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WillDBill

Bill (Me)
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WillDBill

Cobwebs in the wine cellar....

4 min read
Dear deviant friends who still remember me fondly, or who at least don't want to kick me in the groin, or who might want to kick me in the groin, but only in a friendly way,

Like all of us, I have so little time to spend online these days that I can't possibly hope to keep up with all the interesting things I'd like to keep up with. My art projects have suffered from my lack of time, and my presence on dA has become more of a memory than an ongoing concern.

Friends send me funny links and interesting pictures. My RSS feeds would take hours to go through, if I could spend that much time at them every day. Toss in my regular email input, some Facebook and Twitter feeds, and I could easily spend the entire day, sunup to sundown, doing nothing but trying to get caught up.If I had to hold down a job instead of being disabled, I'd probably get fired for spending that much time online!

I don't know about you, but I can't spend that much time at my keyboard!

Having said all that....

I have revived my original blog, "Cobwebs in the Wine Cellar" after letting it lie fallow for more than three and a half years. The purpose of "Cobwebs" is to filter through all the tons of funny stuff I get and distill it down to just the good stuff. Toss out all the chaff and concentrate on the wheat!

Since the whole concept came out of wanting someone to weed out all the junk and just leave me the good stuff, I decided I'd do that for you, too!  I promise to entertain you with only the very best of the stuff that comes across my screen.

Please visit, leave a comment or two, tell your friends, share it with everyone, bookmark the site and come back often...

I could use some help getting this thing off the ground after so long!

Get there by going directly to www.winecellarcobwebs.com, or by visiting my personal website at www.duemler.com and clicking on the link to Cobwebs, or find me on facebook at www.facebook.com/duemler. Any way you get there, I promise at least one chuckle per visit....or double your frown back!

-=b=-

Clubs

:iconartisancraft: :iconapophysis: :iconimagersfractaldds: :iconstealthiscss: :iconthe-fantasy-club: :iconscifi-fans: :iconheroes-club: :iconstampcollectors: :iconitdoesnothaveme: :iconfractal-resources: :iconartisanlist:
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WillDBill

Facebook

4 min read
I've been on Facebook for a couple of years now...almost since the very beginning.  I pretty much hated it from the start...being a solitary old curmudgeon means you try to avoid new social entanglements, not seek them out...and FB was just a wee bit too personal for me.

I have to admit that I have finally given it a fair shake and I'm hooked.  Maybe it's because of the vast majority of formerly computer-illiterate folks from my past who are finally catching on to the use of the PC in their real lives, or maybe it's just because I can spend only a few minutes at a time online and FB makes it count.

I have been getting in touch with friends, colleagues, and family members that I lost touch with years and years ago. I'm able to share my thoughts, tastes and ideas with the world in just a few snippets at a time.  And almost every website makes it way easy to share links via FB these days, so it's a snap to use.

Even my wife, Carol has been using it (after I set her up with a page, of course)!

What's missing?  Most of my dA friends!

That's right...in the online world, you folks have become the only people I actually go out of my way to keep in touch with, and I don't even know most of your names!  Some of you probably don't even have FaceBook pages yet, so even if I do know your name I still can't find you. That makes it hard for me to share my wit, wisdom, bad puns, cool photos, and other smart-ass remarks...and you know how bad I am about having to update more than one site at a time (that's why my journal here has been so sparse lately),

So....

I'm going to make it easy for you to find me!  Just come see me at www.facebook.com/duemler and add me to your friend list. Be sure to include a message with your dA handle in it so I know it's you though!  You'd be surprised how many requests I get from "lonely midwestern housewife looking for a friend and wearing only the smallest of bikinis to show you how serious I am about it all" and I generally delete them before my PC can catch an STD (that's a Serial-port Transmitted Disease, you know).

See ya there!

Clubs

:iconartisancraft: :iconapophysis: :iconimagersfractaldds: :iconstealthiscss: :iconthe-fantasy-club: :iconscifi-fans: :iconheroes-club: :iconstampcollectors: :iconitdoesnothaveme: :iconfractal-resources: :iconartisanlist:
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WillDBill

Huh.

4 min read
Wow.  How long has it been?  Have I been inactive, or did I just drop dead?

No.  Neither, really.

Sorry to have been gone so long, dear friends.  I've been devoting my precious time to offline endeavors, including working in my garden and soaking up some sun.  I'm approaching the second anniversary of my medical disability soon, and I have been trying to adjust to my new life as much as possible.

