Sat. Eve, Jan. 10th… The snow falls… we feast, drink wine & smile…

We went this morning and got a five gallon can of gas and another of Diesel fuel, returned and I threw it into the tractor shed, then went to Charlie’s house and I carried a load of fire wood in for him. He is our friend down the road that had a heart attack in early November, Quad by-passes and a pacemaker right before Thanksgiving, so we do what he needs done if we can. He is a special friend and has been there for Vick and I many times and has given or lent us anything we’ve needed, any time he could. We’ll check with him and Joan tomorrow to see if we need to open his driveway. Sometimes another friend plows it for him before we get around to do it.
Vick made the special corned beef and cabbage recipe that Julia posted again for the second time and it was equally delicious, as before. Thanks again Julia…… what a great recipe…… We would recommend it to anyone that even, remotely, likes corned beef and cabbage and bet that they would rave about this recipe!
I took a few snapshots of Vick’s latest glasswork that she is working on for the Gift Shop. They are quilt squares…… quite a unique little idea. She is making them wall hangers and they are great looking on a living room, especially if you group two or three together.

Finally, I snapped a few of the snowfall on the rear deck and a couple out front. It’s simply BEAUTIFUL out there right now!

Sat. Morn, Jan. 10th… running , to beat the snow that’s coming…

Good morning from the Cluckin ‘ “A”…… We’re running in fast forward this morning to complete all of our objectives before the big afternoon snow starts to fall. They are calling for 6 to 12 inches in our area and it seems that they can hit it right on the head most of the time. Anyway, Vicki and I did all the barn work and feeding early this morning…… in fact, we just came back in, frozen to the limit. I will warm up a bit and then it’s off to the tractor shed to fire up the Cub to bring a slug of wood pellets to the house and stack them on the screened in, front porch for easy access during the next few days when we have snow, like the old saying goes……“A** hole deep to a ten foot Indian ”. I sometimes watch the radar charts and see weather paths coming through the Shenandoah Valley, across Pennsylvania toward us from Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, and watch for air mixing from off the coast of the Carolina’s, Virginia or Delaware, because they seem to pull the moisture in and dump on us. They are usually responsible for the heavy snows, but all too often they undersell these storms which are coming the way this one today is traveling. It is a huge mass….right now stretching from Iowa to the New York border and is carrying a huge water load. These sleepers are the ones that can slow down over top of you if the surrounding air flow changes, stalling the storm movement and you get plopped on! This could be one of those, so I like to expect the worst and be ready even if the weather bureau does not. After all, if they’re wrong…… so what? Oh… well, missed that one didn’t we? And we all crawl out from under more snow than we know what to do with…… unprepared… without enough fuel, milk and other things that would allow us to sit tight and enjoy the beauty. I don’t ever want to dread the winter weather anymore…. I want to enjoy living here in the north country and enjoy all of nature’s beauty. Just a little planning is all it takes…… just be prepared. We’ll take off here in a few minutes and fill the gas can and the diesel fuel can for the Cub Cadet. All the feed barrels are filled in the barns and the feed room is full, the bird feeders are full and the squirrel feeder has corn in it. Now all we need to do is make sure we have enough food staples and we’ll be fine. We always keep two seven gallon containers filled with water, so we don’t have to worry so much about a short power outage, and we have a generator in the Wilson house for a biggie. (thus the need for gas)
Well folks, gotta get moving… cause that’s just what that storm is doing………

Friday, Jan. 9th… Another day… another opportunity… Try Again!

I’ve been trying for almost 58 years now….trying to be successful at peddling my wares…… which most find, not to be of any value, I guess, because there is little interest in what I have to offer……… so it seems. I’ve offered services, like how to deal with eBay and not get ripped off by buyers or sellers. I published an eBook on the subject, detailing how to open your account, how to open a Pay-Pal account, how to create an auction and how to tell if you have a deadbeat buyer trying to rip you off.
I’ve published an eBook on routine electrical repairs around the house also. It deals with safety around electricity, replacing a faulty receptacle, switch or light fixture. I’ve added a little history on knob and nail wiring and why it is not wise to tackle problems with that type of wiring without extensive training.
I’ve published an autobiography of my twelfth year of life, in Central Pennsylvania, around 1963 when I finally was able to join all the hunters in my family on the first day of buck season. It is entitled, “A Family Tradition”.
I’m now in the process of re-writing another, much larger biography about how Vicki and I met, got together and started our life in our present location on the farm. This one, I will have formally published in paperback or hard copy and will be entitled “An Uncommon Journey”. After it is out, I am going to publish a book of poetry, which Vicki has fallen in love with. It will be entitled…… “Unpretentious Notions of a Minimalistic Man”. In it are feelings I’ve experienced and felt throughout my life, which I have penned in the dim gray hours of early, pre-dawn morning light and although I am not sure about sharing these thoughts, Vicki feels it only right to do so, and since I trust her intuition, it will become published and available soon.
Of course, spring is coming and we have all our previously stated plans for the farm, the Alpacas, the Angora bunnies and the Hospice Gift Shop, still hovering on the front burner, as we continue to make ready and keep knitting and producing products for the gift shop to fulfill all of Vicki‘s dreams also, but in the wee hours of the morning, between blogging and those other things, I still plan to write an exciting story of the beginning notions we both had of the farm and a detailed account of our exciting days spent operating it, collecting wool, spinning and creating, but more importantly our story of loving each other and living the tremendously fascinating life that God granted us, as a another chance at happiness…… only this time, together.

