The Neon Nurse's Charting

I feel mildly triumphant tonight.

Even though I kept busy all day, I didn't get as much done as I would have liked to. But I did not let that feeling make me unhappy with what I DID get done!!

I got an unexpected package in the mail. Someone bought a box set of video tapes from me OVER A MONTH ago, and sent them back (WITHOUT asking first!) because she "ordered the wrong ones, and her husband doesn't want these." Oh YEAH I know they watched them, maybe even recorded them to DVDs! But I didn't DWELL on it (except for now, typing about it). I'm just going to email her back and say, "Gosh, sorry you didn't contact me first. If you send me a check for the postage you can have your videos back, because honey, they are YOURS." And Amazon will back me up on it. Heh.

Until tonight, I had a boombox that would rotate up to six CDs. It was pretty old, at least ten years, and had been a favorite toy of Mike's for at least the last couple of those. This spring the thing got jammed somehow. I got it to work again, for a while. But recently something went wrong so that it looked like it powered up, but it wouldn't actually DO anything but blink at you. And six of Mike's favorite CDs were trapped inside!

When none of the usual bypass tricks worked, I did what any sensible person would do. I DEMOLISHED IT, prying off chunks with a screwdriver until I got to the chewy CD center.

It was actually kind of fun!

Once all that excitement wore off, I sat down and finished the last page of my vacation photo essay.

Which is here.

A few more shots of the Royal Gorge, mainly of and from the neat little incline railway elevator jobbie that takes people down to the bottom of the Gorge.

If you were waiting for the whole set to be done to start looking, well, now it is.
This is the start page for it.

You know how I was saying I wasn't getting all of my email or LJ comments?

They came yesterday. 422 from the past week, and most had a twin. Between that, and trying REALLY HARD to finish that damn inventory I've been working on forever, and having a meeting to go to in the evening, I did not get my next page of the vacation photos up. Or much of anything else done either....

But I got another page done tonight, and tomorrow will be the end of the series.

Please to click

I was going to say something else but now I don't remember what.

The only mildly amusing thing that happened today was that I made a nice little old man laugh.

He was standing in line behind me at the Post Office. Someone in another line asked if it were legal to mail cigarettes. So while people were consulting the rule books, I said to no one in particular, "Alcohol and loose women, no. But I think cigarettes are okay."

What can I say, I like to entertain strangers. With that in mind, here's the next page of pics from my vacation.

Exciting shots of the crazy highway down from Silverton, and more scenic stuff, this time the Black Canyon of the Gunnison Mational Park.

Click here!

Whew, this is taking longer than I thought it would!

Here's Page 4 of the photo essay of my vacation. This one is a little shorter, only 17 pics of the train yard tour and a few of Silverton.

Clicky!

Hello, and welcome to Page 3 of the photo essay of my recent vacation!

Click here to see

us going DOWN the Animas Canyon on the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge! 22 pics, all under 100K plus of course my scintilating color commentary!

I was SO ANNOYED. I was 2/3s of the way done with Page 2 and my HTML writing program crashed on me! No, I had not done anything prudent like save as I worked.

But what was written (and coded) once can be written (and coded) again. Which I have just proved.

Click here for Page 2!

Alligators! Train ride! Yet MORE scenic natural wonders!

That will probably be all until tomorrow, though. Too much chair for one day!

Yay, I have the first page of the vacation pics done!

Click here!

This page covers the road down to Trinidad (scenic stuff and some abandoned buildings), more scenic stuff along the mountainous Highway 12, and then the Great Sand Dunes National Monument. 18 pics, all under 100K. The link to Page 2 is not functional yet...I'll give you all a heads up when it is!

My mom had to go in to the hospital for a scan yesterday. She has some kind of growth in her colon, and her doc was concerned because it had come on so suddenly--she has a colonoscopy in May and he says there was no sign of it then.

So she calls me today, saying she wanted to tap into my vast medical knowledge. I was happy to oblige, as always. Then she asks, "So what does metastasized mean?"

I'm sure I don't have to tell you how my heart stopped for a second, while my brain started right in with all the ways this was not going to turn out to be a Bad Thing, no, not at all, no way. My best mental excuse was that she was somehow pronouncing the real word she wanted ALL WRONG. (Like the time she told me my dad had had to be incubated at the hospital....)

But I gritted my teeth and told my brain to shut up and said, "It means something that has spread."

