The Neon Nurse's Charting

I was kind of out of it yesterday, and I think it was because of taking part in all-star yard wrestling Sunday and Monday. Not like you think. It involved trudging through the thick wet clay of the driveway on Sunday, filling up Dreamcloud with trash we haven't been able to get rid of since before the first blizzard. Then Monday I decided it was a good time to reposition my two sheets of black plastic and try to melt out MORE driveway mud. The snow is still kind of deep over in that area, and it wasn't as much fun as you might think. Also, back and legs say ow.

On the plus side, the public roadways are finally clear and dry enough for Caro to be able to get to school in her own little car, the Nimbus '95. So I have gotten to go back to the traditional ways of my people, the Night Owls, and sleep as late as I want.

Seems like I had something else I was going to say, but I can't think of it now. That's how my whole day went yesterday.... Oh, well, maybe later.

That would be me.

I thought I had all the various family birthdays loaded up on a little program I use called Turbonote, which has a pop-up alarm function. But no. I did NOT have the birthday of darling Lexi, my grandgirlie from Indiana, in there.

So this is her as of a couple weeks ago:



Looks like I better get on board with the shoppin'!

You may recall me talking about my friend Richard last fall, who was slowly succumbing to a brain tumor. Today is his birthday, so he has made it past two holiday milestones that the doctors thought he might not. In the most recent news I heard, he was slowly fading, doing a lot of sleeping and mostly waking just to eat.

This is a picture of him from happier times, juggling on top of Pike's Peak.



He was at the top in a lot of people's worlds.

Remember how I was saying recently I felt guilty for not reading enough of actual books? Well, I guess I am not alone. Someone on a bookseller list I belong to shared THIS LINK to a site that lets you choose up to three classic (gone to public domain) or Creative Commons books and receive them in parts via daily email. (Except if you get on a roll you can have them send you the next one right away!)

I've already spotted a bunch of old favorites, plus some of those "always meant to read someday" titles. You can discuss the books with the other people reading them too!

And speaking of great things to read, I saw this quote in a friend's LiveJournal today.

"Giving people the care they need is not socialism, it's Judaism. It's Christianity. It's Buddhism. It's Islam. It's mandated by nearly every religious tradition and moral code, going back to the Code of Hammurabi: "to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land… so that the strong should not harm the weak." There is separation of church and state, but there should never be separation of decency and state, especially in a democracy, where the sovereign IS the people, and the government an expression of their will."

Use the link below to read Nick Dupree's whole post--it's really worth it!

Justice, justice you shall pursue... Deut. 16:20: Any Valid Social Contract Requires Universal Health Care

So we're having another blizzard. People have been feeling nervous, because word at the feed store was that the Farmer's Almanac had correctly predicted the two other blizzards at Christmas and New Years, and was supposedly predicting another BIGGER one in February....

If this one is it, the good part is that any incoming snow is going to promptly blow down to Oklahoma and Texas. The winds have been running steady at about 45-55 mph since early this morning. The bad part is...as pictured below. That WAS the roof of our dogs' turnout pen. Lucky the tree is there, or Dreamcloud would have a new hat.

There's birdseed EVERYWHERE, and I have no idea where the plate of peanut butter went.



This is the field across the road from us. Yesterday it was covered with about a foot of old snow.



Do you remember our black sheet plastic experiment? It was actually working! If the wind dies down by tomorrow, as predicted, I am going to shift it down a few more feet. If it's still here....

Note the chilly ghost on the swing.



My artistic pic for Day on Earth.

The repairman came. The dryer shuts off on its own now! Yay!

I don't think I mentioned it before, but last week I messed up my laser mouse. The wheel was acting a little hinky so I tried to clean it and after that it would only go two spins, then quit. So I installed a new one, which is cool with red shiny jewels all over. But it doesn't like the old mouse's software or something, because while the wheel works fine, the left click button does not. I either get no result from clicking, or up to a dozen as I try to double click at just the right speed. This is annoying.

I am also failing as a bird nurturer. Wouldn't you know, we turned out to have some of that potentially contaminated 2111 peanut butter, which we had already eaten half the jar of. I decided not to push our luck, but rather than waste it totally, we scraped it onto an old plate and set it out on the roof of the dogs' turn out pen for the birds. The birds must watch the news, because they aren't touching it, even after I bought bird seed to scatter all over it. What's up with that?

