A Women's RV Forum run by Women RVer's!

Morning. Cloudy and 31° here at the 45th. Supposed to be a fairly decent day before it goes downhill tomorrow. Winter Storm Watch in effect. Heavy snow and winds coming. 3-6 inches at least. The heavy wet type snow. Some areas could see more. Since they are talking hazardous morning travel conditions, I called and moved my Chiropractor appt. to next week. Not that necessary that I have to go out in that Weather just for that.

O’Sharon, we had that icy Weather like you did Mondsy night into yesterday morning. Just enough freezing drizzle to slick up everything. Fortunately the temperatures were rising in the morning and it was melting pretty quick. It was also very foggy. I was going to a funeral at our church and by the time I left the main roads were fine and mine was just a little icy, but getting slushy. We had a funeral yesterday for one of our parishioners who became an ordained priest late in his life. He was ordained at 67. It is something that he has always wanted to do but other circumstances prevented him from doing it until then. This was a very sudden thing as he died from an aneurysm. It was immediate. Everybody was shocked when they heard the news. He was 77. He died just two days shy of his 10th anniversary of his ordination as a priest. Despite the weather, people came from long distances that knew him from his being at their parishes and priests came from all over the diocese, some of them as far as two hours or more away. People from the parish also came despite the icy roads that some of them had to get out on. I think there were at least 500 people at this funeral. It was a beautiful service.

Irmi, glad you were able to get Ava Maria mastered for the requiem. That is a beautiful hymn. Very difficult to play but beautiful to listen to especially if somebody is singing it. I’m just curious, but what other songs did Thry pick?

Few errands on the agenda for this morning and then of course I will take the dogs for their daily dozen. We haven’t gone to far the past couple of days because of the weather. It was just a bit of a light rain for a little while while we were out yesterday afternoon. Temps have been holding in the 30s. I just got a new Captioned phone yesterday, so now I have to send the old one back. Will drop it off at the shipping place today. The old one wasn’t working all that great anymore, so they sent me a replacement. These phones do not cost anything if you qualify for them so it’s really nice. This is my landline phone. I do have a cell phone and I have the same captioning company on my cell phone, but I have not used it yet to see how the captions work on the cell phone. I just put the app in yesterday. Hamilton CapTel.

So I guess I should get myself dressed and get moving here. Errands aren’t gonna get done thinking about them. Have a nice day out there everyone and Barbie, Happy Birthday.

Morning Sue and All, 44° and sunny. Took care of all the errands yesterday so a stay home and putz. Still have a basket of filing to do. Kitchen will get a good clean today including the fridge, Judy, I saw a Dazzy Dot rechargeable nightlight for $13 that, was a touch light. Charge lasted about a week on dim. Mother’s Day is coming so would be a good gift for a backup. Dinner will be beef stew in the crockpot. Be safe

Good morning, not too bad temp wise here 43° but the high will only be 44° LOL Supposed to get some rain the next few days, we shall see.
I did all my errands yesterday too so will just putz around the house today. Laundry, and have another plant to repot since I bought a couple more plant pots yesterday. It is an Anthurium that is struggling in its small pot LOL
I just bought 3 battery operated motion detection night lights for my 2 bathrooms and living room. I put them on AUTO and they only come on with motion, so far I love them. I didnt want to have to touch them to have them come on, I want them to light my way along my path LOL They are not super bright so that they blind ya but definitely give adequate lighting.
Not sure what I am going to make today for dinner. I want to make one of the low cal casseroles I saved so will see how that works for me.

Good morning ladies!

Sue, Besides the Ave Maria, I also played Make me a Channel of your Peace, Be not Afraid, Let all mortal flesh keep Silence and On Eagle's Wings. They are all beautiful and I'm happy the family of the deceased asked for these. I always enjoy learning new music.

Karen, I'm glad you mentioned dinner because that reminded me to take something out of the freezer for our meal. We got a large package from a girlfriend for Christmas that came from Omaha Steaks which included a large selection of a variety of meats. So we're having burgers cooked on the Egg with a couple sides.

Shirl, I have filing to do also. Maybe I'll try to tackle that tomorrow.

