22 days later

I have not blogged in 3 weeks but I have a good reason. I was recently diagnosed with Vitamin D deficiency. Number one symptom is fatigue, number one cause is lack of sunshine. I would love to say I have been outside in the sun instead of blogging, but the truth is, I have been doing the minimum to get by and then either going to bed early or laying on the couch watching tv. Depressing...

But, since I got the call from my PCP, I have been faithfully taking my supplement and even though it has been only a few days, I am starting to perk up. Could be all in my head, but who cares as long as I am feeling better.

A lot has happened in the past 22 days, most disturbing is that my car was broken into. That pretty much sucked, but the experience reminded me how much i have to be grateful for. Enough said.

Speaking if grateful, I have to say my hubs is the best! For a while, we have been struggling with storage issues, mostly concerning my clothes. Our apartment has built in drawers and closets, and one would think it was space saving, but I have such a hard time getting the drawers open and closed (the house is over 100 years old and the carpentry work was...well....shoddy), that we decided to do something different. Here are the finished results:

We got the materials at Ikea, and spent a total of $30.00 for the metal shelves, the large boxes on the top and bottom, and smaller boxes in the middle. We still plan to hang a curtail rod and a curtain to hide the shelving, but even if we left it as is, I think it looks fine. Before we did this, there used to be a television in that spot - a lot of wasted space, since I have stopped watching television in bed.

I swear, I am not breaking everyone's cars

Picked up my boss on the way to work today. When I got in, I got a call from one of my employees, saying she was going to be late because they were having car trouble. I am not even kidding.

The hubs and I are getting our hair done at our salon and then having dinner here. Should be a nice way to end a long week!

Back on the road....at least, I am

Car is fixed, yay! I was able to get to work with no problems today. What a relief! As I expected, there was a ton waiting for me, but it was okay. I was just glad I had my independence back. Plus, we needed groceries, which I was going to pick up on Monday after work.

At noon, my boss came into my office and asked for a ride home. His car would not start.

I had NOTHING to do with it.

Wednesday worries

Picked the car up today and drove the hubs to the subway station. As I was passing my house on the way to work, it started making the chugging sound again, so back to the garage I went. They think it needs new plugs and a new ignition cable.

Needless to say, I am working from home again today. Don't get me wrong - I am grateful to have a job where I CAN work from home, it's just frustrating to be forced to. As much as I am able to get done, I know there will be so much more waiting for me when I finally get into the office.

Festival of mutants

I took the bus to work today. My car is at the shop and I did not want to work from home unless I absolutely had to, and I could take a bus, so I did. The ride to work was okay, actually. It was the trip home that scared me. I had to wait in the terminal for the bus to arrive, and I have never seen so much drama in my life. I spent the while time sitting there trying to not meet anyone's eye. I can't even recall what everyone was arguing about, all I know was it was loud and it was ugly. At one point a guy came in and started talking to his friend (they all seemed to know each other) about his new job at McDonalds. I respect people who work at McDonalds - I worked there myself. It's a lot of work for not much money. The funny part was when the guy said "Yeah, I have a friend who is a manager there and HE TOTALLY HOOKED ME UP!!!"

I wil NEVER think of a McDonalds job as any kind of hookup.

I had a hot date with AAA!

Meant to blog yesterday but the day got away from me. Have plenty of time now, since my car has decided she needs some time in the spa. The only reason I have not broken down and cried is because they have not called with the estimate yet. I may sound crazy for saying this, but this has been the least hassling instance of car trouble I have had. I have been pretty lucky when it comes to car issues. This morning, I got into my car, started it up, and it started chugging, like it was not getting enough gas. I stepped on the gas, hoping it was just because it was parked on an incline, but the chugging did not go away. I turned it off, and tried to turn it on again, and that was not happening. (This has happened a few times before - I turn the key and nothing happened. I replaced the battery hoping that was the problem, but....I guess not.) So, I called my best friend AAA. They were out within the hour and hooked up the cables. Turned the key, nada. After jiggling with it a few seconds, it started. The AAA guy deduced it was the starter. I said, great, but it is still chugging. He said it was probably because I was parked on an incline, just let it set for about 10 minutes and it should be fine. I was wary, so I asked him who he recommended to have the starter fixed, and he told me about a local guy whose garage was on the same street as the church where the hubs and I got hitched.

