What are you up to today? This week?

[havanaholly]

DH had a good day yesterday, no sniffles or hoarseness so we dodged the respiratory "stuff" I was concerned about with his getting dunked & chilled. The birthday party we attended last night was for & with the friends we hike & paddle with, and mini of them have paddled that particular stretch of that river and all agreed that someone usually rolls over coming out of the chute, since the limestone karst creates countercurrents just below the water. He got lots of sympathy! and we filled up on several different kinds of chili (I had barely enough left over to make it worthwhile putting back in the fridge, not even one full bowl!) and trimmings.

Muriel, it's winter here, too. Rain's in the forecast today & tomorrow, but so far it's just murky-yucky looking.

[KathieB]

Yesterday I finished transferring programs and data from my computer to Lloyd's computer, which we'll be leaving in New Orleans. He bagged more leaves in the yard, which isn't as tidy as I'd like it to be, but Mother Nature is in charge now. I'm sure all will be well come spring. Lloyd also got his clothes ready. He's planning to have half of his underwear in each house and some of his clothes each place so he won't have to carry clothing back and forth. He actually consigned a few shirts and pants to the donation bag, this from the man who has some pieces of clothing older than dirt! Needless to say, he was asleep early last night after all of his efforts.

My goal for today is to pack up the craft supplies in a handy tool box and do my clothes. The piles of stuff to load into the van is getting bigger. I think it's time to consider what we might be able to ship to ourselves via UPS and have a friend send it off once we're down there.

[woodland_miniatures]

Speaking of Mother Nature, we've got another bad winter storm coming tomorrow - weather folk are saying heavy snows, as in 5 - 10 inches in my area (this on top of the foot of snow already out there), and high winds. I'm all battened down and Koko doesn't seem to want to go out all that much, though he still does leave kitty prints in the snow out there even as cold as it is, but not all that many of them.

Last winter was such a wimp-out with hardly any snow at all, but it looks like we're more than going to make up for it this year. Last year was my first in this particular apartment, and my neighbor was showing me pictures he took over the last couple of years - OMG, talk about living in an igloo! See, the snow barrier more or less keeps the snow from blocking our porch doors (except he showed me one pic where the snow come OVER the barrier!), but it piles up against the barrier and then slides down from the roof in a thick sheet to meet the snow on the ground, forming this solid dome of snow....In one pic you see my neighbor peeking out from his porch through a hole he'd opened in this solid wall of snow.....Should be interesting this year!

[KathieB]

Mary, a snow igloo on your porch! Wow! I promise I'll think of you this winter as I'm sipping a café au lait on patio of Café du Monde and brushing a dusting of powdered sugar from the beignets off my chinny chin chin.

[Muriel]

Trip to Bristol was uneventful, did take all of the 30 mins to find a parking space though! There was snow on the fields along the way, but all the roads were clear and dry.

Have discovered that my windscreen washer isn't working. Thought maybe it was a bit frozen yesterday, but today it got up to about 34 degrees and it still didn't work. In fact can't here the pump even trying to pump the water, so wonder what has happened to it! Can't really be bothered to deal with it Will do so of course though!

[Starfire]

Doing some spot clean up in preparation to start the Christmas decorating. Hope to get the tree up on Wed. In between got the roof on the quarter scale "Cobbles" and had some work on the roof joints to do so that all the "slates" appear complete. I really like the "method" used to mold the roof tiles. The kit supplied a rubber form and told how to use light weight spackle mixed with the proper color and one layer of a paper towel laid across and patted in. Let dry for 24 hours. Remove gently from rubber mold. It is light, trimable and looks really good. I think I will be using it again in other buildings. Will begin on the trim in the inside and building the accessories/furniture probably this evening. Still working on various accessories for the Montclair.

Need to start thinking about dinner soon.

[Lynette Smith]

I'm in a state of shock. The mother of an old school friend was murdered yesterday. They lived 7 doors away from where I grew up. I was passing on the way to the gym and two lanes of traffic were blocked off, a large mobile police command unit parked in front of their home. I was disquieted at it being out front of their home, but figured it was for logistics, and that the true emergency was around the corner on a smaller road. After 45 minutes on the treadmill, the news came on and I learned the awful truth.

