Never thought retirement would be like this

Thanks timetlvlr, I had never heard of a geode before. Apparently you find them in areas that had a volcano at one time, right?

Here is a video I just found. Cool!!! I want one! :)


I don't know but the whole area down there must have been subject to vulcanism because just about every mineral has been actively mined there. About a mile up the road from our farm, the serious, very steep and rough mountains began and during the war fluorspar was mined there. It's a glassy mineral that I understand is used in steel making. Copper, manganese, lead, silver, and others are mined near there.
 

What a difference the storm windows make! It was windy today. There was zero draft coming in near those 4 windows. Compare it with the one under the stairs.:eek:nthego: Of course none of this matters with the doors as leaky as they are. But now it makes me think about replacing those doors. (See..., it never ends.:()

Can't do that. Doors are too heavy to deal with. Forget it.

Today I didn't have a plan. It's fine to have a plan and not follow through on it. That's just being lazy. But having no plan makes me feel lost. Might even bring on the mean reds. :playful:

:joke: (sort of)

Nancy, if the leaks are just around the edges of the doors, there is an easy fix. Ask at the hardware store for draft sealing strips that are easy to apply to the door frames top and sides. A variety of threshold strips are also available. I've installed them on both outside doors because in Canada, that's important!
 
Timetrvlr, that's a great idea! The windows have always been so drafty in the basement anyway, I just gave up on thinking about the doors long ago. Now that the windows are (almost) done I can do that. Sometimes I don't see the forest for the trees.:rolleyes: Thanks!
 

...name rings a bell!:rolleyes:

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...name rings a bell!:rolleyes:
Meanderer, something terrible happened last night. I reached the end of the internet and did not find a new funny cartoon. And many I couldn't even understand. It's a frightening feeling. Worse than the Mean Reds.

My grandmother often used the term "foundered," like on leftover turkey.

If it doesn't go away by Monday, I may have to become a serious person.:(

:lol:
 
Childhood memories -a farm in New Mexico during WWII

For a while, mom separated the cream from the milk by letting it stand over night and the cream rose to the top. Then she dipped the cream off for making butter. Later, we had a mechanical cream separator and it had lots of parts that had to be removed and washed by hand. It was quite a job to put it all together again too, but it worked really well. My older brother was the mechanical one in the family and taught my mother how to take it apart and put it all back together again.


Mom churned butter in a two-gallon butter churn. The temperature had to be just right, not too warm or too cold, and it still took a lot of cranking to make butter. I got to help with that. When it was done, we had buttermilk! Mom washed the butter to get all the milk out and then pressed it into butter molds. Then she wrapped each one-pound block in waxed paper.


We did not have electricity yet, so we did not have a refrigerator either. We had to keep the butter and milk cool so my dad built a cooler about the size and shape of a large refrigerator. It was a wooden framework with shelves. The outside was covered with screen wire with a couple of layers of burlap over that. This box was placed under a great Pepper tree and a galvanized number 3 tub was placed on top. The tub had a pattern of tiny holes in the bottom and the leaking water saturated the burlap. Our was a desert climate, very dry, so the evaporation of water kept our cooler quite cool. My job was to keep that tub filled by carrying water from the pump up the ladder and dumping it into the tub.


This was during World War II. Butter was rationed and brought premium prices. My mother would sell our butter and buy margarine for our family because it was cheap. In those days, margarine was sold in its natural color, white. A small package of red coloring was included and you kneaded the coloring into the margarine to make it yellow.
 
Timetvlr, good memories there.

Your story reminds me of visiting my aunt, in the hills of West Virginia, for the first time, when I was a little kid. You had to park the car way down the road and walk the last half mile or so, because it was too full of ruts to drive newer lower cars. When we approached the house, the first thing I saw was my aunt's mother-in-law sitting on the porch, churning butter in a large wooden churn. Something I had never seen before, and an image I won't forget, I hope.
 
I had 6 azaleas that have been with me for years. Didn't do well where I first planted them, didn't have the heart to throw them away. Transplanted 2 more times and they still looked awful, but lived. They had become like old friends. This fall 3 finally died and the other 3 were looking so sick I just grabbed the lopping shears last week, marched over to them without looking them straight in the eye, and lopped them all off at ground level. It was hard.:( They better not come back now. Rain predicted Tuesday (60%).:rolleyes: We'll see...

I am not as brave as you....got my loppers out and told them how sorry I was and then cut off the dead areas! Gosh, that sounds worse than cutting them down to the bone! I should have gone ahead and got it over with!
 
....got my loppers out and told them how sorry I was and then cut off the dead areas! ...

:lol: I didn't even talk to mine.

