(no subject)

I have this feeling that I'm caught in a Laura Ingalls Wilder story
lately. (Minus the horses alas, and plus a few engines.) Amy came and
picked me up and we drove out to her place. The roads were fine. Their
lane, unfortunately, wasn't. We got stuck half-way up. The wind was
howling and it was frigidly cold and dark, of course. As we trudged,
bundled to the nines, to the house, I was in the picture in Farmer Boy
of the 4 children going to school - bundled also to the nines, heads
bent against the wind. Mix that in with Pa walking through the snow in
the dark, and you'll have us nearly exactly. Just add a suitcase in.
Then, last night, as we drove in to meeting, I skipped ahead some years
and dropped into The Long Winter. Specifically when Almanzo and his
friend went after the wheat. It was utterly still, and below freezing
by a fair bit. The moon was nearly full, and it was almost as light as
daytime. And you just have that feeling of the storm right over the
horizon waiting to pounce. I kept looking up at the stars
half-expecting to see them being blotted out one by one as the blizzard
cloud rolled in.
It didn't... /that's/ supposed to happen tonight. But, according to the
weather forecast, not until after midnight, so we can go to the potluck
in safety. I hope!!

Having breakfast with brother workers is very different from having breakfast with sister workers....

For one, I've never been with any sisters who discuss the various merits of AK-47s, the legality (or otherwise) of semi-automatics, automatics and rocket launchers, and Vietnam.  I must say it was quite interesting.

On the drive over here, I saw two young eagles fighting over dinner.  I think it might have been a dead deer - they were up on the bank by the freeway, and the object of their argument was hidden.  It was fascinating though; the quick glimpse I had as we whizzed by:  they were on the ground, wings flapping, taking small floating hops and clawing at each other.  Just as we went around the corner, one of them backed up.  Guess he decided waiting was ok by him.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.  :)

You know you're really tired when you dream about taking a nap....

And when you're dreaming, beware!  There's no guarantees as to /where/ you'll find to sleep!

For instance - a bathtub that is half-swimming pool, half greenhouse, that your mother (yes, yes, the mother who tells you to wash your feet before getting into bed) has filled with a multitude of plants (with attendant dirt and bugs) while she has been gone on vacation, but is now sneakily covering with nice fat comforters and filling with warm water.  And saying things like, "What's wrong with a little dirt?"

On the other hand, there's something rather enticing about the thought of taking a nap /in/ a waterbed...

minus the mud.

I'm a week late, but it's still interesting.  :)

Last Wed. in meeting, there were 19 adults.  There were 13 children - the oldest of whom was 8.  5 of them were 1 year or under.  Quite a ratio, eh?

And on an entirely different note, I'd like to warn all of you poor unsuspecting souls of an evil that is loose in the world.... Libraries that require you to have picture ID with an address on it IN THAT COUNTY!

Sheesh.  

I am feeling like Hercule Poirot today:

No order!  No method!  Where are the little grey cells of the brain??

I was helping a lady put together a puzzle, and the pieces were just scattered all over.  Not sorted at all, not even all in one place, jammed inside the border so you couldn't put any pieces in easily... Now, I am not the most organized person on the face of this planet.  But I was feeling distinctly jangly at this blatant lack of order.  And then... along came Hercule, muttering in my brain.  

My new favorite thought - thanks to Nichole for passing it along:

When we find it hard to leave the place of prayer is when we know we've found the presence of God.

(There, Jen - a post!  Just for you. :)

For all your burgling needs...

come to Leilani and Jane!

Jane wanted to stash some stuff in the sister's cabin at the grounds - which is not generally locked.  This time though?  Yep, you guessed it.  A nice shiny padlock was hanging from the front door and no one could find a key.  We looked everywhere, and finally called up Julia.  Yes, she had a key; but there should be 4 or 5 somewhere.  And the problem with using Julia's key is the small matter of her being several hundred miles away.  Hm. 

We notice that one window is open (oops...) but the screens don't come out, and it's too skinny and too high off the ground for me to want to try and wiggle through.  I might have fit - if I could have gotten up there!  But only 'might'.  'Might not' was pretty prominent, too.

Ok - there's the woodbin.  One could possibly crawl through the wood bin - if the stove wasn't quite so close, and one was feeling particularly contortionistic.  I do think this one could have been done - but it would have been dirty and sticky and uncomfortable and not exactly easy.  And the decisions required!  For one - which end of you do you stick in first? Face up or face down?  Straight in (possibly getting stuck at the stove), or at an angle?  Can you /really/ do the limbo in that amount of space?

