Blatant Self-Promotion

The Bag Lady has entered a contest, but needs help from her friends..... she entered one of her photos in a contest to win a laptop (yes, she knows she just bought one, but if she won another, she could donate it to the museum...... so, essentially, you would be helping out the museum if you went and voted for her picture!)

Click on the link and at least check out the photo!


Access Your Core from Intel

Oh, and just by voting? You, too, will have a chance to win a computer!!

(And, apparently, the Bag Lady has pulled up stakes and moved to Alaska. She heard it was nice there.)

Transformers

The Bag Lady had a busy day yesterday, but it did not all go according to plan. It took her until 10 am to realize that she was mistaken about the repairman coming to fix her washer. The Rancher came in from doing some chores outside and asked her if he had phoned yet, which made her look at the note she left herself, which was when she realized it said March 4th. Sigh.

Her meeting was not a long one, so she had more time in the afternoon to do a few things around the house. She put a soup together and weeded out some papers in her office. Late in the afternoon, she and the Rancher settled in to watch the gold medal women's hockey game between Canada and the States. It was fast, it was exciting, it was down to the last 1 minute and 20 seconds.... Canada was ahead by 2 goals and










the screen went black as the power went off.

They knew that Canada would probably win, but a lot can happen in a fast-paced hockey game in a minute and 20 seconds. The Americans might score, cheating Canada out of a shut-out win.

The Bag Lady called the power company, who promised to send out a serviceman. Then the Bag Lady spoke to the neighbour, just to double-check that their power was off, too. There are only the two households on the line, and the power has been known to go off on just this section. The Bag Lady settled in with a flashlight and a book, while the Rancher napped on the couch. (yes, they lead an exciting life!)

The Rancher finally drove to the highway to confirm that yes, the switch at the highway was open, so the Bag Lady called the power company back to let them know. An hour or so after that, the serviceman from the power company drove into their yard and waded through the snow to their transformer pole (where the main breaker is situated), then eventually waded back out to his truck........

He finally came to the house and the Rancher went outside to talk to him. He explained to the Rancher that the problem appeared to be that the transformer in their yard had blown and would have to be replaced, and could the Rancher please plow a path to the transformer pole so the serviceman could get his truck out there?
Sigh.
Three big trucks eventually pulled into the parking lot space the Rancher had cleared and set to work. Five and a half hours after it went off, the power was restored. There is now a nice shiny new transformer in their yard that will, hopefully, provide them with many years of service.

Time is Flying!

It has been another busy week around the Bag Lady's household. She has been hard at work at her job in town, and working on papers for the museum.

She and the Rancher took some steers to the abbatoir yesterday after she got off work. The meat processing place that they prefer is about an hour's drive away, but they really do a good job, and their facility is absolutely spotless! The Bag Lady knows this because every time they take an animal there, the owner takes them on a tour! After saying goodbye to the steers, the Bag Lady and the Rancher took the long way home so they could have supper with the Rancher's sister and her husband.

The Bag Lady has a repairman coming to her house today. Remember her front-loading washing machine? The door latch broke the other day and needs to be replaced. She has to admit, she is looking forward to having it fixed so she can do some laundry. (OMG, did she actually say that she is looking forward to doing laundry???)

She also has a meeting to attend this afternoon at the museum.
Wow, where did February go?

Quick Update Again!

It appears as though the Bag Lady purchased her laptop just in time. Her other computer seems to be in a bit of a snit now, so perhaps it is jealous....

She and the Rancher had quite a busy weekend, which didn't leave her a lot of time to compose a blog post, so this will be just a quick update on the fly. She has to go to her job in town today.

She has been working on all the paperwork she needs to have before she can start accessioning for the museum. There are a lot of forms she needs to make and she doesn't want to forget anything. She wants to make sure she has everything organized and in order before she takes in a single item for display.