The story is likely to get more press than it might have otherwise, because my friend married the son of a local car dealership and NBA team owner. Last year the car magnate died, leaving my friend's husband the head of the empire. I read a few comments on the news story and was sickened. People were making comments about the victim's husband making custom knife and the fact that she was stabbed, drawing conclusions that he did it. Thankfully the police have ruled him out.

Then, on leaving the gym last night, I witnessed a minor car accident. I got home to call a friend to tell her about my afternoon, only to learn that her father's death from Parkinsons is imminent.

Just a little overwhelmed.

[woodland_miniatures]

Awww, Lynette, I am so sorry that all the bad karma is landing at once. Sometimes it seems to work that way, and who knows why. Hang in there, my dear, and keep on keeping on. It's all we can do when things get weird like that.

My particular bad karma is that Social Security in their infinite wisdom has decided that somewhere along the line they overpaid me and they are electing to take the "overpayment" back right off the top of this month's check (auto deposit, in actual fact). So I am dealing with having several hundred dollars less income this month than I'm used to (they informed me in a letter a couple of weeks ago they're taking it as a lump sum), as well as a rent increase that begins this month. Got enough to pay that rent, feed the cat (spoiled, it's true) and myself, and that's pretty much it this month. And December's a loooooong month.....Oh, well, these things pass.

[Lynette Smith]

Thanks, today went better. One report I found online said that my friend's father is not a suspect, but that seems to be about the only thing I could glean. I hope it's just a case of the police being tight with the information.

Having problems with an overpayment is a pain. Did you contest it, stating it would create a hardship?

[MerriMagic]

Ack Mary, how heartless of the government to yank out so much at this time of the year. Funny thing, they take their sweet time when they owe someone money..you'd think they'd return the favor, and at least let you pay it back in installments.

Lynnette, PLEASE make sure to follow healthy habits...right now you really need all the support you can get. Get enough vitamins, get enough sleep, and remember to take a few breaks here and there. Two days to M day huh? It'll all be over soon..just please don't try to unpack everything right away.

[woodland_miniatures]

What Jeanne said, Lynette - but I don't see you "falling off the wagon" now after all your hard work!

You know, Social Security gave me such short notice that I first just froze over the whole thing, then looked at one month of real hardship, and decided that going through that one month of hardship would have less wear and tear than trying to fight them. They did in fact overpay me and do have a right to get the $$ back - what gets me is if I were like many of my neighbors and getting far less than I do, the short notice and scooping it all back at once would have seen me out on the street. In the dead of winter and up here, that's life-threatening. And did that possibility even occur to them? Apparently not. Well, I am profoundly grateful for that auto deposit each month, but have for all the years I've been on SS disability dreamed of when I could tell them to take a flying leap at the moon.....Just a dream I have. :hug:

[Muriel]

Sending hugs and strength Lynette and Mary!

[Starfire]

I hope every one will find themselves in a better state soon. Sorry to hear about all the sad and difficult things that have popped up.

We had our first real snowfall of the season yesterday, not much really but it was more then the dusting of the past few weeks. Since we live up on a hill we always get more of everything weather wise then down in the valley, more wind, more rain and definitely more snow.

As I sit here the contractors are taking our upstairs bathroom apart so they can install new tile, new sinks, and paint. It is a Christmas present to ourselves. It is a project we have had "On the to do list" for the past 5 years and could never get someone interested in doing it. Most contractors considered it too small a project to bother with. The electrical was weirdly done and I hope they can get it straightened out as well.

I did con the guys into setting up the tree for me so will start the decoration on it later this afternoon. The restringing of lights last year will need to be redone. If I had my way I would simply go out and get a new tree, but for some reason DH got really bent out of shape over the thought. We will have spent as much on new lights as a new tree would have cost and I would not need to spend several days reworking the lighting. Maybe next year.

