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| I promise not to link anything of yours on Facebook or Twitter. I ask that you return the favor.
Also... please send me a message and tell me who you are if you're not on my friends list and know me (from the real world or virtual one.) Friends&I have both gotten some comments from random LJ accounts or anonymous posters, and that's just a bit...odd. | |
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| ( Friday, Saturday and Sunday ... meanderings of a Monday morning insomniac ) Oh a few last thoughts ... V's in with the 4yo kids most days now, so I should really start saying preschool! And her 12 chickens are now 11 chickens. Scott's not sure what happened to the missing hen, and she hasn't figured it out yet... she was just delighted to have a lot of chicken feathers to play with. And I get to add another to the gaveaway list -- I reread "Flying Dutch" by Tom Holt and decided I could pass it along. | |
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| Since Rob doesn't like to fly, he&V both get carsick, and I'm sort of sick of driving, I'm contemplating Amtrak for our next vacation. The Hartford Amtrak station is about 5 miles away, so getting to the station is easy. The trick is finding a destination that is easy and fun for all 3 of us.
Here's what I'm juggling --
I'm hoping for someplace where we can get around without renting a car. Which probably rules out heavily rural areas. (We travel with TooMuchLuggage to hoof it between station & hotel & destinations!!)
Caneoing would work if we could find a lake or calm river (V is barely starting to swim) .
Boston&DC seem like simple destinations, but I've been there several times each ... and I'm sort of hoping to scratch my "New Place!" itch.
And I really need to keep the first experiment fairly short in case the carsick duo also get trainsick. Which rules out Montreal ...even before I remember that the 3yo needs a passport.
Suggestions welcome, because I'm getting frustrated!
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| I upgraded the media player to get it to work on the old clunker I'm working on now that my laptop died. I figured I'd set up my playlist the lazyman way and drag over the entire music file.... I added my photos by mistake as well. So I started in deleting them but it was slow and I'm lazyman so I just closed the playlist without the pictures. Went into the menus to set options and see if I could make tell it to ignore .JPG files -- and learned that the program DEFAULTS TO DELETING FILES from the computer when deleting from the library. I'm actually in a bit of shock. This is my photo archive we're talking here--Denmark. France. Victoria as an infant. Friends who have passed on. So now I must try to concentrate on minutia for the rest of the day. Then I head home and try to juggle childcare with weeding through hundreds and hundreds of photos and see what I've lost. I had just made space on my camera card by moving things to the USB drive, but I haven't moved any to the basement computer in months because that's packed, and I hadn't gotten around to burning them to DVD because I'm a lazyman, and I just lost my friggin' laptop where my favorite pix are also duplicated. I'm so not happy. [Edit: It looks like I might not be totally S.O.L. -- I seem to have gone overboard backing up my laptop when it first started getting really bad in July, so if I'm reading this right I had three copies of everything. I may have just lost the partially sorted copyset. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this is the case. But it took four chocolate chip cookies to get to the point where I could look for it. Thankyou ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) jamiekswriter for bringing me that gluten-free box yesterday, it saved my afternoon!] | |
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| - Mastering something new! Making progress on a project! I’ve learned how to cast off my knitting, so I’ve got the first front section of V’s sweater finished up to the shoulder. Remaining – the opposite front section, the back, the sleeves, the dreaded join, and crocheting the edges. Thanks to my nieces & wendyf & kls-eloise jamiekswriter – I think you’ve succeeded in hooking me where Mom&Nonie did not!
- My USB hard drive. Thank goodness for the Freeagent that Rob gave me for vacation last year. When my laptop went bellyup last week, I didn’t lose vast tracts of family photos.
- Popcorn-flavored rice cakes. I admit was dubious…but I’ve gotten hooked. Especially tasty with a bit of soft cheese. Just not in front of the PC because crumbs go everywhere!
- Extreme fire-starting. Even when the wood’s wet, I can start a fire easily by using a propane torch. BLUhahaha! Rob’s idea, and he’s created a monster.
- An unexpected (mostly) free weekend. We were supposed to go to my Mom’s, but we got a late start, then my wallet went AWOL and it wasn’t at my office where I figured I’d left it and I called Mom and SHE didn’t feel well. So after a stop at a really cool playscape near my office, we went home and had a lazy weekend of minor chores.
DELIGHTFUL.
Now one extra as long as I forgot to post this when I wrote it on Monday… a historical fantasy set in 1814. I’m intrigued! http://torforge.wordpress.com/2010/08/02/odd-historical-things-i-learned-while-writing-shades-of-milk-and-honey/ | |
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| Long live the clunker resurrected from under someone's desk.
