If I can post in 20 minutes....

...then maybe I can get to bed before midnight for once! This is what it looks
like most every evening - and early in the morning too.

Read, read, read, post to the
bulletin board, and post again.

ON another note, I wish I was eating that pie that Jon made. Was it apple?
That's what it smelled like. And speaking of Jon, look at what I'm going
to get for Christmas.

And speaking of Christmas, maybe you've heard already that I won't
be there for Thanksgiving : ( (I've really been getting into emoticons
since I started posting for school.) But really, Christmas will be so
much better, because I won't be trying to finish up projects. Schoolwork has filled up every nook and cranny of my life, and I would be bad company.

All right, it's 11:53, and I'm hittin' the hay. PJ is wrestling with the sack
of your yarn, Nancy. Ha ha! (better send that, huh?) Love you, Mary

JD in

JD in.... JD out.

Good News

Hi Mary et al,

I went for my 6 month checkup with my Nephrologist this week and I am still stable. My creatinine is 2.3 which means this is 3 years now since I first discovered I have PKD and I am still 'stable'.

When I first went to see the doctor in 2004 he talked very seriously about how I should start looking for a donor kidney. This week he said that I can continue with the 6 month visits (instead of quarterly) although I still have to have blood tests done at the three month intervals.

I am still on the National Kidney waiting list but I am only eligible for a perfect match. Unless my kidney function goes to 20 or below I won't go on that wider list. Creatinine of 2.3 is above 20% but less than 25% so I am ineligible. YAY!

So I still carry around the cell phone and wonder every time Jim calls it if it is the kidney people. Since it is a Trak phone it is fairly expensive and I don't use it much otherwise (unless the car is in for service.)

So any of you who tried to be my donor, and you know who you are, can put this worry on the back burner. I am trucking along quite well. I am still looking for a donor but that is just in case.

I try not to eat much of the wrong foods. I am helped in this by my taste disorder which is getting better but still thinks chocolate is roadkill. I also get to take naps with no sneers at old age because they say PKD can make you tired. That's my excuse and I am sticking to it.

However I still stay up late at night which I never used to do. I find myself up often at one a.m. I have talked to several other people who are diagnosed with diseases and they have told me they do it too. It is that feeling of treasuring the time you have, not wasting it with sleep. If it seems illogical to take naps and stay up late I can only say logic has no part of this at all.

I am going to Faye's Henhouse All Cooped up quilt retreat this weekend and have 3 projects to work on. Dylan's quilt is finished so I can play on anything I want.

Love to you all,

Nancy

Surprise! I'm still alive!

But barely, as my blog existence is dictated by the amount of homework I have, which is always....A LOT. Actually, everything is homework, since this library degree is an online deal. But I'm learning some tricks. Such as: how to get something else done while listening to an online lecture:What's that, you say? Could Mary actually be winding up balls of yarn to send to Nancy? Yep. At least, they are currently in this state,
and I listened to the whole hour and 48 minutes of the IP addressing lecture. Yo, I am getting smarter by the mega-second. No, there is no such thing as a mega-second, I made that up. At least, I don't know of any mega-seconds. Unless it's the second helping I like to have of ice cream.

Something that makes me smile out loud, even if school pervades every nook and cranny of my life to the extent that I ignore the short intervals that ol' bear gets to be home from the ship, is that it is Fall.
As usual, I have a stack of fat books stuffed with leaves. I had bricks on top but we had to use those for the firebox of the woodstove. Rats, I meant to snatch another phone book from the library for these beauties I picked up today. The neatest thing I've tried lately is scanning them right at the point of greatest color. Or making copies on a color copier. It works really well. Now I can have pressed actual leaves, and copies of leaves! The ol' bear is excited too - you should hear him growl!
Ok, fun's over. Time to write a paper. Love you, M

HEY I almost forgot. I will be visiting the parents arriving Sunday Nov 18th and leaving on Thanksgiving Day (due to circumstances beyond my control)(I wonder if there will ever be an occasion to say "due to circumcisions beyond my control?" I'm dying to use that line. Perhaps: "Due to circumcisions beyond my control, I won't be having any ..." o never mind. How did I get off on this track - no pun intended?) Anyway, I will be visiting for a short 4.5 days approximately. I don't know if I will see you or not, but if I do, we could do a co-post, huh? Ok, adios already. L, M

I think we have to add quilting to the title

I spent the weekend taking classes at Faye's. She had a teacher from western North Dakota, Kathleen Moorhead Johnson, in to teach machine quilting on Sunday and a quilt using strips and curves on Saturday. I got a lot of the strips done on Saturday but need to make the curves out of my 'strata' (made of 36 different 1-1/2" strips). I make two strata and then cut them with curvy lines and sew them together. It is supposed to be beautiful but busy.

