Too much

Somebody really has to like their job or their store to decorate every square inch. It was a sight, I want to tell you, but it was so overwhelming. You really would have to spend hours looking at the stuff or you would miss most of it. It is mental overload.

I am the type of person that is just awed by the colors and shapes here that I don't see the item unless it is huge and staring me right in the face. So, I miss the small stuff. The purple flower I would remember, but if they would have asked if I saw the shiny money-shaped twig at the bottom of the photo, I'd be like "huh?" Or, the little bear hanging from the black rod, or the blue monarch butterflies, I missed them all.

I don't know if this type of sales layout works or not. It gives me a headache. But, what doesn't?

Plum Cat

Isn't she/he pretty? I could not resist taking a picture of this beautiful cat posing in a store at the Swiss Festival. It ended up being a beautiful day weather-wise although it was a bit close and muggy. I did get a migraine right in the middle of this store and I took medicine. I had to lay low and walk and talk easy for a couple of hours, but for the most part the headache did not progress after that. Whew.

There was an elderly gentleman that kept trying to get my daughter to dance with him. I YouTubed him. If you want to see him you can go to www.youtube.com and perform a search on "happy feet Swiss festival" and it should bring up 2 videos. He was good but my daughter did not care for our teasing her about him. LOL!

His steps at the end of the first video reminds me of clogging and river dancing. My Mom said my dad was a good clog dancer back in the day.

We ate at our favorite restaurant, Der Dutchman. I only ate my mashed potatoes (craving salt during a migraine) and took the rest home. Roast turkey, dressing and green beans. It made for a great supper later in the evening when I was feeling better.

Once the rain began, my headache dispersed. It took it a while.

I purchased 6 mums that I hope to get in my front yard today or at least this week. It is cloudy and rainy out today.

I tried to talk politics a couple of times yesterday with my friends. They didn't seem to want to, so I dropped the subject. They did want to talk economy, though.

My friends and daughter had a good time laughing at me. I am the type of person that talks to strangers. Anything can spark my conversation. I usually zero in on ones with children. I read the parents' response and reaction. If their face reads "back off" I back off. If they smile and reply to what I say, then I chat a while. A lot of folks brought their pooches to the festival also. I told my daughter we will take Sable the next time we go. The dogs made for great conversation starters.

We caught the tail end of some Alpine horn players. I think they would have performed again, but there was a loud polka band (Mr. Happy Feet) just a couple of blocks away and the horns would not have been heard. Sigh. I so wanted to get a video of them playing. YouTube has plenty of samples.

When we went to the popular Amish market to purchase meats, dry goods and baked goods it was swamped. The bakery was wiped out. It was elbow to elbow tourists mixing in with the regular Saturday Amish shoppers. Forget trying to navigate a buggy. This is where I purchased my mums for $3.79 each. Great big huge, blooming ones and some with lots of buds. In my area they are $4.69 each.

My daughter had wanted a pumpkin roll. They didn't even have frozen ones. So, I got out my last can of canned pumpkin and made pumpkin bars of my own. I found a recipe that looked interesting and they are cooling now, waiting to be iced. I also made the cream cheese icing. I hope they turn out good. Or, at least edible.

Edit: No worries about the pumpkin bars being edible. You just need a big glass of cold milk or a cup of hot coffee to go with.

Cloud cover

I don't know where this photo was taken. It was on the camera's memory card when I took pictures of my basement. I like the sky and cloud cover. I did enhance the photo a bit to bring out a prettier shade of blue in the sky. If you look closely you can see my smeared windshield.

And while every other house on my street had one dinky little garbage can set outside for the trash pickup, my front yard looked like this! Oh, Mea culpa!

Hair

Years ago, before my daughter got her hair cut, I took one of her pictures and blew it up on the scanner and printed it. I taped it to a window and traced it. The features I added were much older than her 12 years. I thought, let's see if this is what she looks like when she gets older. I didn't anticipate the hair cut and coloring. Oh, well. It doesn't really look like her at all.

