It's Wine-Thirty!

My Saturday

My Saturday afternoon sky

Coneflowers with bumblebees

Wood waiting to be split

One of my daylillies - see how big it is?

Changes in the past 8 months

I've decided to get back to blogging.

Taking 8 months off was necessary.  Life can get pretty complicated and sometimes spilling your guts in a regular basis takes WAY too much effort.    ;-)

However, I have decided that I'm not going to even try to concentrate on the fiber arts since I've hardly been doing any.  Anyone who checks in will find that I might take about anything, or just show interesting pictures that I have taken in my everyday life.

So just to give you all a quick update:  Dale walked with his graduating class in May and received his diploma.  The governor of MA gave the commencement speech, and he was very good.  While I liked his ideas, I also view some of them as being somewhat impractical, like the "everyone should have a free college education" part.  Yeah, that sounds very cool, especially since we now have a student loan to pay, but WHO is going to pay for it, and HOW? 

Dale also went back to work in January, which made my life significantly easier.

I have taken a part time bartending job at night which I LOVE!  Had I known how much fun it would be to do this, I would have started 20 years ago!  And I can make a killer Washington Apple and an amazing 24K Nightmare.

I've been reading at least 3 paperback books a week now during the summer.  TV has reruns, and the books are more interesting anyway.  I've reread just about every paperback book in my bookcase, including some that I forgot that I had that DH found when he cleaned out my old office/craft room.

The boys have been busy this summer swimming in the pool, and riding their bikes around the yard.  Their cousin Zach has been with us this week and the three of them have had a blast playing together.  DH even set up a real tent in our family room where the boys have been "camping out" since Wednesday night.

DH and I have also been busy the past couple of weeks cutting down trees and splitting wood for burning in our woodstove this winter.  Two weeks ago a terrible storm went through North Amherst, taking down many trees in my old neighborhood.  We were able to get a couple of jobs cutting up the fallen trees (and taking down some ones still left standing).  And the week after that storm, another one blew through my neighborhood, toppling an huge maple that we figured to be over 100 years old in my neighbors yard that fell partly into ours.  We have most of the wood from that tree too now. Yes, believe it or not, I can run a chain saw and wood splitter.  We now have a couple of cords of wood waiting to be stacked in our backyard.

Has this been a weird summer or what?  We've had more thunderstorms than I can ever remember happening; almost one per day for the past several weeks.  Usually my back yard looks like the Sahara desert, with brown crunchy grass, but it is so green and tall that Dale can't keep up with mowing it!  Last night's thunderstorm lasted over 2 hours.  Strange weather!

Where has the time gone?

Damn!  Has it been almost 2 weeks since I last posted?  Time flies when you are having fun.  NOT!

Actually, I've just been swamped at work, which is a good thing, except for the sleep deprivation I get when I'm really stressed.  However, I have worked on some really interesting reports, and loved what I've seen.

I did take last Sunday off from work, and I took the kids down to Storrs, CT to a rabbit show.  We had a great time, but I was exhausted when we got home.  I'll be taking the kids to the Taunton rabbit show on Sunday, as Nathaniel now wants to show rabbits too (he would like to show Netherland Dwarfs, which are a nice small breed).  So we'll be looking for a ND there.

And, because my brother Luke sent this to me last night and I found it really funny, I thought I would direct your attention to Disapproving Rabbits .  Have fun checking out this site.

Among the missing

I'm back.

I took the entire summer off from blogging and just now have had the time to get back to it. 

With DH finishing up his associates degree, I've been feeling a bit overwhelmed with the pressure of work, homemaking, etc.  Enough so that I just didn't have the energy to blog or do anything fiber related until now.

I have devoted my time in the last month to getting my oldest son involved in the local 4-H club that deals with rabbits.  Calvin has decided to start breeding mini-lops (the breed I had been involved with back in the earlier part of the decade) and he also wants to breed Belgain Hares.  I'm excited for him because he's really enjoying going to meetings and learning all about the different breeds.  And as one of 4 boys in a club of 20+ girls, it's a good thing.

Here is his new little rabbit, Twinkle.  We need to get two does for Twinkle so that we have a breeding trio.

And here is a picture I took up in North Amherst near Puffer's Pond.

I love the way the leaves are just starting to change, and the old train tressle going over the road.

Wahhhhhh!

Why aren't the Soprano's on tonight? 

Now we have another week of suspense trying to figure out what will happen in the last few episodes.

Remember this from Saturday?

We were impressed with this.

And now look what we have over at the Quabbin: 

The water coming through the gorge before it goes over the falls. 

This is a view from above the falls.  Scary but beautiful, isn't it?

The power of water!

  Much more water today!

Even with all that water rushing through, it still looks peaceful.

The fog shrouded Quabbin.

I'm still here

I've been really busy with work, which has required me to work  some 12+ hour days lately.  I'm not complaining though, because as a self employed person, work = $$$, which is a good thing when your husband is a full time college student.     :)

But it means that I'm truely exhausted at the end of the day when I collapse into bed and watch some tv before I fall asleep.  Weekends aren't much different; I spend some of my time working, and the rest I spend out and about, running errands, cleaning the house, or reading. 

