Elfin' Bob

Okay, some of us need some cheering up. If this doesn't do it, I don't know what will!

Take a look and see

http://www.elfyourself.com/?userid=91e4c17c6f3513d53c337c1G06121614

Connie in the Hospital and Back Home

Most of you know by now that Connie was admitted into ER last Friday morning. I received a phone call that morning from Connie that she was in ER and had a horrible headache and half her face was numb. I rushed to the hospital and stayed the day and night there. After CAT scans, EKG, and MRI tests, they found nothing. They think it might have been what they call a TIA, which is a very small stroke. The doctor did say she had slurred speech as well.

She has made a complete recovery and seems fine. Her boss gave her the week off, so she's resting. We go on vacation soon, so we're hoping she's up to it by then.

Corky's Accident

Something awful happened last night. My in-laws were all here. We had just finished dinner and were sitting around the table chatting. My sis in law got up to talk with Corky and she was just having a blast, so when she sat down, I decided to let Corky out of her cage so they could see how fun she was to hold etc. So, Corky was on top of the cage playing around and talking, playing peek a boo with Cathy. I got up to get Corky. Now, there is quite a psychology with handling parrots, especially African Greys who are much too smart for their own good. If the parrot is above you, the bird is superior, your boss, and you must bow down to it. If the bird is on the floor, he loves you, will kiss your toes and do your bidding. In the middle, depends on the bird's mood. But Corky's new cage is quite tall, so to get Corky off of it is very hard. I'm almost 6 feet tall, but I can't reach across the top of the cage because it's so tall and deep. So I basically wait until Corky's near an edge and sort of do a quick sweep of my arm across the top of the cage, making Corky step up and get her that way. If I go too slowly, she'll just decide to fight it out.

So, I do my thing and sweep the top of my arm and Corky steps up. But, being a fairly clumsy bird, she loses her balance, gets all in a tither and flutters down to the table. Normally, that's no biggy, but apparently she bumped her head on a glass coming down. When I reached for her, she was horribly disoriented and appeared to have a concussion or something. She was contorting her head backwards with her beak open and moving her head in ways I didn't think possible. It almost looked like her head was on backwards. I was a basketcase. Corky is as near human as any pet I've ever had and she was in such pain or distraught.

I picked her up and she kept doing this exorcist things. Oh, it was so scary. I held her close and kept petting her and reassuring her, but she was out of it. I really thought she was dying. She didn't seem to be able to breathe. I finally took her head ever so gently and while saying a little prayer for her, tried to stop her head from weaving and get it back into position. All of a sudden she just stopped, looked around, looked up at me and said, "Corky" and whistled like she always does when I pick her up. Then she seemed fine. I held her a long time to see if she was ok, and she appeared ok, but a touch wobbly. I put her back in her cage, once I felt she'd be able to stay on her perch without falling. She seems ok this morning. Wow, I don't ever want to go through that again.

You'd have to have an African Grey to understand all of this. They are very, very smart, on par with dolphins. They know what's going on and they really communicate with the family and love to make you laugh. Corky is 15. She should out live me, if she doesn't keep bonking her head on stuff.

I loved this cartoon. heh heh

Bob the Brownie

Tonight I have 12 Brownies coming over to finish their ceramic project from last week. They're just going to glaze them. I had to run a full kiln 3 times last week because of the school ceramic class's trip to "Our Way Ceramics" The school class started glazing their stuff today, but it will be a long process because their pieces are much more detailed. Hopefully, I'll post some pictures of all this at some point.

After the Fact:

bobrocky
I survived the Brownies last night. Actually, it went pretty well. One of the girls has Cerebral Palsy. She has fair motor skills and understands, but can't talk. I was happy to see she could paint the glaze on. I had to touch it up, but she was able to do it.

There was also a big portion of trust involved in this because the glaze was an ugly grey color, but is supposed to turn out to be a splash of fall colors. I wasn't able to test it, though I saw it in the store I bought it. They seemed fine to go for it. (It had better turn out right, or my name is mud.)

