Uh-Oh

Okay, so yesterday didn't go as planned. I did get the laundry done (all but the last load which is in the dryer). I did clean the dining room, kinda (still needs a little tweaking). I cleaned my bedroom (not on the list, but there were HERDS of dustbunnies rampaging around the room, it HAD to be dealt with!). I also went shopping with Jacquie. We went to Marshalls (so mystery solved, I went to TJ Maxx the other day). They didn't have the jacket that I showed yesterday, day before? But they did have some different ones. This gorgeous one in black with red decorations that did up with just one button. I was actually going to buy that one, but it just didnt lay right over my big butt. I took pics with my camera phone but don't know how to get them off the phone. Maybe Chris can show me tonight. And did you know that there are NO HANGERS to be had at our Wal-Mart? Someone or someones must have been robbed and needed to buy every last one at the Wal-Mart. Ugh. I still have that garb waiting to be hung up. *sigh* Guess it will go back in the garb boxes until hangers can be found. :-P

Oh back to my cleaning, I cleaned the hallway and started on the living room. So, now sewing even attempted yesterday. But cleaning was accomplished. And some shopping. Today the plan was to start on the sewing. But alas, yet again we are foiled. Errands to run this morning, then I'm off to babysit little Miss Frances because she's not feeling well. So it's take Jacquie to work, go to CVS, go get boxes for Aly from Uhaul, come home, throw the roast in the slow cooker, then head out to see Frances.

Today's picture is from 1993 - Aly, our niece Sam, and Jacquie taken at Canada's Wonderland. I love this picture - they were having such a good time that day! Sometimes I miss those days when the girls were young and we could go do the kids stuff. Guess I'll just have to spoil my nieces and nephews until grandkids come along. :-) (Which hopefully won't be for a few years yet!)

I'm a Baaaaaad girl!

I didn't get any cleaning done yesterday. But look at my cool new jacket! :-D

Okay, so today I have to do all of the following:
1. Go to CVS and pick up my prescription
2. Go to Curves and work-out
3. Go home and start laundry
4. Clean up the dining room
5. Change over the laundry
6. Dig through material boxes looking for some material
7. Back up to the dining room, sew Aly's nightgown
8. Start cutting out fabric for my hat.
9. Do more laundry.
10. Make said hat.
11. Make a pattern for one of the coats to be made.
12. More laundry
13. Cut out coat pattern, start sewing.
14. More laundry.
15. More sewing.
16. More laundry
17. Lucky me, I get to start dinner. :-P

I might have to skip out and do a little window shopping or I might go batty. Okay, I'm already batty, shopping as a preventive measure against going stir crazy. Yeah, that's it.

Oh and yesterday evening I was going over our weekends from now till December. Oh boy. Talk about busy!
Sept 1-4 - Yard work, take our baby away to college (trying not to be sad), more yard work
Sept 9-10 Yard work, plus cleaning the basement
Sept 16-17 Golden Tygre Tavern, plus finish cleaning the basement
Sept 23-24 Yard work
Sept 30 Coronation!
Oct 7-8 Kingdom Crusades (hopefully!)
Oct 14-15 Yard work - prepping the gardens for the winter, etc.
Oct 21-22 Scrapbooking workshop, maybe I can get Chris to work on my office?
Oct 28-29
Nov 4 Crown Tourney
Nov 8 romantic dinner to celebrate 20 years of marriage
Nov 10-13 Travel to Canada, visit family and friends, maybe celebrate our 20th anniv. at a nice hotel one night?
Nov 18-19
Nov 23-26 Thanksgiving weekend - staying home because Aly will be home from college, so no trip to Canada this year

My goal is to do a lot of yard work during the week so that Chris can work on other projects on the weekend - like finishing up my office. :-)

Okay enough rambling from me. I need to start my day. Get dressed and off to CVS. What fun!