I drive there (less that 5 minutes) and the chugging never went away. In fact, as I pulled in, the check engine light came on. I need a new coil, apparently all the rain we got over the weekend caused the coil to go. I don't really understand it, but I'm not a mechanic, now, am I? After I get the new coil, he will check the starter (which I am resigned to needing - it's original on a car with 182,000 miles) and I should be back on the road tomorrow.

EDIT: Just got the estimate: $433, yikes!

Appreciate what you have...

Today was spectacularly rainy. We went out for breakfast and as soon as we got home we were summoned upstairs to help put in a bookshelf and visit with family. We spent the rest of the day being lazy and appreciating a warm home. Now we are getting ready to Wii race with my brother and sister in law who live in Georgia. They said they just passed a mile long line for gas. I'm scared for this country...

Crazy comes in all shapes and sizes.

Today at work some people who worked upstairs decided to have a potluck - they each cooked a dish and brought them in to share with everyone. We used to have them all the time in our department but there were layoffs and now there aren't that many people left.

One of the women in this group is obsessed with the microwave. She often reheats her lunch 3 or 4 times during her lunch break. Today, though, she really out did herself. Someone brought in mini-meatballs in tomato sauce. This woman would go to the crock pot, place 1 meatball on her plate, put in the microwave for about a minute, bring it back to her place, sit down, and eat it. Then, she did it again. One meatball on the plate, one minute to re-heat it, sit, and eat. She did this 3 times before I left with my own heated lunch. (One 4 minute cycle, thank you very much)

If we only had one microwave in our lunch room, I would have smacked her.

Survivor

Tonight is the new survivor. I have seen every episode since the start of the series. The hubs will only watch with me if there is a water challenge planned, so I will often use this time to stitch. I haven't been stitching a lot over the past few months. I am getting close to the end of a project (except for the dreaded backstitching), and I guess I am losing motivation. The holidays will get me back into stitching shape!

We need smarter pharmaceuticals...

You know how with birth control pills they give you that last week of sugar pills so you can stay in the habit of taking a pill every day? They should remove the sugar pills and replace them with chocolate.

My new favorite side dish

I have often claimed Broccoli as my Dr. Seuss food. I'd eat it raw, cooked, hot, cold, in a house, with a mouse, on a boat, with a goat, you get the idea. I have recently started making broccoli slaw as a side dish, and I can't get enough of it. I was never a fan of cole slaw, so although I have been aware of this product for a while, I only used it to sprinkle in salads. I bit the bullet last month and decided to try it as a slaw and I LUHHHVE it!!! I'll never toss the long stems away again.

Watched Heroes with the hubs last night. I thought it was pretty interesting but the hubs was disappointed. He does not like the way everyone who dies comes back to life. The only thing I did not like was the way Mohinder turned into a slut. I thought he was a nice young man...he deserved to be green and scaly now.

Ummmm...yeah...

So I was all set to watch this last night and come 8 PM, I realized I was a week off. Bummer. Instead, we ended up watching Rome on DVD. I am really disapointed that they cancelled that show. Yes, it was downright butal at times, but I found it interesting and I really liked Pullo and Vorenus. We are still in season 2 (which I think it the last) and I am riveted.

For the past few months, I have been trying to break the habit of watching TV in bed. When we changed from satellite to cable, I purposely did not have the tv in the bedroom set up because I knew I would not be able to resist the temptation. The hubs rented Law and Order DVD's so I could watch those before I fell alseep - at least those had a concrete end. Then I started listening to the Harry Potter books on tape. I have listened to them all before, but I like them, so I put them on when I go to sleep. I rarely get past the first track, so they last a long time, but the hubs is getting tired of listening to the same story over and over.

This post needs no title...meaning I can't come up with a pithy title...

Today will be another lovely lazy day, once I have completed all my chores. I picked out some Christmas designs last night while the hubs and I watched this. Not a great movie but it was fun trying to recall the names of all the people in it. Once my kitchen is back in order, I'll start preparing and measuring my Aida. I haven't determined how many "thingies" I will need, but the most I will be able to make is 10. I may have my first one completely finished by the time this starts tonight!

Lazy days...

What a nice morning. Was able to sleep in and lounge...ahhhh....

Today we are going to go into the North End and have pizza here for lunch. We went for the first time a couple of weeks ago when my brother and sister (in law, but she's more like a real sister to me) came to visit. I'll post some pictures of that vacation - we had the best time!

After lunch? Who knows. We will probably just stroll around the city and pop into shops that look interesting to us. A perfect sounding day! Hope the weather holds out...

TGIF!

