Spammers s***. And brief notes of plans for the day.

I got an email today from "Ada" with subject "You okay?"

I have a relative (a cousin of my Mom, I think, but don't hold me to that - she may be an aunt) named Ada. I don't know her very well, but she has emailed a couple times since my parents died.

I hate spammers. I was all set to reassure her that I was fine, only to discover it was some spammer trying to interest me in some stock. Of course, in retrospect I think the real Ada's "from" line reads more than "Ada" but we've only emailed a couple times and I didn't think about it until I opened it and was annoyed. :P

Off to my parents' house in a bit to do a few things, then home again. I plan to start uploading images from some of the scans today - I think I will do one or at most two rolls a day, both so I don't burn out, and because I'm really hoping people will actually look at them, and that's less likely if I pelt a few hundred up at once. ;) They'll be in sets, though, so I know which came from the same roll, so that should help.

Have a good day, if you're reading this. (Have a good day if you aren't, for that matter.... :)

First set of photos up.

These are photos scanned from some old slides. They are mostly of me, with some of Mom and one of Dad. This just happened to be the first set of slides up, but it was nice to start with a set that I actually could roughly place the time frame and all! They are up in this set.

I think Mom, were she still alive, would be annoyed by my choice of the photo to represent the set. Maybe not, though. You never know.

Some of you asked about my previous post about pinks. When I was growing up, Mom was very very into gardening and caring for the property (a focus that was ultimately defeated by the weak old well - by the time the new well was available, she was no longer physically up to the tasks, I think, and certainly was out of the habit). There were little round flower beds in the front lawn (not so little, really!). One held a variety of flowers including columbines and pinks. I adored the pinks. I wanted to have pinks here at my house - they'd offered me cuttings. But we never got around to cleaning up the back yard.

So we finally do and I talk to them - and a blackberry has overgrown that flowerbed. The pinks are gone. And I have only memories of them from ten years ago (I didn't spend much time staring at the flowers when visiting, I fear!) - and my memory's not that great, nor is visual memory. I start looking for flowers commonly called "pinks" and the most common ones, dianthus, are named for the edges of their flowers, which look like they've been attacked with pinking shears, if I remember right. These are not my "pinks" as, as best I can remember, they had smooth-edged petals (and were named for their vivid shade of, well, pink). My parents did not know what the real name for the pinks was either.

The best I could think of to do, which I had not got around to doing other than half-heartedly, was to look for flowers that "looked right" and settle for one of those, likely never knowing if they really were "my" pinks.

In these old photos that were scanned, some are in the front yard. And some have the pinks in the background. I have yet to find a really clear image of them but I have a couple blurry ones, at least. One was in the set I just uploaded - I cropped it to focus in on the pinks, here. With luck, I will be able to get enough of these to let someone familiar with flowers find a more probable match than my best guess. (I'd forgotten, for example, how tall they are! I remembered the flowers being on a low-to-the-ground plant...which they patently are NOT.)

A question for everyone.

Lowe's has a lovely table that I covet. Unfortunately, it's too large, and I covet it smaller. It is aluminum, theoretically rust-resistant, and takes 12x12 inch tiles to form the table surface - allowing one to change out the appearance of the table for a price of a few tiles, even floor tiles. But I want a table like that, but only 2 x 2 tiles (about 2x2 feet, in other words). Anyone happen to know a company that has such a thing?

For reference, the Lowe's item that I am describing is this thing here. It's a nice table, just too large for what I want.

Note that while I would dearly love a smaller one of those, anything of a similar configurable nature would be great. It DOES need to be safe to put outside, though - this is for the front porch. It will be under cover but subject to weather when it gets windy.