After visiting Gene Stratton-Porter's home, I drove the short jaunt (100 miles or so) to Dayton Ohio. My plan at this point was to spend the night in Dayton, go to the Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and then drive back west into Indiana and stop for the night in Indianapolis, and then hit the zoo and Botanical Gardens the next day, then drive back south to Evansville.

Plan. Right. Out the window!

I did do the museum at Wright-Patterson. Lovely fantastical stuff, old and new. Then got in the car and headed....south! To Cincy! Don't ask me, I have no clues what goes on in my little pea-brain. :) Clicking on a couple of the museum pics lets you read a couple of the plaques that I thought were interesting.

Cincinnati in the next post.

Wow...Where'd I go?

....and, no, I haven't been on the road trip all this time.

Time for little catch-up.

I headed north to see one of the homes that Gene Stratton-Porter once lived in. This home was, I believe, her template for the Birdwoman's home in "A Girl of the Limberlost". It was, alas, not open to the public that day. I started to take a few photos of the outside of the home, and saw a man come out of the house onto the front porch. He told me that he was the curator, and as he was doing a few things inside that day, I (and an older gentleman who was also outside taking pics) could go inside and poke around for a few minutes. Yay! The home was lovely. Lots of wood and soothing colors. Except for the gold accents near the ceiling....not sure about that stuff. :D

Will start a new post for the next day worth of adventures!

Road Trip

Woke up with the urge to get in the car and get the hell out of Dodge, so I guess I better throw some things in a bag and git. Was half thinking of Cincy, but it turns out there is so much there I want to see, I better save it for a longer span of time. So, north it is. :)

This day was obviously my day to get oot and aboot, as is witnessed by the following pictures. This was the first time in all the years I've lived here that I went to the races. The $100.00 I took with me was whittled down to $60.00 by the time I got home, but it was well worth it. I bet on 7 races, anywhere from $10.00 to $30.00 per race, and didn't end up losing my shirt ( or in this case, my dress....now that would have been embarrassing ). Two of my winners ended up wearing the number 7. An omen? :D

At any rate...too much sun and just enough excitement and wine and BBQ ended up being a pretty perfect Sunday afternoon.

And yes, that's a real Bugler. No cheesy recordings here. And the guy's a Pro. Segued the "Call to the Post" into a bunch of different songs over the afternoon. Yankee Doodle Dandy....My Old Kentucky Home....and, of all things, the theme song to The Flintstones! Made me giggle.

Starting the day the Green way....

Woke up at an obscene hour and decided to take advantage of the cool morning and do a little hiking at the Audubon Nature Preserve that's around 10 miles down the road from me, right across the Mighty Ohio in Kentucky. The Lake is pretty calm, and since it's so calm and warm here, it's also pretty scummy, but still, it was all so peaceful. No noise except all the birds waking up with the sunrise, and once, some tremendous crashing of underbrush when I frightened the bejesus out of a whitetail, and it went leaping away. :D

Reviewing a Review

I finally got around to seeing The Chronicles of Narnia 2 nights ago when it came up next on my NetFlix queue. Very not bad. I am totally ashamed to say that these books were not included in my upbringing, so I hadn't a clue what to expect. After the movie, I hit Amazon to see if I could pick up the books for a decent price, and, as always, scrolled down to read some of the reviews.

Not a smart move.

Most of the reviews were urging people not to read the set in chronological order, to read them in the order they were released. It made the mystery even better. Sounds good, will do. One review, however, just made me want to weep.

No, not the religious fanatic's review ( she hated it and thought J.K. Rowling was a much better writer) which stated the obvious Aslan = God / Jesus, and he encouraged the children to war, and "No God of mine would *EVER* do that!!"

It was the poor guy who started off stating that "It lacks some of the details and suspense in some of the scenes that I am used to" and went on to say "The pictures (in the book) give you some releaf (his sp., not mine) and also give you more of a picture of what things look like since the details lack so much." Sigh.

I'm happy that seeing the movie actually moved him to pick up a book and read it. Really. But I thought that not describing things to death was the whole point of books. So you could use your own imagination, see the characters and scenery in your own mind. Make them your own, per se. He also doesn't read books then watch the movies made of them very often.

Hell, make that never. Since when are any of the movies faithful to a tee? Not happening. Pretty much can't be done. And I'm okay with that. Mostly. ;)

Anywho...decided against the purchase for now, as I've blown my mad money for the month on a boatload of antibiotics to fight a killer inner ear infection that has stopped me from eating, sleeping, and even working for most of this week. blah.

Aeon Flux hit the mailbox today, and I dragged myself down there to get it. Let's see if I can stay awake long enough to watch it.

When Bad things happen to Good people.......

.....or......The Hazards of letting your teenage son drive your vehicle.

Yes....it's ugly. And yes, it totalled the vehicle. This was a friend at work's baby, and I said a few words over it for her when the verdict came in.

No, her son wasn't hurt....but he might have been.....if Julie hadn't restrained herself when she found out. :D

Thank_$Deity for insurance.

This is *SO* sad.....

