Weirdness Abounds

Okay, this has been a truly weird weekend around the Bag Lady's ol' stump ranch. After her weird Saturday night experiments with her word processing package, she thought she would have a nice, quiet Sunday.......but no.

The first weird occurrence involved the Princess dog and a deer. The Bag Lady could hear the Princess barking, so she looked out the window to see a deer standing in the driveway. This is not at all unusual, but what was strange was that the deer was not leaving. In fact, as the Bag Lady watched, the deer pinned back her ears, advanced on the Princess and stomped her foot! The Bag Lady's mouth dropped open in disbelief! She has never seen that before! She tried to videotape it, but unfortunately, the angle of the sun was wrong and the deer was standing in the shade, so wasn't visible.

The Mexican stand-off went on for about half an hour, until the Bag Lady finally called her dog to the house. When the dog left, the deer walked a short distance into the trees and stood there. Out of curiosity, the Bag Lady went and searched around in the bush a little (the deer finally left when the Bag Lady got too close) but there was nothing to be seen. Deer don't usually start having babies until late April or May, but she may have had one early. If she did, and it was in the bush, it was very well hidden.

(This is the best shot the Bag Lady can manage - if you look very closely, you can see the deer has her ears laid back and one front foot in the air, about to stomp.)

The second weird occurrence happened Sunday afternoon. The Cowboy and the Bag Lady spent most of the day in the shop, putting together a new grass-seeder. When they finished and were walking from the shop to the house, the Bag Lady heard the roar of jet planes, so looked up. Lo and behold, there was what appeared to be a passenger jet being pursued by 6 fighter jets! The Bag Lady ran to the house for her camera, but the jets were traveling so fast that by the time she got back outside, they were almost out of sight. She snapped a picture of their contrails:

Approximately 15 or 20 minutes later, they heard jets again, so back outside they went. This time there were more contrails, but they were also traveling so fast, the jets themselves were out of sight. The Bag Lady took a picture again. Rather like taking a photo of the empty barn after the horse is gone...

(The funny white square in the picture is the Bag Lady's new high-speed internet receiver.)

The strange part of all this is that the Bag Lady lives far away from any military bases where there are jets stationed. And why would they be chasing a passenger jet, if that is, in fact, what they were doing? Weird.

The Bag Lady is hoping that her quota of weirdness is full now. She doesn't know how much more of this she can take! She should have known what kind of day it would be when she dropped a full 2-litre carton of milk on the floor as she was preparing her breakfast... of course it split open at the top! She was tempted to just throw her cereal there, too. If she was a better housekeeper and washed her floors more often, she just might have...

Weird Saturday Night

The Bag Lady has been playing around with her new word processing package and learning a few things about it. It is quite similar to what she used before, but of course there are some differences.

She has been playing around with highlighting to see if it would survive the transition to blogger.

She managed to turn it on and can't figure out how to make it stop now.

Stupid thing.

There, that seems to have done the trick. Whew.

The Bag Lady has been to many strange fonts and had many strange experiences, but she hopes things will return to normal soon. She may even have figured out the highlighting thing. The bullets have her stumped, though.

For some reason, this word processing package keeps wanting to put words in her mouth. Oh, she may have figured that out and made it stop. Whew. It was driving her crazy. She can do her own thinking, thankyouverymuch. (well, sometimes, anyway!)

This is a ridiculous post. Makes the Bag Lady look like an idiot. But she really just wanted to see if the highlighting and such would make the journey over to Blogger.

And yes, it is Saturday night. And no, she hasn't been drinking. (more's the pity). She will dig through her archives and find a nice picture for you, if you behave. At least then your visit here will not have been totally in vain. (to say nothing of bizarre).

Okay, it might still be bizarre. This is the photo of the Bag Lady's hair that Blogger refused to allow her to post when she was complaining about the Pippi Longstocking look.

