Sunshine—Sunshine

The sun was shining when we got up this morning—after several days of rain, it sure was good to see that big ole sun!  Its rays certainly made everything green and sparkly!

We’ve spent the entire day cleaning and cleaning some more—it is that time of year, spring cleaning!  Michael even washed the mud off two of our vehicles!  I baked bread this morning and made a chocolate pie. 

Today is Nat’s 91rst birthday—we are going into town to runs errands then have dinner with Nat.  The pie is his birthday cake.  Nat still drives, lives alone, makes all his own decisions—doing pretty good for 91 I would say!  He was born in Billings but moved to this area of Montana when he and his twin brother Bo were 3 years old. 

The dang Tin Tee Pee sprung another leak last evening during one of our downpours—guess we should have left it in the shed until summer arrives??? 

A good Montana day!  The black cloud avoided us!

A Black Cloud

I swear there was a black cloud hanging over my head today!  If it wasn’t one thing, it was another!  Right off the bat, I sent something to our wireless printer for printing.  Nothing, not a sound—got a message saying computer couldn’t connect with printer.  Michael’s computer received the same message.  What’s up with that—I printed pages yesterday.  Uninstalled the stupid thing, re-installed the stupid thing—spent probably 2-3 hours of my time fighting the stupid thing.  Tonight I finally thought I was successful—it printed but the blasted thing still won’t scan to email.  We bought this HP printer last fall right before we left for Texas.  I’m not wasting any more time—it is going back to Costco and I will get another brand that MIGHT work!!

OK—I never got rid of the old printer and it is on the desk downstairs connected to an older laptop.  This printer printed one page and I could tell the ink needed replacing.  Installed a brand new cartridge—print quality was worse than before.  Installed a Costco refilled cartridge and got a little better print quality. 

The next black cloud happening—I put the label on a quilt I am giving as a gift upside down—thank goodness I was able to quickly peel the label off and reapply it right side up.

I did manage to apply polyurethane to some of the cabinets in the Tin Tee Pee without spilling anything!  And I made us lunch and dinner without burning anything.  And I was successful in talking to the health insurance companies today—getting our COBRA and other polices all lined up.  I was afraid to start a quilt—the black cloud might have rained on me!

We helped Lonnie and LoraLee brand yesterday.  They had a big crew—LoraLee and I manned the kitchen, she had pre-bought a lot of her food so we mostly just visited!  The branding crew had some excitement—seems one horse was a little over zealous and decided he didn’t like his rider—no broken bones but I sure bet he is sore today.  Brandings are always a good time—lots of friends and neighbors, visiting and great food. 

Here’s a photo of Michael’s new toy:

An oldie but a goodie!

Low hanging clouds and frequent rain showers today—western Montana received eight inches of heavy, wet snow today!

Thank you all for the encouraging comments regarding the anonymous commenters—we appreciate it!

Anonymous Comments

If it were a perfect, trusty worthy world I could leave the “anonymous comment” feature activated on my blog.  But it is not a perfect world and there are crazy idiots out there with nothing to do but drive the rest of us crazy.   And folks, it isn’t just a comment telling me, “hey check out this blog…or product….or some other gobbly gook.”  The last few days it has been nasty, vile comments that I have no desire to see or read.  Several times a day I must check the blog to make sure this trash hasn’t made it to my comment section.  Blogger Dashboard does catch dozens of these trash comments daily but some are slipping through.  All bloggers are complaining about the trash.  As of today I am disabling the “anonymous comment” feature on the blog—it will not be back unfortunately until the Blogger platform finds a way to stop this spam.

I am sorry—Don in OK, I really enjoy your comments.  Rosilita, I am sorry—you are a dear friend and I enjoy seeing your comments.  To you guys and all our other anonymous commenters—there are ways to leave comments and although I am NOT the geek Rick is I will attempt to explain how.

At the bottom of any blog you will see this:

“POSTED BY JANNA AND MIKE AT 6:53 PM 6 COMMENTS:”

Click on the word “Comments” and you will get this white box.

Type your comment then Click “Publish” if you are using a Google Account as show above.  If you stay signed in to your Google account all the time as I do,  your comment will be instantly published. 

