Arizona Renaissance Festival

Did you ever want to run off and join the circus as a kid? Well okay neither did I, but I always heard that phrase and now I think I may understand it a bit better. My younger son and I have attended the Arizona Renaissance Festival for the past two years. This year we even went twice, spent entirely too much money, spent about 4 hours on the road each day to get there and back, stayed from opening to close each time, returned home exhausted, dirty and TOTALLY happy with the experience.

This may be the only event in Arizona with reasonably priced good food. We did learn to stay away from the turkey legs and steak on a stake, but that's because we're from the south and we demand some form of seasoning on our meats. You're just not going to convince me they didn't at least have some salt and pepper during the Renaissance. However, the shrimp and chips were plentiful and cost less than a burger and fries at BK. Affording the food will not be an issue when you go and I want you to GO.

I want you to drop your grown up pants, don a pair of tights and a peasant shirt or something and just GO. Remove that broomstick from your situpon and use it to fly to your local Ren Fest. Truly, your face will not crack into slivers if you smile or actually laugh. I'm sorry, but someone duct taping a bunch of firecrackers to their chest, using a juggling torch to light them, and then having the audience douse the embers with water balloons is funny stuff!

This is not Cirque du Soleil, and if dressing up to go see jugglers is your idea of a grand time I sort of pity you. Ren Fest is earthy, gritty, broad daylight entertainment. There are puffs of smoke, usually from someone lighting their chest on fire with black cats, but no concealment, no dreamscape. The entertainers are real, not ghostly shapes on a stage with no personality. Well, okay the Cast in Bronze guy is kind of weird in his costume, but I'll put up with his somewhat disturbing beak in order to listen to him play the carillon. How many of you have even heard of a carillon, much less seen one being played live?? They're quite rare these days.

Many things at Ren Fest are rare these days. How many harpists do you meet outside your city symphony? Trust me, the harp is best enjoyed in the shade of a tree whose leaves are whispering in a mild breeze. How about listening to a harpsichordist on a patch of soft grass? Think heavy metal gets your heart pounding? Try bagpipes and drums that vibrate your soul. Then again, there is that carillon played as rarely a carillon has been played.

True, the Renaissance Festival has little to do with the actual Renaissance and if you want to be a snobby stuffed shirt about that, stay home, but I can think of little else that would inspire great writing, great thought and great art than some of the music you will find at Ren Fest. Exactly how much fun would it be to sit around and watch people think or pretend to compose, or, god forbid, pretend to carve the statue of David (which would be heresy)?

Rather than people pretending to recreate the great works of the Renaissance, you will instead find much frivolity and excess. They will clap you in irons if you so desire (and indeed some of the costumes did look more like medieval dominatrix garb) but there is jousting, rope ladder climbing, games of skill like axe and knife throwing, great music and entertainment. The street performers and stage performers are all friendly and make you feel part of this 30 acre town. The buildings are beautifully constructed and, if you're a Harry Potter fan, make you feel like you stepped onto the streets of Hogsmeade. This fact alone, well okay and the harp music, had me wondering how I could train one of the horses and volunteer us to wander the festival streets dressed up every weekend next spring. In essence, I wanted to run off and join the circus!

Just some fun stuff from PBR Glendale Invitational

Holy flaming bull heads Batman! This is not a rodeo! THIS is the PBR! (for my friend Stockyard Queen). At least they didn't get the Border Patrol to try and ride spooky horses past the bull heads this year. When did they paint them silver?

The bullfighters of the PBR doing the dangerous job of distracting the bull so that the rider can get away safely. These fellows are amazing to watch in action.

According to my 200 some odd photos, the bulls often don't fall for the bullfighter tactics and go after the rider anyway. Here, Valderon lights out across the arena, the bull lights out after Valderon, and everyone else lights out after the bull.

It kinda looks like everyone is chasing that Brazilian dude.

You know how they talk about "the rider covered that bull"? Well, if this rider's missionary position is any indication, the bull is about to cover him (in the language of horse breeders). Darned if we didn't get home in time to watch the telecast and hear Hummer report on this ride. His exact words were "That bull had his way with him!" Great job Hummer,

you made us send our coffee through our noses.

I think Lohstroh is pretending to be a wounded mountain lion on a canned hunt.

Bet the bull is laughing.

