The Cousin Nancy Show Trailer Is Already Up There!

 Today has been great. I have spent over 8 solid hours making a trailer for The Cousin Nancy Show and to say the least—I am pooped, but it was worth it.

I just finished editing it and I uploaded it to Buzzsprout to publish immediately and believe it or not The Cousin Nancy Show Trailer is already up there! Just click the link below to listen.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1600207/8139881-the-cousin-nancy-show-trailer?play=true

Or go to cousinnancy.com, scroll down to podcast and click. It will take you to Buzzsprout's page for The Cousin Nancy Show. 

Then scroll down the page and click on "Trailer" and adjust the volume to your liking. And I hope you enjoy it and it makes you laugh.

Now, I must wait on Apple to approve my podcast for their platform, which can take up to 14 days before putting it on their Apple Platform and then it will be added to Spotify, Google, etc.. 

So while I am waiting on Apple, I hope to do 2-3 podcasts in the meantime and then start doing 1 a week.

My trailer is not totally perfect, but it is close enough and my episodes will just get better and better as I become more comfortable with the technical stuff.

That's it for tonight, because I am going to make a few phone calls to let family & friends know the trailer is up and running.

Y'all take care and keep on laughing!

You Think You're Done, Yet?

The past ten days I've been very busy learning more about professional podcasting while Tony has been having to go back and fourth to Medina to pick up several packages delivered to me, at the Post Office.

And I do hope that the time and the money that I've already spent for podcasting is going to pay off for me. Because this morning I got out my calculator to add up just how much money I've already spent on The Cousin Nancy Show podcast. And that is not counting all of my time. 

After adding it all up it was pretty shocking to say the least. Here are just a few pictures of the equipment that I've recently purchased.

1 Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 Audio Interface @ $179.00

2 Sony Headphone Sets @ 26.68 each = $53.36

 4 Q2R Microphone Bundles @ 2 Mics per Pack for $149.00 = $298.00

  

1 Blue Yeti Microphone @ $129.00

VistaPrint Business Cards @ $20.00

2 Husky Equipment Carrying Cases @ $8.00 each =$16.00

1 Apple Power Supply @ $40.57

InnoGear  Mic Stand @$20.00

Website setup & Hosting, Buzzsprout, etc. @ $200.00

Free Royalty-Free Music Used for Intro/Outro - Clive Romney@Pixabay donation $50.00

Bottom Line: Here is a detailed list of my costs so far for my upcoming The Cousin Nancy Show:

Items:                                                             Cost         Quantity       Total Amount

 Focusrite Scarlett2i2 Audio Interface         $179.00            1                $179.00

Sony Headphones                                         $26.68              2                $53.36

Miscellaneous Cables/Hardware                  $50.00                                 $50.00

4 Q2R USB Microphones (2 to a Package)     $149.00        2-2pks.       $298.00 

Blue Yeti Microphone                                   $129.00            1                $129.00

VistaPrint Business Cards                             $20.00                                $20.00

Husky Carrying Case                                    $8.00                 2               $16.00   

Apple Power Supply Cord                            $40.57               1               $40.57

Innogear Microphone Mic Stand                  $20.00               1               $20.00

Website & Podcast Hosting                           $200.00                              $200.00

Donation for Royalty-Free Music                  $50.00                                $50.00   

Grand Total I Have Spent So Far is: $1,035.93 

And yes, I know that $1,035.93 is a lot of money to spend on podcasting, especially when there are many podcasting hosts out there that are totally free. Like the ones that offer you a free app and all you have to do is use your cell phone to podcast, but after all of my research I chose to use Buzzsprout. Because Buzzsprout is the most popular podcasting host and it is highly respected among the podcaster community.

Anyway, this morning after I had discovered just how much I've spent I felt guilty about spending so much money and I wanted to tell Tony (confess to him) about just how much I've spent. 

So when Tony got back home from working, I told him/confessed and it made him laugh. Not because we are rich by any means or have plenty of money to throw around—Tony laughed because he thought it was going to be a lot more money, because of all of the packages that he has been picking up for me. And after Tony had quit laughing, he teased me, and he asked, "So, do you think you're done, yet?" And that is just another reason why I love Tony.

