Life in Weyers Cave

David posted a bunch of pictures on his blog of the Colorado mountains where he has ostensibly been hiking. If you got a postcard and couldn't read the writing on the signature, but the message was beautiful printed, it was most definitely from him. Be sure to leave a comment.

I pulled onto the offramp to get off the interstate to go to my house, just a quarter mile away. I noticed the license in front of me was a friend I had hadn't talked to in years. But she still had quite a clunker of a truck! She turned and waved and she hadn't changed a bit. Why are some people exempt from getting older? It isn't fair! The traffic cleared. She sat there. And sat. And sat. Finally she got out. Her truck was stalled. I put on my emergency blinker. Another girl stopped her car and the two of us pushed her off the interstate ramp out of traffic. She started calling on her cell for someone to help. An older gentleman drove by with an offer of jumper cables. He got it started, but one look at the battery with all of its salt deposits showed it was badly deteriorated. I told her about our neighbor who does a great job with cars, and charges less per hour since we are out in the country. She made it to our neighbor's, dropped it off, and walked home with me. S...

And some days are not. David is in Colorado. Three of the kids called. :) I diddled on the Skyline Literacy computers (government reports, bleah), moved some stuff off the hard drive of a dead computer, made some appointments, edited some slides I had digitized, burned some disks, moved Martha's files onto her computer, and worked for three and a half hours at the softball concession stands. I had week old leftovers. But life is good anyway.

Not me, David. He's in Colorado. Happy Father's Day. He did invite me, but he hikes or goes to meetings all day, and I'm not happy being alone in a strange city with nothing at all to do. I like to have someone to do things with, unless I'm home when I have plenty to do alone. Yesterday I got up really early to take him to the airport. Then I went back home and feel asleep until after 9. Yowsers! I normally get a LOT done between 6 and 9. But I've been more tired lately. I paid bills and dressed and was off to the Museum for five hours, then had dinner at 6 for the missionaries on the back deck since they aren't allowed in the house without a guy around. Martha helped me cook it. I threw brownies in the oven as we started to eat, then we took the brownies and brought them over to Martha after dinner to thank her for the chicken. We grabbed Bill from across the street and gave them the grand tour of Weyers Cave. It took over an hour. It was hands on with cows. I ...

Somebody stole our records (along with lots of others) from some medical database in Virginia. It was on national news. SSN, credit card, we don't know what all they got. We got a letter five weeks later saying we needed to call the credit reporting company to put a fraud alert on our accounts. I called, and got some lady in India who tried to sell me a 15 dollar a month policy for each of us. I wonder if Equifax was the one who stole the records? They must be making a killing on this!

Faraday! Rawr! Wakes me up at 6 for water. I dutifully turn it on, wait for her to drink, turn it off and go back to bed. 6:30. She wants more. I hide under the covers. She headbumps me and meows without stopping. Nibbles at my hand where I am holding the sheet. I tell her to bother her dad. She ignores me. I finally get up, walk to the bathroom, and when she jumps on the sink, I shut the door on her and go back to bed. She meows and bumps the door. She also finds a hairdryer cord she can knock against the door to make more noise. She is relentless. I get up, open the bathroom door, and turn on the water. She jumps down and walks to the other bathroom. I turn on the water in the other bathroom, but she stands by her food dish. There is a quarter cup of food in it. I put in more. She sniffs at the food and walks off. Now she is ignoring me. Cats!

I didn't cut my own hair, because I was perfect. Except in two places: the bathtub and the dinner table. I SCREECHED the entire bath if Mommy tried to wash my hair because I was petrified it would get in my eyes. At one point, she was so proud of herself because she found a platter type of plastic stretchy thing with a hole in the middle that she could put over my head and it would fit to my skull and she could just wash the hair on top of it. But I still screeched and tore it off because a drip of water made it through. The dinner table was just as bad. I was the world's worst eater. She would BEG me to eat ANYTHING and I just didn't like food. I just cried and said I wouldn't eat. I would eat chicken (legs only), peas, corn, mashed potatoes, spaghetti (no sauce), cream of mushroom soup, chicken noodle soup, and peanut butter sandwiches (no jelly). Doughnuts, eggs, milk, Life cereal -- and that was about it. Which is amazing because Mom majored in Home Ec in college an...

I enjoy looking at old photos of other people. These were taken around 1960-61.  

