Life on the High Plains

I discovered a couple new things about my dad while I was in Idaho.  1)  He's great at crossword puzzles and 2) He apparently survives on canned chili. Irv and I decided we needed to do something about my dad's diet so we spent the day cooking. Beef stew Cinnamon rolls Chicken enchiladas (my dad's favorite) Cinnamon chip Snickerdoodles (from the Prepared Pantry)  Yummy! And Irv's favority, lasagne We packaged it all into individual servings and put them in the freezer.  At least I know he'll be eating good from a couple weeks. My dad is 83 and in great shape, but he doesn't have much interest in cooking.  I sure wish he lived closer so I could keep his freezer full of homemade meals. Do you think my girls will cook for me when I'm old?  Probably not...but maybe they'll bring me Chick Fil A.

We made it home from Idaho this afternoon.  Although it was sad to be there for a funeral, it was wonderful to be able to celebrate the life of a wonderful woman.  It was also good to be with family, especially my dad.  Although it was cold in Idaho, it wasn't nearly as cold as I had expected. After the graveside service, we made our way through the snow to my mom's grave. Yes, there was lots of snow. You may think that Idaho is the land of potatoes, but in the last few years another crop has become more profitable for the farmers--barley.  Budweiser has always made its presence known, but this is the largest billboard I have ever seen.  My dad's house had these icicles hanging from the eaves.  I'm pretty sure they could kill someone especially if they were underneath them trying to get a picture. His roof has about a foot of snow on it.  Last summer he put snow keepers on his metal roof to keep the snow from slidi...

My Aunt Lois passed away on Saturday.  Lois was a very special person to me.  Aunt Lois and Uncle Frank ran the Sullivan Ranch in southeast Idaho.  Some of the best memories of my life were at that ranch.  As a child I learned my love of horses at the ranch riding "Liz", a beautiful black horse named for Elizabeth Taylor.  There is a creek that runs through the ranch that is warmed by a hot springs that I spent a lot of time in.  And of course there were animals, lots of them--dogs, cats, pigs, horses, and cattle.  The best part of the ranch though was Aunt Lois.  She was a kind, loving, warm person and the best cook ever.  Why does food always taste better on a ranch?  I used to love going there.  When I became a mother my children got to spend time on the ranch also.  By then Liz was gone, but she was replaced by "Pig", a big, fat gelding that kids could ride anywhere they wanted on the ranch.  Secretly I always wished I...

 I got an instruction book and DVD for my new Nikon D5000 so today I sat down and played with it. Today I focused on close up shots so I went outside in hunt of some interesting subjects. I was hoping to find a bug, bird, flower, or something interesting to take a shot of. This is winter in Colorado and everything is dead so I didn't have a lot of options. This is one of the dead plants in my front garden that I haven't cleaned out yet.  I thought it made a cool picture. These are a couple shots of our douglas firs.  Not too interesting.  This is one of our Austrees.  I kind of like this picture too.  This is one of our blue spruce trees.  Boring. Cody always make a great subject. This is my favorite shot of the day...I think I'll call it "rocks". I really like this one too.  It's the welcome bell by our back door. I have a lot to learn.  One thing I ...

We had the most amazing moon on Friday night.  As we were driving home it was just appearing on the horizon, but I couldn't get home fast enough to grab my camera.  By the time I got home it had risen slightly, but was still magnificent. "There are also bodies in the heavens and bodies on the earth. The glory of the heavenly bodies is different from the glory of the earthly bodies. The sun has one kind of glory, while the moon and stars each have another kind. And even the stars differ from each other in their glory."   1 Corinthians 15:40-41

and gets so tired. Luckily, she found few moments to take a nap. Poor baby!

I'm in Wichita again this week working on the NGS or Next Generation Solution.  This project has been going on since December 2008 and the date for all the segments to come together is February 4th or D-Day.  As I sit here less than three weeks before we're supposed to be done, I am highly doubtful that deadline will be met.  Every morning they give us a a new compile that was supposed to have fixed all the bugs we found the day before.  Yesterday we tested version 4.27.  Version 4.27 was full of more bugs than I had seen in a long time, the day was pretty much wasted because we couldn't do much testing.  Hopefully today will be better.  Right now I wouldn't take any bets that the system will be ready by February 4th. I'm glad my association isn't going to be one of the pilots.  Luckily, the pilot won't be released until May and there will be lots more testing done before then.  I get to come back in March when the regression testing sta...