Speaking of love, yesterday I got a sweet e-mail from my dear friend Gaby, who lives in Germany. And when I opened up her e-mail I read the first couple of lines and I burst out laughing. Because Gaby was wishing Tony and me a happy anniversary and she was apologizing for being a day late, because our anniversary is March 10th.

So I quickly sent her a note back telling Gaby that once again Tony and I had both forgotten our anniversary and I also thanked her for reminding me, so I could go tease Tony about it. And Tony laughed about us both forgetting our anniversary, again.

Lastly, early this afternoon I was talking to my sweet sister Cindy, on the phone and I was telling her about how much money that I've already spent on my upcoming podcast and we were laughing about it. "Cindy, the last few days I have probably spent at least eight hours trying to find the perfect, royalty-free, no copyright music to use on my podcast. "

"Okay."

"Well, two days ago after going to several of the royalty-free websites that Buzzsprout's Team had highly recommended I found nothing that I liked. So, I then went to Pixabay, which Buzzsprout, in their YouTube tutorial, had rated Pixabay as their number one choice to find royalty-free-music."

"Anyway, Pixabay is a fabulous site where musicians upload their music for anyone to download for free and to use however they want to. And it is royalty-free with no copyright." 

"Anyway, I finally found the perfect music for my podcast after being on Pixabay's site for several hours. After I had downloaded the Clive Romney song for free, Pixabay suggested that I thank Clive Romney for the use of his music and that I might also consider making a donation to him, before leaving Pixabay's site."

"So, I decided to make a small donation of $50.00 to him, because I wanted to sort of pay it forward and do the right thing for getting to use his music for free. And also because in the picture of him, on Pixabay, Clive has white hair underneath his cowboy hat. So I figured that Clive Romney is probably some old, starving musician, on a fixed income, just hoping to make a little extra spending money from donations."

"That was nice, Nance," Cindy said.

"I thought so too," I said, and then I burst out laughing. "Cindy! I Googled Clive Romney and he is very famous—for his music and he also performs at Cowboy Poetry events, too. And get this—Clive Romney only joined Pixabay on January 7, 2021. Five days ago!" Then Cindy started laughing with me. 

"Cindy, can you believe that I was thinking that I was helping out some poor, old musician with my donation. Heck, I bet when Clive Romney got my e-mail thanking him for letting me use his music for my podcast and for also making a donation to him—he probably felt insulted by my $50.00 donation. And he probably also thinks that I am one cheap, ungrateful woman..." 

And that is about it for tonight.

Y'all take care and keep on laughing!

A Little Teaser!

 It has been a beautiful day outside and even though I wanted to be outside grounding myself by doing a little Earthing— I ended up spending most of my day inside working on my upcoming podcast.

Anyway, I want to give y'all a little teaser and show you the artwork that I've designed for my podcast cover—The Cousin Nancy Show. And please note that Tony took this picture of me and Maya laughing several years ago.

And if y'all are still interested I would also like to give you a peek at my cousinnancy.com website. I totally love it, because I hired the best—my dear friend Pat Symchych, an extremely talented website builder/host to build mine for me. And I think she did a great job. "Thank you, Pat!"

And please note that near the bottom of my website page you can click on the podcast button to see how my podcast looks—even though I have not made my first podcast yet. So now all I have to do is start podcasting which I am hoping to do by next week after a few practice runs.

And that is about it for tonight.

Y'all have a great evening and keep on laughing!

2QU!

First off, I am done with that horrible polar vorTEX and I'm not going to talk about it any further, because of the nightmare that Tony and I had to endure for 11 days going without any running water. Seriously, it nearly did me in mentally. And if you don't believe me—just ask Tone.

But to help fight off my depression during those cold, stressful days and nights I put almost all of my energy into learning more about podcasting. And after all of those hours I spent on research I went on several Amazon shopping sprees. 

You know that old saying that goes something like this, "...Two is nice. Three is a crowd, etc." well, you might say I went a little overboard purchasing some of my podcasting equipment. 

Okay, I admit that podcasting can be as simple as using an app and a cell phone and there is nothing wrong with doing this.

But, because I plan to do a lot of interviews with friends, professionals, musicians, etc. and will also be doing outdoor podcasting with complete strangers, I realized I needed to have at least two microphones and sets of headphones for each person I interview. 

