Fragments From Floyd

She's been at it again, our resident archeologist. This item came out of the branch beside the house. There is an inner numbered dial and an outer numbered ring.

My guess is, it's the dial off of a safe, and the rest of it--along with gazillions in gold coins--is somewhere in the branch! Grab that shovel, maw, and let's get digging! (If there are other suggestions to what this remnant might be, as long as there's a fortune underground involved, I'm interested in hearing your thoughts!)

And totally unrelated to the above...

Board

We found our 2 x 12 bridge about a half mile downstream after last week's flash flood. It's just fine, if a bit waterlogged, and back in place over the stream by the barn. Every time this happens, I say I'm going to cable it to a trailer anchor in the bank, but I never do, so I think I won't do it one more time.

Library HeeHaw

Thanks to all who arranged and participated in the words-and-music event last night at the Radford Library. A couple of dozen folks showed up, and one black and white spotted dog wandered in between Whiskey Before Breakfast and Foggy Mountain Breakdown. Good to meet mommy-blogger (and to be the first in-the-flesh blogger contact for) Sally from very near by; thanks, Danny for coming over from Blacksburg and helping me tote my dog-and-pony paraphernalia out to the truck afterwards; and good to see my micro-friend Georgia from RU and Bill and Sue from Ann's workplace and mine, respectively. As usual, it was fun, but since folks had already been sitting an hour for the music, I glanced across a lot of stuff to shorten the program, and probably set the pace a bit too fast for a SLOW book.

Take Two

I'm thinking second printing. I'll have to go upstairs and count boxes, but think I'm about half way through the first batch. Speaking of which, any readers out there who have spotted typos or glaring goofs in SRH, I'm going to be keeping a list of such for the next few months so I can make wee changes to the second printing. Do let me know the title of the piece and what the changes are, much appreciated.

Nugget from the Road

The man in his late 80s was still frail from a recent illness when I saw him. I asked him what kind of work he used to do. "Worked as a chemist in (secret government facility out west where nuclear bombs were concocted.)" He chuckled to himself and told this: "I was giving a talk once, and somebody asked me about working with plutonium. They asked me if I'd suffered any ill effects from it. I told 'em "Yep, after 30 years of working with the stuff, it made my hair turn gray."

Photo-op

The UPS truck pulled up in the drive yesterday afternoon. I didn't remember ordering anything. Neither did Ann. Then the lights went on: could it be my camera is back from Nikon repair just at the 11th hour of my need to have it? Yes! I tried to love Ann's new Canon Powershot, but it's just not the camera I'm used to, and I'm so pleased to have the D70 back in my hands. They repaired the factory defect for free, AND cleaned the CCD that had spots on it from DAY ONE! I had to touch up every image that had sky or other unbroken fields in the upper half of the image. Now, I won't! Expect pix in days to come.