Scrapbookers I've taught

As you can see by the pages I helped others make, I work with strong color themes and keep the pages uncluttered by most of the crap available at the stores. I believe in throwing out all but the best photos and saving non-photo souvenirs and momentos. Postcards are great resources even for good picture takers.

Being a writer, I also believe very strongly in scrapbook journaling. Why put so much work in on a page if later no one will know who those people are or what they are doing?

I bought my husband a slip-in frame and he keeps a rotating gallery of grandbaby and wife pages in his office.

BEST TIP: new to scrapbooking and don't know where to start? Start with your most recent trip, recital, sports event and work your way backwards while keeping up with current events!

AOL chooses my blog as #1 of week

Thank you, AOL.

I've been an AOL member since my daughter got married and moved to Lubbock. Intra-state telephone rates are outrageous in Texas so we both signed on so we could "chat" in our own private chat room, using a weird title for our room. That's been a while - she divorced, remarried, and has a 4-1/2 year old now.

During the days of irrational exuberance in the stock market, I spent a lot of time on AOL's stock chat boards. Especially the one for AOL stock. I was very proud when one of my posts on the emotional aspects of investing was chosen as Post Of The Day. :( That stock went down $1,000,000, but it is still up ten times what I paid for it.

Wouldn't it be perfect ending if Time Warner published my novel?

Reno Sunrise

The first photos were taken from my room at the Atlantis. The second photo was taken from my Peppermill room in Reno. You can see the Atlantis Hotel & Casino in the distance. To do the photos justice, you really need to click to View Larger. To do the sunrises justice you need to have been there.

Reno Gambling Trip

A friend came into town and we played several days of video poker.

For those who do not play, video poker is basically five-card draw. You bet 5 coins per hand and can discard up to all 5 cards to try to improve your hand. You do not have to beat anyone but are paid according to a schedule on each machine. There are many variations, inlcuding the popular 3,4,10,50 & even 100 lines at a time.

Although I am not a "whale," I am considered a high roller. All hotels, meals, air fare, and Jay Leno show were comped. In spite of several good-sized jackpots, I broke even the first week after my bankroll started dropping as quickly as the temperature.

The first photo is what happened the next week when I took my friend back to Reno for her flight home. The dollar machine dealt me a Royal Flush. I was playing five hands, $5 each for a total bet of $25.

IGT manufactures these fun machines (I own their stock) and you can play on their web site, but it doesn't teach you the correct strategy. For that, you need to buy WinPoker or Frugal Video Poker, both available at Video Poker Home Page

Snow & Full Moon over Lake Tahoe

This is the first time in six years I haven't spent the entire fall at Lake Tahoe. After two early snow storms I just had to get out of Houston. Too late to get a cheap fare, even on Southwest, so I used a frequent flier award.

Flying into Reno I was told I would need chains to go over either of the passes to the lake. Lucky for me, driving restrictions were lifted just before I got to the top of Mt. Rose at 8,900' elevation.

It was still snowing and cloudy on the south side of the lake, making it look like a Currier & Ives Christmas card. It got even better when the clouds cleared overnight to reveal light from the full moon reflecting off the snow covered mountains. The moon set mid-morning the next day against a clear blue sky. As the sun melted the snow off the pines and rooftops it seemed to be raining from a cloudless sky.

One Sentence Story

A few years ago, over Thanksgiving week on the Caribbean island of Hispanola, in the Dominican Republic, just east of and over a mountain range from Haiti, on the beaches of the famous Amber Coast, I surprised my husband and friends from Houston, then half dozing in chaise lounges lined up in the shade of palm trees like so much beach flotsam, by repeatedly stooping at the edge of the surf to collect a satisfying mix of the two prettiest types of the worn smooth marbleized stones (flat multi-green clam-sized ones and translucent white marble-sized ones), which I then rinsed in my resort room's sink and took home in my already bulging suitcase and later displayed in a crystal vase filled with water which intensified the color, much as the ocean had done when I first saw them.

Walker Lake in Nevada Desert between Reno & LV

In the last six years I have driven the 500 miles between Reno and Las Vegas about fifteen times. I'll add to this journal as I find the photos.

Walker Lake

Topping a crest on 95 going south, the sight of Walker Lake always startles me. A real lake in the desert - both unexpected and natural looking. The barren beach-colored mountains and flats separate the lake and sky, both a polished turquoise.

I drive twenty minutes serpentining at the base of rocky mountains a very short distance from the shore of the lake. A lone pickup with a camper top is parked midway, the owner fishing alone. I used to see more fishermen, but then there used to be more fish. The lake, drying up, continues to become saltier as the water level diminishes.

The Great Basin Desert covers Nevada, lapping onto nearby states like the ancient Lake Lahontan it once was. No water falling or flowing within the basin ever reaches the sea.

Blue Moon

 

Excerpt from my novel-in-progress, "Cowbird Lodge, NV" -- (Becky is driving from Reno to Vegas to do something she dreads but must do.)

An oldies station came into range and Becky sang along as they played "Drivin' My Life Away," from the year she and the Professor were together.

A few moments later, the biggest brightest full moon rose over the Timpahute Range to Becky's left.  Barely aware of the road, she stared, mesmerized by the beauty of the silhouetted mountains against the indigo sky.  As the road angled, the moon disappeared behind the next mountain and it was over.  Surely, she would never in a lifetime see anything that stunning again.

And then, because she was in the right place at the right time, a small miracle happened.  More rare than a blue moon, a mere trick of the calendar, this moon rose again - repeating the process in all of its perfection.  Becky watched, fascinated.  Then, it became obscured by another mountain, and this time she was filled with anticipation and hope that she would be given yet another chance.

With the odometer at 419 Becky saw a red glow over the mountain.  On the horizon the faint vertical shaft that was the laser from the peak of Luxor Casino's pyramid beckoned her.