As you can see I'm changing the layout of my blog. I'm in the process of playing with the html tag attributes so if things look funky just remember that I'm working on it.

Merry Christmas from Walker Talker and Bronco610

Image from Crazy Frankenstein

Hey but it's an Infiniti...

And actual ad on Craig's List of a car for sale, where at least they're disclosing all info. Sounds like a few vehicles we've owned.

My mental image of Scrooge...

Everyone has their own favorite versions of A Christmas Carol. For many of us it's the movie or TV version that we grew up with. I remember the first one I watched, which I found while perusing the limited number of shows on TV one Saturday afternoon when I was a kid (I didn't have cable where I grew up out in the country.) The movie I came across was the 1970 version Scrooge, starring Albert Finney. To me, Finney is the epitome of Scrooge, the meanest, nastiest, ugliest man to ever play the role.

I'm not typically a fan of theatrical musicals, but this is one of those movies that I'll watch every year if I can find it. This year it'll be shown on TCM on Saturday, Dec 20 at 6pm. I've already had Hubby set the TiVo.

The only downside is that for weeks afterward I won't be able to get the songs out of my head.

Finally, grades are officially in the system.

Design- A
Drawing- A
Chemistry- A
Beverages- A
Art History- B

Damn Art History, it was more like "Architecture History" as we covered very little art but instead covered floorplans of religious buildings. For instance of Islamic mosques we were taught about the walls and structural components- Qibla wall, mostaba, minarets, and iwans... yeah that will come in handy to know in case I ever change my religion. Oh well. I got a 97 on my final exam but it wasn't enough to raise my overall grade in the class.

A friend of mine who is an alumni told me grades don't matter. However, I received a scholarship last month and to keep receiving it in the future I have to keep my grades up. Luckily my 3.8 is good enough.

Hubby did well too in his first term, receiving all As and Bs also. I'm proud of him.

Looking forward now to next term, my classes I've scheduled are:

Painting II (my course from TCC didn't transfer so I'm taking it again)
Intermediate Figure Drawing
College Algebra
Archeological Sciences
Health Emergencies

Archeology because I have always thought it would be interesting, in an alternate life I can see myself enjoying working at an excavation site. Sitting for hours in the sun with a little brush in my hand searching for tidbits in the ground, believe it or not that sounds like fun to me. Okay I'm weird I know. But I enjoy searching for things and love looking at ancient artifacts.

Health Emergencies because Hubby is taking it as an elective, so I'll be sitting around on campus waiting on him to take the class anyway, and it might come in handy to know what to do if something happens. Although hopefully it's knowledge I'll never have to take action on.

Anyway, classes start again January 20. A much needed break until then.

For that special someone on your list...

You too can own a replica of the famed leg lamp from A Christmas Story. It can be purchased from a gift shop operated in the original home shown in the movie. And after all, who wouldn't want a leg lamp? "It's a major award!!"

Phone tales...

Kids, always erase the info saved in your cellphone before returning it to the cell provider.

Example #1- McCain campaign garage sale story

Example #2- Since most of you are my horse racing friends I gotta tell you this story, but never had the occasion to bring it up before.

In 2005 I was working for a company that refurbishes cellular devices for Verizon wireless. At one point my job was to check the phones being returned. It was a warehouse setting, and our department unpacked the shipments coming directly from the consumers and stores, and then ran the phones through a series of tests to diagnose problems to be fixed.

Because we were the first step in the process of inbound phones, the devices had not been "flashed" yet. To flash is an industry term to remove old software from the cellphone and put new software on it void of any previous customer's personal information. So what I'm trying to say is as employees we saw ALL of people's personal information on their phones. Their call lists, family photos, nude photos, bank account numbers and credit card numbers and passwords that they saved, everything you can imagine.

So anyway, when I picked up one phone I saw that the wallpaper had a race horse on it. I thought, "Hey that horse looks familiar." Turns out it was a close-up headshot of Afleet Alex as he won the Belmont Stakes. When I checked the photo gallery, sure enough it was full of photos taken by someone who was at least close to the winning team. There were photos of Jeremy Rose in the jocks room, barn shots of Alex, the banners in the owner's suite and several people in that party, and even some shots of Rose and a friend as they hung out around town riding Sedgways and goofing off while in Lexington for the Derby. No it wasn't my job to check every single photo, lol. But it was fun. Not to mention reading all the names in the contact list, phone numbers of the top jockeys, trainers, and farms on the East coast.

(this photo credit to the NYTimes)

What I had to wonder about was the odds of me seeing that particular phone. We received on average 60,000 phones per day, there were about 240 people in my department besides me on 3 different shifts, and the pallet next to my workstation had about 500 cardboard boxes of phones on it to be checked as did the other 80 workstations. Not to mention, I'd say somewhere around 30% of the phones can't be checked because of broken screens, software problems, etc. So what are the odds that I myself, a horseracing fan who once worked at the track, happened to see that phone. Irony or fate? Maybe. Or maybe a fluke of chance.

Anyway, moral of the story is to always erase your private information off your cellphones! Other eyes may see it.

We can stop crossing our legs now...

Whew, Hubby got the sewer block cleared, but only after calling the City out (on a Saturday) for them to check their main line. But, Hubby got it clear with the snake where our line connects to the main. Thank goodness. And all this is probably more than you folks want to know.

Good news, bad news...

Good news- My Mom had surgery yesterday to have the defibrillator/pacemaker inserted, and she's recovering well.

She had been nervous about the surgery (who wouldn't be), but talking last week to someone else with a pacemaker eased her mind a little I think. But one surprising thing, the person said his pacemaker was on recall! So when Mom asked if he was going to have it replaced he nonchalantly replied, "Why? It seems to be working fine so far!"

Alrighty then.

Bad news- We're having a problem with our sewer line in our backyard. We've had a sneaking suspicion for a few years that it may be broken or clogged, which may account for how well certain areas of my garden grew compared to others. Well yesterday the line clogged completely, so poor Hubby is digging up the backyard today if snaking it doesn't fix it. Nasty job. And we're not running any water in the meantime. Ugh, ain't home ownership wonderful.

Death by bacon...

If I Die A Bacon-Related Death, I'd Like It To Be Because Of This

(warning, the text is a bit crude)

I can hear my arteries clogging already, but I have to admit it looks pretty damn good.

We might have to try it sometime.

The lights are out and the door is locked...

Yes, as of about an hour ago the Sports-Talkers website seems to be down. Damn it I was just in the middle of typing a post too, and it gave me a message about the site being suspended.

Here is the addy for our backup site, for in case anyone didn't have it bookmarked. Thanks to SonOWar for having the forethought of creating a backup for us to regroup at.

http://hottalkerstwo.freeforums.org/portal.php

Warlock is on top of things, he said he's emailing Matt.

Oh well, my artwork website is down too, I'll probably have it back up and running in January.

