Apparently someone donated a four person goose hunt for a raffle. Rich Simon was the POC, and they managet to raise $1,100 which he wrote out in a check and gave to me. A bowling tournament last year, and a goose hunt this year. There's some pretty nice people down at the Oroville Ranger District.

A girl who I've never met went to Viet Nam on vacation. When she got back, she sent me a shirt she picked up for me there. I've never heard of Tiger beer, but I smile every time I look at the shirt. Thanks, Susan.

As I roll around outside I've noticed that it stays light alot longer... Mostly because of the time change I guess, but also I suspect because I've pretty much been stuck inside for 2 years. Not lately, given, but it got dark early all winter. So as I cruize around, I've noticed all the stuff I stuffed into the little cold frame we built last winter is going crazy...

My Blue-crown passionflowers are in bloom, and the little guys (also bluecrowns) I got as cuttings from my sister's last year are ready to come out and be sold.

My little baby figs? They lasted the winter in the coldframe, and are all leafed out and ready to spend the summer in the sun.

I've also got a 12 piece Solingen knife set- Made in Solingen, Germany. I don't have a picture of it, because I'm sitting in bed, and it's out in the living room, and the camera's out in the van. Sigh. It's pretty damn trick tho. My brother in law Jack gave it to me- He owns a patio furniture store in Hollywood, and on ocasion people walk in with something to sell. Chinese ladies with sox, I dunno, all kinda of stuff. Anyway, this guy walks in with this knife set, and wants to sell them for a hundred bucks. Jack says "No Way". Ok, 50 bucks. "Not interested." hey waddya get for one of those whirly wind toys you have over there? "Forty bucks." I'll trade ya? "Done."
The whirly thing cost him sixteen bucks.
So, he comes home with a briefcase- I didn't think anything of it, he's a business guy, after all. He sets it on the table, and says "Dude, check it out." I'm like .... What? "That case." ...Um, ok... I open the thing, and there's 15 (count 'em) bitchin' kitchen knives in there. Now I've been pickin' up Henckels knives when I get the chance, but they're friggin' Spendy, so I only have 3 so far. Henckels knives are also made in Solingen, Germany. So I'm pretty stoked on my new knife set. Now all I need is my own kitchen to break it out in.

My dwarf voodoo lily has a leaf up, about an inch and a half. I don't have a picture of it either. It *might* get to be about 3 inches tall, that's it. I've prolly spent 500 bucks all told on voodoo's... Pretty much if it's on this page, with the exception of 'pinto' and 'albus', I've got one. Yes, even a hundred dollar a bulb Titanium. Call me weird, whatever.

My Sauromatum Venosum has bloomed.

Why is it sitting outside? Because I had it inside a few days ago, knew it was going to bloom, but not having one actually do so before, didn't know what I was in for. I came home from LA, (Los Angeles, if you're in the east, NOT Louisana(sp?)) and was sitting in bed that evening, and there were a few flies buzzing around the room. Flies annoy the hell out of me with their buzzing, so they attracted my attention almost immediately. What the hell are flies doing in here? I wondered, but then realized I left the window open, and ... Well, I guess I can't kick myself, but you get the idea. It's not like I can chase the little bastards around swatting at them anymore... I need a fly-gun or something. Anyway, I was pissed-off that there were flies in here. But thought no more of it. The next night, as I sat here working on this, I kept smelling something. Urine. Believe me, I know exactly what it smells like, as when you get a UTI it smells. Alot. The room smelled like that, kinda. "Did I piss my pants?" I kept asking myself. Sniff, think 'oh damn that stinks', shift myself to the side and feel the bed, nothing. Feel the pants. Nothing. What the Hell is going on?
The next morning I woke to the odor of nasty unwashed gym socks, which someone had pissed on, and thrown on a fire. "What The Fuck Is That?" I said to myself almost immediately. I was cussin', because I thought I had pee-ed all over something and didn't know what.
Finally, I looked over to the shelf where I had my two most recent bloomers (there's a Dracunculus vulgaris about to pop as well...) and noticed the venosum was all the way open. YOU! You Little Bastard! You've been stinking up the room!
So I grabbed it, and took it out into the living-room and stuck it on a table. Then I went to school.
Sure enough, when I came home, it was outside. Mom had spent about an hour looking through the house for the tipped rotten urinal, opening windows, looking s'more... Finally she found my little trick, and by that time it was warm enough that it would survive outside, which is where it was banished.
Thismorning, it smelled as lily-white as hand-lotion. Amazes me that the smell can come and go so fast, and be So Friggin' Strong!