Then we notice the back door (which is also locked) is one of those bathroom doors with the pinhole on the outside for shoving a bit of metal inside and unlocking.  We shove and search and shove and poke and shove some more - but either our nails aren't long enough or are too thick or are missing some essential part - because nothing opens.  Stare broodingly at door a while longer, until... bingo!

We'll unscrew the doorknob.  Screwdriver?  Who needs one of those, I have a nail with a nice sharp head!  So yes, finally, we got in.  And guess what we found there?  

All the rest of the keys to the padlock, safely and carefully locked inside.  Isn't life fun?  The keys now have company - Jane's spare stuff!

Aaaaaaaand, I'm back in Montana, and already I have done two new things.

Yesterday for lunch, we had deer-meat hotdogs.  They were very good.  Much fatter than ye old normal hotdogs, and for some unknown reason the skin was tougher, but quite tasty.

And yesterday after lunch, Jeff took me for a ride on some manner of 4-wheeler with rollbars and mesh tie ins on the sides.  We went way up into the hills; and on the way back, I drove.  It was fun, but noisy. 

You'll never guess the exciting things we have seen on our flight across southern NM!

Tarantulas!  Big black and white hairy ones crawling across the road!  I saw about 4 or 5, and finally managed to find one where there were no cars coming, and that was crawling slowly enough that it hadn't vanished by the time we got back to where we'd seen it.  Dad took a picture and we continued on down the road.

Also fields and fields and FIELDS full of oil wells.  (Are they called derricks when it is just one of those double-hammer-headed creations that go in slow, incessant circles?)  I've seen them before, of course, but never in such profusion!  It was like looking at a herd of strange, mechanical, and somewhat standoffish cows.

Speaking of cows... whilst still in TX, I noticed that we were driving through acre after acre of unhindered, uninhabited, lushly growing grass... and here and there were tiny little fences enclosing no grass at all, yet thickly clotted with cows.

What's wrong with this picture???

It was pointed out to me that I neglected to say where 'here' is.  We're in Euliss, between Ft. Worth and Dallas.  :)

The aquarium is in Dallas.

Tomorrow morning, we leave for Nevada.

It is very easy to imagine that there are longhorn cattle shaking their horns in a cloud of dust just down the street and around the corner.  Cowboys spur their horses keeping strays in line.  

There are lots of small trail towns in Texas, and I keep imagining Louis L'Amour stories happening around me... subtract the cars and trucks, and it really does look like it could be happening today instead of 150 years ago.

We went to the aquarium here, which was absolutely stunning.  I think the one in Las Vegas has a bigger shark tank and more sharks, but this one has more everything else.  Picture a building about 4 stories high and open all down the center for the first 3.  You go in and climb up the stairs to the top while it becomes more and more jungly around you, and then go inside.  Just across the way, there is a waterfall that falls down to a 'river' below, and all around on every level are plants and trees and flowers, and birds.  There are glassed in cages tucked here and there, and wired-fenced cages, all along the way.  And some birds and monkeys just live free in the center.  You wind your way down through all of this, until you reach the river, where there are otters and turtles and frogs and toads and bats and more birds and still more birds and crocodiles (separate from the otters!) and many fish.  And more monkeys, did I mention them?  Then start going underground - first there are the deeper river denizons:  giant freshwater fish and manatees and catfish that are at least 6 feet long.  The catfish were lined up, very oddly - they all faced the glass and trailed off one behind the other as if they were waiting their turn for something.  Then you go around into the salt-water areas; then begin to climb back up the other side, which is a repeat of the descent, only with different animals and birds and amphibians and fish.  Also little tiny penguins who apparently love hot weather instead of icebergs.  It was great.

In all this, I finally have managed to figure out how to take low-light photos with my camera.  :)

Well.  I went kayaking today.  :)  First time ever.  It was really fun!

Don't get too excited, there was no whitewater involved, nothing that required several hours in a swimming pool learning how to roll over and extract yourself without drowning, nothing to even extract yourself from.  Just this orange kayak-shaped thing with a snap-in seat and a paddle.  And of course, a lot of water, 4 blue herons, an osprey, a seal, a buzzard, a flock of tiny little sandpiper-looking birds, and endless seagulls.

I now consider myself practically an expert.  Whee.  You pull the thing up, scootch into it, wedge your feet on the rests, and paddle off!  Don't do a canoe paddle, just this figure-8 sort of deal across your legs.  It's very good to watch the tide so that you don't end up stranded and have to walk back up an entire bay full of mud.  Also, don't be afraid to paddle across the wind; you won't tip over.  As long, of course, as you make sure that it's not very windy before you take off.  ;)  Floating along on an out-going tide is deceptively easy; coming back will take a bit of work.  