First of all, I understand I must explain something. Salt Lake City is a very nice city, and it was only the lake itself I was referring to when I said it smelled sometimes. As I understand, this is mostly when it has been raining a lot, which it has been. As I flew home, I saw bands of yellow on the lake which are sulfur deposits. Sulfur = rotten egg smell. The rain brings these out. Also, the lake is, in general, a dirty whitish color and really not very pretty. Personally, I prefer green trees to gray dirt. Which is why I like our mountains better. The top parts of the mountains are rather pretty, but the base is full of developments that are not hidden by trees. In fact, as you drive along I-15 through the center of the valley, it is totally flat and there are no trees along the sides of the road to balance out the buildings and plants and junkyards and signs. Of course, it is a desert. My point is, Virginia wins the beauty contest hands down. As for the people, they are the salt o...

What? I haven't posted since Saturday? Where does the time go? Nothing about conference or the Literacy dinner or the computer repairs or drive to mom's or plane trip out to Salt Lake? Bummer! Where does the time go?!? Today I woke up here at Cathy's house in a guest room fit for a princess, took a lovely shower in a huge shower that I could put both my arms out at once and not touch the walls, and then drove down to Lehi to visit my friend Pat. We had a wonderful visit and lunch. Then I drove north to Salt Lake to see Karen and her family. What a treat! We went shopping at a jobber type place that was huge, then dinner at a place called Chuck-O-Rama. Karen has a newborn and two older girls aged 6 & 9. I haven't seen them in four years. Her husband is the one that I go to with computer problems because he always knows everything. I could write about this wonderful family and bore you ad nauseum, but they are like family to me and I really loved being there and it hu...

There is a lady who was on national news because she is encouraging people to do ONE nice thing for someone else each week. ONE! Somehow, this is news? Or something to strive for? Whatever happened to "Do a good turn daily" or "Have I done any good in the world today? .... If not, I have failed indeed"? I think the last day I didn't do something for someone else I was laid up in bed. Of course, it helps to have family, but even without them, there are lots of things to do. This morning, I got up early and mailed 60 homemade postcards, took Allen's gun over to a friend to have it cleaned (getting it out of its hiding spot was quite an ordeal!), visited for half an hour, and am working on scanning slides for a veteran friend in his 80's. I have my pile of food by the door to give to the food bank and am working on a package of school supplies to go to a refugee school in Africa. I got a hand-written thank you letter from one of my customers. That made me f...

Faraday was tremendously ill, didn't eat, threw up constantly for 24 hours, wouldn't drink, stayed out of sight, and I thought we might lose her. But about five last night she started perking up and, although she has only eaten a bit, she is running around and nagging for her running water from the sink. In fact, she got me up at 4 this morning pestering me because she was thirsty. I had woken up once to answer the phone, another time for a bad storm, and then couldn't sleep, so it was a bad night. Grrr. But I am glad she is feeling better. Stupid computer (not mine) giving me a ialmrnt5.dll error and the monitor either switches to lowest resolution or I get a dreaded blue screen. I reloaded the OS and got three warnings about the dll and it is still happening. But before I couldn't do updates or download files, had to put them in through a USB drive. And I reloaded the dll, but Dell doesn't have it on their site for this Inspiron 6000. Grumble, grumble. I also had ...

David has gone to Jacksonville to visit his parents for a week. The cat is sick again. I am grateful that Skyler came and changed my bulbs and finished up on the light for me. When Scott finished, I didn't have the right bulbs and the ones we put in were too strong. I didn't want to burn the ballast out again! David and I went out to L'Italia last night. We get half price coupons at restaurant.com. They have just remodeled and it is very high class for Harrisonburg. Going out to eat is something David and I really enjoy doing. We usually go out once a week, and a nice place once a month.

The Hispanic store turned out to be a Thai store. But no, THAT was next door, so it was a Texaco gas station with a Food Mart in it run by Pakistanis. Fortunately, there was no language problem. The customers were all Hispanic but the owners were fluent in Spanish. Instructions said it should take 45 minutes. Yeah, right. One download was 40 minutes and another was 30. But first I had to get all kinds of numbers and registrations off the old one, then take it apart and put the new one in. The old one was MUCH smaller so the new one didn't fit. I did draw the line at climbing through the ceiling to replace the LAN cable. One of the owners builds computers for a living so I left a few little things for him. But it was only an hour and 45 minutes, so not too bad. Then again, when I see how much I earned for it, I think I will be sad. Then I stopped by Finders Keepers where SOMEtimes they have real (or as real as we get around here) Belgian chocolate for a good price. I hit the jackpot...