Thurs. Jan, 8th… Tomorrow…another end to another week………

I can’t believe just how fast the days and weeks are flying by…… why in just a few weeks, there will be flowers popping through the ground, signaling yet another spring has arrived. We have already weathered the first week of January, and only three more weeks remain in the first month of the year. I have, unlike years past, completely enjoyed this winter and all the snow we have experienced. I find it easier and easier to enjoy the winter time, because I just roll with the flow or………. Snow fall. I don't care if it’s an inch or twenty…… I just deal with it…… I get the snow blower out or the cub cadet with the bucket and remove just enough snow, that we can get out and back in again. If you follow this process and simply remove only enough snow to safely come and go, you too, will more than likely enjoy your winter months and find the lovely snow exactly what you want it to be. LOVELY!!!!! We are finding that we can enjoy our lives better if we just take everything as it comes…… don’t worry…… laugh and hug…… smile and go on…… worrying does nothing except that it causes you to procrastinate about what might be or not be……… yet seldom does it ever come to pass anyway….Just live for today, look to tomorrow and do whatever is needed to keep you and your loved one happy, healthey and secure, then just live.
I know..... I have everything in my life that any one man could ever ask for……… a sensuous, young, sexy woman that is head over heels in love with me and would do anything to please me and make me happy. I, on the other hand, would go to any lengths to keep her happy and content, because she deserves the best that can ever be given to any one angel on this earth. She is a one of a kind lady…… one that doesn’t expect life to come to her, just because she is wants it to, but is constantly meeting it on it’s terms and setting the ground rules as to how it’s gonna be with her life…… and then making sure it takes place.
God how I love and adore her……

Thurs. Jan 8th… Drink the wine and dance the night away……

Good morning all…… Drinking the bottles of wine, chatting in the dim lights at the kitchen table and dancing until the wee hours of the morning was a special evening. After Vick and I finished our dinner, which consisted of loin de pork…Au broccoli with Asian brown Rice, we finished a bottle of Bartenura and then one of sweet Moscato. That inadvertently lead way to soft music, some whirling to Dean Martin and Henry Mancini for awhile and then on to a bout with good ol’ shit kickin’, two steppin’ delights, before we went up to bed and collapsed like the pair of old fogies’ we now appear to be. The mind, heart and soul can sure leave an old body behind………… but it always seems to catch up latern, to drag the party down, sooner than you think. Sooooooo, we gave in cuddled and was asleep by 2:00 AM……. End of story……
Nope…… awake again at 4:00 and as hungry as two ol’ bears rolling amidst the dogs, in a world of blankets.....we donned our housecoats and headed to the table again for cheese, Bialys, crème cheese and peanut butter. Chatting at that hour in the morning in the dim light of the blue rope lights, above the kitchen cabinets and tiny lamps on the sideboard, while nibbling and chatting, especially after earlier wine is a bit of a turn on…… especially when you’re with your sensuous, loving wife, in your own, cozy home. We continued to chat about the Alpacas and Angoras, of spinning their wool and knitting from it, building and raising......... and then were off to bed again, to sleep until eleven. Boy, I’m glad we fed late last evening…… as I went to the barns and refilled all the feed bins just before eating dinner at 6:00PM. All was nice this morning and none of the animals complained about such a late start. I think they were peeking last night!