So, I'm still here, just really, really busy.

Can you put the smell of the beach in a candle?

Not too much going on here. 

I purchased a new external hard drive today, which holds 160 GB, so compared to the 18GB that my computer holds, I feel like I could store 10 years worth of data on this baby.  A huge thank you to Marcy for talking to me about this at 7 a.m. today.  :)

I don't know about you, but I'm getting cabin fever.  I feel stuck inside the house and am anxious for Spring to arrive.  This melt, snow, melt, snow, melt, arctic blast of cold air thing is really annoying.  I want to see the snow gone, and grass growing.  I want to walk outside barefoot, smell the flowers and listen to the birds singing.

One of my "cures" for this seasonal whine, is to light up some of the candles I usually have on hand.  Many years ago, I worked as Christmas help at Yankee Candle when I was a newlywed.  It was a great job which I enjoyed.  The biggest benefit of all was that you got a 50% discount on all candles purchased.  Believe me, I took advantage of this and bought a lot of candles!  I have my favorite Fall and Winter scents, such as Harvest, MacIntosh & Peach and Mandarin Cranberry.  But in when the weather gets like this, I need reminders of Spring.  So back to YC we went today, and I picked out a Lilac Blossom, and a Honeydew Melon.  But the coolest new scent I found today is called Sun and Sand.  It smells just like Coppertone suntan lotion!  I'm such a huge beach fan (as is my whole family) that finding something like this really lifted my spirits (yeah, I know, I'm easily amused).   Now I can close my eyes and think about the beach and smell it too!

Other than this, not much else is going on.  DH is having midterms this week at college, so he's been busy preparing for his speech in the public speaking class, my kids having been playing outside, getting drenched in the "lake" in our backyard that happens each Spring during the thaw, and I've been busy working.   Even Milo has Spring fever, wanting to go out and then come back in almost immediately.  Marcy tells me that he's looking for the "door into summer".   

I guess I am too.

More sites for consumers

I'm glad everyone liked the Gethuman website.  When voice mail came out, I thought it was really cool, but now, since it has become harder and harder to talk to an actual human at the mega companies, I'm liking the idea of by passing their systems, just to talk to a live person.

Here is another site for everyone today:  Gasbuddy.com or for those of you that are in Massachusetts, try Massachusetts Gas Prices.  I'm on the MA site (specifically the Springfield site) daily.  This is my new favorite website, especially since I travel so much for my work.  It has become a game to find the cheapest gas prices and try to fill up at the local station without going out of my way.  Yeah, I'm easily amused these days.   ;-)

I almost bought another flax wheel yesterday.  I had to travel down to Hampden county, and stopped at one of my favorite antique shops.  They had a beautiful little flax wheel for sale, but even if I had talked down the price with the owner, I have other things to be spending money on right now with DH still being unemployed.  DH is going on interviews, so we'll see what happens.  If he gets a job quickly, I'll go back to the shop and buy that wheel (after all, it has been there over three weeks now).   And since I've run out of room to display wheels, I can give it to my mother to put into her house for the time being.

BTW, if anyone is looking for a trailer to either haul products to and from fiber/craft shows, or for their motorcycle, I have my trailer for sale.  It is 4.5' wide x 7.5' long (and a total of 9.5' to the tapered end) with a ramp door on the back.  Contact me for more information if you are interested. 

I'm back

It has been a hectic 2 weeks since I last posted and I'm exhausted.

My uncle passed away on Wednesday, the 2nd.  While we were sad that he died, we also realized that he would not have wanted to have lived without the ability to speak, or partially paralyzed.  Knowing what my aunt went through the last 2 weeks of his life, I am thankful that we have hospice in place for my father.

My oldest son went down to NJ for the funeral with my mother.  They took the train (much to Calvin's delight!) and came home last night with my brother and his family.  It was the longest time Calvin had ever been away from home, and never had he been more than 8 miles from us.  He did experience homesickness, but he did o.k.

I also took on more responsibilities, like taking care of my mother's garden (I am not, repeat NOT a garden person, especially flowers).  Nathaniel told me yesterday that watering his grandmother's flowers was harder than feeding and watering all the rabbits.   ;-)     I also spent a lot of time with my dad, since he felt very badly about my uncles passing.  They used to play marathon games of Pinochle when ever they were together.

I plan to spend this weekend relaxing.  It has been so busy here, that I'm going from morning till night, and I still don't get it all done.  There has been no fiber stuff to speak of, except for some shearing of rabbits that had 1 1/2 month long coats on them during the heat wave last week.  I will say that the rabbits are much happier now with this wonderful cool weather and so am I.

I'm off to take in a sliding screen door to have the screen replaced that Milo went through last night in his quest to get outside.  I'm proud that I was able to get the screen off the track, but not too happy that it has to be replaced.

And in case you happen to get an e-mail about Mar's being close to the earth later this month, please read this article about Mars before you forward anything along.     :)