I've been put to shame!

Ok. So we all know I've been fighting this terrible CrackFacebook games app addiction for a while. I think I've got it to a manageable level now so I can get into the blogs a bit more often. That combined with the several blockages that have hit (well maybe more like big speed bumps) have pretty much kept me from WANTING to write. As y'all know, once I get something in mind that needs to be written...nothing else is going to be forthcoming until I deal with the issues at hand. Since I took care of the one in the Journey blog, it's opened the way to doing this one.

I'm really kind of ashamed I waited as long as I did to do this one to be honest. I mean for goodness sakes all my RAKs arrived and the recipients all said their thank yous. Even the one RAK that in turn became part of another RAK got thanked. And then today....there was another thank you for a gift that wasn't originally part of the RAK we did... but was a genuine RAK with no strings attached.

I've been put to shame.

and for this I'm very very sorry.

Maybe I can blame it all on these little cuties and say I've been busy painting again?
Maybe I can blame it on the fact I've been highly considering doing another RAK sometime in the next few months?

No, I didnt think so...


Too long ago, I got a package as part of the RAK from Georgia. The package says to pass it on but I'd already done that step. I couldn't wait to rip into the parcel and see what Jeannie sent me.
She sent me this bee-autiful little box with a dancing bee fairy and a bumble bee on the lid. Upon handling this piece I heard rattling. Could it be she enclosed just a bit more?

So I open the box and there is a small assortment of candies. Well...there goes the eating modification, albiet just briefly. Mmmmmmmm Krackles. I promptly snarfed down the sweets. What can I say, I have a total lack of control when it comes to sweets and carbs (pasta, breads and the like).

As you can see, I found it a very nice home right where I can see it daily as a reminder.

A few days later, as you all may remember from the one entry, I got my package from Pennsylvania. Considering the conversations we'd had, and the fact he kept referring to a "lab" now and again, I was wondering just what would be in the envelope. Hmm...I can't find a picture of the packaging! *WAH* Well...it was really cute. The stuff was in a Fed Ex envelope which was, in turn, stuffed in a brown envelope. YAY for extra special handling!

I found many delightful things inside. First there was this OCHA "birthing" kit so I can make my own Lil Iggy. Seems like that'll be a good Monday project, whatcha think? I do need to make a slight subtitution to the directions though as I'm a decaf tea drinker. I hope this doesn't affect the cone making process. *crosses fingers*

Then there was this awesome photobook/calendar. I seem to remember some of that clip-art. LOL. Within the front cover was my very own OOP Club card (OCHA Obsessed Person) and a bumper sticker! I see he updated it to reflect the next election year too....

The outside cover has this beautiful saying and has iggy's name right on the spine. No way this one's gonna get lost in the bookshelf.

Inside were many of the lovely photos he's shared with us over the course of the year (one of which was featured in that little video I did). One of my faves was the castle which is located with the month of August. Look at this, he even sent me a shot of the "moose". Creative or otherwise, this moose was a welcome addition to the package.

The last photo was the one he took when we were celebrating my anniversary. I certainly hope that was alcohol free champagne or apple juice though.... You can see at the edge of the photo some writing...that's his signature. It's for when he gets famous so I can say "I knew him when" ya know. Thinking ahead as always!

In the back of the booklet was a recipe for a delightful OCHA shaped dessert. I can't wait to try it one of these days. Orange sherbet is fat free and if I use a low fat vanilla icecream, it shouldn't mess with my eating modification too badly.

Thank you both for such wonderful gifts. They certainly put a spot of sunshine in my day.

PS. This is going into the Blogger is a bloody idiot file too because of the problems the stinker gave me uploading the pix!

WhatIsaw

Ok. Here's this week's cloud pic.

I actually had another pic of this formation but it's not loading the way I want it to. I suspect it's because of the bit of a tree in the frame and Blogger just can't get it through it's fleabrain that the way I'm trying to up load it is the way it's SUPPOSED to be. *sigh*. So I've simply turned the existing picture 90 degrees. Looks different, doesn't it?

This wasn't what I saw when I clicked that picture, but I saw it while I was working with the clyx on my computer it came to my attention. No it's not the suncatcher as a whole, but the subject within. Close...but not what I saw at first glance!

