the train crew

the first picture shows all the crawlers on the track that seem to be checking bolts, fluffing gravel, checking plumb, etc. all i know is that in the spaces you can see the sky through the machines there are men sitting and doing something. behind one of the crawlers another crawler with a magnet was sweeping the gravel for metal something and putting it in a cart.

the other three pictures show a 10 or 12 car set with yellow cars on either end. the cleaner cars seem to be the beginning. but most interesting were the 4 or 5 blackened cars in the middle with strange looking mechanics. you can see through the sets to the sky on the other side. i saw men walk through the openings. there seemed to be two cars where men could work or live and 2 or 3 fuel cars. non of the cars really look like engines but i am sure it moves up and down the track doing something. it must be important because i am guessing the whole thing is very expensive. it reeks money.

graduation

what i learned this year

1. never wear high rise undies with low rise jeans.....sigh (not me!!!! someone else)
2. don't sponsor the senior or junior class at the same time as being registrar
3. triple check everything
4. running away to town with your new fun car doesn't make work go away.....sigh
5. true colors of students rise quickly to the surface when grades are final
6. even though you are graduating...ie four years and retiring .... you are not the star or even a twinkle
7. sticking it out in a dying organization is not always the best choice for everyone, if your young get on your horse and ride out of dodge
8. we are all dysfunctional, some a lot more than others
9. if you can affect someone's future, they are very nice to your face, can't really be friends with those who are dependent on your evaluations
10. young people take technology and many other things for granted ( i learned to type on a manual typewriter and cranked the telephone to make it ring three short and a long instead of speaking a name)

gender bias

as i drive my mini

i can see men mouth the word .....mini .... with a kind of 'that's cool' look as i drive

women say "cute car!" when i pull up to the take out window

old age bias....why won't my telephone work to unlock the doors and change channels on the TV....kirk's communicator did everything!

awards

i hereby award myself an award for having award certificate supplies for teachers available and for making last minute awards for staff without technical finesse.

GOOD JOB!

new and old auto

it was sad to say goodbye to my old friend muffy. we have had all 4 wheels off the ground at once, been on mountain tops, curvy roads, flat plains roads, and through water pot holes. but finally i needed air conditioning for summer--the heat is just to much for me. in colorado i could get by. and i was starting to trip on the lip when i got out. sigh..... so something different.

i was thinking about a yaris or honda... then thinking i will just keep the jeep and get a new top, radio/cd player, get the dent fixed. etc. and buy a golf cart to use around town for groceries and errands.

but then my nephew called and said he had found a mini for me. i had mentioned that what i really wanted was a mini, but didn't have the money for it. but he found a used one...2005 S.

it was more than i wanted to pay, but .............it had air, leather seats, heated seats, cd/radio, sun roof, fog lights, cruise control, .......... it was love at first sight.

my sister and i went shopping with the mini and were able to get our groceries and 4 big flower planters in the back with no problem. for most of our little shopping trips it will be fine. when it is snowy and slippery we will take the blazer. when we go cross country we will take the mini.

now i have bert in the garage. i took bert out today thinking i would drive to gi with it but decided to take the school car since my new insurance isn't quite the right kind for providing taxi service for kids needing to go to town. so what happens!. it hails. but i think it is okay.

trains old and new

On my way to Belle to pick up my "new" car i passed a train with these strange cars. I don't know what was in them, but suspect the contents maybe were parts for the planes that were on the two flatbeds following.

I had not ever seen planes on trains before. Of course, there were no wings!

Earlier that week I had gone with the students to North Platte where we saw an old steam engine. It was so large that it had two separate sets of drive wheels and was articulated. When you look at it from the front it is off center. I don't know exactly how it works. Guess I would have to see a model that actually worked. I have ridden on articulated buses, but it looks like the top part of the train does not bend, only the two bottom parts are articulated.

They had a mail car attached. it was interesting to see all the mail bags and slots.

There was also an old rail bicycle. Instead of two men powering the wheels by pushing a bar up and down, you could ride the rails by "bicycling." I am not sure you can see it all in the picture.

old lady river riding

sabbath afternoon i loaded up 5 of the 6 junior girls and headed to valentine nebraksa. we went through overcast skies, rain, mist, hail, and finally when we close, it lightened up. the weather is so fickle. we thought it was smooth sailing. however, but the time we were driving up a steep road to the top of a bluff over the niobrara it was sprinkling again. you have to picture a big truck....you know the double seats etc, with a horse trailer behind with horse.(trailer could hold at least 3 or 4) plus the obligatory dog in the truck plus the cowboy brother, the girls and the old lady sponsor. the trailer wasn't going to make it up so it was unhitched and the cowboy and his sister(one of the junior girls) alternately drove and rode the horse--dudley.
by the time we were on time we had only a few minutes to enjoy the view before it rained heavy duty. the cowboy road is horse down lickety split leaving the sister drive everyone else down on the slickery up and down road. got stuck on a little rise and had to figure out that it was not in 4 wheel . backed up several times to get a running start but it was no go until it was put in 4 wheel low and then it was no problem. it was right at sunset. the view was pretty while it lasted. we made it safely back to the cabin on the gumbo/sand road.

