First Day of Spring

Posted on March 20, 2012 by civilwarrose5

Today was another gorgeous day. I went for a walk during lunch and I didn’t want to go back into the office. I had to run errands after work and I just kept marveling at how beautiful it was today. It’s hard to believe that it’s only March. We got off light this year with a very easy winter so you wouldn’t think that I would be as impressed with gorgeous weather.

The cats enjoyed it, too. I found a window with a screen in it and opened it for them. Bob loves to sit in an open window. Plus, when I got home there was a beautiful male cardinal sitting on my deck railing. Looking around today it made me wonder why people in the current administration want to so badly take away our rights and liberty in order to replace it with socialism. Only a truly free society can really appreciate the beauty that God has graced us with. If you are repressed by socialism you are too busy just trying to survive day-to-day. Ask anybody who lived in socialist Russia.

Last night I painted the trim in the front bedroom. Today I peeled the tape off of the floor and walls. I thought that painters’ tape was supposed to be sensitive?? It managed to peel off some of the finish from my floor and some of the paint from the wall. 😦 It’s okay, though. It just made me realize that I’m a horrible painter. If Jay buys a place that needs to be painted I’ll have to hire somebody to do it because I would be embarrassed for him after I was finished.

Is it Friday yet? I miss Jay. 😦

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Fun Fly 3-18-12

Posted on March 18, 2012 by civilwarrose5

This weekend the Thermal G R/C Club held a Fun Fly. I wish that they’d held it yesterday because the weather was GORGEOUS!

We went up to the flying field to stretch our wings. I can’t even begin to tell you how nice it felt to be able to get out there and watch the jet have room to move. Some people may think that I’m crazy, but I really enjoy watching Jay fly his planes. A lot of it is a pride thing for me.

 

 

There were a handful of guys up there, and one who had a plane to maiden (take up on its first flight). Jay was helping him trim it out and try to get things just so on it. I was standing a bit away when I noticed that Jay was the one flying the plane. One of the other guys mentioned it out loud, and that elicited a reply from a third guy, “Ah, that makes sense. The flying suddenly became so precise!” I just smiled. They were talking about my sweetie and how good he is. 🙂

Despite the fact that Jay gets irritated that the club holds the Fun Fly on a Sunday all of the time (and he has to go into work Sunday evenings), we took a couple of jets and went out there this morning. Except the website said that it was being held at the Field. We arrived and nobody was there. We waited 20 minutes and still nobody showed up, which was just weird. Jay called one of his buddies and it turns out that they were at the VoTech school. I was NOT happy! First off, they need to get the information correct on their website because some people can’t attend meetings or the flying in the gym (which is when the location was decided upon, but the guy updating the website completely misunderstood). And secondly, if we had known that we were going to be at the VoTech then Jay could have brought some of his other jets that require a dry landing strip (and the field is still quite wet).

Most of the guys don’t even fly. This is what you typically see; one or two guys flying and the rest of them just standing around yapping. I’ve been told that this is part of the hobby, but it still irritates me that the ones making the decision about when and where these events are held aren’t even the ones who are flying!

 

 

I managed to get my temper under control, after vocalizing my irritation with the misunderstanding, and I snapped a few pictures. This was the first flight that Jay did today. He was flying the medium A-10 that he has. He is joined here by Mark and Bill who are flying acrobatic planes.

 

 

This is a close up of an acrobatic plane. It’s light weight so that it can do all kinds of tricks. This isn’t just for flying around in circles and perhaps doing a roll or two. I believe that this was getting ready to hover, which is a move where the prop is up and the tail is down so that it looks like the plane is hanging in the air by the prop. There are a bunch of other tricks you can do with them, too.

 

Wow. Doesn’t that look good? Oh, and the plane hovering in the background doesn’t look too bad, either. 😉

 

 

 

 

Again, more watching than flying going on…

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, wait! There’s a little bit of flying going on. Special notice is being taken and opinions are being given. Let’s just hope that it’s not, “Hey! I bet you can’t get close to those trees!”

