Stair games

I know one dog that's going to be a little out of sorts in her new house. It's a ranch house, no stairs. One of her favorite games won't be possible anymore. No dropping her toys and rawhide bones down the stairs to see how far they go or how much noise they make! I guess we'll have to find a new game. In the meantime she's making the most of it today. Echo-ey empty house. A big rawhide bone makes a lot of noise! :-D

Virtual crafting

Not only was it very hard to pack my fabric out of sight in boxes, it became pretty evident that it was best to pack every other little crafty thing as well. My original thought was to "save something" to do in a quiet moment during the move. HA. Dream on baby! So all my crafting etc. is now virtual. I get my kicks from reading about what everyone else is doing. :-D Thank you very much!

The Tramp is teaching at another site this week so I'm madly packing all by my lonesome. It's starting to look pretty bare around here. I tackled "my half" of the large shed yesterday. Thank goodness we sorted, re-boxed and shelved everything a few months ago, otherwise it would have taken me days and days! As it is I had a brain burp and had to go back and relabel about a dozen boxes...sigh.

Today I'm trying to finish up packing inside the house. Tomorrow I have to clean this place as best I can for our open house party on Saturday. I wouldn't want folks last memory of us to be associated with chaos and filth! The weather isn't looking wonderful Saturday or Sunday so I think we'll just keep the party on Saturday and clear as much people space in this little house as we can. Now if I can just get all the dog hair from under and behind all the boxes.....

Who....me? What hair???

Don't look at me....I've got so much less hair than her!


(Ha! Don't you believe it!)

Our Ghost

We have a ghost car. Really! The evidence shows up when it rains. The concrete stays white and dry in four spots on the driveway. The rest of the pavement is just as wet as everything else is.

Pretty creepy!

If you touch the concrete you can feel that the light spots are dry and the rest of it is wet. Very weird. I took these photos when we got home the other evening after a rain. The cars were all parked in the street. I'm reasonably sure none of them opened the gates and drove in and out while we weren't looking.

The Tramp insists the spots started showing up after we parked the MRS 2 in that spot. Now we see the ghostly tire marks every time it rains! In fact, now that I think about it, MRS 2 was still in the shop, about 20 miles away, during this particular rain event.

Hmmmmmm.......

Musak????

What a struggle to find Music To Pack By this morning. It's not that the music is packed (it is) it's all in iTunes, but it took a bunch of false starts to discover my mood. Usually somewhat unpleasant work (housework anyone?) is better accompanied by something noisy. So we started with Tarkus. Nope. Set to shuffle but kept having to come back and skip. Grunt.

It turns out that this morning, Tchaikovsky, Barber and Elgar have the music to pack up fabric to. Sigh....I'm just hating hiding all my beautiful fabrics in dark boxes. But, to be honest...since it's the most hands-on I've been with my fabric in a while I guess it's just as well. Opening the boxes at the other end will be a treat. :)

Ooops! Shower time, followed by mammogram time and blood work time, then back to the boxes. Groooooaaaan.

Good thing the sun is shining!

Hee hee hee!!!

The sailor son is home! D-I-L just posted photos of the ship coming in. I'm hoping she will send me copies. She was able to go on board to meet him and tour around! Very cool. I wish I'd been there...sigh.

Playing with the new camera

One of the nice things about being "retired" is the ability to just go and sit outside for a while and soak up the "outsideness" of the day. :-) I have discovered, however, just what the complaints are about when it comes to landscapers. Roaring mowers and blowers can go on for hours! For several days in a row too! And they park their monster trucks and trailers in front of my house...blocking my driveway. Sheesh...go park in front of the house you are working at. Block their driveway.

On the weekend when we were enjoying a little "outside time" between packing boxes I brought out the new camera and snapped a few quick photos. Nothing fancy, just snapping away with it on automatic. I'm still afraid to push any of the million buttons on the thing. :-P

Distance shot: I really enjoy sitting and looking at the trees. There are some nice colorful ones in the cul-de-sac.










Contrast shot: Looking up I can see how nice the Magnolia tree looks against the house and blue sky.










Shady shot: And directly overhead is the huge Pin Oak...dropping junk on us as usual. At least it is pollen and flower season, not acorn season! Acorns HURT.









Self portrait: Hmmmm. Note to self...tiny dog makes thunder thighs look bigger.
















Action shot: Here she comes, laughing all the way. That slobbery tongue ready for action!











Closeup shot: The Tramp pretending there isn't a camera nearby. Gotta love him, he's so predictable.

Sunday morning rant...

I guess super high IQ doesn't necessarily make one smart. I just cannot agree with the tit-for-tat advice in Marilyn vos Savant's Parade Magazine column this Sunday. I think it's downright stupid.

"...I have a not-so-intellectual tactic to retaliate against the companies that send junk mail. I seal their postage-paid envelopes and send them back empty. Plus, I figure I'm supporting the U.S. Postal Service when I do this!"