The other project I have been busy with is converting from the Thunderbird mail program back to Eudora, which we have used since we first got the internet a decade ago. Thunderbird has a few quirks that annoy me, even though I either found workarounds or got used to it. The only reason I quit Eudora was that I had an old version that was not playing nice with the new bells and whistles of modern net needs, and I didn't want to pay $50 to get up to speed.

However, Qualcomm is about to give Eudora over to Mozilla for open sourcing. That would be free, but it seems that they will just CALL it Eudora but make it pretty much Thunderbird flavor. Happily, they have not done this yet, and are discounting the most recent version of Eudora down to $19.99. Can't beat that with a stick. So I'm shifting unanswered mail and saving old folders of Stuff.

Another advantage of Eudora over T-bird, for me, is that I can successfully transplant mailboxes on my flash drive from the big computer to the laptop. I have been spending way too much time sitting up in front of the desktop in the past few weeks, and I've been getting fluid build-up in my legs and feet which doesn't go away overnight like it used to. So I need to get back to doing a good chunk of my work from the bedroom on the laptop. (The whole reason I bought it in the first place!) Being able to shift the email I'm behind on will help that a lot! (Also it is much quieter in the bedroom, but don't tell Mike I said so!)

One of the problems with there being such BIG problems going on in our state and country is that others, just as bad on a smaller scale, don't get the coverage or attention they should.

I just happened to read about this today in the email I get from TomPaine.com. Possibly it caught my attention because my son Sterling is a trucker.

"The Federal Highway Administration, which oversees our nation's highway system, is about to issue a regulation allowing 97-foot-long multi-truck monstrosities to roar up and down our nation's streets. These vehicle combinations, called "saddlemount vehicle transporter combinations," or simply, "four-ways," consist of four trucks linked together, with only the first truck maintaining both its front and rear wheels on the ground. On the three other trucks, only the rear wheels touch the ground, the front resting on the truck preceding it. From the side, if one roars by you on the road, they look like elephants holding each others' tails with their trunks—only much, much larger and more dangerous.

As one veteran truck driver with 40 years of driving experience put it, in testimony submitted to the FHA,

The notion that a saddlemount load, 97 feet long and consisting of four semi tractors, is safe is absurd. All four-way configurations have the tendency to cause the fourth truck to whip and sway to a certain degree. It can quickly become a very dangerous situation.

Another driver, who has been driving vehicle combinations for 20 years, testified, "While driving these setups, the rear truck is unstable and wanders excessively from side to side. This type of setup is a danger to the motoring public and to myself." "

Full article here

Short version is, even though Bush signed off on the law allowing these crazy Frankentrucks to be loose on the streets, the Federal Highway Administration has not. Yet.

You can write to this guy to say you think it's a bad idea.

"Comments on the proposed rule should be sent to Richard Capka, Administrator, Federal Highway Administration, at Rick.Capka@dot.gov."

Check out this neat site! It's a 4-H webpage with a camera set to watch eggs in an incubator. As I post this there are 3 eggs and one damp chick to be seen!

Click for chicks!

It's been a long time since we had any chicks or chickens around the place. (And I was glad of that when we were having the blizzards!) But seeing the baby chicks reminded me of when the big kids were in 4-H.

Sterling chose chickens for his project, and we picked some interesting breeds from a catalog. There was one kind where the adults would be solid black, a nice big bird good for both meat and eggs. The chicks turned out to be a black and yellow pattern. The day they came, I pulled a good joke on Damaris. When she got home from school I acted irritated and and complained that the company had made a mistake and sent me baby penguins. I said I'd had to take the heatlamp out and fill the pen with ice cubes instead.

Damaris just stared at me, then asked, "Won't the hatchery take them back?"

Doesn't seem possible, and yet here it is a week after Valentine's Day! So I'll briefly sum up.

For Valentine's Day, I got two new tires for Dreamcloud. That's because when I drove Caro and Mike to school, this happened:



If the tire store people are correct, though, the two tires on the rear had been original equipment, which means they'd had 97K miles on them (and the tread was still decent--it was the sides that had cracks). And luckily the densely snow-packed street kept the rim from being damaged before I figured out something was wrong and pulled over. So all's well, and all that.

Another nice thing was that Mike very sweetly got busy early and surprised us with red-dyed scrambled eggs for Valentine's Day. Awww.