My 3 that might have been saved, well, they had that "look" about them, when you know it is going to take a heroic effort to bring them back. And then I thought about having to mow around them all summer, and, and,...... Well I likened it to decluttering. The kind that makes your life easier. Oh well.

That reminds me, there is one beautiful big pink one out in the country I haven't checked on lately. Oh no...!!! :rolleyes:
 
"Waltzing Azaleas" - Oil by John McCartin
That looks almost exactly like my bush out in the country---a variegated pink. Here is a zoom, and the whole bush, taken in the spring a few years ago, with an older not so great camera. Kind of fuzzy, just like the painting.;)

azaleaZoom.gif

azalea1.jpg

Photobucket is down to a crawl this am, so I'm attaching. Folks must be loading Thanksgiving pictures. :)
 
I have some 15 year old azaleas that bit the dust this year too, I think I can just pull them up as the roots are shallow...hated to loose them they were some of the first to bloom in the spring.
 
Jackie, I never thought of just pulling them out. That would work! But lopping got the gruesome task over with faster. Snip! Snip! :(
 
I'm glad this drought didn't happen in the summer. At least some plants, including the lawn grass, had gone dormant. Did lose a little centipede grass planted on a slope this summer.
 
That looks almost exactly like my bush out in the country---a variegated pink. Here is a zoom, and the whole bush, taken in the spring a few years ago, with an older not so great camera. Kind of fuzzy, just like the painting.;)

View attachment 33689

View attachment 33690

Photobucket is down to a crawl this am, so I'm attaching. Folks must be loading Thanksgiving pictures. :)

Nancy, that is some Azalea bush! I think the painting is called "Waltzing Azaleas" because the four blooms are paired off like they are dancers. Maybe he chose them from a larger bush.
 
Clarence Penney, Mandolin - Azalea Waltz (1914)

Meanderer, the first thing I noticed on your Azalea Waltz video was Felix Arndt listed on the piano. Felix wrote the song Nola for his soon to be wife, Nola, in 1915. He died in the 1918 flu epidemic.

Felix and Nola

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nola.jpg

Nola is classified as novelty ragtime, and it is a really fun song to play on the piano.

Original arrangement:


Ted Weems, whistling version, 1938 (Elmo Tanner whistling)

Les Paul guitar version, 1951

Billy Williams with lyrics added by Sunny Skylar, 1959

Did I mention I love this song??? :rolleyes: :playful: ;)
 
If I have to become a serious person Monday I need to start practicing. Will take this opportunity while everyone is off eating leftover turkey and visiting with relatives.:)

Update on tingling pinky finger. :playful:

It has been exactly 2 months since I started paying attention. It doesn't matter how much you move your arm, or use muscles. The only thing that matters is putting pressure on that nerve, anywhere from the elbow down to the side of your hand. In the morning everything is perfectly normal. By the end of the day, there is some degree of numbness, but it's better than it was.

Typing contributes to the problem because of where you rest your hand. I think it would help if I could get my keyboard down to knee level, but I don't want a laptop, because I don't want to ever get in a habit of slouching while hovering over a laptop. A taller stool doesn't help either. That puts your legs to sleep. It's a trade off, until I get it figured out. Ha! (oops, not serious enough)
 
Nancy, maybe dragging all that brush could be causing your elbow and wrist pain? And not to mention all the painting and window replacement.... I'm just saying! IF we get the rain they are predicting, you can give your joints some rest! But I'm sure you won't. You seem to need to keep busy! I'm the same way...my elbows. hips, knees feel your pain!
 
Nancy, maybe dragging all that brush could be causing your elbow and wrist pain? And not to mention all the painting and window replacement.... I'm just saying! IF we get the rain they are predicting, you can give your joints some rest! But I'm sure you won't. You seem to need to keep busy! I'm the same way...my elbows. hips, knees feel your pain!

Hi there! :) I don't really think working has anything to do with it. The other day I unloaded all those goat pellets and sawed down the bushes, and it made no difference. :confused:

I really think it has to do with sitting at this computer and typing. I tend to rest my forearm, or hand, or elbow, on the edge of the desk, and don't notice I'm doing it until the finger starts to go numb. Then it's probably too late, and a setback. I do like keeping busy. Maybe I need to work more, and spend less time on the pc.:) No claws have started forming yet.

Have you decided on a project to work on this winter?

Yes! A 100% chance of rain for Wednesday! But will they change it before then.:rolleyes:

The pink azalea bush in the country was fine, because it was buried in leaves---normally not a good thing for azaleas. I poured a couple gallons of water on it.

Hope you had a nice Thanksgiving.
 


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