Successful Saturday!!

[helia]

I'm currently being very successful at procrastinating my jog!

Dh and I were very successful in getting lots of sleep last night. We were tired after the long week. I think we slept for 10.5 hours. Dh has been working until the wee hours of the a.m. I've had a few days of just going straight from one thing to another with little down time, until 9 or so at night.

I have a little more wiggle room this next week, thank goodness. I don't have 3 all morning moms group meetings and 2 evening engagements as I did last week. Although, I do have 2 evening engagements this week -- 2 dinner parties, T and Th. night and W. night is cooking with ds. As long as dh is home, he actually does most of the cooking with ds so it can end up being a treat. And small group will be next Saturday night. So maybe 3 evening engagements? I do hope to get more done on Cmas shopping this coming week, though I feel pretty clueless what anyone wants. I've gotten ddad and our friends E and C in TX done. Dbro. and the kids are in process. That leaves dmom, dh, S, R, and toddler J, and my niece with nothing so far -- and dbro. and 3 kids to finish.

No point in getting a tree or decorating until we can move back into the main floor of our house, which will be in another week or week and a half. We don't do much decorating anyway.

Dd18 has been texting a lot. She technically can't stay in the dorm Tuesday night (Dec. 20) so she's looking into options. She may just change her ticket and come home a day earlier. An exam originally scheduled that Tuesday has been changed.

Successes I hope to achieve today:
- jog -- I'm hoping to go 4 miles again
- getting our stuff down here organized. We were so busy last week we pretty much just plunked everything down here without organizing it well when we moved it down Th. morning. I did organize the bathroom. Thankfully, our basement is a walk out with spacious light rooms; the rooms on the very back of the house, including the play room, are just normal rooms with nice big windows since our house is on a hill. There's an outside door in the play room.
- menu plan and groc. store, if I can. At least a run to the groc. store.

Success to you all!

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

I'm s2s and the bedroom is tidied.

I had lunch.

Am waiting for an email but it isn't coming so I may have to make a dpc. Actually, I just realized I am waiting for 2 emails back on two subjects.

I'm not making progress.

I'm looking forward to all the Presbytery stuff being behind me. It has taken so much of my attention and hours of worry and careful composition time as I carefully craft responses to one sentence emails/commands. I really need a holiday from it.

Through it all, I've been reading a book on email called "send" and it talks about pitfalls to avoid. So that has been affecting my writing as well as I try to incorporate some of the suggestions. The most obvious, this should not have been done by email at all. There should have been a face-to-face meeting with the committee. Among other things, the punishment seems to be that I am removed from their list of LLWLs. I don't know if I'm still licensed or not. And I'm not about to write another email asking. I think I'll go to Presbytery one last time and ask the Presbytery minister if I'm still licensed. I've stopped referring to myself as licensed so maybe they decided they didn't have to say the words directly.

[Harmony]

Twins, I'm by no means an expert but I usually do a malware scan and a virus scan. Cleaning out my history helps too. Sometimes nothing helps. Mine is a bit slow right now. Area provider is upgrading their system to faster service (which I am NOT going to order) and things are slower...which I think is their way of getting people to sign up. It's happened before.

I love candy too and try to limit it, should not be eating any. It's hard when I go down the candy aisle to get chewing gum (another bad habit). Last time I bought a small bag of jolly ranchers, about $1.50. Sometimes if I'm feeling really bingy, I find buying the individual bar at checkout is better for me cause then I don't have a whole big bag to eat.

Wow that's too bad about your license, Kathryn. They sound very insensitive to me.

My success: I got the outside lights out. Only got zapped once, bulb broken off but wires still sticking up ZZZZZZZZ. I hope they show up better at night, my plants are pretty small. I made a tree which I put at the end where a couple bushes died and the spot was bare. Used an aluminum pipe and 2 strings of garland with lights attached, wound them around in tree shape and attached with wire ties. Doesn't look too bad. Extension is attached up in soffet so all I do is hit the switch inside to light it all up. Easy Peasy.