Gosh. It doesn't look as bad as she thought at the time. From this angle, anyway! What do y'all think -- does the Bag Lady need a haircut?

Friday Round-up

Well now. The Bag Lady has had a fine time with her computer in the last little while. The high-speed connection was installed with very little trouble (the fellow who installed it had a wee problem getting the signal, until he went outside and moved his ladder from in front of the thingy he installed on her roof!)

Once the high-speed connection was installed and operational, the Bag Lady decided she needed to do a little tweaking. Some of you may recall that she had her computer decimated by the repair shop not that long ago, so she has been having all kinds of fun, downloading a word processing package, and switching over to Mozilla from what she was using previously. Of course, it would help her immensely if she had any freakin' idea what she was doing, but whatever. She has been sorting out her bookmarks and skipping around from blog to blog. Whoosh!

Oh, and for those of you who are obsessed with checking your stats, apparently the Bag Lady moved to Calgary when she got high-speed. She just wishes she could get a food delivery from a restaurant, now that she is supposedly living in the Big City. Bastards still won't deliver! They tell her they can't keep the food warm for the 9 hours it would take them to get it here. What's with that?

On the subject of stats, the Bag Lady is really looking forward to checking the map in sitemeter. She has never been able to do that before, and apparently needs to download something in order to do it, but she will get to that soon. She loves checking her stats. Remember when she posted about things setting off the music in her head? She has several readers in Houston, Texas, so every time she looks at her sitemeter, that song sticks in her head (Houston means that I'm one day closer to you...) Sh*t, just did it to myself again by telling you!

The Bag Lady is off to do some shopping today (even though the nearest city to her doesn't offer anything close to the choices that Calgary would!). She will have to tear herself away from all the fun she's having with her high-speed connection. She also hopes to be back to normal blogging next week. She writes her blog posts in her word-processing program, and has been without one since she got her computer back from the repair-shop-from-hell, so has had to curtail her customary spouting off. Be warned, regular programming will resume next week, so be prepared for spouting. Or at least; dribbling.

And, last but not least, the Bag Lady simply had to try downloading a photo to see how long it would take! This was taken a couple days ago of the Bag Lady's front lawn.

And it took about 20 seconds to load, instead of the 3 or 4 minutes she was accustomed to!!! Woohoo!!!

Have a great weekend!

Lady in Waiting

The Bag Lady is excited this morning. No, silly, not about that! Sheesh, get your mind out of the gutter!



She's excited because she is supposed to be getting high-speed internet installed today. She can hardly wait to not have to wait anymore. When you have a dial-up connection, you wait. For everything. You wait for it to connect, you wait for every page to load, you wait (mostly in vain!) for pictures to load, and you would spend your life waiting to watch some of the videos posted on some of the blogs.



The other day, the Bag Lady tried to watch a video of Mizfit(http://mizfitonline.com) doing some exercises. Those of you with a high-speed connection would just have clicked on the little control thing and the video would play, right? The Bag Lady clicked on the little control and waited. And waited. The video finally started to play. Mizfit moved her arm, said half a word and the video stopped. Then it loaded some more and the Bag Lady waited. And waited. Mizfit's arm moved another quarter of an inch, she said the rest of the word.....and the video stopped to load some more. Twenty minutes later, the Bag Lady finally left Mizfit hanging off her chair. No wonder Mizfit has such toned arms....in the Bag Lady's world, she is still hanging there!! One of the first things the Bag Lady is going to do when she has her high-speed connection hooked up is go and let Mizfit off that damned chair!!



Another place she is going is over to Hilary's blog, the Smitten Image (the link is in my sidebar). The Bag Lady really wants to see the pictures that Hilary has posted of the disaster zone her bedroom was turned into not too long ago. For those of you who haven't read Hilary's last few posts, scoot on over and see how she spent her Easter vacation!!



