Well, well, Thank You all for such a nice welcome! Sorry I didn't see the official place to introduce myself. There's SO much here that I just did NOT go through it all.
Yes, after I saw all your posts I realized that some of you would think of the actor Greg Kinnear, since Kinnear is nothing but a post office, fire dept. (the nearest to us) and store/gas station that all lies between Riverton and well, next sort of known place on Rt. 26 would be DuBois, WY. Although I would describe Kinnear as between Riverton and Crowheart on Rt. 26. Crowheart has a post office so thus it's a "place" when it comes to WY anyway. There's a big butte known as Crowheart Butte and the legend is that the Shoshone and Crow were up there fighting and the Shoshone chief cut out the Crow chief's heart and ate it. Other than that there's the PO as I said, a fire dept. and a store/gas station that also sells damn expensive ice cream and really good homemade dark chocolate (also not cheap but IMO worth every penny). The hubby has been known to drive there for chocolate for me when I was feeling desperate
The hubby used to work for the Northern Arapahoe Tribe, but that's another WY story, that's for SURE. And no, he's white, not American Indian.
Oh, and I LOVE As Good As it Gets and thought Greg Kinnear was wonderful in that movie as was dear Jack Nicholson along with Helen Hunt.
Among other things I do with paper I also make cards. I have WAAAAY too much paper and paper crafting products. I've yet to unpack my room yet but gawd help us all when I do! I've been rubber stamping for 12 years and doing parchment crafting for over 8. I don't scrapbook though. I do like mail art but sadly never got as into it as I'd like to. Someday. But meanwhile I tend to collect stuff for all this, and then stuff sorta related to it. Somehow I now have well over 200 paper punches. That's another story.
Regarding the person who is from Germany; my hubby is also from Germany and I've visited that beautiful country, and other European countries, many times. I agree there's nothing quite as rural or wild as Wyoming there but there IS some gorgeous countryside. I dearly love Germany and do speak some rudimentary German. He talked in his sleep in German when we first met, since he had only been in the US a few years at that time, so I had to know what he was saying
I've been blessed to be able to travel a lot around the US and also other parts of the world. John, the hubby, used to travel a lot for work in the 90s and thanks to frequent flyer miles I went with him a LOT.
Yup.... I've known Phil and John for a long time. I came to the Rochester, NY area 20 years ago and met them not long after that. I'm originally from the Niagara Falls, NY area and came here 20 years ago to marry someone I met online. It didn't work out but thankfully I met tons of great people here and some are dear friends still. Plus I met John here. And yes, I'm verbose and I highly doubt that will change after all these years.
I've never been to Alberta but hopefully someday. When we lived in WY I'd hoped to see some of the western parts of Canada but never made it up there. Hopefully that will change at some point.
I was going to find the proper forum to share the following story but since I'm feeling lazy tonight, it's late for me and as you'll hear later, I'm a bit under the weather, I'm posting it here now. I'll do better in the future.
The cat that found us in WY is creatively named No Tail as he has no tail. We call him NT or Mr. NT. I was in town (Lander) and John was out at our old place in Nuts Flats. It was right after Christmas, the wind was, as usual, howling and the snow was blowing. We never got a lot of snow out there, Lander was always buried but out there it was just in the right spot that the real snow missed us. But the wind howls year round. It was cold, the wind chill was, according to our weather station, -30F. John heard this horrendous yeowling sound. He thought maybe it was Merlin, one of our previously indoor cats that just HAD to go outside when we got to WY. We're not ones to have outdoor cats and none of ours currently are, including Merlin, but for about 3 years Merlin was outside more than in. But it wasn't Merlin, he was in his box under the porch snoozing. He opened one eye, looked at John, and went back to sleep. John got a huge flashlight and proceeded further outside toward the yeowling. We had a typical setup around our place, barbed wire to keep the cattle out, cattle guard at the end of the driveway to keep them out and a gate that if needed, we could close. Between the driveway, such as it was, and the "yard" was a split rail fence with a gate and over the gate a ranch style ... thing... I have no clue WHAT they're called... it's two poles vertically placed, one on each side of the gate, with another pole horizontally across the top. Up on top was an elk head skull nailed to the cross beam. It was there when we moved in. Also up there at this moment was one cat howling and yeowling his fool head off. John, who had gloves on, reached up to try to get him down (John is fairly tall) and the cat ran across the beam and jumped down onto the railing and then to John's feet. John scooped him up and brought him up on the porch. The cat let him take him into the mud room and after John brushed the snow and muck and such off him he saw this weird cat, no tail with a huge head and one eye closed tightly shut.
