work in progress...

I've switched my website server to Wix.com. They are the coolest! It is so much more user friendly then Webs was. I still have some stuff to do and things to tweek but I'm so happy to be headed in the right direction.

Happy Birthday Zoe!!!

little bear

This little guy has been hanging around our house lately. Unfortunately I haven't been able to get a picture because the dogs always see him before I do (they have absolutely no self control or dignity and by the time I get them inside and calmed down he meanders away). So I've stolen this picture from Vicki who lives about a mile from us. She took it yesterday and posted it to facebook. Exercising some tough love she kindly fired shots into the air to try and train him to be scared. He needs to learn that people are bad and that nothing good can come from hanging around us (except maybe apples). Hopefully he will find a nice place far from here to hibernate for the winter. Unfortunately he seems way too content where he is.

entirely, ecstatically satisfied. thanks so very much!

Gosh, I haven't had a guy react to me like that in a very LONG time. Too bad it was for an ebay book. :)

yesterday's work

"just be yourself"

While reading the paper at breakfast this morning I broke the silence with an audible "damn!". Larry looked up so I explained that after reading about some pretrial rulings it seemed clear that the case I've been summoned to jury duty for is heading to court. This is like the fourth or fifth time my number has been called in the last two years (although the trials have always been cancelled before so it was no big deal). As I started to ponder my most convincing I'm an idiot expression in order to dissuade selection, Larry said "just be yourself". Oh geez, thanks! So I'm just naturally crazy??? After a little ribbing he clarified what he meant was that I should just be my bleeding heart liberal self and that that would repulse them enough.

I don't know. I'm still going to practice my blank stare and drooling just in case. :)

pumpkin patch

kitara today

pictures of strangers

Larry's brother likes to deal in antiques. Unfortunately he doesn't really get into the whole computer/ebay thing. For his birthday this year I told him I would list a few things for him and one of the items he gave me was a *lot* of WWII memorabilia which included a sailor's scrapbook of snapshots. For some reason I really enjoy looking through other people's pictures so I thought I would post a few of them here.

I like seeing moments captured by someone I don't know; especially generational ones. It's kind of like peeking into another world.

Whoever they are, I imagine most of them are gone, or at the very least different people now than they were then.

I think this picture is of the man who actively kept the scrapbook well into the '90's. He has a really kind face in all of his pictures. I don't know anything about him but I imagine he is dead now; if he wasn't Wayne wouldn't have his scrapbook. He must not have had any family who cared enough to keep his memories for him so soon they will be in the possession of someone else with an interest in that moment of human history he took a part in.

R.I.P. whoever you are.

Sheesh, we can take a hint...

...we aren't totally dense. Sometimes (like today) when the trees are talking to you, it's time to listen.

We live at the edge of The Bighorn National Forest. About 20 years ago a guy from Ohio bought and started to subdivide some acreage adjacent to it. I don't know all of the gritty details but I do know that roads were slashed through the trees before Mr. Ohio was arrested on something totally unrelated, and the vacant property was confiscated by the IRS. It's kind of remote and deserted so it's a perfect place to walk Stanley. Anyways, a couple of weeks ago someone told us that all of that land was still in the government's possession and stuck in legal limbo. Up until then we weren't sure what was going on with it. But since no one was around and it was essentially government land we decided there would be no harm in hitting some of the back trails where we stumbled upon an old abandoned lodge. Unfortunately I'd forgotten my camera and when we went back a couple of days later to take pics we found that the U.S. Marshal's service had posted signs everywhere threatening arrest to trespassers. Now how weird is that??? 20 years of remote land lying vacant and 2 days after we hike there the government posts notices to keep out.

Well, we're not so paranoid as to think that it really had anything to do with us. I mean, the nearest Marshal Service Office is two and a half hours away for pete's sake. So we laughed it off as a coincidence and went back to walking the road. Then today, as Stanley was prancing out in front of us he stopped dead in his tracks. We stopped too, and although we couldn't see anything, we could hear growling. And if that isn't bad enough, at that very moment the wind eerily delivered an overwhelming stench of death our way. It seems that either we'd managed to interrupt some animal's dinner or something strange is going on in those woods. And while we're pretty comfortable with mysterious signs appearing out of nowhere, we don't really want any part of pissing off large carnivores. So I'm thinking we'll walk someplace else tomorrow. The trees are definitely trying to tell us something!