"Oh good," she chirped. "Because the doctor says my growth has NOT metastasized."

I don't think she does things like that on purpose. But MAN.

You know that LJ has taken over your life when you start trying to blog about things that have happened in your dreams...while you are still asleep and dreaming!

Also I keep dreaming Mike has siblings. I am reasonably sure it doesn't mean I want MORE kids...but what it DOES mean, I do not know.

Anyway, here I am at the end of a busy week. I have that dang inventory pretty much done. Now I just have to apply all the changes and fixes and such to my listings at Amazon, Half.com and Neon Hearts (my personal online store). The last one will be easy, once I get my database cleaned up and good to go. Sadly, my database (ReaderWare) is not cross-platform, so I will have to do the other sites by hand. Argh.

BUT I have not forgotten my goal of putting up a second photo essay this week. For a good part of the afternoon I have been finalizing my picks from the photos I took while Mike and I were on vacation last week. Trying to only inflict the BEST ones on you, you know?

So BEWARE, as Mike would say!

I think I was so overcome with the thrill of having the house to myself (excuse the pets) that I overdid a little. Kept wanting to do a LITTLE more and a COUPLE more things...and now I am likely not going to get to the email and comment answering I was DEFINITELY going to do TODAY.

But I did sit down and go over some things on the computer and defrag it, because it has been getting all slow and picky and annoying and hard to work with. Which is a thing I do not like in any sort of being, biological or electronic.

So maybe tomorrow the e-communication thing will work out better.

For now, I DID remember I was going to get back to doing Tune Tuesday. In honor of our recent vacation experiences, here's a classic from C. W. McCall:

Wolf Creek Pass

Before I forget, I want to tell you something really funny Mike said (and I think it was on purpose!).

Rearranging Stuff naturally means putting it in new places. I had a box of small items needing further sorting, and I put it on the chair Mike uses when he plays with HIS computer.

"It's just for now," I assured him.

"You mean, just for now on."

He knows me all too well.

So there I was, coming home from the Post Office. I turned the last corner to the dirt spur road our house is on, and Suddenly! There it was! A snake! On the plane! (Of the level roadbed.)

I didn't actually recognize what it was at first, because it was stretched out in a completely straight line--not a common pose for a snake. Out of habit I steered so as to miss it, but it was so long I can't believe I didn't clip it on one end or the other.

Once my brain registered that it was indeed a BIG snake in the road, I hit the brakes, turned off the car, and ran back to see if it was alive. I guess maybe it was trying to sun itself (it was cool here today), because once it saw me, it curled up without any problem, hissing and vibrating its totally rattle-free tail, trying to scare me off.

Instead, I tried to scare IT off the road. I knew if our neighbors came home and saw it, they would kill it, even though it was only a harmless bullsnake. (Though a whomping big one. Its middle was bigger around than my wrist!)

So the snake and I faced off a few minutes, each totally failing to scare the other one away. But I am a clever tool using mammal, and he (or she) was not. I went to my car and got--my camera! Oh, and the second best umbrella.

Whooshing the umbrella in its face did the trick. It backed away hissing REALLY loud, and even tried to bite it a couple times! But it did end up in the weeds beside the road, and I hope it had the good sense to slither off some other direction.

Here's the best 2 pics.



I think its markings are really pretty.

Here's a close-up of the head. Did you know that you can tell a non-venomous snake by its round pupils? Also the "pit" is back near the jaw point, instead of between the eye and nostril. And there are an even number of scales between the eyes...or something like that. The trouble with these identifiers is that you DO have to get kinda close to check them out, and that might turn out to be a bad idea.



On the topic of pictures, before I left I did finally get my Photo Essay page up and running.

http://neonnurse.net/photesstoc.htm

As I think I said before, I am going to try to do two a week until I get my backlog of pics caught up (which might take me a long time!) So far what's on there is the auction page, and a four page one of the Harry and the Potters/Draco and the Malfoys library concerts we went to a few weeks ago.

Tonight I added an upgraded version of a page I did a couple years ago. On the way back from one of Mike's orthodontist appointments, we stopped in Granada at the site of Amache, the old Japanese internment camp. It's a small page, only 6 photos. I'm hoping I can add to it one of these days, since some groups are trying to get a museum going there.

http://neonnurse.net/amache.htm

So the meme going around is you're supposed to make a team from various fandoms (five DIFFERENT fandoms) using the following criteria:

(1) Team Leader (could be anyone, but must have good leadership skills!)
(1) Warrior
(1) Smartypants (This one can either be interpreted as the Brains of the Outfit or the One Who Brings the Snark.)
(1) Hottie
(1) Comic Relief

I don't often do these, but this one grabbed my imagination! So here we go!

