Changes

My old laptop bit the dust.  I lost all my photos but that's OK.  They weren't all that special.  I can take more pictures.  In fact now I have a good excuse to go and take some.  I bought a new laptop the other day so now we're in debt up to our eyeballs.  Maybe we'll have it all paid off by the time we retire, if we retire.  We may both die on the job. 

We really need to get a new mattress.  Bill has been sleeping on the couch for the last couple of months because the old mattress hurts his back.  Now the couch is starting to bother him too.  I get a lot of aches and pains from the old mattress too.  So tomorrow we're going mattress shopping.  I know, more debt, but it is a necessity.  Was the new laptop a necessity?  No, but I'm happy with it anyway. 

I finished an oil pastel the other day and took a photo of it and put it on the old computer.  Needless to say it's gone so I have to take a new photo.  I'm working on a new oil pastel based on a photo that I took in Northern New Mexico.  We had a friend who owned a vacation home up there and he let us borrow it.  The photo was taken close to 30 years ago. 

So far I've discovered that I like colored pencil for people and animals and oil pastel for landscapes.  I have some watercolor paints that I haven't built up enough nerve to try yet.  I know it takes practice, practice and more practice. 

Apparently we have some kind of animal living under our house.  Every now and then we hear thumping sounds when it moves around.  It scares Sassy even though she is probably bigger that whatever it is.  We can't figure out how it's getting under there.  There are no large holes anywhere around the foundation.  Obviously it's a small animal that makes a lot of noise when it moves around.  I hope it doesn't have a nest of babies under there somewhere.  We need to take the skirting off and look.  We'll get around to that on of these days.

Photo of the day, a repeat of one that was posted a while back.  This was taken last summer when it was so very dry.  That's smoke from a bad grass fire.  I hope we get enough rain this spring so that we don't see a repeat of this.