Better watch where you're steppin'. You never know what you might step in.


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Might I suggest boots? Them hacked up hairballs are getting really deep in here.


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There's so many of them that this one thinks they need to be weighed.


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Oh now, really!!!!!!! This is just too much.


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I like myself well enough to habitually spend large amounts of time with me. I have found that not everyone can say that, and I tend to find that people who are more needy than I am gravitate towards me in real life. This makes no sense to me. An excellent example is the woman who offered to create a site in her small trailerpark for our older trailer even though she knew that local codes might give her a problem. On the surface, this appears to be such a kind gesture and it gives you some faith in the goodness of people. However, more contact with her than I used to have has definitely bred some contempt in me for her as a human being. I certainly don't hate her, nor does my growing lack of respect for her make us any less happy to live where we live. My new surroundings are everything I want them to be and more.

She owns four of the six homes here in this little park. They are in such bad repair that I'd be ashamed to rent them out to anyone, let alone charge the amount of money for them that she does. She manages to keep them rented, despite the problems, because she choses tenants that would have a difficult time renting somewhere else. They have large dogs that they don't want to lose. She rents them fully furnished, however the ovens don't work and the refrigerators are little more than dormitory sized cubes. My closest neighbor is a single man with a very large and lovable dog, he doesn't even have a stove that works. Twice this winter he's had to have her make repairs to the furnace. The first time she dithered around until she found some kid with a little knowledge to change some fittings which cut down on the air being drawn into the furnace and it restored his heat. She took 5 days to do this because he could bleed the line and the furnace would start and run, but it wouldn't kick back on again. She knows the fuel line needs replacing, it has so many weak connections in what should be a solid piece that it constantly draws air along with the kerosene, which uses up more kerosene to heat the home. It is costing this man $700 every 5 weeks to fill his tank. She says she pays the fuel bill, I don't believe her. She wouldn't spend that much money on anything unless it was for herself.

She is extremely selfish and self centered. She has no idea what to do with herself unless someone is there, yet she can't carry on a conversation about anything other than...her. All she wants to talk about is the good she does for others, how much everything is costing her, how everyone takes advantage of her, how she wants to make more money than she does, etc. I thought at first that this was a result of the death of her husband following a long and painful battle with cancer. I've begun to suspect that is part of the problem but I think it just made a less than desirable character trait much worse. I can't figure out whether it is that she doesn't see that she isn't liked, or whether she thinks it's acceptable because she doesn't like herself. If one doesn't like themselves, how can they expect others to like them? The hardest part of all this is the knowledge that I can't help her, the only one that can is herself. I would like to help her because in a rather strange way she has helped me. Not only by providing a site for my home, but in ways that are possibly not immediately visible.

I feel sorry for her rather than like her. It's pity that I would not want someone else to extend to me. She has no real friends, simply because she's so needy that she has no idea how to let them be themselves and have the privacy that each of us requires on some level. She wants attention and doesn't seem to care that it's all negative. My brother tried to be a friend, and she moved in on his life and took it over to such a degree that he ended up disliking her. She called him one time when he wasn't feeling well and asked him to go with her someplace. He refused and when she attempted to make him feel sorry for her by telling him she'd had a bad day, he suggested she stay home. What would she do there? She actually asked him that. His response was a very firm "clean the damn place". She tried to control my brother the same way she tries to control everyone else. He really tried to be a friend but he began to feel that she wanted something more from him. Once that happened, he stopped taking her calls.

She is the type of person that I would never want to be. I would never want to be that self centered. Nor would I wish to be controlling of every aspect of my own life. She is most likely this way because of fear. Spending ones life fearful of making mistakes, or fearful of others and the damage they can do to you, seems to give some people the need to control. They spend so much time controlling the wrong things that they miss out on so much that is good in life. It seems to me that when you're so busy stressing yourself out trying to control, you're missing the scenery along the highway of lifes travels. I don't want to miss the scenery, it's what makes the journey all worthwhile. Thanks to her I am learning the patience required to stop and enjoy the scenery, and the acceptance necessary to let it be exactly what it is.

At the bottom of the Blogstream sidebar, directly under the Archives entries are some numbers. Right now those numbers indicate that I have had 27,944 unique visitors since opening my blog in April of 2006. Since it is a counter of unique visitors, that means that I get over 1000 visitors a month. To be precise, that means I get 1330.66666666666666666667 visitors a month. Hmmmmmm, I wonder who the .666666666666667th visitor is? Now, this counter does not count the same visitor over and over to my page in any given day. It does not tell me how long someone sits on my page, nor does it tell me where the ISP of said visitor originates from. It also doesn't tell me who that visitor is.

I now find that with the addition of one of the fun toys available to me I could find all that information out. All I need to do is go to a website and download this thing called a stat counter. I may not be able to track you directly to your door, but there are a few things I could find out for myself with the addition of the fun new toy. For instance:

1. I could find out that you really didn't listen to my Saturday night music, because my stat counter would show that you weren't on my page long enough. Oh, you are so busted! You also could find out that I didn't listen to your music because I wasn't on your page long enough. Oh dear, I guess I'm busted. Shame on me, because I lied to you and said I did. Am I going to go to Hell for that?