Then the leader insisted I bring them in person to the next meeting so the girls can thank me. That's 3 Bob the Brownie meetings in a row! What is happening to me?

Field Trip

Today we took our students who are in the Ceramics Class to Our Way Ceramics in La Habra. They got to see how a mold is poured and taken out of the mold. Then there was a tour of the Kilns and molds. They have 16,000 molds!

Afterwards the children were each allowed to buy one or more molded object to take back to school and cleanup and glaze. They bought so many different things. Some bought Christmas presents for their parents. Some bought things they like like animals etc. I was glad to see how much they enjoyed getting these very nice items.

I'm going to be firing that kiln up a lot in the next few weeks!

I'll publish pictures later.

Corky Moves

In 1991, when I bought my first house, I decided I wanted a new type of pet. I've always had a lot of pets over the years, but I wanted something a bit more exotic. I went to a pet store in Cyprus that had some really neat birds. In fact it only sold birds. As I was looking at all these baby birds on their perches, I heard the theme song from the Andy Griffith show on the radio. I thought that was strange because you don't usually hear it on the radio. A bit later I heard it again. But this time I realized it was coming from this parrot near the cash register.

I started talking to the salesperson about that bird. It was an African Grey parrot. As I talked, I learned it was the best of all the talkers and considered the most intelligent of all birds and was up there with elephants, dogs, monkeys and dolphins in intelligence. I decided this was the bird for me. So I bought a baby, named it Corky, and the rest is history.

Corky has delighted my friends and family over the years. She can say so many things. She mimics all of us in the house and she even rings herself on the phone, has a complete conversation and hangs up the phone! She calls the dogs, tells Zack to clean his room and says she loves me. ahhh.

Anyway, it's been some 15 years or so that I bought Corky. She's been a great pal. She's never been sick a day in her life and she has brought me a great deal of joy. Her cage was getting pretty ratty and we decided that it was time to splurge on a new and bigger one. I went back to where I bought her and Zack and I managed to get a new, bigger cage into the van. (It wasn't easy)

So, we bring it home and fix it all up with Corky's old toys and she outright hates the thing. She doesn't want to go in it. When she's in it she shivers like she's deadly ill. A friend on Maclectic found me a blog article about the same thing happening to another African Grey. They don't like change, it seems. It took a few days, but she's calmed down a bit now. Here are some picture of her new cage and Corky herself.

Back from vacation

Well, Connie, Zack, Elizabeth and I have returned from vacation. We were in Big Bear last week. Have a lot of catching up to do with school, church and email. Some of you may know that we were robbed a second time right before I left on vacation. They took our second tier of equipment, leaving us with almost nothing. Insurance just hasn't kicked in anything from the first robbery, so it's rather sad for us.

But vacation was great and surely needed. We had fun swimming, playing ping pong, horse shoes, air hockey, and billiards. We went horse back riding as well through the mountains. We took the kids fishing and they each caught a fish. Elizabeth caught the biggest trout. We BBQed them that night for dinner. They were great. We also found a new restaurant called the Backyard BBQ. Oh, my it was good stuff. Meat was smoked for about 14 hours. I never had such tasty food in my life.

You can view a few pictures on my Maclectic Gallery here and the next page:

http://maclectic.com/B2/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=118&g2_page=3

Well, got lots of things to catch up on now. Post later.

Feeling Down

It's been a lousy couple of days for me. Our church was broken into once again and all of our sound equipment and music equipment that was in the sanctuary was stolen except for the piano. Thankfully, they didn't vandalize the room. They jimmied the door with a crowbar or something and broke the lock open. This is the 3rd or 4th time they've done this since I've been there. I discovered it almost by accident. I went in my church office and noticed my file drawers were open. There were a few papers thrown about. Then I realized the petty cash was missing and it got worse from then on. The police were cool. THey really feel bad when a church gets broken into. Nothing should be broken into, but it just seems all the worse when people would stoop so low to break into a church. At least it does to me.