I also discovered that I needed a voice interface to plug into the mics before plugging them into my GarageBand software, for editing. And so not to get too technical here—I bought Buzzsprout's top rated, highly recommended podcasting equipment that would insure quality sound. 

FYI: Buzzsprout is considered to be one of the top, most popular podcasting hosts and after watching their videos where they rated all kinds of different podcasting equipment in all kinds of price ranges, I took their advice and purchased the equipment, in my price range, that they had reviewed and highly recommended.

Anyway, over the last couple of weeks my podcasting equipment has slowly been arriving piece-by-piece and with each delivery of equipment it has put a big smile on my face.

Up until today I have received the small, but powerful, red Scarlett 2i2 Interface, two Sony headphone sets, all kinds of different cables and jacks, etc.

Well, today the highly rated, 5★★★★★s— 2QU RECORDING AND PODCASTING PACK USB/XLR Dynamic Microphone with Accessories arrived!! And as you can see below— I purchased four of them. Yes—four microphones, because the way I think: "If three is a crowd—Four is a party!

On the far-left of the picture below is my black Blue Yeti that I purchased a while back when I decided I wanted to do podcasting and if I have more than four guests on the show, I will use it even though it is not a dynamic microphone.

And as I finish writing this post Tony just put another log on the fire for me, as Henry Standing Bear watches him, from my chair.

Y'all have a great evening and keep on laughing!

This Polar VorTEX(AS) Sucks! or My Bucket's Got A Hole In It!

This is going to be my story about the Polar VorTEX(AS) that Tony and I have survived so far. First off, knock-on-wood, T. and I and our 4-leggers are doing fine even though we now have no running water, because our pipes froze up a few days ago. Anyway, here is my story.

Last Wednesday, February 10th

 After Tony and I attended a super fun birthday party for our friend, in Kerrville, we went to the small H-E-B to stock up on supplies, because everyone at lunch had talked about the fierce polar vortex that was predicted to hit our area late Thursday afternoon.

So Tone and I stocked up on bottle water and about another week's worth of food, because the weather casters had been warning us about the severe weather maybe lasting as long as five days. And I was excited about it snowing here, because that rarely happens here and it is pretty.

                                                             Thursday, February 11th

Well, the polar vortex decided to come earlier than anticipated and by 11:00 that morning the temperature outside was near freezing and dropping fast. And I was so glad that we had stocked up on extra food and supplies. We were prepared or so I thought.

Friday, February 12th

Friday morning, it was in the lower 20's and around 8:00 when Tony went outside to warm up the truck before going next door to work, he came back inside and told me that a big cedar tree had fallen during the night and it was blocking our driveway and had damaged some of our fence.

So Tony and I put on our heavy jackets and gloves and went to work outside: removing the big, dead tree. Here are pictures that I took of Tony with his chainsaw, before he went to work cutting up the tree, so we could clear the driveway.

An hour and a half later, the driveway was cleared, so Tony went to work next door and I took this picture to show y'all how icy the trees had become before I went back inside The Cabin. 

Saturday, February 13th

Saturday was freezing cold and uneventful, except we started dripping our faucets, because we stayed in the 20's all day and it was getting colder.

Sunday, February 14th

Sunday morning the weather took a nose-dive. Tony went to work next door and by the time he was done working, the roads had gotten so slick he could not drive the truck home, so he had to walk home.

I was unaware about how bad the road conditions had gotten outside and while I was washing some dishes and looking out the kitchen window I saw Tony walking up our driveway and he was holding something in his hand, but I could not tell what it was.

When Tone came inside The Cabin he was holding a beautiful bouquet of red and white roses in his hand, and he said, "These are for you. Happy Valentine's Day. " And then he and bothI started laughing, because we both knew that he had not gotten me those pretty flowers. Because it didn't take a rocket  scientist, to figure out that sweet Sarah and Darlene, over at Escondida, had sent the leftover flowers home with Tony to give to me.

After I put the lovely flowers into a vas I heard the weather forecast which was not good. So Tony and I  decided it would be a good idea for us to store up some water, because our flowing faucets were hardly dripping a drop of water at full blast. 

So we spent about two hours drip-by-drip, filling every container and empty water bottles that we had, in case the pipes froze up. Here is a picture of the kitchen island covered in water containers.