Today is the first day since Sunday that we didn't wake up to a frost. It was 50 when I got up this morning. I have our bed linens in the washer that I got from My Pillow. We also have their pillows but I love their sheets. They almost feel like satin. So if you ever need new linens, I highly recommend them.

Irmi wrote:Karen, I'm glad you mentioned dinner because that reminded me to take something out of the freezer for our meal. We got a large package from a girlfriend for Christmas that came from Omaha Steaks which included a large selection of a variety of meats. So we're having burgers cooked on the Egg with a couple sides. . . I have our bed linens in the washer that I got from My Pillow. We also have their pillows but I love their sheets. They almost feel like satin. So if you ever need new linens, I highly recommend them.

Irmi, sounds very yummy. My sister once ordered some meat from Omaha Steaks, she said it was very good, but pricey.

You have made me hungry! What time should I stop by? Yum! Warning: I have a BIG appetite!

Speaking of bed linens, after visiting a couple of mattress stores here in my smallish town over the last several weeks (I was surprised to know that there were any!) and not finding anything that I liked, I ordered one of those mattress-in-a-box things online, the Helix Sunset. My daughter has one, she and her husband both like it (after trying several other mattresses) and the company offers free delivery and free no-questions-asked pickup for returns (if I don't like it), a full refund - plus a hundred nights to try it out.

The local Big-Box mattress store didn't near have anything like this offer, in fact they tried to sell me a "returned" Tempurpedic ("returned", aka, used - as I understand it, it is illegal to sell a used mattress in California) for the fantastic, super-discounted LOW-LOW price of ONLY two-thousand-dollars. And, sorry, since it was a return, all sales were final. I looked at the (young, male) sales person and somehow managed not to roll my eyes or say something mean.

Why is it that young people seem to think that older people - especially women - are somehow all uneducated and stupid? Oh, never mind, that it surely a topic for another day.

The Helix was also a bit pricey (but what mattress isn't these days? - it was well within the ballpark of the mattresses at the local mattress stores - and hundreds (and hundreds!) less than the aforementioned Tempurpedic).

So what's not to like? LOL - I guess I'll find out. As near as I can remember, my current mattress/foundation is about twelve to fourteen years old, it was a crap mattress the day it arrived, and it has not improved with age.

The mattress should arrive on Thursday. I'm really looking forward to it.

Anne

Actually, the glow stick worked pretty well last night--just enough light and lasted all night. I put it in the hall near the bathroom door but where it would not be directly visible to me. I have listed the lights Karen suggested on my Amazon shopping list. I have some money sitting there in my account from my Chase Amazon credit card which gives me cash back every month. I try to put all my camping expenses and RV repairs on that card, so it adds up.

I flunked dry camping last night. Busied myself cooking a rice and chicken dish in the oven and putting stuff away. Ran the generator until the shut-off time of 6 pm. Then started doing some organizing after the chicken and rice was cooling so I could put it in small containers and put it away. Oops. My portion for dinner cooled off a bit too much and I could not run generator to reheat it, so I ate it barely warm!!! And this morning I slept in until 10:45 am so had only 15 minutes to run generator to charge things up I had used last night and heat a ham and cheese croissant I had in the freezer. Not enough time to charge everything up and somehow could not find all of my 12 volt plugs, but have cell phone and Verizon hot spot charging. I have some computer juice available, so after that is done, I will go for a long walk and take some photos of cactus and desert plants to post tonight. Then I will pull out cell phone, unhook hot spots, and plug in laptop to charge on rig batteries. (I am beginning to think some of this is too complicated for my old brain.) Made some base (broth and chicken) for homemade chicken noodle soup, so that will probably be dinner. I scoop a portion of the base into a pan and add the noodles for one portion. This prevents the noodles from getting soggy.

Anyway, mess from driving and grocery shopping is cleared away and all looks neat inside here. Beautiful mostly sunny day, but very chilly. After three weeks of California rain, I am just happy to be in a dry place!!