I guess I should get used to this by now, but I never will.

Bob

Biola Swimming Lessons

We decided that it was time to get Elizabeth swimming lessons. Having a pool, we've always been concerned about water safety. Zack could already swim well when he came to live with us. Elizabeth was swimming by about 3 years old. Maybe 4, can't remember, but she basically dog paddles. Neither Connie nor I are great swimmers. So, we signed up Elizabeth for lessons at Biola University, which is just about a mile from our house. Today is day 3. She is learning a lot, but she's not crazy about diving. Her instructor pushed her little fanny yesterday to just make her do it. She didn't like that! But she took it in stride. I was waiting for tears to come, but they didn't. Here are some pictures. She in the purple and black swim suit.

Birthday

Well, it's been way too long since I've blogged anything. My apologies if anyone is even still looking. I've been so busy working on my website, Maclectic, that I've not paid much attention to my blog. I just had a birthday. Had to work on my birthday and even stay late at work. But when I got home, Connie, mom, Becky were waiting for me with dinner. Connie has learned how to make my "birthday dinner" which consists of cheese enchiladas, fideo, refried beans and a green salad. It was very good.

Got some shirts, a neat headset so deaf old me can finally hear the TV set, some money, gifts certificates to the Apple Store and today I bought myself a graphics tablet so I can do better at drawing on the computer. Been wanting to try that out for some time now.

Bad news is I lost my cell phone yesterday between work and home. Have no idea what happened. Hope someone will find it and return it to me.

BobBlog

Today is my mom's birthday and tomorrow is my sister, Becky's, birthday and tomorrow is my 9th wedding anniversary. Boy, do we know how to bunch 'em up or what?

Fever Again

I'm staying home with Elizabeth today. It's raining and she's been fighting a fever for about a week. It seems to come and go, but got worse last night. We prayed for her yesterday and put her to bed and she had no fever throughout the night.

She's in better spirits today. Just made her lunch. She loves Pea Soup, so that's what she got. Soups good when you're sick on a rainy day.

That's about all for today.

Bob

Update

I'm sorry I haven't posted in so long. I've been very busy getting my website up. It is up and running and I'm very excited about it. This is the forums board I have had since 1986. It's been renovated throughout the years in many forms, but this is my favorite version. The address is Maclectic

Since I last wrote, ScooterPie, who I now call StupidPie, broke his leg again. Or, more correctly, he chewed off his entire cast and we had to get the whole thing set all over. Luckily, this time it was during the day and I was able to take him to see my regular vet and was charged much less than the first time.

Also, some rather exciting news for me. One of our city councilman, Steve Jones, who I used to work with at the Adult School when I taught high school subjects, called me to ask if I would be interested in serving on the Community Services Foundation. It works within the city helping non-profits raise money and I believe also dispurses money to them. I'm very interested, but I have to find out more about it, what night it meets etc.

School is going pretty well. We're about to add some new playground equipment. I'm very happy about that.

Well, that's all for now.

Bob

Broken Puppy

To add to our hectic couple of weeks, last Friday night, we heard the dog crying very loudly in the backyard. That's ScooterPie, the little guy. Everyone went to the back patio door and there was ScooterPie sitting, holding up a broken front paw. It had a clean break above his 'wrist' and was just dangling there. It was horrible. We found a local Vet who would come back and open up his clinic for us and he set it.

We went back on Sat. morning and picked him up. He had on the weirdest contraption I had ever seen. Here's a picture.

Update

I haven't blogged here for almost 20 days! But things have been hectic. We have rotated some kind of virus throughout the family for a couple of weeks. First I got it and missed 3 days of work. Then Elizabeth got it bad with high fevers, but just for 24 hours and then Connie got it bad and she's been sick since Sunday night. So, we just stayed home yesterday and Connie isn't working today. She'll probably be fine by Wed. we're hoping.