Some great buckoffs from the PBR Glendale Invitational

Bet he's good at Twister too.

What must go through a rider's mind at this moment...

Rider should have gotten points for Levitation.

I don't remember the name of the bull but it should have been Trampoline.

Some of the great bulls from PBR Glendale Invitational

Mad Max

Guilherme Marchi riding Stubby

Valderon's event winning ride on Speckled Ivory

(did you hear us all BOO at the low score?!)

Dustin Elliot

(damned good ride for 7.79 seconds)

Our new blog

We created a new blog about raising Miniature Horses. If you're thinking of getting a mini or know someone getting a mini, go here: http://allaboutminihorses.blogspot.com/

Dancing with the... umm... stars.

Okay, now that they've voted off the people with any real claim to fame, what have we got left and what reality show would they be appropriate for in the future?

A. Shawn Johnson: Little Magilla Gorilla Jr. She's a gymnast. I'd never heard of her before I started watching Dancing with the Stars to see Ty Murray. To be a gymnast you have to perform to music. You have to deal with choreography. Not ONCE has this kid looked like anything other than a muscle bound gymnast on that dance floor. There has been no grace there and those arm movements, impressive in a gym or boxing ring, have no business getting anything greater than a 7 in a dancing competition. Perhaps they'll develop a show called "Boxing with muscle bound children destined to be severely arthritic" just for her. I have a hard time believing that her "fan base" is larger than Lil' Kim's.

B. Melissa Rycroft: The town cryer. She's a professional cheerleader (that's dance, of a sort, people). According to her own little bio video for DWTS she's been taking dance since she was a toddler. UMM.. Did I miss them change the name of the show to Professional Dancers Dancing with Professional Dancers? As far as I can tell, her only claim to fame is that she lined up with a bunch of other gold diggers (yes, that's what you call that) and got dumped on national television. WTH did she expect? You don't find true love when you're choosing out of a field of ONE so she's either a gold digger or a moron, either way she's not a star but she is a professional dancer. So, perhaps ABC will invent a vehicle for Melissa called "Are there people who stupidly think that someone can actually fall in love on command for a national audience or are they just gold diggers?".

C. Gilles Marini: Actor, at least that's what they tell me, I've never heard of him. To be fair, this season of DWTS has been my first foray into network television since my friend Cheryl's TV show got cancelled and before that Frasier. So if all the acting you're famous for is bad network TV, chances are good I haven't heard of you. I don't know how much acting training Gilles has had, but well rounded actors have had at least some dance because it's hard to get acting work and the more entertainment skills you have, the more marketable you are, and if you went to school for your acting you damned sure had dance classes. Perhaps a show for Giles called "Best Dancers Ever Beaten by Height Impaired, Clunky Boxing Gorillas" would be suitable.

Of all the trumped up undeserving pieces of garbage I have ever sat through, this one takes the cake. I should have stopped after watching Ty's Lindy Hop because once again that dance was GREAT and worth watching several times, but nooooo I watched to see Gilles take home the trophy. Never in my wildest dreams did I think little miss "OH was I supposed to be graceful??? I thought I was just supposed to out muscle Mike Tyson and then stick the landing!" win. Whatever...

Newer video of the baby!

She gets stronger every day and she's giving her momma and me more grey hairs.

FINALLY! It's a girl!

Dachsund Garden

My neighbors, the dog ranchers, asked me to do a birthday cake for a friend of theirs. This fellow was kind enough to come over with my neighbor while I was in Louisiana last summer to help her clean out and fill the water buckets in my barn. I'd never met him. When the opportunity to do a cake for him came along I was more than happy to to go all out for the neighbors who have done so much for me in the past hard year, as well as repay the debt owed to their friend.

Here is the finished cake. I call it "The Dachsund Garden". Yes, I made those dachsunds myself. I can't blame them on my kindergarten aged child, but only because I don't have one. I'm still not the Ace of Cakes. Duff's "people" make modeling with gum paste look easy too.

Dancing with the rodeo star!

I just have to put a note on the blog regarding how impressed I am with Ty Murray's dancing. I was already impressed with Ty. We've been impressed a long time with his cowboy capabilities. His sense of humor totally cracks us up. But never, nope not once EVER, did I expect he'd wow me in the field of ballroom dance.