P.S. In case you didn't know this, I like to make lists. If I didn't make lists, well, I don't think anything would get done, cause I'm always forgetting to do something! lol

Cleaning-Shmeaning, Blech

This picture was taken at Penssic last year for Rozakii Dinner Night. A bunch of friends and Rozakii. It's good to have one time at War where family and friends try to get together. Everything is so chaotic and crazy that finding that time can be hard. We didn't get a picture this year because it was hammering down with rain. Made dinner interesting - the roar of rain made sitting under the bumble very LOUD. But as usual the food was delicious! (Way to go Kiki and Sven!)

My house is a mess. But do I want to clean? No. I get a reprieve for the morning because I get to go hang out with three kids and play! Babysitting the twins and their sister for 3 hours. The boys just turned 3 years old. And M is going to kindergarten this week. So we'll have lots ot talk about, I'm sure. Cause man can these kids talk! lol It's fun.

But this afternoon will be cleaning time. Get it done so that we can start sewing projects. Nightgown for Aly to take to college, maybe a pair of lounge pants if there is enough material left, start on my Scythian garb, work on my unicorn project. I need to find some material for both parts to that. Might need to make a trip to the fabric store. Dresden told me about one in Colchester. That would be such a shame to have to go fabric shopping tomorrow. Such a shame. :-D

Over the last two days I scrapbooked 4 pages of Aly's graduation and 2 pages of her senior prom. One more scrapbooking project out of the way! I think I will be working on our mini vacation to Maryland and D.C. this past Spring as the next project. One of these days I should do up a project list. At least I got my books done of my grandmother's pictures. That was a big project! Aly has been scrapbooking her Senior Memories - Graduation, Grad Night, Senior Picnic, Prom and I think she has pictures from the beach left to do.

Speaking of Aly we need to go get some boxes for her to pack stuff. Some of it to pack up the extra stuff laying around her room, the other boxes for stuff that's going to College with her. I can't believe that she's leaving in 5 days. Wow!

Jacquie started her Fall classes at Tunxis. She really likes her teachers and thinks her classes are going to be good. Especially her marketing class. :-)

Okay, just realized how late it was and I need to leave in 7 minutes to babysit.

Another New Favorite - Cow Tippin'

I wanted to share two of my favorite pictures of Frances from this summer. The one in the middle, Pensive, I was trying to get a nice picture to hang up at our house. She would not look at me. lol But then I think that's when I get some of more interesting pictures. Like the first picture, I call that one Baby in the Leaves - I could not get her to look at me, leaves were far more interesting. :-) In the end, I got that picture, which is one of the best pictures I've ever taken. The last picture (Concentration) is Frances, ignoring me yet again because I wanted to take her picture and she wanted to watch the new DVD I brought her. She definitely is a single-minded little girl. Don't distract her when she's concetrating. I was playing around with the colors and tried the B&W, it works with the slightly out of focus fuzziness of the picture. So, when I order pics I'll be getting one of Pensive and one of Concentration. :-)

So, this morning I was working on the banking and cleaning up the desk (does it ever stay clean?) and I put on my new CD - The Little Willies. http://www.emimusic.ca/thelittlewillies/ Norah Jones is one of favorite singers. I just love this mix of sound on the CD - a bit on country, a bit earthy, a little bluesy, I don't know how to define it. Anyhow, sitting her enjoying the music when the last song came on, Lou Reed. Oh lordy! That song is hilarious! You can listen to it on the website. Pay close attention to the words. Cow tippin'. LOL!

It's raining again. Guess today will be spent working on things in the house. Like re-organizing the laundry room, then the storage room. Argh. But we need to do it so that we can get the furnace cleaned and the oil line moved (it currently runs under the concrete, stupid, figured we'd move it before something happens in the middle of winter and we don't have heat). Then of course I need to work on our garb for Coronation. Plus sew some stuff for Aly before she goes away to school in a week! Yikes. Wow that is coming up fast. Jacquie starts school on Monday.

Back to cleaning this office. :-P

Aren't We Cute?