......and it annoys me no end. I went to Subway today to grab a sandwich for lunch. Ordered my little 6 inch sammy.....got it fixed up the way I wanted, and proceeded down the counter to the register. I told the young woman (22, 23, 24 yrs old?) what I ordered, turned down chips and a drink, and she presented me with my total. $3.52. I had already figured out what it was going to be, and was digging for 2 cents to add to the 4 dollar bills I already had sitting on the counter, when she hit the "final" button on the register, and the money drawer popped open. I said" Wait a sec, I've got 2 cents here". Dropped the 2 pennies on the paper money, and watched her become totally flummoxed. She looked at the total on the Register, looked at me, looked at the money on the counter, looked at the Register again, stared at the money *in* the register drawer for a couple of seconds.....and gave up and closed the drawer, voided the transaction, and rang it up again, this time with the $$$ tendered as $4.02 instead of $4.00.

$Deity, grant me patience.

Now, I eat here fairly regularly. She's worked here for at least a year or more. She seems very bright. She just has NO FREAKING MATH SKILLS!

Now, granted, some people have a real problem with math. I get that. But, this type of debacle is happening with more and more frequency over the last few years. And I'm blaming this on the school system allowing calculators to be accessible to every child from God only knows what age on up for every damn exercise, homework assignment, and test. When simple Addition and Subtraction are no longer taught as useful skills (without a damned calculator) we are teaching our children how *not* to exercise their own brains.

Pisses me off.

Yes, I'll be outside next, waving my cane, yelling "Get off my lawn, you damned kids!!!" :D

....rant over.

...and my new camera isn't here yet. grumblemumblebitchwhinecrymoan.

:) Later, my friends.

Finally!

I am such a dork when it comes to new technology. I put off acquiring it for much longer than most people, which is weird, cuz I'm pretty geeky. I didn't break down and get a CD player and CDs until....I guess it must have been around 1996. I finally got around to admitting DVDs were here to stay and buying a player and some movies 18 months ago. I know, I know.....this makes me a dork.

Well, now I've finally lit a fire under my own ass and ordered a digital camera yesterday. Now that it's ordered, I want it here....NOW! lol

My new toy is a Canon Powershot A510 3.2 MP w/ 4x zoom. I need to get some rechargable batteries and a charger still, and perhaps some extra memory. I'll have to read the manual when it gets here before I go crazy and buy more stuff.

The main motivation for finally doing this is, of course, my trip this fall. I want a good dig cam for this, and I know I'm gonna need some "playin' around" time before then so I can use the camera to its full potential.

I can't wait! :D

Damn I'm tired.

The boss took today off, as a vacation day, and I was *In Charge*.

The good news is, I didn't blow up the shop. :D

I actually rather enjoyed myself. Yes, it was unbelievably hectic at times. Yes, I screwed up once and forgot to put an order in for some Acura parts. Yes, I didn't get to get away for lunch. But I also didn't have to continually ask the boss what he'd done, who he'd talked to, what appointments he'd made...etc, etc, etc.

I liked it. And that worries me. :D

Off for some mindless tv and probably to fall asleep in front of said tv.

I am (once again) planning a fall vacation to the Pacific Northwest. I had been planning one for last year, but layoffs at $Evil_Dealership where I work prevented me from taking time off. So here I am again, planning this long anticipated trip.

Since it's been so long since I've been to Portland, I decided an investment in a Frommer's Guide to Oregon would be a worthwhile investment. I'm already loving the decision. This thing has more trivial and *totally* useful information. There are now places that I'm going to avoid, and places I didn't know existed that I can't wait to see. There is also a plethora of trivial facts about Oregon that are mostly useless (but interesting!) and, in some cases, totally bizarre.

Oregon has no Self-Service Gas Stations.

None.

What the hell?

It doesn't really bother me, except for the fact that I can't figure out why. It's killin' me! :D

On another front.....work.

I am still loving the new job. Completely. It has it's drawbacks (what job doesn't), but they're all minor shit compared to other jobs I've had in the past. Here's a little "Auto Industry" fact that nobody probably knows. Even at Dealerships where overall ratings are Excellent, the customer satisfaction percentage for the Body Shop portion af the business is usually a lot lower than the Service or Sales areas. Even if the shop does an A-1 bang-up job on the repair. Just because the car will never be the same again, and the customer knows it. Even if they can't tell the car was ever in an accident when they look at it or drive it, they know it's been smoooshed. And it colors their responses on the surveys. Yet......the shop I'm working at now has significantly higher numbers than industry standards. And it's all because of the guys out in the shop. I have *never* worked with a crew that is SO dedicated to making the accident completely "go away". You'd think that each and every one of the vehicles we work on actually belonged to the guys working on them. They are *that* picky about the final product that rolls out of the shop.

It's pretty cool, all in all.

It may just be that the "honeymoon" isn't over yet, but for now, I'm extremely happy doing what I'm doing. It's been a real challenge so far, seeing as I've never done anything like this before, and it's been extremely satisfying also.

The raise didn't hurt either. lol

More at another time. :)

Once more.....with feeling!

I've come to the realization that I hate LiveJournal. I don't know why, I just do. Therefore, we're gonna give Google's blog a try. Hopefully I'll be more inspired to write here. Until another time, Dear Reader......