Glens Falls (NY) Online Book Discussion Group discussion
What are U doing today?
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What are U doing today? (Ongoing thread)
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Joy H., Group Founder
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May 14, 2013 07:17PM
I see. Now I remember about the knacker.
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Jim, I'll add my condolences to Joy's. Wish I could do more! :-(
I had never heard of a knacker until watching and reading James Herrtiot's "All Creatures Great and Small," and all the rest. Sad occupation, it seems to me. Hope Time eases your sorrow. Not easy.
I got the Speedy pony done! Pics here:https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?s...
It took me over a year to learn to spin & crochet this up, but it came out pretty good, I think. The top layer of his mane needs to flatten out a bit, but I think time will do that. I included a picture of Speedy shedding this year, too.
Jim wrote: "I got the Speedy pony done! Pics here:https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?s...
It took me over a year to learn to spin & crochet t..."
Jim, that is absolutely adorable! You are amazing!
What a prize! You must have been proud to finally finish and have it turn out perfect!
Nina wrote: "What a prize! You must have been proud to finally finish and have it turn out perfect!"Thanks! It's not as perfect as I would have liked. Holding real mane hair on is tough & it isn't bending enough yet, but it came out pretty good.
One of the weirdest things was the head. On the first 2 I made with store bought yarn, practice pieces, I had no trouble with size, but the Speedy yarn was a little thicker & the first 2 heads were HUGE. I had to spin up another skein of Speedy yarn that was quite thin to make this head up & have it come out the right size. I don't really understand why, though.
Last Saturday, Marg took Amber & Pixie, 2 of our Jack Russells, to the BWTA's Spring Fling. Last year, I took Lily, my English Pointer, & she competed in the agility. (She didn't like the tunnels, but had fun seeing all the other dogs.) One of the members made up a 1 minute promotional video with clips from this year's event. Marg isn't in it, but the legs & Alexis' dogs are. She's the gal we bought my pony Chip from.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKSwAS...
Jim wrote: "... Thanks! It's not as perfect as I would have liked. ..."Jim, your tenacity and determination are to be admired. Your dedication to the project is amazing. Don't worry about the imperfections. I'm sure the crocheted pony is as near perfect as possible, after all the work you've put into it!
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything,
That's how the light gets in.
~Leonard Cohen
Jim wrote: "Last Saturday, Marg took Amber & Pixie, 2 of our Jack Russells, to the BWTA's Spring Fling. Last year, I took Lily, my English Pointer, & she competed in the agility. (She didn't like the tunnels..."Thanks for the link to the YouTube, Jim. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKSwAS... )
What fun and excitement for everyone, especially Lily! :)
BWTA="Bluegrass Working Terrier Association"
Thanks, Joy. I'm a perfectionist about some things. Glad you liked the clip.
They're all camera shy, aren't they, Nina?;-)
We started out wet this morning. I got the small bank garden weeded & then mowed 2 of the fields this afternoon. I really need to take a couple of days to catch up on all the weedeating & mowing, but I'll be taking next week off when Mom comes down. I guess I can get her to do some of the weeding. She'd weedeat too, but my harness is adjusted just right for me.
I didn't know weedeaters had harnesses! How do they work?
PS-I just found this YouTube showing a weedeater harness:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BV3PC3...
Is that what yours is like, Jim?
My weedeater is the Stihl FS250.
It's a professional grade, the most powerful 'trimmer' they have, on par with the smallest of their brush cutters, so I have a harness that fits over both shoulders, but no lifter. (Honestly, that's just silly.)
Mine just clips to the orange shield on the side of the harness with a metal ring that you can just see on the shaft about halfway between the handlebars & the motor. That allows me to support it fine & gives me free movement. I often use a circular saw blade on it with chainsaw type teeth to cut down saplings & trim branches up to about 3" in diameter & up to almost 8' high. That's how I keep the edges of the hedgerows & woods clear for the tractor. I used it to cut all the paths through the woods, too.
For just weedeating around the fences & through the woods, I use it with plastic blades on a special head.
I don't have a string head for it at all. It's too powerful & just breaks anything but their tough single strings. I don't care for those as much as I like the plastic blades. They cut longer & cleaner, especially if kept in water until used. The water makes the plastic more flexible & they'll cut a lot longer with less risk of breaking.
I have both a string head & a plastic blade head for my little Echo, an SRM-2400. They don't make it any more, but I don't use it very often, either. I think I might have a strap around for it, but I don't recall. Never used it on something that small. Actually, it's pretty good sized for a home weedeater, but can't cope with the thick heavy grass in the fields much less heavier brush. Just to keep it running, I occasionally use it around the yard, but I have most of that landscaped so that I don't need to trim very much.
