Say What?

Rachel is quickly learning the ropes of her job at the flower shop in Bloomington. She commented on a vase of Lillis Tammy had on our kitchen table and asked: "Are those Stargazer Lilies?" She works two days a week doing odd jobs while taking orders in person and on the phone. It's a good summer gig which leaves her plenty of time to put her feet up and recharge her batteries before she begins her sophomore year of college. It sounds like the kind of job where they'll be able to use her whenever she's home on break so there's no need for her to have to beat the pavement looking for work while competing with the masses of kids all doing the same thing. I'm fair-skinned. I typically spend way too much time outdoors in the warmer months for my own good so I see a dermatologist a couple of times each year to be checked for any suspicious spots on my body that may potentially develop into skin cancer.  The spots are frozen and after a week or two, they're...

It was nice to take my Thursday and Friday off from work this week even though it caused me to not be able to keep my days straight. Thursday became Friday and Friday was Saturday. How will I ever manage when I'm retired? I'm sure I'll find a way. I'll be in the every-day-is-Saturday mode then so I don't suppose it will matter much. I really struggled at Foci this week. Anybody who's been doing this any length of time will tell you that there will always be days like that. I felt tired and not all that focused.  Definitely not the best mindset to have when trying to blow glass. Tammy did well so I was happy for her. We've decided to expand our knowledge base and shift our focus to making bowls. We're not going to bother with adding color until we've got a decent grasp of the steps for making them. Adding color adds considerably to the prep time which would be better spent just practicing the form. Besides, color costs extra and a good many of our e...

My recurring dream is back. It's been a while since I last dreamt it and I would've been quite happy if it never revisited me. It's about as disturbing as any dream I can remember. I used to have a couple of pet Cockatiels years ago and one of them was especially sweet and dear to me . In the dream, I go down into a part of our basement that's secluded from the rest of our house, a place where I seldom go. When I open the door I find the birdcage with both Coocoo and Coconut inside. I'm shocked because I've totally forgotten that they were there and it's been months since I've fed them or given them fresh water. They're so neglected although they don't appear to be. I feel terrible and I'm profoundly sad. It usually occurs to me the next morning that I had the dream again and it leaves me both disturbed and with a sense of relief that it was only a dream. This is about as personal as I get in my blog about my former life. I'm not sure w...

My little-blog-that-could keeps plugging along at over 7.5 years old. I have no idea how long I'll continue to write to it but hopefully, for years to come. I sometimes see other bloggers posting apologies on their blogs for not writing more frequently and promising to do a better job. I see no need to do that, not just because I write here regularly (although not necessarily frequently) but because I do this primarily for me. That others find it interesting enough to follow along is a bonus and I'm grateful for that. Thank you. I'm big into reminiscing and have been ever since I've been old enough to have something to reminisce about I suppose. So when you see (as you will toward the end of this piece) a video of a ride I did over the weekend it may seem like a boring video to anybody else but to me, there's going to be some significance to it in 10 or 20 years. I imagine how cool it would be to have video from some of the rides I did when I first began seriously...

It was 19 years ago yesterday that I moved into our home. That sentence sounds a little odd in that the 'I' is not a 'we' but it refers to a time when I was still back in my former life with my former wife. Tammy and Rachel wouldn't come and bless my presence for another 7 years. (There's a whole other life of mine that I've written very little about or for that matter, discussed much and I'm guessing it will probably remain that way.) Our home has seen many transitions over the years with Tammy being the inspiration behind the majority of them. We've still got two large projects waiting in the wings and they'll remain on hold until Rachel's education is paid for. Mom stopped by Thursday morning to check out our gardens . I had her take my arm and walked her to the backyard much more slowly than she would've made that walk just one year ago. It's been a difficult year for her but she's a determined woman and not one to sit ba...

I was disappointed to see all the press given to the supposed prophet and his ramblings about an impending rapture. Sadly, many will see him as somebody who speaks for Christians everywhere. He doesn't speak for me or any other Christian I know. Hopefully, his legacy will be for the goofball he is and not as some seer acting on direct communications from God or a special ability at divining scripture. My niece Melody's post to her Facebook said for me what I believe: "This "rapture" thing makes me sad:1. Because of the frenzy, you can tell that people are searching for something, and it makes me sad when people don't take the Bible seriously. 2. Tons of money was given to this organization that claimed a lie as the truth. That money could be better spent helping those in need, which is what Jesus made clear to do, until the day He does return." I did have to laugh at something somebody posted to our union's message board, wondering if the FAA sho...

I've been a Mac user since last summer. I have no regrets about making the decision to leave my Toshiba laptop and its frustrating slowness behind. However, I have a few PC based programs that I continue to run on my Mac through the use of VMware Fusion . Macs have a program called Bootcamp that allows you to run PC based programs by dedicating a portion of your hard-drive for that purpose but the only downside is that the Mac and PC platforms can't be run simultaneously. VMware Fusion fixes all that. One such program that can't be used on my MacBook Pro without VMware is a lava lamp that I like to have on my desktop. It's soothing as a lava lamp should be but best of all, it's very realistic. Here's a link for those of you with PC platform capabilities. Check out this screen-capture . When you get it installed, right-click and go to configure to adjust the size and color. I use 3x and random. Rachel is back home from college for the summer. Tammy and I too...