Sigh

Still no Internet access at home, and the Husband does not seem too troubled about it. Aside from the fact that I hate paying for a service I cannot use, I need to be able to get online at home. I missed Lance and Lacey's dance on episode 2 of DWTS last week, and I need to catch it on YouTube! It was to my favorite Cure song! So, if anyone at Insight happens to read this, please please please fix our cable internet service. I'm dyin' here.

Hello? Is Anyone Out There?

Our home network has been down for the past couple of days, so I may not get to post over the weekend unless Husband can isolate the problem. Here are some random thoughts for the end of the week:

• You know your house is really filthy when you're actually looking forward to cleaning it. I positively hate dirty bathrooms.

• I have had some kind of weird cold/allergy/sinus thing going on for a while now. It ruined the past three Saturdays by making me feel rotten and exhausted, and I am really tired of it. In fact, that's why the house is so cruddy...I haven't felt like cleaning it.
  

• TV is really messing with me. I haven't watched any network shows regularly since I got bored with CSI a few seasons ago. At the end of the last season of Dancing with the Stars, I kind of got interested in it, and decided that I would watch it this season. It's a fun show, and I'm really enjoying it. That being said, I have also discovered Fox's new show, Fringe, which is just awesome. And, of course, I must watch my fella Mike Rowe on Dirty Jobs. So, for the first time in about 10 years, I actually have lots of good stuff to watch on TV. What's the problem, you ask? THEY'RE ALL ON AT THE SAME TIME, that's the problem. And we're way too cheap to have tivo or DVR. It's just not right to force a girl to choose between Mike Rowe and anything else.

• As far as DWTS goes, I'm rooting for Lance Bass and/or Misty May-Treanor; The Husband seems to have developed a violent crush on Kim Kardashian. I think she's the only thing that kept him from running screaming from the room during the last show. (He's been forced to watch TV with me, since he can't get online to play his games.) He actually made it through two complete episodes, which indicates either 1) he was really bored without Internet access, or 2) the lure of Kim Kardashian in a skimpy outfit is pretty strong. We'll see if he tunes in on Monday.

• The major part of my job involves attending Planning Commission meetings, taking notes, and transcribing those notes, plus an audio recording, into a set of minutes. We had an 8 1/2 hour meeting in August--and I had to relive every moment of it. It took me a month to finish the minutes, and I am SO relieved to have that monkey off my back.
  

Well, I guess I should wrap up, since I'm technically supposed to be working. Here's hoping that we have Internet access at home before Monday.

If You Want to Have Some Fun Tonight...

Try squirting a syringe full of medicine into a dog's mouth...that's how the Husband and I spent a large portion of our evening tonight. Patches, the dog in question, has a nasty habit of eating things out in the yard that aren't necessarily food. So, one trip to the vet and $120 later, we have three different meds to dispense several times each day. Oddly enough, he'll eat all kinds of crap out in the yard, but he clamps his mouth like he has lockjaw when I come at him with the syringe. So, Husband pried his mouth open, I squirted in medicine, and then I popped in a marshmallow to get him to swallow the stuff. We managed to get almost the whole dose in there, and I only had to wipe down a couple of the cabinets. And the floor. And my hands, and legs, and Patches' chin. Would it be too much to ask to make the stuff bacon-flavored?

Was I Supposed to Post Something?

Oh, that's right. I promised a summary of our fascinating weekend. The Husband was still under the weather, so I did all the yard work Saturday morning. Three hours of strained-shoulder-muscle-torturing fun. We are out of line for the weedeater, so I trimmed ALL the way around the back yard fence with the little garden shears. (I think if I did that more often my hinder might be in better shape; all that bending is murder on the butt.) I was pretty much done in after that, but the yard looked pretty good. Now we just need a couple of days of nice, soaking rain to keep our little landscaping investments alive until winter. Someday, I'll post the story of the week of vacation we took to work in the back yard--or the Bataan Death March of Landscaping, as I like to call it.