Team Leader: Admiral Miles Naismith/Vorkosigan

(Just by this ALONE I have guaranteed my team will be nigh invulnerable! Even more so if he is allowed to use his fleet of Dendarii mercenaries!)

Warrior: Stitch

(Hey. it's what he was created for!)

Smartypants: I considered drafting Snape, but instead went with Odo from DS9, because he is better at being a team player (even when he doesn't much want to) and also, a shapechanger could be remarkable useful.

Hottie: Faith, from the Buffyverse

Comic Relief: Hank McCoy, aka Marvel's Beast. I think this was an especially good choice because he IS funny, but he's also strong, great in a fight, and a genius!

You know what? Someone needs to come up with a way for these created teams to compete! I would really, really, really like to see mine go on a mission!

Yes, that should frighten you.

We actually got home yesterday evening, but what was left of the day was spent in unloading, greeting Caro and the pets effusively, getting stuff in the wash and all that sort of thing. You might find this hard to believe, but I was tired. :)

The only big adventure of our last day of vacation was going to the suspension bridge over the Royal Gorge. I had only been there once, twenty years ago, and Mike had not been at all, although he has gone UNDER it twice when riding the Royal Gorge train up the canyon.

There is a major tourist-trappish place before you get there, called Buckskin Joe's. We went and rode their small, pricey train, but also got a good deal on a t-shirt for Mike, since they were having an end of the season sale.

It's also a bit expensive ($21 for adults) to get into the grounds of the bridge up above, but once you are there, you get to ride rides and wander around and see it all without extra charges, which is at least handy. We rode a very nice old restored carousel, and another silly train ride, and I took the incline railway down to the bottom of the gorge. (Mike did not care to trust such a strange and rickety looking device.) He DID walk out on the bridge, though, in spite of being afraid of "hikes". (I need to convince him HE is afraid of "heights". It's me who is afraid of "hikes".)

I had kind of planned to hit the ground running today. I do seem to have hit it, or at least hit SOMETHING, but with more of a thud. I've been oddly dizzy off and on. Maybe it's like decompression...or recompression, coming back down to our normal altitude!

I planned better than I knew when I decided on this vacation. Mike's school starts Monday, and we wanted to get him back on a better sleep schedule. Naturally he resisted this mightily at home. But here on the trip, we are getting settled in by dark, and he soon drifts off to sleep.

The downside, of course, is that he wakes up at dawn, and even watching his DVD player "quietly" wakes ME up.

On the other hand, it is lots easier to type on this laptop keyboard when there's an external light source. To type in the dark, I have to lean the screen forward so it shines on the keys. But then I can't read what I am typing very well. So that's why I have not been doing a lot of commenting to other people, even though I have been faithfully keeping up with reading my Flist!

No, I am not either addicted to the internet!!

So. Yesterday. The highway from Silverton down to Ouray is just as Completely Insane as advertised. I saw yellow diamond warning signs in shapes I had NEVER seen before! To quote from Mr. McCall's "Wolf Creek Pass":

"From there on down it just wasn't real pretty,
It was Hairpin County and Switchback City.
One of 'em looked like a can full of worms,
Another one looked like malarial germs...."

It was fun.

Ouray is nicknamed the Switzerland of America. I don't know if this means they are always neutral or what, but it's a very scenic little town, and they have incorporated their hot springs into the community swimming pool. It is shaped like a big oval, with one end being hot (about 102 when we were there), and the other end cool and deep with a diving board. The part in the middle has a medium warm area (96 degrees) and a large one which is normal pool cool, with some big fancy slides Mike fell in love with.

I meant to stay and soak for an hour. We were actually there for more than two hours, and it was Mike who dragged ME away in favor of lunch. We even got slightly sunburned, so we will be going home looking like proper vacationers.

At Montrose we hit Highway 50, which runs to Lamar, so we are on the last leg. But we are getting a little blase about the natural wonders and the available touristy activities, so I think it's time. Also the baby cat Souvenir is driving Caro mad at home, wanting her to make up for two people's worth of attention and play. Since she is putting in 10 hour days getting ready for school to start, this is not really doable.