Hint: don't check strings of light on an extension cord if the cord isn't plugged in. I thought I had a whole bin of duds. Duh!

Have my ladder now so I'll get the inside stuff out of the closet. While I was out at 2H I watered all the new plants we put in. It's been so dry here.

[Harriet]

helia, she actually can't stay there? Wow.

Kathryn, it sounds like instead of putting their money into enough high quality plant foods, which would give them excellent nutrition, they are used to responding to a long-held fear of not finding high-caloric foods. That's understandable - in a time of scarcity you try for as many calories in a food as possible. If you had one choice of a small hand-held piece of food, without being sure of a kitchen, a Snickers bar would handle hunger, even though a potato or cup of rice would have been better for the body. I say long-held, because plants couldn't have caused that extensive tooth decay.

I remember when I was a young teen, limited to one 10-ounce cola every once in a while, that I promised myself someday I would be in charge of my own life to the extent I could have all the cola I decided to buy. Now ask me, "How'd that work out for ya?" ugh. Not so good, and the dentist did very well on the billing.

[lucylee]

Harmony, LOL, I was checking a window candle with the extension cord plugged into itself instead of plugged into the wall outlet.

But I really did have two strands of tree lights that were bad, and after I got all lights on the tree and all decorations on the tree, a couple days later, dh noticed another strand out on the tree. HE thought we could just take it off and put a new strand in its place. I told him to go for it. Yeah... only took him till he got to the first ornament to see that THAT wasn't as easy as he thought. (I don't just wrap my lights around the tree in a circle; they weave in and out, up and down every branch. So once the decorations are on, it would be a MAJOR undertaking to try to get them off and start over.) We quickly decided that turning the tree so that most of the dark strand was on the backside would be a good enough solution.

I'm doing a little better today. Part of my big problem yesterday, IMHO, was that I did NOT start the day w/morning exercise, Bible reading, vitamins, or ANY of the important morning routine items. And I guess that has been my problem all week. I still feel like I could go back to bed now and sleep for a month, but at least I have done all the morning routine (except s2s -- but I am dressed2shoes). Probably slept 7-8 hours last night, but I'll probably get a nap in on the way to basketball game in a few hours. IF dh & dbil get along well with each other and play nice.

Still feeling bad for you, (((Kathryn))) re: the church stuff...

and feeling bad for (((Harriet))) re: church stuff.

Really sad that church can cause so many problems, isn't it?

What is the Advent challenge, Kathryn?

Helia, do the dorms completely close for the holidays? I guess they would... but I wonder if there are any students that have no other home to go to? That's probably not a big problem, but maybe it would be for foreign students or someone working their way through school on their own? I just never thought about that dorms would have to tell students they had to be out on certain days.

I've tried all your methods on the eyedrops, and I just can't seem to master ANY of them. The inner corner is the only possible spot for me, it seems, and I'm sure that wastes a lot, but I just can't do it. I got one of those eyedrop "guides" and I could not see the bottle above my eye, but I still blinked the minute the drop hit, and got a lot on my cheek that way, too. At least I know it's apparently not an infection, just allergy-related. I don't know if that would affect my eye make-up or not.

Candy... I only buy individual bars, so as not to have large supply around the house. I still eat too much, but I would have NO self-control if I had it in the house all the time. I can imagine after the difficulty of obtaining "fun" foods that NFs have probably endured, the opportunity of having candy around 24/7 is too much temptation to resist!

Harriet, that is just beyond comprehension that they would have a budget meeting and exclude the treasurer! Good grief. I would be tempted to just throw all my bookkeeping work on the table and tell them to find someone else. * sheesh * OTOH, I'm sure that would just reinforce their opinion of women's incompetence and lack of fitness for the job, right? * sheesh *

I did get my dmom the DNA Ancestry kit for Christmas, Twins. DS is anxious for her to get it and get her results into Ancestry.com.
Sorry you're having such trouble w/computer. I'm no help at all. When my computer messes up, if unplugging/rebooting/etc doesn't help, dh & I are both just helpless, and it usually results in hours on the phone with tech support in foreign country whom I can't half understand.

