Study: Geese

Canadian geese have been landing in the alfalfa field in recent weeks.

Geese can do a number on a field of grass. The birds are worse than deer. Deer just eat it; geese pull it up by the roots and destroy it.

The first of the following three pictures is the original; the other two have been enhanced with Microsoft Picture It! software.





This picture also has been enhanced with the same software. The remainders are original photos, though cropped.

Thursday Thirteen

Here is a list of blogs I read (in no particular order). Some are on my links to the side and some need to get there but I haven't had time to do an update:

1. May Muses. This is written by a former writing buddy who used to live around here but has now taken herself off to Asheville so she can learn to be an acupuncturist. She has a different slant on life.

2. Stillwater suite. I just found this blog. I like the writer's voice and the subject matter.

3. Tom Atkins. Tom writes interesting poetry and has an interesting take on creativity and life in general. I really enjoy reading his work. His blog address changes a lot, though.

4. landuvmilknhoney. This is a local blogger who is doing homesteading and self-sustaining efforts in the biggest way. She makes her own butter, for heaven's sake!

5. AROOO. A different take on politics and life in general. Good reading if you're into women's issues and what is right (but not right-wing).

6. Blue Ridge Blue Collar Girl. Beth doesn't write enough but when she does you can bet your sweet bippy that it is worth the read.

7. Sweetfluttersbys3. This blogger writes about food and offers up recipes, along with a picture of some luscious and fattening cake. Makes me hungry every time I visit!

8. Spatter. June's photos are among my favorites. I wish I had her great photographic eye.

9. Roanoke Firefighters. An interesting take on the place of my husband's employment and probably enlightening reading for the citizens who live there as to how the government is actually working. Did you know this blog was recently banned from the city computers?

10. Jen's Bike Blog. I do not ride a bicycle but often wished I did. Jen writes about her work in the health care system and her bike rides, which includes fun outings and races. I live vicariously through her words, I think.

11. Ron Bailey. Ron is another who keeps changing his site around but at least the address stays the same. I am never quite sure what he is doing but if you're interested in scratching your head check him out.

12. The Virginia Scribe. Amy is in the Hollins Horizon program, following in my footsteps even though she doesn't know me. She has won some writing contests and I expect great things from her. She is doing it all while raising kids, too. Plus I think she married someone who is from around where I live.

13. Bad Jokes and Oven Chips. Another Thursday Thirteen-er, who lives across the sea. I enjoy learning about her world and her trumpet-playing adventures. She also does something with Girl Scouts or something like that group.

There are many more. Hope you found some new reading!


Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; you can learn more about it here. My other Thursday Thirteens are here.

Country in my soul

I love everything about the country. For instance, there is nature in all her glory, the cows lowing, the deer eating my rose bushes, the rabbits chewing holes in my plastic fence to get at my beans.

It is all wonderful and beautiful and pleasing to my ears, eyes and nose. Even the rabbits.

But I do not listen to country music. I do not care for the wail of those who need to leave their husbands to catch a train because their mother-in-law is coming home from Folsom prison.

No, these days I listen to adult contemporary, or pop music, with new artists whose names I do not know. I do not listen to country music.

I was, however, raised on country music.

My father plays the guitar and back then he sang the country songs of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Conway Twitty, Tom T. Hall, Charley Pride, Charlie Rich and Kris Kristofferson, not to mention Johnnie and June Carter Cash – that was the music of my early childhood.

I remember my father playing in the evening, strumming and trying to work out chords. He mostly played by ear as he sang the words to whatever country tune he decided to croon out any given evening.

My mother often joined in and they sang duets. I can still hear them singing “We got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout. You’ve been talkin’ ‘bout Jackson ever since the fire burned out.” It made for a fun evening.

When I was 11, I decided to learn to play the guitar, too. I picked it up hesitantly. I quickly discovered that of the several instruments I played (piano, flute, saxophone), this was the one I truly loved.

I practiced in secret, moving quickly from Skip to My Lou to more popular pieces.

The first song I played for my parents was called California Girl (And The Tennessee Square) by Tompall And The Glaser Brothers.

It was a country song, played in the key of “A”.
I do not think I have ever heard that song played on the radio, but I heard my daddy sing it so that didn’t matter. It was his version I learned and his version that I played, only I played it faster and made the chord changes very quickly.

I went on to play guitar in a band, a short-lived teenage endeavor called Almost Famous that broke apart as we graduated high school and moved on to other things.

These days I very seldom pick up an instrument. My fingers are soft and tender now and the strings hurt when I try to play my guitar. Those hard-won calluses have vanished along with my youth.

But on quiet days sometimes, when I’ve something on my mind and the silence of the house can be a bit much when my husband is not at home, I sing.

And it’s often those old country tunes, with the sadness found in For the Good Times or the swaying blues of Bobby McGhee that I sing aloud to the kitchen walls.

