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My hubby works now as a conference planner as a resort manager. He used to own his own restaurant that he sold. I am sorry to say I have worked as an underwriter for 15 years for the insurance industry. I will slowly (due to my stupid internet connection, which is dial up, and is slow dial up due to the static on the line, rant later) do research on the area and see what comes up.
My folks just moved to Sierra Vista. They love the area. They are not in the house yet. They are having issues with the billions of folks trying to re-fi at the same time clogging the system. You can't get an appraiser out in the town, it seems. For now, they are renting a house in Bisbee, a little old hipee town. Actually, it is a pretty cool town. I would love it, but it does not seem to have a lot of work.
David and I did some pricing on carpet and supplies for things we need to do on the house. It probably after a year or two before we can start doing a move. We also have to find a place for my brother to move before we gut his side and put our house on the market.
My brother is disabled and he lives on the other side of my house. We converted my 4 bedroom house into a duplex but no cooking, etc. Really, it is just a seperate entrance and a barrier between the sides. We have to combine them back and then repair the damage. Frankly, his side looks worse than some crack dens.
His cat was sick with diabetes and had been peeing all over the place. He had failed to mention this and has pretty much destroyed it. Not only do we have to replace all the carpeting, but the subfloor as well. We have black mold as well.
On our side we have already pulled up the carpeting and painted the sub floor. We had water damage from the furnace when the drain was blocked from a wasp nest was built over the drain when I went out of town and flooded the house.
We have 1800 square feet of carpet to be replaced.
I have to say I am pretty much heart broken this week. My mom has moved away and we have lost two family pets.
Sandy has moved on into the light though. I was with her when she passed, of course. The vet gave her kitty valium to relax her, and she started purring as soon as the pain went away. She was one of the sweetest cats I have ever had the pleasure to know. I am glad she was able to move on to the light.
I have been trying to get the Kitty to pass on into the light or to move on to my house to join my cats. My mom has not yet settled into her home - she is in temporary quarters so I cant move her into mom moms new home yet.
I find the situation very sad. I am having no luck getting her spirit to move from the empty house. I am going to try again this weekend once to invite her to my house or to move into the light. My hope is to get her spirit to attach to the cat tree she loved so much and move it to my house this weekend.
I really don't like her being all alone in the house. No ghost should be alone in a house. spirits need family.
My poor mother is devestated and guilt wracked.
I am the same, but here in VA where I can only try to console her on the phone and cant even give her a hug anymore.
Also, Arizona is the land of the sun. What does that mean to my migraines. But, it also means no allergies. Is that better? I have trouble with mirgraines with allergies. Maybe it is better to to move and have no allergy medication.
Of course the housing market means we cant do anything for a couple of years. Also I cant transfer jobs for a couple of years until my health improve enough for my job to be willing to transfer me, too.
Then again, maybe I need a fresh start.
So many paths.
I know I am big girl.
But doesnt every girl need her mom sometimes? And right now, with everything going on with my headaches and what not, the thought of mom being down the road is very important to me. I cant drive right now. She is retired.
I did not realize how much of a crutch emotionally she has become.
Maybe it is a good thing. Long term. She moves in only three weeks, though. Dad is in the army.
I am not ready for this. Yet.
Funny thing is I am always the strong one emotionally in the relationship. She is the one crying about moving. When we are together. This is so hard.
You can see the solid ball of light glow and move in the house all the time. You can also watch the pets watch them float around. They seem to focus around the where the remains of Spike and the colloar of my Pearl who passed. Recently, my brother's cat also passed in the house and Tasha just passed before Christmas so we have a lot of pet spirits in the house. 4 pets is a lot of spirits. I find it comforting. I will find it hard to move with activity. First, I love my little glowy visitors. Secondly, not everyone would be happy to have this kind of presence in their house and may find it frightening if they do not understand that they are really just guardians and love ones checking in.
NUFORC Home Page
Web Report Indexes : by Event Date | by Location | by Shape | by Posting Date
National UFO Reporting Center
Sighting Report
Occurred : 5/15/2005 23:00 (Entered as : 05/15/2005 23:00)
Reported: 6/15/2005 11:02:15 AM 11:02
Posted: 6/20/2005
Location: Faber, VA
Shape: Triangle
Duration:1.5 min
craft was deltiod in shape had white lights at each end non blinking a red light in the center which blinked made a dull rumble when dirrectly over head only very large in comparison to the two fighter jets that were chaseing it one noteworthy thing is while it was overhead a bright light turned on and rotated around the red light
((NUFORC Note: Witness elects to remain totally anonymous; provides no contact information. PD)
Note - THis was not me nor my husband!
