Ramblings 2009

Life is great ... busy as ever ... and I've been informed I am getting behind in keeping up the pics and newsy notes ... here's some of the latest. Shiloh is walking and busy learning words. Its like watching Rosetta Stone without the need for software intervention. She points, someone identifies, she repeats. And repeats. Its awesome. They are a threesome now ... Rob, Nomi and Shiloh ... they are enjoying and reveling in every detail of whatever activity ... which I love watching and hearing about. Here is Shiloh in her motocross outfit >>

Over Memorial Day the boxer girls stayed out here and Rob, et al drove over to Seattle to relax and be tourists for a few days. They took the usual one million photos, but these are some of my favorites >>

Those of you who knew Dad ... is this last one Rob looking like my Dad, or what??? It made me smile when I found it in the stack. Just a casual photo of Rob driving the Lexus as they're travelling across the state. Periodically I am struck by this wheel of life where we all turn round-and-round. What is that line of the opening of the detective show ??? .... "the names have been changed ..." Skip loves watching drama TV shows and I have always turned my nose up contemptously at these shows. What I'm learning is this >>>      names change      years change      life is the same over and over      clothing changes      humans are blissfully consistent          it is a wonderful thing.

I'm looking forward to keeping my younger sister Merri's two children this summer every week once a week. The mere idea is getting me edgy about what else I'll manage. I intend to run my version of boot camp :) My niece Ally (11?) is interested in sewing ... she's helped me a few times before with fairly large things ... she did quite a bit of work on the blocks for Ryan's new quilt ... so I'm going to teach her to sew. She's gotten a sewing machine and I want her to be sewing Hot Pads for Hunger because they are small, artistic, and count-able.

My nephew Christian, who is about 8, is crazy about Ryan (and Skip whenever he gets the chance). I'm going to teach him guy-skills ... such as, we're going to install my new outside sink (plumbing), going to make some new steps down to the mailbox (concrete work / hammer, etc.), going to expand the front deck to twice its current size and add a ramp, replace the heating elements in the hot water heater, etc. etc. ... you get the idea :)

I'm going to try to confine my projects to the days they are here ... because in case you didn't realize it, I tend to drop all money-making work and get completely engrossed in wonderful home-improvement projects every opportunity / excuse I get. So ... none of that!!! If I know I'll have at least one full day a week for them, I'm going to push my projects there.

My business is very busy --- I’m so blessed that things have not taken a downturn with the economic issues. I have more work than I take time to do.

Rob and grandbaby Shiloh continue their Friday morning Nana visits. That has been such a great scheduling plan for Rob and I both. We sit around the yard, enjoying lattes and some treat I bake, and watch Shiloh explore and play with the dogs while we talk internet/development/techy talk. What a blessing!

The demo derby project is coming along nicely. Skip is still posting videos of the progress almost every week at www.skipcook.com ... we're having a good time with it but it is LOADS of work. I'm finishing the last of the artwork on the t-shirt today and going to send out a mass email for pre-orders so we get enough the first time around.

Our yard is gorgeous -- I added another expanded bed at the base of the front pine tree and the dogs were playing in it till I started putting on the grass clipping mulch I usually use everywhere. Once that covered the bare dirt they have left it alone and things are finally settling in and starting to take hold. The plants weren’t stressing, but they were getting uprooted every single day! Sass was burying regular dog-bones out there -- I mean the VitaBone kind.

This raised bed we put in last year on the west side of the house is really taking shape. I put a climbing Mr. Lincoln rose in this year next to the trumpet vine. The trumpet is just starting to wake up now -- small at the bottom and bushy, and Mr. Lincoln looks settled in and healthy. I’m looking for FRAGRANCE! ... unfortunately, the fish in the pond did not survive the winter ... we found them at the bottom of the pond in mud. Happily, the new ones are quite lively and seem content.