Wed. Jan. 7th… I got lots of emails about the Virus calamity……

Seems there are quite a few of you interested in what must be done to clear such a virus out of your computer without losing everything or spending days on it like I did. The answer to that is RELOAD IT. Find someone like me that has been around the block with Best Buy, Circuit City and the likes and has dabbled in his own exploring in the world of viruses and idiocy. DO NOT TAKE IT TO A COMPUTER STORE!! At least thinking you will take it there and they will expunge the virus and your computer will be returned in the same condition it was in before your world changed and the virus latched onto your computer and ate your life as you knew it. NOT gonna happen…… It will never come home cured, as it was before the attack. You’ve already been screwed… Had… Attacked… violated… taken advantage of and unhappy…… don’t allow anyone to coerce you to spend hundreds of dollars. Find a friend that can copy all your program files, pictures and picture files, desktop items and other materials that can be downloaded to an external hard drive, which can then be reloaded into your computer once reset to factory condition. You can find external hard drives that simply plug into any USB slot on your computer which are self contained and very affordable…… Right now you pay around $60.00 to $85.00 for a 4GB SD card and they are slowly outdating them for the new memory sticks which have their own USB plug built right on the memory stick, along with a nice big purchase price! You can now buy an iomega Portable Hard Drive, USB 2.0 Powered, 250 GB unit from Radio Shack for about $100.00. See below. Remember, this is a unit equivalent to 64 of those $60 to $85 4GB SD cards. Now what are ya gonna use?????

Iomega® Prestige Portable 250GB USB 2.0 Hard Drive

$99.99
Model: 34277Catalog #: 25-493


My advise to you is this, If you have a virus… find a friend well versed in computers, give him your tower or invite him to your house and make sure you have a hard drive there for him to use. Copy all of your files on desktop, shortcuts etc. Then go to Program files and copy them, then my documents, then let him copy anything he thinks is important. Then run your restore disc and after checking it over, reload everything from the hard drive, keeping a copy on there for the future.
PS…… you can get smaller hard drives for less money too. Gotta go now, cause Vick has a good dinner on the table and two bottles of Moscato………One for me and one for her……then I’ll help her with hers… and then I’ll not worry about any virus or anything else for that matter……Cause Vick wants to put on some music and we’ll dance…… and dance….. And then we’ll dance. Bye-Bye……

Wed. Jan. 7th… Onward we’ll trudge throughout the Winter……

What choice do we have, but to march onward…… toward spring’s arrival date of Friday, March 20th… a time we will all be ready to embrace and enjoy with renewed excitement. We will have all had our fill of the winter weather, the earth will have renewed it’s resources and cleansed itself of last summers waste and the scattered remnants of nature’s birthing. Imagine what our world would look like if God didn’t allow it to take this break and renew itself…… The flowers would probably all be gone, leaving only withered, dead remains of what used to be…… and the lush, beautifully flowing greenery we wait to see emerging in spring, would be heavy, overgrown vines living beyond they’re beauty. Animals would run rampant throughout our lives with sickness and the old, unfit and becoming unable to fend for themselves would, therefore, become dangerous and hungry, posing threats to all.
There is a time and a place for everything and everybody……AND, the world renews……as the old die and the young emerge… much as the flowers in the spring pop up, live their lives as beautiful additions to the world and then die off to make room for new growth and renewed beauty. Thus is the circle of life, with all of us in it. The key to all of this is for each of us to bloom….and make the world a beautiful place…… then step aside as we grow older and our petals begin to fall, making room for the young flowers beauty to show through, so the entire bouquet around us…including us…… continues to remain lovely to those who see us. Ahhhh, Life. Ya gotta love it…… but ya gotta live it to actually love it!
It sounds as though today may be one of those work inside days with the freezing rain and yuck they are calling for. That’s fine with us…. We have plenty of things to do as we ready for the arrival of spring. That’s when we will kick er’ into overdrive again with the building of the Hospice Gift shop and the talked about raised bed garden center planned for the west side yard. Along with all the garden vegetable plants Vick is planning to grow, she has decided to add a lush and fragrant bed of lavender that will also be for sale in different forms this fall. It all sounds like fun and we can hardly wait, even though we need all this time to prepare for the coming months of excitement.