And let's put emphasis on the deception part of the whole deal.  If the tide is going out, but not very fast, and the wind is ruffling the surface of the water; you could swear that the water (and you yourself) is holding perfectly still and it's the island that is moving.  And when you're out farther from land, and the same thing happens - or possibly a larger gust of wind comes up in your face - no matter how hard you are paddling, it seems as if you haven't budged an inch.  Look behind you and take heart though, the shore is receding.  It's good to keep an eye on the shore for another reason too - come around the point into that wind, and you may think you're paddling along merrily, sure to be home in time for cocoa; but glance sideways?  You ain't budging, honey.  All that work was just to keep in place, better dig a little deeper, and maybe aim not quite straight into the wind.  

Back to convention tomorrow.

We heard a cute story today.

Two workers were getting ready for meeting in their room and the door wasn't quite shut, so the little boy (3-4) invited himself in.  When he saw them praying, he knelt down too.  One of the workers looked down at him, and he looked up, and when their eyes met, he put his finger to his lips and said, "Shhh!  If you make noise, I will put you out of the room!"  

We all know where he'd been hearing that!

Hello from Saginaw, everyone.

It's hot here.  I heard the forecast was that it should be hot, and when we got here it was hot, and it still is hot.  Last night at about 10:30 was just nearly the perfect temperature... alas that it didn't stay that way!

There have already been three amazing things here so far:

*breakfast at a sane hour (8 am!)  ((Not during convention, alas, but I don't get up for breakfast during convention anyways, so I don't care.))

*none of the five of us in our room get up early.  I woke up (accidentally and went back to sleep as fast as possible) at 6 and no one else was up.  Wow, I think.  How nice.  :)

*AND.... drumroll... so far as I could tell (through earplugs and white noise) no one snores.  

Those are, of course, not the /really/ amazing things expected, but they will do for nice starters.  

Let's you and me go and ...

My new favorite words.  :)  

That was how much of Jonathan's conversations began this week.  

Aunty Leilani, let's you and me go - 

be excavators

hunt mean gophers

play in the pool

swing 

skate across the ice 

catch sharks

dig up this hole

Yesterday, he wanted me to go away  - just for the night, so he could have his bed back.  So he was trying to figure out how I could leave before bed, and when he ate breakfast, I would be back.  

Today, I said, "Hey, Jonathan, you get your bed back tonight!"  

He says, "No.  I want you to sleep here more nights."

"I wish that I could, but I have to leave."

"I am going to lock all the doors so that you can't get out."

Big 'awwww' in chorus.

I was such a good girl this week!  I went to the cycling class Darla teaches /both/ Wednesday mornings.  :)  Yay!  Exercise!  Go me!

We also painted Darla's kitchen yellow.  It looks really nice.  :)

In Billings now, Spokane tomorrow and Olympia Friday.

Clearly I am tired, or I would not (probably.. ok, ok, probably I would anyways!  Unrepentantly, too!) be inflicting this on you - but I was right!

Depending, of course, on your estimation of the value of your time; it really only makes sense to speed when the distance you have to travel is over twice the value of the speed you are traveling.  Otherwise, you don't save enough time (imo) for the possible ticket, not to mention the extra gas you'll need to buy, to bother.

Translation:  if the speed limit is 75, and you have 150 miles to go, you will only save 7.5 minutes by speeding up to 80.  The time you save only gets less as you have fewer miles to go.  With 100 miles to go, you save 5 minutes by going 80 instead of 75.  But if you have more than twice your speed value (75 mph and 200 miles to drive, for instance), you begin to save enough time that it might actually be worthwhile.  

Happy 1 am!

Have I mentioned before how I love Wyoming?  I thought I might have but, not being entirely certain I emphasized it enough, I figured it wouldn't hurt to say it again.  :)

Yes, I'm still up at this hour - there was a lightning storm going on, and it is just now moving away.  I stayed up to watch - and even got (by sheer luck!) two pictures.  As soon as I remember how, I'll post them here for your viewing pleasure.

It was the best lightning storm ever - the sky was lighting up non-stop; a strike several times every second, and a constant dull grumble of thunder.   A few bolts of lightning were bright enough that I think they permanently are seared onto my retinas.

J and I were Great Hunters today; we stalked meat-eating dinosaurs and mean deer with our water pistols.  Then we went fishing in the sky.  J caught several red lizards that he grilled with hot barbecue sauce for supper.  And I baked a cake.  (The cake was real. ;)  

Massive Drumroll!!!

