cleaning out, new acquisitions,classy slippers

I saw a few comments about the crafts in the last entry. I didn't bother answering any of them via email because I knew I was covering it in this next entry.

So one day about a week ago or so, I got tired of seeing the over filled baskets in the hall closest. They were put in there to make life easier for us instead of having all this little stuff scattered in there. The system seems to work well, except when we get lazy and just toss stuff in...which is most of the time. *laffz* Anyhow, I got it cleaned up and had to re-adjust what got put with what other items. At one point, my items only took up one basket. Thanks to my mom (and a great sale at Bath and Body Works) my stuff now takes 2+ baskets. Oh my! You see, mom used to work for Gottchalk's and was forever getting samples from the girls at the perfume counters to send off to me. If that wasn't enough, she'd send perfume sets for Christmas. Some of you remember that I'd mentioned getting the same set two years in a row. You can see them in the above photo...one's still in its box. Anyhow, she's telling me that she's looking to get into a different industry and not stay in retail so I'm hoping this is the last of the perfume because as it stands, with as often as I wear it, I have YEARS worth of scents in those baskets! If she ends up in retail again, I may send her the picture and just write "Please, for the love of God, NO MORE!" *laffin* I may do it anyhow just to get a laugh out of her.

This little beauty I found in the local Salvation Army store. If the matching piece had been in better condition, I would have bought it too. I figured it was a great deal at $4.99 as something like that runs nearly $10 or more brand new in the department stores. That piece next to it is a dolly my mom had sent me for Christmas. The kitty will look better with some of the other "girls" but I don't have them unpacked yet. I'm hoping to get a nice lighted case one of these days so I can get them displayed properly. As it stands right now, there isn't enough room for them to come out of their boxes yet. Besides, I don't want to unpack them to simply have to pack them back up in a few months. I reminded hubby about our choices again today regarding the living arrangement we're in but I don't think he was overly receptive to that kind of conversation yet. All I got was an "I know" but no details. Men!


A few weeks back, hubby called me from work and let me know that his friend had just come back from vacation and had very generously bought all his friends a bit of beach front property. Wow. Ok, maybe a time share? That would be cool. Get outta the house for a weekend and put the camera through its paces. Then I noticed a couple days later the item below sitting on the DVD case under the thermostat:
Ok, quit ya groaning. Don't you dare tell me you didn't see THAT one coming from a mile off!

The last picture is for punkn Deanna. These are the leopard "they're classy cuz I say they are" slippers I mentioned in an earlier entry. They're my favs to wear around the house. If I could wear them out to every place else, I would. Could ya see me popping into Olive Garden wearing these?
Had a follow-up appt with the allergy dr today to discuss how the treatment is going. She's said that it seems like those that have the roughest time with the build-up shots (like I've been having) tend to have better results in the long run and the serum helps. That's good to hear. We're hoping to get me off the expensive daily pill and have me down to just the OTC meds and possibly just the one spray during peak season. That would be awesome. Good news though...all this hard work for my weight is paying off. No, I didn't get weighed...but I did have my bp checked. I came in with a beautiful 115/60 (normally I'm a 120/80 or 118/78 or so). Yeah, I'm stoked.

After the appt, we went shopping a bit. Stopped in to Burlington Coat Factory because their window advertised a HUGE clearance sale. Gosh that store's gotten rough looking. I don't remember shopping in one of them before with it looking so rough. Ahh well. Found a nice pair of jeans that fit but would feel nicer with a couple more pounds gone. Definitely NOT "that time" jeans. They don't have the stretch that my usual pairs have but I was pleased to see the 22W fit anyhow (especially after the 24W I tried on before it wouldn't even snap!). God bless the Gloria Vanderbilt lines! Best bet? The original tag price was $21.98 (which makes me suspect it was a first mark down price and they'd been much higher at one point) and the mark down price on the tag now? $9.99. Yep. A bit over $10 and I have a nice pair of jeans. Women's sizes NEVER come that cheap. I may have to pop in again another day and give a proper look around.

Went to AC Moore because I needed to replace some of my brushes. I walked out with only 3 new spotters (brushes are expensive...*sigh*) but that's ok. It'll do. I have a few more items I want to pick up but since they didn't have the canvas sizes I wanted, I didn't bother getting the rest of the supplies for the projects in mind. JoAnn's is less than a half mile from the townhouse and in easy walking distance so I'll just wait until a coupon shows up in the paper and get the stuff later. I'm in no hurry to do those projects yet anyhow. I still have plasters to paint. I have about 10 pieces that I just finished the other day. All that they need is the felt glued to the bottom so I think I'll do that tomorrow. Or maybe Monday.... I really need to consider an internet free day during the week so I can concentrate on my crafting. It might be a Sunday or Monday. I haven't decided yet which day. I do know it needs to be a day when the hubby isn't around to pester me.