Tues. Eve, Jan. 6th… Recovered as best we can expect for now……

I think we have recovered from the virus….at least for what that’s worth…… There will be things we need and don’t have any longer, just like the last time we were infected back in the summer. This time, we were smart enough to have picture files and some programs saved in files which we were able to download to a SD card, but there is always things you forget, like the latest file for the web sites…… so now, you guessed it…… I don’t have the latest for all the web pages. Now when I first need to update a web page……… I’ll need to build it again and redo the html before I can change the page. I did download all the desktop icons, shortcuts and pictures…… but forgot that files on the desktop, all contain something, so while the computer was reloading the original program, I remembered that I failed to copy those files and got that sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach, as I realized they were gone…… not to be retrieved from anyplace in existence.
The last time I pulled this crap, I was busy rebuilding things for weeks. This time it will take but a week. The next time, I will have the stuff on hard disc so it won’t happen again.
Today, I took a break from this “ol’ pooter”, and we went to Hilltown Agway and picked up all our feed for the month……… all $400.00 worth of scratch feed, all grain layer pellets, hi-protein bunny feed, and dog food…… along with six huge bricks of wood shavings for bedding…… all of which was packed tightly into the back of the pick-up with no room to spare. Not even enough space to put an extra 50 lb. bag of granite grit for the chickens, so I will gather a bucket of crusher stone dust chips for them to ingest as grit, which they will use in the craw to pulverize the scratch and pellets for digestion. I think we’ve found a buyer for all of our eggs……that will be nice if it comes to pass. If so, he will take all the eggs we want to sell, which is all we need to be happy. We can supply our regular customers with eggs and sell him the rest. We have already started making plans for this summer. We are going to take the side yard and make several raised bed gardens to grow sweet corn, tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers for sale in our farm store, along with the eggs and whatever other things the farm produces. The beds will be about eight feed wide and may run 100 feet long with enough area between them to run the mower through. In a way, it will be a modern way to till the land and grow crops. We are toying with a 16 x 100 foot section of field corn for the animals so we can offset the feed cost here on the farm. The Alpacas will be pretty self sufficient in the pasture and we will supplement their diet with Alpaca pellets at first. We are anticipating an exciting year as we grow animals that grow wool, that we will harvest, clean spin and knit into products to sell also. Sounds exciting and fun! What do you think?????

Jan. 5th… Just…forget…what…I…said. I’D Kill the Bastard…Badly!!!

I have been working on this damned computer from 6:00AM until 1:30Am ever since this thing was infected with the virus I contracted somewhere. I have dumped the hard drive three times now and have run PC Angel to restore the hard drive on the computer to, like new status, reloaded programs and files of pictures and other things needed to operate the farm, web pages and the blog. This damned thing locks files, erases all your restore points, shuts down and locks out Task Manager and will not allow you to update any virus protection you download. It wipes it’s namesake virus, off the list and you cannot update to get it back on there, so the virus protection works, but doesn’t see the culprit. The average person wouldn't even suspect that their anti-virus program wasn't working right, because it never sees anything happening. I saw it because my virus list wouldn't update and I know my computer. I usually seek out the problems and fix them. Not this time!
Now…. Going back to what I said the other day about having a few minutes with a virus writer and breaking his fingers……… forget it. Now I want to strip him naked, tie him onto a fire ant hill after punching it with a stick, pouring sugar water on him, then coming back in a few hours in the sun with the fire ants on him and douse him good with alcohol… then peel little strips of skin off him and make him beg for mercy., then just laugh at him, before kicking him in the groin. REPEATEDLY… I really don’t like whoever did this to me……… and for what? They don’t even have the decency to try to coerce me into buying a lousy software program to remove the crap they’ve injected into my computer….. At least then I could call the Internet Fraud Complaint Center, and fill out a FTC online complaint form (http://www.ftc.gov) so they could catch the Ahole……… Noooooooo…… they just do it for the hell of it……to cause you grief and anguish. Like I said…… let me catch one… just one time… and I’ll be satisfied after breaking things of interest and rearranging some biological apparatus.
Now…… Much as I would love to blog for you all…… interestingly, as I’ve done in the past, I cannot…… Because that virus inflicting maniac has turned me into a raving idiot, in search of blood…… and uttering nasty words all day long as more and more torment surfaces on the screen of my computer. Vicki sneaks in occasionally, looking at me pitifully, as I drool and giggle while pulling little wisps of hair out and chewing on them…… for all I have are little wisps left amongst raw bare and irritated red spots where wisps used to reside.
Perhaps tomorrow will dawn a new day with no more problems appearing and things can get back to normal again. The dogs can come out from under the table too.

Sunday, Jan. 4th… it’s 11:11 PM… do you know where my sanity is?

I have been working at this computer, non-stop since 8:00Am and I can’t see straight anymore. I finally had to dump the entire computer again and I am now (for the last 12 hours) reloading all the programs back into it. I am quitting for the night and will finish tomorrow. I’ll blog when I’m through. Sorry for the inconvenience……… you have no idea how sorry I am to be doing this.