Is Spring Here or What?

It is a quiet Sunday afternoon here. The sun is shining after a heavy thunderstorm last evening that peaked just as Mass was over. We were headed to a local pizza parlor with some friends but got stuck waiting for the rain to subside. We still got some wet but thank God, He made us waterproof!

Thursday I went to lunch with a good friend, a young man who is a "Space Artist". No, he's not 'spaced out' but creates beautiful pictures of stars, planets, etc. - you know, stuff you would find in space. He was formerly with the Pink Palace Museum for some 17 years and got caught up in the City Budget Cuts. He has been looking for similar employment but has been unsuccessful. It just isn't in God's plan apparently. Now, he has turned his attention to teaching art to young people. Let's all pray for his success. He can use all the prayers he can get.

Well, I've finally bitten the bullet and ordered another hard drive for this machine. The maximum size that this machine will accommodate is 120 GB. That is 3 times as large as the present drive. This should allow for all the pictures that I want to store. Of course, when I built this machine the 40 GB drive was going to be bigger than I could ever use!! Isn't that always the case? So, I'm trying to set up a procedure for moving all this data over to the new drive without loosing anything and retaining all the drive letters so that when a program looks for other files it can find them. Wish me a lot of luck! I'm calling on my good friend Charles to help me sort this out. He is a whiz at these things.

Washed the Staff Car Thursday and it is still clean! We used Anne Marie's car instead last night in the storm!! It was already dirty. I've got to wash it very soon.

Bye.

It is a quiet Sunday afternoon here. The sun is shining after a heavy thunderstorm last evening that peaked just as Mass was over. We were headed to a local pizza parlor with some friends but got stuck waiting for the rain to subside. We still got some wet but thank God, He made us waterproof!

Thursday I went to lunch with a good friend, a young man who is a "Space Artist". No, he's not 'spaced out' but creates beautiful pictures of stars, planets, etc. - you know, stuff you would find in space. He was formerly with the Pink Palace Museum for some 17 years and got caught up in the City Budget Cuts. He has been looking for similar employment but has been unsuccessful. It just isn't in God's plan apparently. Now, he has turned his attention to teaching art to young people. Let's all pray for his success. He can use all the prayers he can get.

Well, I've finally bitten the bullet and ordered another hard drive for this machine. The maximum size that this machine will accommodate is 120 GB. That is 3 times as large as the present drive. This should allow for all the pictures that I want to store. Of course, when I built this machine the 40 GB drive was going to be bigger than I could ever use!! Isn't that always the case? So, I'm trying to set up a procedure for moving all this data over to the new drive without loosing anything and retaining all the drive letters so that when a program looks for other files it can find them. Wish me a lot of luck! I'm calling on my good friend Charles to help me sort this out. He is a whiz at these things.

Washed the Staff Car Thursday and it is still clean! We used Anne Marie's car instead last night in the storm!! It was already dirty. I've got to wash it very soon.

Bye.

Gosh! Here we are at Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, a time to get one's act together in anticipation of Easter.

Today, we drove up to Jackson TN to have lunch with our old friends Harry and Joyce. Unfortunately, Charles and Ginger couldn't make it. At the last moment Ginger managed to get a bad cold and didn't want to share it with us. We had a good time just visiting. Harry has some serious problems with his computer - it will not find his CD or DVD drives!! I'm so out of the loop that I really couldn't offer much help other than to check the cable (both on the same cable and both out - sounded logical to me but alas, that wasn't the problem). It seems that he is having more than just these problems with the machine. Sounds bad!

On the way back, we found Randolph's Nursery over on highway 70. We went in looking for a particular pepper plant but were advised that we were way too early. So, we will have to check again later on in the spring. We saw this pepper plant in bloom over at the UT Ag. Research Center last summer and Anne Marie fell in love with it. It will look good out on our deck. A picture attached:

The berries go from a deep red to black. Thus the name is Black Pearl. The leaves are just as you see them - almost black. It is a stunning plant. Hope we can find a couple for the deck.

Scripture Study last night was a blast! Chapter 19 of Matthew's Gospel deals with, among other things, the subject of divorce. I had anticipated some lively discussion on this matter and I wasn't disappointed! Lively is putting it mildly! But, we survived and all are better off for the discussion.

We will be heading off to Mass tonight and get Lent started properly. Oh yes, I'm giving up Okra for Lent!!

So far this has been a busy week.

Monday brought a checkup visit to my Urologist - always a pleasant experience. It seems all is well in the plumbing department. Fr. Dennis, our associate pastor, came for lunch. He is an interesting person with many experiences to share. He is from the Phillipines and is here for about 2 more years. He sure misses being home as he was a pastor there and his large family is still in the Philipines. We enjoyed his visit.

