Spring is a herky jerky affair............

Ah yes, Spring in Colorado. We're all sitting on the edges of our seats (as it were) waiting for it to start. It starts, we jump up. It stops, we sit down. It starts, we jump up again. It stops, we hunker down again......and so on. Average-wise, the temperatures are slowing increasing, but the average is made up of 20 degree days next to 55 degree days. Sometimes there is snow and sunshine all in the same day - like today. Whatever the case, I am soooooooooooooooo tired of cold weather.

We tried to make the best of it this past weekend by planning a little getaway. It consisted of a ski day at Eldora and a night in Boulder. Eldora is a small, close-by ski resort. Neither Merle or yours truly had been there in many, many years. However, with increasing gas prices and over 4 hours of round trip driving to ski at one of the bigger resorts, we decided to give it a try. It was just OK. I think if the snow had been better, it would have been more enjoyable. However, it was a little melty and made it a little difficult to ski. I'm not the greatest skier anyway and it didn't help my technique. I fell twice. Last time I skied, I didn't fall at all. We still had a good time and got in lots of runs before calling it quits around 2 in the afternoon.

I'd found us a ski and lodging deal that was great. We were able to get two adult all day lift tickets and one night's lodging for $138. The lifts tickets alone for the two of us would have been $60/each, so the lodging included option was too good to pass up. We stayed at Foot of the Mountain Motel at the mouth of the Boulder Canyon. Eldora is only 45 minutes from Boulder, so after returning to the motel, we flopped down on the bed and had naps. After that we walked around a bit and then headed to the Rio Grande Mexican Restaurant for their most delicioso chips and salsa and margaritas.

Margaritas at the Rio are an intoxicating experience - literally. (Go to the Rio link. The introduction includes a margarita and it makes my mouth water just looking at it.) They are very good, but we always limit ourselves to one. They have a 3 margarita limit and frankly, we don't know how anyone can drink 3 of them and still be able to function, must less drive anywhere. However, I do know that people drink that many and sadly (dangerously), they do drive. This time, after one apiece, with our better judgement slightly clouded, we decided to indulge again by sharing another one. We ate two bowls of chips with their to-die-for salsa and had our usual entrees of Tacos Al Carbon. It was a totally satisfying experience. We left in a state of margaphoria and went back to the motel. Merle watched bull riding on the tele and I read with my Mp3 player stuck in my ears. Every once in a while I would glance at the television and recoil in horror at the sight of a huge bull and a rag doll looking cowboy engaged in a fairly violent looking dance. I don't think either one of them could have been having a good time.

I had always thought that the bull's testicles were bound by a special strap and that was why it bucked. However, after Googling this topic, I find that the majority of the material says this is not the case. I'm not sure what to believe.

If you ask me, I'd say the rope in this picture is in a testicularly strategic postion but maybe my knowledge of bull anatomy isn't up to par.

Whatever the case, this sport is just a bunch of bull...........

THEY'RE ALIVE!!!

YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

(Posted for your pleasure through the month of February)

YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

I recently decided it was time that we had the DVD versions of the Toy Story and Bug's Life movies. We've had the original VHS versions since they came out.

Logging onto Amazon.com, I perused their new and used DVD inventories and ended up buying new ones. I threw in the DVD version of The Day The Earth Stood Still too. As soon as they arrived by mail, we watched them over the course of a week. Yes, there is a big difference in the quality of the picture.

That was a couple of weeks ago.

I had just gotten back from my usual early morning run to Walmart for groceries and had walked from the garage into the mud room. That's when I heard a knocking sound coming from one of the cabinets that line the walls. These are filled with craft supplies, some of Merle's radio controlled paraphernalia, games and mostly assorted knick knacks that used to be displayed, but for which we no longer have space.

