Ginger's Blog

Odd things that people leave behind....

2009-10-21T07:06:00.000-07:00

Rarely does anyone leave things behind that aren't trash. They bring the trash here, pay storage on it and then leave it for me to clean up. I often wonder why they took the time to pack it up in the first place if they didn't want it. Anyway... every once in a while things are left behind that make you wonder about the renter. This is one of them.

My office has been taken over by Lady Bugs. Their evil orange, biting cousins anyway.
I sucked them up with the vacuum. I know that isn't going to kill them...but I couldn't have gotten to them otherwise, they were on the ceiling!

The End

2009-10-15T06:27:00.001-07:00

Finally, yesterday the customer comes into my office and wants a pad of paper and pen. She wants to write down her new gate code (see yesterdays entry for the full story) and I take it and read it back to her to ensure that I am reading it correctly, since it is written in her handwriting. She goes off on me "Great! Now I have to come up with a new one, you said it outloud!" I mention that we are the only two people in the office but somehow I have forgotten that our cell phones are bugged and now "they" have the number. Opps my bad! Rest assured I never spoke the second number she wrote down out loud! I know it's sad and this person probably needs to be on some meds, but if I don't see the humor in it, I will be the next one on meds!

I'm Stuck and I Can't Get Out

2009-10-14T06:25:00.000-07:00

Okay....before telling you of my latest and great adventure in the world of storage, I will start out by telling you about Elise getting another award at school. My friends and I are joking now that they are just starting to make stuff up and grasp at reasons to reward her HA HA! She won Good Character again. I have a wall in the k I know I'm biased but she's a pretty cool kid :)

All by it's self.....found this laying on the ground in the facility.

A couple of years ago, Elise picked up a Wheel Bug. Very nasty looking thing. Not sure if I had ever even seen one before and after looking at it, not sure why she would want to touch it. She just isn't chicken like Mom. Anyway, it stabbed her in the hand and injected the stuff it uses to turn its prey to mush so it can suck out it's guts. Her hand took nearly 4 months to completely heal and she still has the scar. I walked out the door the other day and for the first time since, I saw one sitting right on the key pad stand.

This morning I got a phone call from a frantic customer who had followed someone in nearly two hours ago. She asked me if the gate opens before 6 am and I told her no that the hours of access are between 6am and 9pm. So I ask her her name and she tells me and I ask her at which facility is she stuck. What she has done, although there is a Kiosk at which she can pay right outside my office door, she has chosen to follow someone in. After sitting here two hours now she cannot get back out. She gives me her credit card information and I take it and tell her I will be at the office in just a little bit. Once again she goes into a high pitched squeal asking me to “Run the number, run the number now!” I tell her I am in the car I can't do that. I am on my way there right now and will “Run the number” the moment I get in. By the way, during the time I am taking her number over the phone, she tells me there is a guy there who is messing with her phone signal. I never think to ask her who this man is that there messing with her phone signal since she is suppose to be in my facility and by herself.

About 5 minutes later, I arrive at my office and go in and immediately key in her credit card information, giving her access to the doors. She simply sits in her car. She has seen me pull in and go into the office but she isn't attempting to open the gate. I go out and she will only roll the window down ½ inch and the windows are tinted. She tell me she is busy and will come talk to me in the office later. AAAUUUHHHH! I'd really rather you didn't.

I come back in and when she called to tell me how she had been locked in for two hours, the guy she followed in while he was leaving had left at 8:35am, her phone call is at 8:36!!! One minute now is = to two hours! She was asking me when the gate opens so she could be sure that two hours was a correct amount of time that she COULD have been in there waiting. On top of this she has just attempted to key in every number know to man and none of them are her actual access code. How was she planning to come in and out anyway, even if her bill had been paid if she has no clue what her access code is!

She calls me with her number blocked so I can't just dial her right back, so I call her after looking her number up in the system and she immediately tells me she isn't “*&$%^” and hangs up. I just finished talking to her on the phone and it was her. Geeeeze oh Pete! First contact of the day! I hope it's not an Omen.

BTW: she sat in the car for exactly 36 minutes before getting our of her car and even attempting to use her number on the door to get into her storage. This from the frantic customer who had sat here for 2 hours already waiting....

This customer has not left yet and is still out there going through her stuff. I am hoping she will get too busy to come in before I have to leave at 1pm. Its only 10:56 right now so I doubt I will get so lucky. She wants to change her gate code once again and probably go over all the ways she knows she got broken into.

Happy Birthday to Me!

2009-09-07T17:59:00.000-07:00

September 6th was my Birthday and India got me a fire pit. I was very happy to have one as I had been saving up the wood for a very long time and had several wood piles going cut to the perfect length :) It's all burning quite nicely!

My ferns are doing quite nicely as well. I am going to try to save them over the winter and see if I can't "bring them back to life" again in the Spring.

Order of The Sleepless Knights

2009-09-07T17:54:00.000-07:00

Went out Friday night to the Order of the Sleepless Knights event at Denny's here in Terre Haute. Met up with a bunch of Geocachers and didn't get home until late.

Didn't eat a thing while I was there and just had a couple of cups of coffee. :) I was good as usual.

Ryves Hall Youth Center Invaded by Nerds

2009-09-03T18:41:00.000-07:00

A group of nerds arrived this evening at approximately 6PM and exposed the children to things that should the dare to get involved in would guarantee them a life of expanding waistlines and virginity.

All this under the guise of teaching them about Amateur Radio. Muhhhhhaaahhaaahhaa!

And now another installment of.....

2009-09-03T14:23:00.000-07:00

"Look what I found in my lot today."

I should have been doing this all along. There have been some really cool items over the past five years and alas some are now lost forever.

I should also keep a running tally of the money (change) found in the parking lot too. It would eventually add up to a decent amount I think.

The things I find at work.....

2009-08-29T17:53:00.000-07:00

On Friday I found this little guy just outside the gate at my North office. At first I thought it was a nail...as I was picking it up it appeared to be a nail that had a bunch of messy solder on it.

After I picked it up I realized that it was a little gnome. He appears to have been run over a few hundred times but still very easy to see what he is once you have it in your hand.

I have no idea what he was made for. Maybe he was just a bubble gum machine toy or maybe he was part of some game.

I got bored...

2009-08-26T19:17:00.000-07:00

I decided to change my hair AGAIN!

2009-08-26T16:13:00.001-07:00

Got the plants watered when I got home and had a veggie delight for dinner. I haven't had a slice of bread for over a month and a half now I think. :) Oh well. it hit the spot.

I know it's probably just a phase I'm going through or rejection bringing it on, but I have been feeling so gross, fat and ugly lately. Perhaps, along with losing weight I need to work on other parts of me too, I know I dress so drab. My shirts are two sizes too big all the time and I wear big baggy shorts. I hate it though when you see some fat chick wearing skin tight pants and every fat bulge and tummy fold shows. I think it would look better if you DIDN'T see all that. :) I just need to work on my selfconfidence. :(

2009-08-25T16:14:00.000-07:00

Here is what I did when I got home tonight!

Blah......

2009-08-24T18:59:00.000-07:00

Feeling a little blah. Perhaps it's due to being off my normal schedule or maybe it's something else. Either way....I hope I feel better in a few days. I think I had my hopes up really high about things and then it sort of fizzled and it was a bit of a disappointment.

Here is my obligatory picture...I saw a new report and it was about the weather on google and next to it was a tiny picture that I thought was like a "Grudge" the movie type of evil face. Very ominous....and I thought what does that have to do with the weather and I clicked on it...when the bigger picture came up the little red lines weren't veins any more and turned out to be the United States outlines.

Spooky!

Somehow, I feel the winds of change but not sure where they are coming from or going. Not sure what it is that's changing if anything. Just need to get out of this rut somehow.

2009-08-19T08:35:00.000-07:00

Lots of pictures to share this time. Oh and 19.2 pounds thus far. I figure another 47 pounds or so and I'll be happy ;) Actually I'm just glad I've knocked off this near 20 pounds with such little effort. I am pretty good at taking it off, it's the long term reduced calorie thing that I never seemed to get the hang of. Especially being around people that eat around the clock constantly and it seems like every organization that I belong to plans alot of things around food as well.

Tomarrow there is a big cook out with the Amateur Radio Group and I have decided to just make a big O' crock pot full of this diet Turkey Casserole that I like so very much and I'll simply have that for dinner instead.

I don't know what's been bringing them out at work so much lately. Perhaps, they are like locust and have a cycle in which they are more prominent some years than others but just this summer alone...I have gotten to see each of these.

I haven't gotten a chance to take a picture of all of them, but this is pretty cool to see these huge moths around work. BTW: I stuck my toe in the one picture to give you an idea of just how large these moths are.

I painted my frontroom a year and a half ago and it is done in southwestern colors. Well only recently did I figure out that I had an old handwoven rug that I have never put on the floor that would work in there perfectly. The colors match the wall trim and curtains just perfectly. Way back in like 1988 or so, I had made some SW style pottery that I also took down, dusted off and put in the frontroom as well. With Kristen living in New Mexico, it's not hard to come up with some really cute items for the frontroom now. :)

2009-08-14T06:55:00.000-07:00

Well its now 15 pounds even that I have lost. However, instead of feeling all energetic, I have been feeling drained and tired. I really need to get a multivitamin just in case that's what it is. Heck it couldn't hurt either way.

I am almost finished reading The Talisman by Peter Straub and Stephen King. This book must be 1000 pages long in actual print HA HA I'm reading it on my Kindle. I am about 85 percent finished with it. Perhaps a little more after last night but it is a neat book. Turns out, I read the second book in this series (not knowing it was a series) and enjoyed it alot. But characters were mentioned briefly and other things that made me interested in knowing how certain things came to be. I ended up getting this book, the first in the series and have really enjoyed it. I normally don't have a "favorite" character in books. I don't know why, I just take the story as a whole and not really focus on the people. I guess because I know they are fictional. However, there is a character in this book called "Wolf" they end up giving him another name for the sake of not drawing even more attention to him by simply calling him "Wolf" but his character is so innocent and brave when it counts. He would fight to the death to "Protect his herd" but is scared beyond rational of cars, noises etc HA HA You really end up liking him alot.

Yesterday, I sat down at my North office to begin "cleaning" up the computer. I want to make a copy of all the graphics etc onto a disk and clean off the desktop of unnecessary files. I also go in and using add/remove software, begin to clean off all the games and unwork related items I've put on the computer over the past 4 years. I intend to defrag and run a scan disk when I'm done. Instead, I miss the Mircrosoft update will start in 30 seconds unless you click postpone in the corner because it's under 4 windows and it's not flashing in the task bar for some reason, and while transferring files to the cdrom I'm burning to, the computer reboots and when it comes back up the D: drive no longer can be found. No reboot, hardware check, drive install and update could bring it back. In addition to that, the main software program that I use to run the facility will also not come up because it requires a cd rom drive be present to run, although it doesn't go there for any reason during it's processes. Go figure! So I work on it for about and hour and end up having to call in a tech and didn't get to leave my office until 8pm! Oh well. The computer is running. I am a little worried though because the tech calls me today and asks if everything is still okay with it. Not in a, I'm just call as a courtesy but in a I think that I might have just "fixed" it for last night and I'm concerned the real problem isn't resolved kind of way. Hmmmm..... Guess I'll find out when I get to the office.

