Snow, Glorious Snow!!!

I love the snow. I love it when you can see outside at midnight and it looks almost daytime with the glowing brilliance of the white stuff. I love seeing my breath and the chill on my skin. I love to play in it, I even love to drive in it when no one else is around.

It started snowing yesterday while I was at work. At lunch time, it is was coming down heavy and wet. The snow on my car was really slushy and cleaned off very easily. I don’t have a 4 wheel drive anymore, so I went home 2 hours early to beat the rush before the snow-idiots clogged up the intersections. This morning everything was glistening and bright and we had about 5″. I had an urge to grab the camera and to look out the front window where I saw a Cardinal in our Maple Tree.

The first two pictures are of the front yard Maple tree Sat. morning.  The third is the back yard late Friday afternoon.

Front Yard Maple Tree Cardinal sitting alone.

Cardinal found a Robin to chill with.  It is unusual to see a Robin in January around here.

This is the view out my back door.  The fenced in hell of suberbia.  When we first moved in there were no fences and the back yards of all the houses looked like 1 big park.  It was lovely.

New and Improved

It’s a new and improved Vista really.  More of a Service Pack 3.  But I just got it installed.  Windows 7 64 bit only took 1/2 hour to install, it was really amazing.  I wiped both of my drives and let her rip.  It was really quite painless and it found all of my hardware, including a network printer and a wireless headphone/microphone without having to download ANY drivers or insert ANY cds.  I did update the software for my keyboard and mouse since they are both configurable but that doesn’t count.  I also took advantage of Comcast’s free norton security suite on my machine and my wifes today.

The only down side is that it doesn’t come with outlook express and I really like it better than windows live email.  But if that is the only downside I’ve found, I call that an amazing feat of installation magic.  Move over Mac, there’s a new Windows in town.

The only thing left is to re-install ITunes, resubscribe to all 40 or so podcasts (I have an opml for that though) and re-install all of my development stuff (Visual Studio 2010, Silverlight 4 toolkit, etc).  I’ll do that tomorrow.  There are a few little toys I like to have installed but will install them as needed.

Hi, my name is Joe and I’m a PC.  

Nothing to see here… Move along.

I’ve had a seriously uneventful week.  Unless you want to hear about things I’ve learned about Silverlight, but that just screams GEEK!

Mother nature is toying with me.  It was 55 degrees (F) over the weekend.  I wanted to get on my motorcycle soo bad.  The rain kept me away.  It was 35 this morning and is 27 now.  We got an inch or so of snow on top of lots of rain so the drive to work tomorrow should be anything but uneventful.

My Daily practice has pretty much gone south but that is normal for me.  The pendulum swings and my life’s focus changes.  Then it swings back and I go back to it again.  Charge the spiritual batteries, run on em for a while, recharge again.

It seems that emotional baggage is weighing on several of our minds lately.  For me, it’s time to either release or accept the past for what it is… past.  It is only holding me down and preventing me from achieving my goals.  That is the focus of tonight’s meditation.  Letting go of the things that make me think “why try, you’ll just fail anyway”.  The details are for another day however.

Images

These are pictures of the quarter candle holders.  I’ll make votives for them another time.  I have  Mango / Papaya / Vanilla palm votives cooling right now.  I’m upping the fragrance amount to 8% from the recommended 5%, but am adding some stearic acid to see if I can get better scent throw from the palm.  Everyone says that you don’t need stearic with palm, but I’m just not happy with the hot throw from most of the scent oils I’ve tried. 

Anyway, here are the images.  They are all freehand so they aren’t as fine or polished as they would be if I were selling them. 

Earth

 Tree with 2 earth symbols in the trunk. The branches wrap around the glass and join on the other side

Air

 Incense stick in holder on one side, Air symbol on other.  Incense smoke billowing around bottom of glass.  Feathers wrap the top of the glass.

Fire

 Fire symbol on bottom engulfed in flames.  Ring of flames wrap the bottom and top.

Water

I’m not pleased with this one and will probably redo it.  I have waves wrapping the top of the glass with a Water symbol on the bottom.  The bottom is a sandy beach with shells and a hint of waves coming in.  It sounds better than I was able to make it look freehand.

Saturday is craft day

So I finally got off my lazy butt and engraved 2 of my glass votive cups to be used as quarter candles, Air and Earth.  The air cup has a row of feathers around the top of the glass, an air symbol at the bottom and directly opposite the air symbol is an incense stick in a holder.  Going around the bottom between the symbols is the indication of incense smoke.  The Earth cup has a tree with 2 earth symbols carved into the trunk and the branches wrap all the way around the votive cup and link on the other side.  I’m not 100% sure what I want to do with fire and water yet, but I’m thinking flames wrapping the fire cup and a chalice or cauldron surrounded by sea shells for the water cup.

The candles themselves are going to be unscented  plam wax with natural wicks colored in the quarter colors.  I’ll put a picture up when they’re done and have enough votive cups to make 3 sets.  I might do a couple sets to put out on the pagans of etsy street team if it still exists.  I haven’t been out on etsy in a long time.

I’m headed down to spend some time with my ‘ol lady now.  She just got home from a Military Family support meeting.  I’ll make some popcorn and we’ll watch a movie or something.