School out...

Took my last exam this morning for this term, YAY! Final grades come in next week.

At the beginning of each semester I can't wait for classes to begin, but at the end I can't wait for it to be over! Just like when I was in elementary school, lol.

And I will say, for the record, yes classes are more intensive at a university than at community college. Yeah I know, big surprise, right? But I'm glad to see the difference between the two now, as before this term I didn't know what I'd be up against. It wasn't that bad really. The university classes certainly had more busy work and were more time consuming but they weren't necessarily more difficult intellectually.

But I survived and just have a couple more years to survive.

Sick of banner ads?...

Cool, I just learned a new trick and had to share. I'm sick and tired of those damn animated banner ads. At first it was mostly the dancing silhouettes beckoning us to lower our mortgage rates (as if I'm going to trust my home to a website who can't even hire live spokesmodels and is possibly based in a country God-knows-where like Nigeria?) But now it seems every retail company on the planet has jumped on the rotating banner ad bandwagon. It's aggrevating how long I have to wait, since the ad has to load before I can navigate the rest of the web page. I can't even write an email anymore without an ad for Black & Decker drills slowing down my PC to the point of hair-pulling.

So I'd had enough, and Googled how to stop the animated banner ads. What I found was that Mozilla Firefox has an internal setting built in to the browser to adjust the playing of animated ads.

Here's the directions in case y'all are tired of the ads too, taken from the mozillaZine website:

(FYI- I set my browser to play the ads "once", so that I don't accidently block something else on the page that I might need access to like on the college website. And so far it works to stop the ads from playing over and over.)

**************************************

The image.animation_mode preference determines how multi-frame GIF images are animated. This preference settings affects GIFs in every kind of displayed content, including web pages, messages and RSS feeds.

You can change this preference setting using any of the usual methods for editing configuration, specifically:

[edit]

Using about:config

In Mozilla Suite and Firefox:

1. In the Location Bar type about:config and hit Enter
2. Type "anim" in the Filter field (to quickly find the needed preference) *One note, I had to type "image" to find it)
   
3. Double-click the image.animation_mode line and edit it to one of the following:

none — will prevent image animation

once — will let the image animate once

normal (default) — will allow it to play over and over

Video project...

As a final project for my Design II class I had to create a video. I am posting it here as a "Plan B" option for in case it doesn't open off of my thumb drive when I get to class tomorrow. I'm always paranoid about files not opening for instructors when a large project is due, so I tend to save multiple file types in different locations... I'm sure at least ONE will open!

Anyway, to explain this project: We had to make a video incorporating an object made in one of our previous exercises, and the object has to move in the video.

Well in one exercise we had to sew fabric together to make hackysacks. So for this video I used a hackysack that I made with a monochromatic color scheme, hence the title of this "movie".

Hope this works, I've never uploaded one of my own videos to the Blogger.

One last drawing (til next term)...

Here's my final project for the Drawing class. We were given free rein on this one, so I decided to incorporate our pets into the drawing. I started with Athena in colored pencil:



And then for something fun I camouflaged the 6 cats into the yard with watercolor and a Sharpie marker. This is the final drawing:

Athena's World
(aka "Where's those cats?")

With the watercolor I first put down a wash of color, then did the linear work with the Sharpie, and then went back in some areas with more saturated hues of watercolor to create the value variations. Here's a close-up of Sassy:


And Crook in the tree:


My "experiments" with artwork don't usually end up coming out very well (not in my opinion anyway), but for a homework project I'll say I'm decently happy with this one, or at least I can say my experiment of watercolor with colored pencil didn't go horribly wrong.

One last note on this- For 20-some years I've drawn with colored pencils, but ever since I went back to school all of my art professors have told me, "Throw away your colored pencils!!! It's not REAL art!" They preferred to push the old masters' mediums of pastels and oil paint.

And then there is my current drawing instructor who for this project told me, "DO IT IN COLORED PENCIL! It would look SO COOL!!!"

Geez, make up y'alls minds.

Thankful here...

Hope y'all had a nice Thanksgiving.

We went over the river and through the woods about 3 miles to Mom's house for dinner. We even survived her husband's family being there. Barely. Luckily his sister's cooking didn't kill us.

Among a list of many things we're thankful for here in our household - due to Hubby's hearing problem the university has put him in contact with the local DARS office. It turns out when the first test showed his hearing was 40-60% in each ear, it was conducted at decibels ABOVE normal conversation tones. At normal conversation level, his hearing is 8% and 28%. (Explains why I yell at him so much, haha.)

So, being a "disabled student" they are providing him with:

• Free hearing aids - and these are NOT inexpensive ones, the models that he requires cost around $4500 for the both of them.

• Free tuition - starting in Spring, so all his grants etc will be refunded to us for next term

• Free textbooks

• Free school supplies - Scientific calculator, laptop, all other supplies needed for his classes, which for engineering wouldn't be cheap

For all of these things we are very thankful, it will help us tremendously. He's thrilled about the hearing aids, which he was fitted for last week. It'll help him hear again and help save my voice. Not to mention the speakers on our TV.

I'm also proud of him for handling the word "disability" so well. He thought himself to be superman when he was younger, so I'm sure it's not easy for him when at school he has to tell people he's "hard of hearing, please speak up," especially around the younger classmates. That's okay, he's still superman to me.

But there's something he's learned from being part deaf- the hearing therapist brought up that he could probably read lips and didn't even know it. It turns out it's true, he has a harder time understanding people when he can't see their lips move as they talk. So now that he knows it he's been having fun with that little developed assimilation, watching people talk across the room to see if he can understand them, lol.

Yes, we are thankful this Thanksgiving. Hope the rest of you are just as blessed.

Ughhhh...

I am writing this as I take a break from reading an article for my Art History Survey class, which if I didn't take a break my head might have exploded. It's an article about the Phoenix Hall, a Buddhist complex in Japan. An excerpt:

There is evidence that, at the Phoenix Hall, the conflation of Amitabha with Mahavairocana was intentional. The sculpture of Amitabha certainly lends itself to interpretation as a symbolic emanation of the Mahavairocana in the Main Hall nearby. The mudra of the small statue attached to the peak of the mandorla of the Amitabha figure, Wisdom Fists, indicates that it is the Mahavairocana of the Diamond World, or Vajradhatu. As such it represents the adamantine wisdom of the Cosmic Buddha, of which the universe is formed. Ritual convention and iconograpy stipulate its juxtaposition with a Mahavairocana of the Womb World, or Gharbadhatu, the noumenous realm of knowledge, and indeed such is provided in the Amitabha, who is an emanation of that form of Mahavairocana. It is also likely that the solar imagery of the Phoenix Hall, from the sun on the doors behind the Amitabha to its orientation toward the track of the setting sun, encompasses the symbology of Mahavairocana as the Buddha solaris.

Huh?