Not some modern Bubbly or some belly grinder belted out by the likes of Britney Spears.

No indeed. I sing those country songs that I no longer listen to.

I sing them over and over again, as if it was yesterday and I am again 10 years old.

***
This originally appeared in The Fincastle Herald on August 20, 2008, under my Country Crossroads column.

Say What?!?

There is a reason why driving around Valley View Mall in Roanoke can be treacherous!

This sign is at the intersection of the off-ramp from Hershberger Road onto Valley View Blvd. I am directionally challenged so I don't know if it's east or west or north or south but it's the ramp one would take after passing Crossroads Mall going toward toward Interstate 581. Take the ramp and go to make a left turn toward Valley View.

I do know, however, that a STOP sign with a sign beneath that says "No Stopping" makes absolutely no sense.

Nature's Bounty (or Why I Shouldn't Cook)

Our six tomato plants have been especially fruitful this year. I have had tomatoes and more tomatoes.

We've given tomatoes to my in-laws, my husband's aunt, our next door neighbors times three, and my best friend. I have not yet grown desperate enough to leave them on people's doorsteps but with as many as 50 more ready to pick in two days' time I may get that way.

I do not can, though I should. I have made pickles in the past and they were good, but my cucumbers this year are not in the numbers for pickles. I have enough tomatoes to can, but we don't eat that much tomatoey foods anyway because I have a tender belly that can't tolerate all that acid.

Last night I decided I would freeze some of the tomatoes. I have done that before with good results, and it's easy.

All you have to do is boil the tomatoes for about a minute, then plunge them in ice water. This allows you to easily remove the skin.

Then you cut out the bad spots and the core. Rinse out the seeds. Put the meaty pulp in a drainer and then place them in labeled quart freezer bags. Remove as much as you can and then stick them in the freezer.

I made a pot of tea for my husband and then gathered my ingredients for the tomato freezing. A big pot for boiling, a plastic dish for the ice water, a spoon for dipping the tomatoes from the hot water, my colanders for draining, a knife.

As the water heated, I cleaned the tomatoes I planned to use.

Then I filled my plastic bowl with ice water and set it on the stove next to the boiling water for easy transfer.

I plopped in the tomatoes and set a timer. The skin on some of the riper tomatoes began to strip right off. When the timer went off, I grabbed the spoon and plunged the tomatoes one by one into the icy water.

Then I decided to pick up the bowl to carry it to the sink so I could put the tomatoes in the colander.

But what was this? The bowl ... would not budge. Had I become a weakling suddenly?

No.

The bowl had melted to the eye on my Jenn-Air stove. Remember that pot of tea I made before beginning the tomato process?

This eye was still a little hot when I placed the bowl of ice water on it.

First I laughed at my stupidity and then I cried. A new set of stove eye inserts for a Jenn-Air is expensive.

I dipped the tomatoes out and carried them individually to the sink as I tried to figure out what to do now.

I thought about turning the stove eye on so I could remove the bowl but I wasn't sure that was a good idea.

My husband was out but expected back in an hour so I decided to leave the bowl where it was - it wasn't like I could do anything with it anyway - and continue with my tomato freezing.

It took about 35 tomatoes to make up five quarts.

My husband came home as I finished up the tomatoes, and I explained my predicament to him. He vetoed the "turn on the eye and let the bowl melt free" suggestion, saying it would smoke up the house. He's a fireman so I had to respect his knowledge on this subject.

He tested the bowl and could not remove it, but after he emptied the bowl of ice water, he tried again. Perhaps because the water was gone, he was able to wrench it free.

That left just a little tiny ring of plastic on the eye, which he was able to scrap off with his pocket knife. The eye burned fine after he cleaned it.

The bowl is still usable, too. Catastrophe averted!

Regular readers will remember I melted a plastic spoon into peanut brittle back in the winter.

Some folks are meant to cook, and are artistically creative with food.

Some folks, like me, are just meant to eat it, I guess.

Study: Silo

Thursday Thirteen

1. Why does a 55 degree morning in August require a sweater, but a 55 degree morning in March means short sleeves and shorts?

2. The best sound of summer is the swish of the tree leaves as the oaks and maples talk quietly to one another.

3. Tomatoes, whether fruit or vegetable I do not know or care, is among the finer things to eat in summer. How can you beat a tomato and mayonnaise sandwich?

4. Peaches make for a fine dessert. Or main meal, if you like. And they're best this time of year!

5. Apples are a mainstay in a healthy diet (that doctor saying, you know). In the next several weeks fresh apples will be inundating the local markets. Yum.

6. The number of fogs in August supposedly means you will have that many snows. (Or so my mother always said.) We have fog this morning...

7. The dog days of summer should be behind us. During that time cuts don't heal and animals are overheated. (Or so my mother always said.)

