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Post by Vanye on Apr 21, 2009 23:43:04 GMT -6
I've read what Pharmastir, Storm & Desi are doing-so now the rest of us need to give updates on our recent non-Tolkien activities!
I spent the last 10 days preparing for, setting up for & participating in our annual Rock & Mineral Show & i'm all pooped out. I am also taking an evening class in drawing to get myself back into creating art as i used to do. As a result i find myself very busy but i'm enjoying it!
I'm also trying to see how many books i can read this year-so far have read 16 & currently reading "Angels & Demons" before the movie comes out next month.
Well now it's somebody else's turn. What are you up to these days everybody? Vanye 8^)
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Post by Stormrider on Apr 22, 2009 6:39:42 GMT -6
I'm still reading the 12 book series by Robert Jordan--I will be starting Book 9 as soon as I can get a copy of it. While I am waiting for that, I'm reading Dragonlance which is based on that popular Dungeons and Dragons game of the 60's-70's.
I am seling soap--we've got some return customers and planning on making some more batches of new and dwindling fragrances.
I've been working with the drill team to get ready for this year's performances. Desi's team already performed this weekend--I will let her tell about that.
Planning some horse camping trips with my husband and other daughter. Haven't set dates yet but got a few nice brochures from horse camping places at the Midwest Horse Fair this past weekend.
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Post by Andorinha on Apr 25, 2009 20:12:45 GMT -6
Hullo All (and Sundry), Spent the last 10 days "nursing" the wife, she finally parted company with her ailing gall-bladder, got her intestinal fistula all properly stapled together, and now she is up and about for a few hours each day making rapid progress toward recovery -- when she'll finally be available for hikes! I learned how to make a simple salad dressing, olive oil, vinegar, honey, mustard, and some herbs. She says: "Too much oil, too much honey." Otherwise, passable stuff... Been reading geology lately, geomorphology of Scotland circa 1887, and trying to review crystal forms that I have largely forgotten since college days (so how does orthorhombic really differ from tetragonal? lol). books.google.com/books?id=Z2sRAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA485&dq=Primer+of+Geology&lr=#PPA41,M1 Also working on a couple of books detailing the run-up to World War One while watching the old (but excellent, though sometimes British-slanted) "The Fall of Eagles." Have not been reading much on Tolkien, but looking at some of the Tolkien Art online is starting to get the juices flowing again. Also, sigh, have discovered classic college football games now play on the cable during the noonish hours, so I play couch potato more often now, wife insists that'll change once she's ready to resume our hikes... Hope everyone is doing well!
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Post by Stormrider on Apr 26, 2009 7:15:20 GMT -6
geomorphology? orthorhombic? tetragonal? huh?! I better get out my dictionary!
Well, it is best to get rid of the bad organ than keep it, and your wife sounds like she is getting better already if she is threatening to get you off the couch. Anyway, hiking sounds like a good way to exercise and still enjoy yourselves. Do you go up into the mountains or anywhere special out there in the desert?
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Post by Andorinha on Apr 27, 2009 8:56:57 GMT -6
Hi, Stormrider! We are very fortunately situated here, our housing development is semi-rural, adjoining the BLM land reserve of the Catalina Mountains so everything east of us, about one mile away, is fairly wild territory, merely grazed over by a few wandering cattle. Between us and the foothills there runs a large, usually dry watercourse, the Canada Del Oro. We can hike up or down its sandy bottoms, pausing in the shade of some willows, or climb the east-bank cliffs to get up onto the foot-knee hill zones where cattle paths become our main source of accessing the hinterland. There are huge piles of granite-gneissic boulders that we scramble up and crawl through (even have some fine and cool, sandy bottomed grottoes). Occasionally we'll run across some scatters of old Hohokam Indian pottery, or a cowboy campfire ring with 1920 - 1940 style tin cans and "medicine" bottles with stoppers. This zone is about 3200 - 4000 feet in altitude, and while it still has the signature saguarro cactii, it is more grassy and bushy than the deep desert of the valley floor some 10 miles south of us. We have lots of paloverde, mesquite and acacia trees, even some stunted cedars and junipers. Unfortunately there are lots of catclaw" bushes. We had a tremendous riot of wild flowers this year after a wet winter: lupines; owlsfoot clover; tackstem; coral