HUH???? Why is she advocating increasing the volume of "junk mail" (her words) in the system? Each one of those envelopes has to be shipped by truck and plane to get to it's destination and I hate to think of the fossil fuel consumption required to do that. Whether it's one envelope or thousands it doesn't get there by magic, it has to be delivered. Sheesh, what a dumb thing to advocate. Stop the madness at your doorstep. Recycle the envelope...for the good of all.

Ouch!

Oh my aching back! This packing thing is getting old really fast (or could it be that I'm older this time???). I'm not sure what I'm going to do if I can't bend over to put things in boxes...to say nothing of lifting them. Poop. Happily though, I've made some real progress. Today most of our household records have been purged and sorted. I can even see some of my desktop now! :)

Under the piles I even found the punch recipe I've been searching for! Thank goodness, 'cause I wasn't able to find it on the internet again. I wonder how on earth I found it the first time since it wasn't very long ago. Oh well.

Sunday afternoon the Handbell Choir is hosting the reception for the Sanctuary Choir's concert. They hosted our Christmas Concert and Carol Sing reception back in December (aren't we cute in red...LOL) so this is the payback. There will actually be five local choirs performing so it's a big deal. I thought punch would be the easiest since my kitchen is half packed. I even have some of the ingredients so I was going nuts trying to find the recipe! All's well that ends well! :)

We...(The Tramp will say it had nothing to do with him, you know how that goes)...decided today not to pack our kitchen dishes. Luckily the Eldest Daughter wants them so they were easy to dispose of. I took a break this afternoon and hit a couple of stores looking for a cheap and colorful replacement. And I did! Good old Target. I can't find a photo on their website. Darn. Anyway it's a nice bright red. Good Feng Shui for my new kitchen. Ha!

I also spent a few minutes this evening installing the Pentax software so I can start getting the photos off the new camera. One baby step at a time! :)

YAWN. I think I shall crawl off to bed now. Ouch.

The early bird catches the....what????

Sheesh... I'm now "retired". So why am I up at 5 am? Taking the dog for a walk at 5:30? And sitting at my computer waiting to make coffee for The Tramp at 7am?

I'm also sitting here surrounded with my sewing stuff wishing I could take time from packing to just PLAY with my fabric and dolls...sigh. I'll just have to pack like a mad woman and try to save a few hours before moving day for ME! What I will do today (after some packing) is reward myself and go out and get the Quilts and More magazine Heather Bailey's pin cushions are featured in. Heehee!

Oops! Coffee Time.

Grand! (grandchild that is....)

A child that is truly of the digital age.

Imagine! Having your photo and sound of your heartbeat zooming around the world on the internet...even before you are born.

Fantastical!

Retirement

Well this is it.

Yesterday was the last day at the office. How do I feel? Well.... Geez.... Frankly.... I have no idea!!! Today is just a regular Saturday with regular things to do. As usual I'm up early and The Tramp is still sleeping. The dogs are fed and waiting for the next exciting happening in the day. Belle is curled up next to me snoozing and Ngaire is pacing around waiting for her master to wake up. Too early to put her outside in case she starts barking. Just a usual Saturday.

I'm sitting here surrounded by packing boxes and Stuff. Lots of Stuff. How it manages to grow just when you start packing it is a mystery...sigh.

Last weekend we took one last trip to New York City and went to B&H to buy a new camera. What an Amazing place!! Shockingly we came home with TWO!

"Mine" ;-) is complicated so I have to read the manual first. Now I actually have Time for Learning New Things! Very cool. So in between packing boxes, the experiment with photography should be able to commence this week. :-)

Forrest of The Sandbox

This is Forrest. Not too awfully bad for a first try. It's hard to see in the photos how blotchy she is and how much color got wiped on her hands by mistake. But it was fun! Next time I'll consider painting the pieces before I sew them together..... maybe.... dunno....



At first her face just looked dirty. LOL But more color saved it.



Yikes. Not a good photo, with moving boxes and empty shelves in the background. We packed about 14 boxes of books last weekend and started on the breakables in the dining room. One more week of work and then I'm "retired". *happy dance* Then I can really get down to the packing.



Mom and Dad flew down to North Carolina this week and bought a house! Just like that! Chances are they will get there before we do and we only have 5 more weeks to go! That's my Dad. Moving is his new project and nothing is going to get in his way now. Mom is no slouch either. The latest phone call, a few minutes ago, was to ask if we want their big TV because they are going to get a flat screen for their new la-de-dah niche over the fireplace. The Tramp and I are considering taking bets on what will be the next item they call about. :-)

So Forrest is now waiting for her couture. Hmmmmm. At this point I'm not buying new stuff. I want to but I'm being strong! Arrrgghhh! So I settled for cheesecloth from the supermarket and we'll see what we can do with it.