Later, I will have to tell you about my husbands UFO sighting. His, however is not very creditble as it did involve beer beer and a hot tub. I have been sworn to secrecy not to ever speak of the incident. Typing is quiet, so I am sure that I will only be partly breaking my vow.
It is too funny, but he is coming into the room so I will have to tell you tomorrow.
This weekend I was taking some photos - trying to catch a bird I have never seen and do not recognize. This damned squirell kept bopping me on the head with acorns. I kinda like the little guy. My camera is not good enough to get a good picture, though. He is too fast, camera too slow. My life feels like that right now with the mediations and the migraines and the pain.
The Acorn Creature.
No mushroom smoking bugs here with the fairies
Anyone know anything about black stags in general? I do not know too much about them - in fact I had not heard about them. I had only heard about the white stag when I lived in England so this really surprised me.
http://www.blueridgeoutdoors.com:80/con
I even found a group in VA that researches Bigfoot. Pretty cool!
From The Hook in Charlottesville. I love this paper.
by COURTENEY STUART
published on 2/28/2008
NEWS- 'I'm not crazy!' Witness sticks by cougar sighting
by COURTENEY STUART, published February 28, 2008
Susie Humphreys is hoping a motion sensitive camera will capture the cougar she's seen on numerous occasions.
PHOTO BY COURTENEY STUART
Last month, Marlene "Susie" Humphreys called wildlife officials to report her frequent sightings of a mountain lion around her Crozet home and her fear for her seven-year-old granddaughter's safety. Now she's not just afraid. She's angry following news reports in which those officials suggest she's mistaking a bear or some other animal for the big cat.
"I'm almost 50 years old," says Humphreys, shaking her head. "I think I can tell the difference between a cat and a bear."
She can also tell the difference, she says, between a bobcat-- which has a short tail and typically weighs under 40 pounds-- and a mountain lion, which has a long tail and can weigh up to 200 pounds.
"I was born in the country," she says. "I'm not some city girl."
The saga of the Crozet cougar is not new. Last summer, controversy erupted followed a series of cougar sightings. Philip Anderson, a Maryland man who's hoping to move to Crozet, wrote a letter in the Crozet Gazette warning locals of the dangers cougars pose to people-- particularly to small children. Anderson's warning, however, was not appreciated by many, who flogged him in a flood of published responses.
"Stay in the big city where you are more likely to be 'mangled' by one of your own kind," wrote one, "rather than come here and impose your tyrannical views on our wildlife."
Danger posed by mountain lions, others wrote, is minimal since the animals are shy and have a huge natural food supply of white tailed deer and smaller mammals.
Anderson points to mountain lion attacks in California, and says anytime large predators live in close proximity to humans, there's a risk. He doesn't advocate killing cougars; he'd like them relocated to areas where they pose less danger. Humphreys' experience, Anderson now says, could become more common and lead other Crozet residents to fear for their children's safety.
Humphreys first told her story to a television news crew from CBS 19 on February 26. The big cat, she said, prowls her backyard, eating her dogs' food, and on one occasion, scratching on her granddaughter's bedroom window. Humphrey believes the cougar was tempted by two pet guinea pigs squeaking inside, and while she didn't actually see the cat on that occasion, she found paw prints outside the window the following day.
The day after that first story ran on television, however, officials from the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries questioned Humphreys' claims in a follow-up report on Channel 19 and in a Daily Progress article titled "A Crozet catamount or just crazy talk?" Humphreys resents the implication of the headline.
"I may be a lot of things," she says, "but I'm not crazy."
Humphreys is not the only one who's seen the animal around her St. George Avenue house. David Shifflett, the father of Humphreys' granddaughter, Brianna, says he got up close to a cougar in late January when he was leaving the house one evening. About 20 feet in front of his car, light from his headlights illuminated the animal Humphreys had warned him about earlier that day.
"It bared its teeth," Shifflett recalls, reporting that his first instinct was to run over the animal to end the terror it's causing Humphreys. But as he pressed on the gas, the startled cat fled. "It was not a bobcat, a bear or a coyote," he insists.