I did curves once before at the request of your daughter. I guess quilters don't normally do them. As I told one other student I didn't know I couldn't do them so I did them.

Of course Alice seemed to believe that it was her quilt, but she thinks that about all the quilts and is always disappointed.

Sometimes Abby helps her check them out. This is the quilt I gave Mom and Dad.

If and when I get the curvy quilt done I will post a picture.

Keep in touch,

Love,

Nancy

The Cranes are off!!!

I am excited and scared and full of joy. Another year of Whopping Crane Migration has started.

GO CRANES!!!

Love,

Nancy

A Quilt on the bed is worth two...no, that's not it...

I remember telling you I would send you a picture of the quilt on the actual bed, and here it is, complete with matching pillowcases.

I believe that having this beautiful quilt on display helped us sell our house. Who could resist it? The quilt is on the bed at this house too.

Before I go listen to lectures (I plan to stretch and listen, I'm getting awfully stiff with all the time I'm spending in front of the computer), I want to share with you what I learned to do in school. Hee hee! Check this out.

quilts

I have been deleting pictures from my hard drive today. Somehow, I don't know how, they have all been copied not once, not twice, but six times. I think it has something to do with me moving them to my new Adobe Photoshop program. It could be something else though.

As I did it I came across this photo.

I don't remember getting a picture of this on your bed. I do remember being promised one.

HUMPH!

Ah well, I suppose I will wait some more as you are most assuredly still busy trying to figure out Windows Vista.

I have been thinking of doing this pattern again but all in black and whites. I have been collecting black and whites for a while now and need to thin them down a bit. Unfortunately whenever I actually start a quilt I go out and buy some more. I am doing laundry today too. That and letting cats in and out. That, in itself, is a full time job.

Love You,

Nancy

This will be short...

You are right - I'm busy & exhausted from school, but mostly technological burn-out. A new computer, plus a new operating system, plus new software and new technologies to master has made this a nightmare - and it hasn't stopped yet. I won't go into details, but suffice it to say that every delay and snarl imaginable appears to be confounding my first weeks of school. I'm really pissed off about it, too. There is nothing to be done however, but to keep on keeping on.

Meanwhile - it hasn't been all bad, of course. Here's a picture of the really cool Suzzalo Library on the UW campus (in Seattle):
And here's a picture of me watching my Vietnamese coffee steep in a little restaurant in the International District:

YuM! That white stuff on the bottom is sweetened, condensed milk. It whipped up into something like a coffee and cream milkshake.

Hopefully, after a couple more weeks I'll be used to Windows Vista, and a host of other junk. The ol' bear might divorce me after this - near-constant frustration makes a real bitch out of me. Egad! He's been very understanding, noting that his recent school experiences had their own high level of frustration at times.
Time for bed. Oops! No, time to read another 20 pages of (I know you'll love this): "Information-as-process is situational. Therefore, evidence involved in information-as-process is so situationally also. Hence, whether any particular object, document, data, or event is going to be informative depends on the circumstances, just as the "relevance" of a document or a fact is situational depending on the inquiry and on the expertise of the inquirer (Wilson, 1973)" Etc, etc, etc. Actually, that one's not so bad. I couldn't find the really funny paragraph.

Take care of yourselves, I love you. Mary

books and butterflies

Jim wanted a picture of his garden before the cold comes. This is the result. It was taken yesterday and there are even more morning glories today.

I went out in the garden a minute ago just to check the monarch chrysalis and it is very dark. Hopefully it will hatch tomorrow and then it will have a day or so to nectar up and then we are supposed to have cold weather.

Cross your fingers.

I needed a garden break today because I have been playing on the computer. I was looking up an author and one of the links on goodsearch was for bookcrossing so I followed it and was entranced to find this network of people who leave books to be 'found' by new readers. I was just so delighted to see it. Evidently not too many people in North Dakota do this, but someone from Grand Forks does so maybe I can start a little sub-branch in Mayville. Or Fargo.

I have a few books I could send out into the world.

Then later while searching for the same author on ABE I found their book sleuth service. Now I have found that in the past and forgotten about it but it was fun to spend some time there again.

I expect I have not heard from you because you are starting your masters in library science online and learning all about it. And maybe because you are waiting for your new computer.

So I will do a little posting here to take up the slack.

Love ya'

Nancy