coquina

Yes, it was a very nice present. I had been getting "mouse wrist" when I worked on the photos a lot. Now, I've just got to get my act together and learn how to use the tablet. I need to master it before I tackle photoshop, can't do too many things at once. (And I'm already running a machine shop in my spare time.) I'm outta here for the night - going to dinner with a friend. Y'all have fun now, ya here?

I learned on a little $75 program called Image Folio. My daughter gave me Photoshop CX and a Wacom digitizing tablet, but I haven't mastered it yet. I have many old, old graytone photographs that are faded and have no detail at all. I scan them into the computer, then print them out and enhance them manually with a pencil, then rescan them. How do you insert an image here? Does the site have a place you can store your photos or do you have to have your own? I can show you a "before" and "after".

Audrey Hepburn played Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady opposite Rex Harrison. Hepburn was a native of Brussels and moved to London after the war, so English was not her native tongue. How does her Cockney accent compare to the real thing? How about her refined accent?

Which program did you use? The horse originally had a rider - it's wearing a halter, and the reins are pulling its head back to make it rear, but they go nowhere. You used the clone tool to erase the saddle by copying a piece of horse hide and stamping it on the rest of the horse. Then you used the smudge tool to blend where the shades weren't exactly right. You can still see a little bit of the girth going under the horse's belly. There is something trianglular left behind the girth that is not a part of the animal - it's too far back to be part of the rider's boot - saddle blanket maybe? The sky is not the right color blue. I don't know what was originally behind the haybales, but it might have been a barn or some building that the bales were piled against. I don't think the horse is in the right proportion to the bales, although I can't tell the supposed distance because I can't see where the horse's hind feet meet the ground, so I can't tell how far he is supposed to be in front of the bales. You used the magic wand tool to cut the horse out of another picture and superinposed it on the bales of hay. Mind you, that's not to say you didn't do a good job with the picture - it's just that I play with this too.

I'm sure that Mom's system wasn't as strong as some, due to her age. Maybe it was unavoidable. Thanks for the reply.

I'm sorry your grandmother got infected too. Did she recover?

Yes, she got a staph infection from a hip replacement - she was 95 but went through rehab and did great. A few days after she got back from rehab, the hip started to hurt worse. I took her back to the surgeon's office and one of his partners looked her over and told us that she had been given pain meds in rehab so they could work with her, and had taken her off them when they sent her home, so it was to be expected. She did not improve, the pain got worse and she got sicker. I took her back again. They again, brushed her off with comments about her age and fragility. A couple of nights later, while she was in bed, the hip burst open and a geyser of infection shot out and filled the bed. It was a staph infection. The following two months were hell for us both. She was treated, a PIC line was inserted, and she was sent to a nursing home to recover. They let her get bedsores, and they got infected as well. It ended up with one of the nursing home assistants dislocating her hip when they moved her. She went back to the hospital and the doc. degloved her leg while putting the hip back in the socket. The whole thing ended up with the infection going systemic and my mother dying from a massive GI bleed. (Which I wrote about in a "Flashbacks" thread in the psychology segment). I was told staph infections are unavoidable - I witnessed the hair bit during her final hospitalization, when she had an infected hip and infected bedsores on both legs. I wonder who else got it because of that nurse's lack of sterile procedure. (And I did complain about that to her doctors and the head nurse on the wing.) Watching what went on made me aware of how mom probably acquired the infection. I am very sorry to go on about it, but I am very, very bitter about the whole episode, and I do have flashbacks about the end. I know I need to just get it out of my system and move on, but it's easier said than done.

this is jolly good fun, is it not? I keep hearing Brits referring to "caravans" - to us that is a line of camels going across sand dunes. I think you are referring to what we call "RV"s - recreational vehicles, but maybe you are referring to "trailers" or "mobile homes" as depicted in this site: http://www.drbukk.com/gmhom/park.html

Our PBS started carrying "BritComs" several years. In the opening there is the voice of the lift operator describing what is on each floor - it came out garbled, but one thing sounded like "pecuniaries" what the heck are they? How did the expression "Bloody" originate? Speaking of innuendo - that show was full of it - especially regarding Ms. Slocum and her pussy.

I have been told by several dietitians that it's best to leave it alone if you're trying to lose weight because it stimulates the appetite.

Here's a heartwarming story about the bond formed between a little girl and some construction workers. This will make you believe that you CAN make a difference when you give a child the gift of your time... A young family moved into a house next door to a vacant lot. One day, a construction crew came in and began building a house on the empty lot. The family's 5-year-old daughter became interested in all the activity going on next door and spent much of each day observing the workers. Eventually, the construction crew, all of them gems-in-the-rough, more or less adopted her as a project mascot. They chatted with her, let her sit with them while they took coffee and lunch breaks, and gave her little jobs to do here and there to make her feel important. At the end of the first week, the men presented her with a pay envelope which contained $2.00. The little girl took this home to her mother, who said all the appropriate words of admiration, and suggested that they take the money she received to the bank to start a savings account. When they talked to the bank teller, she was equally impressed and asked the little girl how she had earned her very own pay check at such a young age. The child proudly replied, "I worked last week with the crew building the house next door to us." "My goodness gracious" said the teller, "and will you be working on the house again this week, too?" The little girl replied, "I will if those a$$holes at Home Depot ever deliver the fu<kin' sheet rock..."

An old lady dies and goes to heaven. She's chatting it up with St. Peter at the Pearly Gates when all of a sudden she hears the most awful bloodcurdling screams. "Don't worry about that," says St. Peter, "it's only someone having the holes put into her shoulder blades for wings." The old lady looks a little uncomfortable but carries on with the conversation. Ten minutes later, there are more blood curdling screams "Oh my God," says the old lady, "now what is happening?" "Not to worry," says St. Peter, "She's just having her head drilled to fit the halo." "I can't do this," says the old lady, "I'm going to hell." "You can't go there,"says St. Peter. "You'll be raped and sodomized." "Maybe so," says the old lady, "but I've already got the holes for that !"

