Archive for April, 2008
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.
Finally…
Oi this weekend has been stressful.
Between church, me breaking my website, my car and trying to take care of this house by myself…
New theme. Upgraded WordPress.
I only took took two pictures this weekend. One was of 6 gallons of used oil that Ryan had stashed in the garage. One of which was in a milk jug. Keep this in mind for future reference: if oil is left in a milk jug for a year, the milk jug plastic will start to go away. Yes, that made for a pleasant morning. After halfway cleaning out the garage I decided to clean out my car. I had put a bag of sand in my trunk in the fall. I don’t remember why I didn’t take it out. I believe it had something to do with it being wet. It didn’t occur to me why it would be wet. It was wet because my trunk was (is?) leaking. After emptying my trunk of sand and now ruined watercolor paper, I found somewhere around an inch of water in the spare tire well of my trunk (also where the battery lives). That made for an even more unpleasant morning turning to afternoon. After drying it out I poured water all over the trunk and couldn’t get it to leak.
I have a cleaner car now, and a cleaner garage. There is a place nearby that recycles used oil for free. I took as much as I could carry in one trip. There are three gallons left.
I used my last vacation day on Friday, but this weekend has been nothing of a vacation.
Tomorrow Mom and I are going to Cincinnati/West Chester. Gurney needs a bath really bad and hey, it is a good excuse to go to IKEA. I have never been to one and I am very much looking forward to that-and a clean dog.
Well then…
Troubleshooting was taking excessively longer than making an export file, reinstalling WordPress and importing all the entries. I think the upgrade broke it, which will teach me to think the ‘easy’ steps will work.
The theme is of course, horribly wrong and all of my links are gone, but I will fix that tonight, once I shampoo the kitchen floor.
Hrm…
Something funky happened when I upgraded WordPress, or at least, I noticed it after I upgraded.
The sidebar links to things within the blog do not work any longer. i.e. the archives or permanent links.
I do have new theme artwork for spring ready to upload, but I’ll hold off til I figure out why the links aren’t working…
It’s my blog, I can use it to store links if I want…
• Ashford Knitters Loom Just think of the scarves that could be made with that thing. And quickly! Then I looked at the $230 price tag.
I want to make these:
• Jello Fruit – Other than the fact they are cute, I see no practical purpose for these.
• Mini Pincushions – There is a small pile of lids sitting on the kitchen table in preparation for this weekend.
Some neat graphic design stuff:
• Coffee Stain Brush For Photoshop – I really don’t know why you’d want this, it’s just neat.
• Vector Magic – I haven’t tried this yet, but wow, where have these people been all my life? Or rather, how did I just find out about them yesterday? (They trace your raster images and make them vector images.)
Just for fun:
• The Bureau of Communication – Form letters for miscellaneous things to fill out and email. Very official looking, if not so in subject matter.
• Japanese Print & Cut Out Things – I don’t know what a thing on this website says, but with random clicking you’ll get the idea. There are doll house rooms, stores, sushi, animals, vehicles and more.
Lots of stuff…
So I realized I never posted a picture of the new new guinea pig (or maybe I never even said for sure I got one?). Either way. I’ve had him two weeks, which makes him nine weeks old. He came from the show in Springfield. I wanted to name him Bradshaw, but it just doesn’t fit. Ryan says he should be called Mortimer, which I really don’t like (sorry if you read this). Mom says I should name him ‘Inches’. To go with Miles… Ha ha, right? It has been two weeks now though, and I just need to pick a name. Miles doesn’t particularly care for the young energetic nature of his new cage-mate, but they are getting on better than they did the first week. Mom noticed today that the little one has a bite mark on his ear though. I’m not sure if Miles did that or one of his siblings before I got him.
I had the oil changed in my car today, and of course, since I was in
Washington C.H. I went to the thrift store too. I picked up a little bud vase, a vintage stitchery kit and a plastic box filled with reference cards for houseplants. I don’t particularly care for the butterfly on the stitchery, but I wanted to know how they did the fuzzy dandelion and I liked the wool and fabric colors. The box that the houseplant reference cards came in is tacky, dirty and discolored. In Mom’s words when she came in my house tonight, “What is that?” The box will be going, but I hope the cards will have some useful value. The whole thing was only $1.91 though. So for that much, it is worth the amusement of the 70′s style photography.
Sunday Mom and I went fabric shopping. Lately when I have gone fabric shopping I can’t find anything I like. Sunday I spent $50 and could have easily spent double that. I went to get two pieces of a fabric – a blue and a purple for a baby quilt I’ve been working on. I ended up getting two blues and enough purple for the quilt and to back the thing too. It has embroidery blocks in it. I copied patterns out of the Stampin’ Up catalog. There are two frogs, a snail, a dragonfly, a single flower, a long patch of grass and little flowers and a long patch of water and water lilies. I thought it would come together easier than it is. I’m just not feeling it.
The second thing I bought though… Mom says, “Come look at this, I just think it is so you.” Evilness. Look at those bugs in all of their cuteness. It isn’t designed by Eric Carle, but it could be. I bought a yard of the bugs, half a yard of that funky stripe and a fat quarter of the dots. A few of the others I bought fat quarters of, the rest came from Mom’s stash. I have designed a nursery in my head around this fabric. Just picture it, bright vivid colors for the crib sheets, crib skirt, bumper, etc. A patchwork quilt of all of that. For a mobile there could be little felt bugs mimicked from the fabric. Meh. Normally I get a baby quilt pieced pretty quick, but I am oh so tempted to hoard this for that day in the future when I’ll actually need to design a baby room…
What if I just want to ramble?
I built a sidewalk today. Or something like a sidewalk, it doesn’t really go anywhere, it just keeps me from walking in mud or keeping a perilous balance while walking on the rocks lining the flower bed.
Crappy picture. It is from the camera phone. My house, even though it is sided now, is a brick house. So when you do things like till up the garden, you get bricks. So until I dig up more bricks, it can only be that big.
Ryan and I are starting vacation plans. This is always a frustrating job. Do we stay home or do we go somewhere. If we stay home, how many of those days will be actual vacation for me or entertaining people. (When he comes home there is always a ton of friends and family that want to come around, which is fine, it just doesn’t make for much of a vacation for me.) He had mentioned going somewhere for a ‘real’ vacation a month or so ago, so I had started planning for that. Now he is thinking about coming home for part of his leave and going somewhere besides home for the rest of it. I don’t really care. I just want to see him. Nothing set in stone though as the army will feel the need to change the dates a minimum of three times, requiring me to fill out an equal number of vacation requests for my job. Yay.
For the past couple weeks I haven’t been in the mood to make anything. That bothers me. I am never not in the mood to make something. I made myself make a needlebook. I did some cooking (which didn’t turn out all that great). I also decorated paper bags for Dad to put candy in and give to nurses and doctors (40 of them, they were nice and springy, but I didn’t have my camera). Today I made a bag to send to Ryan. It has more of a patriotic feel though.
Tomorrow starts the work week, so I should be going now.
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