Sitting the grocery bag on the kitchen counter, I went back to the mud room and turned on the light. The sound, something between a softish thud and a sort of scrabbling noise, emanated from the most far left cabinet. I slowly moved forward. Not only was there a sound, but with each thud, the cabinet door moved slightly outward and then closed again. By this time, I was wondering if the oatmeal I had for breakfast contained hallucinatory properties. But no, the noise was definitely there and the door was definitely moving with each thud. Suddenly, as the cabinet thudded open again, I was more than shocked to see this.

.....and they were moving. I quickly reached over and opened the door to find this.

Buckshot took one more fierce kick at the door and just missed hitting my fingers. Those hooves might be padded, but they could do some damage, the inside edge of the cabinet door had slight indentations on it.

"OK, enough with the kicking now," I said as I examined the door edge. Buckshot sat up and turned around. In the process, he bumped into the little toy Singer sewing machine.

"Hey, watch out, you big Galumph!" Singer said in a sort of sing-song voice (imagine that).

And all of this time, we've thought those sounds were our furnace..............

Buckshot snorted.

"Hey, Woody," I said as I petted Buckshot.

"Hey." He sat up and stretched.

"So, what's up, guys?" I suddenly realized I was talking to toy creatures with stuffing. I guess there are weirder things in life........

Buckshot turned and looked at Woody.

"Well," said Woody, "Me and Buckshot here heard you playing our movie the other night and we discussed it and decided that we wanted to see it bad enough to raise a ruckus."

"Is that so?" I tried to convey consternation, remembering all of those nights when I had been awake listening to what were now apparently knick knack patty whack partying sounds and thinking my furnace would need to be replaced shortly.

"Yeah, that's so." Woody and Buckshot would have none of it. They were tired of being in the cabinet, tired of no sunshine and tired of not getting to watch movies.

"Well then, I guess we should maybe do something about that." I grabbed them both although Buckshot started to wiggle and I almost dropped him, sat them on the breakfast counter, got the DVD and started it. I didn't have any popcorn, but gave them each some Raisinets from our candy stash. Buckshot proceeded to eat them all, much to Woody's disgust.

"Now you'll have gas all night."

I promised them they could watch the other Toy Story in the next couple of days if they would just keep the noise down.

Down in Dixie.............

I'm reading To Kill A Mockingbird - for the first time. I've seen the movie several times and most recently a week ago after getting it from our local library. After that I realized I had never read the book, so went back to the library and checked it out.

It is the one of the dearest books I've ever read along with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and maybe a couple of others that I can't recall at the moment. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1960 and is the only published book by female author, Harper Lee. It is apparently loosely based on her experiences growing up in Alabama. The main characters are Scout (a little tomboy), her older brother Jem, their attorney father, Atticus, and lots of other extremely colorful characters. The story is told in first person by Scout. So many of the references in it reminded me of things in my life while growing up in Texas, all things southern being somewhat similar.

One particular section reminded me of the hand fans we used in church back then. They were paper affairs with elaborate religious scenes (The Garden of Gethsemane in the book) glued to a thin wooden handle. Since there was no air conditioning and in the southern states, the church could get very stuffy during a typical lengthy service, these fans were made available next to the hymnals on the backs of the church pews. This one depicts the Last Supper and I do remember using a Last Supper fan myself. This website, Jewel Antique has several others.

Anyway, I'm about halfway through the book and it's safe to say that there is something delightfully uplifting on almost every page. Included is much humor as in this passage describing the wild imagination of their friend, Dill, who ran away from his home of some distance to their home.

"I finally found my voice. "How'd you get here?"

By an involved route. Refreshed by food, Dill recited this narrative: having been bound in chains and left to die in the basement (there were basements in Meridian) by his new father, who disliked him, and secretly kept alive on raw field peas by a passing farmer who heard his cries for help (the good man poked a bushel pod by pod through the ventilator), Dill worked himself free by pulling the chains from the wall.

Still in wrist manacles, he wandered two miles out of Meridian where he discovered a small animal show and was immediately engaged to wash the camel. He traveled with the show all over Mississippi until his infallible sense of direction told him he was in Abbott County, Alabama, just across the river from Maycomb. He walked the rest of the way."

The Dill character is based upon her lifelong friend, Truman Capote.