I have been waiting for Friday all week. After having a rough start (I was not feeling too hot on Monday, and MISERABLE on Tuesday) I feel quite refreshed for the weekend! I am starting to prepare my list and budget for holiday gifts and hopefully, I will not be too ambitious where stitching is concerned. I always tend to over estimare what I can get done and underestimate how long it will take me to do it. I can't go into too much detail as to what I am stitching, because I may have reciepients who read this, but I will give a hint: she was a great inspiration for what I will be making.

Phew!

I almost did something REALLY stupid! I was tired of the Kodak software messing up the free patterns I was downloading, so I decided to uninstall it. Then I realized I could not find the 600 or so pictures I had previously downloaded from my camera. I did manage to find them, but not after experiencing a stomach dropping feeling. Ugh, that was AWFUL!

What a difference a day makes...

Yesterday I was feeling like this:

Thankfully, I felt much better today and I went back to work. I picked up a few groceries on the way home and made spaghetti and meatballs for the hubs (his fave!), and then prepared some boneless chicken breasts in marinade(this kind and this kind) to go into the freezer for later this week. I had an energy spurt!

Monday, Monday

The party yesterday was fun. The kids had a good time and they got lots of toys, as we expected. Consequently, they were not as excited to get the book and art supplies, but as their parents told us, "They'll be asking us to read to them tonight, they're just a little overstimulated right now". That was polite of them.

This week I am going to focus on getting rid of some stuff and organizing some of my crafty stuff. I stocked up on some floss at a recent Michael's sale, and I have actually been bad about putting my floss on cards lately. For Easter, the hubs got me a floss winder, so I thought I'd try that, but alas, the floss cards I have do not fit. So, I have been winding by hand...

Family Sunday

Today I am going to a birthday party for my 2 nieces, who turned 4 and 5 this month. We are giving them book and art supplies instead of toys. They have enough toys.

Yesterday we went to the bank to get the mortgage process started. We opened a joint savings account to start saving for the down payment. We realld should have done this a long tim ago, but it's done now and that's the point. We have been concentrating for the past year on paying down our debt, and we are making some real good progress. If things go the way they have been, I will be down to 1 credit card payment per month by the end of October. At the beginning of this year, I was paying off 3 a month. The scary part of this whole thing is that I don't use this card anymore, and it will still take me a year to get it all paid off. Just saying it out loud is frightening. But, I am on my way and I am excited about the prospect of being debt free....until we get our house...

Bad Blogger

I really need to start blogging again. Think I'll start first thing in the morning!

I have reverted to childhood

Can't blog now, too busy playing this.

I had M&M's for lunch, but it wasn't my fault

Someone stole my lunch! We have a community fridge at work, and someone took my Smart Ones! I was pretty annoyed, and contemplated making a sign for all my future lunches: "I spit on this!"

Sooo......I had M&M's for lunch! Yum!

New do

I got a new haircut on Saturday and as I was sitting in the chair having my hair blow-dried, I made the comment "It takes forever to blowdry my hair" and Amanda said "Yes, your hair tends to hold water."

I had no choice but to say:

"My whole body retains water. Why should my hair be any different?"

1 down, 40 to go

I have officially started my new quest to rid myself of credit card debt. According to the calculations I made a few weeks ago, I have 40 more paychecks until I am officially out of debt. but, I forgot that twice a year, I get an extra paycheck that is not budgeted for! After calculating that in, I concluded that I could pay my debt off by 9-2-09 (the day after my 40th birthday). That would be an awesome birthday present!

Seriously, this has become an obsession!

Also

Should I be worried that my blog has been viewed by someone in the occupied Palestinian Territory of Nablus?

"In times of unrest in the region, Nablus is often a focal point of protests and not safe for visitors."


Yikes!

Why?

Why is it that when I decided it is actually safe to brush my teeth while fully dressed for work because I have not gotten toothpaste on my jammies for over a month that is the time I make such a mess I have to change my entire outfit?

I'm a smart girl. I went to college. When did I forget how to brush my teeth without looking like I have rabies?

Easter stash

Scott made me an awesome basket this year. He stole my Lizzie Kate cross stitch pattern and bought me all the materials I needed to complete the project. I have promised myself I would complete Hunting Nostalgia before I started a new project, but it is SO tempting! This will be my first project on evenweave. He also got me a small Lindt chocolate bunny and the soundtrack to Across the Universe. He is wonderful and so thoughtful. We listened to the CD on the way back to Southie, and I totally love it. Scott's basket was filled with peanut butter with honey, ginger preserves and pistachios. I think he liked it!

