Fish and Game, June 2012

Posted on May 30, 2012 by treshabarger

Another fishing magazine in the mail. Let’s take a look at the front cover headlines of the Fish & Game Inland Edition, June 2012.

From Trade Show to Field Test (There are fishing trade shows? Do they trade fish? Is it different than a fish market?)

10 Things You May Not Know About Specks (You mean how they got pointy ears? Oh, that’s Specks, not Spocks. Rats!)

Fishing Strange Water For Bass (Your mother told you never to do that!)

Overcoming Oh Crap! Moments (This article is a wee bit late. I needed it decades ago. Maybe I should send a copy to each of my co-workers.)

Lightning! When Nature Goes Nuclear (Hardly, and we all know “it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.“)

Rules Of The Game: Predators (I think predators make the rules. Yep, they do.)

Whitetail Supplements: Feed Early, Grow Big (No way am I taking supplements that might make me grow a tail, white or otherwise. What some people won’t do for attention!)

Law of Nature

Posted on May 29, 2012 by treshabarger

It’s a law of nature at our house that any appliance breakdown will happen on a holiday weekend. Fortunately, we’re not under the black cloud that ensures that this happens every holiday weekend, but still . . . .

Thursday it seemed that maybe our refrigerator was not feeling so well. By Friday, that was a confirmed diagnosis and its condition steadily worsened. And, of course, it was a holiday weekend.

Also, anytime one of our dogs gets bitten by a rattlesnake, it will be on a weekend when just walking into the emergency vet clinic costs enough to . . . well, buy a new refrigerator! Sometimes two or three refrigerators, even. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad the emergency vet clinic is there. None of our dogs died from the rattlesnake bites. But couldn’t that happen during the week, early in the morning so we could go to our regular vet? Or even better, is there a way to prevent rattlesnake bites altogether, other than moving into a downtown condo, that is? But I digress; back to my refrigerator woes.

Over three days, I spent a noticeable amount of time on the Internet, shopping for a refrigerator much like the one we have: white, top freezer, with a freezer light, no automatic ice maker, no water dispenser, 21-22 cubic feet. How hard can it be? (That’s the clue that it’s always harder than I thought it should be.)

It was hard. As it turns out, those types of refrigerators are still made. The problem is navigating retailers’ web sites to figure out which models have which features. Some web sites have photos of the interior of the refrigerator and the freezer. Nice. Some have photos of just the refrigerator part. Some have photos of only the outside and an abbreviated list of features! Really? They want me to decide on a refrigerator just based on the outside of the doors and a brief summary? I don’t think so.

The sticking point turned out to be the freezer light. Our current freezer has one. Therefore, I think our next one should have one. This is not a default feature. Some freezers have them; some don’t. Then there was the automatic ice maker or water dispenser. I could easily find a top freezer model with a freezer light as long as I paid for the other features that I don’t want.

This wore me out. Besides my online research, I made some phone calls (a hearkening back to the olden days) and I even drove to three — count them three — retailers to look at floor models.

I’m looping back now to the point about it being a holiday weekend. This is a special holiday weekend when it comes to appliances. In Texas, if you buy an Energy Star appliance during the Memorial Day weekend, the purchase is tax-free. That means that everyone who is affected by the holiday-weekend-appliance-breakdown curse is out and about.

Finally I decided on a refrigerator. I took a friend’s advice and bought a bottom-freezer model. With a freezer light. And an automatic ice maker, which we will ignore. (Can’t have everything. Or in this case, can’t have only what I want.) I got lucky about the delivery schedule, considering that I bought the refrigerator on the last day of the three-day holiday weekend and everyone else got on the delivery schedule before me. I didn’t get the “next day” delivery time slot, but one day after that.

That will give me time to discard the science experiments growing in my refrigerator, which this time around aren’t my fault. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Longhorn, Session 2

Posted on May 28, 2012 by treshabarger

Ticka and I worked on our longhorn appliques last weekend. My longhorn, Dippity-Do, now has ears, eyes and a mouth. After session two, he’s starting to look like a longhorn. Here’s what he looked like after Session 1.

I can see clearly now!

I’ve nicknamed Ticka’s longhorn “Freckles.” Here’s Freckles and Dippity-Do next to each other. Ticka actually finished her longhorn body in session two and will start working on the background next time. My next step is to put together the longhorn body.

Two longhorn applique heads, one with freckles, one without

Freckles and Dippity-Do

School’s Out

Posted on May 25, 2012 by treshabarger

Every year I get the same idea at this time of year. Here’s my post from May 27, 2011 on my old blog.

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It’s the end of May. School is out and summer is here. That’s what makes me feel like a kid again. Even though I haven’t been in school for decades, I still get that giddy school’s out feeling. Summer!

Time! Time to read books, visit friends, watch movies, write letters, write short stories, sleep in, cook new dishes, go to the swimming pool.

I have as much time now as I did then — the hours in the day are the same — but I don’t have the same schedule. It’s a slight shock to look around me each end of May, after I have that giddy feeling and think about running out of the building, throwing my hands up in the air and kicking up my heels. The shock is the realization that the building I would run out of is not a school, it’s a business. Instead of textbooks to toss in the air, I have reams and reams of system documentation.

I don’t get the summer off anymore, I have to go to work each weekday. Still, I wonder how it would feel to run out the doors, leaping in joy again. I would probably scare the squirrels.