Stay-cation!

The pool is in! After spending all that money last year on landscaping the back yard (to help sell the house) we decided to stay. With the downswing in the market and nobody enjoying a whole lot of job security, we decided to stay where we are comfortable. So...we decided to put in a pool! This will pay for itself in 2 years, as we can vacation at home.It took one nice day for the great company we hired to put it in. Now its just a matter of getting the chemicals right. Of course, as it has rained 20 out of the last 24 days, our yard was more of a swamp than a backyard, and boy did the installation leave a mess! There's tons of top soil, not to mention the sod mixed in, left in a huge pile. And we still need to finish backfilling. Had a landscaper come today to tell us exactly what we can do with it all. He'll give me a price in 3 - 4 days, I'm sure it'll be a doozy! So, if anyone wants lots of clay filled, rooty, soddy topsoil, come have at it! and if you want to put in a little manual labor on the back fill, we'll put up some beer and a barbeque and a dip in the pool after!

Teddy Bear 5/11/1998 - 5/16/2009 Rest in Peace

Teddy Bear, you were a great watchdog. You were a loyal companion, never more than 3 feet from my chair. I'm sorry for those times I accidentally rolled over your foot, then yelled at you for always being under my feet because I felt bad. I'm sorry I didn't pay enough attention to you. I already miss your happy dance when I come home. I wonder if now grass will grow in your favorite pee spot. I feel guilty for not being able to let the vets run more & more tests until they found out what was wrong with you. I'm glad you have finally found peace and painless rest and I'll see you at the Rainbow bridge. I love and miss you, Teddy.

I Hate Tuesdays

Yes, I hate Tuesdays. It's my least favorite day of the week. Mondays are bad enough, having to return to the grindstone after a too short weekend. But Tuesdays...Tuesdays positively reek! Every single stinking Tuesday, World of Warcraft shuts down for "maintenance". Usually, you can't even tell what they've "maintained". I wish they would fix the flightpath from Dalaran, Dalaran is DC city. If you play, and you have a character over lvl 65, you totally know what I'm saying. But today, today is the big patch. Everybody in the guild has been talking about it. Swimming mounts, dual spec, shorter cool downs on the hearth stones, all very cool. What's not cool? Apparently my DPS. 850 Dps(Damage per second) is apparently very bad for a lvl 80 hunter. I don't know what the problem is. Ive got the best weapon I can afford, and haven't seen much better in the Auction House. I know some players have 1500 Dps, but usually they are Death Knights, and DKs are cheaters as far as I'm concerned. They need to nerf DKs bad. So I guess I'll have to suck it up and ask my guildies what I might be doing wrong, idk. Time to check and see if we are back on line again, and maybe check on the lasagna, too. =)

I'm high? and I can't sleep!

I have recently quit smoking. This is day 3. My head spins and I am dizzy, and a little silly. My friends tell me I am high on Oxygen. Hmmm. Why? Doesn't everyone breath oxygen? Apparently all the weird things in cigarettes block some of the oxygen receptors in our brains. Suddenly, I'm getting oxygen like I haven't in more years than I can count right now. Everyone is being uber supportive, and I'm really not suffering nearly as much as I thought I would. I'm cold turkey. Yes I'm cold alot. Plus, I can't stay asleep at night. It seems like I am waking up every hour. I don't know why, but I feel very awake. Then I just go back to sleep. I took the day off, and got some extra sleep this morning. I'm starting to be afraid to drive, I become so sleepy out of no-where. But thats it. A craving will come, for less than a minute. I wiggle my fingers and take a deep breath and it goes away. I'm good. I don't want to spend the money anymore, I don't want to die of Lung Cancer, I want to see my grand children someday (not soon, mind you, it can wait, lol), but yeah. So I am a non-smoker, big deal.

Did I Do That?

