Living The Wild Life--Part 1

We went in search of big horn sheep. 

In a truck.  We don't have our own truck (yet) so we went in the back seat.  With experienced big horn sheep sighters in the front seat.

A definite advantage of searching from the back seat of a truck is that you are relatively safe from grizzly bears. 

A definite disadvantage is that it is more difficult to shoot pictures through the window of the scenery flying by.  But the scenery is just too amazing not to try. 

It might have been easier if I had been sharing the back seat with a more cooperative soul.  One who was interested in sighting big horn sheep. 

Or even in the scenery. 

Mostly, he just went because I made him.  Because I love spending time with him.  Because it is good for his soul to get out.  And for the lunch. 

He got the window seat, because he has the longest legs. 

Good news, Mom, I found the cup holders.  Bad news?  They were between my legs. 

THEMES SAGE

Deuteronomy (finally!) and Joshua. Check and Check.
Not exactly speed reading here. 
The STP still plowing through Deuteronomy. 
The Goob finished the Samuels. 

Lent me Your Ears

Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers.
Note to self:  Need to get a Bible with bigger print.

Signs Winter Has Gone On Long Enough...

...at least half an acre of hell has evidently frozen over.
Did you miss my camera as much as I did?

On My Way To Where the Air is Sweet

Yesterday at Dodge City Federal I was stuffing statements (because I am just that valuable to the company) and I noticed that one of our customers lives on Sesame Street--in Worland, WY.  Which made me want to call them and ask if they could tell me how to get there. 

I restrained myself.  If I really need to know, I can use the STP's GPS. 

I gave the STP the GPS as a Christmas present.  It is a testimony to my ineptitude as a gifter.  He uses it to download audiobooks and listen while he travels.  Because here is what travel in Wyoming looks like. 

The GPS lady doesn't have anything to say. 

Turn right in 169.8 miles.

Gotta Love This

Figured out how to go directly from my camera to the STP's computer without downloading anything.  This of course does not solve my picture overload on my computer.  Decided I may actually be a hoarder.  Of digital images.  That blurry picture of my feet?  Never know when I might need that.  Four thousand pictures of piles of Wyoming dirt?  Pretty sure I don't need them all, but 'delete' has such a severe and final sound to it.  Who doesn't have a dozen pictures of pancakes shaped like snowmen, hearts, and fireworks? 

This eliminates my urgent need to actually do something with my pictures.  Until the card in my camera is full...

Extreme Curling

What if curling was invented in Why-oming by bored ice fishermen?  Then the size of the 'house' would be determined by the size of the lake.  And there would be holes randomly bored in the ice.  And you could sweep your opponents' stone into a hole and watch it plummet to the bottom of the lake on your fish finder.  All that and wild and crazy pants.  Imagine the possibilities.

Also, Scott Hamilton may be a remarkable skater and a tremendous human being, but he should not be allowed to be a figure skating commentator.  Oh, ah, and uh are mouth sounds-not commentary.  I'm just saying.

Contest, What Contest?

Clearly, the giveaway bribe contest to garner comments was a rousing failure.  By the fourth comment, my faithful readers were trying to give away my giveaway.  So I am awarding the Why-oming shaped cookie cutter to Lil' Chickie.  Just send me your full name, address, and telephone number where I can reach you, and how you know my mother, and I will get that right out to you. If the prize is not claimed in one week, I will send the cutter to the Slovakian princess who agreed to take it if no one else wanted it.  Love you all.

Open to Suggestions

At the suggestion of FaceBook, I have added a new friend this morning.  One of my options for my other friend requests is 'Add to List'.  I thought this might be a good idea so that my wannabe friends weren't just hanging out there.  It's not that I'm not considering your requests, just that I haven't reached a decision yet.  But when I clicked "Add to List' FaceBook told me that I did not have a list.  Go figure. 
FaceBook's other suggestion this morning is that I buy a Penn State vacation home just 4 miles from Beaver Stadium.  If I did, I would give all my FaceBook friends  my brother Michael a key so he could use it anytime.  Because I think today is his birthday.  (Or it could have been the 17th.  I'm pretty sure it is a prime number between 10 and 20 in February.  This is what happens to a brain over 50 years old.)  In honor of his birthday I would like to post this poem which (may I suggest?) is the most romantic poem ever written about prime numbers. I stole plaigarized copied borrowed published this poem from the blog of a friend of a FaceBook friend of mine.

1.15.2010


Prime

That song comes on the radio,
and I bite my lip
and think of you.
Baby, we're like
the two factors
of a prime number.
Together we make something unique,
a combination unable to be recreated
by any two others.
Girl, I'm like the number,
and you are

the one.

If I were young and single, I would accept a FaceBook suggestion to be friends with this guy.

Lenten Observance

Genesis--check.

I Have A Friend

I still have 16 FaceBook friend requests that I am thinking about.  I can't figure out how to get to my FaceBook home page/wall except by accident.  But today in my mailbox I got a card.  From someone I actually went to Penn State with.  And on the cover is a picture of two old ladies.  Sitting on a bench (probably in the quad).  Asking the question, "Is it 'butt naked' or 'buck naked'?"   And I love having a friend like that. 

You Be Spock, I'll Be Kirk

When I signed onto FaceBook, it suggested three friends.  My middle brother, his wife, and a pastor who went to the same camp that I did 23 years ago.  (Not in that order.)  Based only on my name. And a fake birth date.  I went back later and edited my profile.  I put in my high school, my college, my real birthdate.  Today I had 15 people who wanted to be my friend.  And a bunch more suggested friends.  Some names I recognized.  Others were based on this:  She went to Penn State.  Oh, well, that is a great basis for a friendship.  (If we both lived in a non-English speaking foreign country, perhaps.)
I confirmed one friend, and then I panicked.  Is there a response to a friend request besides confirm?  I want a choice that is "Are you sure?"  Are you absolutely positive you want to be my friend?  Because I am not a very good friend.  I'm not good at keeping in touch.  I seldom remember your birthday.  I'm bad at gifting.
I will rarely have a fight with you, or say things behind your back.  I'll just move on.  I don't replace you.  I'm not malicious.  It is just that I have to make new friends in new places and that takes all my friend energy. 
Once I had a really good friend.  And she moved on.  She stopped calling me.  Conversations were strained and then she stopped taking my calls.  I showed up unannouced at her house one day and knocked on the door.  She let me in because her kids were home.  (If they hadn't been there I think she would have hidden behind the couch until I went away.)  Can't we still be friends?  And she said , "We will be as good of friends as we have ever been."  Which it turned out was the Star Trek equivalent of saying, "I am not, and never have been, your friend." 
So I don't know how to handle my FaceBook friend requests. 
I could use a friend.  I'm just not sure I can be a friend.  And I'm not sure that FaceBook is the entity that should be choosing my friends.
(I facebook friended my brother.  You don't really have the same choices when it comes to family.)

Chief Science Officer

STP: Time to get up, Goob.
Goob:  Hey Dad, is the science fair today?
STP:  Yeah, it is.
Goob:  No, it's not.  Science is always good.

The Goob's project is about something about colorblindness.  I have not seen it.  It will be a winner in the category:  "Parents Don't Care." Or maybe:  "Student is a Fourth Child."  Hopefully it will not be beside the project that was completed by the parents of the child who always wins the pine wood derby.

Off The (Facebook) Wall

Brenda changed her Hometown. · Comment ·LikeUnlike


Brenda is married. · Comment ·LikeUnlike

Brenda and Dave Havener are now friends. · Comment ·LikeUnlike

Brenda joined
 
So I am trying out facebook at the urging of a fellow pastor's wife. 
So far this morning I joined.  Made one friend. Married him and moved. 
Facebook is great.  It took me much longer than that in real life to accomplish all those things. 
What I have been unable to do is find the friend I am really looking for.
And what is with the like/unlike?  Is that like check yes or no?