I have now given India tons of money to go buy school clothes and supplies and I have purchased Elise's back to school clothing and supplies. I think they are pretty much ready to go.

Today I will sit down in the office and figure up my bills for the week and see if I have enough to buy groceries. :( No I'm not kidding.

2009-07-31T13:43:00.000-07:00

Well I keep waiting really long times in between posts....grrrrr.

I have gone back on my diet since my last post and have lost 11 pounds so far. I hope to take off ALL my excess weight before next summer. I am getting older and it only makes it harder with each passing year to take it off. I need to lose it now before I get all hunch backed and using a walker. Even thin I won't look hot old... :)

The Illiana Radio Club will be setting up at the America's Night Out at Fairbanks Park. That should be a nice visit with everyone. I am hoping that we have a good turn out and I'll enjoy seeing everyone before the next meeting. We will be sitting up our banner etc and hope to have alot of visitors.

I'll post pictures here when that time has come...I believe its Aug 4th

Lord of the Flys

2009-07-06T08:17:00.000-07:00

I started my week and day off in a very bizarre way. I still don't have a clue as to what brought this one or how they got there but.....

I walked in the door of my office today and the alarm is set and all appears relatively fine. I haven't checked the back doors yet because I notice the bathroom door is closed and the plastic runner in front of it is all crunched up. Like someone slip on the runner and bunched it into the door and then attempted to shut the door on it. I put my hand on the door knob and peek in. The light is on and through the small opening I can see the mirror which has about 50 flys on it! Huge, full grown flys. I was in this office at 1:30 on Friday so there is no way they could have grown that fast. I have no idea how or why they were in there.

At first I thought that perhaps a junkie or homeless person was in there behind the door dead....with that many flies I really expected the worse. I swung the door open and looked in and all was clear. I ended up swatting ALL of them and the ones that escaped out into the office and then swept, washed, disinfected and vacuumed until I felt I had cleaned it all away. YUCK! I have no clue what happened here over the weekend. John was here for a little bit on Saturday but still????

Field Day 2009 Has Come and Gone

2009-07-03T22:06:00.000-07:00

The W9IRC group has had their first Field Day together and it was a blast! I must say that it was my favorite FD of all thus far. Laid back, relaxed and friendly. When visitors showed up, they were talked to. When operators showed up, radio's were graciously turned over for someone else to get a chance. We had people on the air that had either never been on the air as of yet with their licenses or hadn't been for years.

The company as great, the food was great and break down from start to finish lasted a total of 45 minutes. When we were done, there wasn't even a cigarette butt left in the grass!

I think India is trying to kill me.

2009-05-22T06:40:00.000-07:00

I don't mean with a knife or poison or anything like that...that I know of anyway. But with stress. This morning on my drive to work, after we had had our usual "discussion" on why she wasn't going to miss school again today, and why I wouldn't just take her late in the day and why she WAS going to go to work tonight no matter what. I noticed that my arms were hurting. Both of them all the way down both arms and I realized that I was clenching the steering wheel and probably my jaw if I'd stopped to notice with a death grip from stress. If it shows in that way I am sure that it is working on me from the inside out as well.

My oldest daughter, was easy and I believe that youngest one will be too as she has been thus far. But from the beginning of India's life I have known that she would be quite a handful. She was mean and feisty from the very beginning of her life. Don't get me wrong, she is funny, and talented and smart and beautiful but a handful to say the very least and always has been. I think God said "I gave you a simple one the first time and I'll but you a break with the third one too but this middle child the spirit I have assigned her is going to take love and patience. So here she is...do your best."

I know it is a good portion my fault as well. With that mindset and personality I probably should have been less forgiving on her missteps. I need to set some much more "black and white" rules. It's just been a very rough year with her and I don't see any light yet at the end of the tunnel. I am so worried about her future, I can't see her getting herself up to go to college each day, studying and holding herself accountable. She HAS the ability to do all this and more but whether she will choose to do so is what is scaring me. She likes to have money and things and if she just works a register somewhere without a degree for the rest of her life, unless she refocuses her priorities totally, she is not going to be a happy girl.

On a happy note, my MAD Bathroom Companion came yesterday in the mail. I have been content reading it. It's so full of total silliness and NOT serious things that I find it relaxing to goof off reading it :) I've pretty much caught everything up here at the South office so I just might kick back and read for a bit when I'm done here. When I get to the North office I have some collections work to do and will most likely stay too busy to do much else.

I plugged in the card from the camera and found that I hadn't actually taken a single picture since the last bunch you can see in the last post.

We had a great IRC meeting last night and darn if I didn't neglect to take some pictures there too. I really should have too because we had an impromptu cookout during the meeting and everyone was full and had fun. I was very pleased with the turnout and the meeting was extremely productive. We were making a ton of plan for Field Day and much was talked about and done.

That'll do pig, that'll do.

2009-05-18T08:12:00.000-07:00

I have been so neglectful about posting to the blog. It's not that I don't have a ton of things to write about, it's because I HAVE so many things to talk about that there isn't much time in between them.

First of....I got a Kindle 2 and I love it. I have ready sooooo many more books then I did before because no matter where I am I have it right there in my purse with me and I don't have to lug around 3 or 4 books or have one here and one there incase I forgot to bring a book with me. I have found myself having to wait outside of places for the kids to finish with this or that and the Kindle has been great. It has a very basic browser in it and other than looking up basic information, I have found that it really isn't all that cool. It plays MP3's too which was cool for a while to have some classical music there to read to but it takes up a lot of room so I took those offr. But for the purpose of a book reader and the ease of getting the next book you want in a matter of seconds....it is wonderful. I almost go into withdrawal when I don't have it with me.

I have the entire computer room done now except the floor. It is going to be painted with a dutch boy paint that appears to be quite durable. We painted the desk top in the stuff and have drug heavy equipment back and forth across it and not a single scratch so I think the floor is going to hold up quite nicely. It is a pain for floors and decks and porches. It seems to have been made to withstand alot of traffic. Also when you leave a glass there and the glass sweats all over and leaves a big pool. It wipes right up without a trace. So it is a good sealant as well.

I got the entire back yard privacy fence up. I left the ends open as I have heard that that makes you vulnerable to robberies if you close your yard in in such a way that no one can see whats going on. It has been so pleasant to sit out on the deck.
The fence needs to be sprayed with a clear sealant, the deck needs to be washed and power washed and painted and the front porch needs cleaned up and repainted as well. In addition, the first and probably most pending job is the garden. It needs the weeks taken out of it and it tilled so I can get the garden growing. I guess I am going to be busy for a bit.

2009-05-11T09:29:00.001-07:00

2009-03-07T19:08:00.000-08:00

I finally broke down (no pun intended) and went to the doctor on Wed. She packed me up with some pretty hefty drugs. I am hoping that these will get me past the worse of the panic attacks and that soon I will be back to "normal".

The dogs are doing much better now. Molly's little tear will scar but then again she isn't trying to get into a beauty contest and the Baby has a hole in her gut about an inch in diamater but it looks good around the edges and she is draining nicely now without the pockets of built up fluids. Once these fluids stop running the hole, if kept relatively clean, should heal from the inside out.

We got new neighbors on the 27th of Feb. Since they moved in my dog (the Rottweiller) has decided that she hates the little girl that lives next door. She was scaring the crap out of me the way she behaved each time the girl was outside. I could always tell if they had let her out while the dogs were out by thier reactions. She has poked at broom in a threatening way towards the dogs through the fence and yelled at them. She also would stand in her yard and make faces at the dogs through the fence and make sounds at them...you know like barking or growling noises Just really intimidating things. Once when I was trying to explain that she needed to stay back from the fence and not poke things through to her mother that was standing there, the little girl began to climb over the fence into my yard with the dogs going absolutely crazy in the back ground. Well, spur of the moment, but to save my nerves...... behold.

Problem solves. I always wanted a privacy fence anyway >:)

This kitty wants a Kindle2.
It should have been obvious!

2009-02-28T11:49:00.000-08:00

OMG!!!! I am having such a rough time with these dogs. Neither one of them will leave their incisions alone and it ended up costing me another $100.00 today to take them both back in and have stitchs put in Molly again. She had laid open a spot 3 inches wide on her tummy. Luckily the under side was healed and her guts didn't come flying out. This time they put stainless steel stitches in but she was numb when she got back and started yanking at the stitches!!!! She was pulling her skin up like 4 inches off her tummy! So now it has to come to this. They are both ticked at me.

This is probably what they want to do to me.

An amazing thing happened the other day. Nothing brought it on. I was pretty sure that it was a sign of some major rift in the Matrix. I walked into the kitchen and although she never turned around she said..."If you insist on taking pictures of me, I'll quit." I put the camera away. I didn't want to risk it.

My work day went fast and I got two new rentals at the South location. I think a 10 x 30 is in the works North but they haven't called me back yet. They will probably the moment I kick my shoes off and decide to take it easy for the rest of the day. It never fails. :)

2009-02-25T10:17:00.000-08:00

Busy. One word to decribe my life right now and that's busy.

The dogs have gone to the Vet. Molly was pretty routine. Spayed and had her nail clipped because at 7 bucks, I'd paid twice that to not hog tie and wrestler her to get it done. :) Baby was spayed too and had her nails clipped. However, she had mammary gland cancer. It had not spread to her groin lymph nodes yet, which is apparently the first place it goes after the MG's so they did a masectomy on her. The 4 on the right side as well as spaying. She is cut open all down her entire middle from like her "arm pit" front to back. I must admit that I almost feel guilty putting her through this but she will heal and feel better in a few days. She is on antibiotics and pain meds to make her more comfortable. AND most importantly, she she has been spayed and the estrogen will no longer feed the cancer in the glands, she may very well stay cancer free. She had to stay an extra day and seems to be fairing better today than Molly was yesterday. She was still very groggy and had to be helped alot. Today she ran outside when I asked if she wanted out. She is however, being respectful of her "sister" and not playing around and letting her rest.
Here they are right now, laying on Elise's bed where I normally DO NOT let them lay. But I think they are scared right now and feel vulnerable because they are in pain. I am bending the rules and letting them lay in her bed for today. :)

I saw this the other day with I was "Stumbling" the web and thought it was hilarous because this is exactly right for me. I use my cell phone to tell the time more than anything else.

The texting and phone calls might be backwards but the checking the time is right on.
I was sent in an email the following picture of some service men. The exact information is written below the picture it's self. I have it in its original size if you want a copy just email me and ask. wb9zhc@verizon.net

When I was growing up, my Mom, who was a very big woman, would sometimes get up and her entire moo moo would be up her butt crack or a towel or something she might have been sitting on. She would walk around like that and not even notice that it was there until you pointed it out, which just seemed to piss her off so you learned to just let her have a tail and be quiet. However, how can this guy possibly NOT know there is a Mountain Dew bottle up his butt? This has got to be staged but the angle would suggest a sneak phone pic. You never know, he might have put it there on purpose for safe keeping.

And my last thought of the day.... The tune is just so catchy. NO ONE can resist singing along.

Time Keeps on Slippin'.......

2009-02-13T07:42:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I updated the blog. So it's going to be pretty full and random at best. I have included many pictures, now that I remembered to get the card out of the pc :) Enjoy.

1. Elise has joined a dance class.
She is taking both a jazz and ballet class. She says she likes the ballet better but I think that's because the jazz class is faster and she will just need to get used to it not to feel out of sync with everyone else.

