3-11-04

I was down getting a five gallon jug of water from Lowell yesterday. Five gallons last me five or six days. If I am careful I can  make it a week but I can’t make noodles which take water to boil them that has to be thrown out. That includes e dog although she supplements with some really disgusting water she finds out on the trail. . That does include washing but then I have never been known as Mr Clean. I have used the shower facilities at the windspirit a couple of times now.

  I was telling Lowell that they bees were working the small flowers around camp. These are honey bees but I heard on the radio that a guy climbing in the rocks near Phoenix got too close to a hive of Africanized bees and they killed him. the health director came on advising people to stay clear of the Africanized bees. Yah right, like they post their area? Lowell said that the woman down the street was helping in  the hay barn were there are quite a few paper wasps and one stung her near the eye. After just a few minutes it started to puff up and she couldn’t see out of her eye. She went back  to the house and her husband came home about 20 minutes latter and found her on the floor passed out. Her head was  so swollen that you couldn’t see her ear!!! I guess he somewhat revived her and got her in the  pickup and got her to town where she recovered. The doctor said that she should carry some sort of injection to prevent her swelling up and that she should NEVER be further away than five minutes from it. That is scary as I really puff up with a bee sting. Lowell says that there are a lot of bees in the area and he has to go out and skim off the bees in his bird water fountain every now and then. He says that the ranchers skim the water tanks so the horses can drink and that they are solid yellow from bees and  one of the ranchers says that the big dirt tanks will get that way too sometimes. If I can I always get a dab of mud on a sting asp. If I have to spit or pee to make some mud it really helps draw the poison at least for me. Ken says use Adolph meat tenderizer but I have never had any or tried it. He says it works.

I haven’t been too ambitious this morning and so far have made only a couple of clips. I did lay the last batch out and thought you all might like to see the progression of ideas as I work. They start at the left side and continue to the right. The last two I did this morning haven’t been polished yet. Some work and some don’t but after they are polished they all look pretty good by themselves. It always amazes me how ones that I am just about to scrap turn out to be the first ones picked by someone. I do scrap some that just really don’t turn my crank but the metal isn’t wasted, just recycled to hopefully something that makes me smile.

I had to work on my bedding problem this morning as the old down sleeping bag that I have been sleeping under was starting to self-destruct. The cover was heavy canvass and the seams were splitting. I ended up removing the entire outside canvas cover as well as the wool blanket liner. I now have a much lighter down comforter. I will need to get a cover for it and I think it will be much nicer to sleep under especially now that it is so warm at night. If I stayed down here much longer I think the people just sleep out at night and don’t need a cover. I actually have been using a light sheet and wool blanket the last few nights, as the down was too heavy.

I thought  I had just a light sunburn, but it turns out  that it is bordering on a medium well done sunburn. It doesn’t take much sun to burn a Norwegian after a winter. They seem to never learn either…..

When I went down to the computer room this morning at Windspirit there was a guy at one of the computers working out a zodiac chart. There are several here that put a lot of faith in the stars. Evidently the new computer programs allow them to pull up charts without all the plotting and pages of figuring which makes their reading much easier. I do remember when a woman once worked up my charts and when she was done, she had a notebook full. Surprisingly after looking into my most intimate star charts, she still liked me! That just goes to prove that sometimes the charts are wrong or at least don’t tell the whole story.

There was a small thunder storm that went by in the night to the east of here. I could see the lightning and hear the thunder but nothing here at camp. I was ready to get up and go out and get my tools that I had out on my bench. I have been leaving my tools out on the  bench overnight as there hasn’t been any dew. The guy at the computer checked the weather on the internet and clicked for a moving view of the weather that was coming through. There were scattered small storms that were moving up from Mexico. All day there has been so much moisture in the air that it was hard to see more than 30 or 40 miles. There were clouds most of the day which kept it much cooler than they had predicted. I would imagine it was in the mid 70’s most of  the day. I will have to say it was perfect for napping…. The forecast is for warmer weather thought so I will still have to consider moving my camp to deeper shade.