These are my favorite perky early geraniums surrounding a peony that opened just yesterday. Everyone else in the neighborhood has had peonies in bloom for weeks, but this is the first of ours that has opened. We have them in several different locations, but they're all running a bit late.

Our raised beds are looking awesome and we should have enough beet greens to feed most of the neighborhood. Skip went nuts on those. We like them though, so its all good.

This rose has moved four times !!! It was a home-grown transplant I started from the mother plant which climbed the wall next to our chicken house on Bonnie Drive. It is the old-fashioned strongly scented yellow climber. So nice to see that its happy this year :)

Asparagus we planted in a 15" deep trench last year has dirt piling almost back up to ground level. The stalks are tall and ferny, very healthy and looking good. I did lose one rose bush that was planted on the side of a small rise. That was the only plant gone through the winter though.

Ryan has stepped up and become an A student these last 3 weeks and we have all thoroughly enjoyed the process. No idea how much he will remain here -- but no matter, it is wonderful however it works out. I love it when he’s not here and I so enjoy his presence when he is :)

Man, the Thought of God

IF I should say, Now I will think a thought,
Lo! I must wait, unknowing
What thought in me is growing
Until the thing to birth is brought;
Nor know I then what next will come
From out the gulf of silence dumb;
I am the door the thing did find
To pass into the General Mind;
I cannot say I think —
I only stand upon the thought-well's brink;
From darkness to the sun the water bubbles up —
I lift it in my cup.
Thou only thinkest — I am thought;
Me and my thought Thou thinkest, naught
Am I but as a fountain spout
From which Thy water welleth out.
Thou art the only One, the All in All.
Yet when my soul on Thee doth call
And Thou dost answer out of everywhere,
I in Thy allness have my perfect share.



MacDonald, George, "Man, the Thought of God," POEM,
Christian Science Journal, Vol.15 (July1897), p. 226.

Shiloh's First Birthday Party

Of course, you can all expect Nomi to be posting 5,000,000,000 pictures, but these days she is taken with Facebook, and one must be a member to see more than one or two pictures. So ... here is the group that gathered at Rob and Nomi's yesterday to celebrate Shiloh's first birthday. It was so enjoyable! One of the best family gatherings I’ve ever attended. Being a cynic myself about any large family event, I rudely showed up an hour late. This is a habit I intend to cut out of my personal profile immediately. Of course I always have some reason, but yesterday once we got there I realized I would have had so much more enjoyment if I had been prepared in advance. I made the cutest footstool for Shiloh for her birthday. It was a rush job and I know Skip is so right in saying I’ve got to get a grip on this type of stuff. Although it is adorable and no one looking at it would have a complaint, I know improvements I would have made if I had not been finishing it in the hour we were late for the party. I intend to change my ways. I didn't even get a picture, although I intend to do that sometime this week and I'll get it posted up here. Shi was a trooper the whole day. There were 21 people there, everyone talking and laughing and carrying on. Nomi made some Romanian pork rolled in grape leaves (finger food) and TONS of cake --- cupcakes, layer cake, decorated cake ... etc. etc. Cindy brought Satay Chicken Skewers which were delicious and Pam brought some terrific meatballs in sweet/sour sauce. It was a great mix. Not so much food it was overwhelming like a big sit-down dinner, but no hungry kids and plenty to snack and talk over. Being such a cute GIRL, the most common present was frilly little dresses, all of which were adorable. She also got a neat set of wind chimes which I'm guessing she will love. She is fascinated with strings and bells and things that move on cords. Pam, Bruce, Tanner and Kyle brought her a fancy new bike trailer so they will all (Martinsons and Havens) be ready for summer bike riding. At the end of the evening, about 6pm, she was still awake, being passed from person to person. She ended up with me, playing quietly with my necklace and the strings and knots on my sweatshirt before crashing on my shoulder after the last of the visiting kids were gone. Until then she watched the chaos even though her eyes were half-mast much of the time :) For her private birthday celebration, on her actual birthday [2.26.08], Rob and Nomi had another celebration, which included giving her their present of the entire Little Tykes Kitchen. I saw this posted on Facebook that night and asked Rob about it the next day. He admitted he was not in favor of this purchase because it is meant for young girls in the 3-5 yr age group who can "pretend to play kitchen." He said they went home with it Wednesday night and he left for work the next day, leaving Nomi to assemble the thing. Well, turns out she LOVES it! The photos I've copied from Nomi's Facebook postings tell the story ... there are lots of THINGS to touch and fiddle with :) Rob says she loves to open and close all of the doors ... LOL. My fav pic is the one where she is on her tiptoes trying to reach the pans hanging from the top rack. I guess since she is roughly the size of a two-year-old and since her dad comes from a line of Rocket Scientist intelligence ... well, maybe she is advanced for her age, do you think? My latest favorite Shi picture is her in a pair of coveralls crawling around on the floor with Rob >>>