That’s all I’ve been up to other than doing stuff for work, periodic protection spells for a couple soldiers and healing spell for Carolyn Miller.  She is home now and is waiting to see if she needs any further Chemo or marrow transplant.

I’ll try to get out to the SpiritsCast forums tomorrow.  It has been a long time since I’ve been out there.

Kitchen Witchery

We went and saw Avatar in 3D yesterday.  I thought the movie was awesome.  The 3D effects were rockin’ and I didn’t notice the 2 hour 40 minute run time.  2 trips to the bathroom probably had something to do with that though.  I did notice that even though I really enjoyed the movie it threw me into a funk.  I know it’s just a movie, I know it’s irrational but the greedy bastards destroying something so beautiful and old upset me.

So… to get back to normal again I had to play around in the kitchen.  And it worked too.  There was really nothing magical about it.  No witchcraft added, no *special* ingredients or anything like that.  But I haven’t had cinnamon rolls in such an extremely long time that I had to scratch make cinnamon/walnut rolls.  And… since I had the ingredients out, I decided to make a loaf of Cinnamon Oatmeal bread as well.  It’s still in the oven.  Well, it’s actually in the bread machine but it’s a little mini oven isn’t it?    My damn ears failed me again though.  I didn’t hear the beeps to add the raisins or it would have been Cinnamon Raisin Oatmeal bread and that would have been much better.  I’ll have to get those hearing aids next year but they are expensive.

Anyway, I shared the love and sent a plate next door.  The rolls are done and waiting for breakfast.  The bread is in it’s final rise before cooking so it will be done for tomorrow.  We’ll probably use it for french toast.  That’s usually quite yummy.  On top of all that the wife is just finishing up a vegitarian shephards pie (a new recipe) and it smells so delicious downstairs I just can’t stand it.

It’s been a day of cooking.  I did get in a meditation this morning and wrote in my personal journal but mostly I’ve been cooking.  I plan on using the bread machine more this year but I want to use it on dough mode and make normal looking loaves.  My biggest beef with bread machines is the shape of the loaf they make.  It does make good sized french toast though.

Anywho… back to work tomorrow.

Laters…

Carolyn and Jeff

Here is a pic of Carolyn and Jeff for a focus object if you intend to do a healing.

Healing spell

I found out today that the wife of a workmate of mine has lukemia.  With his permission I just completed a healing spell for her.  Her name is Carolyn Miller.  I added an entry to their online guestbook and made reference to the Lord and Lady so I’m sure some fallout is going to come my way.  ALL of the other posts reference the Christian God so it should be interesting.  I did briefly explain my path and what a spell was first, so he shouldn’t be surprised about it.  He said that he had questions about Wicca so we should have an interesting chat in a few weeks.  I told him I’d be glad to answer any questions he had.

Other than that nothing really out of the ordinary was happing today.  Shower cleansing, work, awesome dinner, healing ritual for Carolyn, this blog post, a video game, tv with the wife, bed.  In other words, mostly same old same old.  The dinner was really good.  My wife made a *from scratch* orange chicken stirfry.  I had to have 2 helpings and snatched up the leftovers for lunch tomorrow.  It was awesome.

Speaking of same old same old, it’s about time to mix things up a bit.  I’m not sure what exactly needs to change or be added, but I was thinking.  I’ve been doing magical things in my life for the better part of 2 years now and my daily routine has become a bit mundane.  My shower cleansing, for instance, used to be something special that I wanted to do every day.  It is now just something that I always do.  I still put thought and energy into doing it and it still works for me, but it isn’t something *special* anymore.

Anyway, I’ve been up here in my internal sacred space for the healing ritual and updating journals for all of Wendy Rule’s “Beneath the below is a river” album and another 45 minutes of silence on top of that.  I guess it’s time to check in on the wife and maybe get a munchy crunchy snack.  I’ll skip the video game tonight. 

Laters…
HedonsDog

Daily Draw – Aces and Queens

I did a draw today, asking about tomorrow.  While shuffling the cards, one fell out.  Trying to get my attention are we?  Okey-fine.  I kept that card out, finished shuffing, cut and drew 1 card.

I got the Ace of Swords and the card that fell out while shuffling was the Queen of  Wands.

Aces are initiators.  Swords are intellect.  Put them together and I will be beginning a task tomorrow that will require logic and analytical thought.  Swords are also edged tools, so I may have to cut through my thought processes or mental clutter in order to see the path to completion.  Since the Queen fell out, I will have to watch for a woman of passion, ideas, or possibly a hot-tempered woman.  This could also indicate traits within myself, so I should be on the lookout for any situation where my temper or excitement could hinder the project.

I told you that new camera would come in handy.    I get to add images of my draws now!  Yay!!!

New Year’s Ride

Janet shared in my New Year’s ride.  We only went about 10 miles maybe because it was only like 15 degrees (F) when we left.  I had to jump-start the bike to get it going, but it took the cold fairly well.  She is temperamental in the cold air.  It was a good ride around town and we came home and had a Hot Chocolate with Disaronno Amaretto and a few marshmallows and wrapped up on the couch in a blanket and watched a movie on cable with the dogs on and between us.  1 big happy family.  Janet was all bundled up still.