Thursday's a go....to school that is.......

I

The garden is really drab.  I almost looked for an archived photo of this same spot taken during the summer but I thought it would be a sad thing to see.  We were told that we are still 5 inches short on moisture but it promises to snow again on Monday.  We may get ahead of our moisture average if it keeps it up.

Last winter I took this gazing ball and stand into the basement.  I kind of missed it out there during the past winter so I didn't put it away this fall.  I enjoy watching the snow pile up on it and one can see how much snow is on the ground as the base is covered.

I further extended my capabilities with google and picasa yesterday.  I can now share photos with my son and wife at the picasa site and we can get the latest new photos of the new grandson.  AJ seems unimpressed with any of this as he sleeps bundled in his blanket.

I again am not impressed with it as it made my adding photos to picasa more difficult.  It should be more user friendly than it is.  One is allowed to open up you  photos to share with others by bringing them into a circle and that is good.  I just don't like all the bells and whistles that show up because, just like facebook, they want you to connect to all these strangers and put them in your circle.  My son's friends are his friends and I really don''t want to know who they are nor do I want to connect with them.

I also am having problems with my old computer placing my own photos into picasa as it takes more power to add them in now that it is a new format. Everything is slower now.  I bet you can't believe I created a new file just for my new grandson!!!!

The proud father is feeding his son.  He is going to make a great dad.   Only 18 more years and he will have the worse part done in raising the little guy.

I am in the high school math room today teaching tough stuff.  I am glad they are worksheets and they are review because my first trigonometry class was taken by me in 1967 and then I had to retake it in college in 1968 as I had not mastered it.  Artists can be great mathematicians but artists don't want to mathematicians.

 We are going to do our taxes today and were at the dermatology doctor yesterday for me.   I am ok but my skin seems to be driving crazy.  I will be ok and one precancerous spot was removed off of my nose.  Medicines and ointments are promised to make me into a new old man.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Wednesday's Stuff...........

Do you think it is too late to put the watering can into the garden shed?  Ten inches, or close to it accumulated through noon today.

The town did an unusual thing yesterday.  They cleaned all the alleys of snow first then they hit the streets.  I came home from school and the streets were filled with snow but the alleys were nice and clear.  The alley is just beyond the apple tree and you can see the snow piled up along side of it.

No school today as the country roads were still not cleared.  It seemed to have snowed forever.  Thanks for stopping by today.

Another Snowstorm......

It started to snow at 8:00 this morning and it isn't to stop until Wednesday noon. This was not predicted, it just happened.  Apparently the front shifted, moved north, and it is going to sit still for a while.  Thanks for stopping by today.

A Series of Shots.......

It isn't such a beautiful neighborhood.  The abundance of trees cover up a lot of the problems, but that is only when there are leaves on the trees.  My house is a one and half story farm house.  It was at  first a farmhouse in the town of farmhouses and the owner of the house owned two may three blocks of the town.  As time went on the parts of the land were sold and of course the houses were being built on the lots that they sold.

We have small ranches, one and a half story box shaped houses with porches and then there are a few later ones that are bungalows.   As the houses filled in, there are mixtures of all of these house standing.

The newest part of our area have two ranch houses that were probably built in the early 1960's.  They were built by the same carpenter.  Following down the road is where the tornado removed many houses and they are now all mostly new ranches.  The majority of them are the factory built type home with added garages and bump outs.

Here is the same scene as viewed out of my dining room window. It is better view in the spring than with this winter look.

Here is another shot with more snow on the ground.  We ended up with about 5 or 6 inches of snow on the ground.

I am today an English teacher to English speaking students and one foreign exchange student. It will be an interesting day of the students reading from the book The Lord of the Flies.  They get assigned sections to read and discussion follows.  Other classes are writing essays over a movie they had seen about the Columbine High School tragedy.  One lone class is a mass media class that is discussing the second side of Citizen Kane.  I don't know anything about the second side of this Kane so the students will have to explain it to me.

A milder snow is coming late tonight or on Tuesday.  We are having warm weather right now for winter in Iowa.  Thanks for stopping by today. Take care.

There Is Sun.......

Thanks for stopping by today.

He Is Here!!!!!

I opened my email this morning and read that " it's a boy."  His parents went to the hospital in the middle of the night and he was born at 3 am today.  Andy, our oldest son, is the dad and his wife Patricia were so surprised to have him arrive a week and a half early.  They had chosen to not know if he was going to be a boy or if they would have a girl.  I think they will keep him.

Our son did call in the late morning then as they had not slept all night.  I am sure Andy crashed somewhere in a chair before he called.  Needless to say we were so surprised and are so very happy and proud too.