Easter 2008

We spent Easter at my Mom's house. Mom has always had this tradition of taking a photo of the family around the holiday table, so I have kept it alive. This is us at Easter.

We still have ham left over!

More good news

At work so blogging quickly...

Logged onto my credit card account to gloat over my new zero balance and decided to check to my balance transfer offer. It had always been 6.99 % financing. To my surprise, they were offering 0% financing on all balances transferred through November 2008. I quickly applied, knowing that even at my current rate on that card, it would be paid off by August. I got my approval today. Yay! I did some calculations and figured I would be saving about $350 in interest charges by making the transfer. (It would really be $450 but it did cost me $100 for the transfer.)

Did some more calculations, and figured if everything goes well, I could be completely out of credit card debt by November 2009. I know it seems so far away, but in terms of paychecks, it's only 41 away! I need to figure out how to create a taskbar for that...

One step closer to being debt free

Today I paid off one of my credit cards. I am doing a happy dance in my pants! For the last year, I have been obsessed with paying down my consumer debt. I want a house, and the only way I will be able to comfortably start looking for one is without all the debt I have boosting my finance rate up. My credit rating is good, but I want it to be excellent when I apply for a mortgage. Heck, the way the housing market has blown up over the past few months, they may not give mortgages to anyone with less than excellent credit!

How have I done it? I listened to quite a few financial advisers on satellite radio and NPR, and this is the method I have chosen:

• Choose the card with the smallest balance and focus on paying that one off. Pay the snot out of it (as much as you can afford) and just pay the minimum on the other cards.
• I call my credit card companies ( had 3, now I only have 2! Yay!) every few months and ask them to lower my interest rate. My method is to tell them I got an offer to transfer my balance to another card at a lower rate, and ask them to match that rate. The have never matched it, but they have given me a temporary lower rate for a few (9) months.
• I changed the rewards program on my Discover card to the new Motiva plan. If you pay on time every 6 months, they give you a months worth of finance charges back as a cash bonus.
• Now that I have one card paid off, my plan is to transfer the balance on my card with the highest rate(Discover) to my now clean card. I just got my 6 month bonus, and ended up getting an additional $10 by redeeming it in gift cards instead of putting it back on my card. I thought long and hard about that one, because I really wanted to just use it to pay down the balance. I decided to reward myself instead. I earned it, after all. If I had not gotten my bonus yet, I would have waited for that before transferring the balance.
• I will use the $$ I was paying on my first card and add it to the minimum payment of my card with the next smallest balance. Then, it is the same formula until that one is paid off. It will get paid off quicker, because I am able to pay more on it.
• I get paid every 2 weeks, so every time I get my pay stub, I go online and pay on my cards. By paying every 2 weeks instead of once a month, I am saving on interest charges (because it is compounded daily) and I never have to worry about running short at the end of the month, because I pay it out as soon as I get it. What I have leftover is my budget for the next 2 weeks for gas and any other personal items I may need or want(our household budget automatically goes into a separate account). Everything leftover at the end of those 2 weeks gets transferred into my savings account. (If I have $5o as my beginning balance on payday before my paycheck posts, I will transfer that into my savings account, where it stays unless there is an extreme emergency. I've been doing this for almost a year now, no emergency yet.)

So, I am feeling pretty awesome right now. I am happy, happy, happy!

My hubby loves me

When I was sick last week, Scott came home with this. He thought it was a "one up". I didn't have the heart to tell him the green ones were "one up"s. What a good guy...

After a brief absence...

I have been home from work for 2 1/2 days this week. I'm feeling much better now, but it was a rough week.

I got my goodies in the mail, so now I am ready to start a new project and go on a picnic! Unfortunately, it is currently snowing and I made a committment to finish a few projects before starting any new ones. So....I guess I will continue on with Hunting Nostalgia and prepare for St. Patrick's Day. I live a block away from the parade route in South Boston, so I'll be cooking all day tomorrow, and I need to start preparing for company. I'll prepare, but I doubt we will get any, because that is just how things are with hubby's side of the family. I've learned to live with it. (BTW, hubby made that lolcat for me.)

Picnic Season

Last year for my birthday Scott and I went on a picnic along the Charles River. We had such a fun time he has decided we should go on a picnic twice a month once it starts getting warmer. I wasn't sure we would be able to do that until I saw this picnic cooler. I had a gift card I was able to use, plus I get free monograming and shipping, and now I can't wait to picnic!!!

