Uprooted

There was a lot of this after the Ef1 tornado a couple of weeks ago. This was in my brother's yard in the small town where the tornado hit. In my town (11 miles away) we had many, many trees like this. Some fell on houses and some on cars.

OOPS

I always see "OOPS" when I see these markings on the roadway. And, I see a lot of them. Now, I have one in front of my house.

This is what the street department left me with after they cut one of my trees down. I believe this tree to have been the obvious reason that my sewer pipe became clogged with roots.

The street department will not touch the root under the sidewalk until I get the sidewalk repaired.

I have called for an estimate. The city has a program that will pay half of the sidewalk if we choose one of four companies. I called two. Never received a call back from the one and the other said the deadline for funding for a sidewalk is June first and he would be out Saturday, May 25th to give me an estimate. I waited all day. He never came.

He also mentioned that the city is having money problems.

I have to do something, so I guess I will pay for it out of pocket.

From what I understand though, is once I get that sidewalk removed, the city will come in and cut out the rest of the root. Since it was their tree (and not mine). That is - between the sidewalk and the roadway. They planted it years ago.

But, what a mess, eh?  At least they left me a cone so that I can alert walkers. As if that crater needs a cone.

Oh, and OUPS is Ohio Utility Protection Services.

It's my yard....

....and I can cry if I want to!  Why did they have to cut both of my trees down? Why?!  It is too late to say anything, now. What is done is done. My neighbor said if he had not been home he thinks they would have taken his huge oak tree, too. He confronted them and they only trimmed a few branches.

Architecture

I have decided for my next job - I want to work here. I have no idea where "here" is. I just like the building. LOL!  There is a school that I go to and when I leave, I have to shoot out this little back alley and this day I decided to snag a picture of the building.  Found it. Superb Industries.

On the home front  - ha! My washing machine died last night. Ain't that the way? One thing after another? I had just watched a National Geographic documentary about Hurricane Sandy and all the flooding and mud mess those people had to deal with, so when my washing machine died, I said to myself "It could be worse."

The tree has been cut down. Four branches have been cut off from the other tree. They almost took the wrong tree. I told them it was the tree with the roots as big as a barrel forcing the sidewalk to push up like the roof of a house. I am hoping they come back to grind the stump. I can't recall if the city said they would do that or not. Seems to me like I would have mentioned it since that is the key to stop the roots from growing.

Discovered the reason for my lack of energy and headaches this past week-end. And the super migraine on Friday. Thank-you Mother Nature!

Along the road

Taking a snapshot of the treeline on the other side of the road from where I was taking pictures of the lake. Whew. That was a long sentence.

Arthritis runs in my family. My doctor told me to take magnesium daily. It ain't workin', doc! My left elbow kills. It is my "picking up my coffee cup" elbow. I have to use two hands now to sip my coffee if I don't want much pain.

But, not every day. Today there is a big weather front moving in. Hmmm. Well, I can't complain about headaches anymore - so  you get some arthritis. I'll take the arthritis any day!

Oh, Ohio in Autumn

From my drive five days ago.

OH Autumn!

I snapped this one with my phone while driving back from my sister's house on Tuesday afternoon. The sun was bright  - the foliage was brilliant. Later that evening I went to the lake but should not have wasted the two hours resting because then I may have ones at the lake that look like this taken with a real camera. :) Click that photo to big it - you won't be sorry.

Let me throw a scenario at you.

You have two 21 year old people. One male, one female. The female has been to rehab for heroin use. In fact her baby needed to be in a rehab also because he was born addicted to the drug. The boy is almost two.

The male drove the female to a nearby city to purchase heroin.  Two days later she overdosed and died.

Is he:

a. Totally responsible for her death
b. Partially responsible
c. Not at all responsible - she would have found another way to get it

Now, think about that and chose your answer. Let me add this, now. The 21 year old guy is a regular dealer. He knew the place in Canton to go (she may have also, I don't know for certain) to obtain the drug. Does this change your answer if you chose b or c?

Silhouette

Serene photo, except for the cable wires and that alien-esque street lamp. Directly after the wedding ceremony at Sm@thèrs Bè@ch, Kèy Wè$t;  I pointed my camera west and caught the sky. The photo is untouched except for a slight shadow border and I blacked out the date from the camera (which was incorrect anyway).

Bleary-eyed

Sitting here bleary-eyed this morning. I have the day off from work. I worked until Friday last week and did not have much time to store away any energy. After my niece came in to help Thursday night, her Mother was like a mini tornado ripping around helping me over the week-end. My nephew assembled my (new to me) 7 foot prelit tree. I bought it from a friend of the family. Two strands of lights are out but he said that can be fixed easily. I need to get a bulb and go through each light one at a time to see what one is causing the entire strand to go dark. He made this 360 Panorama with his iPhone. They are my extended family and I am ever so thankful for them.