Jim wrote: "My weedeater is the Stihl FS250. It's a professional grade, the most powerful 'trimmer' they have, on par with the smallest of their brush cutters, so I have a harness that fits over both should..."Jim, thanks for the pics and explanations. I'll show your post to Eddie. He'll appreciate the details. His 80 year old back doesn't allow him to last long each time he weedwhacks. At one time I wanted a light weedwhacker so I could help, but most of the reviews of the light ones indicated that they didn't hold up well. Is your weedeater electric or gas powered? Eddie has both.
Nina wrote: "Tornado headed our way. Wish us luck."Nina, I heard about the tornado on TV. I thought of you and said a little prayer. Hope you're OK. Did it come very near you?
Hope the tornado missed you & yours, Nina.Joy, mine are both gas, the little Echo has a 24cc & the Stihl a 42cc engine. The latter could about run a kid's minibike. An electric motor couldn't develop the power I need & there isn't any electric out in my woods or around most of my fences.
Some weedeaters do wear you out. They're just not built right for a person & often the 'safety' devices screw them up even worse. My little Echo wears me out faster than the big Stihl because of the way I have to hold it.
If I hold both handles (My left hand holds the D ring, the right on the trigger which is toward the motor.) & let my arms relax to their full length, the heel of the shield hits the ground, so I have to bend my right elbow. That puts my wrist at a funny angle & it's my bad wrist on top of that - the one that gave out & the reason I'm no longer a carpenter. It doesn't take too long before that ruins my right wrist.
The safety shield is one thing that makes me hold my right hand up higher than I'd like. My son removed the shield from his & I've been meaning to take mine off, but haven't gotten around to it yet. I'm not sure that will gain me enough & I basically keep it as a backup.
Jim, I showed Eddie your posts and pics. He says that his gasoline powered weedeaters are too heavy for him. Even the kind of "Weedeaters" called "feather-weight" are too heavy for him. So he is currently using a Ryobi brand electric weedeater which is OK for the light work of trimming the grass.
Tornadoes didn't reach this far; only lost a tree branch. Many others in our area are without power.We are lucky so far but they are predicting another storm headed our way this afternoon.
Glad you came through the first & hoping you dodge the rest!
Good luck, Nina! Hope all will be well.
We were fortunate. All missing at our place is a tree branch. So sorry for OKlA people. It so easily could have been us. I remember one time years ago looking out our living room window and seeing the funnel cloud coming right down our street. I grabbed the cat and screamed to the kids to get down into the basement. It didn't touch down. We survived.
What an awful experience! Glad you're OK, Nina.
I think I've mentioned the experience my family and I had with a tornado, back in Indiana in 1990. So my heartfelt sympathy goes out to anyone impacted by that kind of disaster!
Werner, I hope you never have to go through that again. CNN news is covering the recent tornado which took place in OK. What a terrifying experience for all those people!
Did anyone else read Otis' Amazon buy out FAQ? It's pretty good.http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...
Jim, I'll take a look at it later. My computer is slow tonight.
This is pretty cool. It's a slideshow on "The Devious Art of Cell Phone Tower Camouflage". Most are just fake trees, so go quickly to slide 14 of 15 where there is a 4.5min CBS video that shows some very neat ways they've disguised towers including building a lighthouse, a regular house, & a fake rock for the equipment. http://www.networkworld.com/slideshow...
Last day of work for over a week! Erin & Josh are coming tonight with their 2 dogs & a cat or two. Tomorrow morning, they & Marg will take off for my neice's wedding & I'll get to babysit all the animals for the weekend. I expect them back Sunday night along with Mom. She'll be staying for most of the week.I am so far behind on mowing, weeding, & weedeating that I don't know how I'll ever catch up. The past few evenings have been stormy, just as I'm ready to go out. Grrr...
Jim, thanks for the links. I'm behind in everything too! LOL I'll take a look later.The grass is growing fast here. Eddie seems to be riding the mower most of the time. :) He won't teach me to use it. He says it's hard to steer. It's a rear-engine mower.
Have a good weekend with the animals! Hope your family has a good time at the wedding! Do they have to travel far? I guess you're looking forward to seeing your mom.
Jim wrote: "Did anyone else read Otis' Amazon buy out FAQ? It's pretty good.http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1... "
I took a look! I had no idea about this. As far as I'm concerned, things are getting too darn complicated!
Where do I opt out on having my reviews seen elsewhere besides Goodreads? I want my reviews to be seen ONLY on Goodreads!
