The Neon Nurse's Charting

...but I made it home alive, so you said that only proves that I'm insane....

Definitely right, no "may be" about it!

But here I am, happy and exhausted from my Me-day vacation. Not that it was perfect--such things seldom are. I got away from the house a couple hours later than I'd hoped, for instance. But that meant I met up with someone toting around the CUTEST red and white Basset puppy named Boo, and got to woofle her. (And no, the owner isn't "trav'lin' and a-livin' off the land." He's the local Fish and Wildlife guy.) It was minus to plus like that all day.

Very nice weather, we didn't get the suggested rain or snow. However, I WAS driving directly into a west wind that was not kind to my fuel economy (and it had QUIT by the time I headed home!). But the nice weather made it comfortable and easy for me to get some special train shots for Mike. (Beware of pic post tomorrow!)

Whenever we go through Las Animas, we always stop at their library, which has a year round mini book sale. Alas, today they were closed. Then when I grabbed some lunch in La Junta, not only did the KFC NOT have honey BBQ wings (OMGWTFnoBBQ!), they overcharged me for what I DID get and I didn't catch on until too late.

Wah, poor me, two minuses in a row. But then I got up the road to this thrift shop we hit now and then...and way on the top shelf of their books was a copy of "The Gray Walls of Hell", a Colorado based prison bio, which goes for around $75. (I remembered it as $100, but that's okay, one of the other books I found goes for over $30, so my Benjamin-happy was unsullied!)

Something else I did at the thrift shop which I NEVER do was look through the stash of old LPs. We don't even have a record player right now, and it's not one of my areas of expertise, so there's no real reason to do so. Yet I did buy a really old Sesame Street one we had back when Damaris and Sterling were little, because it had "Five Monsters in Our Family" and I wanted to hear it again. Someday. When I get a stereo again. (OH, and it has "I, Grover", and "Monster Lullaby" too!)

After I had made contact with my CONNECTION and SCORED the b-flute (does that sound dramatic and exciting at all? It is hard to make buying rolls of corrugated cardboard for packing and mailing sound Edgy and Dangerously Cool), I drove around Pueblo for a while, trying to remember where some of the thrift shops were. Happily, I stumbled across a Salvation Army before I could manage to get totally lost.

Inside I found myself looking at more LPs in the way I never do. "What the heck?" I wondered to myself. "Why am I doing this? What am I looking for?"

And then there it was. Just sitting there waiting for me.

See, a couple of weeks ago, when I made a music CD of kids' songs for a friend, Mike helped and wanted his own copy. He was playing it and Caro recognized one of the songs, Halfway Down the Stairs. This particular cover was by Robin of the Muppet Show, but as she and I talked, we realized we had both been exposed to the musical version of poems from A. A. Milne's When We Were Very Young, well, when we were very young. I think for me it was my first or second grade classroom, and hers was earlier yet.

Since we were both too young and innocent back then to know performers' or record companies' names, naturally this made Googling it a little tricky. Also, way too many hits came back for either the actual BOOK or the SONG book, which has the printed version of the music (by H. Fraser-Simson).

Anyway, Caro is going to borrow a record player from school so we can play the one I bought to see if it is THE one for either of us. And even if not, hey, it's Carol Channing doing them! So what could be bad?

Also, I found another album no one reading this but me, my mom and my sister would recognize at all, but WOW, Mom, you are going to be so surprised (once I mail it)!

And then I only got lost a little bit and took a couple wrong turns (which helped me get a few more good train shots), and I found BBQ wings (and gizzards! and Cheezits!) at the King Soopers, and I bought a large Blue Raspberry Freeze at Dairy Queen, and gas was 4 cents cheaper a gallon than in Lamar, AND I saw three propeller-type airplanes (like the WWII kind you see at air shows) flying around overhead as I drove home.

So the pluses definitely won the day!

I've been busy with my various projects, as you either know or cleverly guessed, and tomorrow I won't me around much at all, as I am driving off for a WILD FLING to the big bustling city of Pueblo! All on my own! By myself! Really!

I am going to buy 10 rolls of corrugated cardboard, aka b-flute, which will end up being at least a year's supply for me unless business picks up beyond my wildest dreams of avarice. It's a typical story...buying one roll at a time from a local business was costing twice the rate we'd been getting it for buying in bulk, plus he wasn't reliable. So I found someone ONLY 2 hours away...but while he was dealing with a supplier and getting things going (all during the Christmas season), Damaris and I were running low. So we went back to the Denver wholesalers...and now we have LOTS of b-flute. Or will, after tomorrow.

Don't think I have mentioned Where's George here lately -- where you write or stamp the website address www.wheresgeorge.com on paper currency and enter the serial number in their database. They will email you when someone picks up 'your' bill and re-enters it, so you can see where your money goes, besides Away.

Anyway, some bright boys got the even brighter idea of using the data as a way of creating a new paradigm for how disease travels in modern society. Here's the article link:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-01/uoc--igp012406.php

I feel quite pleased at this, as I have been a Georger for several years now. Despite not doing as much with it lately as I would have liked, I am still about 14th in Colorado and in the upper 1000 of the whole membership at the site. So I feel like I contributed to science!

That's how Mike described it, anyway. Which DOES sound more entertaining than, "Caro went to get something out of her car, stepped wrong or something, and fell down and skinned her knee."

Mike (as he has now reminded us 683 times) instantly sprang into action and came to get me. Aren't we glad he did? Oh, yes, we certainly are. And will doubtless remain so until we CRACK.