New Editor

Trying out the new editor at the suggestion of the Sovakian Princess.  Because I have ironing, laundry, dusting, vacuuming, reading, sorting, filing, bills to pay, parent teacher conference, nothing else to do today.  Oh, I may be a big fan of the strikethrough.

Lofty Is NOT Real

Once, in a former life, I went to puppet school. I had a two year old who glued pictures to the wall, emptied tissue boxes and toothpaste tubes, and dipped cats in the toilet. I also had a brand new baby girl who cried 23 1/2 hours a day. I went to puppet school to get out of the house. I took a friend with me. She had just lost her oldest child, her only son, in a car accident. I went to puppet school to get her out of the house as well. We signed up for a special two-for-one deal, which meant we both got to go to class, but we only got to make one puppet. (As a bonus, we discovered together the joy of a hot glue gun and bought one to share.) We made Esther Sue. She had pink hair tied in ponytails and said outrageous things to the STP that were unacceptable for the Pastor's wife to say. My friend ended up with the hot glue gun and Esther Sue ended up with us. My children do not remember life without puppets.
They've watched the puppets, performed with the puppets, know how to make a puppet enter and exit a stage, and how to make a puppet's mouth move. (Because ...you..don't..talk.. like.. this.) They have taken the puppets to Vacation Bible School, church camp meetings, family reunions, and missions trips. They were there when a skunk infiltrated the puppet suitcase.
I still have a box of puppets in the attic. Esther Sue is not in the box. (Hopefully, there are no critters in the box either.) I think she just got worn out along the way and replaced by new and improved puppets.
I have followed a couple of bloggers for several years. Don't know them personally. Just like their writing style, their content, and okay, I basically cyber-stalked their lives. One built a new house in the country and got a part time job at a garden center. Her mother had puppets. The other one had six kids and wrote about times they emptied the toothpaste tube and dipped things in the toilet. She eventually got a book deal. In the past month the first one became an athetist and the second one got a divorce. Their lives no longer hold the same appeal for me that they once did. But they made me think.
And so I want to say to all of my children, for the record, that the puppets are NOT real. But God is. And for all the stupid parenting things I did, and for all the tooth fairy notes you received, and all the coleslaw in your lives, and the unsupervised camping and boating trips you went on, I am sorry. (For those of you who are already out of the house it may be too late to second guess my parenting skills. Pity the Goob with new and improved parents.) But, hopefully along the way, you learned how to think for yourselves and have your own relationship with God and love the people around you. And hopefully you won't get to be 40 years old and act like you have fluff in your heads. Because I didn't mean to raise puppets.

I Have a Map For That

Time again for a giveaway. A little late-winter thing to brighten our days.
So you know (I'm pretty sure my high school English writing teacher never recommended starting a sentence with , "So, you know...") those maps that follow people around above their heads? The red and blue ones. I usually have a red one. But the other day I was trying to describe a place to the southwest of here where the Goob goes to the orthodontist. And I couldn't think of the name of the town. So I switched out my red map for a map of the State of Wyoming. And I proceeded to trace the location of the town in the air above my head. And the native Wyomingite I was talking to was guessing:
NW: Cody?
ME: No, no. Down farther.
NW: Cheyenne? Laramie?
ME: No, no. Down and over here.
NW: Casper?
ME: Look, this is your state. Even I know Casper is this way and I am going this way. (Followed by more emphatic hand waving in front of my map.) Go through Wind River Canyon and then turn this way. To the left. ('Left' is one of those basic map reading terms that almost ended my marriage in Chattanooga.)
And then we realized that she was facing me and looking at the map backwards. And the problem with a clear map of Wyoming is that is looks the same from the front as from the back.
And it's a good thing I didn't have the map upside down, because who would know?
So the giveaway is a metal cookie cutter shaped exactly like the state of Wyoming. So you can bake your own map of Wyoming and eat it too.
All you have to do is leave a comment. If I already gifted a similar cookie cutter to you, you are not eligible to win this one, but feel free to leave me a comment. Comments also brighten late-winter days.
(And the Goob's orthodontist in in Lander, in case you're the kind of person who is still wondering about that.)