Afterwards we went to Best Buy and I drooled over the toy I've been wanting. Some of you might remember that I'd mentioned it sometime before this past Christmas but never got it (if I had you KNOW I would have blogged about it). I just didn't see spending nearly $200 on an item I can get via Amazon for $150 (and if I get it during one of those no shipping costs if you spend x amount...that'd be great!). If I get the smaller one, I can get it for around $85 on Amazon. Not a bad deal, but not something I can justify after spending over $30 on Amazon already this last week.

I met a couple neat bloggers the last couple days or so and would like to welcome them to my corner of the web. Feel free to wander around all the blogs that seldom get maintained. There's plenty for everyone here. While I was checking out their sites, I found a couple that I really like and have added them to my blog roll. There's another game I may just end up playing one of these days ...actually 2 new games. With one of them I'm thinking of adding a twist to it. Maybe adding these games will inspire me to at least post a bit more often.

I think I close this for now. I have one more entry that's in draft form right now (read: the pictures are loaded, I just gotta write about 'em) that I expect to drop either tomorrow or the next day. There's yet another sitting in my email inbox and there are a few more pix in the camera to upload...I got some new nail polishes. You should SEE the shade I'm sporting today (and no it's not Adam Lambert blue!).

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.

the trip, pt2

When we pulled in on that Friday night, I saw the most beautiful flowers in mom's "garden". I don't ever recall seeing them before although I'm sure they've been there every time we visit in the warmer months. Anyhow, I suspect that I noticed it now simply because there was a lesson to be learned. What was the lesson? Well, all this time I've been trying to learn the "don't sweat the small stuff" lesson and it was time to add the "pay attention to the little things" part. So the weekend, for the most part, for me was "Pay attention to the little things, just don't sweat them". Because of this lesson (as well as the macro, foliage and zoom settings on my new camera), I got some pix that I normally wouldn't have even tried for (and in one case, normally would have run away from, but that's a story for another day). This particular bloom was on its way out and was quite dead around the edges. You can see another bud that had already gone past expiration. None of the others were bloomed out and it actually made me look forward to waking up the next day there to see if one of the other colors would be opened up for me to capture with my camera.

His mother has this partial rock garden. Actually, I should say that it's a majority rock garden. It's about 85% rocks and some plants. I always thought the purpose of a rock garden was to be all stone? Ah well. There is this interesting corner piece to it, however. I don't know if the tree had originated there and simply been cut down and dug up, or if the wood piece was brought in from elsewhere, but it makes for an interesting shelf for one of the pieces. The guy on the top (as well as a couple of the others) made me think of several of my friends.......
Here's a close-up of the guy up top. Any guesses as to which readers I thought of when I saw him? The monkeys at the base made me think of my GaSis. I had a closer picture of them but it was blurry so I pitched it. I do have other shots of some of the other pieces in my Flickr account. Feel free to pop over and take a look if you care to. I'll be adding more to the TN folder in the next few days. I'm trying to do it a bit at a time so I still have time to do other stuff around here. Well that and the fact I want this to stay fun and not feel like a major chore. While in the pix files, feel free to take your time as I went into details on a few other pictures there.
This guy to the right is a new addition to the family. He's supposed to be the nephew's dog but this guy actually lives at "paw-paw's" house (sissy doesn't want it at her house as she doesn't like dogs and isn't home most of the day anyhow). The pooch's name is Skynyrd, named for that southern rock band. The nephew insists on calling him Snoopy. I found out the dog will answer to pretty much anything so long as it's said with love and results in a good pat on the head. He's 10 months old and is a pretty good size right now. I don't think he'll get too much bigger though.
This is one of the pictures I was mentioning before that will have more details in the Flickr account. Do you recognize the one tree on the left? It's the big one that I clicked back in December. I'm not seeing an entry with the other picture though so I'm not entirely certain I shared it in Blogger or not. I'm not seeing it here but I know for sure I shared it in my Photobucket account. The next tree I don't believe I got a shot of before but I clicked a couple similar trees that trip.
It reminds me a bit of a bonsai tree with the way some of the branches are on it. The only thing it needed is a bit of twisting and contorting. I kinda like the simplicity of this picture. In trying to get the entire height, I couldn't get much more in the frame with it. Maybe it's a good thing, eh? The next day's worth of pictures, I think I got a shot of grandmother's trees while we were out this time too. I'm not certain right now as I'm downstairs on the laptop and the balance of the pictures are on the main computer upstairs right now. It's highly possible it's in the next set of photos. Then again, the next set might be the pix I snapped while we were walking home that one day. Yeah, hubby knew I needed some away time ;).
Anyhow, on this day hubby saw some rather oddly shaped white things in the lawn. There's a distance shot in the Flickr. When he approached, he noticed that they were these HUGE mushrooms (ew). The picture to the left is one next to his foot for a size comparison. They were quite large. *gets up for a sec to check size of hub's slippers* Ok, his slippers are an 11-12 so I'm guessing his shoe is a 10.5 or so. When he realized what it was, he asked to borrow the camera (not "can I have the camera"..."may I borrow" was actually used....Why? Because this camera I bought with MY money so it is definitely MINE. Ok ok...the money was from my account but it was more than likely from funds donated by him. Sheeesh. Picky picky y'all!).
I was so happy to find out, upon rising the next morning, that my hopes that the other blossoms would have bloomed by the next day had, indeed, done just that. The most GORGEOUS reds and yellows ever. Considering that yellows aren't my "thing"....that comment is really kinda telling. This one to the right (again, turned by Blogger against my wishes) is my absolute FAVORITE of the group. Actually, it's my fave of the whole trip I think. It's not a cropping of the other picture of the yellow blooms, this one is SFTC.