Anyway, it's like 25 pages long and halfway through I already feel like my head has been scrambled. When finished I have to write an essay on whether I agree with the evidence presented in the article. I wonder how I can drag out "Um, yeah" into a 2-page essay.

If any of y'all happen to be masochists you can read the full article here.

More art stuff...

From my design class, here is a bridge I had to make out of balsa wood. My TA suggested that I construct it to look similar to the "birdsnest stadium" from the Beijing Olympics, so that's the basis for its design. And might I add, it's not fun trying to bend balsa wood! Even after boiling the wood to make it pliable it still breaks easily.


Charcoal final nude drawing. The window was put in to fill empty space (and I have found mini-blinds are an easy effect to create.)


Another planar analysis, stemming from the previous exercise from the last post. My only comment is, she looks like she's writhing in pain, lol.


Matrix assignment, the same person drawn at different areas of the room to show proportions in space.




By the way, I'm amused by the assortment of models we have for our classes. This gentleman strided into our class in a white shirt and tie and slacks before undressing. Many of our other models have been college students. One of my male friends said he's signed up to be a model for next term. I have to say I'll feel a little uneasy drawing someone I know, if he happens to model in any of my classes!

Art update...

Some items from my drawing class the last few weeks:

Old dude again:


Planar analysis of body (turning areas into flat planes):


Outside homework project, had to be something related to the space of corners, and had to have 3 objects:


Self portrait... not the best but hey I'm learning...



Still life of complementary colors in class... I chose the complementary colors red & green. Other choices were yellow & violet or orange and blue. Instructor said red & green are hardest to work with, so of course that's what I chose. Yep, she was right the colors are god-awful together.

Apt song...

Something I've noticed listening to the local music station Jack FM- in the time since the Presidential election they've played "Land of Confusion" numerous times. And I mean the original Genesis version shown below, not the cover by Disturbed:



Yeah, I'd say this is a land of confusion right now. Only I can't see Obama as filling the Superman role...

My generation will put it right
Were not just making promises
That we know, well never keep.

... I wish I could believe that about the next 4 years, but just can't. And that's all I'm going to say on that.

Can't get past Textnology...

It's becoming a texting world, and Hubby is trying to cope.

Personally, I like text messaging. I never was a telephone talker, even as a teen. I can't explain it, I just hate calling people. In fact, even though I have a full contact list of names on my phone the only one I ever actually talk to is Hubby. Everyone else I text. Okay okay I occasionally call Mom too.

But texting is so quick and easy. No having to stop and carry on a long drawn-out conversation. My friends and I can banter quick simple quips back and forth without it hardly slowing our daily tasks that we're in the middle of.

It seems it's becoming more commonplace in the business world as well. Within the last couple years both Hubby and I have had bosses who insisted on sending info and asking questions in text form. It was fine by me.

Hubby on the other hand hates it. That should be no surprise, as he's a "talker." He'll call anybody anytime about anything, and chat away. But now he's being forced to face the texting world, and become part of it. He has to communicate with the up-and-coming technology generation that he'll be graduating with. Several of his university classmates already send him texts about joint team projects, homework, etc. I text him about where I parked the car after dropping him off outside his first class. We're all pulling him kicking and screaming into the texting world.

So, we decided that when we next upgrade our 2yo cellphones, we'll have to get the full alpha-numeric keypads. The trick will be finding keys large enough for his big fingers, lol.

But the one thing we both agree on, we SPELL OUT our words. No abbreviated grammatical rebus txt 4 us, thx. Well gtg, C U L8r!

Booming here...

Who says the housing market is down?

On my dead-end street of about 10 houses, 3 have been for sale this last month.

The first one on the market in ONE WEEK had 10 visits, and a bidding war started between buyers that drove the price UP from the seller's original asking price. The resulting buyers paid cash for the house.

Then the second seller posted a sale sign in their yard MONDAY, and today a couple looking at the third house walked over to see the second one... and called the seller back this afternoon that they want to buy it. No squabbles over money or anything. It was the first visit the seller had on their house.

It's like desperate buyers are flocking to our neighborhood. It's weird. I have to wonder if it's due to the foreclosures in the DFW area on larger homes, so folks are downsizing. I also have to wonder how they're getting financed in the mortgage turmoil going on.

By the way, the third house has been on the market for a while, but it's not the most attractive house on the block, on the end and sits at a strange angle. But at this rate it should be snatched up too before long.

New neighbors everywhere.

A late photo for Halloween

HAPPY HALLOWEEN Y'ALL

I have an Art History exam, all essay questions. It's probably the scariest thing I'll face today.

{:^[

*** FYI, I'm messing with some blog feed redirectors, hopefully it doesn't interrupt the normal feed.

New stadium...

The university that I'm attending, U of North Texas, has LOST all 8 football games played thus far. That includes this week which was Homecoming, losing to Troy 45-17. Earlier on the schedule we lost to Rice 77-20. It's official, we suck. Our only hope would be if the St. Mary's Catholic Girls School was on the schedule... although it wouldn't have much of a spread. In fact Hubby unaffectionately refers to the Fighting Eagles as the "Screaming Chickens."

And yet, a vote by the student population was in favor (58%-42%) of building a new football stadium.

According to the university press release, the new stadium will replace Fouts Field and expected completion date is Fall 2011. Luckily the per-credit fee increase won't take effect until then.

My main question is why do we need a new stadium? A UNT home game was on ESPN recently, and we noted the vast amount of empty seats. And it's not like a new stadium will attract better athletes, not with residing in the same state as UT, Texas Tech, Texas A & M, et. al.

One more thing I noticed in the above mentioned press release- it states the current $3 per-credit fee will increase to $10... but it doesn't say the projected cost of the new stadium, information usually presented in an official statement. Hmmmmmmmm. Sounds like a blank check to me.

Funny fact...

I'm amused by the words that people type into Google that lead them to my blog, which I can view on my hit counter stats. And I suppose it shouldn't come as any surprise from my recent posts that one Googler found my website with the search words drunk contour figure drawings.

I might need to work on my "web presence." The world is getting the wrong idea about me! lol

I have the bestest classes...

I really like the Survey of Beverages course. Where else are you served a glass of French wine during lectures?

So letssee... earn college credits for alcohol, nekkid folks, and art... someone tell me again WHY I didn't go back to school sooner?!?

Sorry for all the low-brow humor lately, but the academics have been creating an effluvium from burning brain cells.

(But FYI, I'm getting A's in all my classes so far, including my Chemistry class. Yea!)

Gee, all it takes is a few nekkid drawings to get the comments rolling on the ole blog! haha

On Drawing and Nude Models...


This post includes a small amount of graphic nudity, proceed with your own voyeuristic inquisitiveness.

As I said last week, we've been doing some fairly boring stuff in Drawing class. It starts that way every term, we have to work on the fundamentals first before moving on to more interesting projects. But, for lack of anything else to post, I'll show what we've been doing.

