Category: Daily Life

For the last photo in this week’s series, we’ve jumped to the 1980s. I wore my hair like this for a long, long time and it never occurred to me except in retrospect that it was a mullet. Ah well, live and learn.

Yesterday I finished the last of my gift shopping, so I’ll be ready for all of my holiday celebrations as soon as I make one last trip to the grocery store. My cooking assignments for Christmas day: chocolate cake roll with peppermint ice cream filling, pomegranate/mandarin orange salsa, dinner rolls and maybe cranberry sauce.

You might have noticed that I recently moved all my recipes to the upper right navigation area. Next year (maybe as early as next week if I’m feeling really motivated), I’m going to create another blog devoted entirely to recipes and cooking. It will be part of this same account, but with a different look and feel and plenty of photos.

The focus will be largely on recipes collected by my grandmother that encompass five generations of my family, but I’ll also share recipes that I’ve created or gotten from friends.

Have a delightful holiday, and to quote Ze Frank from yesterday’s episode of "the show," "If you get overwhelmed by family or overwhelmed because you’re celebrating by yourself this year, just breathe…it’ll all be back to normal soon enough."

I’m starting my series of old Christmas photos with one that was taken long before I was born. This is my uncle and mother visiting Santa sometime in the late ’40s or early ’50s. My uncle looks like he’s putting in his bid for a Red Ryder BB Gun.

I didn’t find a lot of black and white holiday photos in my collection, even though I ended up with the lion’s share of the family photos when my mother and grandmother passed away.

I’m going to look through my old scrapbooks and baby book to see what I else can come up with for later this week. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I can dig up a photo of me at age seven or eight dressed as an elf.

It’s 7:33 a.m. and I’m sitting in my home office in my pajamas surfing my Bloglines feeds and listening to iTunes in shuffle mode (now playing: "Dream Warriors" by Dokken). If it weren’t for my oil change appointment at 8:45, I wouldn’t have to get dressed until midday.

Today I’m taking my last full vacation day of the year. As much as I’d like to take it easy, I have a bazillion things on my schedule, including the aforementioned oil change which will inevitably take far longer than I’d like, lunch with a friend, another visit to the vet for my cat, housecleaning, and holiday decorating.

My niece is spending the night tonight and staying all day tomorrow so we can bake cookies and go Christmas shopping. Our guest room is still packed to the metaphorical rafters with drums, tubs of office junk, large empty boxes, and miscellaneous music gear, so she’s going to have to sleep in my dressing room. Fortunately, six-year-olds are small.

I’m ridiculously close to being finished with my holiday shopping. I really need to get the tree up and wrap everything before I forget where I put some of my purchases. There are a few online orders that probably won’t make it here in time, but I’m sure the recipients won’t mind.

Next week: holiday photos from my youth (assuming I can find the right USB cable for my scanner).

Have a great weekend!

I have to get out of the house early today to take Friday back to the vet, so here are some of the sites I’ve thought were worthy of del.icio.us bookmarking in the past week or so:

• WishRadar – It may be a little too late for this holiday season, but I like the idea of a more wide-ranging wishlist than Amazon has to offer.
• Shop NOLA – Links to various stores in New Orleans selling arts, jewelry, clothing, candy and books.
• Are you a fan of scorching hot blues guitar? Then you’ll probably like Eddie "Devil Boy" Turner. His site is chock-full of downloadable tracks.
• If I weren’t still working on rolls of wrapping paper from 5+ years ago, I’d consider buying some of the beautiful papers at Funnel Paper Goods.
• Ever wonder what your pet’s food tastes like? This blogger can tell you.
• Speaking of pet food, I bought a variety pack of canned cat food from Merrick (warning: audio on site), on Flippy’s recommendation. With flavors like Grammy’s Chicken Pot Pie, Thanksgiving Dinner, New England Boil and California Roll, it was an instant hit with my somewhat picky old cat, Kato. It even looks and smells good when you open the can. What other cat food fits that description? Too bad it costs twice as much as his usual food, but when you’re dealing with a 17-year-old cat, I guess it’s worth it just to keep his weight up.

Was that random enough for you? Have a lovely Thursday!

There’s nothing like online shopping to ensure that every evening includes a game of "What’s in the box?" Yesterday’s shipment threw me for a loop because I didn’t recognize the sender. It turns out it was a prize pack I won at Popbytes a couple of weeks ago for answering a trivia question. Woohoo!

Other purchases of late (without giving away any Christmas secrets), include the Coat of Arms and There/They’re/Their shirts from Threadless and the "Superhappy" notecards from blogger and artist Joolie of Oh, My Stars and Garters. Both of those shipments were "gifts for myself."

If you’re looking for good shopping ideas, Sars of Tomato Nation posted a good Gift Guide yesterday. Mrs. Kennedy of Fussy has a new store associated with her site as well. Thanks, Internet, for helping me shop this year!

I spent yesterday evening helping my husband go through the mounds of stuff he’s collected in the studio since the mid-’90s. It was a long overdue process.

He was inclined to just throw away everything for which he does not have an immediate use, including an upsetting number of books. I’m of the "never throw a book away" school of thought, although I had to admit that some of his old MCSE study guides, etc., were too outdated to keep. I retrieved the other books one by one for later Bookcrossing. Someone may want them!

There were other things that I couldn’t let him pitch without at least trying to sell them on Ebay: a "learn to play the guitar" booklet from 1974, an 8" x 10" glossy of Joe Montana and Dan Marino in their respective uniforms of the time, a 1982-1987 import car repair CD-ROM…all potentially valuable to the right buyers. I squirreled away a good sized pile of Ebay stuff that I’ll start listing in my spare time later this week.

