Anyone who knows me or knows this blog knows I love succulents.  But my true love is the Lithop.  I've written about them before so rather that repeat myself go HERE.

I pulled out all of my Lithops for the first time today after a long winter.   The become dormant and die off and a new plant emerges out of the center.  The hard part is not watering them.  I haven't watered them since October!!!  I was a little worried as many of them are very small., just babies.

I brought them out and there they were fresh and ready to go.  I couldn't be happier.  Check out the pics

As I prepare to transition into retirement (in a couple of years) I've been looking at my financial situation.  The economy is bad but my job pays well and I'm secure now that I'm in my thirty-fifth year. 

I've been using Quicken for years and have a pretty good idea where I'm at but decided to download an app for my Apple Ipod Touch that would keep track of purchases at stores.  It cost $0.99 so it was in my price range.  I entered my shopping list and when I shopped entered the prices.  When I got to checkout it was off by a couple bucks.  I figured I must have made a mistake so I didn't think much about it.

The next day I did some grocery shopping and the same thing.  This time when I got home I went over the list.  That is when I found the mistakes.  I bought some blood oranges but was charged for the higher priced oranges.  Then another product was different from the price on the shelf.  Hmmm.

Then I went to the other receipt and found another error, this on worth a couple bucks.

I've always assumed that with scanners things were spot on but not any more.  I plan to watch carefully and correct errors.  I wonder how much these kind of errors have costed me over the years? 

I have been working some horrible hours lately.  It is worse than the Christmas Peak.  That is part of the reason that I've been neglecting this blog.  I've signed up with Twitter to mini-blog.

I'm going to try doing Twitte for a while and see how that goes until work normalizes.  I'm Leastbest there too.

I don't really get the concept yet but it will be an interesting experiment.

I play a lot of poker.  When I play with friends we often need a real poker application like Tim's Tourney Timer .  The timer keeps track of blinds and breaks.  It does everything I need.  Once again this is freeware.  If you play poker this app is for you.

When I first got the Ipod Touch I put photographs and music on it.  I wanted to do more but couldn't find an easy way to do some of it.  Movies were a bit frustrating as you had to convert and transfer them from the dvd.  Then I found Videora Ipod Converter .  It takes all of the muss and fuss out of putting movies onto the Touch.

I love having movies on the Touch.  If I'm stuck someplace I can watch a movie with amazing clarity.  By the way, Videora Ipod Converter is freeware but if you use it as much as I do, send them a buck or two.

I've been using PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) for a long time.  I have a lot of interests and they help me keep things straight.  I started with the Sony Clie and it was okay for its' time but rather limited.  Then I progressed to the Palm Tungsten T2.  This was more like it.  It had a beautiful color screen and unlimited memory due to it's memory slot.  I was frustrated with it as it had a tendency to freeze and sometimes hard to sync.

I now have an Ipod Touch second generation.  It is an incredible machine.  Essentially it is an Iphone without the phone or the camera. I use it for everything.

With WiFi I can access my email and websites from almost anywhere.  This saves me from carrying my laptop. 

  I have over 1000 photographs, a few thousand songs and many full length movies on it.  I also have some incredible applications.

I plan to have some posts devoted to the Touch, specifically applications that I find useful  It's a truly remarkable machine.

While I was busy with my life the great Snooks Eaglin passed.  He was an amazing musician.  They sure know how to have a funeral down in New Orleans.

My lovely daughter Jessica needed to do a project for her chemistry class.  She decided to do a rap video with her friend Chelsea.  She already had some experience using Adobe Premiere Elements and did it all using the video function on our Olympus Digital Camera (not a camcorder).  Once again she has impressed me.

I saw Geoff Muldaur back in May and his playing has been on my mind ever since.  Because of him I stepped back from the banjo and have been playing a lot of guitar.

I found this video of him playing and I had to share it.  Listen to the whole thing and I"m sure you'll be impressed with his gentle touch.

 Here is a video from way back in the sixties jug band with Maria Muldaur. 

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It is the end of the season for my succulents so this will probably be the last post about them until Spring.  I've been getting them ready for winter and transitioning my energy towards other passions.

I wrote about my Echeveria Nudulosa at the end of August.  At that time it was just forming buds.  I was surprised when the buds formed and then took six weeks for the flowers to emerge.

The flower itself is beautiful although the wife says it reminds her of a pig.  Let me know what you think.