Remember how I said we "do lists" every year? There are always surprises and this year was NO exception. I am one happy camper. The absolute sweetest gift was the laughter. My niece's fiance had all his teeth pulled a week or so ago and the poor guy has been in total misery. He kept holding his face in his hands and moaning "Stop! Quit making me laugh!"

Oh my dogs, did we laugh.

What is missing from this photo? Dogs! I had them barricaded in the kitchen and you never heard such mournful crying. Poor babies.

That is over with

The weather turned  lousy. It poured snow down all day and we had a little bit on the roads. People travelled miles to get to the dinner and some got lost. It was a new location this year out in the middle of nowhere. My car and the two following me had to detour around a wreck, an SUV had slid off the road.

It was too hot in the banquet room. The food was so-so and nobody could hear. I had to shout in my loudest voice to be heard above the din. I had a royal headache by the end of the night. The six kids that did show up got showered with gifts and I hope they had fun.

I was rotten this year and sent all kids home with a can of Silly String. Not to be used in the car on the way home, I told them. 

Not sure if we will have it at this location next year or not.

I was tired and had a bad  headache all the next day. I drank only iced tea. I had the mild cod with mashed potato and vegetables. 

My daughter had a new beau. I have nothing to say. I have to adjust.

I do not have one piece of decoration up. I do not have a tree up. I did get the tree delivered Friday night. A pre-owned seven foot tall pre-lit artificial tree. Zoinks!

My living room is full of totes from my daughter's back bedroom (where I stored all my stuff when I had my new floor put in) and her totes from her boyfriend's house. 

My two smaller dogs, Cheech and Chong are back.

My beautiful boxer decided that his territory was not properly marked and proceeded to leave his urine all over every tote in the living room.

I have to find the energy and back muscle to move all the totes into the basement and then get the tree inside the house and put up. My back starts to vibrate like a tuning fork after lifting and moving about two totes. This  is from helping my daughter move her bed and computers and desk and chest of drawers back into the house. Her ex boyfriend dumped everything into our garage. I am thankful he brought her stuff back at all. He could have tossed it out into the yard.

My daughter has wanted out of her relationship for a long time. She always gave the excuse that nobody was there to help him with his new German Shepherd puppy. His cousin and partner are moving in next week.

I really liked her ex boyfriend but I was also torn because both of them are so young. She is twenty and he is twenty-one. They have been dating for 18 months. They are so young to be so serious. He wanted to start a family, she is not ready.

Meanwhile I have to finish shopping, wrapping and fixing food. I work all week.

I am tired and am going to bed. My finger is stinging. For the most part my headache is gone but I recognize a four day migraine when I feel one. It is all just part of the routine. Second verse, same as the first. This ain't my first rodeo.

Panorama

I didn't even know my cell phone camera could do this. I was relaxing out in the back yard a few days ago and was messing with my cell phone and the camera. Left to right:  the very edge of my patio. My neighbor's duplex (two very sweet ladies live in them). My little gray house (with all the garbage cans - yes I am trashy). The road where you can see the duplex across the street. My other neighbor's house - two story gray (also super nice people, I am blessed!). The huge pine tree that provides us beautiful shade during the hot summer months. The little white house on the other side of my neighbor's house and my neighbor's garage with the orange/red wheel barrel leaning up against it.

Where in the hell are my dogs?

Windy

This tree is causing me a bit of anxiety this morning. We are having unusually warm weather and right now the wind is gusting to 33 mph. That is not much, but when I had the dogs out a bit ago, this tree was swaying and rocking back and forth. It is huge. My house is not far from it.

Lit tree

Only the lights. Still. Nothing else. I have been giving it water like crazy. The kids are responsible for decorations this year. Sigh. I like how this cell phone feature "Polaroid" makes the photo look 30 years old. I think my camera is in the trunk of my car. I took pictures at our big family dinner on the 11th, and have pictures but have forgotten to get the camera out each time. Wait. I unloaded groceries on Sunday. I would have picked up the camera if it were in the trunk. Then, where is it? Aw, jeez. Now I have to go look for it.

I have the week off from work for vacation. There are about 3 problems that I am still trying to take care of remotely from home. They concern the filter. I may try one more thing and then let everything go until I return to the office on the 20th.

The filter may die by then.

Do you have children in school? If you did,  how would you feel about their Internet usage and the filter? Would you be upset if they could play games or access facebook in the classroom? How about reading/writing blogs while in the classroom?  Porn is easy. It is blocked with NO exceptions. Proxies are blocked with NO exceptions. 