The next day it was sunny enough and warm enough to go kayaking. we stopped on the way down the river to see the step falls pictured above. it is the perfect river for a beginner and old ladies like myself. most of the time you can touch the bottom with your paddle. there were a few wavy places and one place where there was a whirlpool, but you just had to go around the island on the left and you were home free.

the girls all got sunburned. they wanted to. they were in swimsuits and shorts.

half way back home we ran into rain again. girls didn't care. they were all asleep in the back of the van. no wonder. they slept on the hard deck outside the night before. they only had their sleeping bags. there were soft beds inside. but... well, we were there for the adventure. i didn't need that much adventure. i slept on the bed. inside my sleeping bag. i have done my duty sleeping on hard floors over the years.

muzzle day

started out to work in office, but because of uncertainty went home to do some packing but remembered i need some cortisone so went to town. after returning and having lunch went back to the office and copied some discs, and printed the church bulletin. the people who are in charge are all off campus so had to do calling for information. in the process discovered the maintenance man had already disconnected his phone. talk about checking out early! couldn't reach the cook because there phone is misbehaving. but the bulletin is done. then remembered i needed a waterproof camera for my trip with the juniors to valentine to run down the niobrara. so back to town. principal called. didn't understand that he wanted the cook to call him. i just thought i needed to tell her they were coming back tonight and she didn't need to feed them. so he had to call someone else as i was already in kearney. then i called my sister and found out that we had water on the basement floor. somehow when you water the back yard now, water finds it way in. didn't do it last summer. so it has to do with the remolding that went on downstairs. sigh. did i get any packing done. no. sigh.

bible study dangerous

i usually try to avoid the local bible study. life is calmer if i don't go. but this weekend for some reason i wound up in class. they were studying prophecy. the discussions wandered wildly away from the subject even though the teacher --politely tried to return to the topic again and again. a lot was said about those "californians" and those people who didn't study the prophecies and instead emphasized relationship with GOD. i kept my mouth shut as much as possible. discussion what people wear or not wear to church is a non issue and a waste of time. (not even close to any one of the commandments) but my body paid the price. it kept getting stiffer and stiffer and when i went to get up i twisted weirdly and wound up with a pulled or strained muscle. i have been trying to get rid of the pain since then. so finally, wednesday afternoon i went to the doctor and got some muscle relaxer. i am subbing for a teacher this week besides doing my own classes and it is alumni weekend. i can't be out of commission. i plan to stay away from adult bible study and stay with the youth bible study.

new favorite author

this author has been around for awhile, but i just discovered him. many of his books have 'book" in the title, hence the interest. also, he lives in denver and since i once lived in boulder, i know the places he talks about.

but the best part is his ability to keep me off the the computer, away from the tv and up at night to finish the book!

great mystery writer.

waiting

i hope i don't have to wait too long to pick up my car! anticipation always grows larger the longer the wait and the greater the chance for let down. i thought i might pick it up this weekend, but no such luck. cyn is coming down next weekend for alumni, so maybe if it is in belle she will drive it down although i don't know how the money will get transfered that way or the plates done. i want to get sd plates.

one good thing about waiting is my money gets to make some more interest ...puny as it is.

i keep looking up on the internet to see pictures.

i saw one in kearney the other day and actually saw one in omaha in front of the barnes and noble store. there were 3 jeeps in the parking lot also. real jeeps not those liberty pretend things.

in the hot seat

i cannot seem to cut and past or copy a picture of a mini so i just put a link in (click on the lighthouse). i went and did it. bought a used mini with low mileage. traded my jeep, muffy. i think i will call the mini bertie. it will be the first car i have owned with air conditioning and with an automatic transmission . it gets good mileage and the repair rate is good and it gets a high rating from the 'green' guys. i had to climb in the jeep....now i will have to climb out of the mini. and it has heated seats..... leather. wow!

broken promises

i promised myself and my sister not to buy anything that could be labeled cute or anything that had to be dusted.....but i was in holly lobby looking for graduation decorations and i just had to mosey around to see stuff. and i saw this little -2 feet high) cat bird house. it is definitely cute but i think i can get out of dusting it if i find a place for it outside. after all, it is a bird house. the bird on the plate is on a spring so it wiggles as is the arm with the spoon.

just fun

well, i mention in passing that i though having a mini would be really cool, but way too dear for me. but my nephew --now a car salesman--has decided to hunt down a used mini that i could afford. so i have been crusing the mini sites and ran across this video! RACING

my kids

recently i visited my son and daughter-in-law in illinois. it seems they are following one of the current trends in our church. very small church gatherings or home churches. their group is meeting is a chapel on campus and the chapel is very nice. my son runs the sound system which they probably don't need for such a small group except that he records the service and posts it as a pod cast which gets visited often. pretty cool.

my daughter and her husband and their study group almost started a small home church. and our church here is about to become a home church or small church. it is pretty small right now but during the school year their are the students. now that the school is closing there will be about 10 members. there is a larger church 30 miles to the east and and to the west which would be easy enough to join, but they want to keep their small group.

so it seems that the trend is either a large megachurch or a small home church.

alumni

i made a mad dash to lincoln to alumni weekend the sabbath. it wasn't our class, but it was probably the last time it would be easy for both donna and i to get together. she drove down from michigan. she is still slim and energenic, i am still a slow mover and have gotten fat... no nice way to say that. we are standing by our favorite pictures in the little art gallery. mcclellen is the artist. he teaches at union. it is hard to believe but all the paintings are watercolors. some are transparent watercolors, but most use opaque water colors.

my jeep gave me a scare on the way in. trying to decide if it is a sign or something. as i got to lincoln i slowed down and my dash went crazy. the engine light and air bag light came on, the odometer disappeared, the other dash gages quit working. ie the ones that had lights. the oil gage and temp gage still worked. scared me... slowed way way down. turned on the right hand turn signal....don't know why i thought that would work when all the other lights went off. well i turned the headlights off when i turned the radio and heater off. anyway when i turned on the turn signal, all the dash lights came back on.

the classic dilema. fix or trade.