 

 

 

Another reason for these gatherings is so that guys can bring planes to show off. For instance, Cliff’s Slick was eyed on the ground more than when it was in the air. Although, while Jay was flying it I did overhear somebody say how good Jay was with the plane. Again, that made me smile.

 

 

As the group was looking at Cliff’s plane there were questions being asked of Jay. Which is normal. I’m sure that during this conversation Jay was telling Adam, “Electric doesn’t do that.” 😀

 

 

 

I admit that I can be counted among those who do a lot of looking and no flying. That’s only because I haven’t earned my wings, yet. Until I do, I’ll keep looking…. isn’t he hot?! Jay’s the glow plug in my engine of life. 😉

 

 

 

I am sad to report that we did have one mishap. As Jay was flying his ‘Fabu’ he was going to show me how he had hopped his plane off of the asphalt at eJets. As he hit the pavement there was a sudden scraping/breaking noise and we knew that something wasn’t right. It turns out that the rotor was loose and when the jet hit the pavement it jarred it apart. This was what remained. We didn’t have a spare fan with us, so the Fabu was put out of commission for the day.

Overall, it was a good time. It’s nice to spend the day out in the fresh air and enjoying ourselves. It also gives Jay a chance to wipe off the cobwebs and get some flying in before we head to SEFF.

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Kobra Project Week 3/4

Posted on March 18, 2012 by civilwarrose5

I didn’t update this project last weekend because I was grumpy and forgot to take pictures while I was at Jay’s. I have corrected that this week and would like to show you the progress that’s been made on this plane. It really is a cute little thing.

This is what it looked like two weeks ago. The tail was not attached, the nose wasn’t quite finished and some modifications needed to be done on it. This plane is going to have a prop on the front that is run by an electric motor and the kit was designed for a gas engine to go on the front. Thus the need for modification.

 

This is what it looks like right now. Look at it! Can’t you see it straining to be racing through the air? You can tell that it’s frustrated by sitting still. Poor Kobra!

 

 

 

I wanted to remind you of what the nose looked like. This is why Jay had to modify it. Although, it is a pretty motor. lol. Take note of the square nose and edges.

 

 

 

Isn’t that gorgeous? We have a nose cone installed and can you see how perfectly the curve of the noise lines up with the cone? I am impressed because the rounding of it looks so good. It all had to be done by hand, and made quite the pile of sawdust, but what a great job!

 

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Meteor? Comet? Shooting Star?

Posted on March 16, 2012 by civilwarrose5

Tonight I saw the most amazing sight! I wish that I’d had a chance to get my camera, or even to get Jay’s attention in time for him to see it. We went out on the porch with Jay’s telescope to look at Venus and Jupiter. As he was adjusting everything and getting the planets into view I was just looking up at the sky to see what was going on. I glanced down for a few seconds and when I looked back up there was this giant orange streak heading across the sky!

It looked something like this, but not as bright. Or maybe it just didn’t seem like it because the sky wasn’t completely dark. When I saw it I said, “Hey, Jay! Jay!” I was so excited and amazed at what I was seeing that I had a hard time articulating the fact that there was a burning ball of something in the sky. By the time Jay looked up, it was gone. 😦 I wish that he had seen it so he could verify what it was that I actually saw. I’ve looked online for images that resemble what I remember it looking like in my head, but I could be remembering it incorrectly.

Either way, it was a very interesting sight and one which I won’t soon forget.

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Painted!

Posted on March 15, 2012 by civilwarrose5

Since moving into my house I’ve been a bit of a slacker. I haven’t really done too much in the way of improvements. My excuse is that I come home exhausted from all of the stress and anxiety that I’ve dealt with at work over the past couple of months. Last week I finally kicked my butt in gear and decided to get my front bedroom transformed into my library. I thought that maybe if I could get some of my beloved books put out that it would feel a little more like home to me. That and my mom has told me that my books need to be out of her spare bedroom before my younger sister comes home at Easter. *sigh* Fine! So after a lot of hard work, this is how my library turned out:

 

Don’t I wish!! Unfortunately, that’s the library at the Biltmore Estate. Since I haven’t married a Vanderbilt in the last few months I will have to show you the actual pictures. Be prepared for a disappointment after seeing the above gorgeous picture.