Check out this amazing guy who builds new things from found things. I loved this!

This text is from the original article on the New York Times site. It can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/automobiles/collectibles/22MARQUIS.html?ex=1251003600&en=9642600cc1504d81&ei=5087&WT.mc_id=AU-D-I-NYT-MOD-MOD-M083-ROS-0209-HDR&WT.mc_ev=click

Mr. Heller, winner of the second Collectible Car of the Year contest on nytimes.com, owns Fabulous Furniture on Route 28. In a workshop several paces behind the store, Mr. Heller, 63, creates one-of-a-kind furniture out of wood that he logs, transports, mills, cuts and finishes himself. He also creates sculptures out of found metal, predominantly based on three themes: farm animals, totem poles and rocket ships, which are built out of the headlamps and taillights of cars from the 1950s and ’60s. It is these mechanical wonders, scattered about the premises, that make the storefront so remarkable on the rural highway. "I buy stuff; I have no idea what I’m going to do with it," Mr. Heller said recently in his workshop, which was filled with boxes of car parts, power tools and a thin fog of dust. He has a quiet, easygoing charm punctuated by moments of enthusiasm. He considered a box of old taillights: "If you listen to it closely," he said, "they’ll tell you what to do." Four years ago, the parts told him to build a custom car out of a 1998 Mercury Grand Marquis sedan and body panels from 11 different classic cars, in particular a 1957 De Soto. "I needed a new car, but I can’t have anything regular," he said, noting that his Cadillac hot rod is 50 years old. With the help of a friend who had moved to Florida and found the state overrun with large Mercury sedans, Mr. Heller was able to buy a Grand Marquis with low mileage for $6,600. The first thing he did was pry off the lights and bumpers. Then he stripped the body panels, leaving only the front doors and the roof. And he went to work. He calls his creation the Marquis de Soto. It is the automotive equivalent of a pit bull mix. In this case, the De Soto is the dominant breed, though the car has retained the positive traits of the newer Mercury: air-conditioning and predictable handling. It even passes the state inspection. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/02/22/automobiles/collectibles/20090222-desoto/index.html

Hey! Check Out Skip's New Site

He's been working hard on this stuff and having a terrific time :)

The foundry tour is pretty cool ... click on the SI link to the right and then if you have great resolution, be sure to click the menu on the bottom right of the link to choose HQ. I've had this tour in-person several times and I always love it.

www.skipcook.com

Poinsetta

Is this gorgeous or what? Yes, I did actually take the time to polish that silver bowl. :)