What about my own stuff? Well, I haven’t tackled that yet. There’s some Ebay and/or garage sale fodder there, too. Surely someone will want the hand-carved M*A*S*H movie symbol: a hand making a peace sign atop high-heeled legs. Sure, the person who carved it did the legs backwards, but it’s the thought that counts! The office has always been full of quirky stuff like that, but I think it’s time we pared down the collection.

The day I can look around our office and studio and see only the equipment and furnishings needed to make them function will be a red letter day indeed. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it’ll happen by the end of the year.

I’m posting especially late because we’ve been getting settled in the new office and studio this evening. The downstairs laptop is out of the picture until I go to the Apple store in the morning to replace the power cord, which has gotten dangerously frayed.

While my husband got my desktop Mac to communicate with our wireless router, I put together a set of black, powder-coated steel shelves on which he can display his collection of snare drums. There was much cursing involved (on my end, that is; hubby had no trouble getting my computer up and running).

I’m now sitting at my desk with dark windows on either side of me and the studio behind me. I have iTunes on shuffle and I don’t recognize the song that’s playing right now, but it sounds good now that I’ve fixed a little wiring problem with the speakers.

I still have two enormous tubs of paperwork and miscellaneous gadgetry to sort through, but that can wait until tomorrow. Okay, now there’s a song I recognize: "What is Hip?" by Tower of Power.

That’s enough stream-of-consciousness posting. It’s past my bedtime, I’m tired, and the buzz of satisfaction from building the shelves won’t be enough to keep me going for much longer.

Have a great weekend and I’ll resume my regular Monday through Friday posting next week.

I’m being sarcastic about the "wonderland" thing, but it is getting decidedly wintry around here. It rained slushy ice pellets all day yesterday and we’re expecting a big snowstorm later today.

I have to admit that I kind of like the snow when it’s not actually storming. It’s pretty when the sun shines on a clean expanse of white, glittery snow. However, I am not particularly fond of trying to drive to work when there’s ice all over the roads.

I didn’t have any trouble getting home from work last night, probably because I waited until after five o’clock to leave the office. I think the people who got nervous and left early probably encountered the most traffic and delays. By the time I left, most of the early birds were out of the way and I made it to the highway fairly quickly.

Because I probably won’t be so lucky today, I bought the ingredients for minestrone to start in the crockpot for tonight’s dinner. I also picked up a package of bacon in case we end up eating breakfast at home. If we’re stuck here for lunch, well, I guess we’ll find out whether the leftover Thanksgiving turkey is still good.

I’m going to go get the soup started and try to decide whether it’s practical to try to get to the office today. Wish me luck!

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Today’s the final day of NaBloPoMo and it’s been a lot of fun. The extra two days of posting per week weren’t too big of a deal for me, and I really enjoyed reading all of the blogs I found in the randomizer. Thanks for putting this together, Mrs. Kennedy!

On Black Friday, I spent lots of money, but it was all at Home Depot (or as Monkey refers to it, Home Despot) and Lowe’s on behalf of our studio remodeling endeavor. It was great: no lines, no crowds, no one violating my personal space. I also sat on my couch with the laptop (with some violation of my personal space by the cats) and ordered tile samples for a potential bathroom remodeling project, and a new light fixture for our kitchen.

That’s how I’m planning to handle all of my Christmas shopping as well. My goal is to do about 90% of my shopping online and the other 10% at Target and Costco (notice there’s no mention of going to a mall). I have a pretty good idea of what I’m getting for everyone, so it should be easy to accomplish.

My Kaboodle lists are really going to help. It’s nice to be able to bookmark cool sites with a photo and a description so I can remember what they were. You’re welcome to browse my collections for shopping ideas: Cool T-Shirts, Handcrafted Jewelry, Paper Goods, Eclectic Home Decor, and Kid and Baby Gifts.

I’ve been shopping online almost as long as I’ve been online (the other day I ran across a receipt from an online order I placed in 1996). Every year it gets more and more convenient and I get less and less interested in fighting the crowds to shop in the brick-and-mortar world.

What’s your planned online/offline shopping ratio this year? Or are you foregoing gift-giving altogether?

I have come to loathe "compact car" spaces in parking lots for a variety of reasons, including:

• Everyone seems to think their car is "compact." Yes, your Hummer H3 is a lot smaller than the other two models, but that doesn’t mean you can squeeze it into a six-foot-wide space.
• The spaces don’t take into account that you have to get in and out of your car once you’re parked. I’ve had to force myself to stop caring about all the door dings regularly inflicted upon my car.
• There’s no room for error. Parking even a little to one side or, heaven forbid, crookedly, is a recipe for disaster.

I drive a very small car, a Honda Insight hybrid that’s less than 5-and-a-half feet wide. Even I can’t comfortably park in many compact car spaces, particularly if someone is already parked in a neighboring spot.

Yesterday I parked in a compact car spot and returned later to find that the car to my left was way over the dividing line and just inches from mine. Not only did I have to crawl in via the passenger door, but I also had to fold in my side mirror to keep from hitting the other car’s mirror as I backed out. I can’t imagine someone getting out of his or her car, noting that parking job and thinking, "Looks good!"

It’s almost as bad as when I used to parallel park every day when I was in college. Within one semester, paint on the edges of both my bumpers had been scraped off by other drivers.

I don’t know that there’s any good solution at hand, but I guess I’ll just have to start making a point of parking away from other people or in the larger spots. Grumble, grumble.