He's fifteen now, since yesterday. It does not seem even remotely possible that that much time has passed since we took him in as a temporary foster child placement. And yet, there he grows, tallest of all three of us, living proof!

I haven't done anything else that was very interesting. The tax money came. We paid bills and stuff. We've had SEVERAL DAYS IN A ROW that were above freezing, so some of the snow is melting. The part finally came so that the repair guy can fix the dryer tomorrow. Yep, the fun just never stops around here!

...because I won't be up yet at 6 am (5 am PST)



Anyone who wishes to copy this image, or hotlink to MY link, is welcome to do so. (I have BOATLOADS of unused bandwidth.)

It's either feast or famine, posting-wise. I guess it's like having no money when you have lots of free time vs. earning money but having no time to spend it. When I am doing things that are interesting enough to post about, it's hard to make myself sit down and actually write about them!

So here's a short version. Sunday I finally trimmed Mike's hair and my own, and also did some color changing. Somehow I used a really old bottle of stuff on Mike (instead of the new bottle I'd just bought) and so his hair is only a dark auburn, barely bleached at all. Mine is back to brilliant blue.

Yesterday I had a TON of fiddly things to do, so many I had to make a list to keep track of them all. Today was about the same, although it was only a half ton of things. But instead of the other half ton I had to go to a meeting, the Prowers County Democratic Central Committee, for the biennial reorg stuff required by state law.

I had been warned ahead of time that the current secretary was not going to re-up, due to health reasons. (She's been a mainstay of the local party for decades, and has earned the right to rest!) Hints were floated to me, even though it is well-known, or should be, that I have neither the world's best hand-writing nor organizational skills. Luckily, another victim volunteer was found for the job.

What I was NOT pre-warned about was that the current leaders had decided to make an honest woman of me, as it were, and legalize our relationship by turning my area of volunteer responsibility (the web site, all computer functions, etc) into an actual position on the Central Committee. So now I am the OFFICIAL Communications Specialist. Which does sound nicer than WebWonk. I guess now I will have to do better at keeping the site updated....

When I got home from the meeting, Mike met me with alarmed exclamations and demands. The heater! It was not working! OMGWFTBBQ111!!!1!

And it wasn't. I felt DUMB, because I had been complaining all day about it feeling extra cold.... Yeah, when the furnace isn't going and it's 12 degrees out, that tends to happen.

Luckily it seems to have only been a burp in the gas line or something. The pilot light had gone out, but it started up without a hitch when I re-lit it. Now I just have to not forget to go down to the basement and light the pilot on the hot water heater before I go to bed. (And what are you getting YOUR Significant Other for Valentine's? is it as good as HOT WATER?? Huh?!?!)

Here's one more thing I did today. Did you know they make neon pink duct tape?? Well, they do, and I bought some, and I made a case for my cellphone! My wind-up alligator is jealous in the tree!



Oh, and speaking of pictures, I got asked to be a mod on the photoblog Day On Earth! I am tickled as pink as my duct tape!

OK, off to light the hot water heater pilot now.

We went to town to run a few errands today. One of the desired objectives was to see if Caro could snag a walk-in appointment to get her hair cut. Luck was with us, and she hit exactly the right time window. As Mike and I were waiting, I remembered I had wanted to check out the alley nearby, because it held some very photogenic ice displays.

Here's Mike on a snow hill, in his new favorite jacket.



This is the window of the beauty shop where Caro was getting trimmed up. I liked the similarity of the curtains and the ice shapes.



A disused second floor door that probably once had stairs or a fire escape.



This one I messed with in Paintshop to bring out more contrast for the icicles. I think it looks kind of cool. As it were.



Reflections are often good tricks for interesting photos.



Ice Vs. Brick, a study in contrasting texture.



This is a parking lot that used to be a building, which has about 3 1/2 walls standing. You can see part of Main Street through the empty windows. Right now what's parked in there is a boatload of snow. These people parked in the back lot between the bank and the Quizno's building and are probably headed for Daylight Donuts.



I thought this multiple fall of icicles looked like a wedding cake.



Another one I liked for the textures. It's under a gutterspout and has obviously been freezing and melting and freezing for weeks.



I didn't think we had been wandering the alley more than a few minutes, but Caro had to go searching around to find us!

How's this for a totally genius idea?