No, he's no Gilles Marini... yet, but Gilles hasn't been a cowboy his whole life either. The physical movements of men who do hard physical labor are going to be quite different than young men who have had a softer life. We're not even going to go into all the broken body parts Ty has had in his lifetime that are bound to be stiff.

Each week Ty has rallied and improved until this week's Lindy Hop had us absolutely whooping and cheering. His score should have been at least 9s straight across. Especially if they give "Lil' Kim" (does she have a real name?) whose leaden, blubbery Tango got a 10 from one judge (that judge needs to go home and watch more old movies to know what a real Tango looks like... or just watch Gilles version). Honestly. Watching the scoring for Lil' Kim (has she got a condition that causes the weird mouth expressions or does she always have something stuck in her teeth?) week after week reminds me of some of the bloated scoring that goes on in bull riding. Melissa Rycroft (exactly how is she a star?) got scored too high for her Lindy Hop (although her other dances have taken my breath away). I saw many more bloopers in her dance than in Ty's, but, well, as bull riding fans, we know all about inflated scores.

Of course, unless the fairies of passion and grace liberally sprinkle Ty in the coming weeks, he doesn't have a realistic chance of winning the dancing competition, but he's got more try than any of the other competitors and certainly more talent and grace already than I'd have given him credit for 3 weeks ago. God knows he's got more talent than all but perhaps 4 of the other competitors including Lil' Kim (I suspect substance abuse for some of her facial gestures and expressions).

I hope Ty manages to last for a few more weeks. If he continues dancing like he danced tonight he easily deserves to be in the top 4. The sad fact of the matter is that someone like the at first amusing, but now stomach turning, Steve Wozniak has legions of geeks out there repeatedly deleting their cookies and casting millions of votes for Team Geek. Not because he's trying as hard as any of the others to improve or to actually learn, but because they think he's a geek like them. Got news for you geekmos, he's no longer a geek. He's just rich. I can see the competition coming down to a war between the Gilles fans and the Geeks.

Ladies, get your scissors and go after their computer cords.

Still not the Ace of Cakes

BUT I graduated my second cake decorating course tonight! I had to make a flower basket cake and about 100 flowers. Okay, not 100. It just felt like 100. After the first 50 who the heck cares if it's actually 100 or not?

I've decided that cake decorating is a lot of fun, but it's not nearly as much fun as people make it look on TV. I can tell you why it's not that fun. Duff, The Ace of Cakes, has "people". Duff's "people" even have "people". Therefore, they can all sit at their clean, roomy, work spaces while someone else scrubs bowls, spatulas, tips, couplers, pans and mixer attachments and takes out their trash. Heck, they even have their own baking guy that does all the oven watching for them.

I, on the other hand, have people that leave half eaten pizzas, empty milk jugs (the trash can is less than three feet away), dirty paper plates, etc. ON my workstation. Thus, not only do I have to toss my own trash and seal my own icing leftovers, but I have to throw away other people's trash and bag up other people's leftovers.

Roomy my workspace is not. Somehow all of my projects seem to require every tool, tip, book and ingredient I have. I have to keep moist towels, baggies, decorating bags, couplers, 60 plus decorating tips (and whatever project I'm working on is guaranteed to need tip 104 for use with at least 4 different colors), 4 spatulas, 2 boxes of gel color, paint brushes, fondant iron, parchment paper, waxed paper, plastic containers, plastic wrap, the stand mixer, 2 flower nails, and my tool box leave me with about 1 square foot of free space to actually decorate a cake or make decorations. The counter tops in back of me are filled with freshly washed bowls, spatulas, plastic containers, mixer attachments, tips and couplers. The sink is filled with unwashed bowls, spatulas, plastic containers, mixer attachments, tips and couplers.

One day I'd like to walk unannounced into Charm City Cakes and see if there are at least smears of daffodil yellow icing in anyone's hair.

Not Quite the Ace of Cakes... yet.

When my husband's appetite was lost due to his lymphoma, we started watching The Food Network. We hoped that seeing delectable delights might perk up his digestive system. We have watched little else since October. In that time I became addicted to watching Ace of Cakes. That addiction quickly expanded to the various cake decorating "challenge" shows that the network airs weekly. By January I was surfing cake decorating websites and at the beginning of February I found that a local craft store offered decorating classes. I signed up. There were about 12 people the first night, but we were down to 8 by the third night. Many of those had other obligations this week and our final class boasted 3 warm bodies other than that of the instructor.