First is an architecture project, a charcoal drawing in two-point perspective. It had to be a location on campus, so this is the inside of Chilton Hall as seen from the railing of the third floor. We had to include an indication of "deep space," so that's why I chose this location where you could see the lower floor through the railing.


Chilton Hall

Next, live models. Anyone who might happen to read my blog may as well expect to see quite a bit of nude art for the next few terms at least, since this class will cover nude modeling (no pun intended) for several weeks, then next term I'll have Intermediate Figure Drawing, and after that Advanced Figure Drawing and Figure Painting.

Anyway, like I said we're starting with boring stuff, mostly line work. These next two are examples of "modulated contour" lines. They were drawn very quickly with a light vine charcoal and Sharpie marker, and to me they're rather messy. But, maybe the messiness adds to it. I keep telling myself things don't have to be perfect, messy is okay.

So far we've had 4 models (much much better than my class at TCC which only had ONE model for the entire term! I came to know her body better than my own, lol.) Two were 20-something year old girls, with fairly "classic" looking average bodies. Then we had a late-20's guy, again with a classic Greek-god type of body. This week we had a, umm, less than idealistic figure. I'm not sure how old this gentleman is, but he had a full silvery beard and matching silver hair that strung out crazily in every which direction giving him a helter-skelter look. And what he made up for in weight, he was lacking in, umm, other certain areas. Or maybe the room was just cold, I dunno. But I couldn't help but smile while I was drawing, wondering if this was the inspiration for the "Ugly Naked Guy" character on Friends.

That being said, I have to admit these are braver people than me, so regardless of their body types I am more than appreciative for the service they provide to us being our models. There's no way I would have the guts to undress in front of a bunch of people and pose while they ogle and measure each proportion with their eyes, all for a mere $17-18 an hour. Not that anyone would want to draw my skinny frame anyway, but still... I'm not sure there's enough margaritas that would get me drunk enough to model nude.

By the way, I had one of the hardest views in the class with the above pic. There's not much room in our classroom with all the easels set up, so I didn't have much choice on this pose. It's a difficult position to draw, due to having to show the foreshortening of the legs. Most students had a side view, much easier to draw. But then most of the other students are young girls, so they were probably relieved that they didn't have to draw this view! I have no problem with it though. Heck, I've been married long enough that I have no modesty when it comes to drawing male body parts. While I am too modest to model myself, I'm not at all bashful when drawing someone else. I may as well be drawing a bowl of fruit for all I care about nudity in that respect.

Alright, that's all I have to say about that for now. I'm supposed to be writing a Chemistry essay, not writing about nudity on my blog. Have a nice week to all.

Yes I'm still alive...

Alright alright, I'll put a new post on here so that everyone doesn't have to see the one about my deaf Hubby. Cut me some slack, I've been busy!

Classes are going well, I've been getting mostly A's on my quizzes, essays, etc so far. But that may change with my first Chemistry exam coming up on the 8th. Tomorrow is my first Art History exam, all essay questions, but I'm not too worried about that one.

I would post some art from my drawing class except we've been doing such boring projects, starting out with one-point and two-point perspective work... so in other words we've been drawing a bunch of buildings. This last week we started figure drawing but haven't drawn anything worth mentioning yet.

Hubby took his mom to the doctor and had it confirmed that yes she does indeed have Alzheimer's not just dementia. We're waiting on lab results, which will for one thing tell whether the vitamin B therapy will work or not, apparently it only works in certain types of cases.

I went to the doctor myself, the first time in a gazillion years (we're talking mid-90's). As far as blood results show from the lab, I'm healthier than I thought. Cholesterol levels were extremely good, iron-potassium-sodium-etc levels good, thyroid good (surprising for me being thin), and I only have a 2.1% chance of having a heart attack anytime soon. Doc said I have the health of someone who is athletic and exercises a lot- HA!! That's funny, all I do is walk- A LOT- walking across campus every day carrying art supplies.

Still, it doesn't explain why at 35 I'm all of a sudden getting minor migraine-type headaches, so the doc is setting up a referral for a MRI of my brain... I'll let you know if they find anything... haha. I may as well say it first before the Peanut gallery does.

On a different note, we have a WaMu mortgage and we really really liked them. In fact, last month when we told them we were in college they modified our loan, cutting the interest rate IN HALF! It actually cut our mortgage payment in half. I told Hubby it seemed to me like a dying man going to a bar and buying a round of drinks for everyone... WaMu knew they were being bought so why not give away the farm to all their customers? What did they care? lol But we're curious to see what happens with Chase. We have bank accounts with Chase and they seem decent, but there's still that unknown aspect floating around that makes you nervous about your home.

One last thing... I don't know which is worse, that our local "Oldies" station K-LUV plays music from the 80's... or that I've been listening to the Oldies station. It made me feel even worse when I realized the 80's were 30 years ago. Man it hurts when reality sets in.

That's all for now.

Can you hear me NOW?...

Hubby has had problems with his hearing most of his life (and I mean beyond the typical deaf to the nagging wife hearing loss that many husbands seem to have.)

Understandably it's made college classes even more difficult for him, as if a 30-year gap in education didn't make things hard enough.

He finally had a hearing test conducted at the college clinic... and sure enough he has 40% hearing in one ear, and 67% in the other. Overall, that means he only receives about half of the information being said by instructors. So, the college issued a listening device to him. It's an FM Loop System, where the instructor wears a mic and Hubby wears the corresponding ear piece.

Mic attached to bear

Hubby's estatic that he can hear again. He says he can hear clearly, whereas his normal hearing is like being underwater. I can't tell you how thrilled he is!

Although it's supposed to be for school use, he had to try it out at home too. I'm always complaining about the TV being turned up so loud, so he clipped the mic on the bear and set it up in front of the TV. Worked like a charm. Hopefully no more nights of me not getting to sleep because he's watching movies with amplified explosions. Sometimes it's like trying to sleep in a war zone.

Another thing that's cool about the system- when Hubby walks outside he can still hear the TV. He even walked halfway down the street, and was still in range.

This leads to some additional entertainment on my part too, of course. He's out in the yard casually listening to the TV.... when all of a sudden he hears loud snorting in his eardrum... the great dane had decided to sniff the mic, hahaha.

I'll just have to be careful from now on what I say when he's out of the room... ;)

Political humor...

Been busy with school so haven't been blogging much... but I have to share this cartoon:

My art in the blogosphere...

Just FYI, the blogger Doug Miller wrote a kind post about my artwork on the local Keller City Limits blog. It was nice of him, and let's face it I need to get out into public more to learn to promote myself for when I'm a better artist. Picasso didn't become a household name from sticking all of his paintings in his closet. :)

(Not that I'm comparing myself to famous artists, I could only dare hope to become somewhat "known" even locally, just making a point)

How much longer?...