The Bag Lady can hardly wait to see how fast pictures will load onto her own blog with a high-speed connection. She has mentioned in previous posts about waiting for photos to load. She has negotiated peace treaties between small Balkan countries in the time it took to post a picture on her blog. She's wondering if the high-speed connection will allow her to get up and take the 7 steps to the coffee pot before her picture comes up. She won't have time to vacuum her living room while she waits, will she? On the other hand, she won't spend nearly as much time on the computer, because she will be able to scoot around from blog to blog without waiting for what seems like hours for each page to load! She might even be forced to find new blogs to look at so she can keep her butt planted in front of her computer...or worse yet, get off her ever-expanding butt and lose some of it!



Of course, if something goes wrong (as things sometimes do in her world), the Bag Lady will still be waiting. She'll be waiting for pages to load, or she'll be waiting for pictures to load, or she'll be waiting for the installer to show up. And poor Mizfit will still be hanging off her chair!



Let's all hope for everyone concerned that the installer shows up on time, everything goes smoothly and the Bag Lady will soon be speeding around the blogosphere. Woohoo!

Visitor Day

The Bag Lady had a visitor drop in yesterday morning. He was a little camera-shy, so she had trouble capturing him on film. He is almost impossible to spot in this first shot....

When she stepped out into the yard, he turned his back on her....

And, as she got a little closer, he turned and looked over his shoulder at her....

But when the Princess came tromping along to investigate what had caught the Bag Lady's attention, her guest took off. She had her camera at maximum telephoto, which still wasn't great, so in case you can't tell, he was a bald eagle. We see them quite often here in the winter, and this is the second time in recent years that one has perched in the trees behind the Bag Lady's house.

She spots them most often on the side of the road, feasting on some poor deer or moose that has been struck on the highway. One can always tell when there is a carcass somewhere because of the ravens and the eagles.

Trials of Being a Dog

What is it about things that smell exceptionally bad that makes dogs want to roll in it? Some primitive instinct that drives them to cover their own scent with whatever is available.

The Princess went out yesteday morning to "help" the Cowboy with the chores (she sits in the open gate to the pasture and guards it). When he finished and came into the house, he told the Bag Lady that her dog (why is it her dog when there's something wrong, and his the rest of the time?) got into something and needed to be washed.

The Bag Lady dutifully filled a bucket with warm soapy water and went out to wash "her" dog. Unfortunately, whatever the Princess found to roll in (smelled like some kind of urine) was exceptionally powerful, and wouldn't wash off easily. The Princess was banished from her castle to her deck in the hopes that once it dried, it wouldn't smell quite so bad.

You see, the Princess hates to be bathed. The Bag Lady takes her into the shower stall and uses the handheld shower nozzle on her. Once they are in the stall with the door shut, the Princess sits and suffers in silence, but getting her into the stall is an adventure. It generally takes both of the humans to manage this.

Yesterday, the Cowboy simply picked her up and carried her in. The Bag Lady bathed her and she suffered through it with only one little episode of howling when the Princess thought it was taking too long. Once done, the Bag Lady made the mistake of opening the shower door too soon and the Princess made her escape, still quite wet, and bee-lined directly for her favourite hiding spot underneath the large coffee table in the living room.



She refused to even look at the Bag Lady in order to have her picture taken, and stayed under the table for quite a long time. The Bag Lady finally coaxed her out with a rawhide treat and managed to finish drying her off.

She smells much better, and is extremely shiny and silky. That probably won't last long though.

Hippity Hoppity

The Bag Lady was busy yesterday, baking and decorating cakes for Easter. She got a little carried away, perhaps...

She is afraid her Easter bonnets are a little raggedy looking, but some days nothing goes right!

Tidbit from Bunnygirl's blog was the model for the bunny, although the Bag Lady may have failed to capture Tid's absolute cuteness!

(Oh and of course, they are carrot cakes!)

She is cooking Easter dinner for her step-daughter and her husband, because she and the Cowboy are going elsewhere tomorrow, and the kids have other obligations, too.

