*cringe*

I can't believe that last post!
This is what happens when I am let loose near a computer after my brain has already gone to bed.
I need a minder.
Really I do.

While I'm here I'd like to mention how grateful I am for a warm home. My sister is currently in Minnesota, freezing her teeth off in the -36 degree weather!

Air stagnation in Oregon?
A small price to pay for having all ten toes.
(Just don't breathe too deeply.)

EEP! Just 4 more days until I start my New Year's Resolutions and I'm not quite ready yet! I'd better sign off and get shaking.

Bored...

Can you believe that I'm bored? Bored?!?
It's amazing.
It's unthinkable.
It's WRONG.

Of all the incredible things to do now days, and all the things to be had (electronics, of course hehe) and all the ways to keep in touch with people, being bored must be a crime.
Dagnabit, being bored should be a crime!
(Nothing else is a crime anymore, so why not... Oops. Don't get me started.)

I feel guilty about wandering around the house.
Even if I can't find a novel way to amuse myself, you'd think I could at least clean something!

With that threat hanging over me, I found something to do - retouch old photos.
No kidding. :)

Do you have some pictures that seemed like a good idea, but somehow never quite jelled? I've an entire harddrive full of them.

Here's one that I really liked. This was taken down at Beaver Creek Park, but the sun was too far gone and the photo was too grainy. Sooo.. presto, chango! I used a little Photoshop neon edges action and voila!


I think it turned out rather well, don't you?

How about this one?
It's the wetlands near my office. It was a rainy day and the water was all silver, but somehow I messed up the shot. It had no focal point, no drama.
So, this one got the watercolor treatment and now I think it's quite a nice little impressionist painting.


Finally, a foggy night in the back yard. I redid this photo six ways. It was too much fun to stop! However, here are two of them, for your amusement. (You MUST click on them to see them full size. Otherwise the effect is completely lost.)
Golden Fog - Watercolor

Golden Fog - Ink


I hope you're having an exciting evening, with no boredom in sight!
(If it looms just threaten yourself with cleaning duties and it will slink away.)


PS. Actually, I did these photos last year. But I wanted to post and I really was bored, so I embellished. A little. Kinda. =)

Bits and Bobs

Seems I have forty things going on, so here's a smattering to amuse you.

1) Just found out about "Project 365 - A Photo Everyday for 2009" and want to kick myself! I wish I'd heard of it sooner!
The challenge is to take a picture of something in your life every day, all year.

I really need this to get my creative juices running, so I guess I'll just start now and make it Project 355. (Can I post retroactively?? hmmm...)

2) The water heater is in and purring along nicely. We purchased it on Wednesday and the wonderful guys at George Morlan (insert ad here) delivered it for only $29 and carted away the old one for free. They even did it the same day! Sears, Home Depot and Lowes can't even touch that kind of service.

We did have some fun while switching the heater out. Take a look at what we found when we pulled the old tank out from the wall. Yipes.


I do a visual inspection of all our appliances at least quarterly, but I never had any idea that this damage was back there. The wall had a corresponding mark soaked into it, so my sister cut the dry wall out and replaced it with a waterproof foam panel. She also found and disposed of a mouse who had made himself a nice tomb between the walls. Blecho!
Fortunately it wasn't Calvin the Mouse. *wink*

Dad and Holly installed the new tank and I stood around and passed them tools and garbage bags. Yes, it was an arduous task.

I like to think of myself as a very handy person who can do whatever it takes, but I was pretty much useless on this occasion. No worries, I'm sure there will be others.

3) Cleaning up after the little flood I found a paper bag that seemed to be full of old unused stationery (1950s era) and very much used Christmas and birthday cards. A perfect item for the recycling bin. However I gave it to Mom to go through since it appeared to be Grandma's stuff. (Grandma lived with us here in Portland for a few years before she passed away.)

Mom started looking, and lo and behold it was full of old family photos and letters! Whew - I'm glad I didn't toss it!


There are even pictures of me as a baby.
Here's a Christmas card with me holding my little sister Bonnie and sitting next to my little brother Scott.

What can I say? The rumors are true. I was adorable.

We spent a fun afternoon trying to identify everyone in the pictures (and wishing Grandma had labeled more of them).

Mom also found a letter from one of my great great grandmothers who was living in St. George in the 1850/60/70 time frame. We haven't been able to date the letter (someone cut the stamps off) but here is an excerpt (spelling retained):
"When we heard the word of the conferance that the word of wisdom was given as a commandment we both comenced to observe it and I feel it to be a benefit. I am determined to continue to keep it believing the Lord will not ask of us more than we can do."

That touched my heart.


4) I've been trying my hand at Facebook, and yesterday my Mom created an account for herself. We're tracking down friends and family left and right. Beware - we'll be adding you when we find you!


5) Finally, and this one really makes me laugh, the Christmas lights finally came down from outside. Sadness! But it had to happen.

Holly took them down while I was at work and she found the oddest (most odd?) thing.

About two weeks ago one of the strands of lights on the pine tree on the corner suddenly stopped working about half way up. When Holly was unwinding the string from the limbs she noticed that one of the lights was sitting in a fork of the tree. Just sitting there. Not connected.

When she picked it up she saw teeth marks.