I finished the John Denver autobiography. This one he wrote, I believe in 1994. I didn't like it. I finished the book not liking the guy at all. I am now reading a biography of The Eagles: The Untold Story.

I can almost understand their drug taking and drinking. The party never ends until they burn out. What I cannot understand is "groupies." Where do these people come from? How in the hell are they raised so that they worship a rocker? I think somebody should write a book on groupies. Women who have followed bands around and lived to tell about it. What were they thinking at the time? Where are they now and how are they living their lives? Did they marry and have children? Or, did they all die of a sexually transmitted disease? What values do they carry with them today? Will they let their daughters run out and follow bands around the country sleeping with any band member?

Oh, I don't get it. Oh, okay. There have been books written. Maybe I'll see if my library group has the book(s). I'm not sure I would even want to read it, but curiosity gets the better of me.

Never missed a meal

They came. Five of them. Big strong sturdy men to work in my basement. One of the first remarks as one of the fellows looked at my dog. "Looks like she never missed a meal!" What? Did you just insult my dog? I said "What? She's our baby and we love her very much!" Humph! She is just built stocky! Sable didn't mind. She loved the guys.

They anchored my basement wall with steel supports and put a new drain system in that empties into my sump pump. Now comes the fun part. Washing the walls down with Clorox and water mix, and painting with waterproof paint. I think if I can choose, I'll choose a deep rust or orange color. Why paint them boring white or yellow?

Now, I have a root/fruit/wine cellar again. Should I dabble in wine? Why not? I'll get a small wine rack and put in there. Although I am not sure how cold it gets. Hmmm. I don't think it freezes in there. It is below ground, so I don't suppose it can. It does have a window. That may not be good for the wine.

Kiss this week good-bye

Here is my little grand niece blowing kisses. Or doing something. I am not exactly sure I recall what she was doing when I took this photo. She was laying on the floor, that much I remember.

I have to mention again what respect I have for the folks who go through a hurricane or tornado with stronger winds than what I saw Sunday night. I hope to never have to witness or endure anything like that ever again.

I have to clean up my basement closet for the workers to start installing support bars for my basement's west wall. I procrastinated and now it is like I have Saturday and Sunday. I also have to clean out the root cellar. My niece made it her own personal trash room. I didn't realize this until after she left. It is where the water came in and I never cared to open the door. I am sure there is mold. If I get the time or the inclination, I'll take pictures. Woot!

It was a pretty crazy work week. I finished it today with my head wrapped around the Mandriva flavor of Linux. I have something screwed up and I can't get httpd to start. I tried Ubuntu, didn't like it. I like for this to be difficult and have snags, because then I learn more. If everything worked the way it was supposed to, I'd be sitting there looking around saying "That was easy." And, I wouldn't know what started what and how things worked underneath the desktop. That's probably why I don't like the Mac. Boring.

Which reminds me. You should see me using my iPod. I try to do "windows-related" things when I am syncing it up to my computer and I think I am making it worse. LOL! Oh, well. My music is getting moved over though and I am having a wonderful time with it.

Half car...

During the storm, I snapped a photo west of my front yard. One neighbor drives a small truck and one drives a large car. Put them together and this is what you would have. If the front end of the truck were a wee bit higher.

I went to the park today. I need to take my camera over there soon. The trees that came down there were pretty big. Two huge trees were completely uprooted. As I said, Ohio has not experienced this strength of a wind storm in such a long time, this one just sort of took out the weakest links, I guess.

Many are still without power. Schools are opening their gymnasiums up in the mornings for folks to come and shower. That is a blessing in itself. There is free water somewhere else for folks to come and help themselves. I hope that only those in need take the water and nobody greedy goes to get it.

I had my head stuck in a Catalyst 4006 all day today. I had to replace the supervisor module. That was the easy part. Re-configuring the switch took up most of the time. The part arrived at 11:45 a.m. It was shipped out from Texas yesterday afternoon. I find that remarkable.

