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My ‘local’ store is a hundred and fifty miles away (actually, a few blocks from my parents’ house) and their sole stock was a mermaid sconce that they’d had so long they’d forgotten they had her. The two clerks, when I took her up to pay for her, looked and said “Ohhh- she’s so beautiful; did you find her here?” I was tempted to say no, that I’d just wandered in off the street with a sculpture and spontaneously decided to pay them for, but decided not to. I really miss Wicks N’ Sticks – although I’d still have to drive at least 60-odd miles to the closest mall.
As far as truly local stores . . . I don’t think I can convince Walmart to start ordering Windstones. I’ll have to hunt on the internet.
Bonsai require very careful watering because of the tiny pots. It is typical of a ‘master’ teaching someone to train bonsai to let the student do the trimming and shaping but not the watering. Many of them also don’t do well in the house, so you need to be sure your suit the plant to your environment – the common evergreens are used to cold winters and even when dwarfed, don’t do well with the high heat and low humidity (which exacerbates the watering issue) of most modern houses in winter. You don’t want them to freeze, but they can handle cold better than people think. I had one for the better part for two years on a screened porch, but it died when we moved and could no longer keep it on an outdoor shelf. Some of the less traditional plants do better indoors, but I haven’t looked into the issue in years, so I can’t give a recommendation. Do, though, make sure if you’re buying a shaped tree that they don’t show damage from wires (or have ingrown wires). Wires are sometimes used to train the branch shapes but can damage the plant if they aren’t monitored.
The shaping is fun, and not particularly difficult. It just takes time.Those are northern zebras, by the way; the farther south you go the fewer leg stripes they have, with the (original) extreme southern type being the quagga, with no leg stripes at all.
Congrats, Copper! Hope the bloodwork also is improved.
I’ve been seesawing the last two weeks, but the center point is lower than it used to be, so I’m counting that as good. I’m trying to convince myself to eat fruit instead of cookies for snack, but I practically sprained my hand trying to open a jar of peaches last time. 🙁 One of these days I’ll learn to just skip the ‘try to open jar’ and go straight to the ‘hold under hot water and THEN open jar’!
One of my friends has started asking me for the link to this thread periodically. Some of these are just too good not to share.
Love the fruit bat. One of the best perks of vet school was getting to go to the Lubee center and ‘work with’ the fruit bats. Not a lot of actual work, but the tour was fantastic. Nothing like walking through cages full of beautiful, fox-faced bats with six-foot wingspans, hanging so that their eyes are level with yours. Just watch out for the bananas hanging down on plastic chains! (Enrichment for the bats; they have to use their thumbs to reel in the chain to reach the banana.)
Oh, I love that face!! And that foal sketch!
Guess I’d better get an account somewhere and start posting mine. Poppa cheetah griff’s got a great one of him doubled over like a racing cheetah leaving a few feathers behind him.
The main thing Wii Fit does for me is ensure that I do in fact weigh in everyday. I’ve had a scale since I got my apartment in college, but somehow it never got used . . . . If I can keep going til Dec. 1st, I’ll have weighed in every day for an entire year. (I’ve had it since release, but I broke the initial run when I got appendicitis, and then when I went to England for a week, which didn’t help the weight much either, lol!) I’ve managed to lose 10 pounds, more because of the weigh-in than the exercises, although I go through surges of doing those. I walk the dog and am now walking in place when I give breaks to the Inspectors on the line, which adds at least 2 hours of at least mild exercise instead of sitting.
I’ve got Wii Fit Plus, so I usually do the quick check and avoid being lectured by the scale, especially since the two major reasons for my weight ‘gain’ aren’t listed – #1 different time of day (when I get bumped to 1st shift, I don’t weigh myself before leaving the house at 4 am), #2 different house (the scale reads higher on my parents’ carpet than mine). I really like the ‘bike-riding’ exercise, but I suspect the jogging and ‘hula-hooping’ are more useful. Although the Single-Arm Stand will wear you out. Simple idea – stick one arm straight up in the air and keep it pointing straight up while you lie down – and stand up- and lie down – and stand up . . . now switch arms.
I do NOT believe that I really ought to weigh 119 pounds, BMI or no – I’m shooting for 135, and then if I can stick there for 6 months, will try for 130. My problem was that I was gaining and retaining about a pound a year, and after 20 years that adds up. I’d like to back down some and then stop the trend as much as possible.
That’s my point. They are called flion in the book (minus the capital L and the TM). If they were just winged lions I wouldn’t have a question, but the use of the term flion to identify their species is what I’m wondering about.
Quote:“You shall not,” the flion said. . . . He made a roar, and two more flions appeared from behind the castle, rapidly flying in.
— Jumper Cable, Piers Anthony. p 142 in the paperback edition.
The Xanth book Jumper Cable, just released in paperback, features three flions in it. And on it really since they’re on the cover, albeit with orange and blue wings. I noticed that this forum automatically ‘TM’s the word Flion, so I wasn’t sure if that meant the word wasn’t supposed to be used for other people’s winged lions or what. According to the authors note at the end, the name/winged lion idea was a reader submission so Piers Anthony (the author) may not know that Windstone’s original even exists, let alone was trademarked. I’ll admit to being a bit fuzzy on the implications of Trademark vs Registered Trademark vs Copyright. Does this need to be reported?
ETA I notice that the filter also takes the ‘s’ off the end of plural Flion. 😀
I just got my first piece with metallic eyes (male cheetah griff #1). It’s rather subtle to me – I’m not sure someone seeing these eyes in a (brick and mortar) store would really notice the difference. (The GRIFFIN, they would notice, but probably not the eyes 🙂 ) I don’t think they should be restricted to eBay pieces because, as noted above, that probably over-restricts them. Keeping them on LPs and rarer might be nice though, it keeps them limited while opening the availability to people who can afford the standard prices but not the high-bid ones.
(I hope that made sense; I’ve got a nasty headache today)
I think he’s FABULOUS! And that belly is a snake pattern as well; I’ve caught snakes with those black/white stripes underneath. If you decide you don’t like him after all, toss him this way!
Busy against a solid backdrop, but put him out in the woods and you may not see him again! He’s got some serious camouflage there.
Our first cat, I don’t think would have known what to do with a mouse. He ran away from my gerbils, and the gerbils, having more curiosity than good sense, always ran after him. Peter used to leave half a mouse on the front step. We were never certain if this was because a) he/she was eating the rest, b) he/she was trying to get double credit by offering the other half as a different catch, or c) the cat was just weird. (Peter-Paul-and-Mary was a black and white, gold eyed, deaf pseudo-hermaphrodite who was declawed but had no problems with climbing trees, catching mice and voles, or beating up trespassing dogs and cats. We presume all these were because, being deaf, no one had ever been able to tell ‘them’ that, for instance, they had to be EITHER a boy OR a girl. We gave up worrying about Peter sneaking out the dog door when we saw the cat jumping straight into the air to rake a doberman with the back claws; the dog turned tail and ran for it’s life from psycho cat. We initially found the cat -already declawed – in my brother’s treehouse and never were able to discover where it came from.)
One night when I was babysitting, one of the cats there proudly presented me with a live baby rat. Fortunately the kids were already in bed. I upended an empty wastebasket over it until the parents came home, and the dad just slid a piece of posterboard under and released the poor thing in the back yard.
Ooh! Love the zebricorns. Not sure the tiger pattern is . . . set right? on the OW. (The pattern itself is lovely, it just doesn’t look properly adjusted for the shape of a dragon, if that makes any sense.) Fortunately, I also prefer the first cheetah male to the second, since mine hasn’t even arrived yet! But good to see someone else will have a chance at one.