Sunday was church, lunch, and church again for choir and drama practice, then massive culinary failure. I was supposed to make a dish to bring to our work lunch on Monday, so I found a cobbler recipe in the church cookbook that looked easy and tasty. It was one of those deals where you put the batter in the pan first, and the fruit on top, and the batter "comes up" over the fruit, somehow, when it bakes. I had some doubts about the process going into it, and it turns out I was right. Even though I followed the recipe to the letter, it was a huge FAIL. The batter never "came up," even after more than two hours of baking. I ended up with a pan of hot fruit, covering about an inch of doughy batter. I don't cook much, but I do a fair amount of baking, and I had never had a recipe just...not work before. It was pretty depressing, and I went to bed late because of it. Luckily, we had plenty of desserts for the lunch, so it turned out to be no big deal.

Let's see...anything else? Well, I found a new TV show that I like. Anyone who knows me is aware that I have basically given up on television in recent years, except for Dirty Jobs and Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel. However, I am willing to admit publicly, on this blog, to liking the new show Fringe on Fox. Husband and I watched the pilot during the cobbler debacle on Sunday night, and the first regular episode last night, and it's really good. (BTW, I realize that this blog can hardly be considered "public," since I'm pretty sure no one reads it. But the Husband and I are basically hermits, so this is about as public as I get.) The show is intense, and kind of creepy, and funny in spots, and I will definitely continue to give it a shot as long as it maintains that level of quality.

Part of the difficulty I have with blogging is that I never know how to end my posts. Do I say goodbye? Peace out? Maybe I should come up with some kind of tagline. We'll see. Anyway, goodbye and peace out for now.

New for Fall...

I've updated my WeeMe (the little photo avatar thingambob in my profile) with fall fashions. Can you stand the excitement? Of course, it's supposed to be nearly 90 degrees today, but I can dream.

Hooray for Friday!

This has been a LONG week. Butt-smokin busy all week, some VERY crabby emails from the boss, a couple of large work screw-ups, and a downright hellish day on Thursday. Plus, the Husband has contracted some kind of Bubonic Plague-cold that's had him shlumping around the house like a zombie. But! I get to go home at 4:00 (no overtime allowed), and we have a pretty light schedule for Saturday. We were planning to go wander around at Raven Run, but the forecast is for rain and 86 degrees. I don't really mind the rain if I'm already grubbing around outside anyway, but I doubt that Husband wants to be out in that heat with his cold, and I don't blame him. So I'm not sure what we'll get into.

I finally made a start on sewing the new purse, but I realized that sewing is one of the things that really hurts the strained pectoral muscle. It only took about 1/2 hour at the machine the other night to make me run for the Tylenol PM bottle. Maybe I should dose up on the Tylenol PM to keep the shoulder from hurting, then sew like a fiend until I pass out? Of course, my sewing is not the greatest anyway, I can't even imagine what kind of cracked-out quilting I would do if I was high on Tylenol PM. The only bad thing about sewing my own purse is that I want to switch purses NOW, and it will probably take me at least another couple of weeks to finish.

Off to finish up the last couple hours of my work week. I'll be sure to post the fascinating details of how the most boring couple in the world spent their Saturday.

Seven Years

So many people have written so many wonderful words about this day. I doubt that anything I could write would do the gravity of the day justice, so I'll just say this: the anniversary of 9/11 fills me with gratitude.

I'm grateful for the brave men and women who ran into the towers as they fell, and diverted a doomed airplane, and rushed into the burning Pentagon building.

I'm grateful for the brave men and women in our armed forces, who travel thousands of miles from home and family--knowing they may never return--to defend my freedom.

I'm grateful to be able to work, drive a car, shop, and visit my friends and family. There are countries in the world where, as a woman, I would be stoned, imprisoned, ostracized, or even killed for doing those things.

And finally, I'm grateful to live in a country where I can worship my God any way I choose. There are countries in the world where proclaiming oneself a Christian, or owning a Bible, is punishable by death.

Praise be to the LORD, for he showed his wonderful love to me when I was in a besieged city.
Psalm 31:21

My ?? Things

I have seen this "100 Things" deal done on several blogs, and it's usually pretty interesting and funny. I can't make any guarantees about that, and I'm not sure I can come up with 100 things, but here goes.