"The Mothman Prophecies" is getting ridiculous. Talking about folks being abducted by aliens or some taking spaceship rides to other planets. I am breezing through it just to finish the crazy thing. I am hoping that the author writes the last paragraph "This was all a joke, I really don't believe this stuff."

The author is getting more and more absurd as the book goes on. He is now speaking of aliens predicting events in 1967 (R. Kennedy shooting and attempted assassination of the Pope and MLK murder). Things of this nature. Little red lights, spaceships hovering in the air. It will end with the collapse of the silver bridge and how people knew something "bad" was going to happen because of all the sightings in the area. How they made a movie out of this is beyond me.

Breezy

A neighbor's house on Sunday

If Sunday's wind storm was any indication of even half of what the folks that go through a hurricane deal with, then I want no part of it. I guess it is half. Our winds gusted to 70 mph or more. That is a "weak" category 1. A measly 1 and tree limbs fell all over the state. Trees snapped in half and were uprooted. Maybe it is because we don't get that kind of wind that often, I don't know.

It was intense. We were without power for 18 hours. Some folks are still out. My brother got word that his power may be back on Sunday. That is an entire week without electricity. He has a generator. He is cooking on the gas grill. Folks are tossing out food left and right.

Schools were closed yesterday. Some were still closed today. My office is dark. I had to use a flashlight to go and pick up my work cell phone and laptop. I told the two schools I went to today, even though YOU have electricity - the fiber connection (Time Warner) has lines down all over the state. 260 plus lines down. Some do not have their Internet. Not very happy campers.

Funny how different folks deal differently with situations. One guy was angry and spoke to me in a very annoying manner. The afternoon school personnel was friendly, joking and laughing. They understood that certain aspects of the job are out of my hands and left it at that.

A massive migraine hit me at 4 a.m. Monday morning. Not sure if it was the cold front moving in, or an after effect of the storm stress. Running around, catching flying lawn chairs, making sure I don't catch the house on fire with the dozen of candles I lit, hoping the huge pine tree doesn't fall on my house and hoping my house stays put. The monkey is still with me today, but not nearly as bad as Monday. I lost most of Monday to the pain. I was supposed to be outside picking up tree branches out of my yard. I managed to get out there Monday evening when it was much cooler outside and pile them in a huge pile where my garbage men pick up the trash.

It gets really frustrating. There are so many things I want to do. Although I must admit, life is much better than before the medication.

I am still muddling through "The Mothman Prophecies" which is NOTHING like the movie. It is about some guy who researches UFO activity and all things associated with it. The history. He states that the witches of Salem and vampires were probably these 'mothman' sightings that were seen in late 1967 in WV. Wings, capes, flying. Mothman, vampires, witches. Mmm hmmm.

Lost (almost) Children

There were 8 children in my family. Here are 4 of them.

1. 1942
2. 1944
3. 1949
4. 1953
5. 1954
6. 1956
7. 1957
8. 1960

I am number 8. Above are 2, 3, 4 and 5.

I went to a workshop yesterday. It was with Sister 1944. It was in the county where I had grown up. She had spent a lot of her life growing up in that county also. It was a Genealogy workshop. There was a speaker who had written a book about a Children's home from this county. Lost Children. Sister 1944 said that we were almost placed in this home. She didn't specify what year, and I plan to get back to working with her on this project and asking her questions about this fact.

At the time this photo was taken, I was not born yet. Sister 1956 was in the photo, but she was in the lap of a neighbor, so I cropped it out.

The book is about finding the children who lived in this home and how their life was and is as a result of it. I have the book but have not read it yet. The speaker had asked one lady if he could put her story in his book. She declined. She passed away this Spring and he was now able to tell her story to the group.

Her father had died and her Mother was unable to care for her. She was placed in this home. The Mother said she would come back for her. Years went by. The girl wrote to her Mother, pleading with her to write back to her. The girl received nothing. The Mother died and the girl would visit her grave and crying in anger, curse her Mother. She would cry "I loved you! Didn't you love me?"