We are without water for the next couple of hours so any miniing will have to wait since I will not be able to do any cleanup.

[havanaholly]

Hi, Beverly, our Christmas gift to each other is a new downstairs bathroom, since we haven't really been able to use the old one (and I do mean OLD!) for several years.

[Lynette Smith]

Oh I'm not going to fall off the wagon now! I was bad and ate too many Gardettos rye chips last night, but that's only a small indulgence which I can work into today's calorie intake. I was summarizing my grocery shopping yesterday and realized just how heavy my veggie consumption has become: 10 pounds of dry northern beans, green beans, squash, 2 ceasar salad kits, 5 pounds of fajita vegetables (to supplement the chicken fajita mix I'll be getting on sale in a few days), corn, and 5 pounds of carrots.

I got a great night's sleep. Sleep is something I'm not very efficient at. My fitness monitor detects how much time I'm laying down and how much I'm actually sleeping and can do so on a minute by minute basis. I've got 8 hours sleep a couple of times, but it takes 11 hours or more to do it!

I've eaten a tuna sandwich and am heading out to the gym. After working out, I'm going to have a nice indulgent soak in the hot tub, then sit in the sauna to sweat away some of the water retained from the salty foods I ate yesterday. I will have my water bottle, so don't worry about me getting dehydrated.

[havanaholly]

Tomorrow is going to be a nutzo day, my cardiologist's office change my pacemaker appointment from Tuesday to tomorrow AM; DH has an auction to attend AT THE SAME TIME and I need to get home by 1300 to meet with the plumber who's replacing our downstairs bathroom. And we were offered a paddle (which we'd both rather be doing) on the Blackwater River tomorrow AM! (# hours' drive west of us)

[Muriel]

That sure is a busy morning Holly! Hope everything slots into place and goes well

Woke up with a horrid stomach bug this morning. One of the worst things for me is being sick to my stomach and vomiting. Yuck! So stayed home in bed. Have managed to keep toast down this afternoon thank goodness, hopefully I'll be ok tomorrow.

Cheddar had their festive evening tonight - feeling too uncomfortable to go out to it, but did watch out the window as santa went by in his sleigh! :thumb:

[Starfire]

Spent the morning rewiring a nine foot tree. Luckily there was only one bad string along with several burned out bulbs that needed to be replaced. The 2 extension cords that you place along the trunk were both burned out so will have to be replaced. Maybe a run down to the shop this evening. Would love to get the tree finished so I can get the rest of the decorations up.

Have a transport this weekend for our boxer rescue. Pretty little reverse brindle female being moved to a foster home in western NY. We have snow flurreys at the moment so hope the weather stays the same. Not looking forward to driving in a bad case of lake effect snow.

[havanaholly]

It went well this AM; I left extra early to allow for godawful traffic and the crazies that insist on occupying the roads this time of year, and I wound up without hangups or delays and arrived an hour early! and didn't have to wait all that long (there were only four of us awaiting "device" checks), so that I was on my way home at my appointment time. Someone else wanted the house DH was bidding on a WHOLE LOT more than we did (among other things it needed a new roof & replacement of black-mold damage), so we were both home well before the plumber was scheduled to arrive. He just called a little while ago that his last job took extra time, so he's coming tomorrow. We decided to go out for supper tonight.

It's freezing cold here.

[Starfire]

Our contractor guys are in the process of reworking the plumbing and relocating the commode. They are very noisy!!!!!!! Will be nice to get this done!!!!!!

[sparklepuppies]

Busy day today. After Lawson having 1 1/2 hours of WAVE Team practice until 9:30 last night, I had to have Brennen at school at 7:00am today to go to his Lego League Robotics Competition. Came home for a couple of hours, then took Lawson to a WAVE performance. Left straight from there and drove 30 minutes to the Lego competition, made it just in time to see Brennen's robot compete. Missed Lawson's 2nd performance, but luckily someone was sweet enough to bring him home afterwards. After the competition, I got to be home for about 30 minutes before I had to leave for yet another WAVE performance. And I am finally home now, exhausted! The boys both did great in all their activities today. :thumb:

Tomorrow Lawson has a 2 hour performance an hour away. Then he's done until Friday when he goes to Rock City to perform. Whew!