E-smile

E-filed the taxes yesterday. Woot-woot! Now I can move on to other projects.
The first of which needs to be clearing away the mess I made getting ready to e-file the taxes.
Did I mention a new table and six chairs and two quarts of paint?

Picture This

This blog is getting desperate for some pictures. I have several I am wanting to share. But still no progress on the software download and excess picture transfer. Too bad, so sad.

So, here, direct from the STP's image file, is a pseudo-map of the Grand Canyon. (There are very limited choices in the STP's image files. Unless you are interested in power point backgrounds from recent sermons.) I am so tempted to just download my software to the STP's computer and start dumping my pictures onto it. (I have already started blogging from here, whenever he is not home.)

But I know he will find out and be less than happy with me if I do that. He is quite tolerant of my cluttering my own spaces. Much less when his spaces are involved. So I refrain. But I would like to get some credit for refraining.

Also, we are planning a trip to the Grand Canyon around Memorial Day. You should come. I plan to take a lot of pictures. But don't count on ever seeing them.

Smucker Up

Invited a couple to join us for supper last evening. They volunteered to bring something. The STP suggested rolls or bread. Because 'bringing the rolls' in our world is a minimal effort contribution. They showed up with a loaf of homemade white bread still warm from the oven. They left the leftovers. I went to bed early so I could get up and have homemade bread with butter and jelly for breakfast.
The Goob packs a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every day in his lunch. For ever we have used the store-brand or generic grape jelly. But last week the STP shopped and Smuckers was on sale. So he bought it. And even the Goob commented how much better it is than the usual jelly. I guess the commercial is right. With a name like Smuckers, it has to be good. Cause it was delicious. Took me back to breakfasts at Aunt Ag's kitchen counter.
I'm already planning to have salad and bread for lunch. Can you eat lunch at 10:00am? Or can I just be Hobbit-like and have second breakfast?

I'm So Bad

at cooking that I can even mess up a blog entry about it.

Call Me Jewel OR Is It Summer Yet?

Watched Julie & Julia last evening. So my name doesn't start with 'J'. I still have a lot in common with those ladies. I married a great guy. I moved somewhere where I don't quite fit in. I lack a real direction in my life. I love to eat. I have a blog. I'm known for my cooking.
No, really. Just last week I volunteered to take a meal to someone following surgery and they expressed surprise, if not delight. "Oh," they said, "We didn't think you cooked." A common misconception. I do not cook in the summer. And I do not cook well most other seasons. And that is pretty well known.
Talked to Amidala after supper the other night. Told her there was one piece of garlic bread left on the table. "Is it black?" she asked. Of course it was. Found out last month they sell garlic bread at the store in little heat and eat bags. Who knew?
Yesterday I worked 4 hours at the IBHCF and 4 hours at Dodge City Federal. When I was ready to leave the bank, I could not find my coat. After some inquiry, we decided I hadn't worn a coat. I was surprised, because it was about 20 degrees outside. When I went out to get in my car, I couldn't find my car. I forgot the STP came and got it to drive to visit at the hospital in the medium sized town about an hour from Dodge City. So I had to walk home, without a coat. (Okay, I live about two small town blocks from the bank.) It is scary what I will be like when I am really old. (Evidently the definition of 'really old' is about 20 years older than I am currently.) Decided there is one thing my children will not have to worry about when I am really old and suspiciously senile: What if I forget to turn the stove off. My plan is to retire somewhere where it is summer year round, and I will never even think to turn the stove on.
I did get a few ideas for celebrating Valentine's Day from Julie and Julia.