Saturday, February 28, 2009

The Move continues and a miracle occurs!

First for the miracle. Stephen Childers who is 18 and has been on the heart transplant list since before Christmas, got a heart at 2am this morning. Stephen is the son of Sharon another school nurse in the my school district. We are all so happy! I ran into Helen another nurse in Fry's parking lot and we were laughing and crying with joy as she told me. Thank you God! Please pray for his body to accept this heart and for him to have a great life!

This is the big mouth Merlin. How's that for a cat? We are still in the process of moving Julian's office home. He went to work today and found that Quest had turned off his internet, though they were just supposed to disconnect the land line phone. So, we moved his computer home and spent all day getting his computer connected up to the web. Buy a wireless router by me who doesn't know the difference between a router and a motem. Having to call the company and getting a man in India, very nice. He got me back on the web through the new router. When we realized that Julian didn't have a wireless card in his computer, the nice Indian man suggested we get our computer man to come over and install a card. Having heard stories from Kirsten, I know he thinks that we can just call and he will come. They are shocked that we clean our own houses, do our own laundry, etc. They always call people to do whatever needs to be done. probably wiser than spending a whole day struggling with something we don't know anything about. Anyway by 5:30 we had the wireless going, the problem I'm having now is that it keeps kicking me off. The biggest problem for Jules is that he realized that he cannot keep his same e-mail. After agonizing and griefing for several hours and making several calls to see if there is any way he can keep his same e-mail, it came apparent that he cannot. He finally sat on the couch and surprised the hell out of me when he said, "I think that this will be a blessing. I will have to e-mail all my clients and they will realize that I am still around." As he would say,"you just Ayrauded them." Meaning finding good out of a bad situation, making lemonaid out of lemons. This is actually something we all learned from my Mom. Thanks Mom!
This is CC warming her butt on the new HD cable box. Her new favorite spot!
These are 2 peach faced parrots. I've seen as many as 20 together. I see 2-6 of them every day in our yard.
Yours truely working on the computer. Sometimes I sit on the workout ball to exercise my core.
The nasturiums are all blooming now. We had a salad for dinner tonight. I used nasturiums, brocolli, snow peas, cauliflower and tomatoes from my garden. It was delish!
The African Daisy's are blooming now. They are colorful, perky and vibrant.
These flowers are a bulb. Part of my friendship garden, I think. I think they are in the onion family, cause the have a faint onion spell. Below are flowers from my new peach trees. I hope to have both peaches and apricots this year. I'm especially excited about the apricots because you can never get apricots in the store that taste like apricots. At least not like the ones that I ate while sitting up in one of our apricot trees at home when I was a kid.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Victorian Bushfire Appeal

These are gum trees in Australia, beautiful but deadly when they burn. Please donate to the Victorian Bushfire Appeal 2009 @www.redcross.org.au/default.asp

Kangaroos, people and rural communities in Victoria, Australia need our help.
Phoenix sunset overlooking Camelback Mountain and the Praying Monk taken one street over from my house. I use the Praying Monk as a reminder to pray in my busy days.
This is the beginning of rearranging our family room into Julian's office. This is one end of the room, my office and it will stay pretty much the same. We now have a flat screen TV and have moved the couch to the empty wall you see on the right side of the picture. When we moved the couch we scratched the wood floor which upset me greatly! Now we have a long scratch about 6 feet long in the middle of the room. However, we are now watching our new High Def TV from this end of the room. The TV sits next to my computer. It is really quite cosy. Next is to move the drawing tables etc into the other end of the room.
It's harvest time for the oranges. They are really sweet this year as usual.
African Violets are blooming they like the winter and love it when it rains. They are part of my friendship garden. Given to me by Mom. I'm not sure who gave them to her. My paperwhites just finished blooming they come from my Grandma Cooley's downtown apartments.
These are Snow Peas, great for eating raw with dip or in stir fry. They came from the Sing's through my Mom.
These are my brocolli. Brocolli and cauliflower do well here in the winter. After you harvest the initial big head, they continue producing little baby floweretts that are very tender.
These are my tomatoes. Notice the Christmas tree lights. On frosty nights I plug the lights in and cover them with a sheet to keep them from freezing.
This is our new handle on our redwood gate. Julian made it. I love it.
Hanging flower basket, like they have on Victoria Island.
I put these purple flowers together. I like all the shades of purple and the different heights and shapes.