[havanaholly]

The plumber and his son showed up this AM and started to work. They wound up using the commode stool we'd bought for the job to replace the stool upstairs in the old full bath, so after they left this afternoon DH & I went to the hardware stores to shop for another new one. Buying a new potty isn't as much fun as buying power tools!

[MerriMagic]

Ack, Muriel, you're sick too! I'd shove some chicken soup through the hard drive for you, but I guess food's the last thing you want to look at now.

Holly...don't you just LOVE reconstruction right before Christmas. I hope the plumbing guys clean up their mess!

Ohhh some of you are putting up your Christmas trees? We just got a very tiny one, only a two footer, and it's one of those fiber optic trees. It won't get decorated because the cats will go at it with a vengance, but at least we get to look at a tree this year. We can enjoy the twinkling fiberoptic lights when the room is dim, while we watch TV.

The only other decoration we put out, is a two foot high lumberjack SantaClaus. Oh boy, does Snottydottie ever love that santa. She buries her face in his snowy beard, and guards him for the holiday's duration.

For the life of me, I can't figure out why she loves that Santa so much. The other cats might cuff him around, but she spends hours adoring her artificial StNick. She'll sleep curled around him until he goes back in his box after Christmas.

So that's the extent of our decorations. Picking stuff up after the cats demolish it, makes any more decoration prohibitive.

Next year I'll have dollhouses to decorate, YAY~ I'll start collecting Christmas stuff all of 2011, getting something Christmassy with every order I place to Ernie's...so I'll have at least two BEAUTIFULLY decorated tiny homes in 2011. WOOT!

Jeanne

[havanaholly]

One of my time-filler projects I need to find all the stuff and make a 1:12 table for is a wee Christmas village like Deb's: http://www.greenleafdollhouses.com/forum/i...st&p=402552

[Starfire]

Most all of the plumbing rework is done in our bathroom renovation. They discovered everything was copper piping even the drains. Said they had not seen anything like it before. (They are the younger generation.) The guys worked late last night and took today off. Definitely deserve a day of rest!!! Tomorrow they will be laying the wallboard and sub flooring for the tile. Still some work on getting the electrical wiring straightened out. A previous remodel (before we bought the house) had pretty well screwed it up.

We went looking for bathroom mirrors yesterday afternoon, the last item we needed as everything else is "in the house". Found a couple of very simple dark brown framed ones. Should look nice with the tiles which are a warm mix of tans grays and browns. DD 2 still has to pick out a paint color.

I was able to get all of the lights on the tree working by Friday morning but progress on doing the decoration came to a grinding halt when I discovered the tree extension cord had given up the ghost. So spent part of our mirror hunt looked for the extension cords with multiple plugins that one runs along the trunk of the Christmas tree for all of the lights. No one had them! It seems with the preponderance of pre-lit trees these days most stores do not carry them. Finally found them on line and ordered them and hope they will be here by the beginning of this next week. Don't know what folks with fresh trees will be doing.

Just got back from our dog transport run. Cute two year old boxer and not a peep out of her the whole time. We were expecting some lake effect snow and towards the end of the western run we ran into the front most edge. Roads were not too bad, but the next driver in the chain said she had nearly two feet at her house and was expecting more. Hope she got home OK. We outran it on the way back, but it has caught up with us now and the snow is getting heavier up here on our hill. Went grocery shopping on Friday and the oil tank for the furnace was filled as well so we should be OK if it turns out to be worse than they expected, (and it always is up here on our hill.)

If I can recover some energy I will try and get some more miniing done this evening since I can not do any more on the tree until the cords get here.

I really feel blah today, think I have a touch of broncitus but am hoping it is the cold air. We started out this am with 20 degrees befor it warmed up to a balmy 23 degrees,