Between Montrose and Gunnison (where we are right now) is a National Park for the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. It is AMAZING. Kind of like an inversion of the mountains we have just been in--the same types of rocks and formations, but instead of sticking up into the sky, they form a wild, steep, LONG canyon with a river roaring away down at the bottom. As always, pics to follow.

The town of Gunnison gets big points from me for having big signs advertising a free wifi hot spot at their tourist center. Very modern outlook, but since they are a college town (Western State), I guess that's only appropriate.

High points from yesterday:

When we came out of the Pizza Hut where we had dinner, there was a full 180 DOUBLE rainbow, horizon to horizon, and very bright!

At the Ouray pool, there was a place where you could be in the cool pool but sit under the outflow from the hot pool, so that your neck, shoulders and back had extra warm water burbling over them, but your other body parts were enjoying cool freshness. I would consider growing gills to just live in that spot permanently.

Gunnison had gas at $2.94!!!

When buying the train tickets, I had noticed that one could also pay to go on a tour of the train yard there in Durango. Feeling Mike really needed this extra dose of crack, we went back the next morning.

The highlight for Mike was getting to manually work a lever that changes the switch, the section where the track gets moved to let trains go different directions. I think he would have been perfectly happy to stand there all day switching it back and forth. Thank goodness they are usually kept locked--now that he knows the secret!

I had been a little hesitant to sign up for the tour, since walking for long stretches of time is not something I am currently adept at. But it was supposed to only be an hour, and I figured I could manage that.

Unfortunately, there was a hardcore railfan along on the tour--a guy who has his own foundry and does heaven knows what with it. The kind of guy who tried to show off being able to recognize different WEIGHTS of track steel rails. Who asked questions thinly disguised as a way to show off what he already knew.

OK, a serious fan, and I wasn't into his fandom, so I was annoyed and off-put. Also he was totally lacking a sense of humor.

It WAS very informative, though. I always enjoy behind the scenes peeks at things. And of course there were photo ops. Mike got a big charge out of seeing a roundhouse and turntable up close, and stroking the drivers of an engine. So it was worth it.

The leg cramps from walking and then driving up and down over a couple of fairly heavy duty passes, plus a threatening thunderstorm (which DID end up moving on east) is what made me stick and stay in Silverton that night. It was a very pretty park, and we were right across from a little waterfall coming down the mountain opposite us.

The hot tub was also not smelly, although it could have been fuller. Still, when it comes to the classic question, I am the type who sees the hot tub as half-full, and that was good enough for me!

I felt very clever to remember that our little Trakfone had an alarm function. Wasn't totally thrilled about setting it for 6 AM, but I figured that was what had to be done if we wanted to get to Durango in time to ride the 9 o'clock narrow gauge to Silverton.

The plan almost worked. We made great time over the mountain, despite having to drive RIGHT THROUGH A CLOUD, which was a lot like thin fog. It was pretty cool, actually. But in Durango I had trouble finding the train station and then the correct parking lot. Luckily for us they had a 9:45 train that day, so all was well.

This railroad has been in operation since 1881, first put into operation for the mines. It goes through areas of still almost untouched wilderness; in fact, there's an exclusive resort up there which you can ONLY reach by train. Or the private helicopter!

The cars are all restored vintage ones. There are tons of signs about not sticking your body parts out the window (just like a school bus), because sometimes the side of the car is about 8 inches from the rock wall, and often the trees are growing closer than that. Of course sometimes you are not too close to anything out the window. Sometimes you are going along the edge of the cliff down to the river below. Sometimes the side of the car actually sticks out over that edge! Another reason not to lean out, I guess.

The ride takes almost 4 hours each way (to cover 45 miles), and you have a layover in Silverton which gives time to eat lunch and shop a little. (We ate at a place called Pasta La Vista. Good ravioli.)

I completely used up two sets of batteries on all the great scenic vistas, which is my idea of a great day! Long day, though, because we didn't get back to the car until 7:45!

Riding beside open windows all day in a coal-burning train leaves you covered with little specks of soot and cinders, so I decided to splurge and get an actual motel room. Showers were definitely needed! We found one at a good price which advertised wifi, a hot tub and a pool.