2. India did well in school again, except for math. (working on it though)
She got all A's except at mid term she was at a D in algebra. I am hoping for a miracle and she is able to bring that up. Her grade point average will appreciate it. Once again, she has found my camera. I really need to get this kid her own camera that doesn't "suck".

3. Ryves Hall has become the new W9IRC project. We have been busying our selves moving things around and getting ready to operate. There was a station there but it hadn't been manned much. Jim Edwards did what he could but being the director of the place, I can't imagine he had much time to spend there.

4. Oh yeah I never told you about W9IRC
I'll just let you check out the link. :)
5. The dogs are going in to be spayed. Baby (the black and white Spaniel) has some tumors or growths. One is huge and the other one is much smaller. They are under her nipples. I am afraid that she might have cancer. I hope that when they go in to spay her that things don't turn ugly. But I have talked to the girls about it because I want to make sure they are prepared, just in case.

6. I am having a room redone in my home that was ruined by leaks. I will have to rip out the ceiling and I'm going to take out the wall there and remove the window all together. The window just looks over to the side of the neighbors house and really doesn't let that much light in anyway. I will be taking down all the paneling and replacing the dry wall. The ceiling will just be plain drywall and a whole new light fixture. My ex Mike is going to help me like he has with all other projects I've done over the years to this house and I figure its going to cost me about 1,500 bucks. Oh well. It has to be done.

I'll upload pictures of before and after's once I get this started.
7. Dan got a new toy.

8. I am feeling a whole lot better and may be over "them" for a while.
9. My friend Jim McFall passed away but I didn't want to expose myself to possibly stirring up stuff with people who may attend his visitation so I didn't go. :(

Oh I remembered one more thing. I got myself a gift. Its a Virborplex Iambic set of paddles. I love morse code and that's what I use 99.9% of the time when I'm on the Amateur Radio Bands.

So there it is.

2009-01-25T18:16:00.000-08:00

It's 9:17pm and I am out of bed for the first time since a little after noon Saturday. I came home from work on Saturday and laid down. I didn't feel like doing anything. I feel just a little bit better now. I either got the flue or a cold. My fever never got as high as India's but I've been achy and coughing and sneezing and had a sour throat. Just over all crappy feeling.

Elise is watching comedy central right now and the comedians are on and she loves it. She has watched this episode of Jeff Dunham so often that she has it memorized. She was acting this particuliar show out in the car the other day for my friend Jim. She has always had a keep sense of humor and comedy central just fits right in there with it. I have to watch what she see's on there though because late at night it gets pretty rough.

She is actually a very caring and sweet kid but she has gotten a bit of her moms sense of humor and I'm not sure if that's always a good thing or a bad thing. One day I walked through the kitchen and she has drawn a picture on our dry erase board. I looked at it and asked it what it was and she said....
She said it was a retarded person's thought bubble. Wierd, wierd kid.

This is India if you sneak up on her and ask her a question like you just want her to turn around but instead you snap a picuture of her but just before you do it takes to long for you stupid camera to take the picture so she see's the camera and makes a face instead.
Apparently, her fan in the corner is cold because it's wearing a winter hat.

I can't seem to get photo bucket to take any more pictures as it's running way to slow, so you are safe for now......

2009-01-23T06:46:00.000-08:00

I have been so busy the past few days. I finally got India over the flu and she was back at school on Wed. School was closed Friday due to weather and Monday due to MLK Day. So she missed Tuesday just due to being sick. She had a fever of 102.4 off and on the whole time and I pretty much had to keep her full of medicine to keep it from spiking. Knock on wood....no one else in the house has come down with it. I figured the way the little ones are packed into their classrooms that Elise would have come down with something by now.

We have been quite busy with plans for the W9IRC. The Illiana Radio Club is off the ground and we have made quite a few changes and adjustments attempting to make it run smoother. Probably one of the best was making Don Pine our Pres. as he has tons of experience and can bring a lot to the table. He can also challenge you too but in a civil way and I don't mind that either. I so prefer someone with a opinion over someone who is a lemming and blindly follows whatever they are told. I once knew someone who could "change" their opinion on MAJOR things in his life. Religion, political standing etc I mean things that are usually not flip floppy like what your favorite TV show might be. It solely depended upon who his friends were at the time, if he felt like arguing about it with people around him or who he was "with" at the time. Meaning whoever he might be married to or dating. It was amazing to see so many complete turn arounds without any explanation just flip flopped to thinking one total set of rules and then "believing" in something 180 the next. I know it could be just as bad to get someone who is stuck in their ways and won't bend an inch even IF they found that they were wrong just out of stubbornness.

I will be closing up this office early today and go out and get Elise. They rescheduled the half day from last Friday when the weather closed schools to today. I will most likely take off early and go home to get ready for a dinner tonight at my house with a few friends. Then we will play games. I enjoy these nights with friends. However, I volunteered to make a big steak dinner, home made mashed potatoes and gravy with veggies...hmmmmm a bit more work then ordering pizza. :)

2009-01-18T04:02:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to update the site for the past couple of days. It's like 6am and I've been up for over an hour now. I fell asleep earlyish for me so now here I am before the crack of dawn wide awake. I redid two web pages for work and now I can play.

You know I'm bored when I begin to make glitter text :)

On facebook someone posted a picture of their dog. It wasn't someone on my list but one of my friends made a comment on the picture. It was the most adorable picture I have seen in a long time. I love it and wanted to share it.

I had another picture that I wanted to share here. It was a photo that was next to a news story on Google News. I couldn't believe that they actually used the picture. I put it on photobucket to save it for later reference. Today when I went to pull it off the site, they had deleted it and instead there was a note there saying that it wasn't appropriate for the site. I don't think it was THAT bad but yes it was inappropriate for the Google News site. I have to wonder if it was the last day for the person who decided to post it next to the news article. It was a picture of a chastity belt that was being used as a reference picture to an STD news article. I was amazed that it stayed on the site for so long especially since photobucket yanked it from my own photo folders. Weird. It looked like who ever found the image pulled it from some fetish site.

I have been listening to my My Last.fm page. I have been enjoying sitting with the headset on while the rest of the house is sometimes noisy or asleep and just listening to commercial free music that never ends and I don't have to change out the disks. I could always turn on my mp3 player but this is hear and ready and most of the time has the very same songs as on my player anyway. If you haven't tried it yet...Last FM Check it out!

Still no word on the camera.

2009-01-12T19:55:00.000-08:00

I guess they haven't even sent the camera in yet. I hate this waiting game. I'd like to know how much I going to be reamed for.

Today was a kind of a quiet day at work. Lots of phone calls from people with excuses wbhy they couldn't bring in the full payment. Other's had excuses why they couldn't pay at all and others that I just didn't hear from at all and their stuff is going to be on the line for auction if they don't contact me soon. :/

Still had a rough day with the panic attacks. Sure wish I knew what had brought these on in the first place and wish I could rewind. It might not have been just one thing but I do know they are hanging around a bit too long. I have found that the one closest to me is getting impatient with my not being strong and okay. That doesn't actually help...ads to the pile of things that are causing the attacks in the first place when I know that I am making someone sad, uncomforable, pissed etc etc. I can't wait until this passes.

I am playing Scrabble right now and will probably kick the persons butt that I am playing against. I almost always win against him. Not that he doesn't give it a good shot.

My friend Jerry brought over about 20 pounds of beef attached to some ribs and I cut them up and froze them tonight. I was able to get about 14 nice steaks out of it. A decent thickness as well and 7 ribs with tons of meat on them. Those will be so good BBQ'd up. Here is a picture of the bags of steaks in the fridge.

Those steaks on the right are three packages deep...one over to the left with just two in it and the package in the back left corner of this picture is some fat that I trimmed away that I thought the logs might like cooked up for them. :)

Thank you Jerry! We will enjoy them. India LOVES steak by the way and when we go to Ryan's she will make an entire meal of steaks.

2009-01-10T06:48:00.000-08:00

When I look at things, I see them for what the author/artist intended. THEN my mind always seems to wander immediately. The images begin to morph and sometimes that morphing becomes funnier (to me anyway) then the original intention.

Recently, as some of you know, India got accused of breaking a 400.00 camera. The straps of a purse were put over the top of her head from behind. She is oblivious to what's on her head but is aware that one of the straps has gotten caught on her ear piercing. She detaches the object from her ear and drops it back behind her from where it came. Turns out, its a purse with a 400.00 camera in it. Which is now broke. Won't do anything but give an error message on the screen when turned on. Now the mom thinks that India is responsible. Basically because she knows me and not the parents of the other kid who actually put the bag containing the camera over India's head in the first place. She isn't pursuing this kids parents because 1. there are two of them 2. they have money and live in an upscale subdivision. 3. I am an easier target. Well I am not 100% sure yet how I am going to handle this but when I saw this Dilbert strip about a sales man who basically is making a ton of money because his company is FORCING everyone to upgrade. He feels like a pirate, pillaging these people. However, I saw that sack as representing a camera worth about 400.00.

And this one just made me think of all the relationships that I have witnessed over the years from both friends, family and a few I've personally been involved in where one person says all kinds of mean, totally unable to come back from and be the same, type of comments and then expect that the other person can truly just "Strike that from the record"

2009-01-09T16:21:00.000-08:00

Hopefully, I am almost done with all the panic attack and crap I have been going through for about a month now. I tend to take on way too much and I know that I am often viewed as the person who is always in control, in charge, the go to person when you don't know how or want to deal with something. That's me. When people begin to depend and view you like that and you suddenly can't be so strong and it doesn't go away in a few days, they get scared, or pissed, confused and sometimes they can't handle it and they walk away. These are times, when it's wonderful to have friends you can break down and say, "Hey I'm not handling things so well right now." and they are like "What can I do to help with the load." I have MANY friends that will do that for me. In a bizarre way, I guess the only silver lining to have had to go through so much is to know...I have many good friends. I am glad for that and I don't take a single one of you for granted.

I am usually very strong but occasionally, since the health issues with my defibrillator, once or twice a year I go through a hell of a time. This time lasted about a month actually. I am beginning to feel like the weight is being lifted from my chest and I feel like soon I will be okay again. I wish it hadn't lasted so long this time, but there isn't much I can do but get drugged and I more often than not choose to NOT do that.

I have a friend that has cancer and today was their first visit with the new doctor to find out the options for treatment and a biopsy was sent to the lab today as well. I was very happy to be able to be pulled together enough to be able to be there for my friend. A friend who has handled my panic attacks very well over the years.

Random Stuff

2009-01-05T20:25:00.000-08:00

I spent the weekend busting my butt to get a web site up for our company and then found out the boss was on vacation and wouldn't see it until at least the 13th when he gets back :) Oh well, it's done now and I can move onto other challenges. I am sure that there will be a few tweeks he will want done. I'll work on those later.

I have a dentist appointment tmw Right at this very moment, I am cool with it. I don't know how I'll feel about it tmw when the time comes. I think I'll be okay.

I really do..... I should get to bed asap. I spent the evening playing with Elise. I felt so bad that there was one game I got her for Christmas that we hadn't even played with yet. I made sure that I set aside some time to play the game with her. Tmw night she will be staying at her Dad's. I will miss her but I am glad that I got to play with her tonight for a long, long time. It's funny though. No matter how long we play it is never long enough :)

It's a little early but I think I can start thinking about plans for Field Day. I believe that we have several places to choose from and each one has the basic things that we need. Bathrooms, shelter from rain if it gets bad, a huge amount of land and tower access.

