The Painful Life of A Poet

I always pictured poets living a tortured life in a cold, poorly lit attic. A painful life.

My nephew is a poet, his pain is a self induced, colourful pain. Prince Charming got his latest poem tattooed on his back. It took eight hours, and he still wants some fancying up done, borders and that sort of thing.

Personally, I would publish any poems I wrote in a book style, but hey, to each his own.

They're persistent

If nothing else, they're persistent, phoebes that is. 

This picture was taken in July of 2006. Some phoebes built a nest under the roof of our portico. 

Using the door at all scared mama while she was sitting on the eggs. The last few weeks before the babies fledged, we couldn't really use the door to go outside at all. If they got startled by us going in or out of the door, they could try to fly from the nest before they're ready and they wouldn't survive.

The next year, as soon as I heard them in the spring, we put little containers of water on top of each of the posts so they wouldn't have room for a nest. 

It worked for 2007, and it worked for 2008. Twice in the past few days, we found the little containers of water had been knocked off. We thought it was strange that after sitting there two years, they would suddenly fall. Today, we saw this.

The little container of water was no longer centered on the post, and there was mud on the post and on the phoebe's beak. Sorry ma'am this is not a good spot for a nest, we've doubled up on the containers where there's any room to perch.

They are very determined little birds.

Looks Like It'll Work

After a week of being pretty busy, this morning I clamped the sides to the back. I wanted to make sure they fit just right. The edges around the lower bouts (her hips) need to be trimmed down a bit so there's not as much "lip". I'll trim them down, then glue it together. I'll use a lot more clamps, so they'll be all around the outsides.

I'm working on the finishing touches to the top ... carving the bass bar to fit and then cutting the F holes. This first picture has the base bar just sitting in it right now. I only started it yesterday. It needs a lot more work to get it to carved to the proper dimensions and to fit the front perfectly.

If you click on this to enlarge it, you can see where I've drawn the F holes on. Cutting them will stress me in a big way .. baby steps. 

My Sister's Challenge

My sister Susan, who writes well and has a great imagination has undertaken a challenge.

She has challenged herself to write and post a new short story every day for a year. They are a quick read, and REALLY good. 

You can find her at http://whohastimeforanovel.blogspot.com or just click here

Pretty Pleased With Myself

So I have all the final bits and pieces and I'm ready to glue the back to the sides. I put all her clothes on temporarily to show Gryper's Missus and Carol. Here's a sneak preview.

How exciting is that? Back to work.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Hey ... FG .... What on earth has Cyclin' Granny posted?? I think it's an impersonator, or would that be an infroginator? Either way, we must call the police about my identity being stolen."

Woe is me!

When you think you've hit the bottom, there's only one way to go ... worse apparently. I've never had a Scrabble hand as bad as my last post, but check this out. It's the same darned game!

Nice selection of letters, eh? 

E E E E E E I

Not a lot of choices, I decided to play IE on the "V" for 12 points.

Maybe I'll have something interesting to blog about soon.

☺

Scrabble Hell

These are the letters I have to work with (CEEEEEL).... need I say more??

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. That may be so but seven words can warm your hart and almost bring you to tears.

On Saturday, we visited with Lex and the smurfs. You know Smurf One is in IBI therapy for his autism. He has been talking a lot more, and more clearly. I know that one of the things that they have been working on is waving when saying good bye. Not only did I get a kiss from him when we first arrived, when we were leaving, I asked if I could have a kiss, and he gave me another kiss goodbye. In the past he has let me kiss him, but doesn't give me a kiss. Then what really blew me away was after the kiss goodbye, I said "It was nice to see you.", he replied "Nice to see you." It was as exciting as the first time he actually called me Granny while we were playing.

Smurf Two, is still on the wait list for her IBI therapy, but the class she's in at school has really helped her a lot. Although she loves to sing, she doesn't say a lot of words. Whatever the tune, the words to her songs are "sing, sing, sing". While we were sitting chatting in the living room, she went up to Lex and said, "Want Dad, up", and climbed up on his lap. I was astounded. Three times she came over and climbed on my knee, and we read an Elmo book together too.

They progress differently than other kids, but they are definitely learning things. I'm so proud of their progress. I'm so proud of Lex, being a single dad, who patiently keeps them organized and moving ahead. 

As we drove away Smurf Two, was in the doorway waving as we drove out of the driveway. Granny was very pleased with that visit.

I Have Arrived

Now that we have the RV we plan to do a lot more traveling on the ground rather than in the air. So having a crapload of Aeroplan points, we decided to cash them in on goodies instead of plane tickets. So we now have this baby, I call her the "Granny Apple". 

The Mister has always done all the taking care of our computers. He's been a tekkie since they used punch cards, and his career was in IT, so it made sense. Consequently, I only know how to use the stuff I use, like word processor, spreadsheet and the internet. Not much else. If anything got tangled up, I'd restart, then I'd be out of ideas. If something suspicious happened, my heart rate would increase, panic would set in and I'd walk away and not touch it till he returned. Pathetic.

A long time ago, I decided that it would be a good thing for me to get a MacBook. When we travelled, I would be able to check e-mail and whatever else I needed to do, while the Mister used his. 

The up side is, I figured, the Mister doesn't know much about Apple products, so I'd have to learn about it and figure it out. The down side is, the Mister doesn't know much about Apple products so I'd have to figure it out. Because of this conundrum, it took a while to actually decide to do it. Finally I made up my mind. Then, there was the price. Enter aeroplan. 

Yesterday, I set this one up, and learned about the different ways of doing things on a Mac. I know when I started, before the Mister went outside, he had twitchy fingers, kind of like when I was cutting out the back of my violin on the band saw. The Mister was out boiling maple syrup all day, so he didn't have to listen to me babbling to myself as I figured stuff out.

Now, feeling quite smug, and cautiously confident, can say this. 

"I, Fiddling Granny, installed programs." 

It's Noisy Fixing a Door Bell

You would think that fixing a wireless doorbell would be a quiet sort of job. There are no drills or chainsaws required. They have a pretty simple mechanism, so there's not a lot of cursing. Well, it's not quiet when you have a ferocious guard cockapoo and a parrot that is encouraged by the commotion.

The problem was that it wouldn't send the signal to the ringer, so it required that the button be pressed repeatedly when the Mister was fixing it. Intermittently it would send the signal and set off the bell.

As I was checking to ensure that the video actually worked, both the dog and the bird were flipping!