WHEEWW... this first week of college wore my ass OUT! By Friday I was exhausted. Part of it may be mental exhaustion from the stress of the first week, but the other part is physical exhaustion. Back when I worked as a hotwalker at the track, hauling around 1000lb race horses all morning long was easier than what I'm doing now, hauling around 30lbs of books, art supplies, portfolio, etc, back and forth across the campus. Next week I'm going to try using a rolling carryon suitcase and see how that works out.

It would have been nice to leave my stuff in the car and only take what I need for each class, going back to the car in between classes, but that would take more time and effort than it's worth. The $180 that I paid for "Premium" parking gets me into a lot about 3 city blocks away from my classes. It's when I'm walking to my car that I think that maybe living on campus wouldn't be such a bad idea, lol.

Other notes:

• Why doesn't the Art building have automatic doors? Art students are constantly lugging huge portfolios in and out of the standard push/pull doors, along with boxes of supplies. Heck, even TCC had automatic doors on ALL buildings! Sure made life easier.
  
  
• I wish I had been warned about filling up my schedule with a bunch of lab classes. When I told my friend Erika that I'm taking Chemistry she about flipped with a doomsday prophesy, saying "oh you shouldn't have taken Chemistry with a full schedule!!!" As it turns out my Chemistry class doesn't look too bad, Prof is very entertaining and doesn't seem difficult, makes the labs sound easy as well (I'll let you know after the labs start!) What WILL be difficult is the other labs, Design and Drawing. Mucho homework so far.
  
  
• I'm learning about Teaching Assistants for the first time with my lab classes. One of my TAs is extremely annoying and condescending, and a dingbat on top of that. Unfortunately I don't have much faith in her as an instructor, but I'm stuck with her.
  
  
• The Beverage class that Hubby and I are taking together promises to be fun. Professor is very entertaining and comical, and says we'll have 4-6 tastings for each class. This week will be our first tasting, starting with vodka and gin. Good thing it's our last class of the day!
  
  
• Each day at school is hurry-up-and-wait. Many of my classes have at least an hour break in between... which is just long enough to walk to my next class and sit and munch on a snack... but not long enough to do anything else like go to the computer lab or library or bookstore, etc. Not without being in a rush anyway, and I don't like to rush. So, I use the time to read my textbook chapter for that next class.

That's it for now... I have a wire sculpture model that I have to do for Design class as homework. Then perspective drawings to do for Drawing class. Then..........

Word of the Day...

From the Keller City Limits blog:

Bleg; To bleg is to write a blog entry or comment for the sole purpose of asking for something.

In other words, to beg on a blog. It just struck me as funny, another new bohemian word created from technology.

And no, I have nothing to bleg for myself, other than advance notice of this week's winning Mega-Millions lottery numbers.

School notes...

School starts tomorrow, at the university. I'm looking forward to it. Although, I'm not looking forward to starting off first thing Monday mornings with Chemistry. Yuck. Hopefully I can bring my coffee to class.

Buying textbooks was an adventure last Thursday. I wound up standing in line 4 times for the cashier:

First time I got to the cashier and told her I needed a parking permit, she said I had to go to a computer and register for it first, but she could hold my books at her counter...

so after getting the parking registration I stood in line again only to find out my books had disappeared, one of the other employees had put them back on the shelves...

so I went and gathered up my books a second time and stood in line a third time, only to have a problem with my stupid bankcard and had to leave to find a Chase atm...

and finally stood and waited one last time to actually pay for my stuff. Argh.

Naturally Hubby had to call and ask what was taking so long, had I gotten lost or something? Wrong thing to ask at the wrong time, I think I gave him an earful of aggrevation.

Oh well, things will be a pain sometimes, just a part of being in school. A lesson in patience maybe? I guess I failed that course Thursday...

A Day in the Life...

Having a person in the home with dementia makes for an interesting day. At times it's even comical. I don't mean to offend anyone by making light of a serious disease, but Hubby and I both agreed that we need to keep our senses of humor when dealing with his mom. So, here's a sample of one day, yesterday:

Mom-in-law (Merle) from what I hear was once quite a cook, and she often asks if there's anything she can do to help in the kitchen, although with her vision problem there's not a lot she can do. But, Hubby asked her if she could attempt to make her cold Green Bean Salad. Nothing to cook, just toss the ingredients together, mix, and chill, easy enough. So first thing Hubby did was ask, "Do you remember what goes in it?"

Merle: "I think so... green beans.... hard boiled eggs... salad dressing... onion... salt.... pepper..."

Hubby: "Seems like there's something else... like paprika?"

"No, I never put paprika in it... green beans.... hard boiled eggs... salad dressing... onion... salt.... pepper..."

A thirty minute conversation ensues about the ingredients. Still the same list is repeated.

So Merle and I go to the grocery store. She pushes the cart, I walk in front the whole time guiding it away from running over small children.

One of the first items we pick up is a carton of eggs. (Yes, I know you should get your cold things last, but as slow as we were walking I had no intentions of zig-zagging across the store. The eggs could survive until we got home to the fridge.)

Then in the produce section "We need to get eggs."

Me: "We already got the eggs."

Then on the aisle with the salad dressing "Green beans.... hard boiled eggs... salad dressing... onion... salt.... pepper... OH, we need to get eggs!"

"We already got the eggs."

Then in the meat department "Do you have eggs at home?"

"We already got the eggs."

After getting the rest of our groceries, and establishing another 4 times that we had indeed picked up the eggs, we checked out and went home. Then came the time to make dinner.

"Are you sure you remember how to make your salad?"

"I think so... green beans.... hard boiled eggs... salad dressing... onion... salt.... pepper... paprika..."

Another twenty minute conversation about the ingredients.

So Merle starts making her salad, carefully putting each ingredient in the bowl. Then she turns to me and asks

"So where are the bacon bits?"

"BACON BITS?!? You never once mentioned bacon bits!"

"Oh. Well we need bacon bits."

Luckily we had a package of bacon in the fridge. A few pieces were nuked and crumbled and saved the day.

So anyway, these little tidbits have been comical for us. Hubby and I know things are going to get worse over time, but we're trying to see the humor and not dwell on the negative of it.

Go USA...

Here I am at 2:30am, watching Olympic gymnastics.

It brings back memories- of a night in 1984, sitting out in the hot tub with my parents, we brought a TV outside to watch Mary Lou Retton perform her perfect 10s. Ah, those were the days.

Now sitting here watching these little girls bouncing 15 feet in the air just off their feet, it reminds me that I'd probably fall on my head doing a simple cartwheel. Why are these girls not affected by the laws of gravity like I am???

On another note, I went to the Olympic website to check the schedule and saw that you can "watch events live" on the Internet. So I thought, cool, I'll check out what's going on in the Equestrian arena.