I have *DUMDUMDUM* finally after I don't know and won't admit how many times of getting stuck in Wyoming for the winter (hmmm... you don't suppose there's a subconscious dealie going on here? ;) made it ALL THE WAY to Oregon City!  

Yes!  I have indeed walked, verified by my little yellow pedometer, from Independence, MO to Oregon City, OR!  Visit www.americaonthemove.org to see the trail for yourself!

Cheers and confetti and all that.

Of course, it's not /quite/ so impressive as it might be... I mean, I /could/ have actually made an effort to walk more each day, instead of simply choosing the 4 weeks during which I would be walking the most and counting them... but I don't care!  It counts!

I expect you all have entirely given up on me ever updating this thing.

Sorry!!

I can't claim the excuse that I was too tired - there were plenty of times when I was awake enough to type.  The problem is that I wasn't awake enough to think of anything to say.  ;)

So we had an absolutely wonderful convention at Ronan.  Wednesday morning, at breakfast, I was really feeling:  I want to quit work and go to convention!  Everyone else gets to take off and go to convention and I want to go too!  So it was a really good thing that Wednesday evening was when we all got to 'pack up' (more or less, heh; still plenty to do) and go to convention.  

It rained solid, starting Thursday morning and not quitting until Sunday afternoon (figures, eh?) BUT amazingly enough, it stopped raining Sun afternoon, and didn't start again until Monday evening - which was enough time to dry out and take down the ladies' sleeping tent, and the sidewalls of the mtg barn.  

Also, it was absolutely freezing cold.  However, as one lady said in her testimony, we're cold on the outside, but warm inside.  

And another really good week down at Cody - it was WARM, thankfully.  And the amazing thing there was that the wind stopped blowing Wednesday, and didn't start again until Monday.  ;)  Of course, I like the wind, so it doesn't bother me in the slightest that it blows; but everyone else was happy about it.  I spent a lot of time sleeping, I confess. 

And now we're at Manhattan, and it promises to be hot all week.  I'm scrambling for warm-weather clothes, as most of mine got inadvertently left in Missoula.  Wool skirts are wonderful for Ronan weather, but not so great for Manhattan-in-the-high-90s weather.  

And speaking of Manhattan.... dumdumdum... we got the list last night, and I will be in Helena.  :D  That's almost (but not /quite/ by a teenytiny hair) as good as Wyoming.  ;)  But then, it would be awfully hard to find anywhere as good as Wyoming.  Not that I'm biased or anything!

Righty ho - it's nearly supper time, so this will be all.  Until I remember, have time, and a brain all at once, and can write another post.

A quote by Helen Keller that I'm bound to remember wrong.  Sorry, Helen!

I wanted to do great and noble things, but my lot in life turned out to be doing small things as if they were great and noble.

Or something very similar.

Hm.  This is annoying.  I can't copy a link directly into this window...

Looks like you have to have a title.  Bah.

Ok, title.  This is an interesting article about water conservation and different approaches to it.

http://www.yampayaks.com/

My Cow!...

...is a yak.  Hooray for mom!

Hmm.  I see that there are no Cow Literate folk amongst my audience?  I really truly have no idea what kind of cow this is, and was hoping someone else could tell me.  Someone who could look up and say in educated, knowledgeable tones:  this is a "Bovinus Long-Hairus" (or something similar only true).  

He's kind of cool looking though, isn't he?  The hair on his head is curly, and his horns curl in.  Perhaps it is a yak/holstein cross-breed!  ?

Ok, this is the Official Shaggy Cow Contest!

You tell me what this cow is, and you win!

Cures For What Ails You - Of the Stranger Kind:

Onions on a child's feet will bring down a fever.  Put sliced onions in socks, put on child (onion side underneath, against foot soles), put child to bed.  In the morning, the onions will be shriveled up and dried, and the fever will be lowered or gone.

Maple syrup and baking soda cancer cure.  Mix one part baking soda with three parts pure 100% maple syrup.  Stir briskly.  Heat mixture for 5 minutes. Take 1 tsp daily.

Vinegar and baking soda for shiny clean teeth.  Dip your toothbrush in water, then in baking soda.  Brush as normal.  Rinse with apple cider vinegar, then rinse with water.  

Vix on your feet cures coughs.  Rub Vix VapoRub on the soles of your feet.  Put on thick socks.  Go to bed.  Makes head and chest colds better.

Beating the bottoms of your feet stops nose-bleeds.  Lay bleeding person down on their back.  Hit the bottoms of their feet sharply several times.  Nose-bleed will stop.

(Poster's Disclaimer:  I have done none of these (except the toothbrushing one, which is really cool, as the vinegar fizzes up in your mouth), and can make no guarantees as to their efficacy.  But some people swear they work and even say they have seen them in action!)

