cat got open, played with Suka to distract him from the ferrets. Sat down to have some coffee.

And how is your day going?

ETA: And my day continues swimmingly. The cat kept on trying to open Lukas’ door, so he never did get back to sleep, so I got him up to give him a shower, and the shower drain was clogged. Tried plunging it, got a sliver in my hand from the plunger, so had to resort to the snake. Then we had a chimney fire! Luckily, my nephews are up, and after I threw a chimney fire extinguisher into the stove, they went down in the basement and up in the attic to check on things. So tomorrow I get to call a chimney guy to come inspect it and make sure the flue didn’t get damaged. :( That’s going to be a few hundred dollars. If I didn’t like burning wood so much, I wouldn’t burn wood. End of story, I hope.

2011-01-15T22:23:00.002-06:00

Winter is getting really old here. It’s -3° and this is what it looked like a couple of days ago. Yuck!

So to counter all of that white, here’s a lovely holiday cactus that’s blooming,

Luscious, warm colors....

Suka is growing so fast! He’s still so darned cute, and now he has one ear that wants to stand up.

I finished up figuring out inventory tonight. Jeepers, there’s got to be an easier way to do this! 5 hours!

I took photos of beads to get listed, but nothing really exciting. I’m not sure I like the red dots on this one, although the Galaxy plunges came out nice.

This is TerraNova 2.1, a really nice glass if you heat, cool, heat and cool it just right.

I like this one, with just a hint of purple in it.

LOL, Pip is sleeping on the chair behind me, and she’s snoring. Goofy dog.

2011-01-09T19:53:00.001-06:00

Did you know that, when it’s -14°, if you blow on a glass door to defrost a hole so you can watch the dogs when you let them out, it forms huge crystals?

Yes, I know, it looks pretty, but, sigh, I am so ready for spring. And I think the cats are too. Do you think they can get any closer?

2011-01-06T22:24:00.000-06:00

A year ago yesterday, David collapsed for the first time. He came to while we were on the phone to 911. He said he tripped and fell, and refused to have the ambulance come. I was so angry with him because I was so scared, and I thought it was because he’d been drinking. I spent the next 2 1/2 weeks trying to get him to go to the doctor. I knew something was wrong, just from his behavior. He said and did things that were just irrational. By the 22nd, he finally consented to let me call the doctor and make an appointment for him. He collapsed on the 24th, and until the 26th, it was only the machines that kept him alive.

I don’t miss the constant tension of the past few years. It’s not easy living with an alcoholic, which is what David became after having his job replaced by a computer. But I do miss my old friend, the one who years and years ago, I told of my fears of things going so well that they couldn’t last. I was right, they didn’t. I don’t know how people who don’t have faith in the Bible’s promises of a resurrection handle things like this. I have a hard enough time, and I know, as sure as I know the sun is coming up tomorrow, that there will be a resurrection on this earth, and it’s my hope that I’ll be there to greet David and Mom, and tell them, ‘I told you so.’

2011-01-05T07:38:00.001-06:00

The AGLF is having a fun sale starting today.

“Special Sales Event - Random Bag of Glass - One Day Only!

The Artisan and Glassworker Legal Fund is announcing a major sales event, the "Random Bag of Glass" sale!

For your $5.00, you'll get a package containing random glass goodies from the members of the AGLF as a thank you for your purchase.

But there's much more...random buyers will receive their thank you gift plus a little something extra. That surprise something extra might be a bead roller, silver leaf, mesh, raw glass, a tool, a Creation Station, or a set of Kim Neely's color archives.”

2011-01-04T07:41:00.000-06:00

Oh yuck! -10°. Well, to look on the bright side, this is the coldest week of the year, and from here on, it’s going to start warming up. And at least it’s not -40°.

2010-12-31T20:08:00.001-06:00

The last day of 2010, and I’ll repeat the sentiments of last year, “Good riddance to 2009. It was a year of pain, emotional and physical.”

It’s been so dreary, between snowstorms and rain. I’m tired of winter.

It was kind of pretty the other day, with lots of hoarfrost.

A pretty Christmas cactus,

and this is an amaryllis plant.

Suka is driving us all crazy. He’s like a toddler at this point, lots and lots of energy, and wants to play. I sure wish I could bottle some of that energy. I could use some.

2010-12-28T23:01:00.000-06:00

Oh my, Suka is trying to sleep under my desk, and he’s ripping some awfully stinking gaseous emissions. Wow! Next time I go to the grocery store, I’ll have to look for some fennel seed.

2010-12-26T21:55:00.001-06:00

Suka is growing!! Here he is our 2nd day,

And here he is now.

Still playing with the ferrets,

And all tuckered out,

2010-12-26T08:41:00.001-06:00

I am going to kill some cats pretty soon. They’re chewing all of the stems off of my orchids!!!!

2010-12-25T19:33:00.002-06:00

The little divas,

2010-12-22T21:46:00.001-06:00

Puppy photos tonight. Chunk attacking from above

from below

Suka and BB playing tug of war with a plastic bag

and Suka all tuckered out

2010-12-20T20:10:00.001-06:00

My orchids are starting to bloom!

Some beads to show off. I really like this one (just wish I remembered what glasses I used),

I love the colors in this one. Tomorrow morning I have to try to make some big hole beads with this coloring.

2010-12-19T21:21:00.001-06:00

I’ve been reminded that I need to get photos posted. My sister must be bored. :)

Muddy brown goldfinches, just waiting for spring to brighten up,

Suka stole the ferrets’ snow box, and Buddy is trying to figure out what to do about it.

Christian said it won’t be much longer before he won’t be able to do this, because Suka is growing so fast.

I’ve been feeling the need to get back into drawing/painting, and this is my newest effort. This was a gorgeous Friesian horse down at the Horse Expo. I’d love to have one of these beauties.

1 more day to get past the shortest day of the year, and 20 more until the days start to warm up.

2010-12-15T19:43:00.002-06:00

Lots and lots of photos tonight!
Puppy photos,

Chunk and Suka photos.

Suka has figured out how to keep Chunk from biting him, he just flops down on him.

I bought a record player that hooks up to my computer so I can get some old records digitized. Here’s one that’s really old, it’s an Edison record from the 1920s,

This record is almost 1/4” thick!

The songs on it are A Sturdy Norseman
and Norway, My Norway and Little Mountain Maid

2010-12-13T08:42:00.001-06:00

BRRRR! -13° this a.m. 7/26 days (7 days until the days get longer, 26 until they get warmer).

More cactus photos. The second one is one I just bought at Walmart. I was amazed at all of the blossom buds on it.

And of course, Suka photos,

2010-12-11T10:27:00.001-06:00

My torch is all ready to start making beads, but I have to wait until Chunk goes to sleep before I dare start working. He and Suka have to be closely supervised. Suka likes to swat at them with those big paws, which makes Chunk mad, and Suka also likes to grab their tails, which makes Chunk mad.

We’re in a snowstorm here, with a cold snap moving in. They’re forecasting -10° tomorrow morning. I’m not even going to try to get the tractor started to plow the driveway. I called a guy who does snowplowing to come out tomorrow or Monday. Here’s what it’s looking like right now.

Suka jumped off the deck and couldn’t get back up, and the snow was too deep for him to go around, so I had to get down and my hands and knees and pull him up. BRRRRRRR!

We’re still in the ‘Oh, how cute!’ stage with Suka.Yesterday he was taking a nap with me, laying on his back, spreadeagled. Would have made a cute photo.

Now if I tried sleeping like this, I would wake up with such a stiff neck!