Stillmeadow Friends

Dear Shelley,

It's been a while since I last wrote here because so much has been going on. First my computer crashed in a heap and it took a while to re-install all the programs. Sadly, there was also a bereavement in my family. A lovely lady who, although elderly died very suddenly and it was a shock to us all. There are no older members in our family now. WE are them.

As you know we have been buried for months under several feet of snow here in the NH hills...Well...Last weekend, the temperature shot up and it started to rain something akin to Noah's flood. All that melting snow had to go somewhere, and of course it chose our basement. We have had two pumps going all week and for the first few days they ran non-stop. Now we're down to running them every hour or so. Through prior experience we kept on top of it this year, but last year was another story. We were surprised by a foot and a half of water, and stuff we had stored down there was floating. It smells damp down there now and as soon as we've dried out a bit more I'll be down there with a mop and bucket filled with Lysol...Such fun.

But spring is here, finally. My chives are growing, green daffodil spikes are pushing their way through, and our dear little pet chipmunk called Daniel is out of hibernation for good and is making his presence very well known by eating us out of house and home and by building a brand new hole right outside our back door connecting to his enormous mansion located right uder the propane tank by the garage wall. Our gas supplier is a man called Daniels, which is how our Daniel got his name!. This is the sixth year we have been graced with Daniel, so he's a good age in chipmunk years. He's very tame with us and if you sit still on the porch steps he comes right up to you and sits on your feet, looking lovingly and hopefully up at you, just in case you have a nice peanut to give him. I love him! That's him in the picture. I would love to hold and stroke him.

Now, I've got GOOD news. I've managed to secure a fantastic host for our Stillmeadow site. I've got lots of access to server side stuff like php, cgi and mysql. So I've installed a great forum and have begun to build the site. Offline of course for now, but I managed to get lots done last night between the pumping, and I'm very excited about it. Here's the link to the site. It's an easy, short URL for us to remember :

http://stillmeadow.ecwhost.com/

Shelley if you would like to be a moderator in the forum you will be most welcome! This applies to anyone who would like to help!

What you see on the first page of the site (index.html) is not how it will be when it is finished. This is really just a rough frame up for now while I get the rest of the new graphics made. Please let me know what you think of the color scheme. I'm aiming for simplicity and something easy on the eye.

If I say so myself, I love the shot of gold I put in the borders!

Well, I'm off to pump the basement and then I'm going to bake my "vanishing outmeal cookies"...well named because as soon as they're baked they vanish :)

Take care and lots of love,

Susan,
New Boston,
New Hampshire.