It's A Day For Positive Thoughts and Future Crops

I'm sending all positive thoughts south to Chickie Mama who is undergoing what should be a relatively small, exploratory surgery today. Except ... apparently her doctors at Mayo had a hissy fit because she should have been scheduled months ago. Apparently she has cancer (news to me) and it is a very aggressive type of cancer. The fact that she slipped through the cracks and was given an appointment six months out when she phoned the Clinic to get scheduled was unacceptable to her Mayo team. That's very understandable, and I'm really hoping that extended delay didn't end up harming her beyond their capabilities of healing. We'll see. The surgery is first thing this morning. 

I think ChickieMama is scheduled for laproscopic 
surgery this morning. But I'm not super clear on exactly 
what is going to be done, so I'm just sending general 
"heal quickly" thoughts towards Claire. 

It's hot and humid here, so my run was a sweat-fest and now, more than half-an-hour after my shower, I'm still overheated. At least I'm in the basement computer room, so that's one of the cooler rooms of the house in the summer months. I'll cool down shortly, I'm sure. 

My bean plants have blossoms now, so I'm anxiously 
waiting for my first bean pods to start growing. My peas 
also have blossoms, so snap peas are also in my future. 
Yummy! 

I've got flowers on my beans and flowers on my peas, my tomato plants are arrayed with lots of green tomatoes ready to ripen, and my raspberries are starting to bear. The only disappointment are my strawberries, which we've been trying to establish for years now and which never bear much. I think I'll probably scrap the strawberries next year, they're not worth the time and trouble. 

My raspberry patch is starting to bear fruit again. I love this 
patch. We've had it for years and years, and it doesn't bear 
large fruit, but they are very flavorful. At peak, it gives us quite 
a lot of wonderful fruit, and leaves plenty to share with the 
birds and bunnies. 

Yesterday was a very busy day at the shop, I was hopping all day. That's great, though. I like to be busy, and there was only one time when I was super swamped. My customers were patient, though, so all was well. DH has been working on rewiring the ballasts in our fluorescent fixtures, and he was downstairs working on the wiring so I couldn't call him up for assistance. That was OK. Our landlord will be over today to consult with DH about one wiring question he has, and we'll come over on Sunday to deal with two of the fixtures on the sales floor. With ceilings 12 feet high, we need to set up the big ladder, and we can't chance any customer needing to pass through that area while we're high up. 

I've worked hard at being a positive person over the 
years, and it hasn't always been easy. In the main, I 
think I succeed, but it's really easy to fall back into 
negative thoughts. I vastly prefer positive ones, though. 

So, that's about it for today. All things told, I think it's going to be a good Friday; I'm thinking lots of positive thoughts, at any rate. Have an excellent day and I'll be back tomorrow. Slava Ukraini. 

Power Off, Power On, Life Goes Onwards

We finally got our power back after almost 24 hours. I suppose it could have been worse, but we're still working through the food, figuring out what needs to be tossed and what survived (barely). We did buy ice and put most of the refrigerator "must save" items in a cooler, but that was probably too late to actually save most of them. We should have done it right away. 

We have at least eight Coleman coolers, most more modern
than this one. This Coleman ice chest dates from the 1960's.
We took the food out of the cooler late Saturday night, and it
still has unmelted ice it in as of this morning. If I have
time I'll try to get it emptied today, but carrying it is really
a two-person job. 

I think the most frustrating thing was continuing to go onto the "Lights Out" section of my utility, see that I was identified on there, but get absolutely no time frame for when we might have a repair. DH was quite frustrated, and I was quite grateful that I was at work. Most of my friends in the area were unaffected by the storm - a storm that spawned quite a few tornadoes and hit the Twin Cities with straight-line winds in excess of 70 mph. Unfortunately, when we get winds like that in my area, more often than not, we get blown transformers. This time it was down the line from us - but still affected the area in general. 

The electrical lines in my neighborhood go through
a lot of tree branches, so in a stiff wind, we often
will have power issues down the lines. Usually
these aren't city wide, though. On Saturday we
were one of more than 55,000 houses and high-rise
apartments in the Metro Area that had lost power. 

Around mid-day, DH heard a series of clicks, followed by three concentrated explosions. He assumed that the power company tried something and three transformers blew, one right after another. I suppose that's possible, I wasn't there so can't weigh in on the accuracy of his assumption. 

But, 23 hours after we had lost power, we finally had light on once again. What a relief! On Sunday we continued work on the woodshed. I'll share some photos tomorrow. I hope all of you had a wonderful weekend and I'll be back tomorrow. 

Power!

