Delusions of... Everything

New Years Eve

The teens are invading our house this evening.  It will be the first time both my kids will have friends over at the same time.  It could be interesting.  Dancing Daughter and Star Wars Son are about as different as two people can be, yet so much the same.  Neither has any patience for drinking, drugs or smoking. 

DD is an active Christian who attends church activities twice a week (sometimes three times).  SWS is a self proclaimed atheist, although when pressured he will say that he MIGHT believe in the Force, which we all know is very spiritual.

DD is very uncomfortable hearing foul language.  SWS and his friends are all about the foul language. 

DD and her friends have no tattoos or piercings, SWS and his friends are all about the body art (not that SWS has any body art, besides pierced ears, but whatever).

DD is not into the whole boyfriend/girlfriend thing.  SWS has had a few "serious" girlfriends.

DD wears a purity ring.  SWS.... Well whatever.

We are not really sure how many kids on either side will be showing up, but at least we have the computer back and running well.  While  one group is using the only TV we have, the other group can be on the computer or playing one of the 1,000 board games we have.

We have 3 half racks of soda, 5 bags of chips, many leftover Christmas cookies, meat and cheese platter, crackers, hummus, salmon ball, carrots...  And wine for me.  I think we are all set!!

Finally

The computer is fixed!  A new, larger, hard drive was installed by a Mac wizard who has a shop just down the road from us.  He was able to mirror the fried hard drive and install all of our "stuff" on to the new hard drive so we didn't lose anything, not even passwords!

On Christmas Eve the wireless router mysteriously stopped working.  It didn't really matter because we didn't have the computer anyway, but that meant the iTouch we got Dancing Daughter for Christmas was useless.  The Mac wizard was able to fix that too. 

Now I am up and running.  I have much to catch up on and oh so many pictures to edit!  It's all going to take me awhile.  I hope to read what all of you have been up to in the next few days!

Meanwhile you can go check out my Wordless Wednesday photo here.

Merry Christmas

Just making a quick post from work.  The Mac won't even turn on anymore, so we are totally without a computer at home.  It really sucks.  Work is very busy, so I haven't been able to catch up with all my favorite blogs.  Today is my last day with access to a computer until who knows when.  Therefore I am wishing for all of you to.....

Have a very Merry Christmas!

Computer Woes

We have a Mac and over the last few weeks it's been running really slow.  Handy Man thought maybe it was because there are four of us using it.  Star Wars Son writes songs on it and I use it for 1,000s of photos.   He emptied the trash thinking maybe there was a lot of stuff in there bogging things down, but that did not help.  Late last week Firefox started crashing.  Handy Man found all the purchase info thinking it would still be under warranty.  The warranty just expired.  He called the help desk anyway and they offered to remotely run a diagnostic, for $50.  Handy Man said no thanks!  He dug deeper in the box of crap computer stuff we have and found a warranty cd.  He put it in and found he could run the diagnostic himself.  The video driver, or card, or whatever it's called on a Mac, did not pass diagnostic tests. 

I'm not sure when we will be able to get it to the Apple store to get fixed.  I have pictures to edit and stories to tell, but won't be able to until the Mac gets fixed.  I was able to get by to see most of you over the weekend, but I'm not sure what's going to be happening over the next week or two.  Sometimes, like right now, everything runs fine and I'm tempted to go edit some pictures and try composing a post with them, but I know it's fruitless. I've already saved this post a few times in case Firefox crashes when I'm in the middle of writing, it's very frustrating.

Highlights of my weekend, minus pictures.

We met with the real estate agent to do a walk through on the rental.  She advised us on what we need to do to make the house in tip top shape for selling.  The list is really not as long or as bad as I thought it would be.

Dancing Daughter's holiday dance show was amazing!  She danced in five dances, ballet, tap, acro, modern and showbiz.  She was also in a couple group scenes.  They do acting between the dance performances.  It's a very long 3 hour show, but enjoyable.