Years passed. A decade or so ago, this girl went to look at her records. The director of the home handed over her files. There were piles of letters from her Mother, unopened. She broke down and cried. Her Mother had written to her after all. Why didn't she get the letters? Who was responsible for this complete act of mental cruelty?

She quietly stood up and told the director, "I have to go to the graveyard. I have to go and apologize."

As a side story, the writer spoke of an Interstate that was planned in the late 50's. The home was in the way, so it was to be torn down and moved to another location. The record shows that there was a certain dollar amount provided for this section of highway. It included monies for a cloverleaf. This was a rural area. No cloverleaf was placed there. The money was given to the county for this cloverleaf. What happened to the money? Did dirty politicians make off with it? One has to wonder.

At the workshop I won a prize. A year's free membership to the society. Will I attend the meetings? Will I become involved? Only time will tell. It does interest me. The answers will all be determined by how my experience goes when I attend the meetings. I plan to give it a fair shot. The drive is about 60 miles one way. Let's see what this society is about. My daughter will be 18 in the spring. I need to get involved in a few projects. I had plans to take an electrician class, a water color class and I was looking into some other things. I may as well give this opportunity a go, since it sort of fell in my lap.

Golden opportunity

When the dust has settled
and the sun has set
Let us take this moment

And never, ever forget.

Bugs!

Another view of the bugs that ate my pumpkin. Or, at least they gave it their best shot. My Anti-Virus program has acted up since I updated it in July. This time when I called, they gave me the update to 2009 for free. I had forgotten that when I purchased the product in 2005 I had purchased for 3 computers. They gave me the product key and serial number for when I went to install it on the other 2 computers.

Eh. I forgot. My daughter will get hers updated, but my niece no longer lives here. That leaves me with an extra copy. My work laptop? No. I have the corporate edition there. My old work laptop (that work gives us) - maybe. It isn't worth much. 256MB of RAM in the poor thing. I guess that leaves me with an extra copy. Maybe I'll put it on a sister's computer.

I have more books from another library south of me. Web Design. More HTML, XHTML, CSS and JavaScript coming up. If I get the motivation maybe I'll change my blog background and have some fun. I also have an autobiography of John Denver. The Untold Story of The Eagles. The Mapmaker's wife. And, The Mothman Prophecies. The movie was weird, but I also got it because it is pretty close to Ohio. It was a bridge that connected Gallipolis to WV. That's close to where the Bob Evans farms are, by the way.

At work I am busy installing and learning Ubuntu. Fun stuff all around. My previous experience was with the flavor Mandrake. I think I will be returning to that flavor of Linux.

I finally mowed my grass. I cannot remember the last time it was cut. I had strange sprouts of weeds poking up here and there. In a couple of dry spots, I couldn't tell the line where I was supposed to mow. And it was dusty in places. We had a little rain a couple of days ago. Big booming thunder storm the other night, too.

I've been taking our cat, Moose into my bedroom with me every night so the cats don't fight through the night and wake my daughter. Moose is comfortable in there and I was hoping that we would bond a little more. All went smoothly for a week or so. Until last night. Cats are not dogs. I didn't take the necessary precautions. I was roused from my slumber by some scratching. I slapped my hand on the bed to make her stop. In my drowsy state it didn't occur to me what was going on. Can you tell where I am going with this?

Then it dawned on me. I jumped out of bed and snapped the light on. Too late. Moose was in the crouched position on my runner (thank God it wasn't in my bed!) on the floor. My daughter came in at the same time to tell me the telephone was making strange noises. I cleaned up Mooses' mess and unplugged the phone. Grumbling I went back to bed. It was 2:30 A.M. I sighed and rolled over. That's when I discovered the other mess. The wet mess. Oy vey. Peruby. You should have known better. I didn't sleep much after that. It kind of reminded me of when my daughter would throw up in the middle of the night. Pull sheets off the bed and throw them into the washing machine. Put a towel on the mattress or turn it over and put new sheets on the bed. And try to get back to sleep.