Yesterday was progressing at the shop. It was hot and humid outside and most people were intelligently living their lives in air conditioning - either in their cars, homes or businesses. Quite suddenly, around 2:00 p.m., everything came crashing down. The power went out. Checking next door, they were without power too, as were the stoplights at the corner intersection. Oh joy!

Power outage - never fun, but at least this time we weren't in pouring
rain and it was relatively short. The worst are during dangerous weather
conditions, so I'm grateful. 

After contacting the utility company and reporting the outage, I got the news that it will be 3-4 hours before the power is restored. Apparently it is a blown transformer - not really sure exactly what that is, but up to 800 homes and business have been affected. I shut the computers down from their battery powerblock links, turned off the powerblocks (they have a really annoying "beep" to let us know that the power is off and we are on battery) and turned off extraneous lights. I turned off the laptop, many of the secondary light switches, and spent a ridiculous amount of time on hold with my alarm company to let them know I'd be on battery backup for a few hours.

According to the utility company, it was a transformer problem. Of course
I have no idea if it was an equipment problem, or if a car ran into something
somewhere. I'm just grateful it didn't last longer than it did. 

There's nothing like working with color specific items in the dark. I have windows across the front of the store that allows us to continue working, but if someone actually came through the door for product, we would have been totally out of luck. Fortunately/unfortunately, nobody actually came in to shop so we dodged that issue. Also fortunately, the power was restored within two hours instead of the 4-5 they originally quoted. I then reversed the shut-down process, turning on all of the varied electronic devices and powering up our operational software. It was a mess, but it could have been so much worse.

Here's hoping you have a Friday filled with joy and power. Electricity is good! LOL.

Late Can Be Great

Yesterday we celebrated my birthday. Of course, I already had my gift and numerous cards and best-wishes from my friends and acquaintances around the world (so DON'T repeat - this was an extra celebration). DH had decided to celebrate my birthday a week late because my birthday had fallen on Mother's Day this year which meant restaurants were crowded and not what we wanted to experience. So Sunday was "my" day after a little bit of work.

We're actually pretty good with repairs. The problem with the shop
is that our ceilings are twelve feet high and the lights have to be on when
we're open for business. Repairs must take place after hours or on days off. 

Although we started by doing some electrical work at the shop that had to be done on off-time when we wouldn't have customers needing lights to see the merchandise under. That actually went almost well - one problem remains to be resolved, but I'll have to phone the landlord for extra advise on that. But I now have light in two cases again and the new ballast is installed, even though the light fixture is doing things that make us a bit nervous (thus, the call to the landlord).

Springcon had lots of people in costumes of all types. Coming into the
Grandstand, we saw a father dressed as Superman with his two kids, probably
no more than 10 years old each also dressed as a superhero. Dad gets
"Best Dad Ever" nomination from me for escorting his kids in full costume. 

After getting our work out of the way, we went to the State Fairgrounds for Springcon - an annual comic book show with illustrators, costumed attendees, and panel discussions. We had a really fun time wandering the exhibits and looking at things. I'm trying to find the perfect dashboard ornament for the car I'll be buying later this year, but I wasn't overwhelmed by anything I saw just yet. I know I'll find it eventually, though, and it's going to be a fun hunt.

A Yoda bobblehead is a possibility for my dashboard. But...I really
haven't found the perfect thing yet. I keep looking, though. And, of
course, I don't have the new car yet either. Details...details...

After an hour or two at the con, we went down the road to The Source Comics and Games. I collected my latest subscribed comic issue which they had set aside for me, and DH got a lovely mini to paint. Our purchase was discounted because we had our wristbands from Springcon on, so it was a win-win.

Although I had a MUCH SMALLER piece of meat, this is pretty close
to my dinner. I also brought at least half of my meat home for tonight's
dinner, so I wasn't as bad as I could have been. It was REALLY good! 

Finally, to dinner. DH had given me a choice between Red Lobster or Outback Steakhouse. He was sure I would choose Red Lobster, but he was wrong. I ended up at Outback and I was so pleased that I did. We each chose prime rib with a lobster tail, a wonderful salad and a loaded baked potato. So good! And the best part is I have some leftovers for dinner tonight. Score!

One of these four teams won The Amazing Race All-Stars, and I was
really happy with the end result. I also think the taxi driver who
stayed true to his team was awesome. It was a great race - I can't wait for Fall. 

So it was a great, late, birthday celebration, topped off with cupcakes while we watched the final of The Amazing Race All Stars. I was delighted with who won the Race, and my strawberry cupcake was absolutely amazing. All was good. Now to get back to work *sigh* - LOL.

Have a wonderful Monday!