I shared this photo of our new grandson on my Photo a Day blog.  I wanted to share it over here too as it is such a great photo.  He probably isn't 7 hours old here.  He was 7 lbs. 8 oz.  and 23 inches long  for those who like to know the stats.  He will live with his parents in Arlington Heights, north of Chicago. It may be a couple of weeks before we get out there. We will be so glad to see our newest member to the family.

We are with sunshine and warmer weather today.  No wind to blowing this snow around.  I did make it out to shovel the walks and need to address the back yard walks for the dogs to walk on.  I had created a path for Button in which to go outside for business.  I usually have to do that scooping during the snow storm and then the very first thing in the morning so the little short legged guy can get to his favorite bathroom spot in the yard.

On the opposite side of such a happy day is also some sad news we received on Friday.  A distant cousin of mine who I was close to, had tragedy hit his family. We attended school all the years together and my father being first cousins to his mom, we have kept track of each other even though neither one of us live close to the homefront. Jim and Jenny live on the southern border of Arizona. Their son passed away on Thursday and it has been such a shock to the family.  He was in his early thirties.  Even though I didn't really know my cousin's kids well,  I knew all of the family members from Joshua's grandparents and uncle and aunts and of course his mom and dad.  It just broke my heart to hear of his death. One becomes physically distraught and depressed in an instant from such unexpected news.  There are just not words that can be said to share what one feels about their loss.

It is the weekend and being stuck inside is not a bad think when winter is really upon us.  It restricts the need to really going anywhere and I just wants to just stay in and watch the birds feed and the squirrels scamper and steal food. I like watching them as two of them pile on to my feeder and fill their pouches.  Then the dogs send them scampering away to the nearby tree.  Thanks for stopping by today.  Grandpa will sign off here for the very first time.  I am going to have to get use to that Grandpa thing.

Snow

It did snow.  The conditions were not as good as the weatherman wanted them to be for making snow. I guess moisture and wind causes the snow to travel up and down in the sky repeatedly creating heavy wet snow.  We did not get that.  It is the light crystal-like snow which means that there was less.  I think we ended up with six inches of it.  It still weighed down a lot of the shrubs just like the snowstorm before that put out eleven inches of snow.  It is a powdery mess instead of a wet heavy mess.

No school today.  I will work on my walks clearing them this afternoon.  I hope everyone out there has survived this weather.  I know it was a storm that hit a lot of my blogger friends.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Cadillac of Old.......

Another photo of a model car to share today.  It is an old late 40's Cadillac with operating doors.  I remember seeing this car from the past.

I don't know how common that it was to own a convertible car like this but it was a nice looking car.

Tom Tom and his buddies have been busy filling up their stomachs before the snowstorm hits.  It will be arriving at four o'clock today just an arriving train or airplane.  The weather guys have it down to an actual science of timing and they generally are pretty much correct.  Omaha and Kansas City are covered with snow and now it is moving into Iowa.  Most schools have dismissed to let the kids get home safely before the storm hits.

I haven't had work for the last two day and school is closed on Friday because of Parent-Teacher conferences so I won't be back to work until Monday.  I think my changing of the web address has not caused as much  trouble as I had thought and  yet I will wait and see.  My comments are up as people are letting me know that they are still getting on.  I am not sure that bookmarks to my blog will correct as mine didn't.  I had to reset my bookmarks to the two blogs that I changed.

I don't know that being a favorite blog on another's sites will work as the address is changed and they may have to be removed from the list and then reset by adding the blog back onto the list.  Whatever happens I am glad I got the web address changed to a less descriptive address that doesn't give out my identity.

Thanks for your patience with this.  I was intending to deal with this a long time ago.  I may lose people as they may not find me anymore but that is the chance I had to take.  Thanks for stopping by today.

You lost me......maybe not.

I am sorry that I messed up all of your links to my sites.  I made a decision to fix my blog addresses.  I had stupidly incorporated my full name in the web address of two of my blogs.  I have one other that I need to fix but I hate to loose the large group of followers.

If you are a regular follower, I hoped you just typed in the name of my blog on your search engine and you could find me right away.  Some of you loyal followers I will email specifically and give you my new addresses or links.

Apparently all is still working ok.  I changed my web address and blogger made the correction without stopping you from finding me. So never mind!!!!!


If you found me again no matter how, below are the two sites that I changed.  I guess you are already on the Creative Zone.  Click on the Photo Zone and reset the follow button if you still want to follow me.

Larry's Photo a Day

Larry's Creative Zone

I wouldn't blame you to stop following me for messing things up so greatly but if you do decided to refollow me thanks.

It's a Ford.....Woody.

During my photographic practice session I took some shots of my replicas of old cars.   The 1949 Ford shown here is a woody.

As you can see this replica has some doors and a hood that do open.  The wood panels were always a fascination to me when I  would see them as I was growing up.  They put the wood panels on mostly station wagons and I would see them parked on main street of Osceola when we would go into town to shop.  The memories that I had of them is that the wood coverings didn't wear very well.

