Decorations

Is this smiley visible? YES!

And clearly I have too much time on my hands, to figure this out.  I like that they are big sized...

Let's assume I'm right, It will save time.

My son showed me our house on Google street view yesterday, and WOW wasn't that a eye opener. Our horses were plain to see, and we could also see our neighbor getting into his truck.  I know it must have been a Tuesday, because the trash can is empty and at the curb, and the survey states it was done in Sept. 2013.  I wanted to post a photo here, but it includes my address, which I really don't need to share with the entire internet.

I am not a happy camper this morning.  Our next door neighbor recently cut down 3 trees (that were dead or near dead) along the property  line.  Today he cut down a live tree;  all the trees were on our property.  Husband and son went out to stop him, but too late.  We showed him the property markers,  you can sight along them and see that the trees are on our side.  Several of them are Colorado Blue Spruce, which if you know trees you know how very slow growing they are; we planted them 35 years ago.  He said they interfered with his mowing (??).  He said he would pay for them, but that won't bring the trees back, will it?  Jerk. I am not happy.

The clinic last night discussing knee replacement surgery has had one effect on me; I am not going to have mine replaced any time soon.  The cortisone shot has worked its usual magic and I can walk normally again.  It should be better for at least a month.  My main difficulty is stairs, and according to what I heard last night, that is problematical with the artificial knee as well.  So forget it.  If I start dragging my leg behind me I'll consider it again.  The doctor was very nice, he is a partner with my ortho, but I don't want to have my ortho do the surgery anyway, as he is in the midst of retiring soon.  Along with all my other doctors and therapist.

I am in too bad of a mood, so I will cheer myself up with some knitting.

Bumper sticker for the day:  "Retired.  One owner.  High mileage.  Needs body work."

August is winding down

I have messed up my organizer; I finally figured out that August has 31 days---what a shock!!-- and thus appointments for this week are different from the ones next week.  I postponed my psych dr. appt to October, thinking it was a conflict, but really it wasn't (oh darn).  I left it in October; for some reason I have been getting one hour appointments with her.  I swear it is because she can't find anyone to talk to that isn't in worse shape than I am.  Which is hardly at all, now.  Still, husband is waiting outside for me, I feel like the meter is running.  If only I could get past my driving phobia.

We are facing the humongous task, painting the deck in back and the porch in front.  We will be using the Restore paint that is 10X thicker than regular paint, and is said to cover splinters, cracks, etc. in the wood.  I bet it is a bear to use, not to mention very pricey.  But still cheaper than replacing entire structures.  I will post before and after photos, I think.

The knitting carriage is off to be deep cleaned and adjusted, so the new (to me) knitting machine is at a standstill for now.  I did get some minor parts and have them to change up also, the machine should be in top condition once it is fixed up. Now I just need to decide what to knit first.  Probably something easy, like a hat or scarf.  I will wait to do a punch-card pattern, I think.  Meanwhile I am waiting for an email that the carriage arrived safe and sound in Georgia. Starting to get nervous.  It was insured, at least.

In October it will be 10 years since I started this blog.  My post counter says I have written 525+ posts so far.  I started it on a whim back in 2004 when there were oodles of posts to read.  Now there are far fewer out there, and I follow just a few.  Quality over quantity, I think.  It is hard to find topics to write, there are very personal ones that I don't want to share with the internet, and trivial ones that nobody wants to read, least of all me.  I should get back to posting photos with a post like this one, short on content.
  I resolve to do better in the second ten years ~)

Bumper sticker for the day:  "On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your favorite color of the alphabet?"

"This message...

is  a natural product made from recycled electrons.  The slight variations in spelling and grammar enhance its beauty and in no way are to be considered flaws or defects."


The knitting machine arrived and is up and at least for a simple stockinette stitch, is knitting (once I lubricated it with a little gun oil).  It is bigger than I thought it would be, I really need a bigger room.

The Apple 5c phone arrived and is very entertaining.  But I will never do some things with it - like write emails.  I am usually within a ten yard radius at any time that includes at least one computer, that's out of a total of  five, not counting tablets.   The manual book has arrived and I am slowly going through it, with my phone in hand, and have learned quite a bit.

With the advent of the phones, we discovered an interesting factoid we didn't know:  Our LAN in the house will let us have only 5 hook-ups at a time, max.  After that, it says "no connection" which means something different, at least, I think it means that linksys was down.  Two of the 5 computers are hard-wired in, and are on if the PC is on.  Maybe there is a way to disable the link temporarily but I don't know how.  If I am browsing the net on the phone, and the kids are on their PCs, that's five.  No bandwidth for a second phone, a tablet, etc.  So I do my browsing while the kids are at work.