John dried him off with a towel and the cat stopped howling and all that. So he left him there, went and got some food and water and the cat ate and ate, then laid down on on a towel that John put on a blanket. And that was that. He was home. We took him into the vet, had him checked over and so on. Nothing to do about his eye, it was a birth defect but the vet cleaned it out and the cat could then open it somewhat but it wasn't "right" although he can see some out of it. We asked around but no one knew who the cat belonged to. So we had him neutered and all his shots and he stayed outside with Merlin and they became buddies. He was a fierce hunter and not too keen on people. That Summer we found out where he came from. A ranch quite some miles from us. The actual people who had him, they bred Manx cats, were the son and daughter in law of the people...who turned into good friends of ours...who owned the ranch and they had left that Spring for Texas. They SAID they couldn't find NT when they left but we feel, from what we learned, that they bred these cats and that when they saw NT had the bad eye they just let him run because they knew they couldn't sell him. The vet said NT was about 3 years or so old when he found us. About a year after we found him/he found us he and Merlin ended up living in one of John's two work trailers (he had two old mobile homes that he used for his side business, one was real nice and was used as an office plus some storage of my STUFF, the other was just rather bare but heated and cooled and was used for electronic equipment storage). This was because one of our "neighbors", who is a person we call friend but has some problems (Vietnam vet who came back a bit scrambled, sadly) suddenly got tired of Merlin coming around and said he'd shoot him if we didn't keep him away. Hard for us to do after over 2 years of Mike allowing Merlin not only on his porch but in the winters inside on his couch and chair in front of his fire! So we put them inside and let Mike have some cool down time. But we never did let them out again. We did fear that the eagles would grab one of the cats and that'd be that. Or some of the other wildlife, which we had a LOT of.
When we moved to Ohio both came into the house with us and are of course masters of their domain. NT developed diabetes last Spring and we're still working to get it completely regulated. But he's one loving, cuddly cat who never fails to make us laugh with the odd ways he sits, lays and tries to clean himself. He has real short legs, a wide body and a big, wide head. He can't throw his leg up over his head like most cats to clean his behind so he leans against the wall or in a corner and almost bends in half trying to clean. And he also, get this, licks his paw and then cleans his ...uhemm...privates...with it and then licks and repeat. Funnier than heck. Today he had me in stitches. I have a battery operated clock that in our place here in NY that we recently moved into I really haven't found a place for. It's a wall clock and it's octagonal in shape and about 10 inches across. The battery is in it and it has a second hand. It is sitting against a cabinet at the end of the hall as you go into our living room, on the floor. This afternoon I heard NT meowing a couple times and then heard some rattling noise. I looked out the bathroom door where I was brushing my hair and there he his batting at the second hand as it swept across the face of the clock. I started laughing and put my face in a towel and looked back out. There he was crouched by the clock watching it, then batting at it again, then finally looking around to see if he could see behind the clock. He kept at it about 10 minutes and then gave up. I wish I'd had a camera!
So... it's late and enough from me once again. I had a long evening and sadly missed out on an evening with friends due to some troubles I experienced with my screwed up spine due to lifting books that I shouldn't have over the past weekend. I have some health problems, including chronic pain, that sometimes piss me off and sometimes cause me to write more than usual because I've had to take some pain meds... like tonight.
I promise I'll learn the forums better here and start posting in the appropriate places. Once I unpack my desktop and don't have to use my laptop as my main computer it should be easier for me to spend more time at the computer.
OOOhhh... and for a short time there I actually started to have a Wyoming drawl, as I call it. My Dad was the first one that noticed it and asked me what was wrong with me. I still find myself saying "set" instead of when the word "sit" should be used. "I'm just settin' here at my computer" Thanks again for the warm welcome and your patience with me. I bid you all a Good Night!