I am under strict orders to prove my still-livingness.  So here you are.  I am alive!

But now I have, alas, forgotten the list of Cool Stuff I was hoarding in my brain to post here... 

One thing though - I learned it tonight.  Not Going to Daycare is not necessarily a bad thing.  So says the mother of two that we are staying with tonight.

Her children are, their teachers say, calmer and more attentive, less 'me me me get it or else', as well as better behaved.  On the other hand, they aren't quite so proficient at ignoring distractions. Child A was not finishing his work properly - the room was too noisy, it seems.  So he does it at home with no troubles: here, it is quiet.

The rest of my list will have to wait until I can remember it.

Book of the Week:

(ok, ok, TWO!)

*My Friend Flicka - which, believe it or not, I have never read - but is set in Wyoming!  By Laramie!

*Full Cupboard of Life - I love these books.  And there's a new one out - I need to go and read it, instantly.

Snapshots

I've never heard wild turkeys gobbling in the dawn before.  It's a very strange sound.  I think I would be able to appreciate it much more if it wasn't so early.

The old proverb - March comes in like a lion, out like a lamb - is wrong.  March, this year, came in like a lion and is leaving like one too.  We got probably 6 inches of snow total over 3 days this week out at the grounds.

Macaroni and cheese is a hazardous food.  Eat at your own risk.

Keep an eye out for the new 'DDT' chemical.  I cracked, with my own hands, more than five dozen eggs this week, and I do not ever remember in my entire lifetime's worth of egg-cracking, finding ones that crack so easily and badly - landing more eggshells in my pan than ever before.  It was impossible to break one neatly down the center - every single one splintered up and caved in.  Grr.

And after the snow, comes....

Drumroll...

the sun!

It is gorgeous out!  Mid-40s, brilliantly sunny.  :D

Sandy and Debbie and Jay are out walking around in all this; I am enjoying it from the couch, where I have been attempting to paint, in watercolor, an old-fashioned sailing ship.  The sails look ok, I guess...

It's so nice, I even think I will have to go for a walk.  

It's snowing!  

We're up at Bert and Jay's, and have a beautiful view to watch.  Both the snow coming down (absolutely mesmerizingly gorgeous) and the hillsides covered with it.  :)  You're right, Michelle, no one can decorate a tree better than God.

Debbie and Helen came over this way, this time - so we are enjoying their company.  I'm making supper - pasta primavera and bread.  And jello or something, haven't decided.  Sandy made chocolate chip cookies for dessert.  Mmm.

Next week, back to working full-bore at Ronan.  The cabinets are supposed to be coming, so that will be pretty exciting.  We won't have empty rooms anymore!

The only other exciting news is Me Sewing.  Ha.  I am not fond of sewing.  But, I thought, this little project - aprons from dishtowels and potholders - should be easy enough!  I can do this!  Uh huh.  First, you try sewing on seventy-hundred different machines!  The last and latest setback was the needle breaking, and me not being able to find where the stash of extras was.  The aprons are back in the bag waiting for my temper to cool.  ;)

Highly belatedly for Deana -

Yes!  I know Jim and Edwina.  :)  Tell them hello for me, please.

In other news, we've been busy painting, of which I will tell you all later.  Copy/Paste is Not Working properly right now, grr.  And I need to go get my box ready to send to my grandma.  So all the fun news will have to wait until I have more time.

Another Reason I Like My Mac, and some other stuff.

There is a town called Paradise in our field. It is very small and dingy and unParadisical looking, and every time we have driven through it, I have thought that it looks just exactly like one of those towns in one of those novels about militias and white supremists tucked away in desolate and mountainous parts. It's certainly mountainous. We almost never see any people around when we are going through, and I amuse myself by watching out the window and imagining them all watching us through their curtains or something. So the other day, I learned I was right all along! Or sort of right. Someone told us that apparently, if you take a turn off the main road and wind back up behind Paradise, there is a camp of such-like folks in there.
(P.S. Dear FBI agents who have nothing better to do than wander around the internet looking for mentions of the evil words 'militia' and 'white supremist'. I don't know anything more about this than I have stated up above, so there is no use whatsoever hunting me down to ask. Fyi.)