I don't blame you. From what I have read, prions are pretty indestructable. I hadn't thought about that issue. I wonder if my cousin will serve it? Do most people eat it, or not? We call waterproof boots that are soft enough to be pulled over a shoe "galoshes", I believe you call them "rubbers" - if I'm not mistaken, you call the correction tool on the back end of a pencil a "rubber" also - we call it an eraser. In America, a "rubber" is slang for a condom.

Jeanne looks like she could cause me trouble. I'm only about 100 miles north of the northernmost point on the map.

A friend sent me this link - thought y'all would enjoy it: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

You might want to have a look here: http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/hurricane/index.html Granted - this was from a conference in 2001, and we seem to be having more hurricanes since then. But with regard to Paleotempestology, that seems to be more the norm than the exception to the rule. The biggest problem is that people came to expect that hurricane strikes from big storms to the continental US were a real rarity, and during that time, they built very expensive mansions on barrier islands. The US Gov't, with its National Flood Insurance Program, aided in this, because without insurance, no one would have been able to get a mortgage. No bank or finance company would have lent money to an uninsured $500+k home. So - now we have a lot of very expensive structures sitting in very precarious places, not to mention the human lives associated with them. I read yesterday that the average elevation of New Orleans is -9'. It is protected from flooding from a levee system designed to control the Mississippi. If the storm surge from Ivan breaches the levies, the city will be flooded with water up to the roofs, and after the storm, there will be no where for it to drain away. Levees are another case where human attempts to control nature can make the situation far worse.

I said something to the nurse, she said the hospital wouldn't provide caps because they were too expensive. I told her I thought she ought to at least have her hair put up. She said the regs. did not require it.

The same reason we eat liver and onions, I suppose.

They are rampant in this area. The medical profession says it's because of antibiotic resistant bacteria. However, when mom got one following hip replacement surgery, I didn't think the procedures followed while changing her dressings were very sterile. The nurses would put on a gown and gloves, but they didn't put on a cap. One of them had long hair, and it hung down in front of her face, she would brush it back with her gloved hand. However - if she transferred bacteria from her hand to her hair, then touched her hair after she had degloved, wouldn't it be possible for her to transfer staph to another patient? (It was a surgical wing - mother had to have surgery to debride the wound and remained on the floor a couple of days.) Wouldn't one think that if the medical staff was aware that staph infections are resistant to treatment with antibiotics, they would be extraordinarily careful not to cross contaminate patients?

How do you clean a kidney? It seems to me it would taste like pi$$. 'course, who am I to talk? Some folks here eat "chitterlings" - fried pigs' intestines, and "cracklin's" fried pig fat, and "pickled pigs feet". Not me, mind you...

Do you not eat beef because of BSE or because it is high in cholesterol? My husband used to want it every night - along with bread, potatoes, & real butter. His theme song was "I don't believe in cholesterol." I wonder if he believes in it now? My favorite Brit joke - During WWII a war-weary Yank had R&R and was on a crowded train. He walked up and down looking for a place to sit. The only possibility was one spot occupied by an elderly woman - her dog was sitting on the seat beside her. The soldier asked her if she would mind putting the dog on the floor, so he could sit. She accused him of being rude. He walked up and down the train again, and eventually came back to where the woman was sitting. He said, "Madam, if you'll let me sit down, I'll hold your dog in my lap. I like dogs, I have one at home." The woman said, "You're not only rude, you're arrogant to think I would allow you to hold my dog." The soldier was at the end of his rope, and he picked up the dog, threw it out the train window, and sat down. A gentleman sitting across the way lowered his newspaper and looked over his glasses, saying, "You know, you Yanks do everything backwards. You eat with the wrong hand, you drive on the wrong side of the road, and you've just thrown the wrong bitch out the window!" You say "perambulator" or "pram" - we say "baby carriage". What do you call a coat that is impervious to water? We call it a "raincoat" - seems to me I've heard my cousin call it something else.

You mean a "steak and kidney pudding" doesn't have kidney in it? Here, we say we eat everything from a pig but its squeal. Some people think "mountain oysters" are a real delicacy. Only male pigs have them, and they come in pairs. What about "sweetbreads", sounds yummy, but its actually the pancreas.

So, I guess I better not refer to that little pouch that I wear on the backside of my waist as a "fannypack" huh? Thanks for the heads up. Along those lines, one of my friends was visiting England and was expecting a visitor. The person told her he would "knock her up" at 6pm. She was absolutely floored. Here it refers to a man making a woman pregnant.

We put in "drainage tiles" to carry away excess water, you call them "weepers". We turn on the outside spigot to water our yard. You turn on the hosepipe to water your garden. It seems to me that you have another name for what we call "athletic shoes", "tennis shoes", or more generically, "sneakers". Nike makes 'em. Oh - this one is funny! When my cousin visited she told my husband and me that she was going to make us a dinner of "beefsteak and Yorkshire Pudding". To us, pudding is this gloppy stuff made from milk that comes in chocolate, vanilla, and butterscotch. We couldn't imagine why someone would serve that with beefsteak. My husband was a big fan of any kind of bread, so he quickly changed his opinion of Yorkshire Pudding. My cousin had to teach me to make it so I could fix it for him.

From "Are you being served?" Did you think he was refering to "Y fronts" or something worse? Let's see, we wear panty hose, English women wear tights. We wear "sweaters", you call them "jumpers", here a "jumper" is a skirt with a bib and straps, under which one wears a blouse. I love your expression for what we call a "speed bump" - a "sleeping policeman".