Shifflett and Humphreys are not the only ones frustrated that a local cougar sighting hasn't been taken seriously.
Dozens of people, including a veterinarian, have reported seeing cougars around Crozet in the past decade.
One of those people says he has proof of a cougar around his mountainside house in Greenwood. A grainy photograph Richard Gaya took in 2004-- which has run in the Crozet Gazette, the Hook, and now the Daily Progress-- seems to show a large cat with a long tail. But even such photographic evidence isn't enough to convince officials that cougars are here.
"It looks like a bobcat to me," says Jerry Sims, Fredericksburg-based wildlife biologist and manager for the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, of Gaya's picture.
Gaya counters that the photo leaves no room for interpretation.
"There's no way in the world you can't come to the conclusion," he says, "that this thing weighs at least 80 pounds."
Sims says the only hard proof his department will accept is a cougar carcass, and even that wouldn't prove more than that one such beast is roaming about. He says it's possible someone released a captive cougar into the wild, and he doesn't believe there's evidence of a "reproducing population."
Still, his department is finally taking steps to confirm what Humphreys saw. On Friday, February 29, a game warden mounted a motion-sensitive camera on a tree in her back yard. If the cat goes by, it will be captured on the department's own film. If its existence is confirmed, the department could set a trap to capture it or use dogs to "tree" it. The department would then relocate it to an area unpopulated by humans.
Until that happens, Humphreys and her husband, Harvey, aren't taking any chances. Although it's illegal to kill a mountain lion, which is considered endangered, the couple now keeps a loaded gun in the house to defend themselves.
"I don't like guns to start with," she says, "and to have to keep one loaded?"
She and Harvey say they wouldn't think twice about shooting the endangered animal to save something else.
"My granddaughter's an endangered species," Humphreys says. "There's not but one of her."
And if they face prosecution for killing the cougar?
"We'll just tell them we thought it was a bear," she says with a twinkling smile.
A grainy photograph taken by Greenwood resident Richard Gaya in 2004 seems to show a large cat with a long tail. But even such photographic evidence isn't enough to convince officials that cougars are here.
FILE PHOTO BY RICHARD GAYA
#
www.varockhound.com
Yep, Friday is the big day. It will be my 10th birthday. I can't avoid it this year, my birthday is on the calendar.
This morning before sunrise, the moon was a rich golden color with glowing with a huge bright aura extending into the tree line. The moon is promising bad weather soon, but for now, she is glowing warmly and protecting the earth below.
Last night was shadow work. We worked chasing the shadows as the were revealed slowly by the earths umbra.
Photography By Ann Strober
For Nelson County Life Magazine
Lunar Eclipse Over Nelson County
Nellysford, Virginia
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/0
"Distillery setting up shop in Nelson
Nelson County is making room on its ever-lengthening beer and wine list for some of the hard stuff.
The Virginia Distillery Company plans to raise $5 million in investments to produce a Scottish-style malt whiskey on 95-acres near Lovingston.
“Nelson County has a great name as a drink producing place,” Chris Allwood, Virginia Distillery chief operating officer, said. “Wineries, hard cider, beer and now distilled products.”
The project will create 19 jobs, Gov. Tim Kaine announced on Friday.
Nelson is currently home to nine wineries and one brewery. Five of those wineries and the brewery have opened up shop since 2003. Another brewery and winery are planning to open sometime within the next year, Economic and Tourism Development Director Maureen Corum said.
Corum said the county’s business model tries to attract enterprises like Virginia Distillery because they are small and run by entrepreneurs.
While the first casks of single malt scotch whiskey won’t roll out of the Lovingston operation for five years, the company recently started selling it’s double malt Eades brand whiskey -- imported from Scotland -- in U.S. stores.
The company looked at almost 40 locations around the world before settling in Central Virginia.
“It looks like a piece of the Scottish Highlands has been lifted up and gently dropped down into Virginia,” Allwood said of the Nelson property known as Eades Hollow, located off U.S. 29 one mile north of Lovingston.
Allwood and business partners, Joe Hungate and Brian Gray, plan to have the distillery, a visitor’s center and a warehouse built by the end of the year. They also plan to carve out nature trails and grow barley on the property.
As of July, there were 10 distilleries, 157 wineries and 37 breweries in Virginia, with Nelson’s closest distilling neighbor located in Albemarle County."
nelsoncountytimes
We also had no power for 36+ hours from the fires and wind.