Holiday Entertaining 2008

Christmas break is scheduled to end tomorrow, although it was originally supposed to end today but for some reason the school districts decided they needed one more day. I'm thinking a week or two might be a good idea, not sure what they got done in one day that they couldn't have accomplished over the past two weeks since this snow started, but ... for whatever reason the word is the school is back on tomorrow. Skip went back to work today and was smiling when he went ... guess he finally got enough time off to truly relax and realize he enjoys his job. Here are pictures taken during the holidays. Ashley visited for 2 days with her raspberry hair and stylin' new glasses. Demetri visited for 7 days and all three dedicated gamers spent the approx 105 hours (i.e. x 15 hr/day) playing computer games in the cockpit, as I'm referring to our office these days. Five computer screens in a one hundred square foot area definitely qualifies. The snow continues to pile up and Pippy has decided after one swat that she will remain within the virtual boundaries of the yard rather than roam the neighborhood. She is content to be guard-dog-on-duty at the top of the snowpile. Unfortunately now that she has traveled up and down several times on both sides, loose neighborhood dogs feel like it is justified for them to travel the same path to visit the INSIDE of our yard. Life is good :)

Here they are playing some kind of spinning boxer toy thing ... and giggling like crazy ... Here they are happily working ... shoveling the walkways for the 1,000,000,000th time, with Pippy nipping to keep them focused.

Ryan PwnStar

Shiloh and Triangle Tina

We enjoyed a wonderful Christmas ... big dinner with turkey, ham, cornbread dressing, sweet potatoes, rosemary potatoes, fresh cranberry sauce, giblet gravy, broccoli and rolls. Helen and Ed came over and stayed to play with Helen's photos from her digital camera. Some of the pics I'll be posting up here have come from her snapshots over this past year. Its cool to see her becoming comfortable with digital toys :) Yesterday I drove over to the west side of town and went by Rob and Nomi's house. I was thinking to drop off their Christmas box and then continue on my errands, but Nomi was home and Shiloh was napping and then pretty soon Rob came home and Shiloh got up to visit. Ryan and I made dolls for Shiloh and Sadie for Christmas. Shiloh's doll is named Triangle Tina. She's full of 100% cotton to make for good chewing. Her hair is tubes of quilting cotton and as you can see she is quite a hit. I was very pleased :)

And this is an awesome picture :) Shiloh and Dad ...

Shiloh and Santa

Rob says "About 30 seconds after this she looked at him and started crying a little bit. Reminded me of "A Christmas Story", we got pics of that too. I'll put them up as soon as we get them off of the camera."

Snow!

December 17, 2008 ... haven't seen this much snow come down in such a short time in my memory. I heard reports of 2" per hour there for a bit. I was driving across town, of course, and got stuck in various lines of non-moving traffic. Finally took the coats off the dogs and we just visited, caught up on phone calls, and generally enjoyed the views. We were 3 hours driving 20 miles, and I heard worse stories. People leaving downtown at 5pm were 2 hours to drive 10 blocks. It was crazy! Today, two days later, the roads are plowed, we've all shoveled the MOUNTAINS of snow out of our driveways after the plows came by, and life is pretty much back to normal winter. It is beautiful. The kids were scheduled to have today (Friday) be their last day of school before Christmas break, but every school in the area closed on Wednesday and never resumed. In this part of the country, where we expect snow and know how to deal with it, we almost never stop the daily routines with stormy weather. Occasionally though, like yesterday, its so wonderful to just sit back, snowed-in, and remember how awesome it is to live here. Happy Holidays!!

I heard reports of 23", but we got 19" by our yardstick-measuring-method on top of the flatbed trailer. Here's the view looking west out of through the breezeway toward the driveway. Check out the snow on the top of the garage roof on the left. Here's what a demo car looks like under 2' of snow :) Skip is currently being chauffered to work with the SUBARU (!!!) --- not because the truck isn't running just fine, and the Jeep, but just because it means he gets to get into a warm car at night after work. This is Pippy's first encounter with snow. She started off not wanting to go outside, but she loves it now. With 2 coats on, of course :)