bean; orange, white, and laveder globe mallows; red, orange and blue penstemmons; desert-gold poppies; caltrops, trailing four-o'clocks; and lots more! Lovely! When it gets too hot down here, May - September, we can drive for about an hour and a half and get into the real mountains, up to 9000 feet altitude, where we have pine-fir-aspen forests, fields of waist tall ferns, and some year-round streams with mossy banks. Also lots of short (75 foot tall) cliffs of highly climbable rock -- see appended url for a couple of pictures of one of our climbing episodes, "Desicon" = Andorinha). In the deeps of winter, we can go to the Saguarro National Forrest lands south of us and wander around on the old trails through a true desert, paved with shingle and sand, studded with columnar cactii, and the ubiquitous creosote bushes. The only thing I really miss is a large body of water. There is a four acre "pond" up on the mountain, but no sizeable body of water until you hit Roosevelt Lake, about a hundred miles northwest of us. As I get more arthritic, I start thinking about hiring a small horse to go a bit further into the wilds, there are several packer-outfits in the neighborhood. We even ran into a goat-packer expedition one day, a guide-dog to round them up in the morning, and little 20 pound backpacks for each goat! Looked cool! _________________________ www.mountainproject.com/v/arizona/mount_lemmon/ridgeline/105802710www.mountainproject.com/v/arizona/mount_lemmon/ridgeline/105738713www.go-arizona.com/Mt-Lemmon-Scenic-Byway/
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Post by Stormrider on Apr 28, 2009 6:37:13 GMT -6
It sounds beautiful out there in the desert. I have been to the Saguarro National Forest years ago myself (I believe it was 1990). I know there is a lake in the Superstition Mountains because we rented a boat and went waterskiing there. I really like Arizona because it is so different than up here in the North.
Andorinha wrote:
Wow! You are pretty daring! I've never tried rock climbing--just those wall climbing things at fairs and on playgrounds! lol!
Desi Baggins (not to get confused with Desicon) is looking for a home in the Phoenix area right now. Actually one of the towns outside of it...Queens something or other.
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Post by Desi Baggins on Apr 29, 2009 6:43:05 GMT -6
I started reading the Twilight series...gotta love vampires!!! I am on to the second book after only taking 2 days to read the first one...
We went to Arizona over Spring Break....to the Mesa, Fountain Hills area....We are now working on finding a place to buy out there probably in the west of Phoenix area...we have so far liked houses in Queen Creek....
I have been riding a lot with my stunt drill team and we just had our first performance which went pretty well even though a couple things got messed up....We have a rodeo to perform at in July and then we go to New York in August to perform for the troops in Fort Drum....
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Post by Andorinha on Apr 30, 2009 10:13:23 GMT -6
Hi Desi,
Ah, Queen Creek, yeah, have not actually been there, but have seen some adverts for the place. It is usually 5 to 8 degrees hotter up there in Phoenix when compared even with the lowland, downtown Tucson area, but "at least it is a dry heat!"
Hi Stormrider,
Yeah, the portable climbing walls at the local fairs are fun, been thinking about trying to set one up in the backyard, sigh, HOA codes refuse to allow me anything that shows over the "privacy" wall...
Yeah, I think Roosevelt lake is in the Superstitions, quite a different scene from the upper mid-west! We used to live in eastern Nebraska, visited cousins in Minnesota and Indiana a lot, places up there look impossibly green and wet after you've been down here a while. One good thing, very few mosquitoes here!
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Post by Stormrider on Apr 30, 2009 20:14:10 GMT -6
No mosquitoes is a really good incentive to consider the arid Arizona lifestyle (although you have to watch out for other hazzards such as scorpions and jumping cacti!)
Oh yeah! Desi ran into the privacy wall code when wanting to store their camper in their new backyard--nothing over the wall height! That eliminated a really nice place they were looking at.
Yes, Roosevelt Lake! That's the one! I couldn't remember the name and it was a pretty good sized lake. I guess the higher altitudes in the mountains brings the heat down some. So even though Tucson is further south, the mountains keep it cooler.
We are having professional photographers come out on May 8th and 9th to take pictures of all our drill teams dressed in their outfits and tack. The photographers will take action shots of the teams doing their drills and then team pictures. I assume there will be individual pictures of each rider and their horse as well.It will be really nice to have some good pictures to work with for the website!