My, that took way longer to explain than it should have...

I had an appointment with a podiatrist on last Friday, but  ... I got cold feet and cancelled.  Too many doctors already.

 Bumper sticker for the day :  "I didn't trip, I was just conducting a random test of gravity."

A new knitting machine!

I have purchased a KH-260 knitting machine and it is on its way.  I have been looking for one for several months, and this one on ebay has all the add-on bits and pieces.  Can't wait, I'll post photos.  It is in two boxes, and the main one weighs 63 pounds...

My husband bought two apple 5C phones for us, we am waiting for them to come, too.  He originally went to Sears (they have a representative for Consumer Cellular there) but the guy there was majorly clueless and it was easier to do it all online although that means waiting.  I also ordered a book from Amazon called "the Missing Manual"  to use to figure out all the things it can do.  The book is nearly 600 pages long, it is good the cost isn't per page...

About toothbrushes:  When the internet was reached via MS-DOS and a .edu address, there was a site that featured a photo of a toothbrush, no text or anything but the photo.  In spite of this, there were thousands of hits.  Now, if you google images for a toothbrush, it gives you all the sites for Colgate, etc.  More useful but less amusing.  The reason all this came up for me is that my (Panasonic) toothbrush died the death a couple of days ago, and I had to get another, sticker shock.  Hope this one lasts as long as the other...

Bumper sticker for the day :  "Knitting keeps me from unraveling."

Summer is sliding away...

Here it is August already, what happened to the summer?  We haven't missed the pool, it has been such a mild summer here (West Virginia) that the water would have been a nippy 70 degrees.  And yet the southwest is burning up, between the weather and the fires.  We had a pile of old lumber and a bunch of tree limbs to get rid of, so we burned them, along with an old stump of a huge ash tree.  The fire burned for 4 days, smoldering in the stump, until everything was ash.  This with rain every day, hard rain.  It gave me an appreciation of how hard it is to declare a forest fire as "contained"  because they smolder and burn under what looks like cold ashes, for days.  

Thinking seriously about knee replacement surgery.  The cortisone shots only help so far, and then climbing/descending  stairs becomes a misery.  Oh for a one level house.  We have been in this one for 34 years, and I can't even imagine what moving would entail.  Just the attic alone gives me the blues, full of old junk, books, furniture, lots of stuff.  We would have to rent a dumpster first thing.  

My son got a smart phone this weekend, it is so entertaining.  I'd get one myself if I could think of anything I needed it for.  As it is, my dumb phone sits idle for weeks at a time, and is always needing to be charged when I finally turn it on.  It seems to me that batteries should hold their charge if the device is off, but this one has been like this since it was new.  It is a Motorola Razor, just the thing in its day.  It has a camera and no apps at all.  I don't think I could even receive texts or web pages.  And I have never figured how to get the photos on the phone off of it, to the Mac.  Again, not any need for that.  I carry a tiny tiny little camera which is ever so adaptable for all sorts of photos, and has a huge capacity with a flash card, and of course they can be switched out as needed.  It is a Nikon, no less.  It was a mother's day gift 2 years ago.

My attempts at machine knitting have hit a snag since my knee is paining me so much, it hurts to sit in a simple chair for more than an hour.  I messed up the project I was attempting and ripped the whole thing off to try again later.  Maybe I will try a different chair.  Meanwhile my resolve to not buy any more yarn has recently taken a hit, but only the once.  Or twice.  I love yarn, it does not need to be knitted for me to appreciate it.  The last batch had an alpaca blend in it, sheer luxury to handle.  I don't feel I am a good enough knitter to buy any of the hideously expensive yarns, or at least only to buy a single skein.


Back when the internet was mainly the place to find web camera sites that streamed continually over a broad band for speed, I had several that I visited regularly.  One of them was in Ft. Lauderdale (where my parents lived at that time), and it showed a big picture window with bird feeders outside, and house cats on a perch inside.  Not a very thrilling site, but it showed me how the weather was for my folks, and a sort of zen-like peacefulness to watch.  I don't think there are many private sites now, only those maintained by cities or big business.  I thought of all this because of my toothbrush, but this post is long enough now and I won't explain this connection until next time...

Bumper sticker for the day:  "Gardening is cheaper than therapy and you get tomatoes."