horse business

a couple of weeks ago i stopped by the county fair grounds in buffalo county to see a horse auction. it wasn't just any old auction. they were selling bucking stock...horses on friday and bulls on saturday. so they had an area set up with chutes etc and volunteer riders. before you bought you got to see the horse buck and there was a screen set up so while the bidding went on they replayed the ride. i only got to see some of the first rides. the stock was from canada! they have been breeding bucking stock for years.

as you might expect since there are not they many owners of bucking strings for rodeos, there weren't that many bidders. but i actually knew one of the bidders. my sisiter's late husband's brother was sitting just behind me with several of his friends from the wounded knee area.

life is so weird.

falling apart

it is spring, some say the cruelest month.... and maybe it is. most of us think of spring as a time of growth, new buds and shoots, rain to make them grow. which is all true, but spring is not warm and romantic, it is bitter and cold to the bone.

on campus the truth of the end is closing in and some are just giving up, some complaining about their futures--not that i blame them. some moved here just last year with the intent of staying more than just one year. for sure.

now some are trapped into despair because of circumstances. some are too old. cannot find jobs because no one wants to pay them for their years, some have spouses who do not want to move so will become house husbands, some moved to finish a degree and cannot change course until they finish degree, so must improvise for the next year. stress, stress, stress. we are all tired. stress and uncertainty will do that.

i happen to be lucky since i know that i am going to move to my house in belle soon. the stress for me is how soon can i get everything done. and packed. i do so hate packing.

almost like seattle

we have had several days of clouds and off and on rain. one day the air was so full of moisture that everything was wet even though it wasn't raining. i like the the pictures that fog makes, but i crave the warmth of the sun. actually i could have titled this almost like michigan.

bird clouds

on my way to church i noticed a black cloud or drift of smoke on the horizon. ever curious, i kept glancing in that direction as i headed to kearney. when it kept changing shapes and directions i looked for the nearest county road going south. it happed to go over three tracks and there was a train stopped about a block and a half from the crossing. looking to the left and seeing nothing i crept forward to peek around the stopped train which of course, was on the middle track. just forward enough to see a little ways down the track....i saw a train coming. so i backed up as fast as possible. even if i had stayed where i was i would have been okay. the train on the middle track was not moving. that was definately a track where there should have been an electronic crossing guard.

after the train was on its way i drove to the flock of migrating birds. it was a mixed band of geese and ducks. i think i have to get up a little earlier to see the cranes. but i did get some decent pictures for only have a little digital camera. i will have to start carting around the 35 m with my telephoto lens.

spring

Spring is coming. the other day the little crab apple in front of the ad building was filled with cedar waxwings. i haven't seen waxwings in ages. i hope they like the nannyberry in front of the belle house. maybe we will have to plant a crab apple. another sign of spring is the rising water in wood river. it has filled enough to cover the little wood bridge behind the farm barns that connects the farm compound with the fields. it might actually be six feet deep at the bridge. also, the snow geese and sand hill cranes are flying overhead. and they are racing at fonner park.

buddy shopping on line

i am supprised that there have been no articles about buddy shopping on line. i do it with my daughter and with my sister. we live miles apart so cannot go to the mall to do shopping together. so we just sign on and send our ideas back and forth across the air waves. not quite as good as in person, but it is way better than trying to do it snail mail or by tele.

packing

the boxes are starting to stack up. if i pack a couple of boxes every day or two it won't be too bad at the end. everyone who is moving off campus is planning a big yard sale right after graduation! whatever doesn't go i am going to either burn or take to goodwill. my stuff pile keeps getting smaller. but not small enough. going through all magazines. not toting whole mag everagain. cross out word eve...will try not to cart whole mags. books are a whole another thing.

undecided

hmmmmmm
shall i sell the jeep and buy a new honda fit or civic......or maybe a used honda.... probably could get a good price on a honda civic.....
could haul things in cyn's car...bet she would appreciate that... but on the other hand if we go on trips the honda would get a lot better gas mileage.
this is really difficult for some reason.
i have checked out the new car specs several times and it always comes up as honda as really being the best choice.

hmmmmmmmmmm i just ought to bite the bullet and do it..

part of the problem is that i said i would never own a station wagon or van and i just discovered that the fit is classified as a mini station wagon. sigh

might as well give in the wagon idea. have to wear old ladyke. shoes now because of my feet... just going to the old age home faster than a spring snowflake melts.

the femine side

so i was trying to be more in touch with my femine side. got a manicure while waiting for a student getting physical therapy. she was fast. it looked nice. one under coat, two color coats and a top coat. first thing i nick two of the nails getting into the jeep. i wore gloves while washing dishes. but by sunday i had chips in two nails ... that is beside the jeep chips. by the end of monday after typing i decided it was time to take it off.

i think she had thinned it down to o much so it would dry faster. couldn't possibly be my life style.

secret things

life is full of secrets. i have a feeling that not only did i begin my teaching career with a secret among my students but i am ending my career with a similar secret. my first year deaning, a couple got married at christmas break. the boy brought her back to the dorm every monday morning. remember this was the 60's. the principal knew about it, the girls knew, but i didn't. the principal later went on to be president of a southern college. i think they should have finished school, but it would have been nice if i had known instead of wondering what all the weird looks were about.

this year and last one of the guys has been visiting his girlfriend every home leave. so over christmas he calls from an island in the caribbean. the girl is there. i hear no mention of parents. maybe they are on there honeymoon. i don't know. just seems a little weird. maybe the parents were there. maybe i have an overactive imagination.

stupid things

holding a cell phone with your neck while washing dishes. fortunately mine survived. my son told me to take the battery out and let it dry out which i did immediately. it has been a week and it seems ok.

buying more "cute things" when you are going to move in 3 months!