Waving to ALL! Hope y'all have a great day!

[helia]

For anyone interested in the dorm saga, just keep in mind that I'm getting my info from dd18. I'm assuming she has her facts straight, but you never know. .. She says that unless a student has an exam on Tuesday, Dec. 20, students can't stay in the dorms that night. I think she's going to ask if she can stay anyway since at the time she got her ticket home, she had an exam that day that has since been moved.

Back from a 4 mile jog. I went slower than last time, but I did it without much fuss or angst. I've had a snack and am boiling an egg so I can have a ham and egg wrap. Dh is just back from a 14 mile run. We're moving so slowly today. .. . I did get more of Maia's overpriced food at the vet before jogging, and I updated engrade for one of my classes before I left.

((Kathryn))

As you've probably noticed, I haven't been properly keeping up with you all. I just don't have the time. I pop in here occasionally, and I think reading about holiday prep is more inspiring than anything else. Are you completely done with your shopping, Harriet?

Dh has an exam to make today. I'm going to work on organizing stuff here.

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

Lucylee: the Advent Challenge is a calendar for Church Advent with an activity to do each day. It is to put the focus of Advent back onto preparation for the coming of the Kingdom of God, rather than preparing for Christmas Day.

Back from visiting with ds and picking up the pram. Am working on cleaning it some more. I got 15 years of crud and rust off it when we still had the house. Spent a couple of hours on it then.

There's still what looks like mold (but isn't) on the vinyl liner. The outside, fiberglass outside also has the same discolouration plus some yellowing. It is either ground in dirt or discolouring. It doesn't smell (or didn't until I started working on it here with Fantastic with a Magic Eraser which made a bit more progress.) Now I need to wipe off the cleaners. I'll put a pillow case over the pad that lines the bottom. Not sure if dd will allow dgs in it but mainly she is concerned about unsupervised sleeping so if we lay him there to change him (nice and high) or to sleep next to us while we chat, maybe it will be used. She is relaxing a bit as each week goes by.

Anyway, I still have a ton of writing to do. So *poof*!

[lucylee]

On our way to basketball game. Everyone acting very pleasant re: bowl game tickets.
Dreary rainy day here.
Dbil is disgusted with our football coach and his "ignorant ways." I am LOL in the backseat. DH isn't thrilled with football either, so they are in agreement.
We all like our basketball coach, though.

[Nancy]

H wanted me to get vits multiple for mens over 50 I got the right brand etc. But not the 200 - 300 count he wabted sigh only 100. I said check in Jan. They will probabley will be on sale when these are gone. Chili for lunch was a hit.

Got a free wall calendar at the bank so glad I remembered that!

Got the store run done had to looked i three places but finally located the sug. Free creamer flavor we like.

Came home and raked leaves up in the front yard hens were glad!

Went to the ladies church group thing for a while and got a bread braid for a gift basket at the bakery. No cinnamon or nuts in it so the allergy probs. should be held at bay.

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

Website is updated. Added 3 pictures - me in front of a You Park, You Preach sign, the welcome sign to me at Anniversary Service, and Christmas Eve 2013 when I was doing the blessing and the congregation were lit by the candles they were holding (taken by CM who was sitting behind me at the organ.) The pictures and captions give hints to my personality.

At dinner we looked at the website analytics and could not make hide nor hair of them. So many bots and search engines hit the site, it is hard to see if individuals do. I need a better program to do analysis. I honestly don't think people looking to hire me actually find me through the website. We'll find out - if I never get asked to preach again, the answer is no! (I'm cutting off my other two ways of getting jobs - networking at Presbytery meetings and the LLWL list on the Presbytery website.)

I finished my letter to the church board just now.

Still haven't written the newsletter.