Frustration

I haven't gotten to the pictures yet, which is a bummer. I did manage to edit one video of a very rare Black Rhino that we'd seen when we were staying at Jock Safari Lodge, within Kruger Park. I had promised them that I would post the video on their Facebook page. These rhines are rarely seen. They are very shy. The video I took was taken a half mile away, and it didn't come out badly. This weekend, I'm going to work on getting the photos up on Photobucket so that family and friends can see them. Then, I have to do a video/slide show for friends here in VT who all want to see the animals....and we took videos and stills of lots and lots of animals.

In Africa, they call one group of animals The Big Five - Lion, Leopard, Elephant, Rhino, and Cape Buffalo. By our second day on safari we'd seen all five! That usually doesn't happen. In our case, it was serendipitous, because after seeing the Big Five, we then started watching carefully for all the other animals. All in all, we took over 1500 still photographs and about 600 videos, so you can see why it is taking me so long.

In addition, my classes started on September 29, and I had to get online each day of our trip in order to keep up. The college had given us an estimate of 30 hours a week that we would have to spend online in order to do these intensive courses. I think they were dreaming. While on vacation, I ended up being online 25 hours. This week, after only 4 days, I've spent almost 40 hours online, and still have two quizzes to take and a paper to write. One instructor made the statement that each course was originally meant to take a semester to teach. Each course we're taking is 5 weeks long, meaning that we're covering 4 semesters of work between now and April 30. Sigh...........

I'm frustrated more because the classes aren't giving me the time to think, let alone do anything extra. I'm usually very good at managing my time, but in this case, I've had to shift my organization skills into hyper-drive.

Heading Home....

We start the journey home tomorrow. I'll write more about the trip over the next week or so, but for now, I'll say this. I'm going to truly miss the elephants of Kruger Park. They are the most amazing animals, as well as being far smarter than us dumb humans want to ever admit.

The Park and the surrounding area was wonderful. The trip was ok...I enjoyed the animals, but there were some things I just did not enjoy. But later.....

I'll post more when we arrive in NY on Saturday morning (leaving Friday afternoon, traveling 15 hours by plane, but gaining hours...talk about confusing).

I'm posting only a couple of pictures here.

We took about a thousand pictures and videos, but all will have to be edited. I was thoroughly amazed (and loved it) that the animals were within touching distance most of the time. These zebras were just standing, posing for me. :-)

These pictures were NOT taken with a regular camera. These stills were taken with my video camera!

Malaria and other mundane things I have to worry about

I haven't mentioned our upcoming vacation much because I'm getting less and less enthusiastic the closer it gets. It isn't because it won't be an exciting trip, and it isn't that we won't enjoy ourselves once we're there. It is the preparation that has gone into this.

We have cats, and because we feel very responsible towards those animals, we hire a house sitter to take care of them while we are gone. We pay her what amounts to a small fortune (no I'm not kidding, around $125.00 a day), and for that, we get someone who will care for the house and the cats like we do. This is our second house-sitter. The first one was a doll, but she moved away to get married, and thus we had to go advertising for another. We found our current sitter through our veterinarian (whom we call Auntie Janine because she's one of my best friends as well as our vet).

We have preparation to do for her end of this vacation. Things like medications, food, treats, toys...those all have to be ready for her. And everything needs to be stored in an orderly fashion, as she has to be able to find everything she needs to run a house.

Then there are the preparations for the trip itself. We are going on safari. Yep, you heard right. A safari. First we'll spend a couple days in NYC, where I'll try my best to find a pair of casual boots and will visit Mood Fabrics (featured on the show Project Runway). Then we'll get on a plane and fly to South Africa. We'll fly from Johannesburg to a smaller, rural airport near Kruger Park. We'll spend 3 days in Kruger Park...then we'll move on to a couple of different large game preserves bordering Kruger. Each day will have at least one game drive...and possibly a game hike. Every morning, we'll go out with a guide at dawn to specific places within the preserve and/or Park.