leaving your car running while you go to work when it is zero out .... after driving only 2 blocks and thinking you will turn it off in about 10 minutes and then having someone come in after an hour and ask why your car is running

belle house

over christmas we added bookcases and books and pictures to the northwest wall. well, we don't have a fireplace and our room isn't big enough for a big tv cabinet etc. and we are both book people. we need to work on the pictures though. the two on left are okay, but one of theones on the right needs a different fram and the one on the end is way to dark, so will find a different print and put this one downstairs.

it is a small room, but the chunky furniture seems to work ok and they are compfy.

right now we have a 50's table in the dining area, but will put the big oak table in their, maybe. notice the puzzle on the table....another thing my sister and i share. the book case on the right is hers (on loan) and the one on the left is mine (my great parents).

camping out inside

just when i was ready to work...right... the ice storm came in and turned off all the electric which meant, no tv, no computer, no videos, no cds, no dvds, no lights, no heat, no cold for fridge, and no water or sewer. and for a week! good think i had a down sleeping bag that was good for 20 below. felt like a homeless person hanging out in the malls and stores to keep warm and use bathroom facilities. finally braved taking a bath sort of with 1/2 gallon of cold water in a cold room. felt better even if it was bracing. not ready for artic dips though. finally had heat but no water or sewer. they had the pump going but after a very short time the water line to my house broke...frozen and it took 2 days to fix that. i think light was probably the greatest invention ever. it gives heat and lets you read and most inventions would not have happened without this start. it was really hard to read by candlelight.

what lies beneath

i always thought our elderly money person (younger than my self-but squarely in hippy era) was probably a hippy in his youth. he is a vegan, grows beautiful gardens, and wears sandals. so the following tale was a shocker.

he saw rats eating in his garden...they especially liked his beets and beans. he trapped several of them, but one wily huge old fellow...as big around as an overgrown zuccini...eluded him. the fellow lived under the little garden shed in the back yard. so our money man waited to people were off campus, got out his 22 and shot the thief in the heart. it didn't kill him right off; he was able to crawl back under the garden shed and die in an unreachable place. ....getting his revenge by smelling up the place.

turns out our money man grew up hunting and fishing, served in vidt nam, and owns a rifle. who knew!

the three mums and vase story

my cousin called me yesterday....at least it wasn't at three in the morning so i was coherent. he wanted to know about the vase and the mums. the beginning. the best i can remember is that my dad gave the vase and three football mums to nanny, his grandmother, one thanksgiving when he couldn't be there. i think it must have been in the late 30's or early 40's. in any case the part of the story i didn't know was that my grandmother gave the vase to richard--my dad's cousin. then she decided to get it back. made richard mad so he went out and bought a 600 dollar waterford crystal vase. i can understand. my grandmother was always attaching great importance to things that did not necesarily have inherent importance. in any case she got it back, and i wound up with it ... it skipped my dad....and i gave it to my daughter. i think my sister would have liked it. not sure how i wound up with it.

in any case, my sister, myself, my daughter, i hope my son, richard (when he was alive), my mother(when she was alive), richard's son and i don't know who else... always have three football or other large mums in a vase at thanksgiving.

gobble gobble

it doesn't matter if you are a veggie eater or a meat eater, thanksgiving has lots of gobblers. but why, there is usually much more food than can be eaten. maybe the length of the meal depends on the stories told around the table. in that case you have slow stuffers. my relatives on my dad's side were all great story tellers. i was always mad because when the best stories were being recited, i was at the kids' table. sigh. now i am going to have to rely on my cousin's memory for the stories. he suggested i drive up to sioux falls with my laptop and write them down. i think that is a good idea. will have to find a non snowy weekend. meanwhile, i will find a good book and rest my digestive system.

holidays

it seems like the holidays instead of being relaxing, turn into a frenzied rush to get everything done. i volunteered to help put up the xmas tree in the chapel. i hadn't done it before so was relying completely on ms. m since she has done it for ten years with another (former) teacher. we spent the first hour trying to stablize the tree in the stand. turned out we had the middle section on the bottom. went way faster when we put the bottom on the bottom and the middle in the middle. bummer.

just around the corner

about the time you think things are smoothing out...wham.....life, God...the devil, does not let you rest. we loose a student, gain a student, etc... prospects good. catch a few students breaking the rules, arrange for some community service, and counseling, progress....maybe....more things blow in with the dusty air and wham, three students gone...for the best i believe, but it is still depressing. good thing, wanted enough to be asked to stay another year.:)

running to and fro

i remember that just before the divorce there was a flurry of activity... new house, decorating new house, new car, seeing counselor, new babies, moving twice..... then the end

now- here there is a flurry of activity, cows gone, new roof on chapel, new roof girls' dorm, new entrance gym, new paint on houses and trim on ad building, new furnances, new staffing, old gym being torn down, ........ so then.....?????????

cat attack 2

last Sabbath as I was relaxing on the couch reading i hear this yelp and remembered that the cats were outside. i dashed downstairs and opened the door. the two cats were at the door and came in while digger the dog was walking calmly and innocently with his owner.

what really happened?

the cats were waiting to come in when digger saw them and charged them. both arched and fluffed, but dennis charged back with claws and teeth, hence the yelp. by the time i got to the door, digger was acting as if nothing happened. he is only 3 or 4 times bigger then dennis.

farm trucks

If you have driven in the countryside you have seen this....farm trucks mating. they stop right in the middle of dusty roads and on the edge of plowed fields. they always seem to sidle up to each other like two worms exchanging dna info. even though they mate in the open, there are only a few teenagers around which must mean that either the young are very well hidden or there is a high mortality rate.