BobBlog

Well, I'm working from work on Windoze, so I guess that's why it's not working. You'll have to cut and paste, I guess.

www.maclectic.com

BobBlog

Link didn't show up in last post. Hopefully, this one does.

Bob

BobBlog

A friend of mine, Rich, and I have been working hard on getting Maclectic back up. For those who have known me a long time, you'll know I had a website called Maclectic BBS in the 1980s. It's still going. It has been reinvented many times and in many forms.

My friend and I are getting it back up in a new format that I think people will really like. The front page is similar to what I had last time, but there will be more features. We hope to have a shoutbox, where people can carry on conversations in real time with each other. Also, we're trying to get a Wiki on line, which will allow us to store important information alphabetically, like Wikipedia. One of the things we've not liked in the past has been losing important and informative posts that help people out with their computers.

I'm also very excited about the wordprocessing features of this system. Users have really great abilities to modify and structure their posts, inserting links and pictures quite easily.

You can view Maclectic right now and read up on Mac information. But the forums are not yet open, neither is registration. We have more work to do.

Maclectic is not limited to Macintosh. We cover many other areas such as humor, entertainment, politics, religion and much more. Here's the site to look at so far:

I Wonder if Jonah Knew About This?

Blog: Beachcombers strike gold with whale 'vomit'
January 24, 2006 11:15 AM PST
They say that one man's trash is another man's treasure. But in this case, one whale's bile is man's perfume.

Ambergris is a fatty excrement spewed by whales, and it can float for years in the ocean before washing ashore. The foul-smelling bile can solidify over years, soaking up the sun and ocean breeze to eventually turn into a sweet, smooth lump of perfume. In fact, it is used as an ingredient for perfumes and medicines.

An Australian couple walking on the beach found the rare substance recently, and not knowing what it was, turned to the Internet to investigate. An ecologist finally deemed the rock to be ambergris, or what some scientists and scavengers call "floating gold." According to a report from the BBC, the couple will net $295,000 from the discovery.

Still, ambergris is banned in the United States under endangered species legislation. Wouldn't it be great if cat's vomit was worth the same?

Posted by Stefanie Olsen

Our La Mirada

Here's Debbie's La Mirada site address. Have fun exploring.

Bob

http://www.ourlamirada.com/

La Mirada - My Town

Believe it or not I've started yet another website. In conjunction with a dear old friend, I'm now working on documenting the history of the City of La Mirada, where I live. La Mirada is a wonderful place to live. Just 17 miles from Los Angeles, out at the farthest edge of L.A. county, lies La Mirada. It's a quite town with little crime, friendly people, and a true community spirit. I've lived here since 1963.

My friend Debbie has started a website called Our La Mirada. She is posting some great pictures of times past. In fact, if you have any pictures that reflect La Mirada's past, even if they are just your kids playing in the park, let Debbie see them. Email them to her or at least tell her about them and she just might add them to her collection.

I've been taking pictures for her of places that have remained the same in our fair city. However, it became obvious that we were really creating a lot of work for ourselves, so we decided that I would cover more current events and post pictures of what La Mirada looks like now, while continuing to try and find new resources for Debbie. She now lives in Indiana, so it's a bit tough for her to scrounge around down here.

I've even talked to the city proper and they've been very supportive so far and seem glad this is happening. It appears that they are also in the midst of collecting photos for a new book, so perhaps we can all help each other out.

I'll post the websites here soon for you to look at. I'm at work right now, waiting for the last child to be picked up, so I don't have access to the URL at this moment. Debbie even has some old pictures of me on her website. You'll have to see if you can find me.

Have a great day.

Bob

Rain

It's really raining today. First time in 50 years it has rained on the Rose Parade. Glad I wasn't there. Most people just go once to that parade. It is SOOOO cold, standing there in the morning, waiting for it to start.

I was coming home from Sam's Club. I had just bought food for the school's snacks and a tree had fallen over from Creek Park on Santa Gertudes and was blocking 2 lanes of traffic. Luckily, hardly anyone was dumb enough to be driving in the storm. Except me, of course.