h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Oreos, with ! What else is there.

Unless, of course, you have peanutbutter cookies made with chocolate chips. (Homemade, I don't have a recipe, but man I wish I did.)

OH.!..I'm SO0ooo sorry to be so late in noticing your post.....There it has been sitting there , and I never clicked on it....Today I see it, & find my self wondering ?? What is that about..??..I have enjoyed reading about you and your Journal very much.....So much to say in reply.....Do not have that much time this afternoon, and the early morning hours go SO fast...I love the quiet early morning hours....Last nite was LOTS & LOTS of rain and it sounded so good on the roof.....So now we are not behind for March, & they are able to open up skiing on MT.Hood again., because it has been so dry equals ==No snow...And come summer with not enough rain==[snow pack] the farmers,salmon,forest suffer....
******* Your Van sounds like he has so much personality...and yes, it is beautiful the way the dogs want to be near us. and two dogs bond with each other..because they are a pack animal....sound like Van has a lot of herding instinct..and he want to round up his "herd"....and they can understand SO many words....When my kids were young we got a puppy...ie:..the girl next door,here father worked at a boy-scout camp , in the hills...they had a female lab...on a neighboring mountain top was a male police dog....You get the picture..??..He was the best dog....He was all black..the kids named him Black Jack....But people would ask "What is he"...He was slim & slick, not like a lab....He had one ear that stood up like a police dog ,the other ear stood half way up , but the tip floped over a bit...wanting to drop down like a lab....My daughter would laugh sometimes[she is the real animal lover here] because she would say,"Black Jack wants to look dignified and magnificent but he can not manage it with that floppy ear....Well, also to get on with my story about herding....whenever we would go for a walk in the woods, & we would be strung out along the trail[in the old days of not so many people here & no leach laws....] he would constantly run from one to the other & back again....Well, once we were down along the coast...more the southern part, near Florence,OR...famous for the sand dunes....and we were all over the place & I felt so sorry for him because running in that sand was hard work for him....when he came "to check up on me" I would try to get him to stay...But no....I was a little worried,because one of the kids could get lost there, but all we would have to do is just follow the dog....***** We have also had cats...some get alone with each other, some don't...Both as kittens help...A female maynot like a male around...! & it puts her under stress....Calicos have an attitude!!..And you CAN train them..If you have a good relationship with them they do not like to be scolded....squint you eyes and blink at them when you talk to them & he is yours...I do not like animals on beds & furniture...cats do have a lot of dander... They are happy to have their own place...and a window seat on the world...But they want clean bedding often...An arm load of fresh laundry put down & they will be in the middle of it pronto..!!....I do not like too many cats in the neighborhood,because it is not fair to the birds....I have bird feeders around & 2 kinds of squirrls...in the yard....When I would see the cat stalking I would go & scold...& we would have a talk about it & she knew I did not approve...& I am mindful of keeping them at home...also...mostly indoors..Males need to be altered to be a good pet & stay at home...that goes for all of them....and they are such good companions....
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**** Sputnik** One evening, not dark yet, but dusk...I was putting my 1 to 2 year old daughter to bed...She had a good view of the sky , as I am walking away I hear her excited about something....she is reaching & pointing to a shining object blinking & moving across the sky. *** *** Sputnik going by......Goes without saying we are Trekkie fans & Hitchhikkers...
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I have enjoyed your visit sooo much. I will add another log to the fire and can you stay a little longer for more cookies and another ....I will go and add Oreos & Peanutbutter with chocolate chip to the cookie jar....
********* I also need to write up about our Soggy Towel meet back on the 12 of March...there are pictures
of us on that thread... I'd give you the link,but did not get it copied first and I am afraid I might lose all of this letter if I try to do it at this point....I am not sure how much I can expect this...
.. box to do....It is a constant amazement to me...I say" When I die if I can not take my laptop with me...'I an't goin'"..... ... I go & send the link now... By for now.... .. Ginger....... ... . .