Youtube, facebook, games, shopping, gambling - a lot of other categories are left up to the district. The thorn in my side (this month) is a middle school has three games housed on their web page. We are required to categorize all our school web pages as "education" and all my districts allow this category to pass. If they did not, it would be kind of difficult for them. But, this lets those 3 games show up under the category "education" and all the schools in my organization's network can access the 3 games. I have only one district complaining (but they are relentless). I am working with my filter company (they are located on the west coast and I am on the east) but their resolution has not worked. I may have misunderstood and set it up incorrectly.

I have never heard of a parent wanting a list of blocked categories for their district. I have wanted to go to districts and hold a meeting with the parents to explain how the filter works in the districts but I wonder if any parent is even interested. 

Do they think that this technology is without errors?

I made it to the museum

I can't believe it is almost 10:30. I have to walk the dogs yet, brush my teeth and go to bed. I am so "brain" tired. I did a lot of computer work this evening. Catching up on e-mails, blog reading, web page updates. Where does the time go? I am so tired I am dizzy and cannot think straight. I still have about 15 blogs yet to catch up on. I hate it when I can't read them. It is like missing the paper for a day.

There are so many things I wanted to post about. One story involved "welcome to the 50's" or "stuck in the 50's" or something like that. "You know you're getting old when...."   remember Mad magazine's page on this? Eh, I'll tell the story another time. If  I can remember to. I also wanted to continue the survey I did of my co-workers' favorite actor except do the actress this time. Then the band/singer. Oh, my. I am even more dizzy than before.

I made it to the museum last evening. It was spur of the moment. I was invited and I jumped at the chance. It is so hard to vote for a "people's choice" tree. I like the pink one, but my bathroom is all pink and rosy and I am sick of it. I massacred the photo and boxed it and slapped it on here.
 

Then I just got brain dead. And, I am out of here.

Must try

I only have this week-end to see the beautiful display of trees at the museum.  I've missed it before and I have wanted to kick myself. Saturday has been filled up. That leaves one evening or Sunday. Sometimes on Sunday some of the trees are already gone.

Extremely tired this evening. Maybe it's the rain.

Rainy days and Mondays

It is raining buckets outside. The pups and Sable didn't seem to mind but the boxer pranced around like "What? Are you kidding?" After walking down the alley and patiently waiting while they did nothing, and as soon as I gave the signal the boxer was off for the back porch like being shot out of a cannon. Baby.

The above photo was from a centerpiece on the table at the baby shower we had about a month ago. Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future.

Spring is here and my back hurts from bending over and cleaning up flower beds and raking oak leaves out of the corners of my yard. We have so many oak trees in the neighborhood that keep their leaves all winter long. UGH! Super UGH! They blow around and make a mess in the spring. I have one full garbage can of old, yucky, brown oak leaves.

I read this about why they don't lose their leaves in the fall:

  In young oak trees, however, for reasons that are
 unclear, abscission cells form but do not complete
 their work. Therefore, oak leaves often stay
 connected to the twig until pushed off by new leaf
 and twig growth in the spring.

Yeah well, whatever.

Dogs in snow

Who let the dogs out?! Without their harness and leashes? Me! That's who. With this much snow, they didn't go far. I did have one little scare when Slade (the brown one) took the pups for a run down the alley way. Sable was either too lazy, too sore, too tired or too smart to follow. I walked to the edge of my driveway and called them back and they came a-runnin'. Whew.

They had a blast in the snow. I uploaded the videos on Youtube. I think a search for Cheech Chong snow dogs might get you to the videos. I don't know. Yep, it sure does. Four videos taken just this morning. Sorry about the throat clearing in the one video, I had to keep reminding myself to stay quiet. You can also hear the wind howling.

I slept in! I slept in! My daughter woke me up by calling me. She wanted to know if I had taken the pups outside yet. It was 7:45. She wanted me to take videos so she could see them in the snow. The alarm went off at 5:30 since I had forgotten to turn it off for the week-end. I turned that sucker off and said "Aw, hell no!" and went back to sleep. I cannot believe I slept that long.

Then I have had anti-virus problems for a couple of days. I am hoping it is because I installed that new back-up hard drive and Norton just can't figure it out. I hope that is all it is. I ran the auto-fix a few times and it seems to be working for now. I do not look forward to working with tech support on the telephone for hours.

And, I discovered that I DO NOT have a cake mix in my cupboard as I thought. Well, there is no getting my car out and going to the store today. I don't feel like shovelling all that snow this morning. It may take me all day to get the sidewalks and the driveway cleared anyway. I'd hate to call my nephew and ask him to stop at the store and pick up his own birthday cake mix. Good grief!

I can't believe that I am going to attempt to make a cake from scratch! Me! This should be vewy, vewy interesting. If I retain my sense of humor through the ordeal, I'll take pictures and share them. Fat chance, though. I am not a baker. Cook? Definitely! Baker? No.