Romance novels star (your name here)

By SARAH SKIDMORE
Associated Press Writer

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- This Valentine's Day, one publisher wants you to be the one doing the bodice-ripping.

Books By You says it sells thousands of personalized romance novels each year with titles such as "ER Fever" and "Pirates of Desire," where the reader is the star. It's not Bronte, but customers are going crazy for the novels that make them the main characters.

"I just wanted something unique and different," said Kym Sprague, who bought a book for her boyfriend of three years. "I thought it was pretty neat."

Customers answer 20 to 30 questions about themselves and their beloved, ranging from body type to pet names. Then the details are woven into one of the company's eight pre-formatted novels.

Clients go a step further and have their photos added to the book jacket. Then the personalized novel is shipped directly to them.

For more of the story, click here.

But I must resist. Although I have mostly just been sitting here bleary-eyed trying to get motivated to DO something, so I might as well be sleeping as doing the whole lot of nothing I've accomplished so far....

So here's a silly post. This week I was scouting for interesting things to take a picture of on a weird foggy day, and spotted these train cars holding chunks of track. When I moved around to a place where I could read the sign, I thought, "Someone has taken that sign WAY too seriously!"

I think Mike's blog/LJ fits in with the general topic of things that are good or going well. We haven't worked up to him typing it himself yet, because I think it's better to focus on one aspect at a time. I'm thrilled at how much he's getting into it, though.

Where Mike is at, in general, is that he has a fairly good mental vocabulary, but he tends to stick with a rather basic and somewhat repetitive spoken one, probably because there is less risk of making mistakes, which he hates. If he dictates and I type, I can suggest topics or phrases for him to put in his own words. But even if he just more or less repeats back what I just said, he is practicing a new line of speech without realizing it. I can also casually correct word usage. He has several quirky phrases that I often don't notice in his everyday talk because I'm so used to the MikeSpeak. But when I am transcribing, my inner editor DOES notice. (Minds are funny, eh?) He usually wants me to read back his post three or four times, too, which is another subtle reinforcer for better speech patterns.

Mike's motivation for writing his blog and sending emails is still heavily based on it earning him 'stars' which he can trade for time with his 'playing games', Train Simulator and the various roller coaster ones. But he's also gotten into the idea that when he sends out his messages, there are people reading them who are interested in what he has to say, and who say things back. The basic 'back-and-forth' of human interaction is one of the things that's hard for him, but the low-pressure/high-interest of email and blogging seems to be a good fit for where he's at.

It's fun for me too, because sometimes when I am typing down what he says, he comes up with things that I didn't know he knew, or was worried about, or even that I didn't know had happened. Maybe it's a good learning experience for me too, getting me out of Lecturing Mom Mode!

Hey, we didn't get the freezing drizzle (yet). Go us!

Having a generally good day so far. Last week, if you recall, we were supposed to be visited by the Sears man to see why our dryer, bought new in November, will dry things 'til the cows come home but WON'T shut off automatically. I had carried the phone around with me all day, but made the foolish mistake of taking a few minutes to vacuum the tumbling herds of dust bunnies lurking in the laundry room crannies and corners. Yep, that was when they called to verify someone was home. :/

Today I did not vacuum. Actually, I didn't vacuum all week--I mean, why take a chance? So this time he DID get his directions and was able to complete his mission. It turns out that the dryer they sent us has a rare, strange defect (of COURSE it does--we have a magnet for those things) where someone at the factory installed the wrong timer motor, one that was not rated for 220V like the rest of the dryer! He has ordered a new part, and will be back next week to install it.

If I don't forget and vacuum at the wrong time.

In other good news today, I read in the online Pueblo Chieftain that the pickle factory up the road in La Junta which closed last year (putting over 100 people out of a job) has finally been sold. It had all these big old tanks and stuff, see, so someone is going to turn it into a BIODIESEL factory! All the farmers in the area with the ability to grow soybeans or sunflowers are going YAY!

A little late for Tune Tunesday again, so here is an extra song. The theme continues to be Valentine's Day!

Click here for Dean Martin - That's Amore

Click here for Wrockers - Oscar Hijuelos - I Want to Eat

Oscar Hijuelos is the first Hispanic American novelist to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his 1989 novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, which info I gleaned from the internet. And here is a snippet of an online review by Kevin Quigley, to give you fair warning. "...this song about "the consumptive nature of love" takes a couple of listenings before you get over the "What the hell?" first impression. Then it becomes really fun. Sample lyric: "I want to eat your sister (can't resist her) / I want to eat your map of Arabia." And it gets weirder from there."