Here you will find pictures of the 5 West Coast HooTooers meeting on March, 12, 2005....... ...

OH, OH, ..I'm getting dingy...forgot to punch the button again............. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/F2016526?thread=611013

Heavens to Mergatroid! Don't stress over not getting back to me sooner, I know sometimes posts get over looked!

I'm currently getting over a terrible cold, not quite the flu, (I ALMOST wish it had been, then I would have had an excuse for feeling so bad), but it was much more than allergies.

Here in the hills of East Tennessee, TODAY is warm and sunny and my neighbor is mowing the lawn. The Dogwood trees are just beginning to show the first hint of leaf and flower buds. We'll have snow within two weeks. Well, maybe not snow, but it will get cold again, just about the time the Dogwoods bloom, we will have Dogwood winter for about three or four days.

Van got his summer trim the other day, so he's liking the warmer weather, Luke is too. Though, he doesn't like the sound of the lawn mower or weed eater at all, he tried to get in my lap and was shaking like a leaf when my neighbor first started them up. Sometimes in the summer I have to give him a sedative, he gets so upset with all neighbors cutting their grass, and every time it storms, he goes nuts. He doesn't like thunder, and now he has gotten to the point that he gets scared any time it rains.

It's fun around here on the Fourth of July!

Sorry you didn't have a bigger turn out for your get together, but you all seemed to be having a good time. I hope if there is ever one in the Southeast I'll be able to attend. I would love to meet other HooTooers in person!

I used to attend SciFi conventions, and loved doing that. Of course that was before I had a mortgage and when I had a job. I'm disabled now. Still, if it was close enough, I might be able to swing it.

I've just started a new phase, writing, fanfiction, new for me, anyway. We'll see how long this phase lasts.

Thanks for the Oreos, I'll return the favor. How do you feel about Rice Krispy treats?

Hi..!! It has been a busy day, been out to lunsh with 'ol' classmates[all girls school] Only five turned up today..We were a lively lot...One girl has been too ill to come lately, so it was so good to see her... ...When i got home I went for a walk to "walk off lunch"....& that chocolate cake I thought others would help me with, only one did.....So, back to my walk...saw a big dogwood tree in full bloom.......
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Van sounds so cute...Long ago we had a half coca-pew +doxsen[the little german wenner dog]This will need some explaining....That dog turned out to be about the uglest dog you ever saw....The caca-poo is cute, a little ball of curly fur...they are half poodle and ??...and the owner did not want her to have puppies...but there was a hole in the fence just barely big enough for that little doxen to squeese through. So you get the picture.....As a puppy he was cute...Black and very broad in the houlders...Looked like a little buffalo so we named him "buffy"....But as he got older he had this fine poodle fur but not enough of it....But we loved him....
I think all animals are afraid of the thunder and the vacume cleaner....I keep our dog out durning the day but if there is thunder, I lel him in.... I feel sorry for the pets on 4th of July...and it [the firecrackers] goes on sparatecally for days.....
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Yes, the meet was fun...Hootooers are nice people and interesting,also......
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I like Oreos too much..Don't often bring home a bag or I would eat too many.....
But a big fat NO on Rice Krispy Treats...They are TOO sweet and no other flavor...If I were making them I would be putting in some raisens & cinnamon...When I have a sweet tooth I always have a jar of honey on my kitchen drain board....
.. I have not gotten over to my space yet to put your request in the cookie jar...The day is never long enough for all the things I would like to do......
***** Now I want to go over to Next Word Game.... I like that one...Sometimes it is clever and some times I shake my head....WHAT..!!??..... ... ... .. . By 4 now....

I don't do the Rice Krispy thing often, but every once in a while....


The Bartlett Pear trees, Cherry trees and Forsynthia bushes are in full bloom here. My Lilac bush has leaf buds.