video and updates

One of yesterday's comments reminded me of this song and scene. I wish I could have taken Ivana's advice but there was nothing to take but what I had in hand when I left.

I've got a full page of ideas I'm tossing around now. Thank you to everyone for giving the moose a collective kick in the tush.

I've changed colors to the page (the white is a bit hard on the eyes). I had alotta peeps say they like the clean white backing so I think I'll be keeping it a solid color for a while...see how I like it. You know me though, it probably won't stay that way for long (just until I tweak the other blogs into the new format)!

I've got the frosty boxes back in there by merging the new code with snippits of the old code. I'll be putting the bling back up in a bit. I wish I could figure out why it's not allowing me to put a banner up in there like it used to. If I recall, it took awhile to get it to work the first time through also. Just a matter of time before I get that fixed as well.

Excuse the mess!

Please excuse the mess. I'm trying to freshen up somewhat around here and see if the change of scenery will get the Creative Moose back to work. She's been awful lazy lately (and not just in my blog, Im sure).

I finally got around to sporting a 3 column format. It's something I've been considering changing to for a while now. With any luck, it won't slow my readers browsers down too much.

Along with the 3 column format, I'm going to slam some spackle up and get some fresh decorations on the wall and in the banner. You all know me, it won't last long once it's done. I can hear Shan now..."I'm tellin ya, this chick's got BADD...Bloggy ADD!" What can I say? I'm a Leo, it's in my blood.

I'm thinking that the blog needs a fresh new title to go with it. I've had someone point out to me the last day or so that my blog's name is really hard to remember. I don't know why..then again, my family was really into theatre and I used to be in choir so maybe it's easier for me. Maybe I should put the song up permenantly on my page so it earworms its way into everyone's head? Nah.

So I've been tossing around ideas and can't come up with anything. I need a nice snappy title that I can live with forever that also conveys ME. The only words that keep cropping up as I think about it are Fragment and Fracture. I don't really want to use the former as it's too close to that game that some of you play on Fridays but what can I do with the latter? Everyone put on your thinking caps and leave some ideas below. If you need some ideas, go to the Padded Room and Archived 360s and read. I don't want it to reflect the past life as I have a blog for that. It needs to reflect the damaged life attempting to move forward and deal with the day to day of now without having a total meltdown daily. Did that make sense?

Oh hell, I could always swap the titles of the Home page with this one.....would that be easier?

so a couple things didnt get done

Calories burned: 377.2
trip miles: 10.77
ave mph: 21.54

So his testing didnt get done today. I thought it was just a pop into the lab deal and it wasnt, he has to actually call for an appointment in another building. Lord knows if he'll actually do it.

Didnt get the oil changed today either because the wait to have it done was 3.5 hours....

DID manage to get to McKays Used Books and load up on Christmas music for next year. There's one more I ~think~ I saw there that I may go back for in the next day or so. I got a dvd while there too. Bought the movie Mr Deeds. Now generally I cant stand Adam Sandler, but Im discovering Im liking most (not all) of his movies....go figure.

Oh and while we were out, I saw a pretty angel in the window of the Tuesday Morning shop. On our way back to the truck, I popped in to see how much it was. When I picked it up, I noticed how heavy of a piece it is and when I flipped it over for the price tag I saw it was musical too! It's about 10" tall or so and only cost $19.99 (quality of item is in the $30 range EASILY). She's playing a flute and has music notes all over her wings.

I posted another comic in the Home page for those eating modification people in blogland and changed the decor around in here. Im considering a format change on the page as Im likin the look of the 3 column pages but I know me....just means more space to junk up. That's the last thing I want.