Also, keeping me busy is working with a 6th cousin from England on our ancestry trees. She and I share a couple from the 1700s who were part of large families in the tiny village of Danby in North Yorkshire. She and I have both done several hundred of hours of research, and are similar in that we verify all info with a solid primary and possibly excellent secondary source. Too many people on Ancestry just copy stuff from other people's trees and the info is bad. She lives in southwest England so has not spent a lot of time in Danby. I was able to send her photos of one farm some joint relatives lived at!! Also found it on map and sent that to her as well.

I was shopping for a mattress one time and ended up in the back room where there were less expensive mattresses. I don't remember what I told the salesman but guess he could tell I wasn't going to spring for a $4,000 bed. I don't remember what I paid but the bed was just fine and a lot cheaper than the ones on the front floor.

I haven't tried a battery operated night light but I highly recommend the motion activated ones. I can walk from one side of the house to the other with lights coming on so I don't trip over a cat.

I just turned the weather channel on and there is a red box just to the West of here. The wind has been very strong all afternoon. The line of rain should get here in the next hour. Hope I don't have to go in the old house.

Martha

you know twice in less than a week of getting my post bumped off you think I would learn to look and see if it posted successful. happened again last night ... oh well I will just have to go on and if I think of anything important that happened yesterday... I'd add to today's rambling
Beth posted a memory on FB today it was a gtg from a few years back... sure miss being there..
and have a gtg... it makes you wonder what happened to some people like Louisa anyone know where she is??
Anne can't remember if I told you how much I enjoyed looking at your jewelry or if it was on one of those that that went poof You have lots of really pretty works the first two or three years in Q I met a couple and she wire wrapped gave classes tried to do so wasn't very good... but did enjoy it... she had us practice with craft wire... after Larry passed away I wanted to get some inadvisable wire and make a necklace with birthstones but couldn't find the birthstones and the know how of how to do what I visualized.
yesterday I did get my pedi it was totally expensive and overly not worth the amount charged.. probably double what I normally spend when in Utah but everything has gone up so who knows what it costs down there... the equipment read chair.... was a old one had to pack in a basin for the water so it got cooler quicker and it got tipped over a bit the gal doing it was one of my old classmates so that part was nice but no place for me to put my feet for her to really work on them... so didn't get what I needed done I am not going back there...
there was a knock on the door tonight and it was a group of young men from church came to get the roof cleaned off... my niece stopped by while they were here and took a picture that she sent to my brother and he posted on chat I was totally amazed at how much they removed I'd expected the over hang to be gotten rid of but the roof is bare... it was so nice of them... and they got rid of the ice spot on the porch can even open the door fully now...
you all have a great day
sheila

snowball wrote:Anne can't remember if I told you how much I enjoyed looking at your jewelry or if it was on one of those that that went poof You have lots of really pretty works the first two or three years in Q I met a couple and she wire wrapped gave classes tried to do so wasn't very good... but did enjoy it... she had us practice with craft wire... after Larry passed away I wanted to get some inadvisable wire and make a necklace with birthstones but couldn't find the birthstones and the know how of how to do what I visualized.
sheila

You did tell me, Sheila, and I thank you very much! It always puts a smile on my face when someone likes my jewelry.

I hope that your friend provided you with the correct type and softness of wire. Without the right kind of wire, wire wrapping a stone can be very frustrating and extremely difficult - even for someone who is experienced at the craft.

To get the hang of wire-wrapping, one only needs two things, at least at the start: 1. Good quality wire 2. A lot of time to practice!

There are many different kinds of craft/jewelry wire (aluminum, copper, silver, gold, etc.) and many different brands. I have used copper "Artistic Wire" (this is a brand name, make by a company called Beadalon) for many years. Their wire is quite reasonably priced. When first starting out I would buy the small, relatively inexpensive, spools - these days I go through quite a bit of wire, so I always purchase the quarter-pound spools.

https://www.beadalon.com

I have tried other, less-expensive brands of wire over the years, but none work for me as well as does the Artistic Wire. Also, this wire comes in many gauges (thicknesses), colors, and types. If anyone is interested, take a look at the Beadalon website, link above. It is a bit surprising to realize that craft/jewelry wire can come in so very many different colors and sizes.