I am so glad that we did that, because the pipes froze up during a rolling blackout during the wee hours of the night while we were sleeping. And that lapse of electricity turned off the heat lamp that we had inside the pump house. So when the power did come back on we did not know that the pump house lamp needed to be turned back on.

Monday, February 15th

Monday was totally miserable, because of the polar vortex. It got down to 6 degrees.

The electricity kept going on and off, we both wanted and needed to take showers, but we couldn't, etc. And even if we had wanted to go somewhere we couldn't, because our truck was stuck next door and it was too icy and dangerous for us to be outside anyway.  Plus we had gotten over 5 inches of snow!

Later that night, I was sitting in the dark, because we had no electricity and I was so bored I decided to get my "headlight" glasses that have lights on them for reading in the dark.

And those glasses were fantastic for reading or just walking inside the house. Even though I did scare Henry half to death when I accidentally woke him up. 

Tuesday, February 16th

Tuesday afternoon around 3:00, the temperature got up to 33 degree!

So, I asked Tony to please help me clean out our wood burning stove, because it was so full of ashes. And because our regular bucket (an old, stainless pot) that we normally use to remove the ashes and embers was outside—frozen solid in the ice. So I suggested that we use the other copper, decorative bucket that we normally use to store our kindling in. And that was a big mistake.

Tony filled up the copper bucket that once had belonged to my sweet mom) nearly to the top with burning embers and hot ash. When I handed him the pot holders to carry the bucket outside, he lifted it up the bucket and the whole bottom fell out onto the tile that surrounds our wood burning stove!

Thinking fast, after this unwanted, could-be dangerous event, I grabbed our metal kitchen garbage can, lifted the trash sack out and carried the can over to where the hot ashes were. Then Tony grabbed the fireplace shovel and began piling in the hot embers and ashes as fast as he could. And after that Tony carried out the garbage can and dumped the hot ashes and embers into a pile of snow that melted very quickly.

And the good news is: it didn't hurt, discolor or crack the tile. I took this picture of Mom's copper bucket after it had cooled down. And as you can plainly see I now can say, "My bucket's got a hole in it." (Sorry Mom)

To Be Continued..

Great Advice!

 Well, believe it or not—I am posting again. But beware: this is a short post, because Gaby's cute, snail-mailed postcard, that she sent to us from Germany, arrived today in our mailbox.

Tony and I love Gaby and her daughter Xenia. Tone and I met these two great women many, many years ago, when they came out to the rescue ranch one Saturday to get a tour. Long story short, when T. and I met them we instantly fell in love with these ladies and became friends. 

So that day we gave Xenia and her sweet mom the grand tour, which included them meeting everyone of our dogs and Kinky. And since that day, we've kept in touch with them and every time that Gaby comes to visit her daughter and her family, in Texas—they make a point to come visit us or we meet somewhere, so we can get in a good visit.

Anyway, before I write Gaby a note and e-mail it to her I want to show y'all this great postcard, because I am planning on framing it and hanging it up, in my writing cabin. Here's Gaby's "great advice" postcard:

Y'all have a great evening and keep on laughing!

I'm On A Roll Here!

 Gosh, it looks like I am on a roll here with 3 consecutive days of new posts on my blog. I do apologize for not posting much this past, horrible year and the first month of this new year, but my excuse is I was too down to write in 2021 and the first month of the new year I've been concentrating on podcasting and all it entails. 

Anyway, I do have some exciting news to report. I now have a cousinnancy.com! I've needed my own website for years, but now with me podcasting on the horizon (near future), I hired my dear friend Pat Symchych, who did an excellent job (20 years) doing our Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch website, to help me. So I hope you will check it out cousinnancy.com  because I am very proud of it.

And the reason I decided to get my own website is because I can use it on my podcasts to direct people to my website and my blog, etc. And I want to thank Pat for all of the hard work it involved. "Thank you Pat! I LOVE it!"

During the time I was working with Pat on my website I spent almost every waking hour researching everything you need to know about creating and doing podcasting on the Internet and YouTube. And I am proud to say that I retained almost all of the information, so I could work on creating my podcasting site: 

The Cousin Nancy Show

I spent hours, days, etc. rewriting the information about my podcast and I spent way too much time coming up with the artwork that I finally decided to use. And I hope that you will check it out even though I have not done my 1st podcast, yet. (Trust me, I will keep you posted about that.)

Y'all have a great evening and keep on laughing!