Tuesday we attended a funeral Mass for a friend of Anne Marie's through her Madonna Circle friends and was the wife of an old school chum of mine. I have mentioned that there is a group of 'Brother's Boys' who meet for lunch once a week. The lady was the wife of one of this group. Tuesday evening we had Scripture Study and that went well.

Wednesday was mostly taken up with another photography presentation at the Botanic Gardens. It was to be the program for their Brown Bag Lunch series and last about an hour. It went for almost 2 hours with lots of questions to be answered. Seems I missed out on lunch! We called up a couple of friends and went to dinner with them which was nice. We try to go out with them at least once a month and do a lot of visiting at these dinners.

Whew! Thursday finally got here and I was able to relax and really do nothing! I finally got the switch-over to Comcast accomplished and it seems to be working just fine. Of course this meant new email addresses which I'll publish in due time. Meanwhile, all messages addressed to our old Roadrunner account will be forwarded to the new address anyway so we wont miss any.

We took our little cat, Taffy, in for his annual check-up and shots a few weeks ago. In the process they drew some blood. After analysis they determined that he checked neither positive or negative for Feline Imune Deficiency - cat version of AIDS. So, we had to take him back for another blood drawing and further testing to be sure one way or another if in truth he does or does not have this problem. Pray for the sweet little guy. He was so very good at the vets and does not fight them at all.

And here it is Friday already. Gosh, time really flies by. Sunday, Anne Marie will celebrate another birthday. She seems much more concerned about how many years she will reach on her next birthday next year!!

Our few Jonquils (daffodils, buttercups, whatever) are pushing up and in the yard across the street there are some that have already bloomed. Spring can't be too far off. Are you ready? Meanwhile, here is an Orchid for you to enjoy --

Thanks everyone for your comments. This is how they work. When you leave a comment it is not posted right away. It is sent to me via email and I have the option to publish it or not.

Hmmm. Since they were all kindly I published them. You can look on the Blog now and they show up just fine. I think there are 7 all told.

This system seems to provide for those who elect to brow-beat the Blog's author. He can simply not publish their rant!! Cool!

Oh yes, "long in the tooth" as explained by my dental hygienist came from the common problem old folks have of the gums receding thus making the teeth look longer!! So now you know 'the rest of the story'.

Oh yes, please put at least your last name on the comments. Thanks.

Phil

WOW! Here it is February and I haven't posted anything since November! Why?? Since I didn't get any feedback I felt that no one was looking at my Blog so, therefore, I quit! Well, I have heard from at least a couple of people that they did look and there was nothing new here but they did appreciate the pictures anyway. This pumped me enough to resume posting from time to time. Here goes!

Christmas has come and gone. We had a very nice celebration here at home with Tony and his boys on Christmas eve. Mom fixed a wonderful dinner but some seem dissappointed that we didn't have the usual turkey! She fixed a prime rib roast and it was super - cooked just right. Maybe that will become the new tradition, at least I hope so.

January was a mixed month weather wise thus limiting our outdoor activities - read, little model flying. Also, there were limited photo opportunities so all I could share this month would be dreams for springtime. These dull, gray days have pretty good light for photography but the subjects are few. We take our walks around a lake here in a Collierville park where we can usually see our Blue Heron but he has gone to warmer waters where the fishing is better I guess. At the end of January Phil gave his Drip Irrigation talk to the two new Master Gardener classes. They went over well and seem to have been appreciated.

February brought another opportunity for Phil to give a Photography Basics talk to the Collierville Garden Club. There were about 15 ladies there who all seemed to be interested. One even brought her camera. I'm scheduled to give a lecture next week about the various settings on digital cameras at the Botanic Gardens "Brown Bag Lunch" group. There are so many that people either get terribly confused or they just ignore these settings and resort to "point and shoot" photography. I hope it goes over well.

In April I'm to give the Basic Photography course at the Germantown Library's luncheon program.

All these lectures coupled with facilitating our weekly Scripture Study is keeping me on my toes. We haven't traveled anywhere since November when we went down to Texas to visit our nephew, Steve, and his family. We are already talking about going over to the Smokies in May and perhaps a side trip to Fall Creek Falls State Park since it is "on the way".



We did get a new car - a Dodge Magnum. I call it our Mafia Staff Car since it is all black - no chrome on the outside. See the picture attached. What do you think? The Caddy was getting a bit 'long in the tooth' and I was looking at some rather expensive repairs to a car that was already 10 years old. I wanted a car that I could carry my airplanes in easily as well as haul other stuff. So, a station wagon was in order. I just couldn't bring myself to have a van or SUV.

Do you know where the expression 'long in the tooth' comes from?

Later, Phil