Following the link to watch the live webcast, I was then told I had to install the plug-in "Microsoft SilverLight." This is where I start to bitch. It irritates the bejesus out of me that every time you turn around you have download something else, run another active-x control, and install a friggin plug-in. And Microsoft of course jumps on the opportunity of using the Olympics to promote the downloading of their software. Then the damn thing didn't even work. Grrr. So much for watching "live."

Okay, end of rant. GO USA.

Odds & ends...

... Mom is out of the hospital but has a doctor's appointment in a couple days. They have her on a cocktail of different medications which she is trying to get used to. But she's just happy to be home again.

... Hubby and his Mom will be going to Oklahoma for the weekend, so I'll be enjoying some quiet time for myself. Which means I'll be sitting my ass on the computer all weekend.

... I've got an A so far in my Algebra class, but it doesn't really matter since it doesn't transfer to UNT. I'll have to take the Accuplacer entrance exam and take College Algebra at the university. But, I'm staying in my current class just so that I will do better on the Accuplacer.

... If you've visited my artwork website this last week you'll have seen that I'm giving it a makeover. I never liked how it was put together the first time, but I was in a hurry when I made the first layout using a template. This time I'm trying to make it look a little more professional and doing the website layout from scratch. It'll probably change more than once before I'm happy with it (you mean a female changing her mind over and over?? Say it ain't so!) Anyway, it's in a state of (re)construction right now, so expect a lot of non-working tag attributes and "page not founds."

... UNT sent out information on a new art & design scholarship for new and transferring students. Cool. I've been working on putting together the application packet for about a week now, and I'll be driving it up to the campus today to submit it. Wish me luck!

... One last note, most of the garden has bit the green ghost. My last garden succumbed to squash vine borers, but this year since it was so dry I had an attack of red spider mites. They pretty much ravaged the whole garden, sucking the life out of every green leaf... all except the jalapeno and bell pepper plants! But everything else is toast. We are considering this year's garden a success however, because as Hubby noted we did harvest at least ONE fruit or vegetable of every variety planted, lol. Plus, we have a freezer full of tomato, zucchini, green beans and jalapenos. Overall my carrots and radishes came out decent, and I had one watermelon. I learned that I need to plant my watermelon vines earlier next time. Another unusual thing about them, my "seedless" watermelon had normal big black seeds... what's up with that?!? And then alas my poor pumpkins, unfortunately I don't think they will keep (without rotting) in storage for 3 months until halloween!

Funnies...

For a little humor, here's a modern remake of Calvin & Hobbes I found on the Net called Calvin & Steve Jobs.

Update...

Mom was moved into ICU for two days but is moving back out tomorrow to PCU. Her blood pressure is up which is good, but her heartbeat is really irregular. So, they'll be planning surgery for when her doc comes back from vacation in a week or two. That'll give her some time to build up some strength for surgery. Apparently the defibrillator acts as a pacemaker too.

In the meantime, she's joking around and trying to stay in good spirits.

What's weird is that from the connections of one friend I'm getting emails from other friends that I haven't heard from in years wishing her well. Old high school friends and such. I guess it's a little surprising to me for people I haven't seen since my reunion in 2001 to be sending emails saying they're praying for my mom, but it's nice of them.

Mom-in-law is doing okay too. She's getting better at walking around the house and fixing snacks in the kitchen. She still has good days and bad days though as far as conversations go.

Ugh. It seems that growing old sucks, but I guess it beats the alternative.

Not good...

Now MY mother is in the hospital, in the Cardio unit at Grapevine Baylor. She had a minor heart attack about 7 years ago, and apparently now has had another "congestive heart failure." Her heart is running at 15% capacity, and the cardiologist said he's never seen a person look so good for having such a bad heart. Anyway, they're keeping her for a few days, starting a new medication, and then scheduling her for surgery to have a defibrillator put in.

Female doggie woes...

So our 12 month old Dane goes into heat the first time. I only mention this on here to say that I don't know which was more awkward-

• My discussion with a 20 year old guy at Petsmart about maxi pads for a dog
  or


• Wrestling to put Puppy Panties on an animal that weighs more than me

Needless to say, Athena is not thrilled with wearing the doggie diaper. I had a helluva time getting it on her, she had her butt plastered to the ground with her tail tucked, and there I was trying to pull her tail out to poke it through the hole in the fabric. Now she has the most pathetic hang-dog look on her face. And, she's afraid to move her butt. Seriously, it's like her seat is glued to the sofa. She'd better get used to the panties, as she's going to have to wear them for about 3 weeks.

Unfortunately the store only had sizes up to XL which is supposed to be for 90lb dogs. In the future she's going to need XXL or maybe even XXXL. I'm sure somebody somewhere must make that size??

Anyway, in case y'all were wondering, we're not getting her fixed and are planning to breed her maybe next year.

Another project car...

As if we don't have enough on our plates with school, Hubby's work, elderly home care, a 110 lb puppy, and a hippocatamus (see next post below), now we have another project automobile. Or I should say HUBBY has another project automobile, as it's generally him who does most of the work and I just hand tools to him and occasionally reach my skinny arms into the tight parts of the engine that he can't get to.

Anyway, our new car is a 1971 Triumph Spitfire. As you can see it's pretty rough, but I know Hubby can make a nice finished gem out of it. He once had a 1972 Porsche 914 that he renovated back to cherry condition.

Most of the interior stuff that's missing in the photo is in good condition, they were just taken out for the process of building it up from the frame.

Is this one more cat or 3 more?...

By the way, I mentioned Mom-in-law Merle has a dog and a cat that we brought home with us... and I've just gotta show you the cat. These photos just don't do justice to show you her gargantuan size. Her name is Peaches, but Hubby calls her HIPPOCATAMUS:

Above is her impression of Jabba the Hut.

The bathroom scale says she weighs 21 lbs. My sister came over to visit and upon seeing the cat she exclaimed "OH MY GAWD!" with a horrified look on her face. To try to show her relative size we put this coffee mug next to her for the photo. But it still doesn't compare to seeing her in person. I'm telling you, she's huge.

Life goes on...

Things keep busily rolling in our neck of the woods. It's been a week since we moved Mom-in-law into the house. She's doing better at navigating how the house is laid-out, although she still occasionally forgets there's a step down into the sunken living room. She's also doing better at little, but important, things like remembering to turn the stove off. (To clarify that- she doesn't cook, but we put a carafe of her decaf coffee on the stove each morning to keep it warm while we have our regular coffee on the coffeemaker.) Unfortunately though since she can't see well she still has to ask how to turn the stove off, and I verbally direct her where to place her hand to find it. Each day she does a little better at finding it. Yes, I could get up and do it for her, (and Hubby and I both do a lot of things for her) but I figure it's good for her to be able to do some things on her own. She raised a family of 8 kids and was used to doing everything herself, and I think she's struggling with the concept of letting other people do things FOR her. I think she's feeling pretty helpless.