That's me and Frances. She was too funny Thursday evening. I taught her to say Boo-yaa. And being the little drama girl that she is, she then said it in several different voices. I caught some of it on a movie clip, she is too cute, that kid!

The girls, Frances and I met Chris at Cracker Barrell. All Frances would eat was french fries. Cried when I tried to get her to eat a bite of grilled cheese. Real tears. lol I wasn't too concerned about the eating, I knew I could get her to eat something else at home. Oh and when her scoop of ice cream arrived, she snatched the spoon out of Chris' hand and dug in with gusto! She kept busy coloring and playing with the peg game. One of the pegs was smaller than the others and she called it "The Baby" and kept rocking it. :-)

She was overtired by the time we got home and she ate some yogurt. Got real giggly. Then it was bed time routine. Except instead of going to sleep in her bed, she wanted to be held by Laura. I've noticed she wants to cuddle a lot more when we haven't seen each other for a few weeks.

This afternoon Chris, Aly and I spent it hunting through Fabric Place to look for material for making Scythian garb for Coronation. OHMIGAWD I want to slap whoever decided that only Jana and Lucan can wear Red and Gold. LOL! Just kidding. There is soooooo much lovely red, gold, golden, red and gold, oh the list goes on and on of fabric. We'd find something just perfect, but it would be red or gold or both. In the end all I ended up with was black linen. There is a serious lack of nice blue material out there. Which is what we were looking for since we couldn't use red or gold. :-P In the end we were happy to get anything in any color, but nothing really suited what we wanted. I did find some purple material at JoAnn's, but now I'm not sure what to do with it. Chris found this really nice heavy material that looks like a wool and some fake fur for doing a jacket or tunic. I think that I'm going to use the black linen to make a coat and trim it with silver. And make the matching hat. My concern is whether the linen is heavy enough. But at the same time I don't want it too heavy since I'll be inside most of the time that I wear it. Ugh. Sometimes I just hate making garb. :-P

Okay, off to get some groceries - we're out of milk and I must have been told about 20 times today that we need milk. :-P

Ooh La La!

Look what arrived from FedEx while I took Jacquie to buy her books for school! I have a very special friend named Frances. She's 2.5 years old and I had the priviledge of taking care of her when she was little. We still see each other regularly - she's like a niece to me. We do lots of fun things together including shopping and going to McDonalds. And making music. One of her favorite things!

This ring represents the two of us - the emeralds are me and the amethyst is Frances, kinda like I'm hugging her. I'm just so tickled about the ring! And what makes it extra special is that I'll be babysitting her this evening and the ring arrived today. So it's perfect. Everyone can see the ring! :-) I'm going to try to remember my camera today so that I can get some new Frances pics. Maybe even get her mom to take a picture of the two of us together. :-)

I'm avoiding the rest of my Pennsic clean-up activities. I really do need to get those done. And the last two loads of laundry. Especially since I need to do some sewing. I need to fix up my Roman garb, then make some Russian garb. It's coming up with a pattern for the Russian stuff that's got my brain ticking away. As well as the hat. My colors will be blue and black with silver. I plan on doing some of the trim for it on my inkle loom, so that why I need to get the pattern and sewing started fairly soon. Only 37 days left till Coronation. I'm hoping to make Chris an outfit as well, something using the same blue as I will use for the coat, but with a yellow shirt for him maybe? I don't know. Just thinking about things. I did find a cool website with some pictures of Scythian and Hopliltes re-enactment stuff. http://www.4hoplites.com/Scythian%20Photos.htm

Well I better get some lunch, figure out what the girls can make for dinner, do some laundry and put away stuff. Oh joy......

Feeling Better

I was trying to think of what pictures I wanted to post today and I thought of Kim and Howie. Kim is one of my oldest friends - we're known each other since the 7th grade. She hates getting her picture taken, but these are two of my favorite pictures of her and Howie. :-) I know it sounds corny, but they are so good together. I am very happy that Howie came into Kim's life. :-)

The first picture was taken in 2001 and the second one in 2006.

