Salon.com Life | Confessions of a home-schooler

Salon.com Life | Confessions of a home-schooler

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Pics/Vid: The Fair Grove Festival

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I don’t really know how ‘Live Writer’ and picture ‘albums’ (as opposed to singles) will upload, or if the thumbnails will enlarge to full-size. These are the pictures that I took on the way there and at the festival.

Just thought some music would be nice :)

Technorati Tags: festival,fair grove,missouri,mo,antique tractors

Light at the end of the tunnel

Got this while watching a movie :)

The Dishwasher Plug POV

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Do you think it would be okay if we just replaced the above plug? The motor was running fine before we stopped/unplugged it. We're thinking one of the prongs came loose, which started the quickly dealt with fire. Thoughts? Oh, and something else, the microwave is plugged into the same electrical outlet and works fine.

Previous post: The Wall Socket's POV

Technorati Tags: dishwasher,plugfire,plug,socket,power cord

We are okay because...

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...we located the source of the smell and unplugged it just as it was starting to catch fire, and I mean *just* in time. What was, you say? Our 11 year old portable dishwasher. It has been awesome to us, although the racks had been 'repaired' for several years with duct tape, a homesteader's best friend. LOL. We're out of practice, but I *think* we will be able to figure out how to get clean dishes w/o the dishwasher. LOL.

In other news... I over "trimmed" my face and neck while preparing them to be shaved even closer with the electric razor. But after two days, my electric razor still irritated my skin (dull?) so I tried a regular non-electric razor and it was surprisingly satisfactory. I had been using an electric razor exclusively for over 20 years. Apparently, unannounced to me, they've improved them. So, I'm going to try hand shaving for a while.

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My 'Gadgetized' Desk Top :)

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Blogging: something to do

Well, since I've almost downed the last of the coffee, I suppose I should take that shower. You know what else I've been slackin' on? Other people's blogs that I had been following consistently. Kind of feel guilty about that, but not as much as I once would've. That's because of Facebook and Twitter, for the most part. Only a few friends haven't joined either, which is fine because we're on email lists together. As a matter a fact, most of my immediate family and relatives are on FB or TWTR, and the ones that haven't aren't real gregarious towards us anyway. Bah!

The above just doesn't look like enough. I don't know. Perhaps I'm too used to the 140 character guidelines. *smile* Although that's usually enough since I don't really have a lot of *new* things to write about very infrequently anyway. Ooh, that's right, I AM 'The Rambleman'. Heh-heh-heh ;-)

Gotta pee, so this is good-bye till our pixels meet again! :-)

Online BlogWriter

I told you I'd gone all "browsery", and this will eventually be a regular 'ramble', for now though, just testing this thing called "ScribeFire" as the Firefox Add-On. Seems okay, but it's early ;-)

(photos):Moon,Latte,Twitch

The Comfy Kitties

Moon (queen o da house), Latte ("man" of the house, still single),

And Twitch girl who's always comfy

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Scroll to see enlargements

The first is of Moon who was cuter when she was asleep, but still cute nonetheless

The is my Bud: Latte dude
Just happened to spot him on the one spot on the sofa without a cushion

Twitch

Definitely cute, was more so before she woke-up

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Celtic Festival Pictures 2009

Took these pictures and videos while at the Celtic Festival.
(as always, just click on pic to enlarge)
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My view on the way to the festival


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When we first arrived, this is what we saw

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Big, yet beautiful, Irish Wolf Hounds

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The first time in 3 years that it wasn't raining

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Some sort of fungus I thought was interesting

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Yardwork and wasps

Yesterday after I finished read my email, Facebook, and Twitter messages I decided that instead of continuing to sit at the computer I should get some yard work done. When I first started it was with the intention of putting diatomaceous earth around the base of the house after I trimmed the grass and weeds with the weed-eater. But then I decided that the D.E. only kills one cell bugs and whatnot, and since it's February there probably wasn't many (if any) anyway. After that I did a bit of mowing while riding around on the riding mower. Should prolly explain that I had cut some tree wannabees out from the side of the little house and needed to take the debris to the wood/brush pile, so I got the mower out of the shed, hooked the wagon behind it so that I could take it all in one swail foop. *grin* I had also trimmed some dead branches off of a tree on the other side of the yard that needed to be moved as well. That was the original reason for getting the mower out. After said debris was moved to the brush pile I decided to do some grass cutting in front of the wood shed and right around the house. That is when I remembered that I wanted to trim the Poplar stump which had been growing tree starts, with the machete. Well, I didn't. That is because when I got closer and raised the machete to whack them I noticed that most of the leaves had wasps, flies and other bugs on them. Anyway, didn't want to piss off the wasps so decided I would whack the starts in the evening after they had went to bed. Consequently, I haven't done that yet.