2009-01-01T18:33:00.000-08:00

I hope that everyone has a good year. I've had a few moments in mine that I wish I hadn't but for the most part it was a good year. I guess if the scary, odd, bad stuff doesn't happen, then you wouldn't know when the good stuff was there.

This is what happens when you leave your camera in the car where the kids can get a hold of it. I needed to take some pictures later that same day and the batteries died right as I got to the place I needed to shoot pictures of. I was wanting to update our website with new pictures of both facilities.

I found a tumor on my dogs belly this week. I have to take her to the vet. I really can't afford a ton of doctor bills. I can just afford to get us all to the vet and dentist without spending hundred on the dog. I hope nothing is wrong with her and it's just something that will do away.

I got a new night gown with Signal on it. :) Well actually it's just a frog but I'll say it's Signal.

Okay enough of this foolishness. I better get ready for work tmw.

I'm going to head out today.

2008-12-26T09:15:00.000-08:00

I have been having panic attacks for a few weeks now. I've nearly got em whipped again. However, today I really need to get out and go to the grocery store and take the girls to the Mall as India got money for jeans and gift cards that she would like to use.

I can think of a few events that helped trigger this round and those have now passed. I think for good, so I shall venture out and see how I do. I went out a week or so ago and had to turn right back around. It was in Wal-mart right before the Holiday last few days rush but still. I thought I was going to faint right there in the store. Things have calmed down a bit.

2008-12-25T19:12:00.000-08:00

It was a pretty warm day today compared to how awfully cold it's been lately. Dan and I went out to find a cache. It turned out to be frozen under some water and leaves that had accumilated in the hiding spot (it was put back wrong by the last finders) and turned out I couldn't log it after all.

However, when we first got to the spot it appeared that there was no easy way to the cache but down the side of a hill. Back in 2003 on Dec 9th I ended up in the hospital and then suffering from horrible panic attacks due to having set my difibrillator attempting to climb back up a hill very much like the one I saw today. It scared me and I suggested that I just stay in the car. Dan immediatly put the car in gear and wanted to leave and snapped at me about not wanting to do the cache by himself. I felt just awful.

I got out of the car and pretty much figured that even if I set the dang thing off I was going to do that cache no matter what. Come hell or high water, I had a point to make. How stupid is that. I really wish that I didn't have this stupid defibrillator. No one understands how much it hurts when it goes off. I can't explain to anyone how scary it is. I feel like the biggest loser when I can't do the things I used to be able to do. Much like the gingerbread man above, I am damaged goods. :(

On a lighter note, after finding a better route the cache and not finding it (the cache owner called me later to tell me he had to dig it out of hiding) upon getting back to the car, a black dog came racing over to me. Have you ever met one of those really smart dogs that you can tell is trying to talk to you. She would look at me a little frantic and then sniff the ground. She was asking for help...she was lost. I opened the car door and she gort in. We drove around the park a few times and tried to see if she recognized anyone out for a walk. We also drove around the neighboring homes to see if she responded. Once during the ride around the park, I opened the door and she hopped out. There was a woman there with two black dogs and she stood next to me while I asked the woman if the dog might be hers. Of course she wasn't. The dog didn't run to the other dogs and when I asked her to, she got right back into the car.

I noticed a rabies tag on her collar and called the vet. I got an answering machine that told me if there was an emergency I could call this other number. I did and a man answered. I apologized for having to bother him on Christmas Day and explained to him that I had found this beautiful black dog and she was so well behaved and intelligent. He drove into his office and looked the number up and called me back. He said the owners didn't live anywhere near Deming Park where I had found her. We took her to the vets office where he is keeping her until the owners return his call. If they don't call him back in a couple of days, I am going back to get her and she will become mine. :) She was so sweet. So although I didn't find the cache today, I might have found a new friend. :)

2008-12-18T17:39:00.000-08:00

There is a factory in Northern Minnesota

which makes the Tickle Me Elmo toys.

The toy laughs when you tickle it

under the arms.

Well, Lena is hired at The Tickle Me

Elmo factory and she reports for her

first day promptly at 8:00 am.

The next day at 8:45 am there is

a knock at the personnel manager's

door. The foreman throws open the

door and begins to rant about the

new employee. He complains that

she is incredibly slow and the whole

line is backing up, putting the entire

production line behind schedule.
The personnel manager decides

to see this for himself, so the 2

men march down to the factory floor.

When they get there the line is

so backed up that there are Tickle

Me Elmo's all over the factory floor

and they're really beginning to pile

up. At the end of the line stands

Lena surrounded by mountains of

Tickle Me Elmo's. She has a roll

of plush red fabric and a huge

bag of small marbles. The 2 men

watch in amazement as she cuts

a little piece of fabric, wraps it

around two marbles and begins

to carefully sew the little package

between Elmo's legs.

The personnel manager bursts

into laughter. After several

minutes of hysterics he pulls

himself together and approaches Lena .
"I'm sorry," he says to her, barely

able to keep a straight face,

"but I think you misunderstood

the instructions I gave you yesterday..."

'Your job is to give Elmo two test tickles.

2008-12-13T07:16:00.000-08:00

It's chilly in my office. I would simply turn up the heat but the electric bill came in for Nov and it was over 500.00 and I feel bad turning up the heat. John would say otherwise I am sure but I just can't do it.

I went to my sisters house last night and we set up her tree. She has been feeling under the weather and I think she either had a cold or a touch of the flu and her stomach was giving her fits as well. We started out with like a 4 or 5 foot plain fiber optic tree and when we finished her whole living room area was quite pretty. I enjoyed hanging out with her, just she and I, for a few hours and we even watched a little TV together and I showed her a couple of cool video's from my church.

I can now access both facilities from home. I can see who's come and gone through the gate. I can take credit card payments "live" (in other words running the card info at that moment as to not have to hold it and wait until I'm in the office again). I know who's been bad or good. I just found out through a series of phone calls that we have OWNED a piece of software for the past 4 years that I wasn't aware of. I call our management software company to purchase a 499.00 module and it turns out that we have owned it all along. I wasn't in the picture in the very very beginning of the North location. Apparently, during that time some paperwork was never filed to finish activating this particular part of the program. Being we have paid 499.00 bucks for it, I hate that we haven't used it but at the same time I'm glad it was already there and paid for :) All I have to do is file that paperwork!

I have gifts hidden all over the place. Some at home in one closet, some in drawers, others in a really high closet and still yet others at my North office. I will be heading over to the North office when I am done here and taking what I have there home, so I can wrap it.

Rented a move called 88 seconds that I was able to keep for 5 days. Had to return Step Brothers again for the second time without watching it. I plan to watch 88 seconds tonight and I'm wondering if it wouldn't pay to join Net Flix or Block Buster again. I liked BlockBuster but they shut the one down near my home. I never get movies back in time and if I join back into one of these, I won't have to worry about returning the movies on time anymore either. :)

I did this project a little over two years ago for a neice who was wanting to learn morse code. She ended up getting her Technicians license but I am not sure of her progress on the cose. I need to find another project like this to do. Heck I got a plunge router for Christmas and I haven't done half the stuff I meant to with it either :) I was just now thinking of all the really evil things I could do for geocaching with that router.

2008-12-12T22:05:00.000-08:00

I should know better but it's ever the same.

I fought the law and the law won and it just keeps on going.

2008-12-11T21:25:00.001-08:00

I fought all day today with a door controller. Tried reconfiguring etc to never find a solution. It ended up being a problem with the software never being configured in the first place for that particuliar controller. Grrrrr..... so new software is on order and all should be well when it comes in.

I need to figure out what I'm going to do about signs for the doors telling people to not pull an ID-10-t error and actually close the door behind themselves or it defeats the whole point of security on the doors.

I believe tmw I will go out and sweep the climate control units out and they should now be ready to go.

I was hoping to get to go out caching but it seems that is not going to happen this weekend either. I have way to many things to do and very little time to get them done in. I even found out that I scheduled two things on the same day. When my mind isn't idle things feel better.

It would be nice if it were THAT simple.

This is me!

Never seem to get everything done I want.

2008-12-03T17:47:00.000-08:00

I got Elise's Christmas shirt ready. They are having a Christmas program at school on the 11th of December. I'd like for her to look festive. I think she ought to wear the white turtleneck under it but she is going to fight me the whole way on that.

I found a really sweet Advent Calendar for Elise. It is a Littlest Pet Shop calendar. The first day had a LPS Penguin behind the door. Day two had a little stocking cap for him. On the Third was a little flower clip that goes on any of the LPS bobble heads that have big ears..like the rabbits. It's sitting the on the back of the kitchen table.

I found the perfect nerd gift for a friend of mine. The place that I got them from is all out now and as far as I know, they only lastest a few days. I would imagine he will have nerdwood over this.

I am getting ready to place a cache that I will call Knee Deep. In the late Spring, Summer and early Fall the cache will be in weeds that are Knee Deep. However, here is the container. Go ahead say the name of the cache quickly. >:)

It's going to be a log only cache which I rarely ever do. I dremeled a whole in his butt and the tube fit perfectly. Should be very water tight.

That's it for tonight! Going to try to get a little bit more sleep than I have been getting the past few nights. But also want to go to bed in time to read a little Duma Key before I fall asleep.

2008-11-29T18:48:00.000-08:00

Elise got home after spending a couple of days with her dad and we put together the tree. For whatever, reason this seems to take hours to do each year. I think the tree looks more natural then those that just pop up like an umbrella.

We got 700 lights on it and tmw we will put on the decorations. Elise got tired and wanted to go to sleep.

I also decided to try to take a picture of the wreath on the front porch.

I had a great day and got several new rentals today. It was a pretty productive day, all around.

2008-11-26T19:41:00.000-08:00

I actually completed everything on my list. Elise's room needed cleaned and it is now done!

2008-11-26T16:19:00.000-08:00

Well lets see what actually got done....

1. Clean Elise's bedroom.
2. Change out the cd's in the player for Christmas music.
3. Replace the few nails that were removed in the frontroom where I hang my garland every year.
4. Hang up the garland and balls from the windows.
5. Figure out where to put my "bent" during the time the Christmas tree will be up.
6. Drag in all the dusty boxes from the garage and sort out some decorations.
7. If it gets warmer outside I will go out there today and put up lights outside and just not plug them in quite yet.
8. Remind my boss, who just called, that he TOLD me to take the day off :)

Everything in red got done....the biggest and yuckiest job has not yet been completed. It is still early though...only 7:20. I might very well go on in there and get to it.

I played a game of Scrabble with a friend of mine today but he had to stop early due to some emergency at work. I was sooo totally kicking his butt. Good thing he had to go. If you are on Yahoo Messenger and want to play Scrabble...ad me xxgiggerxx .

While I was hanging out light today I had a bit of help....

2008-11-26T05:52:00.000-08:00

Just finished my oatmeal and banana breakfast and now I will have some energy to do some stuff.
What I would like to get completed today.
1. Clean Elise's bedroom.
2. Change out the cd's in the player for Christmas music.
3. Replace the few nails that were removed in the frontroom where I hang my garland every year.
4. Hang up the garland and balls from the windows.
5. Figure out where to put my "bent" during the time the Christmas tree will be up.
6. Drag in all the dusty boxes from the garage and sort out some decorations.
7. If it gets warmer outside I will go out there today and put up lights outside and just not plug them in quite yet.
8. Remind my boss, who just called, that he TOLD me to take the day off :)

Let's see by this evening just how many of these things I actually get done.

