Weekending

Friday I took a bunch of cupcakes over to the office.  I added a bit of mint to the batch, in honor of St Patrick’s Day.  The kids loved the batch they got to keep, they’re almost gone!  LOL 

We went shopping this weekend and Darc picked up a camera.  He wrote about it on his blog.  He’s pretty excited!  He spent all afternoon reading about it and playing with it.  I’m pretty excited too.  I’ve never had anything other than a “point and shoot” so this will be a nice change.  Now I can take portraits of the kids!  That will be so nice, because I haven’t had any since my local Walmarts closed their in-store photography studios.  I think my daughter was 2 when they did that, so we are really in need of some new pictures. 

Today I saw there were birds flocking around my patio.  I couldn’t figure out why until I realized that something my upstairs neighbor tossed over last night was attracting them.  I don’t know what the heck they were doing up there at all hours of the night, but it sounds like bowling.  Or multiple bodies hitting the floor.  Then she kept going in and out on her deck, and every time she opens her patio door, she whips it open and it makes this loud sliding sound along our wall.  She put her dog out there for a few minutes until he started barking at something.  He barks at dirt, that dog.  A real reflection of his owner. 

The birds were cute though. 

This weekend I actually started putting together a list of gardening things to get!  I haven’t picked up gardening supplies since before my son was born, I think.  I am so excited!  Soon I will have pots of flowers on my little patio.  It’ll be so wonderful! 

And here’s our midday picture of the day.  Can you believe we actually got a Winter weather advisory this morning?!  *sigh*  Chicagoland doesn’t really know the meaning of Spring.  Oh well.  It lives in my heart and I guess that’s all that matters. 

Midday 03-18-13

So how was your weekend?

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Vacation

It’s officially the 1st day of school vacation for me and the kids.  Yay!  So far they’ve been playing and eating, and I’ve been catching up with my Reader.  And housework, there is always housework! 

Now that I have a bit of free time, if you can call it that, I can address some household projects I’ve had my eye on.  Spring is coming, after all, and those cleaning tasks are just begging to get done.  Closets and cupboards and shelves, oh my!  LOL 

This past weekend was just play time though.  Time to do nothing but relax.  No time constraints, no plans, no pressures.  For even vacations bring their own versions of responsibilities so I’m geared up now. 

How about you?  Rested and relaxed?

Don’t forget, St Patrick’s Day’s a-coming!  Kitty hasn’t forgotten.  😉

I thout yu’d – Lolcats ‘n’ Funny Pictures of Cats – I Can Has Cheezburger?

 

Monday 03-11-13 noonish.  Cheerful, no?

Since I won’t be up at sunrise for the next few weeks, I figured I’d document the day with lunchtime shots.  :) 

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Weekending

Nada!  Nothing, zip, zero, zilch!  I did it all with gusto, too.  🙂

How about you?  What kinds of things did you do this weekend, or did you just sit around relaxing, as well? 

It promises to be a golden day!  Sunrise 02-25-13

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Let There Be Light!

Pretty much ever since we moved in, this light has bugged me.  I don’t know if you can tell from this shot, but there is only 1 side glowing light on the ceiling.  It’s a 3-light fixture.  I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve changed one of the bulbs, only to have it burn out … before I was even down from the ladder.  No matter how hard I tried, or what brand of bulbs I got, 2 of the 3 always blew out in a matter of days, if not hours. 

Eventually we learned to just … live with the dark. 

I hate poorly lit kitchens.  Some people are fine with that kind of ambiance, but for me, the kitchen must be BRIGHT.  I’m handling knives here, people!  ;) 

A few months ago, we asked management if it was possible we could change out the fixture and buy our own.  Oh sure! they said.  Matter of fact, if you want one of the crew to put it in for you, just say the word!

We were so excited!  So we planned that after the holidays, sometime into the new year, we’d go light shopping.

Finally this past weekend, we found one we liked at a price we liked, on sale even!  Score! 

I went over and talked to one of the ladies – she’s such a doll, Miss C – and told her we’d found a light and could she schedule a maintenance call for me to have someone install it.  Which she did.

The next day, of the guys came over – we’ll call him MG D.  (for Maintenance Guy D).  He thought I needed a light bulb changed – do people really call for that? – and balked when he saw that it was a fixture.  First he told me they weren’t allowed to put in non-standard fixtures, and I explained that I’d talked to everyone at the office and they’d all cleared it.  Then he said it was a much longer job than he anticipated and would I mind if he came back after lunch?

Sure, I’m good with that. 

That was Monday.

On Tuesday, I went over to the office and talked to them again.  There’s a new head manager there, Miss J, well, new since last year anyway, and she told me that no, I wasn’t allowed to put in a non-standard fixture.  Ummmm.  Hmm.  A rule change?

I explained that I’d talked to management about this for the past few months, was there something I could have misunderstood? 

She said she’d get back to me the next day.

Wednesday came and went. 