Happy Easter, everyone.

Spring Flowers

The Bag Lady simply had to buy some flowers for Easter, but couldn't make up her mind...

She loves the look of the tulips, and loves the smell of the freesia.

What do you think?

Is it Spring Yet?

"I was in the woods with my boyfriend, Ernie...." Oh. Wait. That's not what I wanted to say...that's a dirty Sophie Tucker joke!



The Bag Lady and the Cowboy went for their first spring stroll in the pasture last evening. The snow is almost all gone, and what is left is quite icy, so between that and the big, brown, squishy "rocks", we had to watch our footing!





It was actually quite pleasant, and made the Bag Lady very hopeful that spring is almost here. We will probably get at least one more big snow storm, which will add moisture to the ground, but the days are longer and the sun is stronger, so spring can't delay too much longer.



Last year at this time, there was still a three-foot deep snow pack with a crust hard enough that we could walk on top of it. In fact, it was deep enough and solid enough that we could easily step over the top wire of a 3-wire high barbed wire fence (which, in the summer, hits the Bag Lady around hip-height).

We walked all the way to the edge of our pasture and the Bag Lady was pleased to note that she could actually see the old fella who has been sleeping the "big sleep" in the swamp on the other side of the fence for several years now.


This moose skull has been lying here for at least 4 years, maybe longer; probably dragged here by a coyote. It is old and weathered, and would probably be the kind of thing that some people want to put on their walls in their rustic, "country" house. The Bag Lady thinks he should just stay where he is, lying undisturbed under a willow tree.

He is the Bag Lady's indicator of spring. She knows it's almost spring when he reappears. Regardless of what the calendar says, the Bag Lady has other methods of judging the seasons.

Has spring arrived where you live?

Wednesday Wonderings

The Bag Lady is wondering about a few things, most of them totally unconnected.

Why do cats insist on sitting in your lap right after you change your clothes? Do they have some sixth sense - "she is not covered with cat hair - must remedy that immediately in case she wants to do something ridiculous like cook a meal, or go to town..."

Why, when you have a medical concern, do friends and neighbours suddenly pop out of the woodwork with horror stories like "I knew a fella had that...lost all the blood in his body... had to have transfusions...almost died. You should...blah, blah, blah" Do they think you don't look sufficiently worried?

Why do your bills automatically come due the day before you remember to pay them?

Why, when the phone rings, and you have three cordless phones in the house, is the one you finally track down and answer always the one with the nearly dead battery?

Why is it that the day you decide to wear a white blouse, is also the day you spill your coffee down your front as soon as you are far enough away from home not to be able to change?

Why, when you have just completed washing the floor, does someone open the door and let the muddy dog come galloping in?

Why, when you are introducing two people, do you always forget one of their names, regardless of how well you know it?

** These are all things that have happened to the Bag Lady recently, so it is obvious, isn't it, that Murphy's Law rules her life?!**

Nasty

The Bag Lady is slowly getting her computer back to normal. She is still mourning the loss of a few programs, but will eventually find something to replace them. Apparently there are word processing packages that can be downloaded from the Internet, so she will eventually try that solution.

She's been casting about for something to share with you today, and hasn't come up with very much! The weather here has warmed up enough that she has the window beside her open, and is listening to the birds heralding the rising sun! There is a flock of redpolls sitting in a little tree outside her window, and they are trilling and calling to each other. One of the best things about living in the country is that you can hear, see, and smell nature. Although the smelling part is sometimes not all it's cracked up to be! Fortunately, it's still too early for the worst of the odours. In a few weeks when the winter pile-up of manure starts to thaw, the smell will be unpleasant, to say the least! The Cowboy's uncle used to say it was the smell of money, but in these times of poor cattle prices, the Bag Lady says it's the smell of money down the drain....