Jim wrote: "This is pretty cool. It's a slideshow on "The Devious Art of Cell Phone Tower Camouflage". Most are just fake trees, so go quickly to slide 14 of 15 where there is a 4.5min CBS video that shows s..."Thanks Jim. I've heard about this before. Here in the Adirondack area the environmentalists are fighting having cell towers (camouflaged or not) in the Adirondack Park. They want to keep the scenery "pristine". This angers me because our safety is at stake. A man froze to death on the Northway a few years ago because he couldn't get help when he was stuck on the road.
We use Virgin Mobile for our cell phones. VM uses Sprint. Sprint doesn't work on some cell towers. AT&T does work but Virgin Mobile doesn't use AT&T. (So our cell phone doesn't work in Ticonderoga.) There shouldn't be this inequality!
The wedding is 7 to 8 hours away in the Shenandoah Valley in VA, Joy. They'll be leaving early tomorrow morning, the wedding is early evening, & then driving back on Sunday. I am looking forward to seeing Mom, but I have a ton of work to do. I'm behind on the mowing due to some rainy days & then hit a stump & bent a mower blade tonight. I'll see if I can straighten it well enough in the morning. If not, I'll lose an hour running down to town to buy another. Grr.
Wow, that's a long trip. At least they have each other's company in the car. That can make the time go more quickly if the conversations are interesting. Hope they have a good trip. Too bad about that bent blade! What a bother!
We're back from Nashville. Went down Tuesday morning, made a list, & started in on the back yard. I chopped off a lot of branches to open up their back yard & get some off the house. Using a chainsaw up in a tree isn't my favorite way to spend the morning, but we got everything down, cut up into firewood or 4' lengths for the trash.Then Mom & Erin went off to tour the Grand Old Opry while Josh & I made a run to Home Depot for materials. We fixed up the privacy fence they shared with the neighbor, rehung a crawlspace door, caulked, & generally did a lot of little things. Mom & Erin got back & we replanted some stuff to create a better garden for Erin. Josh was about dead by the time we broke for a shower. He said Mom & I were better than a crew. Couldn't believe how much we'd gotten done.
We went out for dinner at restaurant/bar that floated out on dock & sat outside. It was very nice looking out over the harbor. Saw a bunch of ducks, carp, & funny boaters trying to get their toys back on trailers. The latter may have been the most entertaining. We had a very nice young girl serving us, but she mistook Mom for my wife. I pointed out the mistake & she was speechless. Mom said her day had been made & the girl had earned herself a big tip. I was paying, but made sure to tip her well. Mom dyes her hair & I don't, so it's understandable. We're both OLD, you know.
;-)
The next morning, we drove out to one of the nature trail heads with a friend of the kids, a gal name Elizabeth while the kids stayed home. (Erin had to work from 3pm to 1am & Josh had to go to work at 7am.) The trail paralleled the Stones river & was very nice. Lots of stuff in bloom. Some of the flowers were so strong! Lots of turtles, ducks, & such out in the river. It took us about an hour to walk a little over 3 miles & we wore out the kids' dogs.
When we got back, Erin was up, so we had some breakfast & then went to Cheekwood Botanical Gardens & spent several hours going through it. That's the Maxwell House coffee founder's place. Very, very nice & lots of fun. Mom recognized about 3/4 of the plants, but we still saw some varieties we hadn't been aware of. There's the coolest toy train setup there, too. It's outside. I'll try to get pictures posted eventually.
After that, we ate a quick, late lunch & then came home. The drive went just fine until we hit Louisville. I called Marg to say we'd be home in about an hour & then traffic stopped dead. It took us over an hour to make the mile to the closest exit & we saw the entire highway was blocked off. Apparently one car rear ended another, causing it to flip & it killed a gal. The other guy took off, so a big investigation was underway. They opened one lane just after we got off the highway.
While we were pretty much sitting, a trucker got out of his rig & gave Mom "The Trucker", a trucker newspaper. He didn't stay to chat, just gave it to her & hopped back into his rig. We were quite bemused by the whole thing. She read the paper, though.
Everyone else was going left to detour, but we went right & took some back roads that got us home pretty quickly after that. The interstate would have been a little quicker, but not much. Anyway, didn't get back & get dinner until about 8pm.
Wow, Jim, you had a full schedule! I didn't realize how close you are to Nashville, TN. How long a drive is that?It's amazing what a difference dying one's hair makes, especially in women. Nevertheless I gave up dying my hair about 10 years ago. Too much time and trouble if you do it yourself... and too expensive if you have it done. My mom dyed her hair until she died at the age of 91. Both my sisters dye their hair. So I look older than they do. At the age of 79, I don't try to look young anymore. :)
IMO, men who dye their hair seem foolish. I accept the fact that women dye their hair... but men trying to look young seem foolish or vain. I don't know why there's that difference but there it is.