Mike Sherman was recently in Texas running a crew looking for shuttle parts, and he called me from there. I had asked Tonia if he still had the Bitchin' phone charger I'd made for him awhile back. I have pictures of it, but I can't show you. I'm going the "Invention Submission Corperation" route with it, and apparently it's not a good idea if I wave it around too much just yet. Anyway, in our conversation we got to talking about the toy-hose roller i'm developing (no, no picture of it either) for which incidently Don Willis of Gerlinger Steel and Supply has donated the prototype parts. Check him out, he's got all kinds of stuff, and delivers. But I digress again~> In talking about the hose roller, Mike mentioned what he REALLY wants is a leatherman-sized toy-hose clamp. Which got me thinkin'. Usually, you y off inch fire hose with 3/4th inch light-weight garden hose. (hereafter known as "Toy Hose" cuz after the big hoses, it's a toy.) Then, you mop in 50 feet. (kill all fire in your reach) then, you put down the nozzle and run, as you're usually without a 3/4th shut-off valve and it does the 'mad snake' waving and spraying all over the place, walk back to the y, put on another 50 feet of toy hose, turn on the hose again, and go trap the mad snake so you can mop up some more. Do that 5 to 10 times in a shift, and it tends to get a little annoying. Plus, by the 10th time, you're walking 500 feet back and forth, usually through a ragged fire edge with bushes and all kinds of other crap to fall over. You're especially screwed if it's on a hill, and when are Hotshots NOT on a hill? Never. So a tiny hose clamp would be bitchin'. Clamp the hose, put on 50 feet right there, un-clamp the hose, and put the monkey to it.
So, in order to make the clamp, I have to make a machine which bends aluminum in the right places. Sure I could make ONE clamp, but I want to make a pantload of them (along with the hose roller) and sell them on Crew 13, which is the site I recently bought for that purpose. It's up, BTW, but there's not much there (because I haven't built retail models yet) so don't get too excited just yet.
I've got some of the machining done, and I have to have it ALL done by 5 tomorrow so I can weld it together in class tomorrow night. Then we just have to hope it works as expected. You see, while I was down in LA, I stopped by All Electronics (which happens to be right down the street from her house) and picked up some pneumatic rams. I dunno if they are powerful enough to bend my aluminum pieces tho. So I have to build the machine tomorro and see.

I took the venosum over to my friend Robyn's place- She's The Master Piercer at the local Tattoos and Body Piercings shop which she co-owns with Jeff Gogue. I gave her a couple voodoo's awhile back, and one's putting up a bloom spike. I also took her a baby Blue-crown. Anyway, I wanted to show off my baby and give her a shop-warming gift (they just moved) and also wanted to check out Jeff's operation becasue I've been thinking of getting a tattoo. Well, a few actually. It started out with wanting a line around my torso where the feeling stops, so if in the future if it moves, I'll know. Then, I want vines and spiderwebs on my feet and legs, as they're not doing anything but gathering cobwebs and vines and stuff right now. (it's not like they move, yaknow.) So I've been thinking about it and kind of kicking around what I wanted... And after seeing the shop and Jeff's work, He's the guy.
Now what the hell do I want? Well, Robyn helped me out with the idea of the line should BE something, not just a line, so I was thinking something spiny like greenbriar or silverthorn, merged with the 'grippies' my passionflower vines hold themselves up with. Kinda 3dish as well, so it looks like the vine is a few millimeters from the flesh, but some of the spines are piercing me. Then, I want the 'grippies', which kind of spiral, to look like they're burrowing into my skin holding the vine to me. I also came across a picture of a wound Jeff had done showing the bone beneath. So I thought it would be cool to somehow have the vine grippies holding open a rip in my back through which someone could see all the crap in there. I want that particular part to be "Oh My God" type horrible, and perfectly correct. Well, it is horrible, I just need it to be correct.
In steps the Dr Morgan, Neurosuergon I went to see in Reno today. I've been having 'nailgun to the back' type pain, and asked him about it, after which he asked me to get x-rays and a ct scan. WEll, today I talked to him, and my fusion is perfect, and the implant is allright, so it must be vertebre to rib joint dislocation pain, which can happen when one's ribs are as screwed up as mine.
Anyway, He gave me all the xrays and scans! I have to take them to Dr maerz in Colorado and then Dr Blades in Kentucky when I go on the round-trip next month. But I have them, and x-rays are life size. They show exactly what's in there, and where. So I don't have the ideas totally crystal solidified yet, but I've got all I need to go in and talk to Jeff as soon as I have time.