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Post by Androga Erindalant on May 9, 2009 7:25:57 GMT -6
I've been away for some while now, too. What I've all been up to? Here's the list.
Next to Tolkien and writing myself I've been gaming a lot. Most played games in last few months are Gothic 3, Guild Wars (online RPG) and the Battle for Middle-earth. I recently played a trial of LOTRO (Lord of the Rings Online). Okay, that wasn't all Tolkien-free lol. I'm also reading, currently rereading Magician by Raymond E. Feist. Recently I finished Eragon, Eldest & Brisingir by Paolini. Next to that I've been making lots and lots of backups. I've started a home project to save all my CDs digitally on my computer. This way I have a backup, should anything happen to the CDs, and I can play everything together. As I've linked my computer to my radio, my computer currently is my "CD & DVD player". The old CD player I gave to my brother lol, since he bought a radio. Meanwhile I'm also getting more movies, as my computer screen serves as small TV. They make the screens big enough, these days. Now that sun is returning in the country, I'm also taking my old inline skates from the shelf, and get a few rides on my bike. I'm looking forward for summertime! ;D
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Post by Fredeghar Wayfarer on May 15, 2009 17:50:00 GMT -6
I lost my job a few months ago and have been trying to find a new one. There is not a lot of work out there and I've been trying to figure out if I should stay on my career path in writing/technical writing/editing or reassess and find another direction. I will need to move out of my apartment to either a cheaper place (if I can find a new source of income), move in with friends, or move back home.
I've turned in plenty of Rowena scripts to AC Comics but the comic industry has been hit hard by the economy as well and it's up in the air whether the distributor will continue to carry AC's lower-selling books after the next few issues.
So yeah. Not real happy with my life at present. In more positive news, I'm taking a trip to St. Louis next week to get my mind off all this and to go see a friend of mine from college (a girl I have a thing for so fingers crossed!).
Oh and I'm currently reading Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. That's my life in a nutshell (Help, help, I'm in a nutshell! What kind of a nut leaves a shell this big? Honestly...)
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Post by Stormrider on May 16, 2009 6:35:35 GMT -6
Fredegar:
Good luck in deciding on your career direction and finding a job and in visiting your female friend. Goodness, now that I am getting "hooked" on Rowena, I hope AC Comics keeps those magazines going! Now if The Tale of Sir Pixis would ever get published and start selling maybe that would help your finances, too. I should check back on when I should expect my copy again.
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Post by Andorinha on May 17, 2009 1:03:48 GMT -6
Fredegar, let me add my commiserations, hope things start looking up for you, will keep the fingers-crossed for the potential "thing" with old friend!
Technical writer, hmmm, Raytheon employed my wife in that capacity; with the military budget almost never being cut, it provided stable work regardless of what the rest of the economy was doing...
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Post by Vanye on Jun 23, 2009 12:27:17 GMT -6
What i have been up to lately-is a long story! I have moved out of the house i was sharing with my daughter, son-in-law & granddaughter. My son-in-law is a contrrol freak & i could take any no more of living w/that nonsense. So i now have an apartment in town & do as i please when i please thank you! Right now i do not have the internet at home (i'm at the library) but i'm still on the planet & thinking about you guys. Vanye 8^)
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Post by Ardo Whortleberry on Aug 9, 2009 3:37:18 GMT -6
Right now i do not have the internet at home (i'm at the library) but i'm still on the planet & thinking about you guys. Vanye 8^) Hello, Vanye! --- Just about the time you had written this letter, I had just crashed our old computer at home, & was doing all my "Internetting" at libraries - I even wound up registering for library cards in two other cities ( besides the one we live in ) --- mainly just for the chance it offered me to have more access ( although still limited ) to the Net... I guess if I had played my cards right, I could have had up to three hours per day of Internet use, but I would have had to travel to three different towns ( during library hours ) to accomplish that! == Actually, I had already started using library computers, ( whenever I could ) months before I crashed our own computer, when I found I had been somehow "shut out" of the B&N Book Club at home - [ which had happened sometime in November last year ] ( but could still connect & sign in to that site on the library computers ) -- But ( at the same time ) I also discovered how much faster it could be to use computers & Internet connections that were not as slow as molasses ( on a winter's-day in the Artic Circle ) as compared to what we still had at home...
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