8. The mountains are generally cooler than the lowlands but often its just a matter of degree and imagination.

9. In August the sky seems to move in closer and the blues are more intense.

10. After a rain, everything seems so much cleaner in the summer. Sometimes the green glistens and the raindrops are like diamonds when the sunshine hits them.

11. The days have grown a little shorter and that means less time to harvest, garden, mow and gather stores for the winter.

12. When I was a child we spent our summers with my grandmother in Salem. She lived along the Roanoke River and up the block there was an abandoned house. Can you guess where we weren't supposed to be and usually were?

13. I love to watch the sky in summer. The other day I saw a dinosaur and then a castle... and the other night I saw a glowing Jupiter as it squatted near the moon.



Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; you can learn more about it here. My other Thursday Thirteens are here.

Study: Apples

Great Customer Service

After I made my purchase of RAM Sunday at CC, I came home and unhooked the desktop. I carried it into the kitchen so I'd have room to work.

The case had not been opened since I purchased the computer. There were dustbunnies in the bottom.

I blew those out and rid the thing of the dirt. That alone as probably worth the hassle of unhooking the computer.

Locating the memory was not a problem. Getting to it was a bit difficult; it was behind a tangle of wires. After much huffing and puffing and wondering why it took so much force to get the RAM in, I finally wiped my brow and stood back and admired my work.

I reconnected everything and hit the start button.

The silence was deafening and the blackness on the monitor was blinding.

She was dead, my poor dear little desktop.

I reread the instructions with the RAM. I hunted up the owner's manual for the desktop. I'd done everything right.

The RAM offered free tech support.

This time I kept the desktop connected except for the power, and brought a chair in to lay the computer on so I wouldn't have to sit in the floor.

Then I called tech support for Kingston, the makers of the memory chips. After not even a minute's wait, a very nice man named Eric came on the line.

I explained my problem. He said, "We'll fix that."

I removed the memory and put it back in in various ways. It turns out my computer wasn't even supposed to have four memory slots but it did. Then he determined that the memory should be installed 1 GB chip 512 mg chip 1GB chip 512 mg chip instead of the other way around, which is how I had it.

After some more grunting on my part because the memory chips are hard to clip in (he said it takes 40 pounds of force to get them in! Imagine.), I booted and ... hurrah!

3 GBs of RAM on the desktop. It is a little faster and I think this will satisfy me for some time to come.

I really just wanted to acknowledge the tech at Kingston. He was very patient and I am very happy.

Why can't people always be nice?

I take it back

Remember my whines about my laptop purchase? I bought a little Gateway from CC about 10 days ago.

I felt like I paid for things I didn't get with the "quickstart" service. And then the computer went on sale for $50 less with a rebate and they don't match rebate prices.

The little laptop uses MS Vista. It has 3 or 4 GB RAM and it's very zippy. It whistles and sings and snaps along like a bee buzzing on a fine flower in the best part of June.

My desktop, on the other hand, is a Gateway purchased in 2005. It still uses Windows XP and (up until yesterday) had only 1 GB RAM. Still plenty of hard drive space left on it, though, even with all the photos I take.

My desktop, while reliable, plodded along like a groundhog seeking supper on a hot August day.

I spent some time Saturday trying to tweak the desktop. I consulted a knowledgeable friend about the items I could take out of "start up" in hopes of making it load faster. The computer takes about two minutes to boot (which really isn't all that bad, I mean, at least it boots).

Sunday I decided I should add RAM to the desktop. I did that several months ago for my old Toshiba laptop, which my husband now uses, and that helped it immensely. It went from 256 RAM to 1 RAM and it loads decently now.

I checked online to see what kind of RAM my Gateway might need and discovered it takes PC3200. Then I checked the websites of various stores.

I found it at CC for $45 for 1 GB. So for less than $100 I could soup up the desktop and hopefully use it for another couple of years.

At CC, I found the memory chips but none were marked $45. I found a helpful salesman (I think he was the same one who sold me the Gateway laptop, actually), and he went to look it up for me because I didn't print out the page or preorder it on the web.

As I trailed after him, I walked down the aisle where the laptops were. Lo, there was my Gateway laptop, marked down $50.

I stared at it, looking to see if this was still the sale price with the rebate. A young woman asked if she could help, and I explained I'd just bought that computer but paid $50 more.

This was on sale now WITHOUT the rebate! She said I didn't need my receipt, either, I could just go to customer service and tell them my name and just like that I'd get $50 credited to my card.

Meanwhile, the young man discovered that the memory RAM I needed indeed was on sale for $45 and was not $99 as marked.

Well! My estimation of CC increased exponentially with this nice service and $50 back on my laptop. Not to mention 2 GBs of RAM for $90.

So I take back whatever I said. This is still a better electronics company to deal with than that other one. While I feel like I received a $40 bum deal with the "quickstart" that was a bad decision on my part, really, and I take full responsibility.

Thanks CC for the good work!

Post 700

This is my 700th post, at least, according to the Blogger count, anyway.