7 More People Took The Dip!

2008-11-23T18:22:00.000-08:00

Another 7 people got baptized tonight at church. It was a very very very cool time. I keep thinking "tonight would be a great night for someone new to visit this church. they'd be hooked" and then I think that the next time too :)

FFH is this weeks band of the week for me. Elise has been having me look up everything they have on You Tube since we heard one of thier songs in the car.

I'm having to scan my laptop because I noticed that there was a pop-up screen attempting to come up every time I boot up the system. Some program attempting to conect to the web automatically. I'm sure it's for some "truely remarkable product" or some spy ware.

Can't wait to weigh in tmw to see how much all the starving and working took off over the weekend.

Elise got a beautiful cross necklace that Dan got from a Odessy Posse cache.
Time to think about getting to bed on time.

I need a good screw.

2008-11-22T19:00:00.000-08:00

I still didn't get my new sign on the door because I didn't have a single metal screw in the office. The only metal screws I could find were like 3 inches long and would have come out the backside of the door. So I still have one thing that needs to be done signage wise at the office.

I got my keyboard holder attached to my new desk. It totally sucks to have to have the keyboard way up around my armpits. I have to sit my chair on the lowest setting at work anyway and having the keyboard up on the top of the desk a "pain in the neck" literally.

I'm watching the Hulk right now and funny thing they do a cameo of both of the previous Hulks on the TV he is watching.

I would have liked to have gone caching today but I had to work. The house needs cleaned up tmw and I'm a little behind on that, so I will make an effort to do the whole house tmw. I guess I won't be getting any caching done this weekend. It's been a long time.

2008-11-21T07:12:00.000-08:00

I am in my new office and working on getting my merchandise set up in the new office. I am attempting to comparison shop between these two companies where I'll be purchasing my stuff from.

It's been fairly quiet in this office today except for the fact that the dead beat customers that haven't paid in three or four months are just now beginning to come put of the woodwork again and only now are freaked out about losing their stuff. Pay the bill each month from the beginning and you never have to go there.

Random thought: Shopping carts are fun!

2008-11-20T15:05:00.000-08:00

It's been several months since I've updated the blog. I just got away from it is all.

My work has become alot more work :) with two offices to run now. I love it. My days always went by way to fast the way it was. Now it feels like the days are two hours long. I have gotten tons of stuff done in the past two days though and that's always rewarding.

Lots of fun stuff happening right now. But to some it up:

Lots of Stuff Coming Up

2008-06-18T18:19:00.000-07:00

Our annual Amateur Radio Field Day is coming up. I plan to take a bunch of pictures. We have a very organized event being planned and it seems like everything is coming together.
I have volunteered to bring so much stuff that I will most likely have to make two trips to get it all there. I don't know if I am going to be able to bring a nice soft chair or not. I might settle for cushions on a folding chair before it's all over with.

We are completely full now at work. Each day if one comes open I immediately rent it back out again. I have a sale coming up soon, I think Ill have it the first week of June...that will empty about 4 more units out for me.

Flood waters stand in places for the first time ever...

2008-06-12T08:22:00.001-07:00

Well I guess I can't really say ever....but at least in the past 100 years or so and in some cases perhaps back to the day of the ark. I will make an attempt to post some pictures, however it has been very busy around here as of late. Spent several hours as liaison for the Red Cross and then some time at one of the shelters where people had to stay due to their homes being flooded. Mine, thankfully is fine. I have a few friends that were directly effected by the floods and a few customers are here now because of them as well.

The diet has totally went to the way side so although I really haven't gained anything at all I haven't lost anything either and there is plenty of room for that.

Semi-Busy Day Ends With Shopping

2008-05-12T19:19:00.000-07:00

Today I was partially busy but had some time to finish cleaning a mucky mess out of the bottom of my last remaining storage unit. Which I have reserved for a women who is coming to fill out the paper work at 3:30 PM tmw.

198.4 so a total of 8 pounds in about 3 weeks I think. However, in my journal there is no May 1,2,3,4 like I wasn't dieting. Not too hot on losing the weight. I know 2 pounds a week is great blah blah blah but its pretty hard to stay motivated when you look like a beached whale and it's taking too long to come off.

Progress Soup 2 120
Pudding 2 60
Turkey Breast WW 4 210
Chip 1 45
Granola Bar 2 110
Appple Sauce 1 50
Veggie Delits 6" 4 230
Light Lays 1 75
Ice cream (bad girl) 6 390
23 1290
Still under what I would have to still lose but with more exercise needed and 23 points in the right count on the WW points. So who the hell knows.

I need to get in the shower and get more sleep than yesterday.

Just checking in....

2008-05-10T15:57:00.000-07:00

First get the food crap out of the way....
Pregresso Soup 2 120
Steamed Veggies 4 240
Turkey Dog 4 148
2 Turkey burgers 8 320
bread 2 120
Pretzels 4 220
24 1168

Oppps pudding 2 60 26 1228

Wow that totally sucks. A little heavy on the day.

Dan cut the grass...I ran the weed eater around the yard and also the leaf blower to clean off all the sidewalks. I also got 60 Gladiola bulbs in the ground too. That was the last of the planting that I had. I already got all my seeds planted in the garden last week and the week before that was all the plants.

Tonight I picked up some movies for us to watch. The Golden Compass, The Bee Movie and Stephen Kings Mist. I plan to pretty much veg out in front of the tv tonight.

Weird how just one bunch of pretzels can put on 220 calories to the day. I should have chosen some veggies or something instead of those pretzel sticks.

Well I am out of here. I think that Elise is biting at the bit to get her movies started. Ill check in again later.

Late in the day and finally logging in......

2008-05-09T19:17:00.000-07:00

Had a nice evening. Its been quiet around the house, as Elise is at her sleep over for her Birthday at her dads house (and yes one little girl was able to come over and stay with night) She was apparently having a good time. She will be back sometime on Saturday. India is going to be coming home around midnight. I'll go over and pick India up when she is done at her friends house.

I had today...
Progresso 2 120
Pudding 2 60
Turkey Breast 4 210
Apple Sauce 1 50
Granola Bar 2 110
Grilled Chicken 5.5 249.7
16.5 799.7

I looked up the Grilled Chicken Salad and I am not 100% sure on the numbers but the numbers are so low today it would be fine if they are off a little. I have plenty of room to play today.

I think it will be a pretty good weekend food wise. No big eating social occasions and I am thinking that I am getting really close to 10 pounds thus far. :)

Oh I also got some beautiful flowers today from Kristen for Mothers Day. The card simply said "I love you- Kristen"

Later that day......

2008-05-08T16:26:00.000-07:00

Rained off and on the entire day. Not sure what tmw will be like. I know I am not going to have water for a while.

Todays food was
Progresso Soup 2 120
Pudding 2 60
Broccoli and Cheddar 4 220
Apple Sauce 1 50
Peas 5 280
2 Dogs 4 214
18 944
I was trying to watch The Office and I had to turn it up to watch really loud because the girls were being so LOUD! Just now a commercial came on and it nearly blasted me out of the room :) Yikes.

Its kinda ironic that they have Scrubs and ER on on the same night. I have to run Christina home soon (one of my daughters friends) but The Office is on. I was just watching my dog, the Rottwieller (can't spell it close enough for the stupid computer dictionary to recognize it) watching tv. She seems to like the commercials better than the actual program.

Apparently, we are going to Springhill Wholesale so that our friend Scott can make us some shirts for Dayton. We are getting our calls and our calls and names on them.

Elise's Birthday

2008-05-08T10:27:00.000-07:00

I got home last night and took Elise out shopping after running India to an errand. Thus the Subway for dinner. Elise was able to get everything she had wanted for her Birthday. :) I have been doing okay on money recently especially with there being such a huge credit on my gas bill. The credit is from way back when I it was shut off (during my married and trying to make ends meet with yet another person in the house)over $500.00 had to be paid in order to get it turned back on. Now part of that went as a credit on the account and I have not had to pay a gas bill for two months. I am half tempted to send something anyway so it can keep the credit going for next winter when all hell will break lose on the gas prices. It might cost so much that no one will be able to even heat their homes by next year. I unfortunately have to keep my heat way down already and it's pretty high some months.

I has continued to rain as I thought it might and the gardens and planters are not going to be needing watered for a couple of days. However, the sun coming out sometime soon to help the plants actually grow would be nice. :)

Elise is to go to her dads house over the weekend for a sleep over, well technically to the girlfriends house, and I hope that some of the little girls are actually able to attend. I am sure that if for some reason they can't make it, I will somehow get the blame for this through some conspiracy plot.

It's raining again......

2008-05-07T18:51:00.000-07:00

I won't have to water the plants probably tmw either as it looks like the line of rain storms coming through is going to last perhaps even into tmw. Can't really tell yet.

Went to Subway tonight while I was getting a few things for Elise's Birthday. I found some chips there that were even better than the baked Lays. Soooo.....

Progresso Soup 2 120
Pudding 2 60
Sweet and Sour Chic 3 140
2 Skinny Cow Cones 6 300
6" Veggie Delite 4 230
Light Lays Chips 1 75
Pudding 2 60
20 985

Another very good day on the calorie front. I can't remember off the top of my head ...but I believe that the My Pyramid Gov site had me at like 2000 calories if you exercise 30 to 60 minutes a day and 1800 if you lay around on your ass all day. So I figure at the rate I am going I should be able to lose at least a little every week. I will have to be super careful when I try to do maintainence and switch to anything but starving myself.

So far so good.

2008-05-07T08:59:00.000-07:00

Not a real busy day yet. No food temptations. My friend Roy came over and we talked and talked. After work I plan to take India out for a moment to run an errand and then back home to take Elise and India over to Wal-mart. We are going Birthday shopping for Elise. She has a big day planned at her Dads girlfriends house for her birthday. I will as always send juice and cupcakes to her school to celebrate her birthday and we will have cake and ice cream at home as well. She has several items in mind that she would like for her birthday and hopefully they will be in stock tonight when we go out.

Other than working....not much has taken place yet today. I have had two customers that were supposed to come in and settle up their debts and move out but as of yet...nothing heard from either one.

Alrighty then....

2008-05-06T18:21:00.000-07:00

I did rather well on the food and on top of everything I wasn't a bit hungry.
Preogresso 2 120
Pudding 2 60
Teriyaki Chicken 4 230
Peas 4 280
( I didn't eat all the peas but I am too lazy to measure out the peas I didn't eat)
Dogs w/bread 4 214
16 904

Not bad at all. If I could keep that up all the time, man I would be down to nothing in no time. I wish that there was some kind of pill that could totally kill your appetite and you never get hungry again. :) It would be so cool if you had to actually remind yourself to eat occasionally.

I stopped off and tanned on the way home, took Elise to family night at the book fair at her school, fixed dinner when I got back, washed the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen and then went out to the garage and painted all the trim that goes in the girls room. While I was cooking dinner out on the grill, I watered the flower garden and the garden/garden.

Tomorrow should be another busy day and at work I have had a ton of units rented out. I think I only have 3 units left. It would be really super cool if I rented those out before the end of the week.

Okay I missed a day or two.