gifts two

more than one person understands what i like....we share a number of likes, art, music (but different types), our kids, travel, books, books, and horses. so the gift she gave me for my birthday was a .......horse book. it was one by ben green. i had read several of his books and had given several to my grandfather. but sadly they did not get passed on to me or my sister when he passed away.. so the book was for me and to share with my sister when i finished reading it. it will be in our bookcase upstairs where we are going to put all the books that make us look smart. the romances will be downstairs or farmed out to friends. it isn't that we don't read the books upstairs.....we do.... it isn't just for show. ......altogether....well when you are old you kinda want people to know that your brain isn't dead.....

gifts

often gifts reflect what the giver perceives as something you want but based on what they themselves think they would like to get. My daughter is really good at really thinking about what people would like as a gift as shown by her gift of a horse book to me for my birthday. :) But others are not so perceptive. Take for example, the gifts given me by Dennis Rodman - my cat. Yesterday I was taking a much needed nap, the back door was open so the cats could go in and out. In the middle of my nap I heard a meow. When I woke, I looked over at the gift Dennis brought me. A 2 1/2 food garter snake, alive and unhurt. I know he thought it was a very special gift. It was one he would really like to get. Just think of the fun. Well Mr. Snake found himself flung with great vigor back outside to the middle of the unmown meadow that is my backyard. I can only appreciate the thought of that gift, whereas I will really enjoy reading about Secretariat!

beware of cat

not only does dennis rodman the cat growl when unknowns knock at the door, he chases away intruders. the campus scary dog (he will take off your hand if you are not careful) decided to check dennis out. dennis and his pal sam were just lazing around watching the fininacial vp garden, also the owner of scary dog. as the dog comes towards dennis, dennis rises up and heads straight toward the dog at which point the dog turns and runs. good dennis.

escape

for four days i wandered around the hotel at oprey land in nashville courtesy my employers. there were three coverec court yards filled with water features and tropical plants. it was cooler and drier than outside, but certainly not as dry as colorado. it was very relaxing. meet lots of old friends and teachers from years past. since this is my last convention it was nice that i could go. i am retiring at the end of this year....i think. so if the convention was scheduled for next year i would have missed it. i saw the ann, english teacher at campion who has been unretired for two years now and mr. williams who i think is never going to retire. also met people who had taught in boulder when i was there...paul and deann, del, and students, caleb c who is now going to be a teacher, and old classmates from union- barb s. a nice goodbye. ps. i actually did go to meetings and learned about hunters' registrar program.

summer rodeo

FOURTH OF JULY - BELLE FOURCE
the rodeo arena is quite new but it is a little wide so since i didn't have a big expensive digital with big zoom the horse is a little far away. they had professional big time buckers and bulls which the local cowboys complained about. but i liked the show. the bulls were awesome. before the rodeo there is a parade with a little bit of everything. people grab seats early in the morning along the route. the cowboy band marches by the first time, with the older old members on the bed of a semi, but the band goes by two more times with all the members on the semi. they play for the rodeo too. and they are pretty good.














there are semis all polished in the parade, army trucks and stuff, lots of horses, some tractors, rodeo queens and princesses, little kids, more horses, some mules, politicans, clowns, high school class reunions, water guns, lots of candy being thrown, and fire trucks. and probably more. whew! great parade.

toad house

i was reading about global warming when i ran across an article about toad houses. you just have to make a hole in a clay pot at the edge, turn it upside down in the garden and provide a saucer of water and presto--instant bug snappers. just have to convince my sister. i know she doesn't like snakes, but i don't know how she feels about toads.

it was sort of a coincidence that i rented the movie the day after just two days before about global cooling. sort of scary. so which is it? warming? or cooling? or first one and then the other?

mystery solved

this week is take care of all the stuff you should have done...ie, oil change, teeth cleaning, health check-up. so the boys were stuffed into one cat carrier...dennis protesting with claws and taken to the vet about 20 minutes away. dennis was so stressed his paws turned bright pink and sweaty plus he shot lots of white hairs everywhere. sam though was very nonchalant....he never has had to stay several days at the vets after an operation with two shunts in his face. the vet seemed chatty, so i asked him about sam's diagnosis of kitty hiv. found out that when a kitten is little they may have antibodies for hiv if their mother had hiv, but after a while the antibodies will dissappear and then the kitten will test negative. it is clear that sam does not have kitty hiv. he is fat, shiny and mellow. he sleeps a lot but that is what older cats do... and older people too.

good and bad

the good first, going to belle for the fourth and going to the rodeo, they have a nice small town rodeo and i haven't been to one in a while. they also have a really nice fourth of july parade....lots of horses and fire engines..
and i am really done with all my classes.

the bad...as part of my class looked up info about the rapid paper. they have a community of 20 % non-white but only 3% non-white working on the paper which gives them a parity of like 15%. Chicago has a parity of 67%. Even the Denver Post is in the 60s. Oh thank goodness for the internet. and books stores, and the mail. think i will subscribe to a national paper. at least on sundays.

i am DONE! almost

i finished the research paper and all the other writing things, so now just have the multiple choice and the final essays. sigh

the good thing is i will never have to do it again........

sunday afternoon

it was a rather nice day, not to hot, so i turned off the air and left the back door open for the cats. all afternoon i had to listen to the starlings harassing dennis. he was just laying on the little back porch. i don't know why the starlings thought that was there territory. they would scold and swear at him for a while, fly off, and then come back and do it all over again. poor dennis.

later in the evening, two of the farm cats who don't exactly live on the farm but wander all over campus begging for handouts showed up at the front door. i was trying to get him in for the night, but he was square in the driveway growling and whining at the two intruders. i just picked him, held his claws and brought him. had to shut the door fast, the two oranges were trying to get in.