I have an Apple story to relate for those of you who are following the slow and intermittent saga of my switch from PC to Mac. We made some bookmarks for Teresa to take to the Orient with her. I still have these lingering notions lurking in my brain that Mac software can't interact with the rest of the world, so I didn't even think to suggest that I do it on my computer instead of on Sandy's. Besides, Sandy had all the pictures. So we get it all done (in Word) and properly arranged, four to a page, for printing, and then we go to print. Ha! Sandy's computer won't recognize the printer we are borrowing. It wants an installation disk which we don't have and don't feel like trying to find. Well, fine! we think. We'll put it on a memory stick and print it from /their/ computer! Riiiiight. Their computer won't recognize Sandy's memory stick. You got it. It wants an installation disk. (Side note: whoever on earth ever heard of a memory stick coming with an installation disk???) We back off, scratching our heads in perplexion. (If that's not a word, it ought to be.)
Ohhhhh, idea! We'll put the file on an SD card and stick it directly into the printer. Unfortunately, as it's not a photo file, the printer won't print it. BUT. It can be downloaded to their computer. Bingo, we think! Download happily, hunt up file, open it and... well. They haven't got Microsoft Word on their computer. But they do have Microsoft Works. That ought to work, right? It's made by the same company, same basic program, comes with the computer so it isn't anything fancy or extra... of course you could open a Word file in Works.
Wrong.
Finally, I have the last gasping effort sort of thought - well, let's try /my/ laptop. I know I have a program that will open Word files, and maybe I'll have the right driver for the printer. This takes a little bit more work, as I need to copy each bookmark into Paint and back to Word on Sandy's computer first (don't ask me why, that's /another/ enormously long story - suffice to say that doing that somehow convinces the computer that our single bookmark is indeed one single object), but it's not very long before I'm plugging her memory stick into my laptop, and trotting over to plug the printer in too. Hooray! We have Printage!  (I leave out a long, unrelated issue with the printer itself, which was sulking because of some jammed paper from an earlier copying job.) But the hardest part about doing it from my Mac?
It was too easy.
It was funny, really. I plugged Sandy's flashdrive into my USB port and waited for something to happen. You know, like how Windows will blink a little window at you saying 'new hardware detected' or the like.
Nothing happens. I start thumbing through files and folders and programs on this crazy computer wondering where on earth you /look/ for something like a USB port plug-in. Where's my Windows Explorer??? After some time of this, I realize that the file from the flashdrive has been sitting patiently on my desktop, in plain view (or would have been if it wasn't hidden behind open windows), just waiting for me. Heh heh.

Back to the Book List.

Book Number 4.  (I fear I am grossly ignoring the part of this that requested they be books that are important to you... these are just ones I liked.  :) Although... you /could/ say this one was important!  And it's all Dorlene's fault that I read it in the first place.

Eat Cake by Jeanne Ray.

It's a crack up.  I mean, any book that starts by telling you the main character (middle aged lady) was at a seminar where they told them to relax by imagining some place comforting and safe - and who imagines being inside a bundt cake, has /got/ to be good, right?  Well, it was.  :)  AND the best part is that there are recipes in the back.  :D  Which was a very good thing because by the time I'd read it just part way through, I wanted to Eat Cake in the worst way possible.  Imagine how tormented I would be if no cake (or cake recipe) had been available??

And even better?  They're good recipes.  I highly recommend the Upside Down Pear GingerBread Cake.  Highly.  It's almost better than chocolate.  I made it at least 4 times in the next month and a half.  (There is the important to me part.)

I wonder why my slideshow isn't working properly... 

As far as I can tell, all the pictures are formatted the same; the ones that aren't showing up aren't larger than the ones that are.

Hm.  Very strange.  I shall have to investigate.  But not now!

Got to go study!

Pedicure Secrets of the Ages Revealed!!!

I am truly brilliant. Either that, or this was all some great cosmic sort of accident, but I prefer thinking I'm brilliant. ;)

Oh, all right, the truth was that there was lots of snow, and I have no other boots (except my cowboy boots, which, as much as I love them and as well as they do for traction in snow, are not the sort of thing I want to wear for standing up in all day long - and ESPECIALLY not what I want to wear anywhere near where they might get paint splattered on them. My hiking boots, I don't care about so much. They are much older and will keep on working very nicely, paint-splatters or no.) Anyways. Here is the great secret, for those of you who are waiting breathlessly.

For wonderfully soft and smooth feets:

Wear hiking boots with wool socks for 4 weeks solid. Every day, except Sunday's which you can have off. All day long. And I do mean ALL day. Put them on before 7 am, and don't take them off until after 7 pm. (You don't have to use the same pair of socks all month, if you were wondering.) Walk around a lot and stand most of the day. Voila! At the end of the month, you will have smooth, lovely brand new feets! If they are also sore from all that standing, I take no responsibility.
Hooray!

Yay, new pictures!  Winter ones, even.  :)

We're all packed up and gone from Ronan, except Sandy and I, of course.  And even we're sort of gone - we're in Polson.  No more building until March.