Luke woke me up at 2:00 this morning, he could hear it thundering. So I had to get up and give him his medication, then sleep the rest of the night with the light on in my room. As the storm got closer, and the meds hadn't really taken effect yet, he kept trying to get in the bed with me. My bed is really high, and he can't make the jump. He is so heavy, I can't pick him up. (I have a bad shoulder, torn rotator cuff.) Not that I really want HIM in my bed, not the way he sheds.

Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep last night.

Van is cute, especially when he gets mad after I leave the house and leave him behind. He thinks I'm supposed to stay home with him all the time.

Good morning:..11AM here..Fruit trees beginning to bloom here,also....I just ran outside to check on my lilac tree...I have never done that befor...It has been here since we moved in in 1964 and has never been pruned.. so it is not a bush,it's a tree... and yes, there are small buds there about 2 inches long...and the violets come up all over the place so one of these days it will smell sweet.....
*** We do not have thunder here very often....about 3 or 4 times a year....On a late hot summer eve.....
*** Yes, My dog pouts when I am leaving the house....So we have a routine....when I am ready to go out the door...I shake my keys and say by,by....and talk to him a bit...pet him and tell him he is a good boy[because I think they think they are being left behind as punisment....]" I'll be back soon" and "You guard the house , now"....]
AND that same routine each time soon seem to help him not to be so depressed....The exact same routine seemed to reasure him and make him feel secure...But he has never been taken in the car with me...so he does not expect to "go for a ride"...nor does he leave the yard...He gets his exercise by my throwing his ball for him...If I have not been out to pay with him, late in the afternoon he will be dropping his ball on the porch at the back door...and during the day chasing the squirrels as they run through the trees to trees...
*** There is no spell checker on this Mozella Firefox browser, so excuse... I am almost the worlds worst speller...I like firefox, the design is great...It is faster...It is very new...It is fun to always try something new....My other browser is Safari...Do not use Internet Explorer because this is a Mac....
**** By, BY........Ginger .. . ... .. .

It's 7pm here, my lilac is only starting to show little green tips! Isn't strange, you're so much further north, and yet seem to have Spring much in Bloom! Oh, well, it's a mad, mad world.

We just got home a little bit ago, and I have Van attached at the hip. Luke is passed out somewhere, I gave him drugs before we left the house earlier. It looked like it was going to storm, and I really wanted to have a house standing when we got back. He will be all loopy for hours. Of course it hasn't rained a drop.

Last summer, I DIDN'T give him anything and it stormed while we were gone. We came home to find him curled up on the sofa. THE LEATHER SOFA. The problem was, he was too frightened to get off. I had to pick him up, and lift him off the silly thing. Not easy, what with me having bad shoulders and him being over 60 pounds of shaking uncooperative mutt. Mom was no help either, she was laughing too hard, and Van was barking the the whole time trying to get between me and the sofa.

There was a flash of lighting, guess I better hurry.

Yep, here comes Luke, I better not roll this chair back, I'll run over both of them.

Don't worry about your spelling, I'm the worlds worst. If it hand't been for Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, I never would ahve made it through high school! I did all my homework sitting on the couch my notebook on my lap, writing with my right hand, looking words up with my left. Why wasn't the word rpocessor invented sooner? Of course with my typing skills, I never would have mastered it in school either. I passed typing by the skin of my teeth too. And shorthand, we won't even go there!

Well the strom's getting closer, so I better get of here and shut down the computer.

bye, bye, for now,
WildCat

You have had quite a day... Do you have thunder often...It sure depends on where one is for Spring...If I were 20 miles South East it would be more like spring and If I were 5 miles east , Not SO...Because that is the mouth of the Columbia River Gorge, and it is much colder there..!!...The weather men do better now days, but us natives would shake our heads ...It is very hard to predict the weather here...You have all thoes clouds coming in off the coast...then the "Coast Range" of mountains...Then the great big "Willamette Valley" [ That drew the early wagon trains of people here in 1850... ] .. then the clouds drop all their rain{on me]to rise up over the Cascade Range..to the east...That includes big Mt.Hood...Then Eastern Oregon is nothing like the Western part of the state...quite dry, with big wheat ranches...and much hotter weather than here...We have a saying,.."If you do not like the weather, just wait 10 minets....
Yes, spell checkers are nice,because I like to check my words,because even if it is right , I am not sure of it.... but sometimes even the checker can not figure out what I am trying to spell....
................... by now, Ginger.....