sunday morning

i have always loved sunday mornings...late breakfast--if your lucky somebody makes waffles from scratch--reading the funnies, hanging out in jammies, watching sunday morning. so this morning i am listening/watching sunday morning and doing my mental exercises on the computer, set game, jigzone....when my whinner cat starts in.. at first i don't really hear because i am really concentrating, but then because it is so insistant i turn around. much to my suprise sam has something in his paws. at first i think it is a mouse and this is what i get for giving them the priviledge of an outdoor outing on sunday morning. closer look reveals it is very much alive, seemingly whole and unhurt and it is a little ground squirrel. after sam almost releasing it, i managed to get it away from him and release it back outside out of view of both kitties. the kitties are getting old, when they were younger they would have hunted it back down and brought it back in.

when not to do important things

i don't know what possessed me...well, yes i do...i waited till the last minute to get something done, per usual. anyway i signed up for two online classes because i need them to renew my certificate for one more year. they both have to be done by the end of june. both involved a lot of reading and writting....how else could you do it online....
so i am thinking of buying a used car with air to drive in the hot weather, also to get better gas milage. but, since i am stressed out with class work, i don't think i should be thinking about buying a car right now. i just hinted at it and my sis told her son who works at a car place and presto, i'm at the car place looking at cars. i just need to sit on the idea for a while, but now i feel bad because i am not immediately buying a car from my nephew's business place. PLUS, i have this attachment to my jeep. we have been through a lot togeather. 2 weddings, 2 crashes, one trip to the airport to see my son off to africa for 6 months, trips to the mountains, trips to see the kids.....we have a life togeather...doesn't that mean something?

cord mania

Is there such a thing as a planned move involving things with cords? Sunday my boss came in the office and started moving everything. (don't ask why I was working on a Sunday at school in the summer). That meant moving the computers. There was no careful rolling up of cords. It was pull, lump, and move. By the time the componets were in the copy room, the cords were all twisted into each other. I had actually spent some time organizing the cords earlier that year. I needed that computer, not any other, to run transcripts for seniors getting ready for their freshman year at college. SO, yesterday I untangled everything and stole a network cable from another computer and set the stuff up in the conference room. I didn't even bother to try and organize them. Please, send me wireless. Yah! like that is going to happen.

ps. you don't really have to move anything for the cords to entwine, when I wasn't looking my own comuter and stereo/tv/dvd/ set up tangled up their own set of cords into a gordian knot.

dog story

so i called the wife of the driver of the sheep. i had forgotten that two years ago some friends of the single young farm assistant had given him a baby male lamb...for what reason i do not want to speculate. anyway when he left the half grown sheep went to live with the family of the man with the truck. they had goats for their daughter's faa project. so the ram and the goats lived together. now the daughter is off to college, the ram just eats and eats, and they couldn't find anyone to sheer it this year so he and a few billy goats went off to market. however the dog always follows the truck down to the pens when it is feeding time. so dog follows. after truck loaded, dog is smart enough to know she can't get caught because then she will not be able to go with the truck. she is quick enough to dodge capture. so driver tries to go fast enough around campus to tire dog out. he gets almost to the nearest little town, a mile away, when he calls for family to come and get dog. there were several solutions to this scenereo. lock up dog before going to feeding pens. if dog is at feeding pens and ram and billies in truck, open truck door and dog will jump in; then drive to house and have daughter grab dog when door is opened. however, as it was, the fast dust raising drive around campus entertain not only myself, but several other campus staff memebers.

quiz

your job should you choose to take the challenge is to figure out what is happening and why.

at lunch i looked out my window and saw a staff member fly by my house in his truck...my block is only one block long and he was really flying... inside the truck was a very fat sheep with all the wool still on. racing madly beside the truck was the staff member's yellow dog. while i was thinking about that... as far as i knew this staff member did not own a sheep.... he zoomed by again... with sheep in truck and dog chasing after.... and it happened all again one more time.

he speaks kinda slow and walks kinda slow...never seen him drive so fast.

renewal, sort of

crazy me signed up for two online courses to run congruently--june 5 - june 30. i checked to see if they showed up where they were supposed to. i was able to get to blackboard where they were supposed to show up, but they didn't. emailed both professors. one said she would activate the site on monday, the day the class started. + for professor

the other said there were server problems, and...... i would have better luck using explorer. - points for professor

how does he know what i am using to start with, and if i can get to blackboard then.... i think i am okay....i think he\she just hasn't activated the site.

but they both emailed a prompt return. +'s for both

ring, ring

after sitting in interstate traffice for an hour at a speed of 1 mile an hour, my temper and my bottom decided we needed a break. it was past lunch time and i needed gas so i pulled off into some unknown place and found a country kitchen for refueling me after refueling muffy. i'm sitting quietly reading my text for summer on line classes when the phone rings. just twice. before i can pick it up it quits. so i read. it rings twice at least two more times. really annoying. so i pull it out and press recall on the last incoming call and ask stravens what can i do for him. he says i didn't call. i figure he is embarrassed because he called the wrong number...... 5 times. so i look at the number on the phone which is his, but it was the wrong time. i put the phone away thinking it is going psycho. i read, the phone rings, i pull it out, look at it, put it to my ear..... the waitress says... it isn't your phone.
sigh

stranger in a strange land

i know that is a title of a sci fi book, but today i really, really realized how i don't fit here. an implant from boulder to the middle of nebraska is just weird. so many contrasts.. oxymoric...

