I'll bet many of you knew this already, but until a month ago, I did not. Never EVER put a personal check in the USPS mail. Never!

I've now learned what a "washed check" is. I wrote a check for $110 go a knee/ankle LLC business, put it into the mail box,and learned that it was never arrived. Shortly after that, I received a call from my bank asking if I wrote a check for $4,200 to XXXXX person. H7!! no, but that person took that amount of money from my check account. Totally fraud, and my bank did refund my money, but after my checking account had to be closed, new one opened, then new credit card, new debit card, and then the task of contacting everyone who made direct deposit to my account (as in retirement), and anyone who did direct withdrawal (as in my mortgage). However today I learned that the mortgage bank could do withdrawals for only 30 days. Tomorrow, I get to drive to the mortgage bank, complete a form for NEW withdrawal, and also to write a check for September, since the new form won't take kick in until October.

Moral of the story? Never ever put a personal check into an envelope with a stamp on it. Never. And before anyone might think "I'll tick "pay by credit card" and then write down your credit card number, et. al., and put THAT into an envelope with a stamp on it, think again, for you will have possibly given your credit card number over to a total scam person.

I know there are excellent USPS carriers out there. Very few in my zip code.

So there my fellow members. I share this so that you won't have to go through all of what I have had to do, and I'm not finished it.

Here is another shot of Autumn on the rr tracks. She had the strangest things growing out of her head. I had to get rid of all that trash. Here are presented the before and after. I use photoshop (PS6 Extended) for this kind of editing. See what you think. The only thing that bothers me about this is sacrificing those wisps of hair from the top of her head; saving them would mean working at the pixel level. I've done it, but mostly I don't feel like I should spend 10 hours or more on one photo. Best to take care of this crap in-camera.

If I hadn't shown the before file, I'm sure there would be no comments like "Where are the wisps of hair that should be on top of her head?". But I did, so let your comments fly.

Ok, this is a tough one. At first I agreed with the Northern Rough-winged Swallow. But the stripes on the chest and the shape of the beak looked wrong in all the books I checked. (Stokes, National Geographic, Sibley, and Crossley ID Guide) I am going to propose another bird, see if you agree with me. First the shape of the beak is wrong for a Shrike. The hook referred to by another isn't the same on this bird and the coloring is all wrong. The Northern Rough-winged the beak is smaller and stops as soon as it hits the front of the head, plus I didn't see any stripes on the chest. So I kept looking and in the Crossleys I have (excellent bird book that I LOVE) I found an immature Purple Martin that seems to fill everything. The beak is the same, instead of the beak stopping at the front of the head it extends to almost under the eye. There is a dark patch extending behind the eye that looks the same to me, and the are brown markings on the chest. So I am going to ID it as a immature Purple Martin. Anyone else agree or have another opinion?

I'm making a case for a ukulele, and I thought I'd put some of that round trim along the interior areas where top and sides meet. It took a while to discover that it is called piping. I ordered some from Amazon - five-day delivery. Getting somewhat impatient, I thought I could avoid waiting till Friday by driving to Joann Fabrics. I spent a little over an hour driving there and back. No piping. I couldn't believe it. They had what looked like brown cord and bundles of wool. I bought some wool, but I don't think that will work because it tends to unravel. I'll have to wait till Friday and Amazon's delivery. In using that, I'll have to cut off that wide flap.

That brings up another potential problem. In experimenting with the wool, it seems that the hot glue is going to show on either side of the piping. The same oozing happens with wood glue. I see that Elmer's make clear glue, and that might work. I considered using 3M 77 Adhesive, but that sprays on, so it would go too far. This whole case project was experimenting/learning, so maybe I'll skip the piping. If you have any suggestions about gluing the piping in place, I'd be glad to hear them.