So my eyes seem to be recovered. I'll be calling the contact lens technician later to let her know that I won't be back in. I'm so relieved that I didn't hurt my eyes trying to get those nasty horrible contacts out. :-P

This morning I went back to Curves for the first time this month. It's been little more than three weeks since I last went. It felt good to get back on the machines. I'm hoping to get in three visits this week and four next week. My goal is to be going 4x a week. And I need to be working on upping my steps for my pedometer. I've been only averaging about 50,000-60,000 steps a week for the last few months. Except for Pennsic - I made a goal to do 150,000 steps in 15 days and I actually got in 167,963 steps. Go me!

I've got the after work-out munchies happening, so I'm off to find a little protein to snack on. Maybe a handful of mixed nuts. :-)

I Am Sofa King

we Todd did. Guess what? I didn't lose a contact. It WAS in my eye. I swore I put it in. But then I couldn't see it on my eye. Even took a flashlight to my eye and couldn't see it.

So, here it is, getting later in the evening and my left eye is feeling better, I can even see out of it, but my right eye is still irritated and fuzzy. I'm looking at my eye and lo and behold, there is the contact! So earlier today I was wearing not one but two contacts in my right eye. UGH

I am SO DONE with contacts. Please, everyone, if I ever mention contacts again, remind me what an eye wuss I am and that I can't do it. :-P

Good news is that I re-organized my three filing drawers and things are working better. Even got through the pile of bills that accumulated while we were at Pennsic. Hopefully tomorrow I can get my books and papers all dealt with, then I can work on figuring out how to store all my scrapbooking and scribal stuff. And do laundry. And figure out how I'm going to do my Unicorn project. *sigh* Life isn't easy is it? I wanna go back to Pennsic......

Failed Experiment

Well, the Contact Experiment, failed big time. This morning I was having trouble getting the contacts in so I left them out till this afternoon. Then this afternoon I get them in and my eyes are burning and irritated. Take them out, lose one, clean them, put them back in. Frustrated because it's like wearing glasses that are too weak. Last an hour, then decide to take them out. I planned on calling the contact lady in the morning and trying out the contacts for astigmatism. Well, the right contact was a little difficult to get out. The left one, damn near impossible. I was crying it hurt so much and I couldn't get it out and the eye doctor's office was closed. Finally get it out and now I can't see out of either eye properly. I've been putting in drops and trying to rest my eyes. I'm hoping that come the morning they will be back to normal, otherwise I'm off to the optometrist office to see if I did any damage to my eyes. Not fun or fair.

I hope there isn;t too many typos in this, because I can;'t read the screen to check for them. lol This is not a good day for Laura.

I had plans for starting on re-organizing my office. It's cluttered and it's not working out the way it's set-up. I need a good filing cabinet, I think. What I have isn't working very well. Wish I had money because I would have this office custom built to suit my needs. But I don't, so I need to find ways to make it work with what I have. Hopefully once Chris finishes the shelves in the closet that will help. In the meantime, I need to get this desk cleared off, but I can't see.

Yup, I'm a PMS-ing whiner. And I miss my friends and I miss Pennsic and I'm lonely.

Contacts - Not with Aliens, Just My Eyes

Okay, so I go and try out contacts. After a dozen tries I'm able to put the contacts in myself. Yay me! Unfortunately I have a bit of an astigmatism. So we're trying the regular contacts first. My vision is not as good as it is with glasses. Is it the contacts? Will having the other kind of contacts be better? Is it just that I have a slightly different prescription and my eyes need to adjust? If it's not better in two weeks, then when I go in for the re-chedck, I'll try the contacts for the astigmatism. Cause this is driving me crazy. I don't want contacts bad enough to live with slightly blurry eyes. I'd rather wear glasses.

And speaking of glasses, just bought Aly a new pair. I hate that our insurance company doesn't help out with the cost of glasses. $220 for glasses with anti-glare. And that was with 50% off the lenses. Yikes. Hopefully they'll be in before Aly goes off to school on September 3rd. Only 13 more days! We need to finish going over her packing list and see what she needs for school, yet.

