On Duck, Duck, Goose:

After a few extra trips back to the Geek Doctors for adjustments, on things I couldn’t find the hidden screens for, to have those functions turned back on or re-routed around, Rupert the computer is in fine form. He is acting like he had just been away on vacation for the last week and a half and is showing off his new tan over rippling muscles and lost weight from having problem games removed. He is getting sideward glances from me at his arrogant demeanor, then I hug him or give him a pat on the head.

Gladys, the notebook/laptop, has gotten an upgrade of her own and has been wearing her new favor like a peacock. I thought that maybe a new jealousy might be in the offing between them, but to my surprise, they are now all the more in love. Rupert helps Gladys with the heavy lifting and she has taken the burden of story writing from him, leaving him to the blogging, games, pictures and music.

Clayton, Mountain Man’s older computer, has had a few small up grades himself as Lady Euphoria pampered him a bit while waiting for Rupert’s return. He is thankful, but wants a rest from the near constant pounding of his keys while being shared for so many days.

As peace and tranquility of computers lay kindly over the home of Lady Deathwatch, she is frantically trying to catch up on other things like house work and laundry, feeling goosed by the whole process of computer needs. While Mountain Man grumbles in the corner, as he works on their taxes.

I will now spend a few hours each day trying to catch up on all the emails, blogs, stories and other internet friend stuff that await me in cyberspace.

Here are some pictures of the ducks on my pond that I took, but couldn’t show you last week, with the new camera’s distance capabilities. I didn’t have to doctor or play with the pictures after I took them at all.

On Silly Holiday the Thirteenth 04-13-09:

Dilly Spilly Day*

The town of Dilly Falls spent the last week getting ready for the biggest holiday of the year. Pillows were placed on every park bench. Soft stuffing was wrapped around every tree, light pole and fire hydrant. Everyone had their padding and crash helmets ready for the big day. Yes, Dilly Spilly Day was going to be a head over heals success.

There was raised seating erected at the place where the race would end and Martha Bickbutt loaned her rattan peacock fan chair with the fat cushion for the Queen of the Day’s throne, to be placed on the stage opposite the risers for her to over see the day’s events.

I should tell you that Dilly Falls didn’t have any waterfalls at all. In fact there wasn’t any moving water within city limits. For Dilly Falls was the place where Dilly Spilly Day was started long ago. Homer Houser started the holiday to honor Betty ‘Boom Boom’ Dilly and soon after the town’s name was changed to Dilly Falls. Boom Boom Day, as the holiday was first called, was held on the anniversary of Betty’s death each year there after.

Betty had been a nice little girl who did everything quite normally with the exception of walking. She walked backwards you see. She was called Boom Boom from the time she was a toddler and would bump into things and announce, to any one in hearing distance, that she had a Boom Boom on her bottom.

This was a cause of much merriment as she rarely ever got truly hurt. She didn’t seem to mind the laughter or to be able to walk in the normal way and the people of town just left her to her odd way of getting from place to place.

By the time she was a teen no one seemed to notice any longer, but shortly after she made her way backwards up the isle to marry Freddy Bumper and the whole town showed up. But Freddy didn’t arrive to marry her and… Well, the story made the newspapers of course.

This drew the attention of the people with that book of strange things people did. Betty Dilly was named as the person who walked backward the longest, unseating the holy man in India who had done his backward walking for only five years at that point. This made Betty Dilly the town’s only celebrity.

So the people of Dilly Falls had a day of walking backward on April thirteenth every year in her honor. Backward races were held throughout the day. A backwards queen was crowned. And there were tents of food with backward spoken names.

Strap on a pillow and come join us for a Dilly Spilly Day of backward nuf. (f-u-n)

*This is a totally fictional story by Lady Deathwatch.

On Apple or Orange:

No pictures, No contest today.

Rupert the computer is home but still unwell. After having some things I can’t explain done to him while at the ‘computer hospital’ he works, but he no longer plays well on the internet. In essence, I can’t get onto blogger with him any longer. No blogger, no blog with pictures. So I am back on the older slower computer (named Clayton) that doesn’t deal well with pictures. And Rupert is on juice and light snacks while he lazes around playing games.

Mountain Man is not happy at the expense and I am in a tizzy. I can live with Rupert if he doesn’t do anything but play games and is a glorified typewriter. I have done that before for years before we joined the internet. But my blog will suffer if I can no longer do things like have pictures or other things here on my blog by using the older computer to reach the internet.

I will start to save up for a new computer if Rupert can‘t be fixed, but I do feel I the need for some more input on computers before I put any more money down on these fiendish friends.

I know nothing about Macks/Apples and would like anyone who knows both systems to let me know the difference. In fact the only thing I’ve heard many years ago was an off hand comment someone made, that macks don’t do games well. It takes me some time to learn a new system with my brain hitting the restart button on a fairly regular basis. And I don’t want to waste money on something I might not be able to use.

I found myself thinking about giving up the blogs, much as I don’t want to. But I don’t want to have a boring blog that no one wants to read either. I put a lot of time and thought into my blogs in trying to keep them interesting.

So, I’m looking for a solution. If any of you could help, I thank you in advance.

Tomorrow is Silly Day the Thirteenth.

On Rupert is Coming Home:

Rupert the computer is fixed. The call came too late to get him last night, but today he is coming home. I don’t know yet in what condition he’ll be in, but whether or not he still knows me or has had his memory wiped clean, I will be able to have pictures on the blog again. Whoo hoo!

I have been having a lot of fun with the old gaming system (Gamecube) again. I even bought some more used games for it. My thumbs have gotten stronger so I just might take the time to keep playing those games too.

Still, I have to say that I really want to get back to my writing. I miss attacking the keyboard when the muse hits. Pen and paper take far too long for me now. I have index cards with ideas on them from the past week, but not the pages I had been able to put out on a regular basis before.