In those 4 weeks I have learned that the beautiful piping designs we see done so effortlessly on TV, are not effortless. I'm not sure when I sprouted so many thumbs. My kitchen smells like sugar and vanilla. I smell like icing. Pink, purple, yellow and white smears of hardened icing can be found on nearly every surface of the kitchen. The dogs police up any cake droppings, so thankfully we don't have pink, purple, green, yellow and white footprints throughout the house. Half the "dust" in the air, is probably not real dust, but rather confectioner's sugar. Can one get white lung disease from sugar?



At any rate, the last class of the beginner's course was last night. I'd fought pink icing roses for 4 days trying to get them to look smooth and uniform like the photographs in the manual. While my flowers looked like roses, they looked like roses that had been attacked by hordes of aphids. Rather than smooth, rounded petals, my roses had the lacy look of carnations. I tried stiffer icing. I tried thinner icing. I tried firmer pressure on the piping bag. I finally gave up in absolute frustration.



When I got to class last night, I explained my problem to the instructor. I told her I was failing miserably in getting the icing consistencies correct because my petals all looked chewed. "NO NO! It's not you! It's the Crisco! I'm sorry. I should have warned you!" Apparently, when Crisco removed the trans fats from their shortening the change sent ripples out through the pastry decorating world. One of those tsunami sized ripples wiped out butter cream icing roses.



Thankfully, next session we will be moving into Royal Icing flowers and leave the Crisco cream decorations behind. Also thankfully, the only cake we have to bake is for the final class. For the past month I've had to produce at least one cake per week. I sure don't need to eat this much cake, William's appetite isn't recovered enough to eat cake and the only one here willing to eat a couple of pieces a day is John. Even as I type I have a practice cake in the refrigerator that is only half eaten and an entire cake full of lacy pink roses that I decorated for our final class sitting on the dining table. Having a month off from eating and storing cakes is going to be FABulous. Although... I'm willing to bet I'll just HAVE to bake one just for "practice" at some point during that time.



My best friend, Daphne, went through this course a few years ago. She sent me much of her decorating equipment when I told her I was going to try my hand at the craft. I didn't want her to send all these things because she was so brilliant at the art of decorating, I didn't want to have all her stuff if she suddenly decided she wanted to start making cakes again. She told me that no one wanted her to ever do cakes again. She was making cakes all the time. Daph's cakes became like my zucchini. People would shutter their windows, lock their doors and not answer the phone if they saw her car. She was even taking gigantic decorated sheet cakes to her fitness center every week!



I can see how this could happen. I have already told everyone I know to sit down and write a list of at least 10 people they know that they can hand off cakes to when they get sick of them. I don't visit a fitness center, but there are a lot of people who work at William's Oncology clinic. If nothing else, I have 11 hooved family members who would LOVE a sugar coated carrot cake from time to time.



Here is a photo of the final cake in my beginner's class.

HAPPY MARDI GRAS!

Bourbon Street at about 12:30pm Mardi Gras day. I have been in that crush of humanity before. In order to break free of the throng you have to be arm in arm with several friends and burst through at the doorway of whatever club you wish to enter.

Earlier I watched a Nola.com video cast of the Rex Parade on St. Charles. Been there, done that too. At 10:00am and already fairly well lit my friend Zelda and I found ourselves walking along side by side with Pete Fountain and his Half-Fast Marching Club. He shared a Popeyes Chicken leg with me when I asked him to throw me something. Being fairly well lit, I accepted. Shortly thereafter we were asked to leave the Marine Corps Marching Band by sabre point.

Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez!

Glendale Invitational

First off, I do hope y'all noticed the two bulls whose hometown was listed as Wittmann, AZ., ULURU and Snake Farm. I've mentioned going to the local bullriding event two blocks from my house on occasion. Both times they've bucked some truly (I mean truly) NICE bulls. Last time we were there for a benefit bull ride and they bucked both ULURU and Snake Farm causing us to catch flies in our gaping jaws because these were two bad assed bulls.



At the event we saw "Snake Farm" come up on the big screen and sat there like two dummies trying to figure out where we'd heard that name before (DUH! I blame our collective Chemo Brain). Snake Farm didn't have as good an out as we've seen here in the "hood", but it was enough to unseat Cody Campbell.