This is what the front bedroom looked like when I bought the house. I loved my grandma, but I’m not sure what she was thinking when she put the contact paper on the wall. You can see it to the left of the window. It peeled off easily enough, but it left behind a sticky residue. I did my best to get it off, but it still remained tacky. I gave up and just decided to paint over it. A mistake? As of right now… nope. lol

This is right before I got ready to paint last night. I don’t have any shelves or books up, but my goal this week was to get the walls painted. The ceiling has been painted in this picture, but you can’t tell. Also, you can’t see the gorgeous floor. It’s definitely under there. Believe me. I had originally planned on painting the walls the same color as my living room, which is a tannish color. Here, let me show you.

 

 

I thought that this color would be soothing and calming. It would be a nice hue in the library. Oh, and there’s my gorgeous floor. It looks like that in the bedroom, too. 🙂

As I was standing there looking at the walls I just knew that I couldn’t bring myself to make them a neutral color. I need personality in there. So that left me in a quandry. The only other colors I have are blue, green, white, and a creamy ivory. Blue is my favorite color and I knew that I had about a third of a gallon left from when I painted my bedroom. That color had been a bit bright, though, so I thought I would tone it down with some white. At first I was worried that I was making it too light, that it would look more like a weird white than a blue.

 

Obviously, I didn’t have to worry about that. In fact, it ended up being much brighter than I had expected. You walk in and you are stopped by the blueness of it. Not sure how I feel about it, but it’s done and I don’t feel like redoing it. lol. It is toned down a bit, I guess. When I stand in the hallway and look into my room I can see the difference.

 

 

 

Just to remind you, this is my bedroom. It has the Slap-You-In-The-Face blue on the walls. I do intend on doing a type of rag painting in white over it to tone it down a little. And as you can see the white did bring the brightness down a little. But just a little.

 

 

I can’t decide if this color works for a library. On the other hand, if somebody drops off a baby boy on my front steps in a basket I will have a room perfectly painted for him! lol

Here are two more before and after pictures:

You can’t tell in this picture, but the walls were a pink color before.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All that’s left to do is paint the trim. I’ll have it full of books before you know it!

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My Back Yard

Posted on March 14, 2012 by civilwarrose5

Today was a gorgeous day, so I decided to do a little bit of work outside while it was still bright. It’s kind of nice to get home and have a few hours of daylight left. And I enjoyed being outside. I just wished that I wasn’t in my own back yard. Is that bad for me to say? I just get so frustrated out there because there’s so much to do. I feel like between the inside stuff and the outside stuff, I’m never going to get caught up.

My grandmother was getting weak, so my uncle put up a fence so that she could just let her dog out the door without having to put it on a leash. I have no idea why they needed three fences, but they did. So now I have two sections of fence to take down.

This is part of the first fence that you encounter. This section of it really used to irritate me because the gate was there and so I couldn’t back all the way up to my back door. It made about six feet of my driveway inaccessible. My dad helped me take the gate down this winter. Then I have that stupid post right there that held some wire fencing that I removed, but the post won’t budge. It’s annoying because you hit it every time you turn the corner to head to the car.

These are the other two sections of fence. The only part that I’m going to keep in place is the far chain-linked fence. In fact this fence with the red gate rather irritated me. When I would shovel I had to toss the snow over that fence. One night I was in a rotten mood, so I kicked the snot out of it and opened it up. lol. Not very mature, but it made me feel better.

 

Here we have another picture of the double fences. Also, you can’t see it, but to the left is a pile of crap that my uncle left. Literally. He tossed all of the dog crap into one spot. Nice, eh?