I won't know until Monday at least whether I'm getting a new motherboard&hard drive or a new laptop. Or whether I'll be working on the clunker for a few months until one of the above is approved.
I won't know until then whether or not the last two days data can be retrieved. And I'm on an internet interface for email. (Try saying THAT 5 times fast!)
It wasn't a stellar start to the day, but I've got the new software installed now. So now off to recreating the first of the items that eluded my massive Tuesday backup... - Mood:pessimistic
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| At lunch today I sat in the cafeteria where you can't avoid CNN no matter how hard you try. They were full of bad news, as has been some of my friends blogs, and so today I am reminded that I am a lucky lucky woman. It takes more than five. - I have family and friends.
- I have decent health (and health insurance).
- I have a home and a car.
- I have a job.
- I have no debt I can't worth mentioning.
- I live in a free country.
And that's only the first ones that come to mind. #6 is worth five all on its own -- I'm *very* glad to have been born into a middleclass American family instead of a subsistence-level farm family in a country alternating between dictatorship and anarchy. I'm very glad that when I gripe about things, no one reports me to the government. Because y'all know I gripe. Just figured I'd say it before you do. ;) And now back to my sponsor. | |
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| I never did get time to do more housework than paperwork this week -- but this morning Rob&V slept in so after breakfast so I tackled chores in the kitchen. I wiped the countertops and moved some stuff we don't use often to the porch o' doom (pantry-plus-junk), combined some jars, broke down some boxes... All the usual stuff that I so often put off even though it annoys me while I eat breakfast. My daughter woke up in the middle, and we cuddled on the sofa for a while until Rob woke up and the two of them played some. That gave me time to put away some of the stuff in-progress so they'd have room to eat breakfast. I finished my coffee and puttered while they ate a late breakfast. Rob went off to his PC to do some of HIS paperwork, and V&I broke out the Cinderella voices. I played the stepmother (ordering the chores & supplying equipment) and the mice (washing alongside). V got in her bathing suit and flipflops and we halffilled her sandpail with soapy water and I used a scrubbrush for a while. Then I got out the mop when the a pail tipped and water started creeping off the linoleum-- I played a "little old lady mouse who likes to help" and pulled the dirty water back up. I could tell V was starting to fade, so I encouraged her to go get out of her suit while I finished getting the water up. We both needed a quick shower after playing in all that built-up gunk! Midmorning snack, some games...and now I get some time to myself because she's watching Thomas videos. Wooooooo hoooooo! I like trains.
I also sorted one of the random boxes -- turns out it was Rob's from when the university took away his grad student office, so much of it was easy to figure out. Most is packed smaller for him to take in to work Monday. ;)
Hopefully today I can backfill some of what we've been up to for the last few weeks -- once the heat broke it became much more fun. | |
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| I'm going to edit this from home tonight to add pictures...I ran out of time at lunch, and forgot at break. - In the inlet next to the Silver Sands, there's a Viking-style boat. Bright red&black&white foxhead on the front. My brother went into raptures about rope oarlocks, but I just said "oooo pretty!" and snapped pictures. Interestingly the house was flying the Union Jack and the Swedish flag! I didn't have the heart to ask about the eccentric old lady who used to live there. It could well be her relatives though -- she used to feed the neighborhood foxes, and there's a fox on the boat.
- Kids with floating toys at the beach. I've never made Victoria laugh so hard as I did over the weekend -- I "tried" to balance on a floppy raft and fell off over&over again so she could show me how to do it right.
- I laughed at this picture ... thematic on many levels for this tech-writing, label-designing, chocolate-loving medieval-history buff who never completely outgrew 4th grade jokes.
http://engrishfunny.com/2010/07/19/engrish-funny-ass-fudge/ - Yul Bryner's King&I soundtrack. I just stumbled across this soundtrack at the library. I saw the Broadway show way back when. Yul Bryner & Constance Tower were magnificent. And oh the costumes... wish I'd found this soundtrack before my wedding because showing Mom pictures would have really simplified my explanations -- what a a Victorian confection of a ballgown she wore!
- Friends who are willing to look at my photos. I'm a shutterbug born&bred but I've always done landscapes...this PEOPLE photography thing is a whole 'nuther thing. Thanks for putting up with me & my blurs, everyone!
Must admit there's one grumpy thing to mention. I just finally got my vaccuum cleaner repaired -- the part was hard to find so I've been surviving with the shopvac and a stiff broom -- and the first time I used it again, I seem to have snapped a DIFFERENT part. It still works, but now it doesn't stand upright. Sigh. Hopefully ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.2) coffeementat can work a miracle. | |
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