Dowsers use ancient skill in contemporary jobs
by Rick McDaniel, CITIZEN-TIMES CORRESPONDENT
published May 27, 2007 12:15 am
LEICESTER — When settlers first moved into the Appalachians, they knew water was their lifeline. The lucky ones settled on the banks of creeks or streams, but there were soon more people than there were creek banks. That’s when the call went out for a dowser.
Lee Barnes, a professional dowser in Asheville, teaches a dowsing seminar in Leicester. (2,010 KB)
“Dowsing is underground location,” said Nick Daniels, of Asheville, who uses dowsing every day in his job repairing underground utility cables. While dowsing is most often associated with finding water, dowsers say they can sense the energy that naturally flows from things, be it water, magnetic fields or a person’s aura.
“I use dowsing to locate water lines, power lines, phone lines — you name it,” Daniels said.
Dowsers, also known as “water witches,” use metal or wooden rods to find water flowing in veins underneath the mountains. Since ancient times, they’ve been consulted by people wanting to know where to find water, and their abilities have sparked the curiosity of people who wonder if they might also have “the gift.”
Last weekend, Seana Steele, of Tallahassee, Fla., attended a dowsing clinic in Leicester, sponsored by the Appalachian Chapter of the American Society of Dowsers.
“I just wanted to learn more about how it’s done,” said Steele, whose boyfriend is a dowser.
Family tradition
“My grandfather taught me,” Daniels said. “He used a forked apple stick to locate wells. Later, I learned a lot from Latt Grooms, who owned a septic service. I learned how to find lines from him.”
Energy flows
Richard Crutchfield, of Asheville, got interested in dowsing when he had a dowser check into a house he was staying in several years ago.
“There was no place in that house where I could get to sleep,” Crutchfield said. “Someone told me to get a dowser to check the house, and this old timer came over and told me it was the worst house he had ever seen for having energy flowing under it.”
Crutchfield said that after the dowser had blocked the energy fields using a series of rods driven into the ground, he never had trouble falling asleep in the house again, and he was hooked on dowsing.
Lee Barnes, of Asheville, another experienced dowser, says that the mountains are full of energy flows, from flowing water to geological fault lines to old, unmarked graves.
“Some of this energy can have an effect on people, making them feel uncomfortable,” he said. “I can feel it, a tenseness in my body.”
Tools of the trade
“The Y-shaped rod most people
associate with water witching has been around since the 14th century,” Barnes said.
Although, traditionally, wood was used for most Appalachian divining rods, Barnes said metal rods work just as well, even inexpensive ones made from pieces of an old coat hanger.
“For the real fancy jobs, I bring out the high-tech rods with the Teflon ball
bearings. When I’m charging someone $150 to dowse a well, they seem more willing to pay me than when I come out with a piece of coat hanger and say,
‘Oh, yeah, dig here,’” he quipped.
On the trail
Daniels takes a coat hanger and puts it in a copper sleeve so it will turn freely
“You hold the rods loosely in your hands, and when you pass over the magnetic field, the rods will cross,” he explained.
Although he has sophisticated modern equipment available to look for the buried cables and lines, Daniels says often times the old ways are faster and more accurate.
Keeping tradition alive
Daniels and Barnes have taught others their method, and Western North Carolina has an active chapter of
the American Society of Dowsers that meets quarterly.
“I’d encourage anyone who wants to see what dowsing is about to contact the club,” said Crutchfield, the group’s president.
On the Net:
Appalachian Chapter, American Society of Dowsers, www.wncdowsers.org
The shadowy area at the edge of the property at the end of the property is another story, though. That may be something attracted to me that the elements an protections are keeping out. I use elementals to protect the property. Pearl, my older dog does not notice nor care about the shadows or the light balls. Mia, the younger dog, a large shepard/black lab mix, does notice the activity outside.
This is good training for David as he has not yet gone on a full investigation. It will be interesting to see how he reacts. He gets pretty nervous just working in our yard. He also gets a little freaked out when I talk about some of the stuff that has and can happened. We are not going to start a group until we know if he can handle doing an investigation without running.
It is kind of interesting to see how such a big, strong man gets nervous around energy and light balls but is not afraid of things that truly frighten me. At least we can back each other up when the other is frightened. When I have more time, I will have to post about the snakes and mice. It turns out he is a regular Steve from Ghosthunters. I am the slayer of the pests in our family. Just call me Buffy!