And by the way, I read his friend's facebook post that tells about them driving in the snow all evening last night playing. My nephew has his new all wheel drive Subaru and they said it goes everywhere! They passed dozens of cars that slid off the road but they had no problems at all. That and my nephew is a very good driver. He has driven all over the country. He loves to just take off and drive and drive and drive.

The snow we have is a very wet and heavy one. While taking the dogs out last night it was eerily quiet. I heard a loud pop and snap and a tree branch fell from my neighbor's tree. The wires going into my house were covered with ice. I think the worst one was my old POTS line, though - so I didn't care.

Delays

My back yard about 3 years ago

This is sort of what it looks like today. Not so much ice on the tree, though. They have delayed all area schools by 2 hours or so. I am going to have to finish my coffee and get my behind in gear. A delay just makes me drag my feet even more.

Found out late last night that my brother has a spot on his vocal cord about 2-3 mm. Possibly papilloma. His surgery is scheduled for next week to remove it. From what I have been reading, there is a good chance it comes back.

And, on a side note. I always check the pets lost & found. I saw this ad today:

1/21/10 - LOST DOG - male, tan, American bulldog, pink collar, Indian Meadows

He isn't lost. He ran away. Who puts a pink collar on a male dog? Just kidding! Seriously, I hope all lost pets are found by their caring owners.

Super side note: I was actually going to put a pink tutu on my boxer for Halloween. I'm sick I tell ya, sick!

SNAFU

January of last year. My dogwood covered in ice.

I can't believe I have not posted since Tuesday. What have I been doing? I can barely recall the entire week. I don't know. Time is passing so quickly. For all the griping I do about how long and dull January is, I am always surprised at how quickly it passes.

I heard Colin Powell speak about the situation in Haiti tonight. It is sad that we have to put such a political spin on everything anymore. I am sure he is correct. However, from a victim's standpoint who gives a sh!t about the government and how control needs to be in place to safeguard against chaos. The supply teams are looking out for the people of Haiti's best interest so that the greedy government officials don't take all the supplies and keep it all for themselves. I can imagine that the people of Haiti are just saying "Give me the food and water NOW! Worry about the greedy government officials later!"

I do understand that folks like Mr. Powell know much more about this sort of disaster relief than I do but it certainly looks like the rich kid coming in to say "It's my football and we will play the game the way I want to play with my rules, or I am going to take my football and go home." In other words, we will give you supplies and aid, but on our terms. We don't want you ignorant sub-humans to waste it. We try to force other countries to see things the way we see them. It just doesn't work that way. Not without a lot of friction. We continue to shove our way (the best way, I'm sure!) down their throats. Sigh. Same old, same old.

I repeat. I stand behind our country helping Haiti. I also understand what our government is trying to do (after listening to Mr. Powell). I am just imagining what the victims of this disaster and other countries might be thinking about the United States and our way of policing our efforts.

Jingle all the way!

My Grand Nephew performing at the mall with his pre-school classmates.
He is the one in gray.

Ah, just a note before I start my herculean day. My nephew arrived with a ton of gifts we hid in a back bedroom (pups). He is so organized this year. All wrapped and in lovely store totes. He and my daughter put up a 3 foot live tree. My daughter bought it at the nursery who only had 2 little trees left. We put the LED lights on it and they shine bright blue through my blue curtains. Really quite magical.

I called my eye doctor's office about my dogs chewing my glasses. After a couple of banters back and forth the receptionist said "Oh, you only need temple covers, come on in any time." I did. They covered the ends, tightened the frames, cleaned the lens(es) and I am back in business. Like having new glasses. For 2 dollars! 2 dollars! I didn't know anything (involving a doctor's office) could cost 2 dollars.

Now, I am off to make more cranberry-nut bread, a couple batches of cookies and wrap, wrap, wrap.

Oh, and for Christmas I wish all of you a family (or close friend) who is a techno-geek. I cannot describe how much I am learning from my nephew. When we go shopping (Lowe's, Staples, etc...) he explains so much to me. He told me all about how light fixtures work (picking up a new electrical cable because the dogs chewed mine), he explained all the possible flooring I could choose from (carpet in living room is ruined and must be pulled up), and he knows all about cameras (what CMOS and CCD) are, and he showed me how he can download entire movies in less than 10 minutes. He downloaded "Four Christmases" and a bootleg copy of "Old Dogs". He deleted them, we didn't watch them. He was just showing me how he could do it using something I had not heard of (NZB). It isn't free. He downloads TV shows that he cannot watch here in the USA. All British broadcasts. He is a big fan of British TV. Sigh. Amazing.