Jacquie is considering going to school full-time starting in January. Which would mean that she can be back on our health insurance. Guess her next step is to start saving money to pay for next semester! :-)

Jacquie is starting the Fall semester next Monday. So, in a short time I will have both my girls in college. Wow. I don't feel old enough for that. lol

Okay, gotta get one of the girls to take a picture of me sans glasses this evening. Will post that tomorrow. Gotta go work on list of things that need to get done this week. Including getting Aly her I.D., Jacquie her school books, etc.

I Am We .....

Todd Did.

Please follow this link to see a cute office prank. :-)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-704985594321203050

What can I say? At times my humour is definitely in the juvenile range! :-D

But now I have to be grown up and go grocery shopping and do the banking. And for my reward, today I am getting fitted for contact lenses! Hopefully I can post a pic of me later with no glasses on! YAY!

I just realized another picture that I forgot to take .... the garden gnome fairy (actually it was two fairies!) visited my pavilion 5 TIMES at War and left me 5 friendly and happy gnomes. :-) I can't believe that I forgot to take a picture of them. I was one very happy person to be so lucky! Next year, I plan on making a little garden outside the pavilion for them to live. :-D

Thank you so much garden gnome fairies!!!!!!!!

I can't believe that Pennsic is over. I had such a great time, a bit busy at times, but it was wonderful. In the picture to the left is a bunch of us crazy people waiting for EK Court to start on Wednesday. I ended up with 181 pictures from War, and I'm mad at myself for not getting more! I only have 3 pictures of Katie, no picture of Jess and Sarah lookng at the camera, no real picture of Michel, and I could go on and on.

Let's see, I think I'll start at the beginning. We had a nice uneventful drive to Pennsic - Chris drove the entire way and I slept on and off, waking to change the audio tapes of Dragon Song and Dragon Singer (we always listen to audio books on long travels, makes it go by much faster!). We arrived to beautiful weather and lots of friends in camp. :-) Turi made these beautiful loungers for Lucan and Jana - great job Turi!!! Figured out where to set up our camp and we went to it. Sunday, we took Chris to the airport and dropped him off. Then it was off to do some shopping and have lunch. I discovered a Lone Star restaurant and we HAD to eat there. Ugh. It was like the Las Vegas Lone Star. I was soooooo looking forward to chicken fajitas. We had a Lone Star in Richmond Hill, Ontario and the fajitas there were to die for. Yummmmmmm! We did have a nice lunch before doing some shopping.

Jacquie and I were spoiled the first week - a fan in the pavilion and watching dvds. :-) Part way through the week I decided to re-arrange the pavilion. Next year there will be a bit more tweaking but I think I like this set-up. My pictures didn't come out very good of the set-up, though. Next year I will have to try for better shots. :-) One night during Peace Week, people in the Haus ordered pizza, then we watched 13th Warrior projected on the side of Oof's viking a-frame tent. Suzanne and Mairgred walked down from the back of beyond to join us for movie night. :-) That was really nice. I saw Suzanne and Katie so much that first week and all I have to show for it are 3 pictures. :-( Oooh, forgot that Suzanne, Jacquie and I went into totown to do some shopping and have lunch. We went to the Goodwill where we found some goodies. Jacquie discovered a set of Italian cruise menus from the early 70s, the covers were Renaissance masterpieces! For $2.99. I snatched that puppy up quick. I gave one to Michel, I plan on framing a few more, then passing out the rest.

Before I knew it, it was Friday. Time to get Chris from the airport. But that was a huge mess and a pain in the arse-icle. Made it back to camp in time for a bit of a visit before we headed off to Quaker Steak and Lube in Cranberry. Suzanne and Andrew's camp (Arx Ventus) joined us there. I think there was probably a good 50 people together all out on the patio. We had a blast!!!! Thank you Jenness for suggesting this get together!!! And let me tell you - fried pickles are fabulous! Yum!