Other than that, a typical Saturday so far. I am puttering around, kind of working, waiting for that second wave of energy to hit. Well, actually I don't think I got the full FIRST wave yet today, so that could be the problem right there!

By the way, anyone who needs some colorful craft-type feathers at a bargain price should CLICK HERE Caro bought a humongous lot of them for the crafts at her summer reading program, and she wants to cash them in and try something different (if they fund it again this summer--hard to say, since our town lost a major employer and it will affect school attendance and funding). So if you were thinking of making some Mardi Gras masks, this would be a good start!

They end in about three hours, also. Just sayin'.

I'm working away here at my little computopia, filling book orders as per usual. This one guy's address made me laugh. First of all, he lives somewhere complicated (in Washington state), because he offers two variants for shipping to the SAME STREET NAME, one for the regular US mail and one for UPS.

Okay, fine. But the street name? Sudden Valley.

It made me wonder, that's all. How was it discovered? The hardy pioneers were walking along and all of a sudden, "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA--THUMP!"?

You probably think I should not be alone as much as I am, huh?

If you are like me, and have ALL THE SPARE TIME IN THE WORLD TO FRITTER AWAY, and if you also have boatloads of old b/w or monochrome photos, you will have some fun with this until January 31 when the free beta test runs out:

http://www.recolored.com/index.php

Here is one I did, of a friend in Chicago (late 40s? early 50s?) on a traveling photographer's pony:



Probably you--any of you--can do better. Maybe I used too complex a photo for my first try. I know that I had trouble getting the program to do things the same way the tutorial suggested it would, so maybe user-error is the trouble.

On the other hand, I have always had to fight my copy of PaintShopPro tooth and nail to get it to do what I want too. (Maybe it IS me....) Just for fun I tried to do the same kind of colorizing in that program, and it was nowhere near as good.

What I did like about this is that it's very good at finding the edges (all you have to do is approximate what you want turned pink, blue, etc.) and the overlaid color seems pretty natural--a tint, not a total fill-in. I don't know what they will be charging for it when they sell it, and I don't know if I would ever use it enough to make it worth buying. But I am wondering how it would work on colorizing line drawings...or augmenting color photos into something a little different.

But of course I can't try it now because I am supposed to be WORKING.

You know I dearly love my assorted descendants. But this morning, I also had to acknowledge a deep and meaningful love for the SILENCE when I got up and walked around the house, alone except for two dogs insisting they MUST go out NOW.

That turned out to be because there were crows. A gazillion or so out cawing around in the field in front of our house; flying up, down, swapping places with other batches of the larger group, and COMPLAINING. I guess they had a point--it's neither north NOR south here, it's not spring or fall, and even though all this past week our temps were in the 60s and 70s...it snowed last night. So no doubt, whatever migration tour they thought they signed up for, this was NOT it.

The weekend visit of the grands was quite a success, if you don't factor in the resulting adult exhaustion. The kids didn't bicker hardly at all, and the visiting team acceded to some of Mike's more fervent demands, joining him for a walk down the "tiny road" which leads along the train tracks, where they were lucky enough to get to see a train go by close up. (No worries, Mike is fanatical about 'no playing ON the railroad track'.)

Later on, after everyone's homework was done, we made the gingerbread house:



Of course it would not have been an official family weekend without drama, supplied when the toilet overflowed JUST as Damaris had arrived in desperate need of same. And it also would not be one unless something was left behind. But I packed up Zach's nebulizer and assorted toothbrushes, socks and other small wearables, and mailed THEM back today.

So all is well here. Pretty quiet, though....

*sigh*

We've been having a jolly day here with Marisa, Morrissey and Zach. It was very unseasonably warm today, in the low 70s. The kids rollicked around outside, playing with the toy train, climbing on the barn roof, and finding a pile of mysterious bones to bag up and take home. (That was Morrissey, and we think it might have been a stray dog or fox or young coyote.) We went out to see the wind farm, which was still about as cool as it was when we visited it a year ago.

http://neonnurse.net/windfarm.htm

We got involved in a different project this afternoon, so the gingerbread house is back-burnered until tomorrow. Today I got out a bunch of glitter and stickers and Stuff, and Caro came up with a couple of tiny scrapbook things and the button making kit. Armed with the trusty computer and printer, I helped crank out pictures of family and funny animals to be turned into two little books and a batch of fridge magnets for Lexie (don't tell, Sterling!), the fourth grandkid who lives in the exotic far-off land of Indiana. She is going to be 7 in a couple of weeks.

And then we watched Madagascar, which was better than I expected it to be. And now pretty soon it is bedtime.

Got an email yesterday from CenturyTel, my ISP, informing me they were going to be taking us off-line at midnight to do some work. So JUST as I was about to do some posting...they cut out at 11:50.

So I did not get to say anything about my busy day yesterday, repeatedly refreshing my eBay page to see if I had sold anything new in the five minutes since I last did it. (Usual result = no)

We did sell a good chunk of stuff, though, which will come in very handy for Extra-Long-January. (The school district here pays its employees their January check when they get out for Christmas break, which is great for the holiday but problematical for surviving the last half of January.)

So, short entry because I have to go pack and mail stuff.

We had a nice, jolly New Year's here. We ate yummy food, made appropriate noise at midnight and attempted to roust a few bad luck demons via fireworks. Today, we took down the tree and continued with assorted clean-up projects, because even Mike was noticing that parts of our house look like "a pig style!"

Part of that is because we are all pack rats collectors. Mike wanted me to show you one of the cute things he got for Christmas.



After we took the pic, he put it back in the plastic wrap so he could keep it on the shelf by his bed. It's "too cute to eat."