I started blogging on August 5, 2006 - just a few days over two years ago, with a post entitled A New Beginning.

I had been blogging for about 18 months on AOL Journals. Then AOL decided to put ads all over everything. They were garish and annoying.

About that time I was interested in learning about Google Ads. Switching over to Blogger to see how that worked seemed like a good way to figure it out.

You do not get rich with ads on a blog, unless perhaps you're the Drudge Report or Huffington Post or something like that. People like me, and probably you, who are just posting and have about as much traffic in a week as a 7-11 convenience store sees in an hour likely aren't going to find ads on a blog very profitable.

I suppose if I wanted to spend time trying to leverage my product (i.e., this blog) so that more folks see it, it could be done, but my work and my interest in keeping my husband happy and my house clean and occasionally playing a video game - living life, you know - tends to preclude spending the hours it would take to "optimize" this thing and morph it into something, I don't know, spectacular, whatever that might be.

I actually began blogging on Blogger in 2003 under another name. My blog posts were unread rants about the war, which I opposed from the start. I am a pacifist at heart. War to me is simply a rich man's chess, a way to keep the proletariat at bay and the money in the proper pockets. Life is sacred and should be revered and honored and no one should die from a bullet in a gun fight even though I know people do all the time.

That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it.

So here's to two years of blogging. Thanks so much to my readers, those I know and those I don't, for sticking with me. I hope you've found something to smile at sometimes and something to think about at other times. If you're new here, I welcome you and am glad you dropped by. This is, for all intents and purposes, my front porch, where I put up my feet and offer you lemonade and conversation.

I do hope it has been and continues to be to your liking.

This is not a giraffe

I do not often see a doe on her hind legs, but the other morning as I sipped my tea and peered out the back door ...



she jumped up, apparently hungry for the leaves of a paradise. Or maybe she was after a switch for her young one:





The tree branches are about six feet from the ground. I can barely touch them with my arms outstretched and I am 5'2".




She hopped up on her hind legs several times, tugging at the branch each time she did so. She finally gave up and moseyed on after Junior there, who had long since headed for something less difficult to obtain - my rose bushes!

Swing Vote

Last weekend we saw the movie Swing Vote with Kevin Costner.

The movie basically is about a down-and-out divorced father who works in a egg factory (and gets fired during the movie). Through some twisted logic, he becomes the key vote during the presidential elections.

The presidential candidates then via for his vote.

That's the plot, but the movie is quite a commentary on our society. It is billed as a comedy but I cried throughout much of the show.

The movie highlighted the people that don't seem to matter in this country, at least not to the media and not to the government. Costner's character was one of those folks who have given up and lost hope of ever doing anything with his life. Why should he bother voting, much less trying to understand the issues, when so little of it pertains to his life?

He doesn't care about abortion or stem cell research or the War in Iraq, except that its taken some his drinking buddies away from town. He does care about high prices, gassing up his truck, feeding his daughter and making sure she gets to school.

The presidential candidates swoop into town to convince this uneducated bumpkin to vote for their side. It doesn't really matter what they stand for or if they are right or left in their politics; if Costner's character said he liked purple and the polka that is all that mattered.

Finally Costner's daughter forced him to understand the importance of his decision. He read letters that folks just like himself sent to him, hoping he would make a difference. He asked for a debate between the two candidates. One of the letters asked why, in a nation so rich, is there so little for those who have the least?

It is a good question and the movie did not answer it. That's because the answers are multiple and singular. I can name it in one word: greed.

The concept of the Greater Good has vanished. People do not care about one another. If I know you I might care about you but otherwise, I have no need or desire to see that you are safe and fed. That is how people think, with their eyes and hearts completely closed.

Politicians listen only to whiny self-inflated egoists who sit in their McMansions boo-hooing because they might have to pay another $100 a year in taxes. Those crybabies never think that their money might feed another person, or fix a road so that their best friend's cousin doesn't get killed in the bad curve, or pay for health care for an elderly mother who just had a stroke. All they think about is their tightly closed pocketbook.

The politicians (or the McMansion crowd) don't hear the cries of the waitress trying to raise her daughter on $18,000 a year. Or the sounds of a family of four trying to get back on $24,000 a year. They don't realize that there is no blame - not everyone can come out on top. Despite the rhetoric, we can't all be president or run corporations or make a million dollars. There just isn't enough time or space.

The politicians just hear Halliburton's cries for more cash and Exxon's demands for lower pollution controls. Big business rules. Hail the corporations!

This movie pointed out what is wrong and sad about this country and about the pitiful and sick election process that we undergo every four years.

It made some members of the audience uncomfortable and it made me cry. I wish everyone would watch this flick and understand, if only for a moment, the absolute unfairness of our capitalistic system and just how undemocratic our so-called democracy really is.