When ULURU was announced, the name is so unusual and he was such a memorable bull at the local event that we sat there wondering aloud "Is that the same...?" "It must be!! How many bulls are gonna be named 'ULURU'??!" "OH COOL!!" and then "HOLY SHIT! LOOKIT him GO!" ULURU did not make Austin Meier's life easy for that 8 seconds either. Austin was working for every second of that ride.



I know Luke Kraut and his Dad were proud of their bull. We were too! He is a fine, fine animal. I kept telling everyone we were seeing some damned good bulls buck on our street. We got nationwide proof last night. You go boys!



Note to Justin McKee: The bull's name is ULURU, pronounced OO-LUH-ROO, not "yewlaroo". Not your fault, but just so's you know next time. I want our hometown boys names known.



We were sorry to see Clayton Williams having a tough time. He won here last year. Year before last it was Robson Palermo who won Glendale and it was, I think, his first BFTS event win. Perhaps the Glendale event is good luck for first time winners?



William's latest side effects had abated and he was feeling good. We were so happy about that one fact that we were predisposed to enjoying the hell out of this event so we did. All the habitual comments we have adopted in our home viewing became all the more amusing because of our elevated moods. Our customery call of "Hey Dustin!? It's only 8 seconds! How hard can it be?!" and when Luke Snyder was announced "It's the Schnoz!" (the young man has the largest nostrils I've ever seen on a human and the camera people always seem to shoot him from beneath that nose. Note to Luke: Better keep that nose hair trimmed buddy or the nation will know.)



Bryan "PeeWee" Hermann made a GREAT ride and we were terribly sorry it ended so badly for him. We like ol' PeeWee, now the eldest of the riders. Cool toss though dude. You should have at least gotten a complimentary highball on that first class flight.



Chris Shivers and Guilherme Marchi rode with seasoned determination and were absolutely thrilling to watch in both rounds. I'd so much rather see the end of the year finish in a tight battle between these two young men, than the two cocky little pishers in the lead at the moment.



Note about White Magic: The bull had an excellent out, but if he doesn't take off about 300 lbs he's going to need his name changed to White Whale. When we saw him bucking a couple of years ago in a PRCA event his kick was almost perpendicular to the ground. If his butt makes it past 45 degrees now it's a lucky shot. He can't lift his forequarters more than 8 to 10 inches off the ground anymore.

When White Magic burst onto the BFTS scene early last year he had so much drop before that all mighty high kick that it reminded me of Bodacious because the bull was hauling riders forward and down into his horns. He'd already started flinging his head up to meet them, just like Bo. Then he was either injured or became ill, I can't remember which, and when he came back he was a blimp. His fat rolls jiggle like jello when he bucks for crying out loud. He was a bull to fear early last year. A bull that should have made a rider's stomach flip when drawn. Now he's just another good bull among many good bucking bulls. I don't look for that to continue. If he continues to get blubbery, he'll be a round 1 bull by the end of the year and out of the picture next year.



We missed Cord McCoy. We thought about attending the infamous "After-Party" again, but figured without Cord hauling every pretty girl to the dance floor for a twirl, it wouldn't have been as entertaining as last year's party. Since, watching Cord was really the only entertainment at the party last year and since we were so appalled by our own blithering in the presence of Marchi and since we really didn't want to push our luck with the chemo side effects, we decided to just call the evening good and go home in time to watch the event on TV.

Caution: Desi At Play

PBR Baltimore

I'm blogging live during the NBC presentation of rounds 2 and 3 of the PBR Baltimore event because I got ticked off before the first commercial break. Of course, with William so sick, my patience for idiot buttheads is non-existent.

Basically, I'm noticing that although it's a new year, it's still the same old bullshit. The Point Fairy already struck, but at least her arrival was announced. "OH by the way, Travis Briscoe's score was upped from 90 points to 90.50." I suppose I should be hopeful that since they've decided to let us know when they jack up a score after the fact that one fine day they might deign to give us an explanation for that jack up rather than implying that they can change scores on a whim and we can just go jack off. I don't want a generic explanation either. I want to know what led them to add to or take off points each time they do it.