It takes me much longer than a normally-enabled person to accomplish things, but to me that just makes each project more precious.  As a good example, I bought some redwood lumber and built an 8-foot by 4-foot raised garden bed for my backyard and planted tomatoes, snow peas, corn and butternut squash.  That would be a good weekend project for most of you, but it took me nearly two months of sweat and toil to accomplish.

Mind you, I'm not looking for any sort of sympathy, and I mention it only because I am inordinately proud of my persistence and ability to complete a project like this in spite of the obvious.  I can hardly wait to taste the sweeter-than-possible fruits of my labors when they start bearing fruit in a couple of months!

Along with my garden projects, I've been reading again.  I used to devour books like candy, but the combination of my neurological difficulties and massive doses of painkillers made it much too difficult to maintain the focus to read...at least until my dear wife bought me a Kindle 2!  I spend hours and hours in the sun reading the exploits of Harry Dresden, Anita Blake, Marla Mason, and other supernatural types, along with some classic SF I'd lost touch with over the years, and mainstream fiction from Tom Robbins, Steven King, Vonnegut, Eckart Tolle, and others.  What a great joy to have it back in my life again, and all thanks to a marvel of technology.

If you have not heard of the Kindle, I suggest you take a moment or two to visit amazon.com and check it out.  While I never would have paid the extremely high price for this thing myself, I am so addicted to it now that I am no longer even aware of holding it in my hand any more than I paid attention to the physical books I used to read.  Love it.

To anyone who might have missed me during my long absence, sorry if I worried you at all.  I am still here, still plugging along, still loving life, and still grateful to have you all in my mind and heart, even if I am so terribly bad at expressing it, or staying active in this social network I still love so very much.

Thank you all, love you all.  Smile when you think of me from time to time, eh?

-=b=-

Clubs

:iconartisancraft: :iconapophysis: :iconimagersfractaldds: :iconstealthiscss: :iconthe-fantasy-club: :iconscifi-fans: :iconheroes-club: :iconstampcollectors: :iconitdoesnothaveme: :iconfractal-resources: :iconartisanlist:
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WillDBill

Oh, my. How very nice.

6 min read
It looks good, it feels good.

I'm really loving the new styles and features on the profiles page, and some of the other nice touches that have been added to the look-and-feel of dA lately.  I only regret that I do not have time to keep my own pages updated.  Cripes, here it is February and I just now changed all the chrissmassy caboosta out of my own account.

It's not that I've been idle, no, no, not at all, dear ones.

My fans (yes, Mom, I know you're out there somewhere)...OK...maybe fan is more accurate.... knows that making a daily trip to the mailbox is about as much physical activity as I can tolerate.  My nervous system has been deteriorating for the last several years, and as I approach the beginning of my third year of disability, I have come to some terms with the changes it has made in my life.  Instead of being satisfied with those walks (ok....hobbles....) to the mailbox, I try to do a little more every day.  Sometimes even two or three trips to the mailbox!

Over the last several weeks, I have made some improvements to the garden at the rear of my house.  I laboriously dragged each bag of topsoil from the back of the pickup to the garden cart and then  sliced it open and poured it in the garden until the soil level finally reached the lip of the patio.  Took almost 25 bags, but I have to work around my disability, so I couldn't just get a yard of soil dumped into the driveway and haul it back myself.  Finally yesterday I planted some ferns and some Spanish lavender.  I'm paying for it today, and for the next several days, with screaming muscles and flaming nerve tissues, but I cherish the pain as if it were a medal awarded for a job well done. I earned these aches, and the garden gives me something to show for my efforts.  What a masochist I must be, eh?  Still, I bet you know just how good I really feel.

Carol is still spending her nights on the sailboat, but we have at least arrived at some sort of detente now.  We are cordial, and while I know I am trying my hardest to keep the relationship going, I give her credit for trying too.  Only time will tell what happens there, but I've really learned a lot of lessons about how much pain, both physical and emotional, a person can live through and still manage to get up every morning.  Every day it gets a little easier to live with.  I imagine some day I might not even notice this great gaping chasm in my heart....

It's not always easy, but the alternative is just not acceptable to me.  I'm not built to give up, and I hate sounding like some whiny victim, but it's important to me to be honest here, even if it means that I may not come off as the perfect, macho guy who never sheds a tear....

I eat quiche, too.  Yummy.

I've even tried making some new soaps lately!  Nothing worth adding to my gallery here, but if I get enough bars made I may cough up the cash to rent a table at the Nautical Flea Market our Elkhorn Yacht Club throws each May and see if I can't sell enough soap to buy you all a drink next time you're in town!

Well, dear ones, that's it for me for now.  I'll try my hardest to get back here more frequently to keep you all appraised on events as they transpire in my life, or at least entertain you.  Thank you all for continuing to keep me in your thoughts and prayers.  I have really appreciated the email and messages, and I think fondly of you every day, even if I don't get the chance to express it here as often as I would like.