If you don’t stay signed in, you will see this screen:

Simple enter your Google account password and click “Sign In” and your comment will be published. 

IF you don’t have a Google account click the little arrow beside the words “Google Account” and this list will pop down. 

If you have any of these accounts pictured below (thanks Rick) you have an OpenID

Type your comment first and click on OpenID

 

This screen will appear and this is where people get confused!

 

We have a Yahoo account—I simply searched for OpenID on the Yahoo site and after signing in with my Yahoo password was immediately given an OpenID identifier, a URL address about a mile long . I don’t have to remember that long, complicated phrase if I want to use OpenID to sign into someone’s blog in order to leave a comment—I simply can type yahoo.com in the OpenID spot. 

When I click “Continue” the following screen appears:

Click on “Agree” and your comment is immediately posted.

(Don’t ask me how our Yahoo account was set up as Mike and Clark)

Rick wrote an excellent post a while back explaining exactly what Open ID is and how to use it if you have a Blogger account.  I hope this helps those of you who do have a Yahoo account and might want to leave a comment on the blog. 

I respect anyone’s desire to avoid the reaches of the internet—I hope you can also respect my desire to stop these idiots from being able to leave trash comments on the blog. 

A Hike, Yoga And A Tractor

Beautiful, beautiful sunshine this morning and in spite of the mud we took off on a hike.  When we had hiked as high as we usually go—to the irrigation ditch bank we were pleasantly surprised to see we had water in the ditch.  That meant we needed to hike on over to where our main head gate is located to turn some of the water down our creek—it made for a nice, get your heart rate up hike.

While I was gone to Texas a yoga instructor suddenly appeared in our neighborhood—now remember we live 22 miles from anything—no health club, no restaurant, no gas station—you get the picture.  Ebbie and her husband Keith moved to our neighborhood late last summer I think to manage the ranch which adjoins ours.  Well, this winter a group of ladies got together and began having yoga classes twice weekly.  When we spent 2 months in Mexico one year I went to a yoga class several times a week and loved it.  Today was my first time to attend and again, I loved it!!  I think part of the reason I love it is Ebbie’s house is less than a mile from ours—not 22 miles!! 

I spent the rest of the day finishing up the unpacking process in the quilt studio.  Done—there is even a quilt hanging over the quilt frame—un-wrinkling. 

Michael brought home his new to him tractor—it was built 1958 and was purchased from a friend, Windsor, at his retirement auction.  Windsor’s own Dad purchased the tractor new.  I will have to post some photos although I am sure most of you will say as I did when I saw the tractor, “that thing has seen some use!!”

A beautiful, purposeful day. 

The Things A Girl Has To Do

Just to get internet!!  I was scheduled to participate in Rick Doyle’s Google+ Hangout this morning—I had little post-it notes all over the house reminding me.  We were surfing the internet about 6:30am when all of a sudden—no connection.  I did the normal stuff—unplugged the router, etc. but still no internet. 

OK, no internet and I didn’t have Rick’s phone number.  I thought of calling LoraLee—they have a different internet provider--and have her send Rick an email for me but I couldn’t even access Rick’s email address!!  By this time I am getting antsy—I don’t like to plan something and then not show up.  So, I grabbed the smart phone and headed up into the hayfield to the highest spot up there—yea, I have a signal.  I was able to access email and send Rick a heads up.  Later in the day I thought—I could have had LoraLee sign in to my Gmail account and send an email that way—she would have then had access to Rick’s email address. 

The things a girl has to do in the wilds of Montana just to send an email—slip sliding around in the mud trying to find a cell signal!!!

Emmi needed a bath and haircut—I really cut her close, she will stay cleaner in all this mud and attract less burrs and stickers.

Have you ever started water running in the sink and walked away for just a second.  I was folding clothes back in the bedroom and kept hearing this strange noise.  As I was walking down the hallway it hit me what the noise was—Niagara Falls in my laundry/mud room!!!  The floor is really clean and so is the cabinet underneath the sink!

We got the longarm back in operation and I got a good start unloading boxes.  Lonnie and LoraLee were to have branded calves tomorrow but there’s been way too much rain—so I will get to finish unpacking tomorrow. 