Thursday Thirteen

1. Last evening we went for a walk.

2. On a rock, I found a very large eggshell.

3. My husband surmised it was a turkey or duck egg. Definitely not a chicken or a little bird.

4. I thought maybe it was a buzzard or vulture egg.

5. A little later we found many feathers in lots of colors, mostly black and blue.

6. What happened here?

7. My husband surmised (he was surmising a lot) that it was a coyote, perhaps.

8. We did not find any dead birds.

9. We did not find any live ones, either.

10. We did see a few deer. One was across the road but her snort carried a long ways in the quiet evening hour. It startled us.

11. Deer don't seem to have voices but they do have large snorts and other sounds that I am sure have meaning to other deer.

12. I've run out of things to say.

13. Somehow this posted earlier before I even started it, so if you have a blank entry that was a mistake.


Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; you can learn more about it here. My other Thursday Thirteens are here.

A Little Nectar

Situation Updates

First, but not most important, the laptop computer issue -

I wrote to CC on Sunday and told them I wasn't happy with the $39.99 optimization process.

Early this morning I opened up an advertisement from CC and discovered the same laptop on sale for $50 less than I paid for it, through a mail-in rebate. According to their "unbeatable price guarantee," rebates aren't considered when they are matching said "unbeatable price."

Later this morning I received a letter from their customer service. Essentially it said they would re-do the optimization process. Of course I have already taken care of the issues - Microsoft and Norton are all updated, I've added the icons I wanted on my screen desktop - so there is nothing for them to do.

It is still a good buy even if I do feel like I was taken for $90 now, what with the rebate coming up and all. It won't matter in a 100 years, or even next year, and that is the benchmark to go buy.

Second, Old Folks update -

I am happy to report my mother-in-law came home Friday. She is doing great in her recovery from her broken hip and partial hip replacement. She is definitely an inspiration, if not a lesson, to the whiners of the world (I include myself in that). She just does what she is told and moves on. I really admire her for that.

I am not so happy to report that my aunt who is charge of my great-aunt's care has decided to call in hospice for my great aunt, Susie. Hospice, for my friends not in the U.S., is palliative end-of-life care. Some folks like it, some don't. My two previous experiences with it have not been good but I do think the concept of it has merit.

Having hospice come to the assisted living facility is supposed to allow Susie to stay where she is, as opposed to being moved around and into the nursing home portion of the place where we stick old people (otherwise known as a retirement community).

Third, the helicopter rescue -

Sadly, my neighbor did not survive the physical ailment that had the rescue helicopter buzzing the area 10 days ago.

I had hoped that the speediness with which she received care would help her, but it was not to be.

The funeral was today. My husband and I attended, and I went to visitation last night. He knows the family much better than I, having played with the young sons all during his childhood, but then I too have known a few of the sons since elementary school.

It is always hard to lose your mama, I don't care who you are.

Fried Green Tomatoes

Saturday I decided it was time for fried green tomatoes.

My husband doesn't care for them, but he was working and so I had only my self to please.

I thought I'd fry up a zucchini, too, while I was at it.



Normally I do not eat fried food. I cook in a little olive oil from time to time but otherwise had nothing in the house for a big batch of fried 'maters. I bought some Smart Balance oil that was supposed to be heart healthy, although I have my doubts as to the healthiness of cooking oil in all shapes and forms.



Those tomatoes and the one zucchini made up a great big plate full of veggies.




I had purchased batter for onion rings, but didn't care much for it on the first batch. So I added flour and milk and an egg to what I had and went from there.

I liked that better.

It took me almost an hour to get the tomatoes and the zucchini fried.




Yum.

Family Reunion

Last Sunday, my grandfather's side of the family had their annual get together.

I go pretty much every year, but I honestly only know about five people.


I can only name one person in this picture.


The crowd grew to about 65 or more by the time dinner was done. Folks gathered around in their respective groups and talked while children raced around chasing one another.

Humidity made the day sticky but under the pavilion the breeze kept us from sweating too much.



My great-aunt Ruth is the matriarch. She is 88 years old and the only one of two of my grandfather's six siblings still living. Uncle Max is the other one.




This is Uncle Max.

I did not know I had an Uncle Max until just a few years ago. Apparently he and my grandfather had a falling out maybe even before I was born. It has only been in this millennium that Uncle Max has attended the family reunions even though they've been having them every year for more than 15 years.

My grandfather died in 1976. Uncle Max looks a whole lot like him and has a voice similar in timbre, too. It gives me chills to talk to him.



This is my cousin, Matthew. I visited him in the hospital when he was born. He is my aunt's son (my mother's sister's boy). He is a nice young man and we usually see him and his family several times a year. They always come down at Christmas.



This is Matt's wife and his baby girl, Madison. Madison will be two in September. She is going to grow up to be some kind of researcher, I think, because she is incredibly inquisitive.

She also seems to adore my husband as she kept calling his name and running to him while we were there. He loves children so that is no surprise to me.