We'll start gospel mtgs Sundays over in Hot Springs, and Wed, we hope, down in Charlo.  It'll be nice to flip things around and have the Sun. mtg on the other side of the field - easier for those folks to get to for a while.

Reading Anna's sister's blog has inspired me to post my all-time favorite engineer joke, heh heh.

There were four engineers driving down the road when their car broke down.  They pulled off to the shoulder and sat there pondering what might be wrong.  

The mechanical engineer said, "I heard a grinding sound just before things went wrong, I bet there's something wrong with the suspension."

The electrical engineer shook his head decidedly.  "No, no, didn't you see that puff of smoke?  I'm sure the wiring has shorted out!"

The chemical engineer snorted.  "You're both wrong," he stated.  "The engine was sputtering a little; I'm positive that something has contaminated the fuel."

The Microsoft Windows engineer listened to all of this, then spoke up hesitantly.  "I don't know much about cars," he said, "But why don't we try shutting the car off, everyone getting out, and then getting back in and turning it on again?"

DRUM ROLL!!!  Sorry, sorry, I'm a geek, but that cracks me up every time.

I have switched from Cook to Painter.  Also ScissorLift Driver (woohoo!).  Sandy and I spent all day yesterday and today up on the scissorlift priming the wood trim around the 'windows'.  They're not exactly windows - it's more a long stretch of see-through fiberglass sheeting with an equally long stretch of squares set in front of it that give the appearance of lots of windows.  Driving the scissorlift was lots more fun than priming!  Not sure what we're going to do tomorrow - we have 3 more squares to prime, and then all of them need painting - but they might be spraying texture and paint on the big wall, which would pre-empt us, I think.  If they do it.  Maybe they'll just spray in the kitchen area.

I also finally refound my pedometer and re-remembered about Walk Across America - and have started out on the Oregon Trail again!  This time, I'm determined to get farther than Wyoming!  Doing good while I'm here - after we leave (I think that will be Monday?  Or maybe Tuesday...), things could get worser fast.  Here, I /have/ to walk around.  ;)  

It made it up to 15 today.  Heat wave, no?  I think it's cold from the ground all the way up - the snow that falls is light and airy and icy; and stays in its separate crystals even on the ground.  Makes for even more beautiful - at night, every facet glints at you - every time you take a step, imagine a thousand tiny stars dying and being born again.  Absolutely gorgeous.

Dean told us about his travels today - Liked one thought he heard at convention in Australia:  The waterpots in John 2 were empty.  But they were upright, and they were available.  We might feel sometimes like empty pots, but if we're available, God can put into us the water of his word.  And then he performs the miracle of turning it to wine - joy, peace, etc.

Yesterday, it was 28 deg in our cookhouse when John got there to start the fire.  I don't know what time that was, but when I got there at about 6:40, there was ice in the sink where the water splashes from running all night, and the towel we keep to sop up the drips was frozen into shape around the wood...

(The water runs all the time to keep the hose from freezing, fyi.)  

It was -7 out.  It warmed up to 3.9.  Today, it was a whole 7 deg warmer - made it all the way up to 12!  Heatwave!!

Makes me glad I was cooking.  ;)  I got to spend all day next to a nice cozy woodstove.  :D

(I am just now wondering... what happened to my Book Post??  I did it, honest, I did, Jen.  A couple of days ago.  And I have just now noticed that it's not there....)

So, for my part of the fun, since I have been terribly lax taking pictures, and haven't really managed to keep you all updated with fun posts... The Menu!

Yesterday for lunch we had Shepherd's Pie.  Supper was Split Pea Soup.  

Today:  Lunch was potato corn chowder (provided by Mary) and chicago style deep dish pizza (I think I may have been the first person ever to make that pizza with deer burger in cast iron frypans in a wood stove oven... ;).  Supper was a roast 'Misc. Pork Item'.  I'm not sure what it was, but it had a bone in and looked rather like a ham before it was hammed.  Is that a word?

Tomorrow - beef roast and bean paella (presuming it works; I've got the beans soaking and the roast roasting) and leftovers for supper. 

You may all drool now.  ;)

It's beautiful out.  :)  The snow creaks underfoot, and there's nearly a full moon.  Last night, it was clear - you could stand in the middle of the snow and stare up at the sky.  For a few seconds until you froze.  ;)  But gorgeous!  And during the day - when there's sun... - there are a million little rainbow sparkles everywhere.

Ok, I'm supposed to list five books I've read in the last year (I hope it means LAST year, and not this one!  Not that I haven't read 5 books this year, but... I don't remember what they were!  For that matter, I'm having trouble remember five important-t0-me books I read last year...)