Internet came back on about 1:30 this afternoon—we really are fortunate living this far from a town to have DSL service.  My family in Arkansas live 10 miles from town and still have dial-up with no hope of getting high speed any time in the near future.  My brother as well as Mom and Chuck have gone the cellphone provider route with MiFi devices. 

Our thoughts and prayers are with those poor people in the path of that tornado in Oklahoma. 

Well, I Guess I Will Still Be Quilting

I didn’t win the lottery—I never buy a lottery ticket unless the payoff gets so high it is unimaginable--maybe because I never pay any attention to the lottery until all the hype starts about the dollar amount being so large.  So about once a year I splurge and buy that $2 ticket—easy come, easy go!

One and a half inches of rain in the gauge this morning and it has rained all day, hard rain at times.  Lonnie felt like cooking today and invited us to lunch.  As I had all ready invited Nat for Sunday lunch we just loaded up and headed over to the West Boulder.  I made some of Brenda’s cheesy potatoes and took some green beans to cook.  LoraLee had cut up watermelon and made a wonderful strawberry pie.  Let’s just say we all dined sufficiently!! 

Just think, a week ago today we were packing the motorhome and trailer, sweating in the heat and humidity of Texas.  Today it is 44 degrees, raining and we have a fire in the woodstove downstairs.  And we are not complaining. 

The motorhome sat in Texas for almost six months—it rained there, hard at times, there was a heavy, heavy dew most mornings and we never had a roof leak.  I went out to the motorhome for something this morning and stepped in a puddle—GRRRRR!  Michael thinks it was because the motorhome was parked at such a steep angle, water ran in through the air conditioner.  He went out, started the motorhome and put it in a more level spot.  I haven’t gotten up the nerve to go out there yet to see if the leak is gone!  We also have a leak in the Tin Tee Pee—we parked it for the winter in the shed belonging to our neighbor and just recently brought it back to the house so we could again start working on it.  The trailer has really old type fans in the ceiling and is leaking around one of those—we had plastic sheeting on the hardwood floors to protect the wood from paint, etc. so no harm was done by this leak—a bucket is now catching all the water.  

Life is good, really good!

Oh, I forgot—Michael went to an auction yesterday—a neighbor retiring and selling off all his treasures.  My dear husband bought a tractor, a 1950-60ish Ford tractor.  Did we need another tractor??  Guess so!

Rain, The Birds Came Back And We Lose An Old Friend

Michael and I were scurrying around, moving the motorhome, unhooking the trailer, re-hooking it to the truck and pulling the trailer up into the pasture on top of our hill—trying to beat this coming storm.  It has now been raining for over a hour—welcome, blessed rain!!! 

Today I attended the funeral for a East Boulder matriarch—Maxine, she was 86 years old and had been in the nursing home for several years.  She and her husband Barney moved to the East Boulder in the late 50’s, early 60’s and ranched for years on a place up Elk Creek about 2 miles from us.  There were six couples living on the East Boulder during those years who never had children—Maxine and Barney were one of those couples.  They had nieces and nephews plus lots of neighbors and good friends. 

Barney was a frugal man—Maxine could only go to town once a month or so—I can’t imagine living all the way up here and not being able to go to town when I wanted to!!  Maxine was also frugal—she never bought milk, always making their milk from powdered milk.  She told me she would remove her soaking wet, heavy clothes from the rinse water in the washing machine and reuse that water to wash the next load!!! 

Maxine drove the school bus when Michael was attending high school and she also delivered the mail in McLeod.  Michael said the school bus was an old Ford station wagon which was also used as a driver’s education car!!

When Michael and I first married I was asked by a company for whom I had previously worked to do an interim director of nursing job at the hospital in Hardin, MT.  Maxine had a brother living in Hardin, MT at the time and she would ride over with me on Monday morning and we would both stay until Thursday evening before coming home.  I learned so much about the people living in our valley on those drives and I sure heard a lot about my husband’s early years too!!! 

Maxine and Barney sold the ranch in 1997 moving to Big Timber—Barney died a few years ago.  Rest in peace Maxine—you will be missed.

And last but not least—the lazuli buntings came back today—my beautiful little blue birds.  For many years I could set the clock by their arrival—May 13—but now the birds usually arrive sometime around the middle of May.