Barb and I don't dye our hair, either. (She says she's earned every grey hair that she's got! :-) ) But I have both male and female friends who do (or used to), and I understand their reasons too.
It's supposed to be just under a 4 hour drive, Joy. I'm all gray, as I guess you know, & not vain enough to want to dye it. It is what it is. Women have different priorities & that's fine. Mom is only 18 years older than me & at our age & her fitness level, there isn't much difference in our looks & hasn't been for a decade, at least at a quick glance. It's quit bothering me & I find it kind of funny that people think we're married or brother & sister.
it's been a hectic visit. I think Mom is still going stronger than me, although she slept in until 6:30 this morning, so maybe we are wearing her down. That's how I got caught up on FB & GR today, I had almost 2 hours free. Then she got up & we went out & did some weeding & walking. Eventually went for a ride on the horses with Marg, too. Mom rode Speedy who tried to buck her off when we cantered up a hill, the old brat. Mom got to see Chip & I swim in the pond, too. He's getting pretty good, I knelt on him & didn't even get my shoes wet. He had a blast splashing & I let him eat some algae for a while.
We visited the Salato Center today, a local wildlife preserve. It is PERFECT for kids, but super fun for adults, too. Inside they have all this interactive, very informative stuff, even a living bee hive. The bees come & go to the hive through clear pipes that go outside the building.
Outside, they have lots of trails & a dozen or so areas where they keep native animals, many being rehabilitated. There was only 1 eagle with a busted wing that can never fly again. He's been there for several years now. 1 bear, some buffalo, elk, deer, turkeys, quail, & wild cats. There's also a really cool aquarium built into the stream. You walk under a waterfall with the huge aquarium on one side water spilling over the other.
The new quail cage is cool. It has double doors on both sides so the birds can't get out, but you walk through on a raised footpath with the birds loose all around. They're being raised for local release.
Lots of native plants well tagged & trees, too. Marg & I have gone there quite a bit. They give classes on bird recognition, tree identification & such. Very interesting, always cheap. I also bought my hunting fishing license there. I don't do either, but all the money goes directly back to the state wildlife department for places like Salato, so I figure it's well spent. It's only $4 to take the tour, but they have a donation box there I always toss some more into. They do a lot of good work.
We spent a few hours there, then toured a local junk shop & a few other things. Then came back & did some more gardening & stuff. I'm taking her to the airport first thing tomorrow, so life should go back to a slightly less hectic pace.
Jim, if I'm ever in Nashville, the Salato Center is on my must-see list! :-) Sounds like a fascinating place, and right up my alley.
The Salato Center is here in Frankfort, Werner. Cheekwood was in Nashville. If you ever come for a visit, I'll take you. My treat. We do have an extra bedroom & can even give you & Barb a dog or two to keep you warm at night.;-)
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I took Mom to the airport first thing, so life should go back to a slightly less hectic pace. I can get to the weedeating around the fence line & all the mowing that's piled up again, too. It was good seeing her, but it's nice to be back to normal.
Jim, you're sweet! (That's okay --guys can be tough and macho and still be sweet.)If you and Marg ever make a trip to the Bluefields, we'll want you to make our house your headquarters for your stay. (We've got two guestrooms.) Princess sleeps outside, though; so you'll have to come in the warm weather, or make do with blankets! :-)
Werner wrote: "Barb and I don't dye our hair, either. (She says she's earned every grey hair that she's got! :-) ) ...."Werner, I agree with Barb. :)
Jim, what a wonderful visit you had with your mom! She must get a kick out of the fact that people think she's your wife or sister! She was very young when she had you, only 18. Just a kid herself.
Thanks, Werner.;-)
She was, Joy, & pretty much a single mother to boot. Pretty amazing.
Yeah, I'm back. Just wanted to add to the looking young message. When our oldest son who was then nineteen was checking out his dorm room at college and his father was carrying a suitcase everyone thought he was our son's roommate. He was forty one at the time. So, I know the "young" feeling. Actually, he often said it was a detrement to look twenty years younger when you are in business.
Glad to see you back, Nina!
Thanks, I missed the excitement of reading all my goodreads friends'news. Books and our lives as they daily unfold. It is almost like reading a book; first I'm in New York state and then Ky and upstate NY and MN and so on. We travel with our words.
Glens Falls (NY) Online Book Discussion Group
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