Archive for shopping
I had a fairly good weekend (except for a few things that started Sunday night…).
Friday night I spent the night at Mom and Dad’s house. I reformatted their new HP computer to put XP on it. I was advised not to (by HP), but I did it anyway and it works just fine. Even as they advised against it, they told me where to get all the XP drivers for the hardware.
Saturday I spent a lot of the day at their house transferring files and installing programs. That evening Dad went to a hospital to visit someone while Mom and I went to the thrift store, the Mexican restaurant and Wal-Mart. I have pictures of what I bought, but my card reader is at their house and the cord isn’t wanting to work, I’ll get that worked out tomorrow.
Yesterday I went to church, then the three of us went to Columbus. We went to the hospital (the James Cancer Center, one of their friends is pretty bad off) and visited awhile. We went to North Market, which isn’t nearly as good as Findlay Marke
t, but still a market. I got six gerbera daisies which are a satisfactory replacement for zinnias til they begin blooming. I have pictures of the flowers too, but as I said above.. After the market we went to Utrecht (really I was the only one that had a real interest in that store). I do love Utrecht. I could have spent a lot of money, but I was good. I bought a palette for watercolors. It has four mixing wells, but then on the sides it has little removable-sealable jars. I also bought six individual Prismacolor colored pencils to keep with my sketchbook. Oh, and a stick of Kiss-Off. If you’ve never tried this stuff you need to. It is a stain remover stick, but better than anything you buy at a normal store (since it is made for people who tend to get pigment in their clothes).
Today I finished transferring some files to my parents’ computer, then I ran to Wal-Mart to pick up a few things. Otherwise I’ve been cleaning all day, the down on your knees scrubbing sort of cleaning.
My clumsiness has worked against me in the cleaning aspect though… Last night I decided to dye some yarn while I was cleaning the kitchen. Whatever off brand drink mix (think Kool-Aid) I was using, grape, exploded in the microwave about nine minutes in. I had fun cleaning dripping purple water out of the microwave, really. Today I made sun tea and when I was bringing it back in I was holding it by the handle. The handle did not break, I’m not really sure what happened, but the jar came undone from the lid and shattered spectacularly all over the patio. A gallon of tea and a million shards of glass. Gurney couldn’t go out until the tea dried and I swept up the glass, though when I was out there when the sun was setting you could see it glinting everywhere. After that I was cleaning the bathroom. I picked up a full package of those little latex hair rubber bands-it was open-and I flung them everywhere, including in the toilet. Tonight I took a pitcher full of chicken broth over to Mom. It made it fine down my driveway on a hill, a stop at the highway crossing, and for whatever reason, when I stopped at their house the pitcher tipped, the lid popped off and about five cups of chicken broth ended up on my front passenger floor board. I really, really hope that the shampooer sucked it all out.
So now I am going to sit here and relax til I go to bed and try not to break anything else.
Life Is Hectic…
I’ve been really busy the past couple of weeks between work and everything not-work.
One of the big things: Paul had surgery today to remove three large bladder stones and whatever small ones the x-ray didn’t pick up. Now, if you would have asked me two weeks ago, I would have said, “No, I would not spend that much money on a cat to have surgery.” Right. I did. $51 for the first vet trip, $35 for the second, $70 for the third and $250-300 for today. He is staying overnight at the veterinarian for observation, but they said he used the litter box after he woke up, which is a good thing (no blockage). He also has to stay on a special food now to prevent recurrence. Apparently some cats get them and some cats don’t.
Earlier I started to yell at Gurney and Paul to stop rough-housing, then I realized it was Gurney rough-housing by himself.
Another big thing: Our office switched over to Quark 7 two weeks ago. This week they are using 6.52 again. There was one day that I just dropped everything I needed to do and spent half the day with the open question, “So what is your problem?” x 20 people. That program (in my opinion) is a piece of crap. They are just begging people to switch to InDesign. In order for us to switch to InDesign though, we need to get the programmers from American Color in to see how well the database program works with what we do compared to what it will do with InDesign.
Lately, getting ready for work in the morning has been a trial because I have nothing to wear. Most of my clothes are winter clothes with the exception of about three work appropriate shirts. I’ve been wearing a lot of tank tops and sweater cardigans. Ryan told me to go buy clothes then as I was ranting about this last Monday on the phone while trying to find something to wear to a church dinner. Most girls would say, “Sure!” I for one, Hate Shopping For Clothes. It isn’t that things don’t fit (sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t), it is that with the current style trends I can a.) look pregnant b.) wear tie dye c.) buy pre-worn out clothing d.) any number of things I’m not paying money for.
Saturday I went with my aunt Teresa to the Dayton Mall (she had to return eyeglasses). Between a variety of stores I bought a t-shirt (not for work), a button up oxford shirt and a white tank top out of a nice fabric. I tried on lots and lots of shirts, but that is what worked.
