Happy Halloween from Rufus!

   Here's a drawing I did last summer of a grey treefrog on a cherry tree trunk with toadstools. The tree is one near a local nature center that I found fascinating. It's done in pencil and pen & ink. I also added a close-up of the frog, as my sister said it was hard to see, entirely missing the point of camouflage. It was one that I sent to the Cold-Blooded Creations Show in Daytona Beach, Florida last August.

   Last week, family problems & cold, rainy weather left me in a gloomy mood, so I wasn't in the frame of mind to update. Sunday I went to the library, which lifted my spirits, but nothing exciting happened other than getting a hamburger for dinner, which, let's face it, is not as thrilling to everyone as it is to me.

   Yesterday, Tuesday, was finally going to give me some material, as my sister & I were to see the movie "Elizabeth:The Golden Age". However, when I met her at the movie theatre, the line was out the door, clear to the curb of the parking lot. It wasn't moving, either, because the ticket machine was broken. We postponed it for another day.

Instead we went to Home Depot, for what I thought was going to be a speedy look at refridgerators, which my sister needs to replace. She didn't find any to her liking, though I was fascinated with the ones for 2 thousand dollars. They looked more like cold cabinets for artwork rather than storing food. We agreed we disliked freezers on the bottom. She told me she wanted to check on a couple of things "real quick", which turned out to be 45 minutes spent looking at porch lights. At first, I was amazed at the variety, but after awhile, not even setting off the motion detectors on display was entertaining me. Finally, finally, she made her decision & I thought we were leaving. But no, she wanted to look for some ceiling light grids for her kitchen, which she had broken with by too vigorously cleaning. After she finally found them, they proved to be about a meter long & unwieldy to carry. I nabbed a buggy  to load everything in & then had to help stabilize the grids as we made our way to the checkout, past some scary Halloween decorations. Then I had to guard the buggy in the drizzling rain while she went to get the car so we could load it. At long last, I was rewarded with dinner at a pizza place. They even had brownies!

   Went to the diabetic doctor today & had the most wonderful surprise: I've lost 6 pounds! Yaaaaaayyyyy! It might not seem like much, but last year I gained 10 lbs. so this is a step in the right direction. With having bronchitis & a pulled back for a good part of the summer, I hadn't been able to exercise. The last couple months I have been doing a little routine with 5 lb. barbels, plus taking a few long walks, which obviously have been having more of an effect than I thought. This is just the sort of encouragement I needed to push me to walk more often.

    I'm still trying to get the equipment I need to convert to DSL, as my old computer(99 Gateway) doesn't have en Ethernet port. Talking to the tech support of my ISP was useless, they couldn't even understand what my problem was. Finally I found out that I need an Ethernet card, which has the port built in & supposedly I can install it myself. Not sure about the last part, but maybe I can work up my nerve to do so by the time it arrives. I have spent so many hours trying to find out what to do, in addition to trying to download my email on dial-up, that I run out of steam to do anything else such as update my blog or comment on others. Sorry about that, but hopefully it will be fixed soon.

  It's National Wolf Awareness Week. I don't know if it's a different animal each week of the year or what, but it's always worth a few minutes to think of a certain animal, whether a cute one such as a squirrel or a magnificent creature like a wolf. Actually wolves ought to be an International event, since they are endangered in all parts of the globe, but who knows how they decide these things.

    The Cleveland Indians baseball team is battling the New York Yankees in the playoffs, so I'm rooting for the home team. It would be great if Cleveland would at least win their division. To complete the mood, I'm reading a mystery novel about old-time baseball players in WWI.

  It's National Squirrel Awareness Week !