The Heart of Christmas At the hearth of hope, in the manger of the humble mind, on the Sabbath of everyday, in the holiness of everywhere, in the evergreen of time no longer, in the whispering praise of stars (one silver shining for each of us), at the eternal moment of divine conception, in the unfolding of continuous creation, the annunciation of abundance, the trumpets of heaven’s windows’ raising, is the end of longing for belonging, the visible beginning of invisible grace. In the gift of the giver, the present of the presence, the outward embrace of indwelling Love, all things become lamb-white and new. We are born over and over in the beauty of perfection, crowned kings and queens, princes and princesses of peace, open unspeakable gifts on the altar of exceeding joy. The child-heart leaps in wonder and welcome, beating with the great heart of Christmas. -Alfred Gemrich Christian Science Sentinel,December 22, 2008

Thanksgiving 2008 and Weekend

OMG!!!! Skip said this afternoon his stomach hurts ... and it is from us laughing so much over the past 24 hours :) We had a terrific Thanksgiving dinner out at Rick and Sandi's ... great marinated turkey that browned and cooked so perfect, ham, sweet potatoes, scalloped potatoes, stuffing, rice-n-artichoke dressing, umpteen salads, lots of pickles and finger foods ... and the best part??? I only took scalloped potatoes and some delicious dill pickle hors 'doeurves:

Take nice-sliced lunch ham, spread with cream cheese, wrap around a great dill pickle. press tight and then with a good sharp knife (... a Sanelli??) slice generous 1/2" wedges. Ryan made ours the night before and they were still great the next day even after slicing and overnight in the fridge.

It was great not to do my usual over-cooking :) And of course there was PLENTY of great food.

So we get home and Ryan and Skip decide to go back to playing FarCry2 ... a game they have been non-stop on since it came out at the end of October. Skip has been talking about wanting to set up a server game since they got it, but never sounded really serious. We all started talking about it and I was fiddling with online info about router settings and such. We made some progress and then decided to get really motivated and figure it out. Several hours later, we had it kicked. Up and running a dedicated server from Skip's machine in the shop, which meant that Ryan and Skip could both connect to 'their own' server from in the house. Most importantly, it meant they could load up some of the player-created maps and could choose which map to plan when.

Once it was working, they were a couple of happy campers and played non-stop from about 8:30 till 5am this morning. Killing each other, hollering, laughing like crazy, and having a wonderful time. We got up this morning, well ... we got up a little after noon and had breakfast at 2:30, and they have been having a great time ever since. We sat down to a delicious dinner at 9pm and they have placed a deadline of 2am for tonight's play.

Pinta's First Trail

Finally got the opportunity and managed to fight down the anxiety of considering a trail ride with unknown new friends and unknown new friends' horses. After seven and a half years I loaded up and went with Pat Richardson's to Joanie Koch's place over off Bigelow Gulch Road. It was awesome! So enjoyable and new friends who have very nice trail horses to boot! What more can a girl ask for???
It was crispy but we all dressed for warmth, and we were blessed with beautiful sun. We went for just under 2 hours which was perfect for Pinta. She was dripping sweaty when we got back ... poor girl had to figure out how to work ... lol.
A very enjoyable day and we sat and visited for lunch after while the horses relaxed a bit. Trailmarkers!

Wynecoop Wood Art 2008

This is a pic of the finished piece of sap wood I got from Tina Wynecoop last fall. The back, which doesn't look too smooth, has 20 coats of clear on it. This front side -- ??? -- who knows how many. I had it on my table in the shop and would just keep adding coats periodically every time I was in the shop all through spring and summer. We decided it was finished and ready about August, then I scrounged some 'found' hardware and made a hook strap out of copper. It was always destined for the contrast with the rich green of our bedroom wall, which of course was in-the-process of being painted. Once the room was 100% green in September, I finished the wood and it now hangs and looks great.

Ryan's Morning Coffee

Ryan enjoyed morning coffee the last day we were in Yakima. Now, in order to appreciate this story you need to know that he does not like coffee, at all. I believe he decided to test out the machine in the hotel room for entertainment. He used every single creamer and sugar available in our two adjoining rooms. Skip likes those International House creamer concoctions so he drank a cup of black with a teaspoon of Ryan's mix. Ryan drank the rest ... He actually wasn't too wired ...