God's gift to psycho, blood lust, tiny pricked assholes, aka Kody Lohstroh, received an 86.something for a ride in which he spent probably 2 seconds in correct position on a crummy bull and finished the ride on the bull's butt whereas Guilherme (Who?) received an 85 for being in perfect position on a relatively decent bull matching that bull move for move in a beautiful "How to" visual aid.

As William predicted last year, one of the new fan attractions this year is Fantasy Bull Riding. I have a fantasy, but I doubt it's what the PBR is looking for. After hearing about Kody Lohstroh and his other small penised, psychotic, blood lust buddies that think slowly killing an ancient lion in a canned hunt was funny, my fantasy is that Lohstroh will draw Blueberry Buckle. In that fantasy, Blueberry buckle will break both Lohstroh's legs so that he can't crawl away. Then for 5 minutes Buckle will roll and toss that sleazy bastard all over the arena so that he knows how that old, sick, crippled miserable lion felt. I don't want Lohstroh dead or even permanently crippled. No. I want worse. I want him to feel the pain and fear of that lion. I want him to literally piss and crap himself. I don't want him let off the hook by death. If Blueberry Buckle and all the other bulls in the pen can laugh like Kody and his buddies in the video did, all the better.

I would also like to complain about the spelling of bull names. I didn't mention it last year. I just rolled my eyes a lot. "Optimist Prime" sent me over the edge though. IT'S OPTIMUS PRIME for god's sake. He's a Transformers character. Perhaps y'all should GOOGLE a cool name before you use it? Ya think?

In retrospect, I may have to wait until the chemo really starts to heal my husband's cancer before I can watch PBR with any sort of patience for human bullshit.

The Tales of Beedle The Bard Collector's Edition

IT'S HERE! My collector's edition of The Tales of Beedle the Bard arrived via USPS today and it was not only worth the price, but also worth the wait and two aggravating phone calls to amazon.com. The packaging, the prints and the gorgeous collector's edition book are spectacular. These photos really do not do them justice.

All I need is a coffee pot.

Current technology had obviously left me far behind. I knew this. I have no idea how to use all the features on my cell phone. The idea of an iPod that plays movies is totally lost on me, "I can't read a book without two pairs of glasses, how the hell am I supposed to watch a movie on a 1 inch by 1 inch screen??" Thus, while almost everyone else in the world moved on with advances in home technology, I stayed happily where I was, in the world of the 80 gigs of computer memory, 8 gig iPods, an office without a fax machine and a land line phone (even though I mostly use my cell).

Elder members of my family would have considered me quite the "geek". There are a few elderly people who still don't have cell phones or computers, but with the passing of my father, that group is even more limited. Geeks, however, look at my cell phone and chortle things like "my god, it's the kind with screws! I didn't think there were any of those left." My cell phone was only 5 years old when it died for pete's sake. It's not like it was an antique. In geekdom, however, technology which is 4 years has hit "classic" status.

Replacing my old computer with this laptop, therefore, has been a really big deal for me. I started a new hobby. Rather, I wanted to start a new hobby. My old computer was failing and even in it's prime wouldn't have served my video editing well. In it's failing state, however, my old computer wouldn't even run the little "Windows Movie Maker" program it came with without freezing every 1 to 3 minutes. The little movie I made of Handsome a few posts ago, took about 8 hours spread over 3 days to get done because I was constantly losing information due to freezes and restarts. The last day of editing I was trying to beat the program to the draw by saving and exiting the program every 2 minutes. I'm not exaggerating.

By the time I replaced the old computer, it had one working USB port, it's cd/dvd wouldn't open, and it had lost 3/4 of it's RAM. I'd log onto the web and feel like I was back on dial up again. Even my email wouldn't open in less than 15 seconds. It was losing it's memory and all of it's abilities. As a friend of mine told me "Sounds like me". Yeah, me too, but let's please not go there.

Another place I really don't wish to go right now is the land of 4 years from now when my spiffy new laptop becomes "a classic". By then the geeks will laugh "Good god, I've never even seen a computer with only 4 gigs of RAM." and "Only 320 gigs of space on the hard drive!? Dang!" or "Dude! No solar panels, do you believe that?"

I was all excited about being able to do away with the rat's nest of cords that ran my old puter, and all the external peripherals I was using to replace all the things that puter wouldn't do anymore. "Hermione" only used two cords. Power and DSL. Bless her. Then our friends Barb and Sean came to dinner and Sean gave me an easy to understand tutorial on setting up a wireless network. I'm down to ONE cord now and can work without that for about 3 to 4 hours. Thus, as behind as I still am in technology, I'm giant leaps from where I was and I'm damned excited about that.