I should sleep good tonight with fresh, clean sheets, a deodorized mattress and no cat in my room tonight. They can kill each other out there for all I care.

Amish house? Yes, No?

I thought it was an Amish house. The bird feeder, no electricity lines visible, drab-colored clothes on the line. The car in the driveway threw me off a bit. Maybe it is just company visiting. I see a basketball hoop, but no trampoline.

This photo was taken whilst I was looking for the falls. I see a lot of house like this in Amish country. Holmes county Ohio.

I am really getting back into the music life. I confiscated my daughter's iPod. She doesn't want it. She uses her Blackberry for everything. And now she has a Palm Pilot somebody gave her. Not sure what she can do with that. I passed on it. She is having fun with it. Checking it out, seeing what she can do. She'll tire of it soon enough and forget about it.

I have finished reading a memoir by Pete Hamill. "A Drinking Life." Since I drank a lot in my past days, it caught my eye.

The woods and the jungle

Here is another view of the falls I found last week. It is as close to the jungle as we get here in Ohio. I wanted to mention the book I finished reading a couple of weeks ago.

When I was in high school I remember the war ending and I remember having a Vietnamese family move in down the road from us and our bus would pick them up for school. I worked for a restaurant where the owner was a Vietnamese lady. Tu. She had married a service man and he brought her back to Ohio with him. She was not afraid to try anything. The last I heard she had moved to Las Vegas. She divorced and they say it was her family money that purchased the restaurant so she got to keep it. I worked there about three years on and off. Other times I drank there and we kept on good terms. I have no idea where she is or what she is doing. If she even stayed in Vegas. She was married about a total of 4 times.

The book was about the Hmong people. I had never even heard of this race of people. The life is from a girl's perspective. She told about her family and how it came to be that they ended up in Minnesota. Her family lived in the jungle. I think it was in Laos. After the war ended, they were not welcome in Vietnam, Laos or Thailand. After some years in a refugee camp, her family came to the United States. It was a very good read.

I find myself thinking as I read about what happened to her Mother in 1979. Because the woman was close to my age. A year or two younger. About the time I was 19 and working an office job, dancing in the discos at night. Her Mother was struggling to stay alive in the jungle.

I sat humbled by the story. Why is it that I could dance in a disco while her poor Mother dodged bullets in the jungle at the same time?

I found it

I found the falls that my niece spoke of. It is about 15 miles from our house. I think there are 2 sets of falls. This is the "lower" falls. I've been trying to get there for years to take pictures and I said "Today is the day." I was close to them while working at a school. I skipped lunch and found them. I snapped a few pictures and headed back to the office.

In case you ever wondered, salt 'n vinegar chips with lukewarm coffee do not a good lunch make. I'm just sayin'.

Looking for the bugs

She wouldn't touch the squash bugs. Whenever I would touch one, she squealed. She is a squealer. My daughter was very annoyed at this squealing coming from my Grand Niece. The bugs are eating the pumpkin. A few survived the shower of Sevin that I gave them and made their way the few yards to where I moved the pumpkin and have started to eat away at it.

I noticed that I didn't follow up with the shaving of our cat Moose. That is because this chick completely forgot her appointment with the vet. I was to drop Moose off between 8:30 and 9:00 on Thursday morning. I called at 9:10 when I remembered and they said it was too late. I was a bit forgetful all week long. Too busy, too stressed? Probably.

My sister brought me a whole basket of tomatoes. They are the kind that are sweet enough to eat by themselves. Like my Mom used to do for dinner. She would fix dinner and on the side serve sliced fresh tomatoes and cucumbers from our garden. Pure heaven.

I have the day off from work. The long week-end went fast, of course, but it has been a very nice one. The weather was a bit on the warm side but the late afternoons and evenings were beautiful. My neighbor had a big party last night. They sounded like they were having a good time. They are a couple (I guess) in their 30's. Two dogs, two cats but no children. On the other side I have two elderly widowed ladies living in a duplex.