Today I went to the outlet mall at 9am only to realize they didn’t open til 10. I wasn’t going to wait around until they did open, so I headed to Beavercreek to go to Goodwill which is where I actually wanted to go on Saturday. Normally at that particular Goodwill I can find tons of clothing in almost new condition. Even there though, there wasn’t a lot of good work clothes. I ended up getting two button up shirts. On my way home I went through Xenia and stopped at that Goodwill and found another.
I also went to Kohl’s. My mom could tell you how desperate I must be if I ventured in there. I found a pair of Lee jeans ($20) and a pair of Croft & Barrow dress pants ($8!).
So I guess I have a few more things to be wearing now. I am quite aware I wouldn’t have this problem if I would make it a point to let’s say, buy one shirt a month, but as previously stated, I don’t like clothes shopping.
In addition to buying clothes, I of course bought some other fun stuff:
I was being lazy and made the collage all one picture, instead of a bunch of little ones… 1. New Moleskins. I keep my ‘ideas of things to make’ magazine clippings in a set of small kraft cover, grid paged moleskins. Lately though I have found the need for a sketchbook again, so I bought the medium sized ones with blank pages. 2. Reader’s Digest Complete Guide To Needlework. Slowly I am finding the books that were staples of my childhood once I could check out ‘adult’ library books-mind you, they were mostly craft related. 3. Hamburger & Fry Baskets. These are from the Target Dollar section. There have been times I have wanted them in the past, now I have six. 4. Iron On Vinyl. I did not know such a thing existed, now I do. 5. Shish Kabob! So cute, this is from PetsMart’s new summer collection. The ‘meat’ pieces squeak and the red and yellow things crinkle. 6. Produce ball. I’m sure that has another name, but I don’t know it. Technically I also bought that last weekend, but I needed another picture. 7. Ice Cube Drink Stirrers. This is in Target’s summer section. Normally they are expensive, but this one was $2.99. 8. Wind Chime. This was in Target’s Dollar section too. 9. Bath & Body Works Shampoo & Conditioner. I did not know they started making hair care products again. I’ve used it once so far and am pretty pleased with it.
One last thing before I go to bed. Last weekend I needed to fit something new into one of the drawers in my kitchen, but it just wasn’t going to happen (see first picture). I took a three drawer storage container from my sewing room and repurposed it for the kitchen. Now the top drawer has cake/cookie decorating supplies. The middle drawer has sandwich/drink supplies. The bottom drawer has cupcake liners and treat bags. Cleaning that drawer out also enabled me to realize I could get rid of some of the stuff. Yay for organizing.
Tomorrow night I am going to try and upload all of the pictures and movies I haven’t messed with in the last month…
I should be in bed…
It’s strange, but for the past couple weeks, I haven’t been able to get myself in bed before eleven, let alone midnight… That isn’t good when you should get up at 5am in the morning to get ready for work. And when you are up until midnight, that 5am slowly turns to 5:30, then 6, then…
Anyway…
Mom and I went to IKEA last Monday. I was very excited and I wasn’t let down. I only spent $30 but got a lot of stuff. Here are four things I did get (I bought more, but they didn’t have pictures online).
Those aren’t in any sort of scale. For the dog leash hook, I got the black one to match the picture frames by the kitchen door where Gurney’s leash normally hangs. The multi colored boxes were missing their cellophane wrapper and were clearanced for only fifty cents.
We also had breakfast there which I thought was very reasonably priced and tasty. Dad though, pointed out that they certainly made their money back by the time Mom and I left.
Sunday Dad came over and tilled up my garden. He broke two bolts on the tiller before calling it done. Because of the broken bolts my brick sidewalk gained two more bricks (plus two more from planting marigolds earlier in the day).
I planted a window box again for the kitchen window and I will really try to remember to water it this year…
I also tried to get some good shots of Gurney. Gurney does not like cameras though and I think there was only one good one of him actually looking towards the lens… I really like this one though:
All of these pictures (except the IKEA ones) were taken with a Canon PowerShot A550. It is my grandpa’s camera that he said doesn’t take as good of pictures as his HP. I’m tempted to agree with him after one day of using it. The shutter speed seems laggy. It has a manual feature on it, but most of the time, I just want a camera to take a picture and be done with it. At one point I had to turn it off and turn it back on to get it to use the flash. Every time I held the button down for it to focus an icon would pop up telling me that the camera would shake too much if I took the picture (i.e. it should have been ok since I was outside, otherwise it should have used flash, what I was doing had no need of a tripod). Many of my pictures of Gurney turned out blurry anyhow. There is a setting called ‘Kids & Pets’ but I don’t want to have to switch from setting to setting all the time. My Kodak camera does not have that issue. I think it also goes into digital zoom too easy as well. I will mess with it some more, but from a day of using it, I don’t think I would want one.
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