2. We could also find out that we actually aren't even reading the posts. Remember, we will KNOW just how long we spent on someones page, and how many times we returned to...in some cases read the train wreck. Sometimes the comments are actually better than the posts. Those train wrecks, blog wars, or even the single blogger with many many identities fighting with themselves is just so much fun to watch.

3. We could find out that someone actually spent HOURS sitting with our blogs open in a window. There are many good reasons for that, listening to the music, reading the archives for those little nuggets we may have missed. However, I saw somewhere that some people believe that pointing out those reasons is a form of hostility. Apparently they believe that Blogstream is rife with computer hackers and others who want to steal...what?

4. If we believed all the information our stat counter provides we might even be able to find that a blogger is lying about the state they actually live in. I live in New York, my ISP is from Asheville, N.C. I use AOL to surf sometimes. My, my how confusing my information will be to those of you with a stat counter. Not to worry, you will always know it's me by my blog URL. That information will show up when you have provided yourself with your very own personal stat counter.

5. With a stat counter, we will ALWAYS know who owns the character blogs that so many bloggers find fault with. They may be able to generate many blogs here by using different email addresses, but with a stat counter we will always know who you are by your ISP. You know? That just might take all the fun out of the guessing games we play trying to figure you all out. There is always the possibility that you can continue to create character blogs by using different computers with different ISP's so all is not entirely lost.

Do I care about any of this? Ummmmm, no, not unless you are pushing your ideas about what fun toys we can use for your own personal agenda. It's an odd sort of thing, but when I saw the blog suggesting this, there was a suggestion that those of us who are on your blogs for a long period of time were possible hackers. Having spent hours reading someone's archives and in some cases listening to the finetune widget through all of it's 45 songs, I thought maybe I had another reason for that phenomenon. So, I used it along with my knowledge of what my presence on your blog might show on your stat counter. I never thought that I was being hostile. I even said for some it was a good idea but that I wasn't interested. Another blogger also mentioned why she might be on your blog. Odd that we should BOTH be accused of attempting hostility. My question at this point is why would we be hostile if we were just explaining our own behavior?

Not able to come up with a good answer to that question, I just decided to go and choose some music for tonight and to take those blogs off my list of places to visit. I'm not interested in playing a lot of petty games online. I enjoy the reading and the commenting, and I am not going to involve myself in someones silly game.

In September of 2006, Hubby and I traveled up the road to Remsen to enjoy their annual Festival of the Arts called Remsen Barn Fest. It's the biggest most successful arts/crafts show held in Central New York. It's the hardest to get into, with a waiting period of 2 years in some cases. It's also the most seriously juried show which is why I believe it's so successful. You aren't going to find plastic canvas, or pom pom and glue gun crafts there. These are the high end crafts, the furniture makers, basket weavers, glass blowers and stained glass artists, specialty foods and performance artists. It draws some 20,000 people to this town for one weekend of exploration.

This is where I found Frank DellaPenna of Pennsylvania and his 200 bell carillon. His story is very interesting, he graduated from the French Carillon School and returned to the United States to work for a Dutch Company that made this "portable" bell carillon. I say "portable" because it's weight is 4 tons and contains 200 bells of different sizes. He was hired to demonstrate it for the company but apparently they had few takers for the "portable" variety. Most buyers were churches and cathedrals which purchased the bells for their stationary carillons. Finally they sold the portable and Frank was unemployed. He thought his dream of bringing his music to the world was at an end.

He was contacted on his birthday in 1985 and asked to come to Valley Forge to play the carillon in honor of his first teacher who had died. As they needed a carillon player, he stayed. One day he was fortunate enough to meet someone who believed that Frank's talent was such that it should be shared. This man purchased the original portable carillon and Cast In Bronze has been traveling to festivals and other venues sharing his music.

I can attest to the power of his performance first hand. The crowd that stood in the sun to listen to him was made up of all ages and even a small group of adolescent boys stopped their shenanigans long enough to really listen. Dressed in black, he sits slumped over the levers that operate the bells. The music begins. Pre-recorded CD's are used in his performance. They contain all other sounds except the bells that he must play to complete the piece we listen to. I found myself thinking how corny his costume was, All black, high laced boots, shirt with flowing sleeves, hood and bronze bird mask. Then the performance begins and everything changes. Even my dyed in the wool country boy, can't stand classical music Hubby was caught up in the music.

When I first got DSL I was hoping to upload some songs from my CD of his entitled "The Voyage". That was not to be. I never thought of Youtube until today. I don't know why, but I happened to be in Youtube and something made me search Cast In Bronze and I found videos of some of his performances in Texas and Colorado. This one is not the best of his music, but it was the one that showed his performance most clearly. Plus it is the only one that is NOT "Carol of the Bells". As I was listening to the video, Hubby came to stand behind me to watch. I wonder if Mr. DellaPenna knows how much of his dream he has actually realized? If I were to judge by Hubby alone, Cast In Bronze has the ability to cross all lines of music appreciation.

Is this week over with yet?



I don't know about anybody else, but my week doesn't seem to be going all that well.



Something sure does stink, I wonder what it is?



I just can't wait for the weekend.



Say, maybe I feel a bit better at that.