Mmmm-wwwhhhhhaaaaahhh!  :blowkiss:  (Big sloppy kiss!)

-=b=-




Stamps, stamps, stampie stamp stamps!

:thumb74210802:

I have finally collected so many stamps that they don't fit into a single journal.  I have  organized them into a series of journal entries depending on arbitrary categories I devised myself.  Here are the links:



Featured Artist

In the interest of trying to keep this entry short (and save my limited online time for catching up on some of the hundreds of deviations in my message center), I'm going to skip the featured artist link this issue and urge you instead to write a new journal entry of your own featuring one of your favorite artists on dA.  Spread the love, folks!



Clubs

:iconartisancraft: :iconapophysis: :iconimagersfractaldds: :iconstealthiscss: :iconthe-fantasy-club: :iconscifi-fans: :iconheroes-club: :iconstampcollectors: :iconitdoesnothaveme: :iconfractal-resources: :iconartisanlist:

CSS design by WillDBill
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WillDBill

Hammacher schle-what, now?

12 min read
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Happy Holidays

When I was a kid, my favorite mail delivery of the entire year was the day the mailman brought the Sears  catalog.  Regular readers may even remember one of my first posts here on dA titled "It Came From The 1971 Sears Catalog" which actually was delivered right about the time I was starting high school.  The ones I really remember were from many years ealier than that and I remember them because of the great full-color TOYS section!  I loved to leaf through the pages looking at all the great stuff I never knew existed and I would never be able to afford.

Now that I'm an adult, the Sears catalog just doesn't do it for me any more.  No, now my tastes are more jaded, and I often boast that I've seen it all...that is I boast until this year's Hammacher-Schlemmer catalog shows up in my mailbox.  If you don't know them, then you should.  H-S (abbreviated because my hands can only type it out just so many times a day) provides me with a full color TOYS section that I can sit on the john and leaf through at my leisure.  Filled with tons of things that I never knew existed, that I can no longer go one more minute of life living without, that have absolutely no practical value whatsoever in my life, and that cost far more than any sane person would ever spend for such junk as:




and of course



You can find all of these items online of course, simply by visiting their website at hammacher.com, but you know, there's just something special for me to be able to sit down with my pants around my ankles and giggle while I read the descriptions of things that I will never need, never buy, never afford, and covet like a mutha!

Hmmm...maybe it's really just the pants/ankles thing after all.....

-=b=-


Season's Giggles!


Thanks to Roger for passing this one on....he knows I can't resist a good play on words....and this is nothing like a good play on words!

1. The roundest knight at king Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference.

He acquired his size from too much pi.

2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island,

  but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.

3. She was only a whisky maker, but he loved her still.

4. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class because

  it was a weapon of math disruption.

5. The butcher backed into the meat grinder

   and got a little behind in his work.

6. No matter how much you push the envelope,

it'll still be stationery.

7. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road

  and was cited for littering.

8. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in:

  Linoleum Blownapart.

9. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.

10. Time flies like an arrow.  Fruit flies like a banana.

11. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall.

   The police are looking into it.

12. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

13. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway.

     One hat said to the other, 'You stay here, I'll go on a head.'

14. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger.

     Then it hit me.

15. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: 'Keep off the Grass.'

16. A small boy swallowed some coins and was taken to a hospital.

  When his grandmother telephoned to ask how he was, a nurse said, 'No change yet.'

17. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.

19. The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was

   a small medium at large.

20. The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now

  a seasoned veteran.

21. A backward poet writes inverse.

22. In democracy it's your vote that counts.

In feudalism it's your count that votes.

23. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.

24. Don't join dangerous cults: Practice safe sects!





Stamps, stamps, stampie stamp stamps!

:thumb74210802:

I have collected so many stamps that they don't fit into a single journal.  I've  organized them into a series of journal entries depending on arbitrary categories I devised myself.  Here are the links:



Featured Artist

:iconrocamiadesign:

My new friend Kathleen a.k.a. rocamiadesign is one of the best Ultra Fractal artists around.  Once you visit her gallery, I'm sure you will agree.  Here are just a few of her works that I thought were perfect for the holiday season....






Clubs

:iconartisancraft: :iconapophysis: :iconimagersfractaldds: :iconstealthiscss: :iconthe-fantasy-club: :iconscifi-fans: :iconheroes-club: :iconstampcollectors: :iconitdoesnothaveme: :iconfractal-resources: :iconartisanlist:

CSS design by WillDBill
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