Not Worth the Money

I recently (as in, last night) purchased a harlot red little Gateway laptop from one of our local electronic stories (the initials are CC).

The laptop itself so far seems fine, although I haven't had a chance to use it much. I think I got it at a decent price.

I enjoyed my experience at the store. I felt like the salesman was listening and I didn't have to pay the sales tax and they matched an ad for MS Office 2007. The computer was already on sale, $90 off. It seemed like a good deal.

What wasn't a good deal was the $70 I paid to CC for software installation and something called "quickstart".

As explained to me at the point of sale, the tech would remove extraneous advertising that comes on new PCs and make sure everything was updated and properly installed so that when I came home I could boot the system and vrooom .... I could get straight to it.

I have always done this myself for new computer purchases, but my husband said, "Go on, let them take care of it. It's a new operating system (Windows Vista, which I haven't used) and I know that takes you a lot of time."

He has listened to me voice expletives before as I sweated over a new computer set-up. This is my second laptop and I've had a number of desktops (2 HPs, 2 Gateways, 1 made for me, 1 Radio Shack, 1 Tandy, and 1 Commodore 64, 1 Vic 20 ... not counting the Toshiba laptop and now this new Gateway. I think that is all of them but I may be missing one in there somewhere.).

So I agreed and we spent $70 for this service, $29.99 for software installation and $39.99 for this quickstart set up. CC called late last night, about 2 hours after the purchase, and said the laptop was ready.

I had a hair appointment in Roanoke anyway this morning, so I went and picked it up. It is not like the store is next door; it's a 40 minute drive.

Upon my return home, I turned the thing on and after it connected to my wireless connection on my home network, the computer started downloading upgrades for Vista.

I was not happy about this. While it's something that, knowing Microsoft, will continue from now until the end of time, the fact is I shouldn't have turned the thing on and had that occur since I'd paid $39.99 just so that would not happen.

I called CC and was shuffled around and eventually told I got what I'd paid for. Essentially I was patted on the head and told to be a good girl and go away and leave the boys to their toys.

It's only $40, I know. But that is a tank of gas or a week's worth of food for us. I feel like I wasted that money and I will not purchase this kind of service from CC or anyone else ever again.

I would advise anyone who has even a small amount of computer knowledge to keep their money and do the initial set up themselves. If nothing else you'll learn from the process and still be able to buy gas.

NOTE TO BLOGGER USERS

If you're having problems accessing your blog this morning, remove Sitemeter. Apparently there is some problem there but once you get rid of the counter your blog will come back up.

Curious Joe

Getting a Buzz

Thursday Thirteen

1. I do not have a favorite author or book, even though I read about 50 books a year.

2. Instead, I take in new books all the time, like a word vacuum, constantly sucking up new ideas and words.

3. When I was young, I wanted to read and collect every Nancy Drew book. They were written by Carolyn Keene, which was a pseudonym. The books were actually written by a number of people.

4. I ended up with only 25 of the 175 original Nancy Drew books. I still have them. They fill a shelf in the living room and are so dusty I would sneeze if I tried to read them.


5. Every now and then I think about donating them to the library book sale but so far I have not been able to part with them.

6.Nancy Drew has a best girl friend named George. And another whose name I forget. Bess I think but I'm not certain.

7. Her boyfriend's name is Ned.

8. She has a father but no mother. Her dad is an attorney.

9. Nancy also has a car.

10. Her books are mysteries that in hindsight are rather silly but when I was 10 years old they were quite interesting and intriguing.

11. I tried to write my own series of mysteries at the age of 11.

12. I remember I used a red notebook.

13. I have no idea what happened to that little series of stories. I can only imagine how bad they were ...


Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; you can learn more about it here. My other Thursday Thirteens are here.

Mother and Child

Book: Fearless Fourteen

Fearless Fourteen
By Janet Evanovich
310 pages
Copyright 2008

Number 14 in the Stephanie Plum series brings about a fast-paced story with little character development.

Stephanie finds herself babysitting a teenager who is her boyfriend Joe's cousin. There are bombs, the return of Mooner, Grandma learning to play video games, Lula chasing after Tank - the usual found in these books.

There was not, however, much growth in the characters.

Maybe I'm just getting tired of this series?

2.5 stars

At 10 p.m.

Around 10 p.m. last night, the house began to shake.

The sounds of a low-flying helicopter forced us to rise from our half-asleep stupor as we lounged on the couch watching Ice Road Truckers.

I figured it was Army choppers flying across to wherever they go. They do that though usually not so low that it makes the dishes dance in the cupboard.

My husband went to the garage and hollered for me to follow.

The helicopter had a search light and was flying all around the farm. We watched as it went down behind the hill in front of the house.

"It either just landed or crashed in the hayfield," I said. We couldn't see exactly what had happened.

Was it a police chopper? My husband thought it might be. He feared a break out at the penitentiary five miles down the road.

