OCD Pays Off

Today's trip to the local Goodwill was particularly rewarding:

• Almost new beige Vans in my older son's size - $4.99
• Michel Muß Mehr Männchen Machen by Astrid Lindgren - $1.59
• Brand new decorative shower curtain in the perfect colors to complement my newly updated bathroom - $2.99
• Brand new Eddie Bauer fleece-lined Gore-Tex shell jacket with detachable hood in my size and preferred color - $6.99
• One glow-in-the-dark plastic skull Halloween candy collecting basket - $.49
• One wooden elephant piggy bank where you stuff the coins down the trunk and watch them snake into the animal's clear plastic gut - $3.99 (a fellow shopper said she saw the same thing at the zoo for $27.00)
• One wooden pear-shaped pepper grinder in the most beautiful deep Bartlett green - $1.99
• Two brand new Sleep Cell, Litron hollowfil, cool-vented 30-degree, three pound sleeping bags with stuff sacks recently dropped off from the local Target store - $9.99 ea.

And the pièce de résistance: One black car-length genuine shearling coat, fully lined with the real stuff - not that synthetic fur that pills as soon as it is exposed to Wisconsin winter - in my size, but generous so that I can fit my handknit sweaters underneath it, not that I'll need them, but just in case - $19.99. I've been searching Goodwill, and other places, for the perfect genuine shearling coat for about 15 years. Today was my day.

Even compulsive gamblers occasionally win, which of course further feeds their frenzy and seals their eventual downfall. I can stop any time I really want to. I just don't want to, yet.

Waterlily at Chicago Botanic
Photo by A. Graf

Stormy skies at the WI-IL border along Hwy 43, 9-27-06
Photo by A. Graf

Underside of a leaf at Chicago Botanic Gardens, 9-27-06
Photo by A. Graf

Another Great Bumper Sticker

OCD - Shopping Strain

I have been known to enjoy the hunt - shopping, research, geocaching - but of late I sense a need to get the economic side of this habit under control. I'm just spending too damn much money. But I'm so good at finding fantastic deals!

I read an article on Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder last week, once again confirming our entire family's tendencies to walk this path - cleaning, organizing, cataloguing and filling it as we go. A couple of the OCD traits listed were shopping and bargain hunting. Oh, dear.

Not to pass up an opportunity to foist partial blame on someone else, my mother has always been an unstoppable shopper. My father and I would be in the car with her on the way home and she'd say, "Pull in to Kohl's. I just want to run in." At those words, our blood would run cold. Thankfully there was almost always something to read in the car for the 45 minute wait that ensued.

Well, I find that my pride at finding a bargain is beginning to become a bad hobby, as my son would say. We are in the process of remodeling parts of the house, and being the detail minded, penny pincher that I am, I keep track of each contractor's charges and the cost of various parts along the way, updating the balance against the loan we just received from the bank, making sure we don't spend the loan money on anything but the remodeling projects. All these numbers and interest rates running through my head have given me pause. I need to be more careful about my compulsive bargain hunting before I bargain us out of our newly renovated digs.

So, I decided, in the spirit of Christ-centered submission and sacrifice, to start a fast. Not from food, but from shopping. Seeing as I do take care of all the household details, such as stocking toilet paper and milk, Pull-Ups and postage stamps, there would have to be exceptions, but exceptions only - no personal, unnecessary purchases! I began the fast yesterday morning.

Today, as the new bathtub liner was being installed upstairs, my vacuum cleaner started on fire.

I quickly dragged it out to the patio and let it smoke itself out. I threw open all the windows and got my purse out, grabbed my keys and drove off towards the nearest Wal-Mart (forgive me - hate Wal-Mart, but they're cheap and Andrea in the optical department is so nice). Stopped at a geocache along the way (hunt, hunt, hunt - success!) and soon found myself in the vacuum cleaner aisle at the nation's slimiest mass retailer. Got an inexpensive ($58.89) Bissell bagless, extra belts and filter, socks for the Gibster, some gum, two bed pillows, a dozen shower curtain rings, two Snickers bars, two Dove bars (isoflavones are a necessity), Kleenex, pumpkin in a can, and miniature marshmallows (for the kids). Then stopped in the optical department as I had my prescription on me from this past spring and I needed to take advantage of my insurance allotment of one pair per year. $250 later and I'm good to go. But you should see the deal I got on these new lenses . . .