I do remember them being shown in ads in magazines and everyone who owned them was going on vacation to the mountains or to the beach. A friend of mine had a Jeep with wood panels on it.

A write up from a site that was selling a 1941 Woody describes the manufacturing of the car.

Ford was entering a challenging time in its history when it produced its new line of Super Deluxe cars beginning in 1941. The company was branching into wartime production, especially after Pearl Harbor. Automotive innovation was not on the immediate engineering horizon, but there is no doubt that their styling department led the industry into the forties. One of the early highlights of that era was the 1941 Super Deluxe Woody Wagon that proved to be both an esthetic and utilitarian success. 

The war gave the car companies business as they created cars for the military.  It was a hard time to justify using up the metal for automobiles for pleasure when it was needed to build aircraft. The wood panels seemed to be a good solution in order to use less metal. 

Thanks for stopping by my post today. 

Toy Truck Tootsietoy.......

Can you say Tootsietoy truck three times? I had a photography shoot on my dining room table last night and played with taking shots with one overhead light source.

I have not researched this truck but it does remind me of a firetruck.  I may be wrong.  I do see that there probably more parts to the trailer of the truck.

I like the representation of the doors shown on the sides of the bed or trailer.

The wheels seem to be more than plastic.  The truck could have been made after WW 2 being that it looks more like a rubber product used to make the wheels.   I just noticed a light on the roof of the cab which must have been a light for a firetruck.


It is sunny outside today but it is very cold.  The wind has been gusting at high rates and we are told a storm is coming Thursday morning.  Thanks for stopping by today.

I've Got Time......you get to read.

It is just a plain old normal Monday for me but I am going to do one of my longer blogs.  If you are not weary and like to hear me blab, well you get a lot of words today so sit back and read.  I searched through my archives to find "red" on this red letter day.  President's day is the excuse for not celebrating the two presidents Washington and Lincoln on different days.  I guess it is the average of the two birthdays into on day.


 I searched my old grade school blog in Murray, Iowa and they still have hanging in one of the classrooms a picture of George Washington, the unfinished painting by Gilbert Sturat, that hung back in the 50's while I was attending there.  There was a copy in every elementary classroom.  That is history and loyalty of a school to keep those prints in their original frame still hanging today.

I thought I would give you a visual of that print on the wall still today.  I searched it out and here it is.  I have been out of high school over 45 years ago.  I don't remember Lincoln's photo hanging but we did put up something every February for him.

The red pears that were sent to us from our oldest son and his wife for Christmas looked like this.  I know some of my blogger friends had never heard of red pears before so here they are.  They taste the very same as the others and these came from Texas.  They are boxed up nicely in top and bottom foam padding and each is wrapped in papper to protect its skin.  They actually ripen after the arrive which can be touchy at times.  They like to ripen at all the same time some years but this year they seemed to keep until we ate them all at different times.

Spring means the blooming of tulips and then comes the lilies.  We were so dry last year that we had very few in bloom.  I transplanted some in the fall and their roots were barely in existence.  They were frail and thin.  I moved them out into an area in the open sun and away from any trees or the house.  I hope the moisture we are getting will revive them once again to give me good flowers.  The iris did not bloom well last year either.  When they get too wet they die, but hopefully they will be back and show their color again like previous years.

The archived photo of the poinsettia jumped out at me when I was going through my picasa files.  I don't categorize my files other than I  make a new one each month in my documents. I move them from documents to picasa in order to blog.  In the picasa files I can guess the time of year because of the subject matter. I have a lot of Christmas decorations in the one part of a  file and I know I am in November through January.  Sprouting tomato plants show me that we are in the spring along with all the tulip photos.  Finding the different archived photos is pretty easy to do.

It is more of a red orange than red but it fits the theme today.  The trailer was a gift to me from santa a few years back, maybe 55 years ago.  It had a different car I believe that was to be sotred inside of the stream line camper.  It is all thin metal but the wheels are still on it.  I really didn't have many cars as a young guy, mostly tractors were in my toy box.  I have a small collection of miniature cars now because my wife was buying me one each Christmas.  She has stopped doing that a few years back but I still like having them.

My wife explained to me early in our marriage that red and roses both symbolized true love.  So I do try to be sure there are some around durning Valentines day.   Last year I went crazy and bought here a red, white and pink combination bouquet.  It was a hit but I went back to just red this year.

An old firetruck that I salvage from my late wife's family home.  The stuff was going to be auctioned off after everyone had taken what they wanted.  I grabbed up a handfull of them, leaving a lot of plastic ones behind.  The plastic would have been collectible too but at the time I had a metal toy collection so I added to it from ones like this.  It was a family of three girls and I bet the dad really wanted to play with the cars more than his daughters did and yet I could see them playing with them.  I confused the different trucks for a while with my John and Iva connection and a couple of months ago I remembered they were not from them.

