Piffffllle on all of you. I have to wear reading glasses now if I really want to read the fine print any more. I can't do all the tilling, hauling, spreading mulch and digging holes in the garden any more and I really don't want to. I stopped cleaning gutters and blowing leaves off the roof before I moved but I was up the ladder in a New York minute the other day when My grandson confided in me that he was afraid of heights after I had him climb up there to remove a tree limb. He finally did get the limb off, I'm sure because he didn't want to be outdone by his grandmother. I'm checking with the hospital about mixng up babies because MY grandson surely wouldn't be afraid of heights.:0) I still cook all the time if that counts for anything, and I can still chase dust bunnies with the best of them. I never used to have backaches but just spent most of last week and this weekend taking muscle relaxers and lying on the heating pad. Lord luv a duck, I feel like such a wuss compared to the rest of you. I talk to myself a lot but haven't talked to any trees lately. I did bend my bumper on some bricks but if you had to try and manuever your car out of my backyard with all those trucks parked back there you would have dented your bumper to. I don't even think that counts because Neil still doesn't know I did it, sometimes it helps when ones spouse can't see anything. The more I think about it, I do pretty darn good chasing our 4 pound ball of fluff all over this house to retrieve all the things she tries to scarf down that she isn't supposed to have, like twist ties from the bread, a nickle, broomstraws, strings, her poop, well you get the idea. I must have crawled under the sofa, bed, chairs a million times today to get the little squirt's ball for her. Shoot! now that I think about it, I'm getting around like a spring chicken and maybe I have a few good years left in these old bones. Marda, I couldn't even stand up on a skateboard so my hat's off to you. Sheila, I have that book. Suzy, I've had thin fine hair all my life so I expect to go bald any day now. Do they still make wigs? I'm going to bed now, it'll take me all night to fall asleep and tomorrow I may just try out a new skate board. Yeah right!

Whew! That photo just blew me away! She sure is a doll. She looks like the epitome of young and beautiful and full of life, doesn't she? Give her a hug for me. If she's yours she's got to be a good kid! LOL

Strangely, I took this in late afternoon on a cloudy day (yesterday). The violet sits in a north facing window. I didn't expect that much light coming in to cause background issues. Yes, I was somewhat convinced it was a good plant before bidding, just wasn't really wanting another standard (lol).

I'll add a few more. Sears and Roebuck catalog Using a Sears and Roebuck catalog for toilet paper (in an outhouse). Corn cobs soaking in kerosene in a can on the back porch used as a fire starter for the kitchen stove. Kitchen matches (The last kitchen match made in the US was about 2 years ago.) Blow torch Bump starting a car engine. (It should have a manual transmission for this. This can be accomplished with a few automatics if the transmission has a rear oil pump. The vehicle has to be pushed fast enough for the oil pump to engage the transmission clutches tight enough to avoid slipping.) Setting the output of a generator on a car engine by moving a control brush. Fountain pen. Dictionary. Marchant calculators. These could extract square roots. This was accomplished by a series of subtractions while keeping count of the number of subtractions. It took several seconds to do this. It was using an oddity of the number system: Adding a series of odd numbers, starting with 1, returns the square of the number of odd numbers. Isn't that neat. 1 1 3 4 [1+3] 5 9 [4+5] 7 16 [7+9] 9 25 [9+16] ************ By the way, the proper lubricant for a slide rule is talcum powder or body powder. The object is to have the static friction as close as possible to dynamic friction to reduce a stick-slip action. When these two frictions are equal, the slide rule action becomes smooth. Slide rules made of bamboo usually do not require lubricants, and in my day, were more expensive. Engineering slide-rules have vertical cursor lines on both sides of the rule. These are adjustable and should be checked for alignment before using the slide-rule. These two cursors must be aligned with each other, in other words, when the cursor on one side lies on its index, the other side must also be on its index line. The index line is at ends of the scale. The reason for this is there are calculations that use both sides of the device and will be in error if the two lines on the cursor glasses are not aligned. A 10 inch slide-rule can only calculate to 3 places. Sometimes, it can do a 4th place if the answer lies between the 1 and 2 on the scale. A 20 inch slide-rule adds one more place. I have seen only one of these in my lifetime. It was a special issued by GM to some of its engineers in the 1950s. ************