I know many good folk who do regular 24-hour fasts. Maybe next time I'll make it to 48 hours.

Loquacious

If you post numerous times in one day, could you be said to be bloguacious?

It took a bit of courage, but I finally stuck this bumper sticker on the back of our van, knowing that I'd have to drive that same van to church on Sunday. Not that I'm afraid to say that I don't like our President very much, but I don't want to be thought insensitive. It does have a very nice literary allusion to it. I do like literature very much.

This male monarch hatched in our yard today. I was actually chrysallis-sitting for a friend when it happened, so I got to see the sacred event while my friend was at work. It didn't look like a male until a couple hours later when the dark spots began to show better on the back wings. He is still sitting on our cherry tree tonight in the dark, waiting and gathering resources for his long migratory flight to mountain forests in the state of Michoacan, Mexico. Only one of three to four annual North American monarch generations takes the trip, covering thousands of miles to the overwintering grounds. The ones that survive the trip and the winter supposedly fly back to the southern United States and begin another generation in the late spring, spreading further up the continent all the way to Canada, following the warmer air as it heads north. Amazing creatures.

Photo by A. Graf

Close up of today's monarch wing
Photo by A. Graf

Another happy ending, at least for those of us who have recently established good reasons for hating the yellowjacket. My Dad took this photo of a garden spider and her unfortunate (awww, I'm so sad about that - NOT!) prey. Go, spidey - you rock!
Photo by B. Hartinger

The Miracle Worker

To follow up on the last post, my father's friend Chris agreed to try and recover my lost photos using a wonderful little SanDisk program called RescuePro. He put my memory card into his reader, ran it through this program and got every photo back that I had deleted, except for three that were clipped in half. How wonderful is that?! I was so excited and am so thankful to Chris for his time and effort in retrieving my losses.

I went home, reprocessed all the images and made a new CD for the Dog Fair folks. Chris also helped me in the past by printing some photos on his large format printer when I had a last minute art show to prepare for. It's good to have a few of these "miracle workers" in your life when times get tough. Anyway, a happy ending this time.

U E

I spent two-and-a-half hours at the Enderis Park Dog Fair this past Saturday, photographing the event at the request of my friend, Georgianna, one of the event planners. It was an enjoyable day, being introduced to various breeds of dogs and their owners, watching the animals run, jump, sniff, make paw-print art and bob for hot dogs. The weather was warmish and sunny and I nearly filled my 512mb memory card by the end of the afternoon.

I came home and downloaded everything, worked another two to three hours in Photoshop, tweaking the lighting, cropping, burning, dodging and tossing out rejects. I then burned everything to a CD, made myself a copy, and dropped the finished project off at Georgianna’s house. I was rather proud of myself for having gotten it all done in one day, and was also very happy with a good number of the shots – that beautiful white husky head shot showing one brown eye and one blue, the profile of a handsome blue heeler hound and those stinking adorable black schnoodle puppies that were for sale.

She gratefully accepted the disk and called later to thank me. She then asked about the other photos. “What other photos?” I replied.
“Well, you said you had over 100, but there’s only 47 on the disk.”
“Oh, no. I’ll have to check my hard drive and I”ll get back to you.”

Gone. All but 47 shots. Oh, the sick, sinking feeling in my stomach. I sat at my desk and thought it over. I realized my mistake. I usually download into a folder called “Recent Downloads” and then after working up each photo, I save them into their proper folder, whether Door County, Havenwoods, Rusty Junk, Our Family, etc. Then I go back to the organizer and delete all those that I have worked up. This time I had created a new folder at the time of download and entitled it “Enderis Park Dog Fair.” I downloaded directly into that folder and worked them all up in that same folder. Since they were not my photos, per se, I did not rename most of them, but left them in whatever numbered name the computer had given them. The ones in which I recognized people or animals personally, I renamed – 47 of them. When I edit and rename a file, I close it and then delete the original, especially when it’s not my work that I am going to print. When I am all done, I leave the editor window, return to the organizer and delete all the recently downloaded files because they are now saved into a new folder someplace else on the hard drive. What I did differently this time was that I didn’t rename most of the files, and I didn’t move them to a folder other than the one I had directly downloaded to. I didn’t think about this scenario when I returned to the organizer at the end of my editing session and deleted all the recently downloaded “originals,” which were, of course, the same files I had just worked up. I had also chosen to delete the originals from the memory card after downloading, so they weren't even in the camera any more. Oh, what a sick, sick feeling.