(click 2 enlarge)
There is a stump under those 'starts'

(clik 2 enlarge)
A wasp on the leaf of a start

(click to enlarge)
Another wasp

Peace Dome Yesterday

This is where we went yesterday to meet up with friends. Actually, we were originally just taking our DD (16) to meet her friend and found out there was a cool event with 'Speakers', 'Authors', and stuff. Next time I want to walk the Labyrinth :-)

(click 2 enlarge)

Rain, mini's, networks

It rained pretty much all afternoon yesterday starting around 3 p.m. It was nice to have falling. I know almost exactly what time is was because my wife, Rain, was out on the porch waiting for the UPS truck to pull-up, the driver to get out and hand her a box that hopefully contained a "Mini" notebook computer. Lucky for us all that is what happened between 3-30. Had it NOT happened, she would not have been happy, which as you know, if she isn't happy, none of us are. lol. Anyway, after getting it all set-up, she happily played on it off and on the rest of the afternoon and evening. In the 'off' times, she made us supper and played Wii Golf with our dearest daughter and I. That and watch repeats of shows from previous seasons.
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Well, it'll be 8 o'clock in the morning here in about 15 minutes, whatever that is suppose to mean. What it means is that I got out of bed and on to the computer about 2 hours earlier than usual. Yes, I got up at 7 and normally sleep until 9 or 9:30. Time 2 chek on my Tweeters, Bookers, Emailers and other bloggers. You know who you are :)
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Okay, redid this so the formatting isn't all screwed up. Thanks for your patience :)

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Me? Blogging? That's different!

I remember when I first started this blog that I wrote several times a week. There was even a period when I was trying to write a full page daily. That was mostly for my journal, but a lot of those days had very little "personal identifying" things in them that I posted them here. 'course there was also a time when I went a little too far over to the paranoia mindset. You'll be happy to know it's been over a year (I think) since that was my common way of thinking. I admit it, I think it was somewhat fear-based, more like, oh crap, I don't know. I was just into all that "just in case" everything hits the fan I must be prepared way of thinking. Then two Yule/Christmas's I was in a really bad mood ranting about Christmas songs always being the same year after year after year. Was so cranky that just hearing the word "Christmas" was annoying me. To this day, almost a year later (possibly 2, can't find a blog entry to verify it) I remember the day that I was snapped out of it by my dear wife. Actually remember the conversation (or close to it). I just kept going on and on about really disliking the Yule/Christmas holiday/season when she looked at me, almost with tears in her eyes, a scowl on her face and said, "You know, just because *you* don't like Christmas and Christmas songs doesn't mean I don't! I'm *trying* to stay upbeat about it all and you are NOT helping, so just try to make the best of it and let US enjoy the season!!" Then it hit me and *SNAP* I started finally coming out of that funk and into that guilt of making everyone in the house miserable just because I wasn't happy. Realized just how selfish I was being and did my best to "just cheer-up, dammit!" A month or two after that I went to the doctor and *finally* got put on an anti-fatigue medicine that I was prescribed 2 years before but the Medicare Prescription Insurance wouldn't pay for, so I did without. Plus my anti depressant dosage was upped. Well, with the mind-snap and the medicine all combined I came OUT of it and actually started to enjoy life. That's right, happiness through chemicals. Ya do what ya gotta do I suppose. *snicker* Any hoot, for a year or more we've started worrying less and less about all the "bad" things that *could* happen and started focusing on what *good* things could become reality if we just went with the flow, so to speak. I stopped watching political news completely, and let me tell you, THAT made a HUGE difference in my mood and mindset, not to mention people around me didn't seem so bad anymore either. LOL.
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The last couple of months. Got a new car that we desperately needed. Thank you Obama! Enrolled DD in College, only doable thanks to Rain's bio dad. Got DD a new laptop computer for school as well. Thank you, Sir! Got a couple of flat screen, 19 inch monitors for our computers (SuuuWEET. *smile*). Have become closer to our egg connection/hay mower and bailer a mile away. We gave our pool table and exercise machine to our new/9 year neighbors, but we got a Wii System so we can still play sports and exercise. It's nice having friends who live only minutes away, as opposed to hours. Although with a vehicle that not only gets better gas mileage but is way more dependable, we can visit our far-away friends more often, therefore helping us feel less isolated. Woot! Unfortunately they've pretty much moved on with their lives so we're not as close as we once were. Long distance relationships are really hard to maintain for long periods of time. Yeah, I know, that's obvious, but me being me, I felt the need to state the obvious. Sometimes it's a curse. LOL. At least we have The Internet, so we're still in contact.
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Unfortunately, but not too bad since the kids hadn't been swimming much anyway, the pool liner and sand-filter developed a leak so we shut the pool down for the year. Our solar porch light's battery died right after I bragged about finally getting it mounted on the front porch. LOL. Of course it was sad when my parents moved on to the great beyond in March, but at least they are no longer suffering or unhappy. I know that has nothing to do with the pool, just popped into my head. Been thinking about them both lately. Don't know why really. Guess I miss them more than I thought I would even though we only talked on the phone every couple of months toward the end.
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Had a good year of tomato producing. Apple tree never did bloom or produce apples, ever since last year's surprise ice snap right as it was flowering. But the grass keeps on growing, is green most of time, so at least we have that to beautify the place. And of course the Rose of Sharons along the front are beautiful. The weeping willow tree in the back got blown over, but being a willow tree just kept on growing anyway. Kind of neat actually. Now it's almost Fall and cooling off more during the day and early morning's especially. But it's all good. If you made it this far, thanks for reading.
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