So maybe I'll do this in installments.

1.  The Ominvore's Dilemma.  

This is one of the nonfiction books I promised myself I would read to balance out all the fiction ones.  That is - not this specific book; I just told myself (sternly too) to get one interesting non-fiction book with each batch of other books.  This was one of them.  It had a nice shiny cover with pictures of food on it.

It ended up being absolutely fascinating.  The author decided to follow the line from the original food object to the meal it eventually became a part of.  He did this for a fast-food meal, an organic meal, and a hunter-gatherer meal.  It seems to me that there may have been another, but it apparently didn't register in my mind.  For the first - fast food - he bought a steer, sent it to a feed lot, visited the feed lot... etc.  For the second, he spent a week working on a farm in Virginia called Polyfarms.  It is an organic, self-sustainable farm.  For the third, he learned to hunt, gather wild mushrooms and cooked the meal himself.  Along the way, he tells you everything he learned.  Highly interesting.

2.  Harry Potter the Seventh.  

I am pleased.  All of my objections (and they were strenuous) at the end of #6 were resolved to my satisfaction.  I found a few new objections, but they are minor.  ;)

3.  Um.  I'm in the middle of reading something called Salt.  Does being in the middle count?  It's quite interesting also - a history of salt, basically.   How it was used and how it was made and all kinds of things about how important it was to ancient civilizations.  

still thinking on the others. 

(Jen, I found it!)

So last night, we went sledding.  :)  I haven't been sledding for, um, so many years, I can't even remember.  The last sledding party I do remember, I spent sitting in my living room with bronchitis.  

So my only excuse(s) for not really wanting to go was that A. I was tired.  And B. I'd forgotten how much fun it was.

We had a nice bonfire, and they dragged a sled trail straight down the hill to the driveway.  But most of us just ended up going along the driveway itself.  Sandy and I tried the straight trail a couple of times, but we couldn't keep going straight along it, and always ended in a snowbank far too soon.  The driveway was just right - packed down and icy, and a long slope with a nice curve at the beginning.  After I figured out how to steer (dig a heel in the way you want to go, and don't listen to all those kids who say all you have to do is lean!), it was a blast!  If you did it just right, you could go all the way to the end of the drive, then make the turn at the mailbox and keep on down the road.  I never tried to see if I could have gotten to Leroy and Lindy's driveway (1/2 mile down) - I didn't want to have to walk back!

We didn't start until probably 7:30 - so it was dark, with just the yard light and the fire.  And not too cold - about 28-30, I think.  So you were warm enough with just walking.  I'm pleased with my new coat; all I had on was a turtleneck, no sweater or anything, and I was perfectly comfortable.

Several families with kids came - so there were at least 10 children; and most of us - and even Robert and Julia got onto sleds!  Loren mostly pushed the kids off - racing down the driveway, and sprawling on the ice as the sleds went racing on around the corner.  Donovan and Eldon built two enormous snow-people: a man and a woman next to each other.  Afterwards, there was cocoa and brownies and popcorn in the cookshack; and smores if you wanted to roast them over the fire.  I didn't stay for much of that; my bed was sounding altogether too welcoming.

Snow!  I love snow.  :)  And we've got somewhere around 10 inches of it.  I think.

Anyways, it's beautiful.  I should take some pictures, I should, and put them on my nifty little scrolling slideshow down there.

We've been painting like madwomen, with the result that by the time I actually stagger upstairs and fall onto my bed; I haven't enough energy or brain left to write any updating posts.  Instead, I stare blankly at the screen for a while, pretend to read my emails, and then sag offline.

But the painting (ok, one painting project; we won't mention the others) is almost done!  I should take a picture of that, too.  I will, I really will, but I might wait until the border is up.  Which should be tomorrow.  :)  All that's left to do is a little touch-up and a few corners and edges.  

Our study this week was Matt 6.  The thought I especially liked from last night was about the verse that says, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.."  It was just said that we all probably know the importance of seeking the kingdom of God first, and we try to do this.  But perhaps we feel like we have a fairly good idea of what the righteousness of God is - and so we aren't seeking for it.  But in any given situation, we don't know everything about it - all that's going on in the background, or in people's hearts - and so perhaps what we think we know isn't right.  We need to be seeking for the righteousness of God each time, because God does know all the sides of every situation.

Test (no longer)

Erm.  Well, we're back at Ronan.  :)  I was doing a test and can't see immediately how to erase the test post, and thought that I should do a brief update in the space instead, except, of course, my brain instantly has gone blank.

So.  More update later.