I had to call Georgianna back and tell her the awful news. I went back online and googled, “How to recover deleted files.” I downloaded some software from PC Tools called File Recover, installed it and ran it immediately, pushing aside all the fears of being totally hacked by some nasty virus or identity theft subprogram. It ran through my entire C drive and scanned for deleted files. The program kept at it for hours. I couldn’t stay awake long enough, but woke around 2:45 am to find it had finally finished. There were over 30,000 files found from the last five years since I got this computer. I sorted through and narrowed my selections down to only those of September 16, 2006 and only those of jpeg format. I pushed the restore button and was given a warning message: “Files may only be restored using a registered version of this program. Click here to purchase online.” What choice did I have? I went online and paid $29.95 for a one year subscription to the program. I pushed the restore button again and it quickly did the job. Unfortunately, all those jpegs were from my daughter’s disk that I had downloaded and burned onto a CD for her the same day. Only five were listed as having come out of the Enderis Park Dog Fair folder, and these showed only a pattern of green lines, totally unrecognizable as photos. Where did my work go? What a sick, sick feeling. I could cry. I cried. And it was truly all my fault. Complete user error. I feel I should be walking around with big red letters on my chest, Hester Prynne style: U E. What a stupid thing to do.

Hobbit

My youngest child came home today smelling of urine. I had him change clothes and wash up, after which he returned and sat down beside me.

"Why did you wet your pants?" I asked, thinking there may have been a good reason.
"I don't know," he replied. "It's a hobby."
"A hobby!?" I said.
"Yeah. A bad hobby."
"You mean a habit?" I asked.
"Um, what's a hobby?" he replied.
"Something you do for fun in your spare time," I explained.
"Oh. It's a habit. A bad habit."

You Never Know What You'll Find

I have recently found a new hobby in geocaching (see my stats over to the right). Geocaching is a world-wide activity where someone hides, or caches, something (usually a container to hold a small log book, a pencil and some small trinkets) somewhere. When they are done placing their cache, they use a global positioning device to note their exact latitude and longitude coordinates and these numbers become a big hint as to where the cache is hidden. The cacher then logs his cache onto the geocaching website where other cachers can take down the coordinates and any other cryptic (or not so cryptic) clues given to try to find the treasure.

It is fun, not just to find the container or trade for a small prize or two, but you very often end up hiking in places you might never have visited. The few caches I've sought out in my own home town have already taken me to some very interesting and beautiful spots. Once you find the cache, you log your find onto the website and watch your cache numbers climb.

My dad and I did a cache a couple weeks ago and found something very interesting - not in the cache, but growing next to it. I took a photograph of part of it, before destroying the rest of it. (Not by burning it - shame on you!) And no, I will never tell which cache. Try it yourself and see what you find.

Bug Man Triumphs Over Satan's Minions

The Yellow Jacket vanquisher, seen here just after drenching the nest with liquid poison and just before administering the chaser of deadly vapors. Thank you, Mike. And thanks for donning the bee suit after I mentioned there would be free publicity.

Same old Chevy as before. Here all the letters have fallen off, and I think that must have been a number below that is barely hanging on. Maybe someone knows if that is a model number, and if so, what was it? Looks like 360, but I don't know a thing about old cars. I'll have to ask my brother.

Cheeeeese, Gilbert!

My youngest son has recently developed a habit of saying, "Jeeeez!" in an annoyed tone whenever something bothers him. In the car yesterday I told him that I did not like it when he used that word as it was rather close to the name of our lord Jesus.

"You can say something else, like bananas, for example."

"Are bananas the opposite of cheese?" he asked.

Old Chevy Front End

Rainbow This Afternoon 9-5-06

I took two photos of this rainbow and stitched them together in Photoshop Elements. It's not quite a perfect merge, but shows the entire bow over the cemetery near our house this afternoon. You can even faintly see the ends of a second bow, showing more clearly on the right.