Earthquake!

If any of you have been paying attention to the news lately, maybe you have seen a small article hidden behind the more important headlines mentioning our most recent significant earthquake.  I say "significant", but we are ALWAYS having earthquakes, it's just that most of them are so small we don't feel them.  But every now and then we get one that we do notice in a significant way.  It's funny how we always have it in the back of our minds that we could have an earthquake at any time, yet when it comes, it always catches us off guard.  Kinda sounds like the 2nd Coming, don't it?

To me, earthquakes are a thrilling part of living here.  I mean that in both ways.  Thrilling in a "scary" sense of suspense, and also thrilling in an exciting kind of way.  Like hanging on the edge of your seat, biting your nails kind of thrilling, and when it's over you say, "that was awesome!"  (like riding on a "scary" loopy roller coaster) Although earthquakes can make me tense up with suspense, I have gotten used to them enough to not be frantically scared out of my wits.  I would gladly take an earthquake over a big ol' hairy spider any day.

Anyhoo, this time it caught us off guard because it came at 1:30 in the morning when we were sleeping.  The weird thing was that I could feel it coming before it hit.  I must've been half asleep cuz I swear I could feel a subtle vibration.  But at the same time, my cat was on the floor and I could hear her scratching, like she was itching herself.  And I remember laying there thinking that it was weird that her scratching would be causing the whole room to vibrate.  But I was half asleep, so it was hard for me to separate reality from dreaming.  And now I'm wondering if my cat was actually scratching on the floor cuz she could feel it coming too??

Then all of a sudden it hit.  The house started "jumping around" and rocking and swaying, and it seemed like it was lasting a long long time.  I sat up in bed and watched the ceiling fan violently rocking back and forth, and waited for it to fall off and land on top of us. Thankfully, it did not fall.  I could hear all the clutter in my room shaking and finally I heard something fall off a shelf. This was the first time for me that an earthquake ever actually knocked anything off a shelf. (It's a good thing I wasn't watching any kind of scary paranormal movie before I went to bed cuz that was almost what it was like.) I wasn't frantically scared, but I did have a tight grip on Chuck's arm.  He just laid there and said, "You can't do anything about it."  I have to say, in all my years living here, I've experienced some real rockers before, but I think this one was the worst one I've ever felt.

When it finally decided to die down, it still took a few moments for all of the vibrations to go away.  Finally everything was calm, and we went back to sleep.  Apparently, there was a 4.something aftershock a few hours later, but we slept through it.

According to the website "Recent Alaska Earthquakes", it measured 6.79 on the Richter scale, but the newspaper said it was 7.1.  (take your pick)  The epicenter was about 165 miles away from us and 76 miles deep.  Wow.  Just think of all that energy. I guess some people all the way up in Fairbanks felt it too, but for them it was only a small rumble.  (Steph didn't feel it.)

With all of the rattling and rumblings going on, I thought I would wake up in the morning to all kinds of messes on the floor to clean up.  But this was all the evidence that I had of the earthquake:

Some plastic flowers fell into the bathroom sink:

1. My antique plate and a little knick knack fell on the floor:

This old antique clock began ticking again:

And some of my scrapbooking ribbons took a flying leap:

That was about it.  Thankfully no damage. So, in case you were thinking about us when you heard about the earthquake, now you know that we survived and thankfully the results of it were humdrum, at least at my house.  Unfortunately, for some people who live down in the Peninsula, they were a lot closer to the epicenter, so there were some homes destroyed and some gas lines broke.

Now for a few other boring subjects going on behind the scenes:

I thought you might be interested in seeing my burnt snowman friend that lives in my oven:

No one needs to tell me that I need to clean out my oven!

This next one is for Ma (Hi Ma!).  I got back to work on my quilt again:

I got all my rows sewn together.  Now I can start working on the inner border.

And then there's the dreaded jury duty summons.