2008-05-06T08:50:00.000-07:00

My schedule has been uber busy! I kinda messed up on the diet on Saturday evening for dinner when brauts were cooked and pizza and bread sticks brought in...however, I still lost weight for the week. I just need to not do that because thats not always the case.
A total of 1120 calories and 23 points for Monday. I am in a tiny bit of a hurry so I am not going to take the time to write everything out but there you have it. Dinner was with a guest over and I probably shouldn't have had any chips and found a veggie instead. :) But still under on points/calories so I won't beat myself up over it. 6.8 pounds thus far with yesterday being the one week mark.

I had a medical emergency with my middle daughter. She is the only one that does not have insurance. She was taken to the hospital Saturday night and is doing fine now. However, I have no idea how this is going to turn out. The important thing is that she is doing fine and all is well again for now.

We were out at Cory at the time all this happened and had to rush back to Terre Haute. At the time all our antenna's and radio equipment were everywhere. I believe every thing is back and accounted for. As it ended up getting slit up between three different people. Here are a few of us up and taking a break from the radios. The bands were in terrible shape earlier in the day and we worked for every contact we made!

I might check in again a little later to post todays menu or I might do it first thing tmw morning. Just have to see how busy my schedule is.

Wowser!

2008-05-02T08:40:00.000-07:00

I can't believe how busy we got yesterday. At one point in time there were 8 contracts for new rentals sitting on my desk waiting to be keyed in. They came in so fast in such a short period of time that I couldn't get them keyed in until they all left. I had to just open the gate and leave it open for a bit so people could come and go until I got their numbers keyed in. It was hectic but fun at the same time. I know I am nuts but I find it a challenge to try to keep it all straight and get every bit of information and paperwork that I needed in a friendly effecient but fast manner. I have to say.... I think I did pretty good :)

Hmmm food for yesterday.....
Soup 2 120
Pudding 2 60
Oriental chicken 4 230
Apple Sauce 1 50
Chicken Portobello
sandwhich from Apple bees 7 360
Pudding 2 60
totals 16 880

I think I was too dang busy to worry about food. I ended up eating my Porobello chicken sandwich and fruit in the car on the way to the grocery store. During all of this the kids and Dan are with me at the store and eating snacks and crap in the car...and I was just fine with that. When I got home...I had a sugar free Pudding and that was good enough for me. :)

I have no idea if today is going to be as hectic or not....but if it is it will only make the day go faster. It's already 11:52 and this is the first chance I've had to sit at the computer for a moment and get yesterdays information keyed in. Good thing I'm keeping a log. I am now under 200 but I am not going to post the total again until Monday that way it will have been a week since the last one. :)

As I suspected....

2008-04-30T15:20:00.000-07:00

Another very busy day. I figure by next Monday the kids should pretty much have settled for whatever they are going to do with their storage situations and probably won't be calling much after that. Things will settle back into a steady good weather pace then. It's looking like right now I will have 5 or 4 (<--- India's way of putting it)to sell off around May 20th or so. I hate to do that but one just simply can't pay and the other three have vanished from the face of the earth.

Of course we have to type of the exciting word on what Ginger ate today:
Progresso Rice and Veggie 2 and 120
Apple Sauce 1 and 50
Pudding 2 60
Oriental Chicken 4 230
Hot Dogs 4 148
Mixed Veggies 4 240
Pudding 2 60
Totals 19 908

Very good day and pretty healthy choices. The dogs are 98% fat and made of turkey...so no fatty floor scrap dogs there. Yeah I ate the whole bag of veggies but with 0 fat and all those nutrients I am not going to feel bad about filling up on veggies. :) Very good day....wasn't as active as I probably should have been and unfortunately I don't think I'll get a walk in tonight. I have promised to do some sewing for tonight.

Just have enough time for a quicky!

2008-04-29T17:19:00.000-07:00

Very very busy day and really didn't have a chance to sit down and type anything. Going to stay busy while we are preparing to open the new place. Lot's of new customers and unfortunately because it's the end of the month I have a bunch of move outs too. So lots of cleaning up and sweeping as well. Of course I come in and someone had left some junky ass cabinet laying out in the lot and I had to haul it around. That is one of the many times I wish we had video camera's around there so I could bust who ever did it and call them on it. If they have just moved out, then I can keep the 25.00 security deposit for it.

Todays intake was in a nut shell:
Soup 2 120
Pudding 2 60
Sweet and sour chickent 3 140
apple sauce 1 50
2 turkey burgers 8 320
2 bread 2 140
peas 4 100 probably not but I'm going high because I dont want to dig the package out of the trash
puddin 2 60
Total 24 and 990 calories.

Not a bad day and not counting the yard work I did when I got home, 8683 steps for the short time I had the counter on. Need to work on 10,000 every day.

Nothing much to report. Thursday, Friday and Saturday all have lots of stuff scheduled for the week so I'll be busy.

What a dreary day!

2008-04-28T18:22:00.001-07:00

I went from 206.4 to 200.00 today one week later. I am sure a lot of that has to do with water loss too but I have drank enough iced tea to surely make up for some of that.

It's been extremely busy at work and I am glad for that. I wanted to have as many of those units rented out as possible before the other building was complete. I don't have as many students as I might have thought I would get but I guess in a way that's a good thing because they all leave in August and I have to make up for those that leave. I got a ton of calls today asking for prices from the college bunch. Not sure how many of them I will get tmw.

Today food was.....

Progresso points 2 Cals 160
Chicken Oriental WW 4 230
2 Apple Sauce 2 100
GTP Co. Chick Wrap 7 353.3 This is based on reg ranch and I had fat free ranch on mine
Black Bean 3 180
Fruit Cup (didnt finish) 1 91.2
19 1074.5

Still a little higher than I would like on the calories but the WW watcher points are down there where they belong. I won't sweat it too much as long as it keeps working.

Today while I was at Grand Travers Pie Company for dinner, I asked for their nutritional chart. They didn't seem to have one but did have one printed out from a local guys website. He collects all this data and puts it on his site at
He had a ton of stuff on there and all the local restaurants as well. I had a hard time finding anything on the web for GTP CO.

My arm is feeling a ton better after all the work Sat and Sun and by tmw night I will be ready to get out there and get the rest of the seeds in the ground and get the garden area finished up. With a little bit of tending, it should grow quite well. Much of the dirt out there in that garden spot was as black as coal and very rich looking. It should do well.

The pictures I promised.

2008-04-27T17:54:00.000-07:00

First off....here is a shot of my kitty walking along his newly edged sidewalk...the very sad thing is ...once we cleared off the side walk out front of the house it was obvious how bad of shape it was in. Last year the city came around and marked and replaced all the side walks that it thought were in bad shape. They thought mine were fine apparently and very few people actually got their's replaced on my street. Mostly the ones right off the main street was done. I guess for looks.

Look at all those breaks in the concrete! I replaced my "personal walk" but I think the city should do the ones that everyone uses.

Here is the old gate and fence that was in front of my garden area. It was constantly falling down and actually had two saw horses holding it up and the dogs were constantly getting past the fence/gate. Obviously, not doing it's job anymore. It was long past time to replace it.

After it was removed Dan began work on a new fence.

Working right along...

and the final results. This is one solid gate and the hardware is nice and sturdy this time. I am glad we didn't try to salvage the old ones.

While Dan worked on the new fence and gate. I got to work on this area.

and worked on getting these in the ground.

and here they are getting watered.

As you can see I only got a couple of things done that I wanted to do. I will keep working on the list every night until I get caught up. I have an outing on Monday night. Thursday night at the radio station and Friday night will be a Club meeting night and the Indiana QSO Party/Bison Stampede too on Saturday.

Hopefully, I'll survive it all.

I am just too dang tired!

2008-04-27T15:14:00.000-07:00

I have a ton of pictures of the stuff I'm doing around here right now but I am too tired to pull them off the computer and upload them. I just don't want to mess with them right now. I held a shovel,pick fork,broom,spade etc etc far too much this weekend and even my upper arms are hurting.

Today was a heavy calorie day:

Shredded Wheat 2 160
Milk 1 45
toast w/preserves 1 70

2 turkey burgers 8 320
salad dressing 2 50
apple sauce 1 50
pudding 2 60
2 bread 2 140

broccolli WW meal 4 220
chicken breast 2 60
Total 23 1175

I have worked like a dog though and I am not going to worry about it too awful much.

I have tons of pictures of the work and projects that are going on right now around here but will end up posting them twm. Today I am just too tired.

Busy, busy day.

2008-04-26T20:27:00.000-07:00

Work was relatively quiet. Got in a few payments that were WAY past due and that was great. I got one rental while I was there and later when I got home, we ran an errand, came home and got dinner in the crock pot and the phone rang. It was someone wanting to rent and although we had been closed for a few hours at that point, I ran back to work and rented a unit to them. I didn't mind. For one they probably wouldn't have gotten anyone else to answer the phone and secondly that brings me down to only having 3 left. WOOOT!

After that I came home and started working on my yard. I began working on the side walks out front. Clearing all the grass out of the cracks and cleaning them up and hadn't gotten very far with it was time to grab a bit to eat. While doing that my brother and his wife and daughter came over to visit and drop off some shirts they wanted embroidered. Well after visiting for a little bit, I excused myself because I had a ton of stuff I wanted to get done or as much of it as possible. My brother and his wife come outside and start helping me. Pretty soon Joe (my brother) runs home and gets his power washer and leaf blower and before too long, my yard looked like a professional crew had come in and worked over the yard. It was fantastic. They worked just as hard if not harder than me. I ended up getting the sidewalks all cleared, blown off and then power washed. The flower beds were completely weeded and are prepped for bulbs and flowers. Then Joey rakes everything up and we put away all the tools etc and go in for a nice glass of ice tea. In the meantime, Dan is in the backyard building me a new fence and gate for the front of my garden area that is just gorgeous. He wouldn't let me pay him back for the supplies either. 80 bucks just to build that 10 foot section with gate. Everything is coming together very nicely.

Todays food count: (I know how exciting)
Progresso Soup 2 120
Piece of toast
with rasb.perserves 1 70
Chicken Oriento 4 230
Pudding 2 60
Apple Sauce 1 50
2 Dogs w Buns 4 224
Lemon Lime chicken 3 156
Totals 17 910

NOT bad at all and I felt like I'd eaten like a pig but really I didn't do bad at all. Super busy day as far as exercise. I am so sore right now and so tired, I could just drop. I hope that when I get up in the morning my hands and my arm won't hurt near as much as it does right now. I am thinking that the heating pad on my shoulder tonight while I'm sleeping....might not be a bad idea if I want it to be lose enough to work some more tmw. I have a ton more things I'd really like to accomplish tmw.

I am going to start using my pedometer at work and make myself get in my 10,000 steps or darn close to it each day. It's a little tough when it's raining out but most days it will be fine. If I keep up like I am doing right now...Monday should be a good weigh day. :)

I'm still here

2008-04-26T06:18:00.001-07:00

Did really well yesterday. I need to look something up on the subway menu but here's the day as far as food is concerned:

Progresso 2 120
Apple Sauce 1 50
BBQ Chicken 5 240
Apple Sauce 1 50
Pudding 2 60
6" sweetonion
chicken 7 370
Sun chips 3 140
Totals 21 1030

Okay a little high on the calories probably due to the sandwich mostly but I appear to be down to 201.8 as of this morning. So I believe that from a few days ago and 206.4 Im heading in the right direction anyway. I can't believe Im actually typing that weight for all to see. When I was married I wouldn't even dream of letting him know what my weight was. It was bad enough that he could see me and judge me I wasn't going to give him any ammo.