Perhaps if I can manage to save about 500.00 a year, in 4 years I'll be able to afford the 120 gigs of RAM, the 800 gigs of dedicated graphics memory, and the 10 bazillion gig hard drives, all run wirelessly via solar power that will surely be available next week. But, for now, all I need is a wireless, portable, coffee pot.

An Evening In The Life

Sheesh, beware when clicking buttons to see what they do on a new computer. I just spent the last 5 minutes in Microsoft hell just because I clicked a button in the toolbar that LOOKED as if it was the full monty of an Office version of Word. NO. It wanted me to set up a trial version of Word. There went 5 minutes of time that I could have been typing from the comfort of my own soft bed.

You see. I have a new laptop. We’re in the middle of a horrible storm, complete with dime sized hail that soon made the entire desert look snowed upon. For the first time in my computing life, I didn’t have to shut down the computer and twiddle my thumbs for several hours until there was no longer a danger of power outages and power surges. I could still play solitaire. I could still play Diablo II, albeit in single player mode. Heck, I could pop a movie in the DVD player of the laptop and watch a movie if I so desired. But no. I decided I’d put my time to more creative uses and write a bit. I didn’t realize I’d spend 5 minutes of comfy, writing time trying to get the heck out of a set up program that doesn’t allow a person to exit until the final page where MS finally provides a CANCEL button. I also didn’t realize that on top of that 5 minute trip through set up hell that I’d feel compelled to spend another 5 minutes bitching about it.
Hell, the storm is over now and it’s getting damned hot in this bed. As Charlie Brown would say, “Good Grief.”

It’s Thanksgiving evening. I should never have waited this late in the week to clean house. I have at least one guest coming to dinner tomorrow when we have our traditional Thanksgiving with recognizable foods, in the country where we can sprawl outdoors. At least, I hope we can sprawl outdoors tomorrow. The weather has been fairly nasty for two days.

Anyway, I have to clean furniture, mop the floor, straighten the office, do dishes, dust, dump the litter box and cook a turkey, dressing, peas, rolls, mashed potatoes, and sweet potatoes. Oh. Also need to make iced-tea. Somewhere in all that time I also need to doctor the feet of the horses that have had to stand in sopping muddy stalls for two days. One of those horses already had a foot problem before his stall flooded. All in this life I want to do right now is sleep off the in-law family Thanksgiving dinner I ate this afternoon. Again, good grief.
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Well, that was entertaining. I went outside to invite a little fresh air inspiration and heard the otherwise “dry” wash not running, but roaring past. As I was registering that problem in my brain synapses, our neighbor Doug called, “Are you alright down there? I have 6 inches of water across everything up here.” These are not words I want to hear. Doug's property isn't adjacent to the main wash. I'm where everyone elses water runs AND I'm adjacent to where the main wash makes a 90 degree turn.

Now, John had been out to check the barn and the horses and the runoff situation just after the hail stopped. Everything was wet, there was hail in poor little Godric’s stall, the muck was just deeper in the two already wet stalls, but all the horses were dry. If the wash was running, it wasn’t running enough to be audible. The rain stopped, we went about our business, until I went back outside searching for inspiration. Be careful what you wish for.

After the call from Doug, I sent John out to check the wash. It’s topped the bank behind the back corner paddock and is pouring into Handsome’s playground. The only thing keeping two stalls in the back barn from flooding is the dip William dug to lead other people’s roof runoff floodwaters through the back of the property and out into the wash. I’m afraid I’m going to find not the usual three fence lines undermined in the morning, but rather multiple undermined areas in 4 lines of fencing.

Yanno, I’m thinking that when the housing market rebounds I’m going to plop a For Sale sign in the front yard and head for higher ground. This sucks Beavis. Next time anyone tells me how much we need rain I may spit in their eye.

John has gone down to Doug’s house to see if he can help down there. At this point, there is nothing anyone can do for us except loan us a few horse trailers to pull our hooved kids to higher ground. We’d sink any tractor we tried to get out there right now.

What I need is a damn dam damn it, one made of concrete. Yet again, good grief.

The Gods Painted Him Black