In the meantime, Hubby is trying to figure out exactly what areas she's having trouble with, and whether she has Alzheimer's or dementia (they are separate disorders), and which type , as dementia is further broken down into different types. Until we can get a CAT Scan performed we won't know for sure what it is exactly. Hubby's also giving her little projects to try to increase her cognitive thinking again, since the mind can improve with exercise. He's starting her off with 1st grade math and is planning to slowly work her back up. I printed some simple addition and subtraction problems like 2 + 4 = __. Her biggest problem was seeing the problems on the paper with her bad eyesight. Then, I printed some multiplication and division problems, again simple ones like 6 / 2 = ___ and they took her a little longer to work out but she did it. So he's trying to slowly increase the exercises. The important thing is to get her mind running again. The interesting thing is, when Hubby asks her to answer an abstract thinking question, she doesn't seem to have any difficulties with that, which is unusual with memory disorders. Although, on the abstract side she does have problems with the concept of TIME. For example, she keeps asking when we're taking her back up to Oklahoma to go to the doctor and Hubby keeps explaining to her that it'll be "next month" but then she'll ask the question again later in the day. Each day she asks about it a couple times.

Other than that, she has good days and bad days. On "good" days she seems a little more clear in her thinking, and on "bad" she has more trouble remembering things, even past details. But what I find interesting is how AWARE she is of the problems she's having. She doesn't realize the mistakes she's making while she does it, but then she does realize afterward and I think it embarrasses her. For example, the other day she kept calling her dog, for like 3 minutes she called him because she thought he was in the other room, and then she realized he was sitting on her lap the whole time. She's fully aware of the mistakes she makes, but only after she makes them.

Something that I feel bad for her about is how bored she is right now. Until we can get her to an ophthalmologist she can't see very well, so there's not much she can do but sit around and talk to us and watch TV. She wants things to do, but I'm at a loss for what she CAN do while she can't see close-up. She wants to help in the kitchen but then gets frustrated that she can't see what she's doing. She brushes her pets, and takes them outside, things like that. Any ideas from any of you about what else she can do?

Just a nothing post...

Our town of Keller is continuously growing commercially, mostly with new shopping strips. But, a construction site on a corner just down the street piqued my interest as it's about the size of a restaurant. We were curious about it because Hubby and I are constantly complaining about not having a nice little home-cooking diner around here. Oh sure, there's one down Hwy 377 in the next town (Joe's Coffee Shop), but it only serves dinner hours on Fridays. Other than that, we mostly have a population of Mexican, pizza, and burger places in the close vicinity of our house. We'd love to have some type of old-fashioned diner around here with good ole American food. Heck, we'd even be happy with a Denny's. Is that too much to ask?

After some research, it turns out the new location on the corner is going to a Zaxby's restaurant. Never heard of it, but apparently it's a national chain of chicken "fast-casual" food joints. Ah well, I guess we're still waiting for that dream diner to get past the city council's red tape.

Changes in the household...

Well we now have a few new additions in the home. This last weekend, with the help of friends with a couple of pickup trucks, we drove up to Oklahoma City and packed up Hubby's mother and her furniture and moved her down to live with us. She's 78 and having problems with her rememberer, so it would be best at this point for her to not be living by herself anymore. We have an extra bedroom for right now, but we're going to be converting our garage into an apartment for her for the long term.

Mom-in-law also has a cat and dog, so our menagerie has now increased to 3 dogs and 7 cats.

It'll take a little while for things to get settled around here. Change isn't easy, and I think we're all feeling pretty restless. Mom is getting lost walking around the house, and it isn't helping that she can't hardly see (we gotta get her to a new eye doctor.) It's really worrying me when we have to leave her alone while we go to school. Luckily we only have one evening class at the moment, unlike the fall term when we'll be gone all day sometimes. Hopefully she'll be okay by then.

The only thing constant is change.

How I spent my summer vacation...



Hope all y'all had a nice 4th of July.



Here's what I did for the holiday:

Turned one very LARGE bush...

... into two "tree-like" bushes.

Man, it was some hard work, but as Hubby said we gained about another 100 sq ft of ground in our backyard!

I also climbed up on the roof of the house and cut away branches of the tree in the front yard that were hitting the roof during storms.

We need to cut down that dead maple tree you see in the pics above, but I'm afraid the little Saws-All that I was using just wasn't quite big enough. Maybe if the Great Dane keeps gnawing at it she'll have it down by winter.

Paintings...

Since I've been so busy with schoolwork I haven't had a chance to update y'all on artwork. MUCHO MUCHO THANKS to friends Al & Kat in Virginia who were kind enough to ship a digital camera to me so that I can take decent photos from now on, no more crappy cellphone pics, YAY! So below is the same thing that I posted on our racing forum:

Here's a couple of paintings that I did in class during the spring term. First, a painting of Curlin. It's oil on canvas, 40"x32". I used a technique that I'd never tried before, by using a palette knife to apply the paint instead of using a brush. It was like trying to paint with a butter knife!

If you want to see a really close-up view to see the texture from the knife go to this link: http://img380.imageshack.us/img380/9444/curlinfinelargecc7.jpg

Then, we had a project where we had to duplicate a "Master work" but then make a change to it. I chose to reproduce a painting by Edgar Degas, called "Race Horses at Longchamp." But, I made them cowboys on horses instead. A little kitsch maybe, but hey I'm from Texas! I'm calling it "Cowboys at Longchamp." It's oil on canvas, and rather large at 60"x48". And yes I used regular paintbrushes for this one.

I'll be talking to the local gallery that has my work on display to see if they have room for this one. Maybe someone around here would want to hang it above their sofa, lol.

Another one over...

Well the Summer I term is ending today. THANK GOD!

"No more classes, no more books"
No more teacher's dirty...... looks..... um, well they were online classes so I didn't get to see the dirty looks, but did see a few email spats between students, lol. People can be so rude through email that probably wouldn't act like that in person. Too many people read words the wrong way and get defensive. Oh well.

Anyway, as much as I like college I really hate the online classes. If only they weren't so damn convenient!

More than anything, I'm sick of writing essays. Just ask about the Modernist and Contemporary literary periods and I'll probably bite your head off. That essay was my "final exam" for my World Lit class.

But at least it's over... until Monday. Then Summer II starts with an algebra class and World Civilization. At least the Algebra class is a real lecture class to sit in on. Civie is online again. At least I know the Algebra won't have any essays!!!

Well sign me up...

We were searching for an electives class for Hubby at UNT, and came across this one-

Survey of Beverages - SMHM 4300
A study of social beverages commonly used in the hospitality
industry. Primary emphasis is on history, language, product identification and production and merchandising techniques for wines, beers, distilled spirits and non-alcoholic beverages.
Prerequisite(s): student must be 21 years of age or older.