the tallest part of the lower 48 to the probably the flattest, from a very health aware place where people may drink wine, but are really into organic and good fresh food and exercise and people are quite fit to the place where they really ought to be the most fit and healthest and there is no whole foods, (except for your own garden), or farmer's market and cows are fed hormones and antibotics, etc. the ground force fed fertilizers, the water sucked out of the aquafier. from more saved by grace to yeah that is true but i had better work hard at being perfect. from a collage of language and cultures to a place that endorses english as the state language and putting fences up along the border and no citizenship for people here already.
you can not find really good bread in the nearby towns, but on campus there are people who make truly great bread, and there are people who exercise, and there are thinkers, and believers in grace. there is a small fresh spring.

i am here for some reason

ps ... boulder is not perfect ... i know....

a whispered word

because of a word said in passing, a word taken as a hint, a word passed on with cues, all is changed. i thought the changes were long overdue, but why do i feel so guilty, sad. i am probably only one small pebble in the stream that changes the course of events. sometimes the course of events need to be split.

you can think an idea to death, i have to believe it was meant to be and i was just a way of passing the word along.

four and twenty blackbirds

well, maybe not quite....it is lawn watering season. since i don't have automatic sprinklers, i move the thompson twin around about every 2 or 3 hours. ie when i get back to the house from where ever. each time i come back there are birds, mostly red-winged blackbirds and robins having a spa day under the sprinklers. oh to be a child again and play in the sprinklers. walking in a gentle rain is almost as good.

double checking

it is a good thing that the official document for graduates is the transcript. i swear if i ever make a document without an error i will fall over dead from shock. i put down two students as having honors when they didn't. good thing a program is just a program. it was gone over with a fine tooth comb. of course the students wouldn't say anything about being promoted.

the art of saying no

you would think that by my age i would know how to say no. i am not volunteering to do anything from now until the middle of summer. my house is a disaster area, my lawn needs mowing, and the ironing is really, really piling up. so what brought all this on? i volunteered to make photo collages of the campus and students for leaving personnel. i volunteered to teach a girl how to drive a stick shift, i volunteered to sponsor the kids who wanted to make mother's day cards, i volunteered --sort of--to buy the gifts for the going away people. what was i thinking. my regular job entails checking classes and transcripts for students at the end of the year, making my own tests, and grading them, making sure the seniors have everything in place, and i have all the reglia....which reminds me, i volunteered to do the seniors weekend handout program. urggghhhh!

spring of farewells

the cliche is that spring is a time of new beginnings. it probably depends on the angle. for school it is the ending of many things--papers, books, exercises, grades, classes, and for some the end of being at this particular school. of course, the seniors will be going on as they should. but, we are also loosing an english teacher, a bible teacher, the cafeteria director--we lost the boys' dean in the middle of the year. it is a good thing or bad? probably some of each.
in public school teachers can stay on in places for years. my sister went back to a place where she had taught at least twenty-five years previously and there were still some of the same teachers. i know a few academy teachers who have stayed in one place for a very long time--one a science teacher which was a good thing, and the other an english teacher who comes with mixed reviews.
it is probably good that things do change else everyone and everything gets in a rut and the world goes forward while the rut diggers are not looking up from their work.

it is probably time to stop teaching people to follow the ruts.

Lilacs

a close up of part of the picture.

the lavender room

my sis is into lavender and purple big time. so when she saw this cool quilt in spearfish she bought it and i bought the picture of lilacs to go over her hand made cherrywood chest. i do not know how it originally came into the family...maybe my cousin doug knows. but my grandmother had it for a while and then for some crazy reason sold it to some friends of hers. the only thing i remember about them is that the lady could make great bisquits using the wrong techniques. anyway it caused a great rift in the family and finally it came back to grandmother. and then to my sis. it is a great chest. i hope she has written a history on the bottom of one of the drawers. or maybe grandmother did. i have pieces of furniture with her writing on the bottom of drawers and shelves. i have added my own comments. the picture is her birthday and christmas present and all other occasions gift for the year 2006.

being thrifty

my nephew just moved his business to a new place and requested a wreath for the wall. since i needed to have a display for the music conference of young students, i decided to combine the two projects. so first i used all of the flowers for the music program.... i got minus points from my distance employers for not doing anything last year. it was a matter of money. since i am using these for another project it didn't cost my close or distant employers anything.

just about when i was going to weld them into a wreath, i found out there was a big board meeting. so reconfigured everything, took out the flags and the gold stars.

no it is all at home and i have about 2 days to make a wreath before i travel northwest...... and do my taxes.

going to work

my trip home was slowed frist by snow in the sierra's...the train was 5 hours late. but it plugged along pretty good afterwards. but when i reached hastings a blizzard had settled in. and it took my ride a little while to get to the station.
it was so snowy that the bus drive to the east to pick up students was delayed until the next day. but i postholed it to the office to do some work. and the next day also. it cleared enough by tuesday night that the principal drove the bus east and picked up students in the night and brought them back in time for classes on wednesday morning. walking in the snow can be quite a challange...no walks shoveled and only part of the roads cleared. couldn't drive the jeep! a 5 foot drift in front of the garage and this old lady does not do shoveling of big drifts anymore. the tractor was late doing driveways because the milk truck...a big semi...got stuck down on the farm. but a week and a half later almost all the snow is gone. yesterday was rain, hail and watch for tornado day. i just want it to be nice tomorrow so i can go crane watching.

lolita in tehran & bad dirt

over spring break my daughter and i traded books. i love annie p and bad dirt. i think i read it in two days. i traded it to my daughter for reading lolita in tehran, much different in temperment, but very revealing. both reveal culture of a specific time and place but one with wry humor and the other with a wistfulness for better times.

this is the suggested reading list for reading lolita in tehran compliled by the author.