We say the same thing about the weather!!

Yes! We get a LOT of storms, April, on through til September even October. We even had thunder in January! Here in the valley were Knoxville is, we haven't gotten much snow the past few winters. In fact this past winter we didn't get over a quarter inch I guess really all season. Up in the Mountains, and on the Cumberland Plateau it came a few snows.

That's what makes it hard to predict the weather here in the valley. You have the mountains on the east and the Plateau to the north and west. They never know what a system is going to do when it's coming our way. Will it come on over the mountains or will they stop it? Will the Plateau slow it down, stall it out, or will it hit hte plateau, jump and dump everything in the valley? You never know. Of course they've gotten much better than when I was a kid, but still, sometimes it's a guessing game.

Last Summer was really nice, I think we only had a few days when it got up in the 90's, and the humidity wasn't bad at all. That was a change for us! We had lots of rain last year too.

We had been having a dry spell and the summers had been really hot, temps up in the high 90's of 100 and humidity 80 or 90%. It was like a sauna around here. We're already the allergy capital of the universe, and one of the most smog filled places on the planet. So people with asthma were in real trouble around here. Last summer wasn't all that bad.

I hope this summer is nice too. My utility bill could stand the break! I hope the rain lets up soon too. I need to have my roof replaced soon, and the less rain we get, the better. I just hope we don't have any hail storms or tornados. We get those too. And it's that time of year.

Well, Van's getting fussy, he says it's bedtime, I guess I better go see what his highness wants now.

Bye,
Wildcat

7:30 PM.Thursday 4/7/05...been a cool wet day,had a little fire going all day, but now sky is clearing,lot of blue with big fluffy clouds and when I steped outside to play ball with the dog...I could smell the lilacs in the evening air.....

April 8 4 pm

It rained last night and a little this morning. It's turned cool, I think it's Dogwood winter.

We get all these little "winters" this time of year. When the Dogwoods bloom, it's Dogwood winter. So far we've had Redbud winter, I guess this is Dogwood, we have Blackberry yet to come, and at some point the poor little Whippoorwill bird will get blamed for a cold snap too. If no trees or bushes have just bloomed, somebody will say "Oh, I thought I heard the first Whippoorwill the other day, this must be Whippoorwill Winter."

I got some good news yesterday. My step-sister called, her daughter-in-law had her baby! This is Sis' first grandbaby, so of course we are all excited. It's a girl, everyone is doing fine. 8 pounds 10 ounces, 20 inches long, Sis e-mailed me a picture, and she is a little butter-ball.

Mom is making her a dress, and is afraid now it won't fit, it took her DAYS to sew all those pin tucks, I don't know what she's going to do.

I wish I knew how to attach pictures here...

The English Hawthorns are in full bloom....
A thunder storm yesterday.. Then a big plane flew over head and the dog thought it was more thunder....
cold & rainey to day
So I have my wood stove going....

************* By for now ... Ginger ..... .. .

Well, the Dogwoods are beginning to fade. They were beautiful this year.

Three of my Azalea's have peaked, and the blooms are looking a bit faded too. The fourth I didn't think was going to bloom at all is just now starting too. I have a Rhododendron that was very confused and bloomed last September. It is startint to bloom now, I wasn't sure it would this spring. My other Rhodoies look like they won't be too far behind.

I planted some strawberries last summer in large containers. These are everbareing strawberries, so they are supposed to yield fruit all summer. They didn't produce much last year. I didn't know if they would survive the winter. Several of them already have blooms! Maybe this year I'll be able to pick more than 1 or 2 berries every third or fourth day.