This timid red lily did not bloom for very long this past summer.  It is actually a darker brown red than what the camera picks up.  You can see that the stem is so short on it because of the dry weather.  I must have just finishing watering the tomatoes and it got wet in the process. It certainly was rain drops that are on it.

I will be interested in seeing how many raspberry canes that I will have this summer.  I lost over half of them last year. I think that the outer edges of my stand were older canes so the heat and lack of water just shut them down early in the season. They may come up from the roots as I think that is how they grow, but it wasn't a great season for these juicy red berries.

My son and his wife had a one year wedding anniversary celebration near their home in Maine.  The uncle and sons related to Keegan cooked the lobsters.  It was a fun time and was nice to be able to have fresh lobster that was caught that morning from the Atlantic.  They were hot on the plate when you picked it up from the food line and it was my very first time to eat lobster.  I do like it.

I am in the High School  English classroom today.  They have papers to finish up or they have study hall work to do.  I don't really have to instruct today other than keep crowd control and encourage work to get done,  Thanks for stopping by today.

Another Visual Journey.........

This is another art mug that shows the artist sitting on the beach looking out at the water.  It looks like a summer day with fluffy clouds floating by in the blue sky.  We came home last night to threatening dark clouds hovering over our town.  It was just a moving cold front but it was very dark as we drove in and under the clouds to get home.   We had a snow shower for five minutes in the late afternoon, which looked serious, but then just stopped.

I am floating around again today being a couple of different teachers.  It is so good to be facing an oncoming weekend.  It has seemed like a long week.  Next week will be shortened with Friday off and perhaps no work on a couple of the other days as they are having parent/teachers days in the afternoon and evening of Tuesday and Thursday.  Thanks for stopping by today and have a good day.

An old collection........

Just to share Valentine's of the past I took a group photo of some of the ones that I inherited from my parents.

Springtime on a Mug.......

One of my mugs has an art replica of spring with iris blooming on it. It reminds me of a Van Gogh but he was better at it with painting than what is on this mug.

I am a librarian again today.  I never know when I might get moved into another position though when something comes up and a staff person has to leave.  We saw sunshine yesterday for a while.  The days are getting longer now. Barnabas won't go outside until it is daylight in the morning.  I don't know what scared him during our two windy days but he won't trust himself in wind in the dark. We usually encourage him to go out right before I go to work now as it is daylight.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Tax Dollars at Work......

In the old days we received a census form in which we filled it out and returned it in the mail.  I am still disgusted with the way it was done in 2010.  If every household received a free canvas bag like the one above,  a free small towel to use for wiping off your golf clubs, and pencils or pens printed up for the event then how much money did we spend on this project? We know that there are over 400 million people living in the United States.  If you divide that into household numbers, multiple and single households, the number would still be staggering for the money spent, just to encourage us to fill out our census.

When filling out the census, it seemed we were taking a poll on who the next voters one would have to woo in order to win an election. Which ones of the middle class need to be addressed in order to get their vote and then spend their money for canvas bags while doing so. I guess the gifts would encourage households of people who in large families to readily identify whether they could speak English or not and how many of them are out there.

If I wanted to buy a canvas bag in order to save the world, I would buy one myself.  If I golfed I would probably cut up an old towel into small pieces to carry with me for cleaning off my clubs and shoes.

Filling out the census really isn't a party the keeps going on and on with gifts. There has to be a better way of doing it.

Thanks for stopping by today.

There Is A Sun.........

Yellow zinnia

The sun really isn't yellow as all children color it on their art papers.  It is a glowing orb and it does make the days seem a little better for us.

I am hitting seven different classrooms today.  As a teacher is out evaluating all the other classrooms to see what kind of teaching is going on during that period, I am sitting with their students. Different teachers leave their room for one period and throughout the day a classroom will be visited 7 to 8 times.

 I actually taught high school reading first hour with students learning about Greek theatre and the development of plays.  Second hour I taught all about state of change of solids, liquids and gases. The sixth graders liked learning about the changing of liquids into ice cream. Third hour I am sitting with test takers in a high school history class.  The rest of the day of adventure is before me.  What I will be, to be or not to be, will be happening with me following the schedule that was given to me.  It is a first kind of assignment that I have ever had like this.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Not Feeling it.......

I am not feeling very creative today but I will share this one lone photo of  my cookie jar.  When you lift the lid it plays a Christmas tune.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Patterns On Parade......

The pattern made by rain drops can be seen on the sidewalks here.  The ground is still frozen so there are water puddles in the yard.  Hopefully some of this water heads for the ponds and lakes in our area to help with the low water levels everywhere.  We are having a strong eastern wind with our rain that makes it feel like a colder day than the thermometer actually say that it is.

Thanks for stopping by today.