From what I read from other students on the Web, they have representatives from several beer and wine distributors providing samples for "taste tests" and teach brewing techniques.

Again I'm asking myself, "Why didn't I go to college sooner?"

.

Our town...

Taken from the City of Keller website:

D Magazine placed Keller in its Top 10 of Best Suburbs, one of only three Tarrant County cities on the list. The full story is published in the magazine’s July 2008 issue and was released on the magazine’s Web site this week.

Cities were ranked based on four factors: safety, education, housing values and ambiance. The magazine citied Keller’s affordability compared to neighboring cities, its network of bike trails, the Arthouse at Keller Town Center development as well as new single-family home construction. The article also mentions the rural charm that remains amid the city’s many amenities, as a sign proclaimed that goats were for sale just down the street from an upscale housing development.

Keller’s low rate of violent crimes, TAKS and SAT scores of Keller ISD students and per-student expenditures, increases in home values, ambiance and air quality combined to put the city on the list.

Keller rated No. 9 on the list. University Park in Dallas County was No. 1, followed by Tarrant County cities Southlake and Colleyville.

In 2007, Money magazine rated Keller in the top 50 places to live in the United States.

Well I like our town... as long as you ignore the "old town Keller" vs. "new money suburban transplants" politics, and don't mind voting down multi-million dollar bonds for a Taj Mahal library every two years. Yep, I still like it here.

My garden's more healthy than me...

I'm feeling better at least. I'm not 100% yet, but better. If you remember last summer I said I was pretty sure I had West Nile... well I seem to be having some rebounding effects from it. Symptoms I'm having match viral encephalitis perfectly. A constant headache that last a week, stiff sore neck, dizziness, fatigue, feverish, and what's been the biggest indicator in me, a sensitivity to light. Sunlight, house lights, it doesn't matter, they all bother me and make my head hurt worse. And this is the second time in 2 months that it's happened. Poor Hubby is stressed out worrying about me. But I'm signing up for student health insurance at UNT so that I can get this checked out sometime soon. I'm just toughing it out until then.

Other symptoms that occur in some people is confusion, lack of concentration, and memory loss... but with me who the hell could tell? haha

On the brighter side, at least I have healthy tomatoes! I guess I picked a good year to grow them. I have no shortage here at my house...

I also have a zillion jalepeno peppers. Literally a zillion. Between them and the tomatoes I can make a mean salsa soon.

My zucchini plants have been doing better too. I've been watering twice a day lately and seems to have made the difference.

Plus I have carrots, watermelons, and pumpkins that still have a lot of growing to do. They're Big Max jumbo pumpkins, so they have a long time to go yet. Anyway, hopefully all these home grown veggies will be good for me!

Ugh...


Sorry not to be posting anything, but I've been sick. Still am.


So in the meantime, here's some pet pics for your amusement.

Don't you wish we could all sleep like dogs...
anywhere, anytime, and in any position:

If you look real closely, you can see Camouflage Cat in our front tree.

It's no wonder she catches so many birds. It must be like Predator creeping up on them.

Over WHAT hill? I don't remember a hill...

Today happens to be my husband's 50th birthday. He's officially "over the hill." Or is that not 'til 60?

He wouldn't let any of us throw him a party. So, he and I are celebrating by driving across town to take a US Government exam, and then he has History class tonight. I could make a joke about him BEING a part of history, but then that would just be mean...

Anyway, maybe I'll have to bake a cake or something. Although he teases me about one I made one time, cake and frosting both from scratch. Over the next few days the frosting kept disappearing. It turns out, the cake was absorbing the frosting! Hubby jokes that only I could manage to make a cake that eats itself. But it was damn moist though!

Maybe I should buy a cake.

Anyway, HAPPY BIRTHDAY old man. :)

Not this time...

Alas, another disappointment. The way Big Brown stopped at the second turn I would say either A) his lungs bled or B) he couldn't handle the heat. Or both. When Kent couldn't rouse him I knew it was over. Too bad, another Crown lost.

May the horse be with you...

It's Belmont Day, and I'm glued to the tv. I have a list of other things I need to be doing like catching up on World Literature homework, trim the bushes, mow the lawn, change the layout on a print advertisement for Leapin' Lizards, work on painting... but, they can wait!

Alright, I'll stick my neck out and call it- BIG BROWN should win the Triple Crown... that is, providing:

• His quarter-crack doesn't bother him
• His glue-on shoes don't fall off
• He isn't too frazzled in the stakes barn
• He doesn't step on a safety pin (like one excuse we know of...)
• He isn't too frazzled by the crowd in the paddock
• He comes out of the gate cleanly
• He doesn't get pinched on the rail
• Nobody clips his heels
• His saddle doesn't slip
• Kent doesn't lose a rein
• Kent doesn't drop his stick
• Kent doesn't move him too soon (think Smarty Jones, grrrr)
• The field doesn't set rabbit fractions
• He doesn't run away with Kent (again)
• A flock of seagulls doesn't land on the track (happened before)
• A drunk doesn't run out onto the track throwing punches (happened before)
• He doesn't jump shadows on the track
• He doesn't take a misstep
• He has a perfect trip
• He doesn't get heatstroke
• His lungs don't bleed too much
• His tongue tie doesn't come off
• They didn't seal the track TOO MUCH (ahem...)
• He (ahem...) doesn't break both his front ankles
• Nobody throws an inquiry

Oh yeah... and if he runs the fastest!

Yep, then BIG BROWN should win. Piece of cake, right? As long as all the planets and the stars are in line, and there are no catastrophic forces of fate working against him. As the saying goes, there's a million ways to lose a race, and one way to win.

By the way, I really think he will. Part of my faith is in the fact that he doesn't really have any real competition, and the other part is in the experience of Kent Desormeaux. Kent won't be making any stupid mistakes in this race. I hope.

Waiting to see...........

Harvest bounty...




Ain't these the prettiest beans you've ever seen?

Yes, I know you can buy them for 50-cents a can at the store... but to me they were worth the trouble! They're crisp, no brown spots, and you can't beat the taste. And there's more still growing in the garden.

What I can't figure out is the zucchini and yellow squash this year. In my garden a couple years ago I had zucchini coming out my ears, and because I was slow to pick them they were growing to the size of baseball bats. But this year, they start to grow small zucchinis but then after growing a few inches long they develop blossom end rot and the fruit shrivels up and dies. I'm watering enough, so that's not it. The only difference (that I know of) between last time and this time is I have them planted in a different place in the garden. Where I had them planted last time I have the tomato and bean plants now, and they're growing like gangbusters. Hmmm. And Hubby suspects we may have a broken sewer line running underneath the yard... that could be the culprit?

I've also picked some jalapenos, and a couple cherry tomatoes, and now I'm starting the second batch of radishes. I also planted some spinach last week, but they're an early variety so hopefully it'll be okay that I started them late.