The buzzer on the dryer just went off, I better go see if my bedspread is dry.

Later, gator.
Wildcat

Oh, we had snow flurries this morning! I didn't see any, but that's what the weather people said. Up in the mountain's somewhere they were expecting something like an inch and a half. I think this is blackberry winter. Maybe. I'll have to ask my aunt if blackberries are in bloom. It's colder than a coal miner's...

...well, you get the idea.

You have Rhodies?? They grow all over the place in the woods here...especially around the foot hills of Mt Hood....Many old homes have beautiful one planted...but the young home owners come in & cut them down...I do not know why...If they are not planted on the north side of the house or do notget some shade from a tree, well, just as they are in full bloom we get some hot weather and then they do welt fast, poor things....At my other house I had one and I read they like to have big rocks around its feet .People also move here and then cut down beautiful old fir and spruce trees...because they are afraid of them...I wish they wouldn't move here then..,!!And whole hill sides of trees are cut down to put up houses because we have so much growth But of course when we do have a "bad winter" the news media get all excited about the tree that fell on a house.and all 3 channels show it every half hour and it looks like trees are falling all over the place...and of course one falls on a power line and people have no heat or phone......The news media get so excited about everything....!! I listen to local news as little as possible...it is always pretty much 5 subjects over & over..with hype...Maybe I have been caught in a time warp...By for now...Ginger...

I have three Rhodies that Mom and I planted spring before last. We weren't sure if they would make it. I don't have much shade my front yard, and the dirt is really just clay. I had to use a lot of peat to losen it up. So far they are doing really well.

I'm not too worried about them now. That first year was the most critical, I think. They were just in little 1 gallon pots, so they were small, but they have really grown.

Granny could just look at a plant and if it was almost dead it would be all lush and green in a week. I did NOT get her green thumb. Just her thick hair. My Crepe Myrtles and so far the Rhodies have been the only things that I have had any real success with.

Oh, and the Heather. I have some Heather that is doing quite well. I may get some more of that at the Highland Games next month if the same vendor is there. It blooms in December and January, and is really very striking.

OH! Heather, how nice...I bring some home and next year I never see it again...It is very shady in my yard and lots & lots of humis, [spelling??], I have lots of moss, & ferns and the squirrels run all over the place digging to bury their peanuts that I put out for them....
Its good to hear your Rhodies are doing well, Thanks to Granny, I think...because your soil does't sound like "Home" for them....I would fine a couple of old fallen logs and put around them, and find an 'ol big maple tree[I have one] and in the fall put a couple of handfuls of thoes leaves around...maple leaves decompose so beautfully....do you compost??..I think it is a beautiful miracle that happens...and you come up with that dark ,rich, crumbley earth[full of earth worms working away for me]...I have a perfect spot for my bin...out of sight, a back corner all its own....,behind a work shed[green with moss: its at least 50 years old....and under a very big old cherry tree....I have had the cherry tree pruned a lot. because when they get old they tend one day to just fall over...and one icy winter, some of its branches came crashing down...When I heard the first one ..I looked out & said,"well, I can live with that...But sadly more came down...Lucky none on the work shed...but one big one right parallel to it...it is now covered with moss with trilliums around.... ... By now ..

No, I don't compost I really should. I need to get some pine bark mulch, or pine needles to put around them. They love the acid in the pine. There are a lot of oak trees in th neighborhood. In fact 3 right across the street.

I worry when we have a really severe wind storm. One of the trees is leaning just a little too much in my direction. It sits VERY close to the edge of an enbankment and more and more of it washes away every year. If that tree falls, it is so tall it will hit my house and the one next to me. The tree is at least 100 years old, and has a lot of dead limbs in it, so NOT a real safe situation.

Need to go, Mom is getting breakfast, then I think I'll go back to bed. I didn't sleep well last night. Blasted allergies.