So he hurried into his clothes. "Lock all the doors and call Daddy and make sure he's alright," he said as he rushed out.

I roused my father-in-law, who sleepily said he thought something must be going on because he heard a racket.

My husband called just moments later. "It's Lifeguard 10," he said.

This service, Virginia's first helicopter transport, is called only in dire emergencies.

A neighbor was seriously ill and in need of evacuation. The hospital's helicopter had made a landing and was preparing to move the patient.

My husband, the firefighter-EMT, stayed to assist and to offer support to the neighbors. He even drove a mile or so down the road to one of the neighbor's sons' houses and picked him up and brought him back.

Several other neighbors have called this morning to ask what the commotion was all about.

It isn't often we have search lights and helicopters making the rounds in the dark on the farm.

No word on the ill neighbor, unfortunately. I do hope she will be well.

Old Folks Update

My mother-in-law remains in a rehabilitation facility, but she is doing great!

Everyone should be such a good and motivated patient. I have great admiration for her spirit and pluck. I look for her to be home soon, maybe even this week.

She is in her mid-70s.

Meanwhile, a visit to my great aunt, Susie, who is 88, revealed that she has gone downhill in a hurry. I just saw her two weeks ago and she was walking with a walker and animated, etc.

She was asleep when I went in and she's often muddled when I wake her. What really shocked me was the fact that she could hardly stand up to get in a wheel chair when they came to get her for lunch.

She said they had given her a different medication for pain in her legs. I am wondering if this new drug has contributed to her rapid decline.

Four Things

This meme comes from Sweetfluttersbys. She challenged anyone who wanted to follow her in doing this and I was feeling obliging.

So here goes:

Four jobs I’ve had

-sales and purchasing in a machine shop
-legal secretary/receptionist
-small town weekly reporter
-retail clerk in a downtown Roanoke store

Four movies I can watch over and over

- Dirty Dancing
- Steel Magnolias
- Flashdance
- The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (all three movies)

Four places I’ve lived

- Salem, VA
- On Lee's Gap Road outside of Fincastle, VA
- On Breckinridge Mill Road outside of Fincastle, VA
- On Blacksburg Road outside of Fincastle, VA.

Obviously I have pretty much lived in one place all of my life.


Four TV shows I love

- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- Xena: Warrior Princess
- Cagney & Lacey
- Six Feet Under

Four places I’ve vacationed

-Myrtle Beach, SC
-Williamsburg, VA
-Gatlinburg, TN
-Virginia Beach, VA

Four of my favorite foods

-chocolate
-root beer
-strawberries
-yeast rolls

Four sites I visit daily

-Blogger/favorite blogs
-Google.com
-AOL
-wherever my work and research takes me

Four places I would rather be right now

-on vacation at Myrtle Beach, SC
-In a cabin in the woods where no one can find me
-Scotland, Ireland or England
-in bed with my husband ;-)

Okay, anybody else wanna play? Have at it.

Me, When I was Young

I would have been three years old in this picture of me with my baby brother.

My doll was what I called my "Grandma" doll. She was made of very hard plastic and looked old to me. She talked when you pulled her string but I do not recall what she said. Her legs were straight but hinged at the hip so you could move her.

I thought it might be a Mrs. Beasley doll but I looked it up and it is not. So I do not know the doll's real name.

My mother kept me in dresses for a very long time. I hated to get dirty and loved to be prissy and girly, I have been told.

By my pre-teens that was certainly gone. I started wearing blue jeans and never looked back. Today I don't even own a dress, although I will wear skirts.

My hair turned from blond to brown (and now to gray) as I moved through the years.

I recall a few things about those early years. I remember a snake curled around a tree while I was playing, getting sand in my eyes and crying for my grandmother or the fire department (it must've burned like h*ll), and eating a wild onion in the back yard. (And it took me very long time to eat onions again.)

I also remember a box kite flight, my mother fainting in the floor, my father playing guitar, washing the dishes while standing in a chair (I must have been five or younger because we were gone from there by then), and learning that the tooth fairy and Santa Claus were myths.

I figured out the latter because I knocked out my tooth and the tooth fairy left me a 50 cent piece. I found a bowl of 50 cent pieces not long after while I was dusting for my mother. I immediately put it together and told her there was no tooth fairy and no Santa and no Easter Bunny.

I promised not to let my brother know the truth and he was nearly 10 before he found out, I think. He was devastated by the news.

I was a very smart and precocious child and a handful, I suppose. I was reading by the time I was four. I began reading newspapers before the age of six, even if I didn't understand what I was looking at.

I don't remember this but my mother said when I was three I began talking about Scotland and living in a castle and walking in the moors and losing my head in a beheading. She told me once it scared her and she thought I must have been reincarnated.

I wish she had written it down.

I also remember falling and hitting my head; I still have a small and unnoticeable ridge in my forehead where I cracked it.

And then there was the ghost that sat on the edge of my bed at night and the man who was playing poker with my father who shot himself in the leg.