The hot tub, though, turned out to have some kind of weird chemical in it that emitted such noxious fumes we actually couldn't breathe while in it. The pool was clean and clear, but freezing cold. Sigh. The internet and showers worked, though, and the bed was decent. So all was well for another day!

After going to the Gatorfest on Tuesday, we wound up at the McDonald's in Alamosa, where again I enjoyed the free wifi while we ate our late lunch and pondered what to do next. Durango, our next potential stop, was only 150 (or so) miles away, but that was over several mountain passes, which take longer (WAY longer) than the plain plains highways I am used to.

It was almost moot, because we very nearly got creamed on our way out of town. It had started to rain, and someone stopped in the single highway lane, waiting to turn left onto their side road. I stopped too, as a seemingly endless line of cars coming the other way zoomed on by. There WAS room for me to go around, but it was in the outgoing lane from several businesses and I was hesitant to get in someone else's way, what with the poor visibility and all.

Then I noticed the RV barreling down upon us. Somewhat before HE noticed US....

During that whole time slowing down thing that happens, I considered my options. Left, no--still oncoming traffic. Straight ahead through the stopped car--not so good either. But just before I made the decision to gun it to the right, the RV driver made the same one. So I stayed put and watched him fishtail by, the car he was towing behind rocking like a marlin on high test line.

As my heart started back up again, the oblivious left-turner made his exit and I roared on as well. Mike then began to wonder aloud what had happened to make me say the Bad Words.

We made it up and over Wolf Creek Pass without further drama. Mike enjoyed the tunnels and was impressed by the runaway truck ramps, which go straight up the mountainside like roller coasters. Very short ones, but hey.

I am sorry to say that there is no feedstore on the edge of town in Downtown Pagosa Springs. Of course in the song, Wolf Creek Pass, it got bashed in, so maybe that's why.

By the time we got there it was about 6:30, and I decided we should call it a day. After a little searching, we found what we thought was a good RV place. But they would not rent us a spot because they had no nighttime bathroom access. However, they DID tell us of a motel just down the road which maintained a tenting ground (with the porta-potty required by law) right by the river, and was only $17.50 to boot!

So we got signed up there, then went back to the first spot and paid for the privilege of using their hot springs heated pool and hot tub. Which were very nice, temperature wise. But my swimming suit STILL smells of sulphur, even after being well rinsed (we hung our suits out to dry but it rained real good that night) and washed in an actual washing machine today!

Also there was no internet.

We slept very well in Dreamcloud, though, listening to the rain and the river. Which is what I am going to do right now, except the sound is more a wind through the RV park sort of thing.

OK, we are parked for the evening in a nice little RV place in Silverton, Colorado. When we got here, it seemed for a while like it was going to storm (loud thunder being my first clue), and I was already not having the mountain driving fun, because of overdoing it with the walking this morning. So since there was a good place to stay, here we are. The internet connection could be speedier, and Mike is peeved they have no pool (at 9000+ feet I think they aren't that practical), but there IS a hot tub, and there are showers! So we're good for the night.

Let's see, first the sand part. We went to the Great Sand Dunes, which have formed from millennia of westerly winds picking up sand and not QUITE managing to blow it clear over the Sangre de Christo mountains. So it all piled up at the base. Quite a lot of it.

I walked a short ways out on this beach without an ocean, but enough is as good as plenty, eh? Mike sat down with me and we played in the sand.



I also tried making a sand angel, which looked kind of cool, but I got a lot of sand in my hair doing it.

Next we went to the Alligator Farm. Long time readers may recall that there used to be a "branch office" of this organization in Lamar, when they were raising tilipai fish off the warm water from the electrical power plant, and using a few spare gators as garbage disposals for the fish who did not make it all the way through the production process.

If they still have the same gators, we did not recognize them. They have about 400, though, so it's not like we were lacking for reptilian samples to gaze upon. Mike and I even got to hold a baby one. They had many other cold-blooded critters there as well, snakes, tortoises, fish, lizards...if you like that sort of thing, it's worth the $10 entrance fee.



Plus at the end you can help yourself to some anti-bacterial hand wash gel. Which kept us from adding another S to our log--salmonella.

More later, it's time to go seek a dinner place!

(From this morning)

For the past couple of days I have either had no connection to post via, or no brain energy to write one when I was hooked up. Today I decided to at least do a LITTLE, however much I can before Mike drags me off to another day of adventure.