 

 

 

This is my back deck. It will be nice to use once the weather warms up and I get it cleaned up a bit. I helped my dad on this deck when my grandma still lived here, so at least I know that it was built correctly. I only have one problem with the deck…

 

 

 

… the trees. My grandma loved nature and birds, so my aunt and uncle bought her these trees. She wanted to be able to see them when she looked out her kitchen window so my uncle planted them close. Can you see how close they are to the deck?? They are still young with lots of growing to do so it’s not like they are going to stay that size forever. Not only that, but these are flowering trees. Not a good thing for a person with allergies to almost everything that’s natural. Needless to say, these trees are coming down. Also, this twisted branch thing in the front of the picture is some kind of bush that grows flowers that hummingbirds love. That’s all fine and dandy, but when this bush is at it’s prime it’s huge and covers the entire corner of the deck. That will be removed as well. I don’t need my allergies flaring up, and also it’s not good for the deck to be covered by a moist plant like that.

One thing that I do like about the back yard is I’ll have room for a vegetable garden. You can kind of see my grandma’s gardens in the background. My uncle made them for her out of landscaping timbers (which are beginning to rot). My dad and I are going to build bigger ones this spring.

 

 

There’s a lot more crap back there, but I don’t want to bore you with it. All I can say is that most of it is being torn out. That doesn’t sound very nice, but it’s what I will need to do to keep my allergies somewhat in check.

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Cubs Square Finished!

Posted on March 13, 2012 by civilwarrose5

It didn’t take me very long (and I didn’t think that it would because it was a simple pattern), but my latest COLE’s Quilt square is finished. Woo-hoo!

Here’s what it looked like last week:

And here is the finished product:

I will get that put in the mail tomorrow. It will be a nice excuse to take a walk during lunch.

My next project will be a cross stitched A-10 ‘Warthog’ for that special somebody in my life. He just has to decide which picture he wants me to stitch, and then I get to play with my new pattern maker software! I hope that it turns out okay. I’ve never used any kind of software to make a pattern before so this will be a learning curve.

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The Kobra Project – Week 2

Posted on March 5, 2012 by civilwarrose5

First off,  I have a correction that has to be made. When I have incorrect information then I will do my best to fix it. I don’t want anybody getting the wrong idea, and I’m definitely not perfect. I was reminded that the Kobra was the third plane that Jay ever built, it was not the first. Technically this will be the third Kobra that he has put together, but there were a couple of other practice planes in there before he got to this one. Either way, he’s VERY good at building them or modifying them to his specifications. I love watching him work because he makes it look so easy. His work is beautiful when he’s done, too.

Last week he started on the wings. Do you remember what they looked like?

Yep. He had the skeletons put together and he was starting to mark out where he was going to put the landing gear. You can see the retracts here in the picture. A week will give you some decent time to get things done. Are you ready to see what they look like a week later?

 

Aren’t they pretty?? Where all you had was the skeleton before now we are adding some flesh and some sinews. You can see that the landing gear has been installed and the beginnings of boxing it in has begun. Also, if you look you can see that he’s got the ailerons going. I wish that you could touch it because the sanding job is wonderful. It’s so smooth!

I wanted to give you another close up of the wing last week. At this stage it actually reminds me of the toothpick bridge that I had to build in high school for my physics class. Except, the ratio of wood to glue on the Kobra is MUCH higher than my bridge. lol

 

See the difference? If you look towards the leading edge (I think that’s what it’s called) of the wing you can see how rounded it is. Per what I’ve been told, that was a square piece of wood that had to be sanded down and shaped just right. In fact, when Jay wasn’t looking I ran my hand over the edge a few times just to enjoy the smoothness of it. I didn’t want him getting a big head about how good he is. lol

Last week when I left his house all that he had put together were the wing skeletons. This week he has most of the pieces assembled.

