Remnants

You know when you see someone you haven’t seen for a long time and you can’t remember their name? Well that happened last night on Lost, with the cameo appearance of an actor from a TV show I watched as a kid. There he was on the screen and I turned to my husband and said, “Hey that’s the kid from Kate and Ally (or is it Allie)!” He said, “Who?” Obviously he did not watch much good TV during the 1980s because I went online today and found lots of people who had the same reaction I did.

Well anyway, it took me about 12 hours to remember the character from Kate and Allie. His name was Chip and I have seen the actor a few commercials over the years. I always feel a little sorry for actors who once did movies or TV and ends up doing commercials. My husband says at least they are still acting and that is true.  So here is to Chip! It should be interesting to see if they include his character in future episodes.

Here are two rides my seven year old daughter rode, that I her much older mother, did not. I am such a wimp.

This weekend is our local county fair. In the fall I volunteered to help out with my daughter’s 4-H group. She is a Clover Bud, which is like the introductory level for kids too young to be in full-fledged 4-H. In many ways I am also a Clover Bud since I did not grow up doing 4-H and lived in the “city”. This year has been a great experience for both us. The best part was this week when the projects were judged at the county level. The kids have done some outstanding projects from Clover Bud all the way up to the high school students. Many of the projects received blue ribbons and 6 projects are going to the state fair in August. My daughter received 3 participation ribbons for her 3 projects, including her chicken project. Way to go kids!

This evening I found my very first tick on my person. Yuck! Luckily I did not freak out when I felt a strange little lump on the top of my head. Instead I called for my fearless husband who lovingly removed the tick from my head, with only the slightest bit of scalp and hair also. He said it was easy to remove ticks from yourself, just practice on dogs and cats. Oh boy, can’t wait!

Yeah! Today I thinned the carrots and we actually have things growing in the ground that look like carrots. They even taste like carrots! We sampled two of the varieties, Danvers and Little Finger. The Danvers was sweeter and (for now anyway) much tastier. I’m itching to try the Red Core, but am too tired to continue weeding. It will have to wait until tomorrow.

This summer I am working part-time at my favorite local museum archiving photos. The museum regularly receives photographs from donors that span the more than 150 year history of the area. The challenge has always been determining which photos are duplicates (photos already in the collection) and which ones are new to the collection. The new photos need to be given a collection number, documented, and added to the collection. In the last few years the museum has created a searchable computer database to make this task easier. Incidentally I helped with that project as well, including scanning in many of the photos and creating digital copies.

Every day holds something new. Today, while entering the new photos into the database from the paper file created earlier in the week, the photo collection surpassed the 5,900 mark.  That’s 5,900 different photographs in the collection! By the end of the summer who knows how many more photographs will be added. On a personal note, one of the more interesting photos from this week included a photo of hired hands, or tagloehners in local parlance, having a picnic. One of my pet projects as been to research the hired hands in the community. By collecting photographs of hired hands I can add a new dimension to my research. Another cool thing about this photo is that it has a companion photo already in the collection. These two photos were taken at the same time, only the people are posed differently. In these photos several of the men are holding bottles of beer, one has a guitar, and one has what looks like a cured ham. Unfortunately none of these men are identified by name. On the back of the newest photo is the date 1915 and the name “Corbett.” On the photo already part of the collection are two other names, “Dubsel” and “William Heinrichs Sr.” Who were these men? Who was the photographer? What was the occasion? and most importantly What’s up with the ham?

My daughter’s guinea pig, Nature, died. We think he died sometime yesterday, but we didn’t discover him until this morning. Last month we gave him his own “hidy-hole” as we called it, a place to hide and have some private time while inside his cage. My husband noticed Nat still had plenty of food AND water, pretty unusual for a pig. When my husband lifted up Nat’s hiding place (an old shoe box with a doorway cut out of it) he discovered the still body. After school and work we said a few words over his body and buried him in the backyard.

My most recent attempts at being “earthy-crunchy”, or whatever you want to call it, are composting with worms (vermaculture) and making sourdough bread starter from natural yeast. The bread looked really good, but was too dense and sour for our taste. I’ll try again in a month or so. The worm adventure is brand new. The worms came in the mail yesterday and I put them in their bin last night. This morning I buried the first batch of food (our vegetable garbage from the last two weeks). They seem happy in their new home, none have tried to escape since I feed them. Wish me luck!

My cousin Stuart has been named Principal of the Year in the state of Kentucky! Wow, what an honor. It really is not a surprise though, he is such a fun spirited and compassionate person. Being a principal really fits his personality. Growing up he loved to play games. When our family would visit, the cousins would always find some type of game to play that could include all of us. Of course Stuart would usually win, but that was never the point, it was to have fun. Great job Stu!

Photo by Chris Hall, The Courier Journal

http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/200903180540/ZONE09/903180312

The combination of a sick child and a borrowed magazine gave me the opportunity to try a craft project yesterday. I’ve tried making quilts before but always gave up when attempting to put the quilt squares (or whatever shape it was) together. It always involved using a sewing machine and having the pieces pucker and/or become misaligned. The techinque I tried yesterday was simple and involved hand-sewing hexagon shapes together into a honeycomb pattern. Hand-sewing has fascinated me for a few years, which is the reason I took up embroidery. The appeal is that it’s a very hands on process that allows for creativity while using a pattern. Yesterday I sewed 7 hexagon shapes together (it looks like a bee to me) and appliqued them to a piece of fabric. Today (yes, sick child again) the fabric will be turned into a pillow for my daughter’s stuffed animals.