1. I am terrified of birds and bugs. Those are not the only things I'm scared of, but they make the least sense; I mean, what can they do to me, really? But they still completely freak me out.
2. Cat scratch fever is not just a rockin' tune by the Nuge. It is a real medical condition, and I nearly died from it when I was three.
3. With a couple of exceptions, I prefer a good action movie to a chick flick any day.
4. I have lived in the same city my whole life, but in 18 different houses. We moved a lot when I was a kid, which probably didn't help the whole "shy and nerdy" thing very much.
5. I could live on fruit and sweets--breads, vegetables, and meats are all great, but I must have fruit and dessert to survive.
6. During my junior year of high school, I worked at Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream to earn money for a class ring. I spilled an entire mop bucket full of water in the walk-in freezer one night, and unintentionally created a teeny skating rink.
7. I hate for my clothes to be wrinkled, and I iron and starch everything. If you see me at Kroger in sweatpants and a t-shirt, I've probably ironed them.
8. I am an idiot. I gave up a full-tuition college scholarship...and now I'm going on my 20th year of employment in administrative/clerical work.
9. Autumn is my favorite season, because it reminds me of falling in love with my husband.
10. I can't sleep without covers. Even when my family lived in a 100-year-old house in the country with no air conditioning, I had to be covered with at least a sheet.
11. I made an appearance on a local TV talk show in December of 1975. The host chose several kids from my kindergarten class to appear on her Christmas special, and I was one of them. I don't remember anything about the experience except what I wore.
12. When I got my first pair of Nike sneakers in fifth grade, I thought they were so cool that I slept with them on top of the dresser so that I could see them when I woke up. (They were white leather with a red swoosh and blue trim on the soles.)
13. I met Sally Field at a hotel in Georgia. I didn't know who she was while I was talking to her; my mom had to explain to me later that she was "the lady from the Smokey & The Bandit movies."
14. I had scarlet fever when I was five. My grandmother and I were quarantined for about a month.
15. My grandmother, cousin and I took a Greyhound bus from Lexington, KY to Houston, TX, and back in 1982. It was a very, very, very long trip.


EDITED TO ADD: Blogger is completely insane. I was typing away, and all of a sudden it just...posted my entry, with no prompting from me whatsoever. I will complete this list in another entry. (I know you will be waiting with bated breath.)

It Could Be Worse...

After another couple of days of struggling with CorelDraw and Blogger, I've managed to come up with a header that I don't completely hate. Clearly, I'm going to have to haul out the old HTML book and learn some code so that I can create a cute background and make some other changes. This will do for the moment, though.

In Which I Discover Just How Little I Know

So, there I was, thinking that I do pretty well with computers. Not that I don't know my limits, but I felt pretty confident that I could come up with my own blog template and use it without too much trouble. To say that I was wrong would be an understatement. I have struggled with graphics programs and Blogger for nearly a week now, and all I've been able to come up with is a crummy header, stuck on a template that I can't seem to get rid of. So, if anyone happens to read this, please excuse the way it looks. Hopefully I'll be able to figure this mess out soon.

Random Wednesday Observations

• Four-day weeks sometimes seem much longer than regular weeks.
• After 3 1/2 years of working at my nice, peaceful, low-stress job, my cheese is about to be moved. I came here from a horrible work environment, and it helped me appreciate this great job even more. Now things are about to change (for the worse, I'm afraid), and I'm pretty bummed about it. As usual with work stuff, there's not a darned thing I can do about it.
  
• The worst part of sewing is the measuring and cutting. That old "measure twice, cut once" thing apparently doesn't apply to math morons like me. I measured three times, and still cut wrong. Fortunately, it was the lining fabric for the purse I'm making, so at least it won't show on the outside.
• A strained pectoral muscle is really painful, and takes a while to heal. It's been two weeks, and I still can't stand to raise my arm above my head, or pick up anything that weighs more than five pounds.
• You know the weather has been dry when you strain a pectoral muscle, trying to shove the sprinkler spike into the Sahara-like ground in your back yard.
• It's hot, and humid, and I want it to go away. That is all.