But right now she needs to dash off to work

Quick Update

The Bag Lady has been really quite busy this week, and is using that as her excuse for not posting!
In spite of the fact (or perhaps more accurately, because of the fact) that she only worked two days this week, she really had to put out. She is on a bit of a deadline for sprucing up some of the areas at her workplace, so she was busy painting for most of the last two days (and isn't anywhere close to being done!) She has to wait for someone else to move some things out of her way (they are just too danged heavy for her to do it herself!) and the someone else has other things to do, too. Sigh.

On the homefront, she bought herself a laptop computer so she can tote it back and forth with her in her capacity of curator at the new museum. The museum doesn't have a computer, and she thinks she will need one, so she found an inexpensive laptop at Costco that she simply couldn't live without! Now all she needs to do is figure out how to use it. She also bought a router so she could access the internet without a warren of wires to trip over, and actually managed to hook it up AND have it work properly, all on her own! (She is quite proud of herself for that!)

The weather in her neck of the woods continues to be quite mild, which makes her happy. Except, of course, for the periods of freezing rain, which do not make her happy! Today promises to be clear and sunny and quite warm, so she is planning to spend some time outside enjoying it.
There are chores to attend to outside (giving the calves grain, filling bird feeders, sweeping up the sunflower seeds that the woodpeckers delight in tossing around, etc.) and in (laundry, cleaning, etc.) and you can bet that the Bag Lady will be concentrating on the outside chores as much as she can! In fact, as soon as the sun comes up, the Bag Lady will be outside!

Another Peek at the Past

Here are a couple of short installments from the history book of the region where the Bag Lady lives:

"Mom struggled with a garden. The growth was terrific, but occasionally a summer frost would kill her potatoes and that was a disaster as that was a staple they depended on. She often told of times she and a neighbor lady would go horse back riding to pick blueberries or cranberries, or the lonely nights when the men were away hunting and the only sound you would hear was the howling coyotes. No communication in those days, but somehow life was not boring as there was so much to do one was far too busy to feel sorry for oneself.

I was born in January of 1918, in the tiny hospital in town. It was so cold inside the hospital that the water froze solid in a glass on a bedside table.
Soon the flu epidemic spread to our area and families and neighbors died by the score. Dad made boxes and helped bury the dead. People that were well a few days before were suddenly sick and dying. "

Another woman wrote of her experiences attending school in the 1940's:

"When my brother and I were school age, we rode horseback for the spring and fall months. Several families in our area travelled together with horses and sleigh during the winter months. School was about 5 miles away and on very cold days we often suffered frostbite on face, hands and feet. Our mothers would heat rocks in the oven and wrap them in blankets. The rocks held the heat for quite awhile and we would keep our feet on them to keep warm. However, often the roads would be badly drifted and we children would have to get out and break trail for the horses and sleigh. This, of course, meant extra time spent on the road and as a result, the rocks would be cold long before we arrived at school."

Stories such as these abound in the history of this country, and the Bag Lady is fascinated by them! She has great admiration for the pioneers who suffered all manner of hardships in order to carve a life out of the wilderness.

Weird Work Week

The Bag Lady went on a bit of a road trip with the Rancher last weekend. He had to move some equipment, and needed her to come along to drive his truck. Without her help, he would have had to move the equipment and walk back for his truck. As it was quite a long distance, he opted for some assistance.

Of course, the Bag Lady took her little camera along and snapped some pictures along the way. The frost on the trees sparkled against the blue sky:

There was a hint of fog visible in places:

The Bag Lady followed the Rancher as he trundled along:

She thought this clump of willows looked pretty, sparkling in the sun.



The weather was actually fairly mild that day, and has stayed quite mild all week. It is even supposed to warm up a little more for the coming weekend, which suits the Bag Lady just fine!
She is looking forward to getting lots done this weekend (It is a long weekend where she lives, which means she doesn't have to work on Monday. Which means she will have had 5 days off in a row by the time she goes back to work. Which means her work week will be the same length as most people's weekend. How weird is that?!)