we should all be so lucky

a few months ago a friend sent this email to me and several hundred other people to let us know about his mom...hope he doesn't see this! too good not to share.


 FOR YEARS I'VE ASKED MOM TO NOT DO ANYTHING ON MONDAYS AS I'M TIRED FROM THE TWO TWELVE HOUR SHIFTS I DO AT xxxxxx OVER THE WEEKEND SO YOU CAN IMAGINE HOW PERTURBED I WAS WHEN I FOUND HER MONDAY MORNING, HAVING PASSED ON PEACEFULLY IN BED THE NIGHT BEFORE. WE SHOULD ALL BE SO LUCKY! ALL MY RELATIVES DESCENDED UNINVITED THE NEXT DAY & JUST LEFT, DO I GET MOM'S BOSE RADIO? THE SILVER? THE NEW WICKER SET ON THE PORCH?? NO- I GET A SMELLY, FILTHY, FLATULENT DOG...... ALL THE GOOD STUFF IS GONE ALREADY.... VULTURES I TELL YOU!! I APPRECIATE ALL YOUR "THOUGHTS", BUT IN LIEU OF 'SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS' EMAILS I WILL ACCEPT CASH.

my own time capsule

all kinds of stuff was in my old desk drawer.  

cleaned it out and i found a notebook with lists of books and comments about them.  one of my doomed attempts to do that sort of thing where you write something every day, draw something every day, take a photo every day, etc.  

it never works out.  

but it was fun looking at several years' worth of books, most of which i have no memory of ever reading.

also in the back of the drawer, i found THIS!!

watching trains in Folkston, GA

my sisters did a little train watching on their trip home:
"..we stopped on the way back for a few minutes at Folkston GA to watch the trains come thru the Folkston Funnel.  It's where the tracks from all over FL converge into one N, one S so a train goes by just abt every 20 min.
There is a platform where people (and there were at least 7 there already) can sit and a speaker where you can listen to the dispatcher send the cars down the line, telling what track and how many axles on the train. After abt 3 came by S. was ready for ice cream and P. was deaf from the horns, shaking his head to clear his drums so we went to find the store. It had moved to the other end of town so we had to drive in the air conditioning to get there. The owner was real chatty and somehow we got on to the fact that she owns two overnight places to stay, a caboose and a station masters cabin and "let me show them to you in case you come back." I couldn't resist that cause I know I'm coming back there, probably alone, to watch trains!
"Could have knocked me over with a feather when we toured them and S. asked if we could rent the stationmaster's cabin for the night. It's right on the tracks so I can watch trains all night and has some space so P. can run and far enough from the track that he won't be run over and his ears won't shatter. What a treat that was. And I never knew there was so much to know abt trains.
"We saw whole trains of coal cars filled with coal going south to the coal-fired  utility plants in FL and back empty to the mines in wherever, there is a nightly (5 nights a week) Tropicana Orange Juice train, quite long, that goes from Bradenton FL up to NJ loaded with OJ and back empty, and there are specialized cars to carry all kinds of specialized cargo, and they all went by Horn Honking and Engineers waving.
"I didn't stay up all night. Just couldn't do it, but I could hear them go by. Seems the night trains frequently pass each other  going N and S right at the spot instead of one train at a time. Lots of rumbling and roaring. Very relaxing.
"In the morning when we went to settle up with the ice cream lady we asked where the tracks split north of town cause one set of tracks sends trains up thru Valdosta to the east and one set to Waycross toward the west. "Well, let me just show you where that is. I own the land up there." I think the woman owns most of the town. She told us she bought this plot of land with trailers on it for her husband for Christmas. also has 3 camping spots and again right next to the tracks.
"What a treat.! I'm going back someday. "
(note: we grew up near Baltimore MD, a train city if ever there was one, then lived in south FL and could hear both the east coast RR and the Fla central RR going by at night. we were the sort of family that said "oh boy!" if we got to a RR crossing and a train was coming)

WOOTSTOCK 2012

it's one of life's great pleasures to have people show up at the house on a saturday or sunday summer afternoon and sit on the porch all day and talk.  i love it!
this weekend we had drop-ins both saturday AND sunday.
only teeny drawback -- it was WOOTSTOCK IN RAGLANSHIRE for only ONE WEEKEND!
fortunately i had my stock and wooted too, because i got to the last concert of the weekend after all.
it's worth it for the music alone, and the costumes are outrageous.
here's a few snapshots:

onstage - dj's - the guru and the diva?

mudpie rocks out in coveralls while others 'peace out'

hippy on hippo

fireworks finale - this doesn't do it justice

Dancing and dessert

is there a standard length for a minuet? i got a new recipe book -- one recipe mentions 'minuet' several times but it doesn't list it in the back under the measurements section!

must be a commonly used measure, because when i google "how long is a minuet" there are numerous sites addressing the question.

answer is, it depends.  but not on what you are cooking -- it depends on the piece of music, and also, it is usually played faster if there are no dancers.  so if i dance, this will take longer to cook.

phoebe! phoebe! phoebe!

mom and pop phoebe are raising a family on my back porch platform again this year. 

i'm so honored!
 (see last year's nest http://sitsup.blogspot.com/2011/05/phoebe.html)

they have a trio of hungry mouths and they are run ragged from early predawn (4 or 4:30 am) to dusk (8 or so) bringing creepy crawly things, flappy things, and probably spiders, since i don't see any in the porch eaves. 

next year i'll wash the windows before they get here -- i realized i can see the nest from a back window.

painting the church

across the street a van pulls up and unloads men and ladders. 

they've been working all week on the big new england white church, scraping, sanding, and now painting.  it's going to look great! 

they are a quiet group, well behaved, fairly lean, did you guess? 

i didn't at first. but i'm pretty sure they are from the prison.  

a good deal for the church, non-profits can hire them for a low wage, and a good deal for them.  

make some money, get out of jail for a week, do some good for somebody in the summer sunshine and green hills.

it used to creep me out a little to see these guys out working somewhere or playing volleyball in the prison yard,

until someone pointed out to me that they are pretty much mostly our friends and neighbors.

tripping on no-mesh

due mostly to laziness and non-inspiration, i still haven't upgraded to MESH !!  as more and more people use it, my view of second life has become more interesting. fewer cookie-cutter barbie and ken avatars, idealized houses and furnishing, and more CRAZY LOOKING STUFF

Osprey, who has never been cookie-cutter, is becoming less and less human to me, and wearing clementine's herring boxes for sandals.


 the fabulous SL9B lotus stage was, to me made of legos *smile smile*   and some of my fellow meditators look like pieces of cheese.

 and what are these things for sale? Buddhas? to me they are like beautiful stones. i admit i'm having fun.  like wearing distortion glasses.