My crazy neighbor here at work has not yet contacted me again so I think that all is quiet for the time being.

Today I plan to go get some garden plants for the garden area. Tomatoes, cucumbers, zuccinni and some peppers for sure to start with. I don't have a huge area but it would really be nice to have a few fresh veggies through mid summer and fall. I need to sit down here in a moment and figure up the bills and make sure I budget myself. I need to buy supplies also to build a new gate to keep the dogs out. It's really cooled off outside today from near or a little over 80 yesterday to 48 right now. If nothing else it will make working outside not so hot and muggy. I still have that huge pile of mulch to clean up too. It's a little damp right now but should dry out quickly. We had some storms come through last night but the wind and lightening were much worse than the rain. No hail and very little rain...just tons of electrical activity and wind.

Interesting Day - 204.4 from 206.4 water probably

2008-04-24T12:38:00.000-07:00

Tonight we are going out to the radio station. We always go out to eat afterwards. I plan to have a salad or nothing at all and try to eat before we leave the hosue. I am figuring on perhaps cooking a couple of dogs (turkey 2 point jobbies) on the grill before I leave and then a salad with fat free dressing to top it off. Should work out okay.

So todays food intake will be.... showing quanity in () then WW points then calories

Progress Soup 2 120
Apple Sauce 1 50
Turkey Meal 5 240
Ice cream (2) 6 300
5 baked lay chips 1 40
Salad Dressing 0 60
2 turkey dogs 2 74
totals 17 884

Should be an over all pretty good day. Okay 2 icecreams were a bit much but they were Skinny Cow and really good :)

Today I got a call from a person that lives near by the facility who proceeded to tell me they had heard some banging sounds outside and were pretty sure, "Because I've seen enough episodes of CSI and COPS" to know that there might be a person locked in one of the units facing their house and is being help captive and are trying to escape. Well noone from that side of the building were even in today and when I went out to listen...apparently who ever was in there decided they liked it there now and didn't want to be let out (ie they were being very quiet) or they just didn't exist at all except in the head of the very disturbed man next door. He proceeded to tell me not to really trust anything the other neighbor says because he "drinks quiet a bit, but that's neither here nor there." NO SHIT you are nuttier than a fruit cake yourself there buddy and just how is that better or more reliable than the drunk? OH MY! What an interesting day it has been. Oh by the way...I switched lines and went over to talk to the boss on the other line and the man proceeded to walk on over and talk to me in person. My friend Jim says I was too close to the gate and he could have grabbed me but it is always best to keep a position/stance of dominance and not act all meek and scared. Jim was out there with him for a while and he even called Jim a liar when he told him I was on the phone with the boss and would come out in a bit....he didn't get mouthy with me and I was able to defuse the hieghtened hysteria he had worked himself into and get him to hush and go back home relatively quickly. Assuring him that I would keep my eye out for any suspicious behavior. :) Wowser!

Okay...what I ate today

2008-04-23T16:53:00.000-07:00

Well it was a bit more than I wanted to:

Points Calories

Progresso Lite 2 120
WW Tortilla Chick 10 480
Pudding 2 60
Granola Bars (2) 4 220
Turkey Burger (2) 8 320
plain Total 26 1200

Okay that was a little heavy on the calories. I'll have to cut back on a couple of items. Like I could have easily done without the second Granola Bar and the Jello sugar free pudding and that would have brought it to under 1000 calories for the day.
I'll work on it tmw. ♥☻♥☻♥

Day 1 ☺

2008-04-23T06:27:00.000-07:00

I woke this morning with my head hurting...I am sneezing like crazy, so I can assume it is allergies. I'm here at work with a nice cup of coffee (my first for the morning) and I took two Alleve in hopes that Ill be fine in a bit. I plan to take it easy for a bit anyway and not go out and start weeding or working with the planters. I have perhaps 20 pages of Stephen Kings Insomnia left to go. The plan was then to read something a bit lighter but right now I have way too many good deep books that I want to get into. This is my favorite time of year to read. I love to sit outside and read.

I'll post first thing before I got to bed or first thing the next morning as to what I consumed. I have a ton of the Progresso soups which are too high in sodium but I'm going to finish them off all the same. Lunch will be from the Apple Bee's WW menu. I have been using Altern (Splenda off brand name) in my iced tea and it's great. You can't tell its not sugar because it is made from sugar but your body doesn't recognize it's moleculiar make up and thus doesn't process it. 0 calories.

My big downfall is not during the day. Breakfast and lunch go along without a hitch. I have what I brought and thats it. I don't keep food stockpiled around so I'm fine. It's when I get home and I am tired or don't feel like making something or what I have to make is not healthy but fast and easy. I need to utilize that slow cooker!

We went out last night and cleaned out the garden area. It was a good 4 or 5 contractor bags full! Dan said he didn't think that there it could look that good back there and in such a short time. Just Sunday it was PILED with brush and all kinds of crap that the dogs had drug in there. Now it's very neat and clean and ready to be tilled under. Gotta get those plants out soon. ♥

Fat

2008-04-22T08:40:00.000-07:00

I went out yesterday to buy a couple of t-shirts for the summer. I always like to have a few to switch in between for the summer and those full length three way mirrors are hell. I looked like a big ball with arms sticking out the sides.

About a year ago I weighed 42 pounds less than I do now. I went through a divorce, and a couple of surgeries and began dating a nice guy named Dan. A combination of having been on a diet (Weight Wathers 23 or less points a day depending on what my weight was at the time) consisting of about 900 calories. Not much. No wonder I was able to lose 50 pounds in just 7 months or so. It showed alot in my face but it came off of course all around. I got quite a few compliments too. I threw out all my really huge clothes which must have been worn a few pounds heavier than when I started the WW program. One of the reasons I think I might have started WW was due to my lack of self esteem. I had a husband that liked to let me know that I pretty much grossed him out and was no longer worthy. He told me that the reason he viewed porn on the internet day in and day out was because I had packed on pound after pound after pound. I decided I didn't want to be disgusting any more. Not for his sake or any other man for that matter actually...just for me. I was tired of being that fat.

I kinda let up a little on the diet during two different MINOR surgeries that I had during that time and during that time removed the person that thought so little of me from the household. I suddenly had WAY less stress in my life. I kinda kicked back and began enjoying myself. One social event after another, now that no one was around to ask me when "exactly" I was going to be home and make me feel bad that I had a life outside the house. I also began dating a man who LOVES to eat. Every outing with him is an event and occasion to celebrate with food. :) Lots and lots of fun but MAN it wrecks hell with a diet. Now since my body had become adjusted to eating about 600-900 calories a day....when I began to eat even 1500 (what would have been a normal amount or there abouts) I packed the weight on as quick as you can imagine.

I have restarted this diet just about every single week for the past year. I can't seem to stick to it for more than a few days. I am happy with my life and apparently hitting rock bottom and being so down on myself and disgusted with myself really helped to motivate me the first time around.

I am currently grasping at straws I think. Attempting to find something that will motivate me into losing it. I know there are a million health reasons that I need to do it. I don't want to wait until I have a heart attack or stroke to have my health motivate me. Right now I am up to a whopping 206! At only 5 ft tall what a porkprincess. I look more like a weeble right now than a person. Going to Dayton and walking around all day long is going to be tough carrying around all this weight. It will feel like Ive got a huge back pack on. I just need to get myself into a routine and stay with it.

I think that I am going to keep my food diary as I have including any indiscretions I might have and post them here as well. I wasn't paying a bit of attention to the calories and just going with the points which worked but it was amazing recently when I started paying attention to it....I was consuming a very very very low number of calories a day. Of course my body after about 7 months of that thought I was starving to death and just wasn't very efficient at burning calories.

I now have a recumbent bike that I should be riding each and every chance I get...and if I can't get that done there is NO excuse for me not to get out and walk every day. I really need to get myself motivated!!! I will begin to post each day and see if accountability helps. Of course when you go to WW classes (13 bucks a week and about an hour and a half a week of your time, being in front of everyone, even though noone see's what you weigh and or how much you have or haven't lost...my competive nature made me want to be one that lost 5 or more pounds as often as I could so that I felt I was accomplishing something. I DON'T want to go back. For two reasons, I don't want to pay for what I KNOW I could do myself if I could just find my nitch...and also because hell I gained the weight back and I'll be darned if I'm going to put myself on display for it. I guess I'm a little to vain for that. I know its wrong and unhealthy but I so wish I was 6 weeks out of stomach surgery right now and doing okay with it.

By the way....here is me...now big and fat. Arms sticking out at my sides and looking generally nasty.

Here is me a year ago....yeah I got my hair cut and it's not straightened today...but here I am. What a difference a year made.

How depressing.

Okay I have a few more things.

2008-04-20T18:09:00.000-07:00

Today we created a huge pile of mulch in the yard. My friend Roy was over with his chipper and we must have run and entire tree through that thing. It was neat but time consuming and noisy. We needed to chop a bunch of a tree off that was shading our garden area. I haven't been able to have a garden there because of it. I still need to clean the area out where the actual garden goes....meaning raking it out and smoothing it and tilling it. I still need to rake up all the chippings and put them in bags. I will take pictures of my garden as it comes along....I might even take a picture of the mess before I rake and clean it out.

When I walked into the house yesterday, my little one had been playing with her littlest pet shop toys and had two of them on a skate board. It was totally innocent in her eyes but I laughed my head off. I HAD to take a picture.

I went out caching with my friend Marvin and introduced him to using a gps. He did really well. I was able to get three new ones that I didn't have, so it was a double bonus. I think he really enjoyed himself.

Is this cannibalism?

I always get all kinds of comments and compliments on my car seats. I have seat covers with frogs sitting on top and lilly pad embroidery with dragon flies on the butt part. They are very neat and I've not seen them again since I got them. My girls bought them for me several years ago.

Lastly, I took a picture of my youngest daughter and her sister thought it would be funny to act spooky and get in the picture in the background. Little did she know just how spooky it would turn out. It looked like something out of The Grudge or The Messenger. :)

Okay thats it for now. I'll write more later.

How hard can it be to keep a blog....

2008-04-19T08:04:00.000-07:00

Apparently, pretty hard. I keep forgetting to log in. I save all kinds of pictures and items to post and then eventually tuck them away into a folder off the desktop so it doesn't become so cluttered.

Here in less than an hour I am going to go Geocaching with my friend Marvin. I have loaned him a GPS but no manual or anything so we will be going out basically to learn how to use the GPS I loaned him. I have suggested he purchase this particular brand of GPS so it would be nice for him to have a chance to try it out. It rained last night. I was going to go out to Dobbs park but now we will go to Calvary and Woodlawn cemeteries instead. I'll write more late on how that went.

I am having my last cup of coffee for the morning and the only draw back to that is that I will need to pee like crazy now. :( Hopefully I can get all that out of my system too.

There was a particuliarly funny Dilbert this week and my poor friend Jim was basically saying he can relate to it. :(

I found a picture on the internet while I was browsing around. It was a small thumbnail off to the side of a graphics side I was searching on. I started laughing and it cracked me up over and over again. I went to show it to one of my older daughters and she was "Oh yeah that....seen it a million times." and here I was thinking I was going to show her something new and funny.