Random Thoughts After the Storms

My power was out for almost 24 hours and there are neighborhoods here in the Cities that won't have power back until Wednesday, so I'm very grateful that ours was back just in time to watch the Stanley Cup Final hockey game on Saturday night. We lost large branches from some of our trees, and pulled several other trees down yesterday but our damage wasn't as great as other people's.

This is the weather map of what hit us on Friday night. The darkest part is very
close to my suburb and the storm was moving from left to right with 60+ mph
winds and driving rains. 

All over the cities trees gave up and were uprooted, losing the battle with waterlogged soil. We got eight inches of rain added to our lakes, creeks and rivers. Storms reappeared on Saturday night and early Sunday morning, but they were more fleeting and didn't cause us as many problems. But we'll be cleaning up for days.

This scene was duplicated throughout the Twin Cities area.
Many trees just couldn't hold up through the high winds
and saturated ground. 

As I said above, we pulled down several trees. These were trees that were now endangering my house, so they had to go. My front yard looks like a lumberyard right now. We'll get all of these cut into smaller pieces and either bundled for collection or added to the wood pile before mid-week. More rain is expected on Tuesday so that may be pushed out a bit longer, but it will get there. 

The largest tree we pulled down was a big ash. We have had our eye on it for a while, but it was still OK. But not after this storm. We climbed a ladder and roped it with 100 feet of rope and DH wielded the chain saw while I pulled to keep it moving toward me instead of the roof. The problem was that all of the branches were away from me, so it was HEAVY! I wasn't getting anywhere and the chainsaw bound into the back cuts, so DH turned off the saw and came over to help me pull. We were getting there, but not easily, when a young man came over, t-shirt, shorts and work gloves. After he helped us get the tree down (help so needed!) we thanked him and found out that he is our new next door neighbor - Chris. He, his wife and their three kids moved in a month or two ago but since the house was never officially listed for sale we weren't sure if it had been sold or if they were house-sitting. Now we know, and they seem like really nice people. He certainly was a big help when we needed it!

Several cars were squashed by falling trees, but this was a great pic.

I'll be spending a few days catching up with several days of no internet/computer access, so please forgive the lack of immediate response to your posts and comments. I'll get there. Thanks for all of the kind thoughts during our latest weather issue. It's nice to hear the ambient sounds of my house and get a nice response when I flip a light switch. Such a simple thing and so nice...

What Did We Do Without Them?

I'm looking to my left and there are my "devices" awaiting packing before I leave for work. They are several different sizes, from very small to larger purse-sized and I love each one of them. There is my Apple Nano on which I just loaded four Mendelssohn symphonies - such wonderful music. Next to this is my Motorola Droid smartphone on which I now have a free voice recorder app for when story inspiration hits me while I'm in the car (which actually happens quite frequently). On the far right is my NookColor - still a piece of equipment that I use every day even though I can and do read on my phone also. I still adore my Nook after more than two years, it just does whatever I ask of it so well. On the floor, patiently waiting, is my laptop nestled in its case. And of course, I'm sitting at my desktop computer writing this. 

My Nano is green, with my LJ User Name engraved on the back.

In 1876, on March 10th, so just slightly more than 137 years ago, Alexander Graham Bell, using a liquid transmitter, spoke the famous words "Mr Watson - Come here - I want to see you" and was heard clearly by his assistant in a nearby room on the other end of the transmitter. The first telephone - the first baby step on a very slippery slope of electronic devices.  

One of the original ads for the Princess Phone. I was in love and it
is still considered a classic phone design.

I grew up with the phone as a common part of the household. When I lived in Aspen, Colorado we had a party line (that means that we shared a phone line with a second household, each one having a specific ring tone). But our phone line in Denver was a single line - FLorida 8195 was my phone number. I remember it even today, more than fifty years after I had that number. The phone were dial phones and direct connect, i.e. we didn't go through a switchboard (although I have worked at switchboards and routing boards in my employment past). In those days I wanted a "Princess Phone", but my Dad never wanted to spring for the extra dollars. I finally had a phone receiver of my own when I was in high school, but it was still wired to the wall and just an extension phone, not a separate phone number, and still not a Princess Phone. 

This phone was so small and portable, It only made and
received  calls, but I really didn't need more than that.

Touch-tone phones came into use while I was in college and grad school. Within a short amount of time they had become the predominant style of phone, although I still had a rotary dial phone in some rooms of my house until the late 1980's. In 1996 Motorola introduced their StarTac mobile phone. It was revolutionary. It was super thin and very portable compared to mobile phones of the past. It was so revolutionary that it was included in the Academy Awards goodie bag that year and several of the stars were gushing about the phones in their interviews. I bought one of these a few years later when it was less expensive. 