The other down side of Rupert being gone has been that I haven’t been using the exerbike nearly as much, so my weight loss has slowed too. Or has that been Holiday prep and the extra special cooking going on around here. A little of both I suspect.

After a small celebration on his return I will dump the pictures I’ve been taking this past week into him, and get the Epitaph contest ready for tomorrow. But after that I will be deep into my writing again. My characters are clamoring for attention again and I can’t wait to get back at it.

Let me see, how did it go again… Mysteriously, a beautifully carved wooden box arrives at the house in the arms of a bald man with a scar on his left hand and cheek. The main character (Un-named as yet.) wonders at its meaning. Is there more to the seemingly empty box? And what is the secret of its heavy weight?… I can’t wait to find out. How about you?

On Blame It On the Restart Button:

I didn’t forget to sit down to post yesterday. I really didn’t. I woke up knowing what I wanted to say. I’m a creature of habit like we all tend to be.

My morning habit is to get up, do the bathroom stuff and get the blog written. I often put it on the timer to go out between 7:00 and 7:30 in the morning, a difference of about a half an hour from the time I wrote it. And while it goes out into cyber space I’ve been peacefully doing my yoga.

When that is done, I wash up, dress for the day and read other peoples blogs and answer my emails while my hair dries and I eat my breakfast. (Yes, I know. Way, too much information.)

Yesterday, I didn’t get up at the usually time and decided to use the extra time to do some maintenance on the computer. Defrag and clean, you know the drill. And since this computer I’m currently using is so slow at its tasks I didn’t write the blog as I waited, I was hand writing a shopping list on a note pad.

And then there is this seizures business. I have had mild seizures since the cancer treatments. I am fortunate that the computer screen doesn’t set them off, but I can’t drive the car any more. If you were in the room you’d probably miss that I had one. I get a little spacey for a moment as my brain hits the restart button a few times a day.

Well, I had one, round about the time the computer finished and when I found myself sitting in my computer chair, I looked up at the clock, and thought, I must have done what I sat down there to do, so I then went off to do my morning yoga.

Only getting up this morning to repeat my daily process reminded me that I hadn’t, in fact, blogged yesterday. Not that you missed anything important. I didn’t find the answer to world peace or anything, but I did wonder at the lack of comments when I checked on the blog and my emails.

So the blog was lost in translation, or rebooting, or some such thing of my twisted brain. I’m going back to doing things the way I had been doing them, with no deviations in the future. I have to go with what works, to make it work, right?

On Music on the Wind:

Today I move my wind chimes outside. This I do knowing full well that they may still be snowed on a time or two before the nice weather comes to stay for a while. It is snowing right now in my yard. I live on top of a mountain so spring comes a bit later for me but I can’t wait any longer.

I love the sound of the chimes and gongs and have missed their discordant music all winter long. The heavy long metal tube chime with it’s deeper gong like sound. The light clacking hollow sounds of the bamboo. The tinkle of the brass bell chime. And all the others filling in the other notes and noises in the breezes. Metal, Glass, Stone, Wood, and pottery. There are also shards of broken things that had an interesting sound when strung up with a clacker to bump into each other when the wind comes to play.

Each wind chime on it’s own hook hanging outside my kitchen door. As they are placed in their yearly place of honor, hanging from the ash tree, they are checked for damage and fixed if possible. A new clacker string or a bit of wire to hold something back in place. Some do not make it, their cording rotted away and their pieces are taken to be replacement parts for others that have seen the ravages of time. So interspersed with the newer chimes are the miss-mash of the reclaimed.

I remember the person that had given it to me or the occasion it was received. Remembering time spent in finding the right placement for a unique sound or look that didn‘t survive another year. They are important to me not just because I like the sounds but because of the memories that they invoke also.

Today the music of my wind chimes will be back at my house. Can you hear the love floating in the air?

On Rocking and Rolling Along:

Busy week, Holidays and all that coming up. I’m still spring cleaning. No crafting projects to speak of. I’m trying to ignore the return of winter weather around here. And I’m trying to get some things done in the yard. With the weather it is taking longer then I hoped.

I have been doing some yard work out in the yard and other areas of the property. The ground heaves and moves in the winter freezes and thaws. Every year we find new rocks and stones coming out of the ground That have to be removed or marked before we start up the mower and do it damage. Then there are the other decorative edging rocks and stones that we find sinking down from the rodents undermining them, literally.

Can you see me out in the yard with a pick-ax like one of the dwarfs in Snow White? Pulling rocks and stones from the ground and adding them to Mountain Mans stash. Well, it really isn’t quite like that.

I have my own rocks and stones that I play with too. I really do. Mountain Man has his walls and towers of stone and I have a Meditation Labyrinth. It is in the medieval style and in need of repair after a long winter or two. (I haven’t worked in there like I should have in the last few years since the cancer. I just wasn’t up to it before now.) I posted a link on meditation labyrinths here. I will post pictures of mine when I can again, in the future.

Meditation Labyrinths are not the hedge path mazes you hear about. They are paths on the ground that you walk on. You walk around on the narrow twisting path into the center and back out again as you pray or think on how to improve your personal growth.

My Labyrinth is in a clearing in the oak grove west of the house. This requires two leaf cleanings a year. Oak trees hold onto half of their autumn leave until spring and then drop the rest. It takes me days just to clean out the fallen leaves and twigs from between all the rocks, marking the sides of the path, without disturbing them.

Next I have to unearth the rocks that have sunken into the ground more then I want them to. This I have to do with hundreds of rocks. I’ll go through a few pair of gardening gloves before I’m done and it is hard work, but I love it there.

I hope that you have an inspirational place of your own to go to also.