Work in progress

Here is my work in progress on Hunting Nostalgia. I would estimate I am almost 3/4 done with the regular stitching. Then the dreaded backstitching...

The first pic was taken last Saturday, and the second one was taken a few minutes ago.

*Blogger is being weird, sorry for the ugly layout...

Gifties

I just purchased this pattern. I love it's simplicity and the fact that it looks like there is no backstitching. I will work this on evenweave, which will be my first attempt at anything other than Aida. I've used plastic canvas and waste canvas, but those don't count, as they were very similar to Aida, for me. I must admit, I'm a little scared of evenweave, but if my experience is anything like the experiences of the other stitchers I read about, I will soon stitch on nothing else. Can't wait!!!

Yay Friday

I am blogging quickly today because I want to get right to stitching. With such a busy work week, I did not get much progress done on HN. I will take another progress pic when I start tomorrow, so you can see how much (or how little) I can get done in a week.

I don't know who I'm talking to when I say "you", the only one who knows about this new blog is Scott, and I'm fine with that for a while. This way, I can post the pix I want and not have to worry about my family seeing gifts early.

Okay, off to my weekend!

Busy Kitty

I did not blog yesterday because I had to work late. Part of my job involves computer programming and we were changing the way we were going to deliver a weekly newspaper product (until today, we mailed it, now we have home delivery). The deadline for this project was actually a week ago, and I set it then because I knew I would have a hard time getting corporate support. Our company is currently being sold (as part of the Wall Street Journal sale) so all the corporate programmers will be out of work soon, so they really have no interest in helping the individual sites get their projects done. Yes, it sucks. So, yesterday, I was forced to wait until the very last second before I was able to proceed with my conversion. And since I have an hour commute I did not get home until after 10 PM.

The good news is that the project was a success and now my boss will leave me alone for the rest of this week (And I realize that means it's only tomorrow, but it's still a break!). He even let me leave 2 hours early today! Yay! I spent my free time purchasing my favorite imported cross stitch magazines! I have a subscription to the first one but it does not start until next month (but I already got my first issue. I know, strange).

So, I have BB9 to watch and Survivor to watch tonight, which I will do while working on HN. Later!!!

I am breakfasty!

This couldn't be more correct, right down to the Sunday morning pancakes...

Finally wireless!

Thanks to my brilliant brother, I am finally wireless! I would have never been able to do this on my own, so I am forever in his debt. Am currently updating the Wii so we can exchange Wiimail!

My weekend was very lazy. Spent a LOT of time working on "Hunting Nostalgia", and actually took before and after pix, which I will upload soon.

Must go now, playing with the Wii...

Happy Leap Day

Tonight Scott is out with a friend so I am on my own! Yay! A house all to myself! I will spend my evening doing a few chores (not many, believe me!) and the rest of the evening will be spent stitching and watching DVD's.

After reading some of my preferred stitching blogs, I learned that it is kind of a tradition to start or finish a special project on this day. I am nowhere near finishing "Hunting Nostalgia", and I have promised myself I would not start anything new until I have done some of my dreaded backstitching, so I am at a loss as to what to do. What I really need to do is organize my projects and make a list of what I have and what I need to finish. I often see lists of WIP's, UFO's and wish lists, so maybe my special project will be to pick out 5 WIP's and spend my Saturdays working on those projects until I am more caught up. That sounds good.

Finally Framed!

I made this for my brother 11 years ago and I just now had it framed. It is his birthday present, and I am positive he will love it.

I have been having a hard time actually completing projects, and I hope this will encourage me to do more. It's the backstitching I absolutely hate. I must have 20 projects that are done except for the backstitching. It should be my new year's resolution, but I know I will never stick to it, so maybe I will shoot for 1 finish per month. Now that I have a really good framer, I will be able to enjoy my finishes, and maybe it will encourage me to do more.

Mom's new lamp

I sent Mom a new lamp because she was always fussing with the shade on her old one. This one is a special craft lamp so she will be able to do something other than knit in her chair

Welcome to my new blog

Decided to start over with a new blog...

Yesterday I was watching Friends and Scott sat next to me and started laughing. I asked him what was funny, and he replied by saying he had never seen it before, and I said "What, this episode?" and he said "No, this show."

Hard to believe it was on 14 years ago and he's just now catching it. Of course, his favorite was Chandler.

Must go soon, BB9 is almost on.