It's a 5K walk/run (thank GOD the work "walk" comes first!). You can join the team or simply donate, if you're a LAZY BUM. Go to www.fsawv.org and click on the "donations" tab along the top, then there's a "donate" box with a heart, click on that and it takes you right to Paypal.
You better pony up or I'll look bad and we don't want that!
It's a Cajon, which wikipedia describes as a box-shaped percussion instrument originally from Peru. You sit on it and slap the front, back and sides...it has drum snares on the inside of the light brown plywood side, for a buzz like effect.
I got it from my daughter and her girlfriend. (take THAT Rick Santorum!)
By the way, the pinkish edges on these pictures is a result of my iPhone case, which ALMOST fits. This is my reward for buying it on Ebay for, like, three bucks.
It really helps if you already know how to play a percussion instrument...which I don't....but I'm working on it. I went on line to try & find some video of someone who KNOWS HOW playing the thing, but it was all too intimidating. So as soon as I.T. Boy gets back to me, I'll post a video of ME playing it!
Well, it's not ALL about donating money, but that's what I want YOU to do. Here's the link to the website: http://www.therenalrace.org/ If you want to run/walk, that's fine too, all the info is there.
Make checks payable to The Renal Race c/o FOP Lodge 36
Stop by or mail em to
Cathy Donnelly
102.3 The Mountain
305 Hwy 315
Pittston, PA 18640
Tax id # 23-7586154
Charitable organizations tax # 237586154
Lookit my new car!!Well it's new to me.It's a 2007 Pontiac G5, standard shift, that I got from a guy up on top of Giant's Despair.Turns out you CAN buy your car on Craigslist!
Anyhoo, thought I'd dash home between school (one I teach AT, one I LEARN at) to grab some dinner.Parked my new car in the driveway.Came out 10 minutes later, it was GONE!!!Yes, I had left the keys in it, but rarely would that be a problem in my neighborhood.And it wasn't this time, either.It had ROLLED BACKWARDS down a flat-seeming driveway (although looking at the one picture it really isnt as flat as it looks), into the woods, JUST MISSING going right INTO the creek.And no, I didn't set the parking brake.It WAS in first gear, but apparently that didn't matter!
I called Martin's 24 hour towing, but it was 7pm by now, and I didn't have anywhere to go in the morning, so I told 'em to come back.Eli and Murph showed up next morning….here they are moving the wood out of the way (something I should have done before they even got there).And what Manly Men they were!
Eli lay down right in the multi-flora rose to attach the car to the cable.
They extracted my lil' car from the woods, even checked the oil for me and looked underneath to see if everything was OK.Except for some prodigious dents in the trunk, it WAS.PERFECTLY.
Look at the tree, the small one, in the middle of the picture.See how the bark is kind of shaved off for about 10 feet from the ground?Does that mean my car went UP that tree and back down, instead of continuing on into the creek?I think it does.
So God bless that poor tree, and God bless Eli and Murphy and Martins 24-hour Towing, in Kunkle, Pa, right across from the Shady Side Bar!
This is a great article about a common problem, in fact I found it when I went on the net looking for, well, ways to use up the zucchini.
http://www.wisebread.com/gadzukes-10-ways-to-use-up-your-zucchini-bounty
And now ladies and gentlemen, the grand Finale. Four pictures into one!! An additional two or three that I just took little bits from, and the earlier Tongue Affliction picture. Of course MY camera decides not to work at all, so one of the residents took these pictures, and most of them were blurry. There was a lot of blend-testing, and it was minimally effective, but it was mainly cutting, pasting, and blurring.
First we start with the happiest resident ever. It was a âTrip to New Yorkâ [props to Brenda at Bonham Nursing in Stillwater, sheâs a pistol, and smart as a whip], and so this resident has BOTH a âfeather in her capâ and an American Flag.
Then there was the rest of the audience, which had to be attached to the happy resident.
Then there was Sal, bless him, he even got up and danced but of course we didnât get a picture of that! But we did get him clappinâ along. Youâll notice I flipped him.
The worst and most time consuming part of this was making the colors match. Itâs surprising how some pictures come out all in yellows and some pictures are all in blues. Cold and warm colors, donâtcha know.
Layer levels can be adjusted, it makes a new layer and adjusts the hue, saturation, luminosity, and any other attribute you can think of. This required a lot of playing around and now that Iâm getting more advanced there isnât a lot on the web to help me. Youâll be surprised to hear, there are many minimally gifted people who randomly post YouTube videos telling you nothing you really want to know. Besides, as one of my fellow students who is a graphic design MAJOR told me, tutorials are fine but you really donât learn until you fool around with it. What she didnât say is I would waste HOURS and DAYS on it! One of the files I saved was called âfeetsâ because that one lady with the red-striped socks, her feet took literally HOURS to position properly. And if you look close, they really arenât. I also spent a lot of time on that 60âs era floor, since the colors didnât always match. I found out the danger of cutting and pasting ad infinitum, because every time you paste something it creates a layer. I think 35 layers is too many, but I was afraid to âflattenâ them all because then theyâd be lost. Guess it depends on how left-brain of a thinker you are!
The only thing I took from this picture, to the left, was the copier or whatever it is on the right.
The main thing that is different from the old way of doing things [mainly with an exacto-knife] is that you CAN adjust the colors, hue, saturation, luminosity, darkness, brightness, contrast to make pictures look like they were taken at the same time.
And what, exactly, did I learn? That there are many, many hours in the day that the youth of our nation can fritter away on the Internet. That if you think our politicians have more ways than ever to âspinâ themselves and their actions, you are right. That we are all children of advertising and therefore donât believe everything we see, even if it looks really, really good.
I still need 2 more pictures to complete my final project. However the one that I already posted was the only, well, acceptable one. But the solution is part and parcel of âPhotoshopââ¦just get an image off the Internet, and stick yourself in! I already knew how to do this from that aforementioned nice young man.
Easier said than done. Thereâs a finite amount of pictures of me, and it took a long long time to find one I would fit in to. Even then I had to flip it horizontally (under the âImageâ menu). There were other pictures but they were the wrong colorâ¦and yes, you can change thatâ¦or taken at facilities in Japan. I have been doing this performing at facilities thing for about 20 years and in all that time I have seen MAYBE two or three people of Asian descent. So those pics were out, too. This was the only one that even remotely fit, it's from Florida but it couldnât be helped. (How do I know itâs Florida? Well I donât, but I know damn well the elderly never EVER wear shoes like that, around here even if itâs 120 degrees). I had to cut myself out of the picture, trim my horrible neck area, then insert myself into the now-horizontally flipped picture. I actually succeeded in covering up dancer #2....dancer #1 just got cropped right out entirely.
I am really not satisfed with this pictureâ¦try & guess whyâ¦but even the Internet could not help me here. My friend Tyler says I should put someone, preferably creepy, at that window to provide the audience with a reason why theyâre looking there, and not at me! I did take a couple of audience members from behind me, since they were kinda looking in my direction, and placed them up front next to the guy with the powder blue shirt. That's why that table looks so crowded.
By the way if youâre going to flip a picture make sure thereâs nothing written visible because it will appear backwards. This will make your viewers think you live in Bizzaro world. Which I assuredly do.
And this time I'm going to train!
Well, it's not ALL about donating money, but that's what I want YOU to do. Here's the link to the website: http://www.therenalrace.org/ If you want to run/walk, that's fine too, all the info is there. 
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