You've heard of PTSD. I think I have PSTD, Predicted Snow Traumatic Disorder. We have a forecast for fog, freezing drizzle, wintry mix and...the S word, for the whole coming WEEK.

Still, nothing we can do but laugh and plow onwards!

From the Lamar Daily Snooze online: (note the time!)

2:41 a.m. Animal problem - Deputy Earls and Deputy Parker responded to the 7000 block of Hwy. 196 on a report of a cat stuck behind a refrigerator. The deputies rescued the cat without incident.

I think I should assure everyone that just because I only post the occasional GEM from the police or sheriff report, it doesn't mean we don't have actual crime here. We do. Not a lot, but we do have it. And there are tons of non-funny events reported too. I just feel like the really eye- and/or mind-boggling bits should be shared.

Speaking of cats, Souvy is doing very well post-op. The vet could not spot the shy testicle (now there's an idea for a reality/game show!) from the usual viewpoint, so he decided to go ahead and do an exploratory abdominal. Souvy was Not Happy Tuesday afternoon, but by Wednesday was feeling well enough to jump to the top of the kitchen cupboards. So it's fair to say everything came out okay....

In a funny co-incidence, since I had just posted about the wondrousness of Yaxtrax, the traction device you slip on over your shoes, as I walked in to fetch our boy at the vets, Dr. Eaton was talking about how he wished he could get snow chains for his feet! Luckily I had mine on and got to show him. He was amazed, and eager to know where to get some. I really wish I was on commission with these guys!

The last four days kind of went past in a blur, but I did get our taxes and all the tedious partnership paperwork sent in. I think this is the earliest I've gotten it done in years. Also, this year I am resolved NOT to forget to pay my self-employment tax when we get the refund!

Finally, here is a funny story for my coffee-loving friends. The other night I dreamed I was going around carrying a clear plastic bag, the size you would normally bag leaves in, which was half full with coffee. That would probably be 20 gallons or so! Every now and then I would unfasten the twisty tie thingie on the top and drink some. I remember telling someone that this was not a 'grande' size, it was a 'grandiosity' size.

Some weird stuff happened in the dream as well.

Busy, busy, that's been me!

The construction guys working on the coal plant have been as well. And they have brought in a HUGE crane which I can see from my HOUSE several miles away!



Doesn't look that big, you say? Check out the full work site.



Closer look at the two crane necks together.



Here's the pic I posted to the LJ photo community Day_on_Earth.



It was actually almost WARM today. There were little melty mini-creeks all over the place! This is a melt path in one of the deeply frozen gutters.

Yes, I am supposed to be doing our taxes.

But as we all know, having something annoying and boring you HAVE to do just simply REDLINES the Procrastination Gauge. (Or is that just me?)

So I have of course been doing something else, and I would really like some advice and input from my Flist.

I read about a new system for putting ads on websites, called Project Wonderful. It's something different from the services where you get charged by the click or the viewings (which are highly susceptible to artificial inflation via bots). Here, a person wishing to advertise bids on a given spot, specifying the maximum they are willing to pay and the number of days they want to do so. That way, the best sites get the most money, but beginners (both advertisers and sellers) can get a foot in the door and try it out inexpensively.

I am pleased to be getting new visitors checking out my online bookstore, but I'm sure I can do better with my ads. That's where you guys come in.

This one is generating the most hits, but it is in the most different spots, so that might be the only reason. Not a lot of room for words on the button size.


This one is getting the next most, but it's on the two newest Girl Genius pages (and two others), so it's maybe a more book friendly audience.


This one is only on two pages. Not as popular a size, I guess. Still, I have had a couple of clicks. I think it's kind of generic.


This one is on 4 pages which are admittedly a bit low traffic, but there have been no clicks yet. Tell me honestly, is it annoying rather than funny?


What I would like to hear from you all is what brief info data bursts would make you interested in clicking over to see my book page. My reliability (selling online since 1996)? Special deals like a 1 cent book with every $10 in purchases? 1000's of satisfied customers? My free book search service?

OK, you think about it and I will go start the gol-danged taxes.