Thursday I went over to the office again, and asked if there was any update on the status of me getting my light installed.

The new lady, Miss J, said, “Yes, you’re on schedule for this week.  If they’re not there today, they’ll be there tomorrow.”  And she smiled.  She’s a hard one to get to know, pretty shy and reserved like I am, more of the paperwork sort than the people sort.  And our first introduction to her was over the whole oven thing.  So we’re still kind of tentative around one another.  But the smile was good. 

Perhaps there really is a payoff to taking in a couple dozen cupcakes to the office every so often.  😉

Friday morning I got the knock on my door and MG D was back, with drill in hand.  We chatted while he worked and I got to know him a little better.  That was nice – I like knowing who’s in my home.

By the time he left a couple hours later, I had this:

LIGHT!  Bright, beautiful, glowing light!  The kids and I cheered, we were so happy.  We can see!

It’s so nice and bright that I don’t always need to turn on the light above the stove now, unless I’m actually cooking.  Bonus, it fit ALL my criteria:

• it’s bright
• it’s pretty
• the shades point down so bugs can’t get in there and die, leaving those charming bug corpse shadows that occur from time to time
• the light points down, where I need it, and not up, where I don’t
• it hangs lower, saving me from having to climb at least 2 steps on the ladder, and my knee will be ever so grateful
• I won’t have to take it apart just to put a new bulb in if one burns out
• there’s no fiberglass insulation to get in my eyes if I need to change a bulb either, like the old fixture
• and it was on sale and cheap

WIN!

This is where I do the Snoopy Happy Dance.  😀

And how was your weekend?

Monday’s sunrise – 02-18-13.  Pretty!  What a nice way to start the day.  🙂

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Reader Rant

Today, Google Reader is the bane of my existence.  Usually, I rely on it every day, to sort through my news articles, blogs I read, LOLcats stuff, yep I’ve even ported Facebook posts into my Reader.  It’s been hinky the past few weeks though, and today I absolutely want to take a shotgun to it and put it out of my misery.  Everything I’ve marked as read for the past month has mysteriously, and stubbornly, showed up back in my Reader, as though I never read it, or marked it as read.  I keep marking things, and poof, there it is again, like some sort of foul magic.  How many times can I delete a thing?! 

I’ve been exploring other feed readers – right now I’m checking out one called RSS Owl.  So far it’s not bad.  I’m trying to figure things out, and of course, when IT imported my rss feeds, it brought everything in for the last 6 months, oy vey!   Still, it’s a cleaner interface, and it’s a desktop application, not something that sits in a browser like Google Reader does.  We’ll see how that goes.  *sigh*

Otherwise, the weekend was good.  Darc was feeling spendy, so we picked up a few things.  I now have under-cabinet lighting.  I’ve wanted under-cabinet lights for maybe 25 or 30 years, and thanks to my beloved, and Menard’s having such low prices, I now have lighting under my cabinets.  I can SEE!  😀

And how was your weekend?

Our sort of sunrise this morning.  It tried real hard!  Eventually it gave up though and succumbed to the cloud cover.

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Welcome February

Did you have a good weekend?  We sure did.  :)  We didn’t go anywhere or do a blessed thing, just sat and played and had absolutely no pressure on ourselves to do anything but relax.  Sometimes you simply need time like that, you know? 

This is the little centerpiece thing I made for February.  I’m not entirely happy with it yet, but I do like the sweetheart candies around the candle.  Oh!  That reminds me!  I need to get my St Valentine’s tree up!  That’ll be fun.  🙂

So what did you do over the weekend?  Did you get to do things you enjoy?

 

Sunrise 02-04-13.  Snow.  *sigh* 

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Weekending

Perhaps it’s nothing more than the doldrums of winter and cabin fever.  Perhaps it’s just part of the new routine.  My daughter generally wakes up grumpy and my son does not.  He really is more of a morning guy and likes that we’re getting up early now.  My daughter, the night owl, not so much.  He likes to rub her face in her grumpiness, which naturally causes her to be not just grumpy, but irritated.  And then the sparks fly!  Usually from me because by that time I’m sick of listening to them both. 

Most of the time, by the time they’re done with breakfast, they’re both in generally pretty good moods.  I should institute a “NO talking until breakfast is done!” rule, heh.  Yeah, that’ll work, lol. 

In other news, we found out why our new Internet service hasn’t been so hot lately.  We called over the weekend and they sent a man out Sunday, and poor guy – he worked several hours in freezing rain, checking all the cable boxes they have in the area.  Turns out a mouse had moved into one of the boxes and was chewing on some wires.  He said it tends to happen rather regularly during the cold months, and I remembered when that happened in a car I had about 20 years ago or so.  Maybe I’ll tell you about that on a Whensday post. 

So all’s well that ends well, well, except for the mouse, ha!

How was your weekend? 

 

 

Today’s sunrise – or lack thereof.  At least temps are decent for January!

 

Clipped from It’s a Forever Bond – Cheezburger