I love my Droid - it's so darned versatile and thin. Yes, I am
a gadget geek!

After a few more portable phones, and switching from carrier to carrier to get a better plan and better signal strengths (from AT&T to Sprint to Verizon) I upgraded to a smartphone. I bought a Motorola Razr Droid late last summer when my prior phone died. I never thought I would really get into a smartphone, but I'm finding that I really love it. I'm still watching my activity closely so that I don't increase the amount I pay monthly past a reasonable point, but I love my electronics Whatever did we do without them? Just the ability to carry more than 300 books with me in my hand - so wonderful! Yes, I love my line-up of devices, I am a true Gadget Geek.

A Day of Color and Light

The electronic ballast adventure was successful beyond my dreams. My landlord came in at 10:30 am or so and began the rewire of one fixture. I phoned my Manager who came by on his day off to watch and learn. After one more call-back for the landlord to explain one more little point, my manager understood what to do and jumped in. By early afternoon all fixtures had been rewired as needed and new bulbs were installed. We have light! It's a beautiful (and very bright) thing and I and my customers will be very happy. No more hiding in the shadows...

A solar flare from 2007

I thought I'd share this lovely solar flare with all of you. It is,

of course, much brighter than my banks of fluorescent lamps, 

but there is nothing exciting about looking at a row of lighted

light bulbs and solar flares are much more beautiful.

Today is my day off, but I won't get a chance to actually be home and relax until mid-afternoon, really cutting into my creative time. A local bead store is going out of business at the end of the month. The owner contacted me (and other stores in the area) to offer the last of her merchandise, fixtures and supplies and she does have a few things that I can use. So, I'll be at her place at 11:00 am today to pick up the supplies I discussed with her and to see if there might be anything else of interest. This will keep me away from my desk for hours which does not make me happy.

Loading boxes

I have high hopes that the boxes I pick up won't be too bulky, but

no guarantees. Either way, I'm getting a good deal and she's getting

a bit more cash before her doors close forever tomorrow.

My plan for whatever time I have left today is to ink in as much of the new panels for CB's story as I can and begin the color work this weekend. I'll see if that works or not. I have a total of seven panels that I want to create for her as well as one original portrait. We'll see how time goes. I wanted everything finished by tomorrow - yeah! Right! Totally rolling on the floor with that deadline. But Back to Middle Earth Month begins on Friday and I refuse to back-burner writing completely in favor of panels. I'm hoping that I can manage mostly original art instead of digital or photo-shopped montage works and so I'm really trying to work on original pieces. We'll see how things are standing at the end of March.

Using PanPastels

I can hardly wait to begin the color work on my inked panels. Too fun!

I hope that your Wednesday will be a bit less hectic than mine. I know mine is impossible when I begin doing laundry at 4:00 am (a ridiculous hour to start my laundry). A highlight for my day will be my weekly conversation with Aearwen. Thank goodness for friends!

Adventures in Electricity

My shop is well lighted by long banks of 8 foot fluorescent bulbs extending from the front door to the store back. Periodically, of course, the bulbs burn out, and more rarely the ballasts burn out and need replacement. We've been doing this (and complaining about doing it) for years. I have four fixtures out right now due to ballast issues and we can't have our customers shopping in the dark, so we were off to the hardware store after we closed last night to get ballasts since we had finally used up our overstock supply.

This is the old-style ballast that we used to be able to install...

Bad news. The type of ballast we had been using for years - a magnetic ballast - has now been replaced by a new style because of new Department of Energy regulations and this has unfamiliar wiring and may even require a total rewire of each fixture. We bought four of the new ballasts, but when DH climbed up to change the first one he realized that there was an extra wire on the ballast that he had no idea how to use properly. So, I put in a call to our landlord asking him to come by before hours today and take a look. We might have to have him contact an electrician and suddenly a job that was looking like $200 and stretching our budget at that may run into the upper $100's or even $1000's and seriously impact us. Call me NOT happy. In fact, today you can call me worried until I get some positive news.

Because I'm thinking about electricity, I'm showing pictures of amazing electrical things today...

Electrical Spark and Water

I loved this picture. We are always told that there is an attraction between electricity and water, but this shows it so beautifully.

Ever wonder about electrical plugs? Interesting, isn't it?

Power from an electrical cord.

There's something so beautiful about electricity. It's random in general appearance, yet directed. But that said, take a look at my last pic for the day - this one is called Colored Power and it's quite stunning.

Colored Power

Have a fabulous, high-powered day...