But the Bag Lady is grateful for the ability to smell. Leah, over at the Goat's Lunch Pail (link in the sidebar) mentioned olfactory senses in her Gratitude Monday post yesterday, and it got the Bag Lady thinking about odours. She posted awhile ago about her favourite smells, but today she is thinking about the most offensive. One of the worst smells, to her, is the smell of horse manure. To her mind, it is worse than cow manure, which is quite unpleasant in it's own right!
Other odours she hates are garbage, vomit, and car exhaust.

What are your least favourite smells?

**the Bag Lady is really scraping the bottom of the barrel with this post, isn't she?**

A Hottie?

Well, the Bag Lady has certainly learned a few things over the past couple of days. Hopefully, she is smart enough to remember the lessons.





One of them will stick with her awhile, because she will be reminded every time she looks in the mirror.


She decided the other day, whilst waiting for the computer repair shop to call and tell her her computer was ready, that she would get a little tarted up for her trip to town. She bought some mascara a while back that is waterproof, smudgeproof, along with a bunch of other -proofs that she can't remember. So she curled her skimpy little lashes and coated them with this gunk. She managed not to get any in her eyes (not much, anyway) and only smeared a little of it on her eyelid. Once she got the smear cleaned away (with an industrial-strength make-up remover), she added a little blush and a little eye-shadow and was set.



She'll skip over the saga of the computer fiasco because she doesn't want this to turn into a rant, which brings her to Saturday night. She still had the mascara coating her lashes, because it doesn't come off with soap and water, and she hadn't bothered to haul out the industrial strength make-up remover. She was doing her Suzy Home-maker impression, making a nice pot roast for her Cowboy. She decided she had better check to see how things were progressing in the oven, so she opened the door and leaned in to pull out the roaster. She has done this the same way for her entire life and has never had a problem. But she was never wearing this particular waterproof, smudgeproof and everything but heat-proof mascara before. Before she even had a chance to say "Covergirl", her eyelashes had melted!!



Well, in truth, only the eyelashes on her right eye had melted. She must have had her head tilted a little and, in good boxer fashion, was leading with her right. The eyelashes on her left eye just formed a coalition. So now the Bag Lady looks even stranger than she normally looks because she has one bald eye. The one thing she is thankful for is that she only had the mascara on her top eyelashes - if she had applied it to the bottom lashes, she fears it would have melted together, effectively welding her eyes shut.



She is also thankful that the mascara seems to have a high melting point because she has been really steamed at the computer shop, to say nothing of the little tropical moments she experiences on a regular basis. She does think, though, that this particular brand of mascara should have a label warning against this kind of heat-induced melt-down. And she will be more careful in the future. That is, if her eyelashes ever get long enough to put mascara on again!

(She has a new magnet on her fridge: "I'm still HOT, it just comes in flashes now!")

Hello? Is Anyone There?

The Bag Lady is back. Sort of. She is not very happy with the computer place. They told her they had to completely wipe out her computer and re-install everything. Well, it certainly was wiped off, anyway. She now has absolutely NO word processing package, can't get onto her homepage at all and the computer is about 10 times slower than it was before she took it in to them.
She has used this place in the past - in fact, she bought her computer from them, but she is not at all impressed with them this time. Of course, it is too late tonight to do anything about it (which is probably a good thing for them, because by tomorrow she will have calmed down enough that they may escape with their lives) but she will definitely be calling them for an explanation tomorrow.

And the Winner IS:

Milkshake.



Hilary of the Smitten Image has come through yet again. For those of you not familiar with Hilary's blog, you should check it out - she posts amazing photos and always has interesting stuff on her blog. Unfortunately, the Bag Lady cannot post a link at this time, due to her balky computer, but there is a link in the sidebar.



The Bag Lady still has not determined what is wrong with her computer, so she is going to have to take it to the hospital. She will simply have to bite the bullet and miss out on a few days blogging. Sigh.