Christmas dinner is planned and the main food is purchased.  I still need to go by the store to pick up a few things, but nothing major!  I'm making prime rib for the first time ever!  For dessert I will be serving an applesauce cheesecake w/caramel pecan sauce.  I haven't made it in years!  I'm excited to be doing something different this year.

All of my shopping and wrapping is done!

How was your weekend?!

Pearl Jam Sunday

This is from Pearl Jam's 1991 first Christmas single gift to fans.  Enjoy!

Let Me Sleep (It's Christmas Time)

To see my photo of the day, go here.

Sing-A-Long Saturday

These are for Chrissy!!

To see my photo of the day go here.

This and That

The feeling of being one day behind is driving me crazy!  I do know it's Friday, but I'm doing This and That anyway!

I woke at 3:50 this morning and couldn't go back to sleep.  My mind starting going in a 101 different directions, I gave up trying to go back to sleep and got up at 4:15.  My eyes feel like they have sand in them.

Yesterday it hit me that Dancing Daughter's holiday dance show is Saturday, with dress rehearsal this afternoon.  The reason it hit me was because DD was running around the house like a wild woman looking for needle and thread to sew costumes.  She was also whining about how she needs a jacket for the show.  She does this every performance and I find it very annoying.  That's all I'm gonna say about that.

Last night was Star Wars Son's CBA presentation.  CBA is Classroom Based Assessment which is a graduation requirement.  The presentation must be at least 20 minutes in length and cover certain areas.  He and a partner did their presentation on religious intolerance.  It was very interesting and insightful.  I plan to post more about it, with pictures, next week.

Speaking of pictures I dropped my camera on the concrete when I got out of the car at SWS's school last night.  Some really foul words came out of my mouth and I almost cried.  Luckily it wasn't damaged, but it was such a horrible feeling when I heard the crunch of metal of the sidewalk when the camera hit the ground.  I know I should use a camera bag and I usually do, but the battery had been charging and I grabbed the camera at the last minute, not even knowing if I could take pictures.  I know, blah, blah, blah.

I haven't started planning the menu for Christmas dinner yet, I haven't even decided if I want to do Christmas dinner or brunch.  I'd be happy with either, but I'm guessing my family would prefer dinner.  *sigh*

Still haven't started teaching myself Photoshop, while I have the desire there is simply no time. *sigh*

No one in my family noticed my haircut until I pointed it out to them.  This proves that just because you live with people it doesn't mean they are looking at you. *sigh*

(To see the photo of the day, go here.)

Locks of... Oh My Gawd!

Yes, I did it!

Oh my, I really did it!

 

On Tuesday I stopped in at Salon Spectrum and screamed "get a tape measure, I'm ready for this hair to be gone."  Not really, but I wanted to.  My hair was calmly measured and it was determined that indeed I had more than the required 10 inches of hair Locks of Love takes as a donation.  I made an appointment for the next day!!

In a few days Locks of Love will received this in an envelope....

 

Dancing Daughter, the next Vanna White?!

I'm kind of in shock!

Workshop Wednesday

Self teaching is something I'm all about!  I love to learn at my own pace, whether it be fast or slow.  I like to learn in the comfort of my own home.  I've taught myself how to cook, bake, crochet, cross stitch, scrapbook, zentangle (I'm still learning this skill), use any new camera, use Excel and so on!

So with that attitude I'm self teaching how to use Photoshop AND to improve my writing skills.  Being the good self teacher, I put a bunch of books on hold at the library.  Going to the library is like Christmas morning, only less messy.  It's always an adventure to see what's waiting on the shelf.  I just love the library, the muffled sounds, the old book smell, the oversized chairs by the window to sit and sample what's behind the cover of a selected book.

Why December seemed like a good month to start these projects I'm not sure, but I'm going with it while I have the desire and motivation!

These are the Photoshop books from the library...

I have not had time to get going yet, but I have scanned through a couple of them.  I might need to actually take a class, but we'll see.