When we're in the vehicles, we will have a guide and a ranger (for the lack of a better name for him) who will be armed. For the walks, and this caused me a little bit of pause, the guide and the ranger will be armed with elephant guns and handguns. Our nights will be spent surrounded by mosquito netting in quite elegant rooms (we've seen pictures).

The preparation for this which is causing the most problem is Malarone. This medication is to be taken beginning two days before you arrive in any malarial area and for 7 days after you leave. Obviously, you also slather on bug spray everywhere you go for the time you are in an area where malarial mosquitos might be found. The "mosquito" season in South Africa runs from October through March, but we are going at the end of September and because of Climate Change, we may find mosquitos waiting for us (oh goody gumdrops).

I had no problem with being told we had to take the malaria medicine. My problem arose when I tried to get it prescribed and filled at a pharmacy. Our local hospital, Fletcher Allen, decided that it would cost us $321.00 EACH for the appointment, the medicine, and the counseling. I told them more than once that neither of us needed any sort of counseling, but their reply was that it was mandatory.

Next I called my doctor, who told me that the counseling had to be done by the "travel office" at Fletcher Allen. I told him that we didn't need counseling, that we understood malaria, Malarone, and what we needed to do. He then, finally, granted my request to prescribe it. Great! Well, maybe not. First the drugstore didn't stock it and it had to be ordered. Then, when they tried to charge our insurance, the insurance carrier went crazy, going even so far as to call us on the phone and ask what we thought we were doing, lol.

Finally, we get the scripts filled and find that the medication is $171.00 per person. So we paid the $342.00 gladly, considering Fletcher Allen was about to charge us almost double that.

So, we will begin taking the medication on our second day in New York, and we're hoping to avoid insect bites during our trip, so that we can arrive back home safe and sound.

The rest of the prep has been the clothing, which has to be pretty specific, based on the conditions we'll encounter. We're taking one set of clothing for New York, then we will pack all of that away and store one suitcase at JFK airport while we're gone then pick it up when we arrive back in the US.

As you might be able to tell, this has occupied us for the last month, and now we're down to the last week and a half or so before we leave. I'm excited, and somewhat relieved to have it finally arrive. We've gone on some wonderful vacations, adventures if you will. Hopefully, this vacation will be as great as the last 3. :-) We'll see.

New peekers....

You're definitely allowed to peak at this blog now and again. Keep in mind, I don't care if you "follow" it or not. My worth isn't based on how many followers I have, or how many people comment. I do this solely for myself...sometimes to vent, but usually just to play it back to myself.

Enjoy, read, comment, or not. But whatever you do, enjoy.

V-Day minus 14 days

On the 17th of this month, I start back to school. Not that I really wanted to do this, but this will allow me to branch out into an entirely new field of work. I'm going to be studying Health Information Technology. This intensive course is six months, 35 hours a week, and will teach me to use the software that doctors, hospitals, and clinics use to do their coding, billing, and information transmission. This course is for the technical side - software and support. After that, if I choose, I'll be able to take the remainder of the course which will be the "human" side of it...coding, billing, and understanding the "backroom" of a medical office.

This course is completely paid for by a Federal Grant, which responded to the screaming being done by doctors, hospitals, software companies, and insurers that there were few people trained to handle the technological side of Health Care. I chose this because, frankly, I'm bored. I have gone as far as I can go with managing an office. I'm finding myself thoroughly frustrated by the lack of ethics I've run into lately. I'm tired of having to repeat myself constantly because my co-workers deliberately fail to do things they would rather I did for them. Do I sound like I've had it with people looking for a free ride? I am. My parents taught me that you reap what you sow....that means, the harder I work, the better the rewards. Unfortunately, I can honestly say that the people I've met lately are rarely looking that far forward. So, I'm going to switch careers....and hopefully give myself the time to work on my pattern-making and sewing, which I truly love but haven't been able to concentrate on.