Tuesday morning we started the day by driving up Highway 12, which is called The Highway of Legends. It circles from Trinidad up to La Veta, and features really gorgeous scenery, plus lots of interesting little old towns, some still thriving, some not so much. It helped Mike wear a little of the edge off his nervousness about mountain driving, which would turn out to be a very good thing!

After all that riding of the brake, I wanted to stretch my legs, so we stopped at Fort Garland. This was one of the forts from which troops were sent to fight the Battle of Glorietta Pass, which was the westernmost battle of the Civil War. Lots of neat stuff to see, including a room dedicated to the "Buffalo Soldiers", the African-American troops of the Western Expansion that so few people know about.

But I must go now, Mr. Mike calls! (To Be Continued!)

Well, here we are on vacation at last, Mike and I, sitting inside the scenic McDonald's in Trinidad, Colorado. Yes, they have free wireless access. The campground we are staying at tonight was supposed to have it too, but I went the the wrong Budget Inn and I think I got the low tech one. We'll see later on, I suppose....

Highway 350 from La Junta to Trinidad is amazing...I thought I knew vast vistas of not much but grass and sky! But this was even more vast and overwhelming than anything I have seen before! Several neat old ghost towns, but I only stopped for a few brief pics, which I haven't tried to process yet.

We mainly drove around town looking at things, because of COURSE we got here just AFTER all the museums closed. Still, it's an interesting town with hilly streets to rival San Francisco.

Haven't found any cats yet.

Sorry for not touching base before now. We definitely had Too Much Fun all weekend, and that makes for a very tired Susan. Add to that the fact that all three of us are going away for the weekend AGAIN Saturday, and then Mike and I will be off on adventures Monday...and you can see I have to cram a lot of stuff into these five days at home!

I had an idea ("Oh NOOO! Run away, for your LIVES!" As Mike would say.) for a new project. (As you know, I so desperately need more things to do to keep me busy and out of trouble.) Since I have so many series of photos I've taken that are languishing on my hard drive, unseen, I decided to put them up as photo essays, each with its own web page. Then, sort of in the spirit of NaNoWriMo, I will try to put up two essays a week, until I get caught up.

I am sort of cheating with the first one...it's that series about the local auction that I just recently did. But I partly started with the easy one because I am working on a much bigger series, an overview of the Harry and the Potters/Draco and the Malfoys concerts we attended over the weekend. I promised the clone and several other people I would get it done ASAP. So far I have winnowed out the best of over 200 pics and done the Photoshop clean-up on the keepers. With a little luck I MIGHT finish it today.

(This didn't get posted when we were away on our weekend jaunt, so I am resending it.)

It turns out the hotel connection is not wireless access as we expected, and last night I was too zosted to cope with the alternatives. Right now I am typing from Dreamcloud in the parking lot at a Ross store, while Caro shops. Yay, hotspots!

I wrote this much last night--more later, as I think I already said. Last night when I was writing, I mean...

(Mom, you might want to skip this one....)

You know that old joke? About the hotel that says they are full, but the guy begs and pleads, so they say he can stay if he will make his own bed? And he agrees and they give him a hammer and nails?

We didn't even get THAT!

After a fun but exhausting day (more on which later), we came back to the room. Caro sat on the edge of one of the beds, and it collapsed on that side! These bed frames are mere rectangles of fiberboard with some braces running across inside, and on this one, the side piece just fell OFF and lay there on the rug looking useless and pathetic. Much the way I felt at this point, after our long day.

Caro then found out that the bedside lights, the clock and another table lamp were all non-functional. Further CSI-worthy investigation produced the reason why--they had all been unplugged. “Huh,” we said.

A call to the desk gave us the unwelcome news that there were no other nonsmoking rooms with two beds available. So we decided to have a go at putting our busted one back together well enough to get through the night.

Getting through the night must have been a problem for a former resident of the room. When Caro lifted up the box springs and mattress so that I could access the broken piece, we found...an abandoned item.

Wrapped mostly in a towel. Enough was sticking out for me to identify it as an adult recreational device. I‘m not sure what they are called, but they bring to mind the old SNL skit of Hans and Franz promising to PUMP you UP. If you get my drift....

Happily it did not attract Mike's interest, so he did not get an educational moment.

I did manage to get the frame stuck back together well enough to make the bed sleepable. We also found we were able to plug the lights and clock back in, with the mattress shifted. My speculation that the former resident in question unplugged these highly necessary items in order to power up things he felt were even MORE crucial to his well-being remains just and only that, speculation.

But ew.

Got all the crucial stuff done, so we are now cleared for take-off on our little trip. With luck I can pop in to post "Hi!" from the hotel tomorrow night!

I am over myself for the moment, and figure my ancestors are probably coping reasonably well with a descendant who gets all whiny because she can't get her hair dyed a proper shade of blue, the IRS is bugging her, and her offspring are varying degrees of punks. (*sigh* They never blog, they never email....)

Mike is sorry for his punkitudiness lately, and was extremely helpful and nice today, which bodes reasonably well for the weekend. I refilled out the schedules the IRS *seems* to want, and will hope for the best there. I finally blued my hair into submission, AND I found an extra tube of glowsticks ("wands" for the Harry and the Potters concert), plus my missing Dixie Chicks CD (the new album)! It's off to bed for me now, so I can leap up in the morning all ready for adventure!

Silly note: Caro and I came up with a modern version of the old tongue-twister, "She sells sea shells by the sea shore."

"She sells cell phones by the Sears store."

Which do YOU think is more twisty?

If I had any.

Damaris and Sterling, now, they had a great-grandma who walked into Missouri behind the family's covered wagon as a girl. She was a great-niece of Jefferson Davis, as an addition bragging point.

My grandpas were a truck driver, and a school teacher who became a small business owner in a small town. One grandma died when my mom was five, and the other led a rather interesting life in her youth -- she got shot in a speakeasy by a jealous wife! (She had got religion and settled down considerable by the time I knew her.)

The ancestor I got my name from was actually named something like Kreutz, but it was changed to Crites at Ellis Island, to make the spelling easier for the clerks, most likely.

On my mom's side, the Agees were once the Des Agee, Huguenots who came to America early on, fleeing Europe so they would not have to convert to Catholicism.

So, no hardy pioneer ancestors trekking west for me. Although I know my various grands and greats had rough times nevertheless, being as how it's part of the human condition and all.

Don't worry if all this makes no sense to you. I'm basically trying to cheer myself up out of a bad case of the sobby-sorry-for-myselfs.

Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950) * Spoon River Anthology * 1916.

207. Lucinda Matlock

I went to the dances at Chandlerville,
And played snap-out at Winchester.
One time we changed partners,
Driving home in the moonlight of middle June,
And then I found Davis.
We were married and lived together for seventy years,
Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,
Eight of whom we lost
Ere I had reached the age of sixty.
I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick,
I made the garden, and for holiday
Rambled over the fields where sang the larks,
And by Spoon River gathering many a shell,
And many a flower and medicinal weed—
Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys.
At ninety-six I had lived enough, that is all,
And passed to a sweet repose.
What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,
Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?
Degenerate sons and daughters,
Life is too strong for you—
It takes life to love Life.

I sort of took a day off today. I was afraid that if I didn't, my knees would follow through on their threat to leave me and find a new hostbody that would not abuse them. With all the auctions and Stuff going on lately, I have been trying to push the envelope a little, activity wise, and build them up. But...well, the overdoing thing, you know?

The August calendar is packed already. This weekend, our little family group is heading to Denver to go see Harry and the Potters in concert--BOTH DAYS! There's some back to school shopping and a trip to Lakeside Amusement Park in the mix too! (I hope they still have lots of benches.)

We spent the week at home resting and catching up, and then we are off again the NEXT weekend to go visit Caro's brother! The original plan was to have a regular family vacation in the middle there, but there have been major changes and shake-ups at Caro's middle school, so she needs to use that time getting ready and helping all the teachers (many of whom are new) get ready also.

SO it's going to be the Mikester and me touring scenic and educational spots in southern Colorado from about the 14th to the 20th. Mike has to be back home by Monday the 21st, because SCHOOL IS STARTING. (Be still, my heart! :) )

I am hoping that somewhere in those two sets of weekdays I can finish that inventory project I was all gung-ho on until the auction barrage started. We'll see. "Distractable" is my other middle name, sadly....

No, I didn't get around to taking a picture of my new favorite chair yet. But I DID finally toss the photo essay of "What A SE Colo Auction is Like" up on my website.

http://www.neonnurse.net/auction.htm

12 pictures, averaging 100K each, so it might take a minute or two on dial-up. Just sayin'.