So much of the rest of War passed in a blur! We had dinner with the Rozakii on Sunday, had a meeting then did Cean's initiation. Monday it was back down to Rozakii for Family Dinner Night. That was really nice. Even with the downpours. Because of course that meant Naked Skull Ball across the road in Dalhraidia. :-D Let's see I had also completed two scrolls by Monday early afternoon. Took on a 4th husband, Dugan. He is such a sweetie! I can't really remember what happened on Tuesday. Oh,in the morning we had a Workshop get together. We had a snack in the food court before heading out to do some shopping. That was really nice. Can't say as I really remember anything else happening that day. lol Wednesday was court. Took lots of pictures. Then it was Midnight Madness. Chris bought me some perfume cream, supposedly it's the recipe that was used to make Cleopatra's cream. :-) Oh and Jenness bought us Hussy mugs earlier in the week. Cause we have been HUSSIES this week! Naughty, naughtym, girls. Eilis is going to be sooooo jealous when she hears how many butts we have touched this week. ;-P We've even started writing down the names. :-D And I got some fabulous stuff while shopping - a basket backpack, been wanting one of those for years!, plus a new scribal book and a tea pot. Amber is discontinuing the Newgrange line and I had to buy an over-the-top handle tea pot. Wish I had the money to have gotten a casserole dish as well. :-( Next year on my shopping list is new shoes. Demi and Fygen bought these really nice gillie shoes and now I want a pair! :-)

By Friday, my mind was mush. Started packing in the morning. Spent part of the afternoon in Rozakii. Before I knew it, it was dinner time, then Haus Circle. Had to miss the end of that in order to drive down to Rozakii for Khagan's Court (got there right on time!). By the time we got back to camp, we were tired. Sat up chatting with folk until Jacquie got back from babysitting.

Saturday morning it was a whirlwind of nearly everyone packing and giving hugs goodbye! Today I am so tired and just having a hard time getting going. I think I need a little caffeine, a shower and need to start tackling this unpacking. And writing down notes for next year so that I don't forget what I want to do then! ...........................

Sticky!

Okay, where is this cooler weather we're supposed to be having? It's still hot and humid. I'm so sticky! Yuck.

I've been a busy little beaver already this morning. Been working on two scrolls. I'd like to get them inked in, callig'd and the gold put down before packing it away tonight. I'll paint them at War. Plus there is all the stuff that's left to be packed and a couple of errands to run. The packing should take an hour or so, not too bad. Mostly it's gathering up toiletries, etc and packing food, stuff like that.

I want to write more, but I'm tired (5 hours sleep), and so hot and sticky I can't think right now. I'm sure I'll write again today, maybe in the evening after the trailer and van are packed.

Half-Price Day!!!

Okay, now I KNOW that most of you don't get that reference. I'm a fan of Neopets - an online game place. You get pets and ahve to take care of them, can play games, do all kinds of stuff. You can also buy and sell stuff. And today is half-price day. One of the things I love to do most at Neopets is merchanting. So, half-price day is WONDERFUL! However I am in crunch time for Pennsic. Lots of stuff to do today. And work on a scroll. I must be nuts to be sitting here and hitting refresh waiting for a Neopets store to restock. lol

I'm a little sad, one of my bestest pals is not going to be at War this year. :`-( He'll be in Germany instead, working.

I've been thinking of ways to maximize the space in my office. My friend, Barb, had her office totally re-done and it looks fabulous! The entire room is now covered in wall-to-wall cupboards and shelves. Under the windows are window seats with baskets underneath. Her desk is in one corner. Oh and she has a large island in the middle of the room for doing crafts. It's absolutely fabulous! I'd like to do something similar. Only my office is a LOT smaller. Definitely move the desk into the corner. Make the wall with the window into a built bookshelf thingy with a window seat under the window. It will flow into the corner desk. That with the built in cupboard Chris is doing in the closet, should really make this room function better. But of course this will all have to wait until other things get done. Like a new back door, etc. But one day.....