And there are many different hard-nesses of craft/jewelry wire. Most Artistic Wire is made from pure copper, and most Artistic Wire is what is called "dead soft". This makes the wire very easy to work with - keeping in mind that the more one works (bends and shapes) a piece of wire the more the wire will harden - and as it hardens, metal fatigue can occur.

With metal fatigue, a wire will just break without warning, at the worst possible moment, at the most important bend of that particular wire in one's project. Ask me how I know!!

Here is the hardness scale for craft wire:

https://www.beadalon.com/images/germanstyle_hardnessscale.jpg

And what does one do when a wire breaks? Especially if it breaks at an important place? Only one thing for it - cut off all of the wire preceding the broken piece, all the way back to the first bend, and start over.

LOL, Sheila, I'm sure, from your many postings regarding your Swedish (?) Weave crocheting, that you are no stranger to this concept!! One can't "unravel" wire (as one can yarn), this is why it needs to be cut away.

I did quite a lot of crocheting when I was a young woman, and loved it. I find that, although the mediums are different (wire rather than yarn) the techniques between weaving/wrapping wire and crocheting yarn are surprisingly similar. Sheila, with your years of experience (far more than mine!) with the crochet hook, I am convinced you could pick up this wire thing without a whole lot of difficulty. If you had a good teacher (and I doubt you would need much teaching), and if you were presented with the correct kind of wire to use.

As with most things these days, there are a bounty of wire-weaving and wire-wrapping videos on YouTube. Acquiring the basic skill set is pretty easy (the two most important requirements are "I want to" and patience), but takes a bit of practice. I have watched a lot of YouTube wire-wrapping videos over the years, and the rock club I belonged to taught classes in wire wrapping.

LOL - something to do with all of those rocks we always brought home from rock club field trips, instead of just filling up the garage!!

Before I joined my rock club, I had never even heard of wire-wrapped jewelry. I fell in love at my very first encounter, and have remained in love until this very day.

Thanks again, Sheila. You have a nice day, and please stay warm!

Anne

I slept in some this morning since I went to bed late last night. Got up and went to WM to exchange that water bottle kit that was empty. I hadn't realized that it was half price! So I got another one (I checked the box to make sure it was all in there). Was glad to only spend $10 instead of the $20 that was marked on the shelf. So far I like the taste of the water with the flavor filter in it. There are a large variety of flavors you can get for it. And you can adjust the filter from 1 to 9 as far as how strong of flavor you want added to the water. 3 seems to be just about right. One cartridge is supposed to last about 6-8 bottle fills, which hold 32 oz at a time.

I worked on the porch today to organize the bins I have in there and clean the dirt and dust up. Had to borrow my neighbor's vacuum cleaner since mine is small and doesn't pick much up. Her's about sucked the carpet right off the floor! Wiped down the window sills and the walls in there. So much dust!! I just have a little bit left to put away and that is just left over, misc stuff that I need to figure out what to do with. The bins that are still in there and stacked in one corner on and under a folding table are full of photos, and things for my daughter. Still have to go thru all the photos, but at least they are all in one spot now. The porch looks clean and inviting now, which is good since that is where everyone walks thru to get into my house. Then just need to do some basic housecleaning and also the laundry yet.

I discovered a ton of ants outside my house. They built a nest right along the edge of the skirting of the house. I think they are fire ants, young, small ones! I put out some bait for them.

I found 4 diaries of mine from high school. Started reading one of them. So far pretty interesting but I sure was a typical boy-crazy teenager! Brought back some fun memories tho.

I took Romeow for a stroll today in his new stroller. He cried a lot at first but settled down a bit. I parked him on the grass in my back yard for a bit so he could look around which he seemed to like. But then the landscaper came by with the lawn mower so I decided it was a good time to bring Romeow back inside. Well, we got in the house and I let him out of the stroller just when I saw we had a visitor cat inside the house! I had left the porch door open when I brought Romeow outside and Bootsy, the tuxedo cat I had trapped and neutered last year, decided it was a good opportunity to go inside and explore. Well, luckily, no cat fight but Romeow ran to my bedroom and Bootsy ran back outside.

Good night!