However, my all time favorite will always be.....

I have had that hanging on the wall in my computer room off and on for years.

I will be coming into my busy time both at work and socially here starting the first of May. Lots of meetings and activities to attend and on top of that work will get busier over the next two weeks and then even back out about the second or third week of May.

I now officially only have 9 units left 10 x 10 or larger. The rest of them are the small ones and college kids will come and go from those but no one really stays in them for long.

I guess I better go pee now and about thee more times in the next twenty minutes to keep from having to do it the moment I get out caching. :)

More stuff.......

2008-03-06T07:47:00.000-08:00

I have a few more things to share today. First off:

Irony....I saw a crow this morning with crap all over it. Apparently, one of his buds apparently missed someone's car and hit his fellow bird instead.

I've read a couple of cartoons that caught my attention. The first one reminds me of a customer of mine that also has a sexy song playing on her cell phone while she is "paged" (fancy way of saying...the phone is ringing and you are waiting for her to pick it up..makes the other person seem important) Anyway....apparently she thinks she is pretty hot. But she ranks about right here along with this cartoon.

This one was just too typical.

and lastly..Opps...I know a couple of people with about this much tact.

I will be heading over to the fair grounds tomarrow and unlock everything. Get tables assigned and check out all the buildings and make sure things are set up. I am hoping that one of our out of town commercial vendors is going to be a little earlier for us. Last year we were there really super late waiting for him to finish setting up last year. He always brings a bunch of cool stuff and I look forward to getting some antenna's and mounts from him this year. However, since we have to be back at 6am its going to be a very short night if I am out there again until Midnight.

This is what happens when good dogs turn bad. OR....maybe he never was good to begin with.

2008-03-04T10:24:00.000-08:00

There used to be a place here where I could change the color of the test. For whatever reason, that has been removed. So I guess I am stuck using the same color of font throughout the entire post. :(

Other than tacking down some trim which we just got an air compressor borrowed to do that with...the front room is done. I still need to make the curtains for the front room but other than that...finished!!! Yeah! It's about time.

I will need to take off here pretty soon and pick my little one up from school but I'll try to get as much of this posted as I can.

I went to a Geocaching Event that Bret and I hosted. It was Boat Drinks II. As far as I can tell everyone had a great time.

My oldest showed up for a little bit and visited and I bought her and her husband a drink. That got to see that all of my friends are not quite as nerdy as others.

We have the WVARA Hamfest to work on this coming weekend. After that I would imagine that Dan will begin working weekends again and I'll find ways to occupy myself after noon. I will probably start skimping on weekends around here again pretty soon. I just hope that things pick up and we get some new renters in. We are by far not the lowest we've ever been in renters but I would like to see a lot more activity.

We Are Getting Closer

2008-02-25T08:11:00.002-08:00

I am going to try to post some pictures again here today but not sure if it will oversize them and cut them off again. I want to avoid the messy look earlier in the blog of half a photo showing.

I have been working on my front room for about a month. Maybe a little more. Off and on every chance I got. Lots of things are happening around there all the time that either keep me busy or pull me away from the house all together. We are finally getting the floor down and in one of the following pictures, I have a piece of the trim just laying there up against the base board so I could see what it was going to look like. I think the place looks beautiful.

I have already bought a matching set of rugs that will look really super nice on the new floor and some pads for the bottoms of all the furniture that will need to be fixed to protect if from scratching up the new floor. I would so love to have a group of people come over and finish this up before Dan gets back from his weather spotters class. That would be a neat surprise but I doubt that's going to happen. :(

I broke down and bought myself the Recumbent trike that I have been wanting now for near 7 years. I used to ride my bike all the time every single time the weather permitted. However, I got away from that because with the defibrillator I have been a little afraid to ride a regular upright bike for fear that the defibrillator would fire and send me into traffic or I'd simply just topple over and hurt myself pretty good. With the trike if something like that were to happen....I really wouldn't go anywhere and I couldn't hurt myself.

The bike set me back a load of money but I have wanted the bike for a very long time. The opportunity came up for me to get it and the price has been going up year after year. It wasn't going to get cheaper if I waited. So I bit the bullet and got one. The guilt from spending that much isn't so bad now as it was the first day or two but I am sure that if the furnace goes out or something like that, I am going to be kicking myself in the butt again.

I was in the house last weekend and there was a knock on the door and someone asked me if that was my green car out front and if I knew that there was a tree on it. Well no I didn't. I had been out there less than a half hour before, loading up a bunch of gallon jugs of water for work. It was an extremely blustery day out and that tree there in the pictures has now fallen on every person car that lives in the neighborhood right there in those four home area and some that have long since moved away.

I am supposed to take it to be looked at the body shop as soon as I can get it there. I just don't want to be without a car for the day either and have to depend on others to haul me around. :(

Time

2008-02-23T06:24:00.000-08:00

I am trying to get to the point where I don't have to do something every single day.
What I mean by that; is that every single day there is a meeting to attend, a party to go to, a get together, a new project at the house that needs to be done. It's difficult to find time to do NOTHING. I would like to stop requiring sleep so that I can spend those precious hours that I am wasting doing other stuff besides sleep.

For whatever reason I am unable to upload any pictures to the blog. It's just this computer, I probably need to reboot. I am sitting at work, not at home where all the stuff I need to do is sitting, updating the blog.

I got a new bike. A Sun Recumbent EZ-3 SX...of course the day they are going to deliver the bike it snows and I don't want to throw a ton of road salt and sand on the bike from the snow if I can help it. I will make an attempt to upload photo's of the new bike when I get home.

I also got a new hair cut. I like it. Everyone else seems to like it as well so I guess it's a keeper. At least until it grows out.

I started two savings accounts at the bank. One is a Christmas fund and the other is a regular savings started for emergency purposes. I haven't had anything in savings for over 10 years and it's about time I started.

I am reading a book called "Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Big?" by Peter Walsh. Oh my goodness I just Googled him and he is friends and associates with Oprah. Is nothing sacred any more. I mean Oprah is just fine but oh my gosh. She has a more like God status with most of America than God himself and thats just wrong. Anyway, I don't want to be accused of liking or reading something because Oprah said I should. Honestly, I didn't know there was a connection until just now.

I am also reading a book called "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert. It's a bit slow and lastly I am starting a new "work" book called Insomnia by my fav...Stephen King.

Many many pictures taken and ready to upload when ever I get a chance. I might not actually edit this posting but rather include a posting of nothing but pictures and you can figure the rest out on your own. :)

Finally getting around to an update!

2008-02-08T07:53:00.000-08:00

I am going to taking part in the North American Sprint this Saturday night from 7-11PM local time on SSB. It should be fun. I need to look over the rules, but I pretty much remember them from last year. I will using the call sign KT9E. As it's much shorter and it keeps the Eastside Outdoor Ham Club on the air.

My little brother, KC9MLL has set up an event at the local Boy Scout camp where the kids are going to setting up and earning their merit badges. That should be fun. I wanted to go out there and do some CW (morse code) for them but I am just WAY too busy this weekend.

I am in the middle of repainting my front room. There is a ton of trim that needed painting and it is a darker contrast then the flat paint for the walls. It takes a lot of time and effort to make it nice. I hate it when you go into a rental property or a place that someone bought cheap (like a repo or former trashed rental) and they are selling or renting the place and did a sloppy job painting. There will be drips and runs and lots of contrast paint from the trim to the wall and vise versa. I am trying to make this job look as professional as possible. It looks great so far but is taking a lot longer than I wanted. Here are the new colors.

The colors are sort of a South Western Burnt Orange and a beige with a hint of orange in it as well. They are very pretty together and should turn out nicely. In the above picture you can see the green in the corner near the victrola. It didnt look green at all because it was so very pale until you get it next to this new color and then the green stands out and clashes badly with the new paint. It should be all covered over by this weekend....I hope. I am so tired of pulling out paint and putting it back over and over again. We are living in this room and still using it too the whole time we are painting, which makes it just that much harder to do. But it will be finished soon. I am buying all new blinds for the windows tonight but not sure if Ill be able to get enough fabric cheap enough to do what I want with the curtains. We will have to see.

On a local geocaching news group that I post to, we have been finding all kinds of great pictures to post on the site and this was one of them. Someone actually asked if it was real.

Lot of stuff done this weekend!

2008-01-20T18:41:00.000-08:00

I was able to get a bunch of stuff done this weekend. I had a bunch of cables, like television cables and cat5 cables running willy nilly around doors and over doors. It was pretty ugly. With the help of my daughter and Dan we got several new cables run. A wireless internet card in the youngest daughters computer and moved a tv out of the middle daughters room and put an All In Wonder card in here pc. She is really enjoying being able to run the PS2 through the monitor. Just a ton of neat stuff done and squared away this weekend and most all of it done just on Sunday.

Last weekend my youngest came up with a neat idea for me to make with my button maker. She wore it the first day of school back with using just three of them and eliminating one of the middle sections.

I was caching this past year and found some really odd headstones. All I can figure is that perhaps these people couldn't afford to have a real headstone made. The really odd thing, was the way some of the letters are backwards and some aren't. There doesn't seem to be any consistancy.

Well before the computer locks up and the video card goes nuts. Later!

Trying to get back onto the swing of this

2008-01-13T12:38:00.001-08:00

I finally find a place that I think will be okay for the new blog but then I can't seem to work out the schedule to keep it updated. Also it tends to put all the photo's at the top of the blog instead of the places I want them to be....which would be in between the particuliar paragraphs that they correspond to. I will try this again and see if I cant get my pictures to go where I need them.

Dan and I found this coffee at Wal-mart. It really wasn't too bad. There was a little bit of a metal taste from the top of the can where the pull tab is but otherwise it was pretty good. It comes in a container that is sort of shaped like a plastic thermos. You push a little button of chemicals in the bottom of the container and about 7 minutes later you have a hot cup of coffee. This means you could be out in the woods, caching into the middle of nowhere and are caching in the cold....there you have a nice hot cup of coffee at your hands.

This photo is from a friend of mine that lives up in near Chicago. His family put together this gingerbread house and of course he had to add is own special little touch. Next year he will put in a beam with a rotter.

I thought I might put a picture here of this cats picture. Who does he remind you of. Hmmm.... Hitler maybe!

A cabinet was left behind by a customer and I was able to use it in my kitchen. I had to bolt it to the wall with a couple of small brackets to insure that it wouldn't tip over. It looks very nice in the kitchen ansd was in mint condition. I haven't decided what to put in it yet but there it sits.

I was on the radio (2 Meters) and was talking to a bunch of guys about how we couldn't find any Christmas Tree stands after the holidays to stand out antenna's up in. I went out today with the girls to just get a couple of things and found some fantastic Christmas tree stands. I got 16 of them for only .25 cents a peice. I hit the jackpot.

Okay enough of that....Im out of here...talk to you later.

New Blog Location

2007-12-23T18:08:00.000-08:00

Well I just spent a tremendous amount of time laying out the page and uploading pictures etc and then lost it all when I switched between pages. It also says that the blog is autosaving every few minutes but heck if I can find where it saved it to.

I have many pictures that I have saved on the desktop thinking that I would upload a bunch of them here. I am going to do that anyway but not really make any comment about th pictures. You can figure out where they go and what event and or hobby they went to.