Almost every page has some wonderful story on it. Many are the life's lessons found on it's pages.

My Mother and "I'll Swan".....

Growing up in Texas, I remember that when my mother was on the telephone, she would repeat the phrase, "I'll swan", in response to some revelation being conveyed by someone on the other end of the line. "Well, I'll swan," she'd say. (Her inflection when speaking this would be similar to saying the phrase, "Well, I'll be darned".) Through the years I've always wondered what it meant, but my interpretation is "I'll swoon". Women were prone to swooning in times past, as was expected from the "frail and more delicate sensibilites" of the "fairer" sex. According to Dictionary. com swoon means: 1. To faint; to lose consciousness 2. To enter into a state of hysterical rapture or ectasy From one southern belle to another, it was a dramatic statement conveying their astonishment and or consternation over certain events of import.

Well, I'll swan...............

Valentine

Remember Valentine's Day when you were a kid? (I'm assuming you are not a kid right now.) I don't know what it is like nowadays, but when I was growing up Valentine's Day was a combination of anticipation, tiny love intrigues and many times, rejection. As the day of national love approached we all brought shoeboxes to school to decorate. These were to be our Valentine mailboxes. The decorating part was always fun for me - Little Miss Creativity. The school provided various materials in the form of the standard pink, red and white construction papers, doilies, crayons and glue. We each then proceeded to cut out hearts and paste them on doilies which in turn were pasted onto our mailbox. A large rectangle opening was cut into the lid of each shoebox as the mailbox slot. Your name was put on the outside. The completed mailboxes were lined up on a table.

Every girl usually had a crush on at least one boy and this was the time of year when you could really let them know how you felt. Boys, at these ages, were not into "love" - it made them throw up. However, they did like girls to love them - they just didn't want to reciprocate. (So, just exactly how have things changed in that regard?)

The days leading up to Valentine's Day were spent in choosing the most effective and prettiest assortment of valentines from the local dime store (see definition below). These came in boxes of around 25, with envelopes. I don't remember what pictures were on them or what they said, but I know that I would sort through them, picking the biggest and most expressive one for the object of my fervent affections. The word "Love" was, of course, essential in the verbiage.

From Wikipedia: The concept of the variety store originated with the five and ten, or nickel and dime or dimestore, a store where everything cost either five cents (a nickel) or ten cents (a dime). The originator of the concept may be Woolworths, which began in 1878 in Watertown, New York. Other five and tens that existed in the USA included W.T. Grant, J.J. Newberry's, McCrory's, Kresge, McClellan's, and Ben Franklin Stores. These stores originally featured merchandise priced at only five cents or ten cents, although later in the century, the price range of merchandise expanded. Inflation eventually dictated that the stores were no longer able to sell any items for five or ten cents, and were then referred to as "variety stores". Given that $0.05 in 1913 when adjusted for inflation is $1.02 in 2006 dollars, this retailing concept has shown remarkable vitality over the years.

We were not required to give Valentine's to each classmate, so naturally, a typically stinky little adolescent is generally not going to consider the long term effects of the rejection experienced from not receving many Valentines. Each mailbox owner was terrified of opening it and finding that they did not have many or any Valentines. It was safest to open your box later at home, in case this was the outcome. ("I just want to be able to savor it in the privacy of my room.") Lord pity the poor unpopular child. As we all know, there were those unfortunate souls that were at a disadvantage in looks (most important acceptance criteria), nice clothes or money. In my case, I wore glasses. Perhaps my choice of glasses may have had something to do with it as you can see below.

Please don't hold this lack of taste against me - maybe cat eyes glasses were the "thing" then. I suspect they might have been. My daughter told me that she can't believe my parents let me wear them...........

Apparently, this has all changed now and everyone must give a Valentine to each classmate - this is assuming that Valentine's Day is still celebrated with mailboxes in the classroom. Whatever the case, I do imagine that our latest batch of adolescents is just as mean sometimes.

In closing, give Valentines, especially to those you do not like. It's the golden rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.