The pile of books about writing is less daunting.

The Anne Lamott book is wonderful.  It reads like a novel and is filled with the best advice and encouragement and it's funny, in an Anne Lamott way!

The Writer's Book of Wisdom is a small pocket sized book, easily carried around.  It has 101 "rules" for writers and I've marked many pages (with Harry Potter Uno cards, don't ask) to go back and read again.  I might have to purchase this book to have handy.

The Writer's Path is an instruction book with exercises.  I've done a few of them starting with writing about my earliest memories, which Anne Lamott suggests too.  I'm having some fun doing it, but also some uncomfortable moments as I relive some of those memories.  There was another exercise where you start with a simple sentence, change nouns and verbs, add adverbs and adjectives, take some away.  I loved doing this!  I'm not going to show you how the sentence evolved over nine different steps, but show you the beginning sentence and where it ended up.

A cat walked into the kitchen.

Evolved to...

The extremely talented boys sang beautifully at the music studio.

Fun and simple stuff!!

My goal is to spend each Wednesday showing you what I'm up to with writing, Photoshop or other projects I'm working on.

(To see my photo of the day go here.)

Party Recap - The People

This is the one time of year we invite a large number of people into our home.  I send out 40 - 50 invitations to our holiday open house.  Some years we get a large crowd, some years much less.  This was a year when less people stop by, but the people who did come made it unforgettable! 

We had the usual family, moms, dads, sister, niece, aunt, uncle, boss, bosses family... Word about the niece, I served her alcohol for the first time ever.  Somehow she managed to turn 21 last January and I didn't know it... Last January?!  Where does the time go?

We had two very special guests!  First I have to give you a little back story, which is interesting because I was already planning to blog this story in the future.  I guess the future has arrived!!  One of my early childhood memories involves one of the guests who showed up at our party.

D and I used to walk to school together everyday starting in kindergarten!  Our moms must have met at a school function and got to talking about how my mom doesn't drive and how she had to walk me to school everyday and how she HATES getting up in the morning (ok, that last part is me editorializing, but she might have said that!).  D's mom probably mentioned that D walks to school and suggested since we only live two blocks apart we could walk together.

Each morning my mom would walk me to the sidewalk in front of our house and watch me walk two blocks down the hill to meet D.  From D's house it was only a couple more blocks to school.  The last block always seemed to be wet and full of slugs.  We made a game out of walking on that block, a game of avoiding those slugs at all costs, jumping, skipping, walking around, you name it we did it, anything to avoid stepping on what seemed to be a million slugs.  I seem to remember D maybe, possibly, poking sticks into the slugs and me being really grossed out.  I'm sure, since he was a boy, he did that!

In the second grade he moved away and we lost touch.  We found each other again in junior high and spent those years, plus high school, hanging out, saying "hey" in the halls and having a few classes together here and there.

Well that boy man D, who I walked through slugland with, showed up at our party with his wonderful wife P.  D is the one person I'm still in contact with who I've known longer than anyone I'm not related to.  Thankfully he showed up while my parents were there so they could see him too. 

 

The other guest was a total shocker!  We have a rental house in the next town south of us and our renter works with someone I went to high school with.  That's not how she ended up being our renter, if was just one of those "small world" moments.  She brought my friend N as a surprise and surprised I was!!  N was one of those high school friends who I just connected with.  She was one of those "girlfriends" who you pass notes, letters and cards to in the hall between classes.  Who you talk about boys with endlessly.  If we were teen friends today we would have thousands of text messages to each other.  I'm sure you had one of those friends too!  I didn't mention this to her when she was here, but I still have many of the notes, letters and cards she passed to me! 

It was great to spend time with both D and N!  I hope it's not 10 years before we all see each other again!

 

Why do my friends look so much better than me?!  Thank goodness Asthmagirl got rid of the two inches of gray that was hanging out of my scalp!  Man that would have been embarrassing seeing old friends like that!

(To see my daily photo go here.)