I DID finish a pattern commission last week. The oddest thing about it was that I didn't know this woman. She was a friend of a friend, of a friend. She wanted a "mother of the bride" dress, but wanted something stunning. She's quite an accomplished seamstress, but when she'd tried to build this pattern, she just couldn't quite put it together. Think that famous Demi Moore dress with the criss-cross straps, with a turtleneck front. I thought that the design idea was strange until I realized that she has a surgical scar on her neck that is quite prominent..hence the turtleneck. Add to that, she wanted a matching cape because it is a fall wedding, in Vermont, at a mountain inn. Vermont weather is always unpredictable...add in the autumn and the mountain, and she's right in thinking she might need a cover of some type.

This took me almost two weeks to complete. We had to do two fittings with this pattern, as she (like me) is not perfectly proportioned and those straps were teeth-grinders.

When we got it done, I made it up in muslin for her, just as a test run. I was amazed that it fit so beautifully, and she's promised me a picture when she completes the dress (hopefully this week). She's doing it in a gorgeous, rich-looking Navy Blue stretch velvet, and the cape is going to be the same fabric, lined in this beautiful patterned silk. I was very pleased with this, but I don't expect to become rich doing this. A pattern in a store (Vogue, Butterick, etc) would run about $13 for a long dress and it might even have the cape pattern with it, or at least some sort of shawl. I charged her $35 for this pattern, as it was custom fit, and included the muslin. Keep in mind, I had NO idea what to charge for this work, as the pattern software does the really hard work....making the pattern.

I'll be tickled to death if she gets me a picture of this dress.....

Irene, again, you were a witch

We really dodged a bullet in Northern Vermont with that storm. But the Central and Southern parts of our state did not. Roads and bridges aren't merely washed out, they are gone. In some cases, it will take years to rebuild the infrastructure that this storm destroyed.

We ended up with 7" of rain, some wind, but overall not at all what was forecast. She just didn't come this far north, and because of the direction she was turning, Mount Mansfield protected this area from the full brunt of her winds.

Irene, you witch

For almost two days, we've been sitting in front of our TV, watching the progress of Irene up the East Coast of the US. This storm frightens me, not because of her winds, but because of the rain.

We are in Northern Vermont, not too far from the Canadian Border. Most of the land around us is farmland, mainly corn for silage in the winter. There's some sweet corn up here, some soybean, some alfalfa, but mainly corn. This is the primary way that the dairy farmers, which Vermont is known for, can feed their cows during the long Vermont winter. Without those fields of corn, the farmers have to purchase.

This year's crop was already damaged before it was even planted. This spring, prior to the "planting time" we got rain...lots and lots of rain. So much so that any low-lying cornfield couldn't be planted until it stopped. Some of the farmers know their crop is probably doomed. It won't be ready for the fall harvest. Up here, we have a finite planting season. We have a long winter that can begin at the end of October, and can end in May.

Now, these farmers are looking at anywhere between 6 and 10 inches of rain coming at us. That will flood their fields, and probably further damage an "iffy" crop.

Then add the damage of rain-soaked ground. We live in a house surrounded by a one acre yard (most of the yard is circular, closer to house at the sides than at the front and back). The more the rain falls, the softer the ground gets, then the trees begin to uproot. We had one do this in our yard in the spring. Luckily it didn't fall, it just began leaning, and was losing the fight. It fell sideways about 10 feet the afternoon before the tree guys showed up to take it down.

Now, I'm afraid that the same thing will happen today, because this rain today will be equal to what would have fallen in a week this spring. It is now 12:30 in the afternoon, and we've gotten about 2-1/2 inches of rain and it doesn't look like its going to slow down any time soon. We've done everything we can, but it is impossible to predict what Mother Nature is about to throw at Northern Vermont. If the back end of this storm drops the expected 7" of rain on us, added onto what is falling now, it will be devastating here. I hate feeling helpless in the face of weather.