French onion soup in my 80's shino glazed bowl

Here's a picture of the French Onion soup in one of my shino glazed bowls from the early 80's.

This was the coldest morning yet - 5 degrees F this morning. Our high of the day was around 22F; but this weather is supposed to break Monday and go up to the 40's by Monday afternoon.

Yesterday we got the carpets out of the studio and our dining room is now back to normal. Jim dismantled his under the tree village today and will take down the tree tomorrow. I've been  on the computer all day. I'm still deleting duplicate photos - thousands of them! This is taking forever; but I need to get it done.

Microsoft called me yesterday about some of the problems and I found that Windows 7 allows you to partition your computer so I'll be able to install Windows Xp in a new drive and have Windows 7 in another. So I'll be able to have a dual boot system and use XP with my old software. I asked him to email me detailed instructions on how to do this; but it will have to wait until I get the cleanup finished and back those documents up on the stand alone hard drive.

Jim's watching football and I'm still working on this computer. I've made a  lot of headway the past two days. There's still more to do but I am seeing some light at the end of the tunnel. I'm looking forward to closing it down at 8 o'clock and watching the Brit coms  and giving  kitty Bonnie some play time, followed by Poirot which we'll watch in bed at 10pm. Other than meal prep and animal care, and a short stint on my Farmville distraction, I've been cleaning up these computer files all day. I'm beginning to wonder if there's life after computer woes!

Salt glazed sake set from Japan

Here's a nice little, blue accented, sake set from one of my Japan trips.

I don't know what happened but after I was able to download Windows SP3, and re-loading my anti virus software, the blue screen of death hasn't appeared since! After days of frantically trying to download my documents in between the blue screen of death appearing regularly, giving messages with the words "fatal error", this is quite a surprise. Yesterday I even spent time researching laptops, figuring that any minute I was going to have to buy a new one!

The universe has a great sense of humor, though. Now that this problem seems to be temporarily solved, and company is gone, our dog Shanti has been having pee accidents, probably due to another infection due to the Cushing disease he's on medication for. So today's plan to get studio time is probably going to change to "take Shanti to the vet day". After two accidents yesterday, we wound up taking him out about every hour and a half; and of course it was raining most of the time! Poor dear is 12 years old and seems to be fading fast lately.

If we can get an early enough appointment at the vets, I may be able to get in some studio time this afternoon. With more rain coming, gardening is out of the question other than watering seedlings, maybe planting more seeds. Hopefully I will be able to get in some time in the studio. I'm getting a bit frustrated at not being able to find work time!

Till later,
June

Salt glazed fish cup

This is a really nice, sturdy, salt glazed cup I purchased at a gallery/pottery in New Smyrna Beach, Florida several years ago. The only marking is a couple of initials -jr I think.

I'm back on my laptop but it looks like this hard drive is badly damaged, and dying fast. It only lets me stay on a while and then the blue screen of death pops up; but I was able to get all my documents downloaded to the new stand alone hard drive. That took all day! Now I have to decide whether to put more money into this laptop with a new hard drive or just rent or buy a cheap laptop until the new Windows 7 comes in at the end of the year.

We're going to enjoy vegging out on this cloudy, rain expected, day with our daughter and her husband. Friends are coming over tonight to join us for dinner. They're bringing Cosmopolitans and chocolates and we're supplying the burgers with all the trimmings. The family leaves tomorrow and hopefully after a day of cleaning up, I can get back to the garden if it's not raining or into the studio if it is.

Yesterday I planted a few more tomato seeds and planted more frying pepper seeds. The past couple of years I've found that I'm getting a much lower germination rate from commercial seeds. I think it's because many companies are now treating seeds so that you can's save seed and that process is actually affecting the initial germination rate. Corporate greed continues to boggle the mind!

I think I can plant my cold weather vegetable starts and peas now, as well as the onion starts and leeks I got the other day. There are also a few packs of pansies to pot and plant. If the ground isn't too wet after a few days of rain I'd like to get potatoes planted as well. Yesterday I bought some Yukon Gold seed potatoes. I'm also planting Kennebecs this year and maybe some red potatoes like Pontiac's; but Walmart didn't have that variety so I'll have to look elsewhere.

We saw the first daffodils yesterday and it looks like the forsythia is going to bursting into bloom any minute. Spring is definitely breaking through!

Till later,
June