I've made a Reil (search google) style forge.

It runs on propane, the torch design I found on Mr Reil's site a while back. I made one forge, Gingery style (Again, search google-) but as with all things I make, the first version didn't work all that well. It was caseless, as in had no metal shell like this one does, and kinda fell apart after awhile. For this one I've used a 6 gallon trash-can and castable refractory. It's dried for a week, and I've fired it twice with charcoal to do the final drying. Next I'll coat the inside with black (the gooey kind) furnace cement. Then it will be ready. I know it's possible to melt cast iron in one, as I allready did it in the first one. Didn't mean to, I was melting some copper out of an old motor, and gave it a little too much monkey, and melted the cast iron housing as well. That was a little exciting and unexpected, lemme tell ya. So now I have the capability to melt and cast aluminum and brass (and iron, should I wish) for some future project. Dunno really what the hell I'm going to do with it. I betcha I can even melt and cast glass, but I dunno what to do with that, either.

My friend Dianne's little girl has a friend who's in a chair, for some reason or another. (I forget) Apparently he has no foot-plate on the chair, so his poor little feet drag soemtimes. After reading about my bitchin' foot-plate, she wondered if he could use one. So, she has to talk to his Mom and him to see if it's cool, and if it is, I'm gonna build him one. I picked up some cool diamond-plate at the recycler's in Reno today which should work. If it's a go, and it works, I'll post pictures.

What the hell else is there? Am I forgeting something I wanted to tell all y'all? Prolly.
What a freakin' week it's been. Monday I had to go see the Doc to try to get rid of the most recent UTI- The one I got about 10 minutes after I went off the cipro the last time. I'm on it again. Tuesday my rehab councelor came by, we talked till noon, and I got started on the toy hose clamp. Today, I went to class, then to reno, saw the neurologist and went to the recycler's, then came home, worked on the clamp for a bit, then went up to school for the pre-kayak trip meeting.
Oh Yeah, the kayak trip. I'm going kayaking this saturday. How the hell's a para gonna do that? We shall see, grasshopper. WE're going from the greenville Y to woodie's, about 5 miles of class 2's, with one class 3. (the one right by Paxton) It should be a cool trip. I did alot of rafting before, but have been kind of afraid of water since then. I sink, quickly. There's gonna be about 10 of us tho, so I'll be allright. My friend Megan's going as well, she lost a leg last year to cancer. Poor girl's not but 22 or so. She incidently was also in the class with me when we built our longboards. Those 16 foot vintage skis I made and raced? yeah, those. Anyway, she's got a prosthetic leg now and is getting along fairly well.
Tomorrow I have calss till noon, massage at 2, and welding class at 5. At some point I have to machine the rest of the parts I'm going to weld together for the hose-clamp-maker tomorrow. If I'm not done, I have to wait till next thursday to put it together. Then Friday, I have to be in Chico at 9 to give the van to the Nor-Cal folks (The ones who modified it for me) so they can put in an extra battery. It's been dying in a few days, becasue "I don't drive it enough". I think it's because I leave the drawbridge down alot, but I'm not saying anything. (Shhhhh!) While the van's in the shop, I'm going with Susan (the rehab councelor) over to CSU Chico to check out housing. I've been accepted there, in computer science, and that's prolly where I'm going to go. Since I can use about 5% of the available housing now that I wheel, it behooves me to start looking now. Then Saturday I'm going on the river trip.
I hope next week isn't as hectic.

Oh yeah! the Tibook! It's fixed, it's back, and I'm using it. Didn't cost me anyhting to get it fixed, either.

I'm also in the process of making a power-hacksaw, so I can cut up all the raw materiel for my toy hose clamp and roller. I almost have all the parts.