No, I am not actually a self-centered person, but with everything that is going on lately, I sometimes have this idea that it is all my fault. You see, around August of last year, we decided we were going to sell our house and move to our daughter's school district. Just to make everything easier on everyone concerned. So, in preparation, we paid off all our credit cards. No more interest payments, no more revolving debt, just to make sure we could qualify for the size of house we needed. We started buying what we needed with cash, which meant we bought significantly less. Now all the credit companies are failing, and I have to wonder, did we all have the same idea at the same time? I've often wondered what it would be like, what would happen, if everyone started living off of just what they have, like all the gurus suggested. Hm, maybe this is it? And if that's the case, the banks don't need a bailout, why continue a product that no longer sells? Of course now we are in the position that nothing is selling. We would buy a new car, but are afraid we'll lose our jobs, because no one is buying new cars. We would buy a house, especially now that prices have dropped so much, but oops, now we owe more on our house than we could get for it. This whole thing is a catch 22. What are we going to do? Everyone is saying that banks won't release the funds for new mortgages, I think its just that no one is asking. Hmm, what next? There are layoffs at work happening today, furloughs last month and next. Maybe if I stick my neck out there and tell hubby to buy a new car, everyone else will too? Come on, America! We need you to shop even more now than after 9/11, oh, but I'll wait til you're done, lol.

WOW! A story of addiction

OK, My husband turned me on, and now I'm addicted.

To a blood elf priest character, wandering around the realm of Aggramar in Eversong woods. It started last weekend, while dh was planning to meet his friend, Dan, in the alternate reality. They do this once or twice a week, with geeky little headsets carrying on til the wee hours of the morning. He lamented once again how great it would be if we could play together, so I decided to try it. Actually, the kicker was watching my daughter make her character dance, and before you know it, she had started a complete dance party, with at least 10 other players stopping to dance with her(sans music). I just thought that was the neatest thing, well, at least until someone started removing her armor, leaving her in her underwear. So, I got online and he stood behind me, telling me how to power attacks and win experience points, how to loot the vanquished, and receive and complete quests. For me, the hardest part is walking right now. No, its not complicated, arrow left and right for turns, up to walk forward, and down to walk backwards. A note to the novice, walking backwards to try to retreat from an enemy? it doesn't work so well, any better than if you were to try it for real. Anyway, I keep getting stuck behind fences and barrels and benches. I mean, come on, really? And every time you have to enter a building to get a quest or training or beat somebody up, there are always circular ramps, with NO HAND RAILS! I mean, COME ON! How many times do I have to die because I fell off the stupid thing! And how freaking far do I have to walk to get back to my corpse? And whats the point of that anyway? Virtual punishment for dying? Oh! Oh! and getting bumped off the server and returning to find you had died in a battle you were clearly winning? Pah! I guess if there weren't some frustrations, I'd never get to bed. So after playing a few hours, hubby decides to start a new character so we can play together, because, well, you know, he can't join me on level four with his level 60 character, right? Only to find out, he had started me on the same account he plays on! So I deleted my character, and created a new one on our second account and started all over. we played together for a couple of hours, but now he's lost interest again, so I've played without him. Now he's a level 4, and I've gone on to level twelve, and will have to repeat everything so he can catch up. Uhg! I should just make one character to play by myself, and one to play with him. See! This has taken over my life! DO NOT play this game, if you haven't started already. I punished myself for taking all this time away from the housework, by making myself wash and fold socks. now to sneak over and start that new character.

Back to School

Time to get the kids back to School. What do you do with 5'7" twelve year old, with great fashion sense? Take her to Fashion Bug of course! She loved the graet looks, even though I spent twice the money as I do on the boys, and got half as much. An almost 13 year old with big bones has to fit in. Of course, do they sell size 12 shoes? Oh no, of course not. Nice of them to think of the larger fashion girl, but they don't think about the feet. Where do you find size 11.5 wide for a girl? We ended up with the plain ugly black shoes for her performances in 11W from Walmart. Her palazzos are so long and wide at the feet, no one will really see them anyway. I also found a pair of size 12 bobos in plain white canvas and got her a set of washable markers with which she can draw on them over and over again. But anything attractive? Sure they offer these things on line, but you can't try them on. And in the past, anything from a 9 WW to a size 12 has fit, and when we finally found sneaks, a men's 9 1/2 is what we had to settle for. I couldn't tell her they were men's shoes of course, she would freak out and not wear them. But she says they are the most comfortable sneakers she has ever had. They are a pretty lime green, one of the schools colors, and hopefully she'll not find out. The idea of showers with the other girls has got her freaked out. Me too, of course. Maybe they've stopped that heinous practice of making all the kids get naked and shower together. Can it cost all that much to invest in a few shower curtains for privacy's sake?