No, THIS is what I saw at first (second and third) glance(s). Ok. This is 2 weeks running I've seen a cartoon figure. You think my brain's trying to tell me something??

Chicagolady posed an interesting question last night (when she ~finally~ came up for a breather from her game...). She wanted to know what we were going to do once winter hit and the sky was nothing but nasty grey clouds and really too dark to do some serious cloud gazing. I told her I have several pix on the computer and a few donations from that darling shepherdess we all know and love. Between that and Google, I suppose we could make it through the winter. Better yet.... we've got several beautiful days before the winter hits. If anyone would like to donate an afternoon's worth of clouds to the game, please send them along to my hotmail account.

Just for fun, cops, decor and more

Got this one off from Jeannie's blog a few weeks back. I'd really meant to post it within a day or two of doing the quiz....

You Are Soft Serve

You are laid back, peaceful, and accepting. You are easy to please, and you enjoy letting others do things their way. People might be surprised to know that you're experimental and funky - at least in your own mind. You are open to wherever life takes you, even if it's very unconventional.

What Frozen Treat Are You?

I wanna thank those that came in to wish me a Happy Birthday (I see a couple new names..YAY! Feel free to visit again.), but someone announced it a wee bit early. I'm not a July baby. Actually, I should have been... however, even from birth the female gene for "fashionable late" was kicked into high gear. Yeah, that's right...I'm going into this particular birthday kicking and screamin and certainly don't wanna be 40 until I damned well HAVE to be.

I see a few of you picked up on the cops comment. Well a few nights ago, I popped into bed early and did a bit of reading. I went to a lights out about 30 minutes after midnight (1230am) and actually fell right to sleep. Very unusual for me but I've been attempting a decent lights out so I'm not sleeping until 11am-noon daily. Anyhow, I fell right to sleep. I was only asleep an hour when the doorbell rang. Yeah, at what many would deem an UnGodly hour. Certainly one does NOT go ringing people's doorbells at 130am unless there's an emergency. As I roused from sleep, I realized I was seeing lights being flashed into my windows! So I very carefully peeked out my blinds and I saw cops in the neighborhood and one standing at my door, looking up and aiming his flashlight at our bedroom windows. I told hubby that we had a cop at our door, so he went down with his wallet to see what was up. I can see the question marks now....why bring the wallet? Well a month or two ago, we had another cop show up at our door , looking for someone and had wanted proof that hubby was who he said he was. I guess the neighborhood must be filled with liars. So anyway, hubby was prepared this time. When he answered the door, the cop asked if everyone inside was ok. Ummm yeah, why? Well, there'd been a shooting in the area so they were checking on all the residents to make sure everyone was ok. They'd said "in the area" but I don't recall hubby ever saying that the cop specified where. I figure if it wasn't our cul du sac, it might have been the one across the street or the one across that empty lot the kids play in (the one where I get some of the "Old Timer" cone shots). It's also possible that it might have been in the strip mall behind us. All three areas are within seconds of our place if the person(s) in question are at a dead run. I actually suspect they hadn't caught the person and that's why they were REALLY looking. Couldn't have been too major, it never made the news here.

A couple days after that one, we had another cop (?) show up at our door while hubby was at work. I hadn't called them and hadn't been making any noise myself (now why can't they show up when I'm teaching the neighbor a lesson? Did ya know heavy metal music pumping at level25 aimed straight at the adjoining wall works wonders?) so I know he wasn't there for me. I question whether he was a cop or not because he wasn't in any uniform that I could tell, just plain street clothes... a polo shirt and dockers. However, he had his id and badge handy for when I opened the door. He asked me if a certain person was here, to which I told him that no...I didn't even know the person... this was the ____ residence and we'd been here nearly 2 years now. I also told him that we're constantly getting calls from the cops regarding that particular person and 3-4 others and each time we've told them that those people haven't lived here for X amount of time. The dude apologized for the inconvenience and as he walked away, said "I guess he gave me the wrong address".... which tells me that maybe he wasn't a cop, but a parole officer. Great.