We had two Dalmatians and both of them were run over by the milk truck. They were named Prince and Princess.

And I had a little plastic bank in the shape of Dino the Dinosaur and a blue stuffed puppy dog that I carried around until my brother decided it was his.

I received a blue bike with training wheels when I was five and it had a Batgirl doll sitting on the seat when I woke up that Christmas morning.

I loved kindergarten but hated the first grade because the teacher, Mrs. Zircle at East Salem Elementary School, was very mean. I later was told that her husband had died that year and I was able to forgive her for her many unkindnesses because obviously she was very sad.

And then we moved to the country, where my mother's father grew up, and I became a country girl.

Thursday Thirteen

1. I wonder what it says about us as a society that http://civilization.com is about a video game?

2. I like Pop Tarts but I don't eat them very often. Blueberry is my favorite but it can give me heartburn.

3. Today is the day my parents' house burned down in 1989.

4. It was hit by lightning.

5. My wedding gown burned in the fire. My mother was storing it for me.

6. I saw nine turkeys in the field yesterday and was greatly relieved.

7. I was afraid the logging efforts next door had forced them to leave.

8. I haven't had any chocolate to speak of since the middle of June.

9. I haven't had any root beer, either.

10. I have, however, lost nearly 10 pounds.

11. The sun is shining very brightly today.

12. My efforts at Thursday Thirteen today are pretty lame.

13. I give myself an "E" for the effort and a "D" for the results. I haven't played for a few weeks because I've had many other things on my mind. It shows.


Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; you can learn more about it here. My other Thursday Thirteens are here.

A Quiet Moment

Recommendations?

I am contemplating a week away from home sans work and husband in some nice quite B&B or small cabin. I want a writing retreat, is what I want.

A place to write poetry or short stories or work on my forgotten novel without interruption and worry.

I need a place that is no smoking and no inside pets (cats and dogs) because of my allergies. Preferably a country setting but the beach is good too. Mountains are negotiable.

Also not overly expensive.

It should be within a day's driving distance of Roanoke, which leaves open a very wide range of territory.

If anyone knows of such a place that they recommend, I'd sure like to hear of it.

Shroom

My Trees, Part II

I am happy to report that the loggers pulled out.

They left behind a mess.

My view my window went from this in the spring:



To this in summer:



To this, which is pretty much what it looks like now, except that the leaves on the dead branches are dying.



They left the trees that had no value. The remaining two oaks forked and so were not good sawmill logs. I am thankful they did not cut them for pulp wood like they did so many others. At least I still have a tree to see, although I worry that it will die without its friends to help protect it from the weather.

Though the loggers call this "selective" cutting, by the time more than 250 trees were murdered, the selectiveness of it is pretty much semantics. The loggers left the Paradise trees and small trees. They also left a stand of poplars because bees had built nests in them.

Hooray for the bees.

I have no idea how many animals were displaced, all the squirrels who lost their homes and winter stores, the owls and birds and chipmunks and other creatures.

Not to mention all those mythical gnomes and fairies that I was sure lived in enchanted areas. They are gone too, off to find a new home where the sounds of chainsaws do not make raucous racket.

I am sure the air has grown thicker and more polluted just in recent days. And the sounds around my home are stronger; I can hear neighbors in distant subdivisions. The other night I heard The Star Spangled Banner from the Botetourt Sports Complex waft across as clear as if I were standing in the stadium.

Sounds I had not heard before.

I am glad they left a few trees, but the environmental damage has certainly sickened my soul.

Big Spring Park

Welcome to Big Spring Park in Fincastle.



This little park is the site of many weddings and other events. During the week, it is mostly empty, though.



There are a couple of memorials in the park. The above is for September 11. A few stone benches in the park have the names of Big Spring Garden Club members who have passed on.



When I was in elementary school, which was a long time ago in the 1970s, we'd troop down to Big Spring Park for our end-of-year picnic. The park is within walking distance of Breckinridge Elementary School. I thought then that it was the greatest park in the world.



The park is also next to Fincastle Presbyterian Church. The cemetery holds the remains of a number of Botetourt County Revolutionary War heroes.

It Just Needs a Wind

Three Bucks

On Tuesday morning I looked out the front door to see:



Thankfully we own this and there will be no logging there. Of course deer need a large habitat and without the oak trees and their acorns they probably will have no reason to frequent my field.



They stood up as my husband left for work on his motorcycle. As he ventured down the driveway, they were joined by a buddy:



Four bucks. The last one was the nicest; I think he was an eight-pointer.

MIL Update

Thank you all for the good thoughts and prayers about my mother-in-law and her poor broken hip.

She has been moved to a rehab facility and seems to be resting comfortably. I don't know how long she will be there - as long as it takes, I suppose. Her prognosis is good.

Unless something happens I likely won't post about her again until she comes home. For now she is doing well and hopefully that will continue.