E-mail jungle

I'm changing cable providers, which means that I have to change my personal e-mail address, the one I've used for over ten years. How frustrating.

Which means that I also had to change the e-mail address here at blogger. But I can't use my new gmail address on my Google-Blogger account. Likely because if Google crashes, they can reach me at a backup contact. Safe, but odd.

So, I have been crafting, but life hiccups have kept me from crafting as much. More content soon. After I switch out all of the other e-mail addresses.

Thanks for stopping by.

Still on the planet

I'm still here. I'm in one of the many area that flooded this spring. Other activities and people need my attention. I'm still making art, and still reading any comments posted. Go ahead and ask any questions about any of my projects.

Project Basement is also stalled. But I can show photos of my church basement...


Christmas 2003 - my church basement, called Fellowship Hall. Serving windows to the kitchen. Serving table that is actually a sewing / cutting table. IN door is propped open. Entry to the kitchen is on the far left.



The flood crested on a Friday in June - this was taken by a church member on the following Tuesday, the first day that property owners were allowed back into this neighborhood to inspect properties.

The reflection under the windows shows that the waters are still receding. Water escaped through the boiler room drain and down five sinks and two toilets in the basement. But once the water was lower than the toilets, the boiler room drain alone had to remove the rest of the waters.

The water went to 11' 11" from the basement floor, and around 7' from ground level. This is not a broken pipe kind of flooding. This was fast moving waters, stirring up everything. It was polluted with gasoline and oil, sheep waste, Dumpster(TM) debris, fertilizers. It ate the varnish off of the wood finishes. I'm told that at a local cultural museum, it at the paint off the lower half of a portrait, down to blank white canvas, but the upper half looks fine.

The acoustic ceiling tiles disintegrated into blobs of ick, but the frame remained intact.

IN and OUT doors are closed. Drinking fountain has been forced from its usual position.

The wallpaper has an eerie - cool texture. The wallpaper wrinkled, then the silt and slime settled on the ridges as the water slowly receded, creating highlights that resemble shadows. Fascinating, once one is detached from the emotions of loss and of memory.



Slightly different photo angle, same serving window wall. Gone is the wallpaper, the drywall, the sinks, the cabinets, the phone, the dishes and silverware, the refrigerators. No more ceiling tiles or frame, ceiling lights or wires. It is a very solid building, built in 1915, and has a beauty of brick and wood to it. It was well designed for use of space and well constructed.

We did the demolition with over 200 volunteers representing over 25 groups for more than 1600 work-hours. Then we hired out the dehumidifying and the biocide, so also gone by this stage should be the excess moisture, the mold the spores, and the bacteria.

Oh, the weather outside is frightful...

Here's how it looks this midday.

Our house is between the left foreground tree limb and the limb across from the postal truck. Our outdoor car is through the downed limb branches and twigs.

I've helped pull four branches or limbs from the street onto curbs or yards. Ganoush, Skunk, and I were outside when we heard the tell-tale crack and saw a limb fall at the white house on the right, down by the curb.

Click to make the photos bigger.

What is falling is rain, but it freezes on contact, so everything is icicles. We had a brief spell of ice pellets, but now we are back to rain.

Icicles on the clotheslines.

Ice on the trees and icicles on the power lines leading to the house. We just learned from CHG last night that there are two insulated wires and one uninsulated neutral wire.

CHG noticed intermittent flickers on the basement lights and his PC since the installation of the generator panel. We learned yesterday afternoon from our electrician that he found the cause - the neutral wire to that circuit breaker was touching the screw but wasn't actually clamped under the screw as it should have been to make a connection.

So last night, CHG explained to us how the power is carried along the wires. I can't explain it here. I didn't learn it that well.

Ice encasing the bushes at our neighbor's yard.

Missed Saturday - Explanation Sunday

I was trying to achieve NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month - less intense than writing a 50,000 word novel in November) but fell short. I'll keep posting, however. My DH explains why I missed:

I sent Heidi a link to a story, and clicking it cause three help windows to pop up as well as the site. They couldn't be closed by ordinary means, so I nuked Firefox from the task manager (the desktop box being a Windows installation). After that, we heard the tell-tale clicks of application after application being opened in the background. Turns out that about a hundred little help windows were starting, but not showing up on the desktop. Panic is sometimes appropriate, so I hit the hardware reset and started over. So during blog time, the machine was undergoing a thorough virus scan (which it does regularly anyway), and a scrub from Spybot. All seems well now. You may return to your normal lives.

Now for the more interesting part. Gonzo has latched onto dice stacking. He saw a video of it last night, and has in the intervening 20 hours managed to teach himself to stack three dice reliably, and occasionally four dice. I am impressed, and very happy that he's developed an interest in a juggling trick -- as a juggler, I can actually help him with that.

Confidential to Andrea:

Confidential to Andrea:

This photo is for you.

During a wonderful outing this week, I realized that six out the eleven in our group were wearing their Crocs the whole time, out in public and everything. I gathered them up and took a photo of their feet. When I finished directing the Croc-ers, the other non-Croc-ers were laughing. I had gathered the six in front of an office window and the employees inside were curious about what I was doing. After I showed around the resulting photo ("I wanna see next!") to all of the kids, I had to hold my camera up to the office window for the gentleman closest to see what all the hubbub was about. Quite a good laugh.

Trying an e-mail post

Blogger allows remote posts sent by e-mail. Since I have been so remiss in posting these last weeks, I'll try this method. I can always enhance the formatting later.
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I have been a busy bee for my Summer Band job. I manage the personnel for our 60-member Summer Concerts in the Park. I'm also a musician with the group. My dad just retired from Summer Concerts in the Park after 60 seasons, and my husband has been a sub but this is his first year of nine-week full membership with Summer Concerts in the Park. Hooray for Kid-Watching Grandma.
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But this blog is supposed to be about art. Not a lot of time for art in May. I finished my April bonus card for the CMP ATC swap. I found an ATC magazine: ATC Quarterly. I'll review more soon. Band will move from panic mode to maintenance mode in the next week or two. I need to come up with a card for "At Water's Edge." I have many detailed seashell stamps.... Hmmm. Now I have a crafty idea...

It's such an honor to be nominated...

As others have posted, I was startled to discovered that I was one of the nominees for the 2006 Homeshool Blog Awards, in the category of Best Crafts, Plans & Projects Blog. Thanks to whomever submitted my name.

I don't know how to make a click on the photo take you to the list of categories and nominees, so here is the main link. The list of nominees makes a great resource to find new ideas on the web, so go forth and find something extra while I gather up new items to photograph.

This should encourage me to post more often.

I'll take a new set of photos from what I've been making and what I've been receiving, what I should be mailing and haven't yet, and what I will be teaching to other families in just a couple of weeks.

The Concert

I can check some info about my blog visitors through Site Meter. One bit of information is what key words were put into Google or other search engine to bring that seeker to me.

This week, someone was seeking with the words {short British crosswalk piano}

I know exact what you mean. I loved that little moive when I saw it in junior high music class and I still remember chunks of it fondly.

The IMDb says that it is The Concert (1974).

Ordinary Guy walks into a London black and white striped cross walk and hears piano music, as if he were stepping on large keys. He investigates for a while, puzzled, then delighted. He plays on the wristcuff of a London Bobbie / police officer. He taps a trill on an old lady's teeth. Anything black, white, and vaguely rectangular becomes a music making device.

Then, just as abruptly, the gift has run out and the concert is over. He hops expectantly through the cross walk and hears nothing by typical street sounds. He re-composes (ha, ha) himself and goes on his way.

Alas, I cannot find it on You Tube.