Oh how I HATE getting these in the mail!!  I don't know why it's always ME that gets these things.  Chuck only got them twice, one of them while he was in Iraq so of course he got out of that one.  I've gotten summoned many times.  So far I haven't actually SERVED on a jury.  Last time I was summoned, I got as far as being "interviewed", but wasn't selected to serve.  It's only a matter of time before I actually get selected, and it makes me nervous.  I wish I would quit getting these things, but that would require giving up my PFD checks every year.  I think most states summon their jurors by drivers licenses, but here in Alaska they randomly pick names from the pool of PFD recipients.  Some people never get picked, while others (like me) seem to get picked all the time.  Anyhoo, I am being summoned for the whole month of February (and of course this just happens to be leap year, lucky me!).  I will keep you all posted on that, even though it's humdrum news.

Too bad I can't send Kiska in my place:

She's good at anything if you just let her sleep through it.

A Hobby Challenge

This is probably gonna be a boring post, but this is what I've been up to. Most of you know that scrap booking and making cards is one of my hobbies, and no one knows more than Chuck just how much money I have invested into all of my "toys" to support said hobby.  So last week he came home from work and said, "There's a guy from work that's gonna be retiring.........."  Say no more, I already know what you're gonna ask.  You need me to make a potluck dish, right?  Wrong.  "I need you to use all your thousands of dollars worth of scrap booking stuff to make a card."

"And it needs to be a fishing theme."

"And it needs to have extra pages inside it for all the signatures."

Okay then...........not a problem.

Spent the first few days looking for ideas on the internet.  Found lots of ideas and inspiration, but in the end I went with a design that I found in one of my card pattern books (in my scrap booking "library").  Then I had to figure out how I was gonna incorporate that design into a fishing theme.  Here was my problem:

As you can see from my fish stamp inventory sheet, I don't have a very big selection of fish to choose from.  They were all the wrong style except for that little tiny one in the upper left-hand corner.  

So I proceeded to play with that one.

This is what I came up with.

A cute idea, but it was not manly, and plus I was having problems with masking the trees behind him.  I gave up on that idea.  Chuck said he wasn't too keen on that bear anyway.  He suggested an outdoorsy theme with a cabin.

The only cabin I had showing in my inventory was this one:

With a heart on the door?  Cute.  But cute is not manly.

But wait!!  Didn't I make a Christmas card a few years ago using a different cabin stamp?

Yes I did!

Now, that's more like it!  But where, or where can I find that stamp in my stamp stash?  If I don't have it in my inventory binder, I'm at the mercy of my limited brain cells to help me remember where to find it.

It turned out to be a part of the "Backwoods" set that I had stashed with all my other wildlife stamps.

And surprise, surprise!  Lo, and behold!!  There's a fish stamp, a MANLY fish stamp that I can use!

Woo-HOO!

So, to make a long story short, I played and played and played and played, and I kept bringing the card downstairs to ask Chuck about my progress:  "Is this okay?  Is this okay?  Is this okay?"

In the end, this is what I ended up with:

I'm not 100% happy with it (could've done better on the tree background), and if I had time, I would play around with a whole different design using that fish stamp.  But Chuck said it was perfect and paid me in kisses.  So I'm done.  Whew!

In case you're wondering, the strings on the top are there because I tied the inner pages into it.  I thought the string would also serve as an embellishment for the card.  I love when things turn out to serve a dual purpose (smile).

Now that I'm looking at it, I think I could've added more trees.  The background looks too bare.  Well, I'm not touching it now!

Oh yeah, and by the way,  at first Chuck said, "what are those buttons for?"  Being a man, he wouldn't understand or appreciate embellishments (roll eyes), but I wonder, if HE doesn't appreciate them, I wonder what the recipient of this card will think of them.

 Maybe I should've left them off or put something else there.

Anyhoo, my mission is accomplished and before I put all my toys away, I made sure to update my inventory pages with those stamps.

Now next time I need a manly fish, I'll know that it even exists.

my scrap booking partner

Change Subject.

Genealogy is another past time that I like to dabble with every now and then.  It's not something I get into very often, but whenever I get the "bug" for it, I really get the bug for it.  This time it started all because me and Chuck were watching some kind of English show on BBC, and we talked about maybe going to England someday.  And that led to the conversation of his ancestors who came from there.  Before you know it, we were pulling out Civil War Pension Papers and reading all about his great-grandfather.  And of course that led into wanting to find more information and more names further back on his family tree.  So I spent days and days and days on the internet, doing some research and I learned some really exciting things.  He has ancestors from Germany too, but just in the Sutton tree, most of his English ancestors came from the Kent area.  Now it's true that you can't believe everything you read on the internet, and that is especially true with genealogy.  But from what I have found, I think that what I found is probably reliable.  And if it's true, then many of Chuck's ancestors were married in this church building:

It was built in 1062 AD.  When I saw it, I got so excited.  Just look at all those old tombstones!  They date back to the 1600s!  I wanna go there really really really bad!!

