IM

Being dragged kicking and screaming into this technology age . Beloved just showed me how to IM after IMing eldest daughter this afternoon to tell her to ask me to turn on my phone, which was off due to a doctor's appointment. I've actually been quite proud of deserving the name "urban Amish" ever since I nearly laughed myself sick hearing it on Jeopardy. Heck, until I joined Ravelry I had no use for the Internet except to play webgames. Everything changes I guess.

Since he knows how much wasted time I spend at the computer I can expect to get lots of reminders now that he can IM as well as e-mail. Hopefully they will be gentle, but with only a couple of weeks 'til move day, if his company gets its act together, I have to admit that a sense of urgency is starting to develop.

Of Sausage and Blogs

A commenter on one of the blogs I follow quoted Bismark as saying that "legislation as with sausage should be ground out and gotten out the door." Since I'm trying to remain apolitical in this venue I won't give my thoughts on the legislation part of that. It did cause me to think though that perhaps blogs fell into the same category. After all, it's neither lack of material or of time at the computer that have prevented me from writing the last couple of months. It's starting to look as though what's preventing me is the desire for perfection and polish in the finished post. This causes said post to remain between my ears for ever. Case in point? I read that quote at least two weeks ago, had the thought instantly and am only now writing this.

I suppose the only cure will be to grind out the writing, get it written, and then edit as necessary. Onward, into a brave new future of writing!

Goodbye, perfection! Hello blogging!

Vive le, uhm... how do you say writing in French?

Well anyway, here's hoping.

Let it snow, etc...

Well, the appraiser was willing to risk the drive from Greeley Friday. He was just 45 minutes late because he had to shovel his walk and such before leaving. Now we have a third realtor coming to do a market estimate and she's supposed to get here at 8:30 A.M. from Boulder. And did I mention it's supposed to snow again? We'll just have to see if she's as brave as the rest have been. Maybe I'll get lucky though this time.

I didn't need oxygen anyway

So, there I was, two days after a blizzard, with all the windows in the house open and it was all the fault of my new best friend. Who I seriously hope never to see again. Some may wonder what the name of this unpopular friend would be. The answer is Goof-off!

I swear by Dog and a stack of Bibles that from now on that if I paint I will immediately clean up anything that I spill and not leave it on doors and cupboards for four years to harden into colorful little rock streaks. Even with Goof-off the removal process required hours and a huge helping of elbow grease which is causing me to want to fall over from exhaustion as I write this.

My husband, who took the kids to his parents to confine all potential brain-damage to one family member, kept calling throughout the day to make sure I hadn't passed out or anything. He even offered to come back and help me but I couldn't think of anything for him to do except add some muscle and since he's the breadwinner it didn't seem practical to have him losing IQ points along with me.

Fortunately, I'm done with all that. Now I can move on to: touching up the paint in every room, cleaning every room in a way it's never seen before, and pulling all the weeds that missed the memo that it was too early to grow yet. See, nearly done.

Snow Day!

Since the short types were already on Spring Break nothing much changed for them when the weather report called for 12"-19" of snow in our area. Particularly since my dad was able to pick them up for an overnight at the grandparents as was already scheduled. I did find out tonight though that they almost got hit twice on the way to his house and the drive took half-again as long as usual. This means we're not exactly sure when the kids are coming home, as it completely depends on the state of the roads.

On the other hand, Beloved had intended to go to work in Cheyenne today but decided to stay home after hearing there was a wreck on the inter-state he takes between here and there. It ended up being a good thing because he would have just had to come home as soon as he got there or risk having the roads closed and being stuck there for a day or two.

Since he was home, and the kids were gone after about 10:30 we watched the next DVD of Babylon 5 from Netflix and caught up another six or so episodes of Bleach on youtube. I also got a lot of mending done which is good because I need to move my work basket as part of pre-sale cleaning and anything in the basket that hasn't been taken care of will probably not be seen again until we unpack it in Missouri. There was also the Appraiser visit, which was really good having Beloved home to talk to him, brownie making, and much shoveling of snow. I helped with that the first time, and hope never to again experience the sensation of snow blowing into my ears, but used the promise of nice, fresh from the oven brownies as bait to get out of helping the second time.

I'm rather curious how much snow we're going to get and if the second appraiser will make an appearance or choose not to brave the roads tomorrow.

Clean Pantry

Too tired to post, but at least the pantry is clean and has just enough stuff on the shelves to look like there's lots of food in there with lots of room left over.

And finally, the knowledge bit

The subheading of my blog title is "needlework, knowledge, and the thunder of eight not-so-little feet." I've noticed recently that I've posted mainly about family stuff, a little about fiber stuff, and not at all about books or other knowledge gained. Now is the time to fix that.

In a non-book format most of what I've been learning lately is of a political nature and I really don't want to get into that here as that's not the point of this blog. So, although that has been interesting and often enlightening, it doesn't particularly count, even though there has been much knowledge gained. A lot of the reason there hasn't been much book reading going on is that our library was closed for renovations until a week ago. Usually I would have been going to the used book store or Barnes & Nobel and the like but, with my Beloveds doctor's appointments and the oddness that is life after a cancer diagnosis in the family, it just didn't seem all that important. And then, last week, the library reopened.

I checked out four non-fiction books, one American graphic novel, and one manga from a series I'd never read. This is a fairly common amount of books for me to check out as we get two weeks of check-out and a one week grace period. I tend to treat that as meaning a three week check-out, but I probably shouldn't.

So far I have read two of the non-fiction and the manga and started both of the other non-fiction but put one aside when it seemed too depressing to read right now. My Beloved and oldest daughter have read the graphic novel, a compilation of Conan the Barbarian comics from the 70's so I haven't been able to get near it yet. Beloved has also read one of the non-fiction that I've read. It is titled Problem Solving 101 and was originally written in a push for Japanese school-children to focus more on problem solving skills than plain fact memorization. Interestingly enough, he thinks that the book and the corporate training his company started recently have a common background. I'll have to see if I can get the two oldest to read it in the remaining two weeks. Oops, one week and then I renew...yeah, that's the good library patron way.