Snow

We had 6 - 8 inches of snow last night. Another storm is forecast for tomorrow. Welcome to the north country.

I had to put on my snowshoes and tromp through the woods to knock the snow off the satellite dish before I could get enough reception to be able to upload this post.

Critters

The deer have definitely decided this is their spot for the winter and we see them in the woods around the house several times a day. This one was particularly bold.

Then there are the squirrels. I put some seed out hoping to attract some birds. But of course the squirrels found it first. This very fat grey squirrel arrived first.

But the red squirrel chased him off and I imagine we'll be seeing a lot of him from now on.

Diet Watch :(

142.5 pounds; up 2.5 pounds for the week. And it is actually up 3 pounds because I was down to 139.5 at the beginning of the week. I guess I've sort of forgotten about dieting while here at camp. I'll have to get back into the groove.

Quilt IV

And here is my "leaf quilt" that is now hanging at camp. Each of the fabrics is a leaf print.

Quilt III

Now that Christmas is over I can post a photo of the quilt I made my grandson. I found some neat animal prints in Alaska and then added to them from quilt shops all over the country, including on-line. There are so many neat prints out there I had trouble limiting myself. As the sign in a quilt shop says: "So many fabrics, so little time."

Snow

In the Adirondacks, that is. We drove to camp yesterday. There is lots of snow on the ground, as you can tell from the photos, and we're supposed to get a few more inches today.

Music Links

Arkiv Music
Choral Public Domain Library
Midi Learning Files from Cyberbass
Princeton Society of Musical Amateurs
Sheet Music

Kayaking Links

Bel Haven, NJ Paddling
Chesapeake Bay Kayaking
Chester River Paddling
Jack's Boathouse, Georgetown
Kayaking Routes
Northern Forest Canoe Trail
Ontario Kayaking
Pine Barrens Paddling

Diet Watch :|

140 pounds; same as last week. Sigh.

Arthritis Medicine Revisited

Just to update the thoughts on the previous post on this subject. The Naprelan definitely works. I was wrong about the dosage - it is two 375 mg tablets a day, which is more than Aleve. But you would think that the inital burst of medication you get when you take an Aleve would work, versus the time-release Naprelan, and it does not work nearly as well. Plus, once I get the inflamation under control I can switch to one tablet a day of Naprelan. Just to be sure that the pain didn't just leave on its own, I stopped all medication for a couple of days. When it woke me up in the middle of the night, I made the decision to go back on Naprelan for the forseeable future. It was good to know that the Naprelan is really working on the inflammation and is not just a pain killer. If it were, the pain should have returned right away.

I am looking forward to cross-country skiing and snow-shoeing at camp next week and signed up for a line-dancing class next month :)

Free Rice

The other day while listening to NPR I heard about a neat website. It is at http://www.freerice.com/. It was created by a father who wanted to help his son study vocabulary for the SAT and who happens to be the creator of another website http://www.poverty.com/. It is now part of my daily routine. For every vocabulary word you get correct, 20 grains of rice are donated to the United Nations World Food program, paid for by the advertisers on the site.

Some of the words are doozies. Did you know that pharisaic means self-righteous?

Diet Watch :)

140 pounds; down 1 pound for the week. But that just gets me back to where I was three weeks ago. Sigh.

Arthritis Medicine

I never thought I'd be touting medication on this blog -- do you suppose I can get money from the drug company? I did our usual 4-mile walk on the boardwalk today and my hip hardly bothered me at all. I haven't been able to walk that far for several weeks. I attribute the pain reduction to the fact that I started a new medication yesterday. The doctor gave me some samples of Naprelan, which is just naproxen sodium, the same compound as in over-the-counter Aleve. Except in Naprelan, it is in a controlled-release form. I actually am taking less naproxen than I was at 2 Aleve a day, which has to be better for my stomach. But apparently the continuous release works much better at getting the inflamation down and keeping it down.

There is one caveat. When I was researching arthritis medication, I read somewhere that the following effect can come into play. Arthritis flare-ups tend to be cyclical. By the time the pain gets bad enough that the patient looks for some new type of medication, it is probably about time for the pain to subside on its own. So improvements that are attributed to the medication may actually have nothing to do with it. The timing in my case seems much too coincidental. But maybe I'll just take Aleve for the next couple of days and see what happens.

Diet Watch :(

141 pounds; down 2 pounds for the week. But still not down to where I was 2 weeks ago. My hip is still bothering me, so I have exercised very little. I have a feeling this winter is going to be tough from a weight-loss perspective. But I'll keep trying.

Genealogical Research

I did lots of on-line genealogical research this week, with some fascinating findings. It just goes to show "you can find anything on the web".

I found someone who has the same great grandparents that I have. I think that means we are third cousins. We are now sharing our findings about our ancestors.

I ordered photos of the headstones of ancestors buried in Indiana in the mid-1850's. You can do that at http://www.findagrave.com/. They have volunteers who take email requests and go out and take the photos.

I found out which cemetery they were in from a family tree on http://www.rootsweb.com/. On that same very extensive family tree I found ancestors way back to the 11th century in England. And they include King Henry I, one of whose large number of illegitimate children is supposedly an ancestor of mine. That particular ancestor has his own entry in Wickipedia. Who knows whether the data that far back is correct, but it is fun to look at all the same. I'm going to concentrate on tracking down those ancestors who immigrated to this country. There are lots of ships lists available on the web so I'll see how many I can find. Several of my ancestors were on the Mayflower and the ships that followed soon after.

Then there are the digital books. I ordered a county history on CD from Amazon. It includes digital versions of 4 books of Pennsylvania history and I found several good leads, including photos of some ancestors' homes.

http://www.worldvitalrecords.com/ led me to the Google book search. You can put in a name in the vital records website and it leads you to occurrences of the name in digital books through which you can search on books.google.com.

I also learned abut the GEDCOM file standard. I can export my data from Family Tree Maker to GEDCOM files and there is lots of free software on the web that can turn those files into HTML. My ultimate goal is to create a website with all the genealogical data hyperlinked together.

And best of all, I finally know how to spell "genealogy".

First Snow

We had our first snow last night. It is supposed to rain later, so it won't stay around. I don't believe we have had snow this early for quite a few years.

Diet Watch :(

143 pounds; up 3 pounds for the week. Well, at least when I fail I do it spectacularly. I really fell off the wagon this week. I wish I knew where the will power came from that allowed me to lose weight to begin with. Then maybe I could find it again. And cutting down on exercising didn't help. But my hip is not as bad as it was, so hopefully I'll start getting more exercise. And the public embarrassment has got to mean something. I'll try to lose next week. Wish me luck.