Here is another one that his ancestors were supposedly acquainted with.  A lot of babies were christianed there:

I think that one was built in the 1200s.

And then here is a church in Durham that someone may have gotten married in.  I'm not real sure if this is the right one cuz I didn't spend a whole lot of time researching this one.

Anyhoo, all of these pictures get me real excited to take a trip there to find these places.  If we could get to these places, we might find some official documents in their archives proving that these are the right places, and also proving that all the names on the family are correct, and maybe finding some of his ancestors in that graveyard.  That would be very thrilling.  I get goosebumps just thinking about it.

Starting A New Year

So, here we are in the new year.  2016  Anno Domini.  I don't know about you all, but I don't get very excited about New Year's.  I like the way it was expressed by one of the characters on the TV sitcom "Third Rock From the Sun":  "New Year's is just a random mark in the orbit of the sun" (or something like that).  Really, what is the origin of Jan 1 being the mark of the new year?  Why that specific mark in the orbit of the sun?  Why not another place in the orbital path?  Is it the Chinese who have a different notch marked on the orbital path to symbolize their New Year?  Something to research, I suppose. ("Google is a wondering thing.")

The only reason I take note of New Year's is because everyone else does, and then there's the friendly reminder from the neighbors who shoot off their firecrackers all night.  Unfortunately it is legal to do that here - apparently. (my poor poor scared cats) How in the world they can afford to spend so much money on that stuff is beyond me.  Anyhoo,  making New Year's resolutions is the choice topic of conversation among many people this time of year.  I am glad that people use this opportunity to better themselves, or at least think about it (if you are one of those - more power to ya!), but for me, I make the same New Year's resolution every year and that is to not make any New Year's resolutions.  That is the only New Year's resolution that I can manage to keep.

Last week in church, someone made a comment in his lesson that I have kept in the forefront of my mind in light of the holiday.  In passing, he said "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak."  That is taken from Mark 14:38.  I know that, in context, it is talking about sin, but I've been thinking about it in the perspective of the New Year's holiday and the annual tradition of making new resolutions. I think it does a very good job at summing up why I don't make resolutions and I never really thought about it until he quoted that passage.  In a nutshell, I don't make resolutions because I always end up breaking them.  So why even bother to set myself up for disappointing myself?  

"The spirit is willing" -- yes, I LOVE to imagine myself eating better, losing weight, sticking to an exercise routine, cutting those XCheddar goldfish out of my diet, getting more organized, or doing whatever it takes to strengthen my various and numerous character weaknesses, etc.  My spirit is ready and willing to do those things and I get excited just thinking about it.  But "the flesh is weak".  Reality hits.  I know I should go for a run today (my spirit talking), ......but.........(fill in the blank).  "The flesh is weak" and I will come up with any lame excuse to not do it.  Like Paul said in Rom 7:15:  "For what I will to do, that I do not practice".  In spirit I am willing to do what it takes to make the changes, but my flesh is weak (not willing to make the physical effort).   Yes, I took that verse out of context to apply it to New Year's.  My point is, I am confessing my reason for not making any New Year's resolutions. Basically, I'm physically lazy (the flesh part of me) and not motivated enough.

But it's not like I'm giving up before I'm trying; it's just that I'm not "ready".  There are times (on other random marks of the orbital path - take your pick out of 365), when my flesh is indeed strong enough to carry out the will of my spirit (again, I'm not talking about sin here, I am talking about common secular goals that anyone might have), and I find that if it's really important to me, I can make it happen, because I came to the conviction on my own, not because the calendar says I should.  I think it's true that goals are more successfully reached by people if it comes from the spirit within themselves, rather than from outsiders, like an inanimate paper calendar hanging on the wall.

So all that being said (from my soapbox), I don't feel bad about not making resolutions because I know that I can get things done at the time of my own choosing and conviction, if it's the Lord's will.

Nuf said.

Happy New Year!