November 2003 Archives

I had a little bit of a dream about my grandfather this morning.

I walked into a room and saw Grandpa sitting at a little dressing table. He was watching Linda, Dennis, Rolf, Mom and Kaaren put a big desk together for him. He wasn't interfering, just watching. He looked young and he was quite relaxed. He had two tiny Siamese kittens on the little table in front of him. They were just sitting there in his hands. I sat down on the end of a big bed next to him and he handed me one of the kittens. It was bigger then, more a teenaged cat, and I only held it for a moment. It didn't want to stay with me and it jumped down, but I wasn't upset.

That's it. Just a fragment of a dream. But I felt very peaceful when I woke up. Before I left for work, I took the vial of Grandpa's ashes that Grandma gave me out to the yard. I walked around the house, and as I told him all about it, I sprinkled some of the ashes in the places I thought he'd like the best--under my favorite tree that makes the pretty yellow flowers, next to the huge hibiscus in the dark plant-cave place, around the big old crepe myrtle, at the foot of the holly that's always full of squirrels and birds, and in the back bed where the spring bulbs are already poking their little leaves up. And I asked him to watch over us, which is presumptuous, I suppose, but somehow I don't think he'll mind :-)

My latest favorite cool new tool is here (click on BeadLiner). I saw the ad in Bead & Button. What a splendiforous idea!! I see from the instructions that you still have to start it with a hammer (a nervous thing around glass beads) but I like the idea of the more controlled finishing process. I would think you could line with copper as well as silver, and why not line gemstones as well as glass? Oooooh, the possibilities....

Yesterday Marianne and I went to the local bead society's annual show, and I found some wonderful goodies. I picked up some vintage glass flowers--just can't resist those--in pink and in yellow, and some little bitty flowers in green and in aqua. I got some fun clear pink cubes with polka dots on them, some clear purple rectangles, and some clear blue round beads with polka dots. I think my favorite find was a strand of big amethyst chunks, all kind of long and skinny, and drilled on one end. They're very pretty. And a special bead--a little tiger-striped lampworked kitty :-)

I also got to chat with Yvonne and see her jewelry, and ooh la la, it is impressive! Santi had told me she made "big" things, but I wasn't really quite prepared.... Covetousness makes it tempting to think that it's hard to mess up when you start with beads that amazing, but there's more to it than that. She has a really good eye for color, especially when she uses smaller beads, and her big pieces are actually wearable. Well, if you can afford them, of course ;-)

Charles Weever Cushman, amateur photographer and Indiana University alumnus, bequeathed approximately 14,500 Kodachrome color slides to his alma mater. The photographs in this collection bridge a thirty-two year span from 1938 to 1969, during which time he extensively documented the United States as well as other countries.

The collection is searchable by year and by various keywords (location, subject, genre). The presentation is attractive and easy to navigate. They've even scanned in the notebooks that Mr. Cushman used to document his slides. Some of the pictures have been restored, which is noted in the details for the image.

Sample photo here

[link via ResearchBuzz]

This can't be right....

I love you :-)

I had no idea "mind mapping" was such a popular concept (see this list of software titles for the purpose.... I also didn't expect to stumble onto this topic from the research I'm doing at work today :-)

NaNoWriMo has 22,000 people signed up this year! That's pretty amazing. I think it would be a fun thing to try, but it seems unlikely that the ideas would last for a whole month? I haven't the faintest how you put together enough of a story to write a whole novel.... My ideas tend be good enough for a short essay, at best. And somehow I don't think 50 short essays would count ;-)

These lovely ladies are my great-grandmother (upper right) and her sisters. Aren't they wonderful! The picture was taken in 1915. I scanned it in from a print that Mom & Dad gave me. They have a treasure trove of photos and documents, mostly from Dad's side of the family. I think it will be a lot of fun to gather some family history for our (eventual) kids, partly because Mark's background is so different from mine. My family has been here since the ship after the Mayflower (so I hear) and his grandparents were immigrants. And here we are, in the melting pot, being Americans :-)

I've finally updated our phototheme project here. Next theme is Indian Summer.

I shot 22/50 on sporting clays today :-) So far, that's my personal best. It was on the easiest course, but still, I'm pretty excited about it. The low-recoil loads that Mark found for me are a HUGE improvement. Now it's actually easier to shoot my gun than his. His still pushes (aside from being way too big for me) and now shooting Maggie is like shooting a bb gun. Sweet! I just have to figure out what to do with the six boxes of dove shot that I have left.... It's going to be really hard to convince myself to shoot the heavy stuff after getting used to these wonderful shells.