Dinosaur Bone Puzzle Day and Some Work on the H/J Blog

I'd been waiting for these to fill an order for dinosaur skeleton puzzles (models), so I was very happy to see them arrive - but I also thought I was going to have a helper here to sort out the six different dinosaur types (Pteranodon, Stegosaurus, Velociraptor, Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops, and - oh, yes - that famous dinosaur, Woolly Mammoth). It's great when you get to do this stuff and call it "work." Anyway, as it turned out, I was able to get them sorted and re-boxed myself, although it took most of what I had to put into it today. The re-boxing is because I am only shipping out part of what came in, and they need to be specific quantities of each dino. It seemed like a lot more stuff than you see here, and actually several packed boxes are already outside the photo area. I didn't exactly need the fan today, as it poured for most of 12 hours or so.

The inflatable dinosaur (which is not part of this project) stayed around to help keep an eye on the process.

This is not quite as exciting an image, but it was also a lot of fun, and -YES! - I begin to feel like I'm accomplishing something on this new direction of the Hudson/Joy project. I spent a lot of time last week organizing the blog better, and tonight I spent a lot of time transferring journal entries and scans and also figuring out how to work with the 1800s dates in blog format so that it doesn't take forever to put the posts together. With the exception of one love letter and marriage proposal (which is truly amazing and romantic), most of the entries are not that much fun to read yet. Some aren't bad, but I had to start somewhere, and that was really hard to decide.

After posting some material from 1856 when Hudson was already in Iowa, I decided to go back and make my starting point the marriage proposal linked above. After that, without an answer, Hudson goes west to Iowa, and the history begins to get interesting, because the state was really just getting settled, and then also on the home front, his letters with Helen start heating up. This is a good place to begin a long stretch of the historic and romantic material, but I also love the earlier years. I really had to think about it, but there is a certain momentum that tells a story beginning in 1855. Eventually I'll go back and fill in, but much of that is already in the chapters I've had printed. After a certain point in 1856, it will all be new.

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