Look! We have a fuselage! Okay, so right now it doesn’t look like much. In fact, it kind of looks like it should be used over in Venice with a little guy standing on the back steering the pair of lovers through the canals. Shhh… don’t let Jay know that I likened his fuselage to a gondola. lol

 

With the pieces arranged the fuselage has lost its boat-like look. If you were wondering, Jay went into the Navy to fly planes, not to ride around on the boats. So he will be happy that it doesn’t look like a gondola now. lol

 

 

This plane was originally designed to house a gas-powered engine. My sweetness, however, has decided to modify this Kobra to have an electric motor. That means a slight bit of engineering on his part, but that won’t be hard. After all, my sweetie is WAY smarter than most engineers. Believe me, I know. I work with a bunch of them! This is going to be a nice looking plane once it is finished.

Finally, I just wanted to show off the motor because I think that it’s so pretty. In person it’s a really pretty color of blue. That’s the only reason I took the picture. lol

 

 

The color scheme has yet to be decided. Are there any suggestions? We need a color scheme that will enable Jay to know which side he’s looking at when it’s up in the air. Besides, having it a solid color makes it boring. You need a little bit of pizzazz. Any suggestions will be considered. Thanks!

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Cubs Quilt Square 3-4-12

Posted on March 5, 2012 by civilwarrose5

Last week seems like a blur, so I don’t even remember how much time I had to actually sit and stitch. This little quilt square doesn’t seem like it should be taking me this long to finish, but it is.

Last week:

This was when I was working on the white that surrounds the ‘Cubs’ part of the design. It was very hard for you to see just how much of the white I had to do.

 

 

 

This week:

This gives you a slightly better idea of what I was talking about. Between the blue and the red is a whole bunch of white! I actually have a little more of the blue stitched, but I was glutened this weekend so I’m not feeling like dragging the camera out and uploading things. You will just have to wait until next week. Hopefully by then I’ll be just about done. 🙂

 

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Lingerie Chest

Posted on March 4, 2012 by civilwarrose5

Last week I finally got tired of not having enough space in my dresser for all of my bras. It’s not that I have a huge amount of them, but all of the new bras seem to have lots of padding in them not only for lift, but also to keep the world from seeing your ‘high beams’. I was being grumpy and decided that I had to do something, so I went out and made a purchase.

As you can see it’s not a high quality piece of furniture. My dad bought my mom a lingerie chest a few years ago for Christmas and it’s made out of solid wood. It was not cheap. I don’t need anything that’s going to last for 300 years. I just need something to make me happy for now.

 

 

I carried it into the bedroom so that I could assemble it and not have to drag it very far. I laughed when I saw this on the box:

I’m not sure if you can read the very left symbol, but it says ‘Team Lift’. After I carried it into my house and down the hallway to the bedroom by myself. Since it said that I would need a team I decided that I should put that together first. Luckily I didn’t have to go far to find one.

As you can see, I have some professional supervisors living with me. They inspected the box and it was determined that everything appeared to be in good order. The box was sturdy and held up well to the physical tests they put it through. They were exhausted after that, however, and so they disappeared to take some naps.

 

I had all of these pieces and nobody to supervise me. Hopefully I would be able to handle it! Actually, in all seriousness, I enjoy doing projects like this. They are easy to follow and when you’re all done there’s a sense of accomplishment. Sitting at a desk all week really doesn’t give you the same satisfaction. You can’t visibly see your hard work. When you’ve finished putting together something like this then you have something to show for it. Even without my furry supervisors. lol

 

 

It was at this point that I wondered what I had gotten myself into. A blister was starting to form on my hand from the screwdriver, and I had wondered who in the world did the designing on this thing. After all, the ‘brace’ is that piece of cardboard there in the middle. What is that supposed to do? If Chester were to put her feet on it the whole thing would rip into two pieces. So I just shook my head as I screwed it on. Might as well use it, right?

 

 

It’s a five drawer chest… so here are the drawers before being assembled. And yes, the bottoms of the drawers are just cardboard. I’m glad that I’m not bigger chested! I don’t know if those cardboard bottoms would be able to handle the massive Over-the-shoulder-boulder-holders that would be required. lol

 

One down. Four more to go…

 

 

 

 

 

 

I managed to assemble the rest of the drawers and then put the chest into place. I’m rather happy with it. 🙂

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