by Halla Basu, calligrapher.

From the Noonist

“Good fortune smiled on me one night and I made it over to Torgerson Island with the seabird researchers during the height of egg laying season. It was fun to see the Adelie penguins sitting on their newly laid eggs, about 7-10 days earlier than average and I was able to get several good photos.”

[more...]

Fred Wessel

Good news - the cancer is responding to the chemo.
Sissie says thanks to all for your prayers and support.

I took the older embedded slideshow down and will take this one down after a while, too because I think they slow up the website. Broadband does o.k. with it but it must drive the dailup surfers in the family crazy. You can actually see them a lot better if you click here. And here’s the whole history of Thanksgiving photos. Taylor still has a bunch and some video that we haven’t downloaded yet.

The Daily Riddle

Small I Am

October 20th, 2006 at 1:20 am (riddle)

AAaaawwwwww!!!!

I have been waiting for the right time to post this and finally realized it’s never going to come. So here goes. My sister, Dallas Louise Grodman aka Sissie has been diagnosed with lung cancer. That’s why she’s wearing the wig in the Thanksgiving photos. She’s had two rounds of chemo and tomorrow we learn whether or not it’s working.So many of you WhippleWorlders know her and care about me and my family, but it’s just been hard to deal with. I’m sorry not to have kept you all informed until now. When I get home from work tomorrow I’ll let you know how her scans turned out.
Keep your fingers crossed!

Her cancer was first diagnosed on 9-14 as atypical carcinoid. It is a very rare and aggressive form of cancer that is NOT caused by smoking. The cancer is stage IV because it has spread to other organs. No surgery was recommended, just the chemotherapy. She did get a second opinion from San Antonio Cancer Institute and they have confirmed the diagnosis and are handling treatments.

She has tolerated the chemo very well and has even gained some weight. Her energy level seems extaordinary to me but then I’m from the sloth branch of the family.

She reads the blog so feel free to send her your love and support in a comment.

Prosper —A US based social lending network.

Zopa —A UK based social lending network.

Kiva —A social lending network for small businesses in the developing world.

It’s like myspace for lenders and borrowers.

The only guy I know who can appreciate the Osmands going psychedelic.

Boo giving it Hell… Gotta look snazzy at the tree farm. We are still working at it, darn this is hard work… Drag Win Drag… Boo won’t help. Cute candid shot Win is a goat and Boo a big Pig at Devine Acres. Of course Jack gets the kudos for the cutting it is a beautiful Leyland Cypress. A mix between an Alaskan Cedar and a Monterrey Pine. We will figure allergies in the next 24 hours. Love, The Wickham’s

[more...]

Isn’t Casey beautiful? She’s spoiled her new baby pit bull. She just loves this dog.

Thanksgiving 2006 at Mitch and Hillary’s. You see Taylor with his camera in that first photo, he took a bunch but he hasn’t downloaded them yet so we’ll put them up later. Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. With the deaths in the family it started out as “yeah, thanks a lot” But being with family and friends is what you do to combat that. It’s easy to be thankful when everything’s going right, it felt to me that Thanksgiving had more meaning to everybody in the family than usual this year.

[more...]

cushions that look like rocks
from BoingBoing

I just found and added the 2004 Thanksgiving photos to the slideshow below. I think 2003 is missing - I see what I think is 2002, 2004 and 2005 in there - we can probably date different years by seeing who in the picture was visiting. Seems like in most years somebody has flown in. The year it was Becky and Tom AND Cassell and Craig at the same time was 2002. Anyway, play the slideshow again if you want to see what got added.

Had to take the live slideshow down because it was slowing things up on the rest of the website. But you can view it here. I added about 40 photos that I took at last week’s Thanksgiving that you probably haven’t seen yet. Still waiting to get Taylor’s.

If you want to open this playlist in a new window so it will keep playing in the background, here’s their remote player. If your browser isn’t set to open links in a new window, right click on the link and choose that option.

I could have used one about 10 years ago!

Baby Keeper restrains your toddler while you go potty.

to my favorite Power Ranger, Jonah!

Check this out…. some of Raymond’s art? Everything he does is interesting. . . We looked over the little farm on 46 where Raymond has lived for the last 16 years. My mother would paint it flat black and sell it! That’s not the bad part!. . .The bad part is. . . . I would buy it!

Five Reasons to Take Naps
“Set aside half an hour every day to do all your worrying; then take a nap during this period.” -anonymous

from Reddit

made from beer bottles, no less.
Link from BoingBoing

this website called myfabrik. Says it’s a free, no signup ftp service and host for large files. Also says it can embed an MP3 player. That didn’t work. But it did upload my four trial songs here and you can listen to them by clicking on the first one in the playlist. That would be a way to share songs with somebody without actually giving them the MP3s in an email. The uploading works perfectly and the player might go into your website alright but it just didn’t like being put in a post. It’s all very cool.

Let’s try embedding the photostrip: