Black Friday

Last year, at some awful hour, my dad and I embarked on our first (and maybe last) Black Friday outing. It was a blast, and his patience was unbelievable! This year, I did not have the energy to leave my house in attempt to experience the Black Friday madness. I hear the early sales should have been great, but this way, a few bucks stayed in my pocket!

Of course, I did have the energy to get the laundry done and sit here at my computer. I thought what a perfect way to get into the holiday spirit and the trend of on-line shopping! It was a great idea, right? I was not on-line at 4 AM trying to get those big bargains. After lunch, I attempted my first shopping. The first three websites I attempted each stalled out, I gave up. I wouldn't say that I have an abundance of either patience or perseverance, so I will have to shop another way, another day!

Hope your Black Friday experience was all you were hoping for -- even if that meant just getting to sleep in this morning!

2008 -- Year of Breakage Continues

OK, here it is November. You'd have thought we were all done breaking things. WRONG.

Wednesday HE noticed the freezer didn't seem quite cold enough. I tell him he's too temperature sensitive. Thursday, we have a problem. Of course, it's 11 PM when HE finds that the ice is melting in the freezer. Immediately the poor pups are blamed for shedding so much, clogging up the airway and breaking the fridge. He took parts off and vacuumed things out. Then, he comes inside with the air hose. I could not believe my eyes, he wouldn't really blow all of the dust out of there, or would he? Yes, he would. Talk about a mess!

Of course, I plugged in the vacuum to the outlet the TV was plugged into. POOF! There went that outlet. So, buy midnight on Thursday/Friday, the fridge was getting warm and the ever so important TV outlet was no longer working.

On Friday, he was on the ball! He had a repair man to fix the fridge in and out before lunch! Apparently there is an external switch to the compressor that had gone out. As a result, it was not cooling. If the internal switch to the compressor had gone out, we would have spent the weekend shopping for a new fridge. (Let me add this to the list of my things I'm thankful for this year.)

On Saturday, he asked me if I had reversed the fan in the living room. I had no idea what he was talking about, so I had to ask for clarification. I would have never noticed that the fan was turning in the opposite direction. This fan has a remote wall thingy that you push a button to turn on the fan. Apparently people no longer want the strings hanging down to adjust the fan speed or turn the light on. All we can figure is that when the vacuum got plugged into the outlet, something caused the fan to get reversed and now the wall control doesn't work. Electricians? Not us. He did his best and promptly went to the local home store and bought replacements. No such luck.

Monday will bring us another repair person attempt. Cross your fingers we have such good luck -- this fridge guy rocked!

Ready to Ride

This year HE decided we should take out grown up toys to the country for Christmas. So, last week, HE reserved 2 4-wheelers and some sort of RTV (as opposed to an ATV) a few weeks ago.

Since we are going to be living adventurously, HE also decided it was time for helmets. I got a silver one and I think his is white. My helmet is a nice "average" medium size -- but would you believe he had to get an XXL for his big head!

Ahhh, Christmas just isn't getting here fast enough!

Holiday Anticipation

Wow, it's so hard to believe how fast this year has flown by. I think it's especially hard because some times the days/weeks seem to be moving so slow. Then, BAM! out of no where, it's like two months are just gone. Time simply amazes me.

So, let's see...we've done Halloween. Turkey day, which seems like it may not have turkey for me, is about to be here. Then there's birthday, birthday, holiday shopping, Christmas, family gatherings, New Years, and before we know it, 2009 is HERE.

My To Do List looks like this....
1. Figure out if we're going to have turkey dinner on Turkey Day?
2. Figure out if we're going to put up Christmas decor? It's such a pain.
3. Holiday shopping lists -- they are a MUST
4. Holiday parties -- which ones, when, what needs to be done for them.
5. Holiday baking, a day or a week devoted to this??
6. Gift wrapping. Yes, I have to plan for this too.
7. Holiday planning -- done, thanks to HIM this year.
8. Pet care for holidays, if needed.
9. Last minute lists :) Always needed!
10. RESOLUTIONS!!

Making our own art!?

Well, we've been in the house for some time now. We have managed to paint only a couple of rooms. The floor has been replaced, in two rooms. We're not really do-it-yourselfers and we're not really all that creative. OK, well, I'm not either of those two things.

HE just loves cars and trucks. I think he probably subscribes to about 5 magazines and then saves them. So, he's got boxes and boxes of magazines. All filed away neatly, in order, by magazine type and year, of course. So, as a result, we have lots of space dedicated to the cataloging of magazines, that I believe, will never be of any use to anyone. I digress....

HE has been working at culling through the bad, useless stuff, but just hated to be "wasteful" and toss out the old magazines. (Not all, just one "brand".) I made the crazy suggestion to select the pictures he liked and frame them in sort of a collage. Well, I had no idea of what would happen when Mr. OCD was assigned a craft project of this sort.

I think this is week three of this project. I'm convinced there will be photos of cars on every wall of our house very soon. Please pray for my sanity during this self-inflicted turmoil! By the way, next time, I will keep my mouth shut! :)

We can eat!

Here's the dining room table we bought a few weeks ago. I would have put up pictures sooner, but, well, we had to do some work first. The ceiling was viciously attacked by the small electrical fire we had after hurricane Ike was here. So, it's been replaced and the ceiling was repainted. The table is nice, but we hardly ever use that room. Hopefully the table isn't a total waste of cash.

If you look closely, you can see the entry way, too. We painted that a few weeks before Ike. Luckily no damage in there. It's a nice shade of yellow.


Those are the updates, and there will be more to come, I think. He's been talking of more paint and new carpet. Hopefully, we'll stick something on the walls soon, too!

Things Rita Will Eat

This is nothing to be proud of, and she probably shouldn't eat them...but can you believe a dog will eat these things??

Pasta, any kind
White rice
Grapefruit
Pickles
Apples
Bananas
Cotton Candy
Grapes (I quit letting her eat these.)
Alvocado (I don't think these are good for her either.)
Most nuts
Oatmeal
Most Cereal - granola
Granola bars


This little beagle is, well, not so little after eating so well! She's something special!

It's November

WOW! I can't believe it's November. Seems like just yesterday it was August!

Well, I had voted before Halloween. Halloween was another incredible disappointment. We stayed home this year. With Rita in recovery mode still, we hate to leave her for too long. She's recovering quite nicely, but she's a heap of energy and it's hard to contain her. We had planned to go to our High School homecoming game Halloween night, but well, it was just easier to stay home.

We live in a rather secluded neighborhood, and do not usually have many trick or treaters. This year we had all of about 8 and they were some rude little characters. Kids these days don't even say "Trick-or-treat". They wiped out our candy! Can you believe that? I mean, I didn't have a warehouse supply of candy, but there was a rather large bag. These not-so-little beings were not happy with the speed candy was handed out, and grabbed candy by the handful out of our candy bowl. Next year, the rules will have changed!

Lastly, sadly, the time has fallen back again. I used to love this day, an extra hour of sleep, like a little bit of heaven. HE has ruined it for me. HE hates this day; he hates it getting dark early. The best thing is that he loved it happening later this year. I keep telling him we have to be thankful for the little things! :)

Happy November -- VOTE THIS WEEK and then get to holiday shopping - the holidays will be here before we know what happened!