Hey! Some of you may have noticed that I've taken to answering comments via email. I'm going to try and keep that a habit because I know not everyone has time to come back to previous entries and see if I said anything in response. If I haven't commented back or I've left the response in your blog, it's because I don't have an email addy for you. Please remember I am only leaving the email link up in my profile for another few days. This Sunday it comes right back down. If you're wanting to keep in touch, I'm encouraging you to use that link by Saturday. Oh....and those that HAVE been using the link, you'll notice that I've bounced your answers to my comments on your blogs over to another account before answering. That one's my main addy that I check religiously during the day. The ladystyx1969, well it's checked once a day...if even that.

I'm also on strike with a few of the blogs. If you haven't been visiting and leaving love here, ya aint been a very good bloggy buddy. No one likes one sided bloggy friendships ya know. I know, alot of you follow ALOT of blogs (or work or both) and may not have time, but I don't exactly update this as often as some of those out there. You know the ones I'm talking about, the multiple entries a day posters. I do, however, wanna say thank you to the few of you who do have massive amounts of blogs to follow and STILL manage to leave at least a lol or a one word comment. I won't embarrass anyone by pointing them out, but you know who y'all are. So...if you look around your blog and see I haven't visited in a good long time, yet I seem to be commenting on everyone else's blogs, that could be why. Please remember to leave some comment love where ever you visit. If you got nothing to say, just leave a hug...they're always appreciated! I don't mean on every post, but at least often enough so the author knows you're still there.

Oh! And thanks to those that commented on the new decor around here. I thought that banner in the header was appropriate. My desk, my 2 pennies...but the carpeting is from the dr's office. I thought it'd look cool as a backdrop because of that pattern.... well cooler than the nasty, boring beige we have in the townhouse.

I was reading over at Red Pen's today that the IE error that some of us have been suffering on certain blogs might just have a simple fix. It means dumping the Follower widget off the sidebar. Now all we need to do is decide how important that little bit of code really is. If it's really important for you to have that little widget up so your readers can see who all has been sucked into your blog, then I suggest making friends with FireFox as I haven't had a single problem with that widget it FF. However, if it's really not all that important and you don't like the fact you have to change browsers just to read a few entries... then dump the widget.


I'm going to copy and paste the comments so far from her site here (which amounts to just my comment and hers at this point):



LadyStyx said...
Dang, is that all it takes? Sheesh. You'd think they'd get it fixed.
July 29, 2009 9:52 AM


THE GRAMMARPHILE said...
You'd think that Blogger would have found a workaround for all blogs, but they didn't. Unfortunately, this is the best--and ONLY--workaround I know of. IE8 is really buggy, and I'm actually really curious as to how and why the folks at Microsoft have not yet fixed IE 8, since that seems to be the source of the problem.
July 29, 2009 11:22 AM


Here's to hoping that Windows does a better release the next time around. If not, I may just have to talk to my brother about Linux and Red Hat.

Well aint THAT just special!

It's Weekend Wordle: The Independence Day Edition

It's that time of week again!
It's time for Shan's Weekend Wordles.
Here's what ya do:

01) Go to Wordle.net to create your Wordle. It's lots of fun. You can tweak the colors, fonts and such. If you really want to customize your Wordle for your site you can use this color code chart .

02) Post it on your blog with a link to Shan's Week~End Wordles or Last Shreds Of Sanity.

03) Once that's done, go back to Last Shreds Of Sanity and sign the Mr Linky that she'll have up (this will help direct those who play along to your blog...we're talking new peeps reading and maybe new followers for everyone....). Dont forget to leave a comment on the sites you visit!!

I'm not going to be in the habit of posting several wordles but today is a special day. I'm thinking poems and lyrics for the holidays. Whatcha think? I've put links to bring you to the poems I chose. Each link with its own Wordle.


Link to poem


Link to the poem



Link to lyrics

A big thank you to those who work at jobs that help protect and keep us safe.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

edit 9am on July 4th: Looks like Blogger doesn't want to handle scheduled posts anymore these days...this WAS supposed to be posted at 6am.

*backspaces over the rest of the rant and heads to the "HELP" section to rip someone a new one*

edit 9:41am on July 4th: evidentally this is a known issue

Scheduled posting is currently unreliable for some users. We're looking into this and will post and update when we have more to share.Thanks for your patience. — latest update on Thursday, June 18, 2009

The question I have is WHY is it taking so long to fix??? It's been over 2 weeks now y'all!