She is aware that she posted something very similar to this last Monday, but she managed to limp along for another week, and could probably do so again, but that would just be postponing the inevitable. So she will at least phone the computer place today and find out if they can have a look. If they are insanely busy, she will be back tomorrow but if they can get to it right away, she'll be gone a little while. **Sob**

Name That Calf

The response to the "name that calf " contest has been great! Now the Bag Lady is going to let you choose the name. Listed below are the entries (in no particular order) and she would like you to vote for your choice. You don't have to have an entry in the contest in order to vote, so make your choice and let the Bag Lady know.

She will turn on the comment moderation, so you won't see your comment come up. The Bag Lady will tally up the votes over the weekend and publish the name on Monday. She will publish any comments that aren't related to the vote. Here are the choices:


1. Milkshake


2. Lil' Bea


3. Dairyaire


4. Dee Calf


5. Calf eh ole


6. (Cow) Asaki


7. Baby B


8. Calfe-Latte

Have fun! And have a great weekend.

Bundle of Joy?

Well, it's official. Calving season has started at Scratch-Nut Creek Ranch! Of course, it will be a slow start because most of the herd is bred to start calving in April. but we do have a few that were bred early.

First, thanks to everyone who played along yesterday. The popular vote went to Spooky; probably because she is not as grumpy-looking as the White Bitch.


Here, now, is a photo of the proud papa (surrounded by a couple members of his harem):














And now, the newest member of the herd:

As you can see, the White Bitch was first. The Bag Lady apologizes for the quality of the photo - she had to take it from quite a distance away using her telephoto feature on her little camera. The White Bitch is called that for a reason, and the Bag Lady didn't want to get too close! If disturbed, WB would have either charged the Bag Lady, with the possibility of grievous injury on the Bag Lady's part, or would have taken her calf and retreated into the bush, resulting in the possible death of the calf. So this is the best photo to be obtained for now.

So, now that the calf has arrived, she (yes, the Bag Lady is pretty sure it's a girl) needs a name. Does anyone want to participate in a naming contest? The Bag Lady hates comment moderation, but can't think of a way you can leave your suggestion for a name without using it. If you want to participate in a naming contest, use the email address in the sidebar to send the Bag Lady your suggestion. Please do so before Thursday at midnight, and the Bag Lady will put them all in another post on Friday to allow everyone to vote on them over the weekend.

PS if you want to enter a name in the contest, but don't want the Bag Lady to know what your email address is (although she doesn't udderstand why you wouldn't!), leave it in the comment section of another post - pick one at random - Blogger will notify her of any comments anywhere...

Cows!!

Here are a couple photos for you to ponder. These cows are very close to calving, and the Bag Lady is not sure which one will be first. (Well, she thinks she knows, but she's been wrong before!)

Here is the first one. We call her Spooky, because she is.



And here is the second one. We call her the White Bitch, because she is!

Now, the Bag Lady could give you all kinds of instructions about what to look for, but because the photos aren't really very good, and not all of the things you need to look at are visible in the photos, she just wants you to guess.

Which cow do you think will be first? (Talk about scientific, eh? C'mon, gimme your best guess!)

Your prize? You get to name the calf when it arrives!! Woohoo!! Oh, wait, that wouldn't be fair, because what if you all guess correctly? Hmmm, the Bag Lady will have to ponder a little more on that point. Perhaps we'll have a little naming contest when the calf arrives...

(The Bag Lady's computer is still misbehaving, but she hasn't taken it to the hospital yet because she's addicted to blogging and can still do that...)

Monday Morning Blues

The Bag Lady has been having all kinds of trouble with her computer and may end up taking it to town (or out behind the barn, or on a long walk off a short pier, or something equally drastic...) so if she disappears from the blogging scene for awhile, please don't forget her....
If anyone has any suggestions to fix her 'puter, feel free.

Follow-up to Friday

Here is a photo of the Bag Lady's cookies (recipe in yesterday's post). She had to make another batch, and thought she'd show you how they turned out.