I Survived

First, I just want to thank everyone who emailed, tweeted or otherwise contacted me yesterday to see how I was doing after the earthquake.

That was something else, wasn’t it?  I grew up in California and lived in San Francisco during the 7.1 quake there.  So minor tremblers don’t really make me take notice, but I wasn’t expecting one way out here!

At the time the quake hit, I was lying on my bed, nursing Pipsqueak.  The bed started to shake, but it felt like one of our cats getting out from up under what is essentially the bedspring.  But the shaking continued. Both cats, maybe?

Then I could feel the whole house swaying and I realized – We’re having an earthquake!

Now, having been raised in California, I am properly trained in earthquake procedures.  If you’re at school, you duck and cover under your desk.  (Coincidentally, this is the same technique to use in case of an atomic bomb.  That way the schools didn’t waste  time with conducting multiple safety drills.  One command of “Duck and Cover!” and we’d trained for multiple situations in just seconds.) When not in school, you shove everyone out of the way to stand in a doorway.  In this way, when the building collapsed, at least you’d have died standing.

The only problem this time was that Pipsqueak was sleeping and nursing and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to disturb him.  So I braved it out where I was.

I did not even bother waking up Phil or the children and the next morning they had no idea that anything unusual had happened.

Wait, what? You thought I was talking about the quake in Virginia that happened in the middle of the day? No-o-o, Colorado had its largest earthquake in over 40 years yesterday! It was all very exciting.  Rocks fell down!  On the highway! Tens of people talked about it on Twitter! We were all over the news until the Virginia quake hit, the little upstart.

So yes, I am fine, thanks for asking.

(Nobody actually asked at all.)

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Love My Web Host

Last Wednesday I blew up my blog.

It was gone, completely.  A fatal error message was all that was left.  Not only that, I could no longer access my control panel to fix things.  The whole thing was lost to the ages.

I was just tinkering a bit, and I messed with the code.  I can write both HTML and CSS so usually this is OK, but in this case I was pasting from someone else and it didn’t work.

So I went to my web host page and found their customer service number and called it. I was barely on hold for a few seconds and in five minutes my blog was restored to workable order.  Their customer service guy set my blog back to the default template which allowed me access.  I could take it from there.

After deleting and reinstalling the corrupted theme, all was fine in blogland again.

So, who is this Wonder Web Host?  BlueHost!  They have 24 customer support, either over the phone or live chat.  They have one-click installation for WordPress and a bunch of other blogging platforms.  They have a very easy to understand file uploading system (FTP). AND I am able to add additional domains under this one. (In other words, our personal family-only blog with a separate name is also hosted there for no additional fee.)

They brought my blog back from oblivion in just minutes.  You can imagine how relieved I was!  And even though I blew the thing up right before Bip’s birthday dinner, I was able to join the family with my blog already completely restored.

So if you’re looking for a new web host- definitely consider BlueHost.  They’ll treat you right.

(I was totally not compensated for this glowing report.)

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Wild Life

We had some excitement here last Saturday night.

A mama bear and her teenage cub got in to our trashcan, made a total mess and then broke down our gate.

A bear got into our trash.You totally didn’t expect that, did you? Yeah, me neither. We didn’t even find out until our neighbor rang our doorbell on Sunday morning. He heard the ruckus, looked out the window and saw the whole thing. We had forgotten to turn off the a/c and open the window, so we missed it. I’m glad we did. Our window is at the wrong angle to have seen the bears, so who knows what we would have done if we’d heard someone or something breaking down the gate.

Speaking of the gate – this was the same one that the deck people used while building our new deck. It may or may not have gotten whacked a couple of times by building material. It did get broken when a gust of wind caught it, back in June. My parents were visiting at the time, so my dad took it upon himself to fix the gate.

My dad is a great Fixer of Things. If you have a fix-it project, my dad is the one to call. He will do that job and do it right. Which is what he did with the gate. He took the time to hunt down the materials to repair the gate and repair it he did. We were grateful, because honestly, with 4 children at home we don’t always have time to address problems like that.

So, my dad fixed the gate and fixed it well. Alas, the bears broke it down.

Hi, dad!

Now the gate is propped up along the fence, because we’re classy like that.

And because bears will return to the scene of the crime, we had to move the trash cans in to the garage.

Did I mention it gets hot here in summer? Exactly. It’s a bit oderiferous in the garage now.

I’ve been online researching bear-proof trash can options. They are expensive. We could go with what looks like a regular trash can, but has some sort of child-lock lid thing. The only problem is that trash companies may not accept them because you can’t just dump them out, you’ve got to stop and undo the lid.

Another solution is a metal box thing that will hold the trashcans. Those are really expensive, but might be the only option.

So, who was it that had to move to the mountains?

Oh, right. That would be me.

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Five on a Friday

*Pumpkin Girl finishes up the last of her dance workshops today. She danced 85 hours over 5 weeks and discovered muscles she never knew she had.

*We’re starting school again next week. 7th, 5th and 1st grades!

*Pipsqueak requires my presence during naps. I’m not sure how this will work for school.

*I got permission to use my own religion curriculum at home rather than having to send the children to faith formation classes at church. It irks me that I need “permission”.

*I started a new watercolor class – an imaginary trip to Italy!

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Have five things you want to share that don’t add up to a whole post? Go over to Falling Like Rain and leave a link in the comments!

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M is for

Montgolfier Balloon

W-a-y back sometime around 1995, Philip and I visited the Air and Space Museum in San Diego. While we were there we saw a model – lifesize, maybe – of the Montgolfier balloon.

“Oh cool,” I said. “I like it!”

“I’ll buy it for you,” said Philip.

Did I mention that we were young and silly?

And you know what…a few years later we found a Montgolfier balloon for sale. Of course, Philip bought it for me.

It’s tin and was once filled with candy. It holds a special place in my heart because once upon a time, Philip promised to buy me the Montgolfier balloon. And he did.

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All A-twitter

So…I’m on Twitter now. Look over there in my sidebar – you can click on the Follow button and be one of my minions, er, followers. You never know when I’ll say something pithy or funny or have a great stock tip*, so go ahead and follow me. You know you want to!

And if you’re reading this on your feed reader – THANK YOU for subscribing, I love you more than you know – here’s my Twitter name or handle or whatever, so you don’t have to click over to my blog first and find the button: @justlorri That’s 2 rs, no e.

Of course, if you’d like to click over to my blog, that’s fine, too.

*no actual stock tips will be given

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Ladybug and Swan

This assignment was to add a decorative border around the subject of your choice.


The picture and video demonstration were provided for a different assignment. I didn’t use the swan picture, but I wanted to try the technique of painting something white and painting water, so I just did it in the empty corner of the ladybug page.

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