nuha al-radi, baghdad diaries
margaret atwood, the blind assassin
jane austen, emma, mansfield park, & pride and prejudice*
saul bellow, the dean's december & more die of heartbreak
emily bronte, wuthering heights* (read only once-too dark, now that i am older, want more cheerful items)
lewis carroll, alice's adventures in wonderland* (if only i could figure out the math stuff)
jaseph conrad, under western eyes
henry fielding, shamela & tome jones* (:))
gustave flaubert, madame bovary
anne frank, the diary of anne frank (hasn't everybody read this is grade school or high school)
henry james, the ambassadors, daisy miller*, & washington square
franz kafka, in the penal colony & the trial*
katherine kressman talor, address unkown
herman melville, the confidence man
vladimir nabokov, lotita (don't think i can read that one), invitation to a beheading, & pnin
sarah orne jewett, the country of the pointed firs
iraj pezeshkzad, my uncle napoleon
diane ravitch, the language poice
julie slamon, the net of dreams
marjane satrapi, persepolis
scheherazade, a thousand and one tales* (loved this book when i was in high school)
f scott fitzgerald, the great gatsby (never read because it just seemed to decadent)
*ones i have read

picture worth a thou....

monday was twin day....that's all i am going to say

free acrobatic show

as i was driving home this evening ...close to sunset...i saw a swarm of birds performing acrobatics. group acrobtics. the snow geese are flying overhead now in their typical raggedy v shapes, but i am pretty sure the swarm was not snow geese. they were tightly packed and performed as one, it seemed as if they had one mind or were connected like the borg. the maintain a tight group that folded over and over on itself making them appear like a black cloud one minute and nearly invisable the next. sometimes they were in an oval shape and sometimes they stretched out into a pencil shape. i had my camera but they were to far away. they would have been like pencil dots.

acrobats

There are some pictures online, but they do not do justice to the actual visual image of birds swarming. The snow geese have been overhead in their typical intertwined v shapes, but the birds i saw coming home this evening were more acrobatic than geese. they were quite far away and it was almost sunset, but they formed a black cloud that twisted to darkness and then to almost complete transparency. they stayed in an aemebic shape that changed from almost a perfect oval to a worm shape all the time folding over and over on themselves. it was as if their minds were connected in some fashion a la borg.

i don't like cloudy overcast days, but there is something about low laying fog that is interesting. maybe because it softens the harshness of the world around us. distances become a mystery. paths lead into unknown places. there is a little bit of scary, too. who knows what is lurking in the mist.

monday morning

after mumbling about it being a melt down weekend last weekend, i found 8 beautiful red roses on my desk on monday. i got a personal thanks for the sabbath school lesson from an adult and one of the students said it was the best so far this year. unfortunately one of the students sort of gave it away during one of the exercises. ... the student was to walk across a mine field of raw eggs blindfolded with the help of two friends ( one pretending to be the good angel and one the bad angel only the blindfolded person wasn't supposed to know that). No eggs were broken even though i kept rearranging them ( the kids didn't think it quite fair, but i said the devil cheats all the time) because of the careless words of one student the blindfolded student knew who to listen to. but it was okay. the students still got the point. so the roses sat beautifully on my desk for one week and then i took them home to dry. this monday is the monday after board meeting so it will be interesting to hear what transpired. time to go to work.

why i don't make lots of money

i absolutely know that i could not handle a leadership role in any circumstance. i was asked once if i wanted to be a principal and without even blinking, i said no. i cannot handle conflict or stress. this week has been rather stressful....behind on yearbook, missed one deadline...behind on getting restricted list published...forgot to send out reminder cards for a meeting...responsible for a faculty family dinner....have to teach a sabbath school lesson to teens and keep them interested...get the house sort of clean for the faculty family dinner...on top of the usual classes and supervison duties. so, i sort of lost my phone again...left it at home instead of bringing it with me.... caught the lid of the powder creamer on a shelf and had to clean up the counter and the floor....had a lid on a paper cup of coffee and heated it the microwave too long, it blew up and had to clean the microwave out completely....turned the oven on to heat the lasagna and the pie filling that i forgot i spilled caught on fire.... then i had a cover loosely on a container of rosemary butter i was melting for making non-garlic bread and it blew up in the microwave and i had to clean it all up. i think i'll go to bed.

oxymoron

retired hippy~ barbie phone

ghost

i really did want to find my phone. i didn't want to spend the big bucks for replacement. i didn't want to have the contract renewed. so now in the middle of the night i sort of wake up like people do - not quite awake, not quite asleep- and i see a flashing red light. i think, my phone. the thing is, it appears in the same place. when i look in the morning, moving furniture and everything there is no phone. my phone has come back to haunt and harassess me. hahahaha you can't find me. actually i am beginning to think it is one of those big coal trains rumbling by that wakes me and that the red light is from the rail crossings or the light on the caboose. Or maybe it my phone calling me.

phone trap

the phone is lost. i let the battery die before i realized it was missing. since i don't have a land line, i went to the local dispenser of cells and got a new one. the nifty prices are for first time users. then they pull you into a longer contract by "giving" you a discount on the phone. contrary to my sister's opinion, i bought the cheapest one i could get that was a flip phone. the only one they had in stock was PINK. can you imagine me and pink.

i am going to make a little purse with a snap handle --for jean belt loops -- the ones in the stores are all glittery or 50's prints. i didn't like the prints then and they have not aged well.

the big thing is recollecting all the phone numbers and entering them. since i have the same number, i am hoping people will call and then i can just save the number.

i cut down the number of hours but added some roaming hours because this particular provider does not cover western nebraska and the black hills. when i move i will have to change. then i can get a cheap phone with lots of stuff :)

what they need to invent is a little long powered gadget of some kind that starts beeping when the power is almost gone. beeping loudly for people like myself. or i could train my cats to be search cats, like they have search dogs for people and drugs, i will train dennis to find my phone. right.