Some little squirrel had gnawed off one of the lights and tried to hide it in his stash! She found others, of the same color, that had also been gnawed on.

Well, they do kind of look like little bitty pine cones... so....

Holly says that the first squirrel was busy collecting these shiny tidbits when another squirrel came up, noticed what was happening and flicked the first one on the ear. "You nut! You can't eat those!"

Made me laugh - except that he ruined a perfectly good set of lights.
grrr...

Oh well, I have electrical tape and I know how to use it!

When it rains, it pours

Sunday night the lights on the north side of the house gave three big jolts and my parents ran upstairs to see if I'd electrocuted myself. (I hadn't. Hadn't even been using anything powered at the time.)

We checked out the fuse box and the garage, and though we could smell something pungent it wasn't a normal "hot" electrical smell, and it went away fairly quickly. However, we couldn't' get the starter on the furnace to work.

"Great," I thought, "Just what I need - to replace the furnace."

After resetting the circuit breakers and the thermostat the starter kicked in and the furnace ran and so we figured we'd dodged the bullet.

Monday morning my mom tried to take a shower and the hot water cut off half way through. Yup - it wasn't the furnace freaking out, it was the water heater.

So, tomorrow is our Christmas (January 7th, Russian Orthodox Christmas) and we'll be running down to buy and install a new water heater.

Thank heavens my Dad is here. He's the VERY best.
It's not that my sister and I couldn't do the installation (it's dead easy) but having a wonderful strong man around is so comforting. Not to mention the fact that he's done this a dozen times.

I need to brag about my Dad. He's notorious in my family for dropping everything and anything that he's doing and coming to the rescue. In fact, once my sister was in Canada and the transmission fell out of her car (seriously, it FELL out). He jumped in the car and drove to Canada to help her. How's that for a fabulous guy?
(No wonder I can't find Mr. Right. Who could possibly hold a candle to my Dad? hehe)

So - bring on the rain! We can handle it!

Frosty morning

This morning's weather forecast:
High 37
Low 36
Current temperature 27

I wish my job would allow for that margin of error!

I know, I know, my friends in Canada are laughing up their mufflers right now. 27 sounds like beach weather to them. My friend in Slave Lake has had temperatures at -30 for the past several weeks.

However, this was a nice chilly morning for Oregon. And one benefit was that we had a wonderful bit of frost on everything. I had no camera with me when we drove to church and I resigned myself to only enjoying the frost from memory. But when we got out of church, three hours later, the frost was still there (mostly)!

Ran home, bundled into something warm and rushed back to the church parking lot to capture the moment before it got any warmer. (Click on the pictures for a larger size. The blog resizing makes them a bit blurry.





Today's Gratitude Moment: I'm thankful for thick, warm flannel sheets!

The Rains Came Down and the Floods Came Up

What were you doing in the wee hours of the morning of January 1st? (Umm... actually it was the 2nd at that point?) Were you sleeping soundly? Watching the heavy snow flakes/clumps drop? Playing one more tune on Rock Band?

My sister and I were out in the side yard, up to our ankles in freezing water, bailing out the area around the garage side door and digging a new trench through the sodden, muddy grass to funnel flood water to the street.

Yup, fun and games!
Did I mention the heavy snow clumps?

It was cold and wet, but oddly satisfying when the water finally went down. Not a bad night, although we wanted to smack ourselves in the head for not buying sandbags earlier.

Everything that was on the floor along the north wall of the garage is now sodden. That means I've lost almost all of my notes from Law School (and some of the texts). There are several boxes of fabric and crafts gone, and probably two cabinets that we had in storage, waiting for our dream house to be built. Also a couple boxes that survived the flood waters but seem to have housed Nancy Bui's mouse for a month or so. ICK!!

The worst part - I think my entire collection of original X-Men comics is a loss. *cries* Still have to find out about that, but I've given up hope (even though I did have them stored in plastic sleeves... so maybe...)

The good news - the water was all clear, not muddy, so clean up just means throwing things away. The suitcases that are storing my Russian souvenirs had wheels and kept the bottom of the case far enough from the ground that everything should be saved (I still haven't been able to get to the second case, it's kind of wedged in the back.) And the rest of the things were in Rubbermaid tubs, so no leakage.

What's more, I feel an odd sense of freedom. I can finally clean out the garage without obsessing about every little piece of paper! We're just going to rent a tip, toss everything that can't be recycled, dust our hands off and walk away.

Wow! What a great feeling to start the new year!
I think I'll need to have a flood more often...

Bah Humbug New Years style

Truth be told, I detest New Years Eve. It's one of the most depressing times of the year (second only to that wicked pseudo-holiday, Valentine's Day.)

Every year I say to myself, "This time next year, I'm going to be dancing with a kind, fascinating man and I'm going to kiss him madly at midnight!"
And every year I find myself sitting at home, alone, comforting my dogs while the fireworks try to scare them to death.

Well, this year I kissed my dog, dang it!!

Don't worry, it was on the top of his silly little head. But he's the only male around and I'm no longer proud! I used to kid about not finding my Prince Charming. I'd say, "I told him to meet me in 1982 and he got confused and went to 1892!"

Somehow that's no longer as funny as it used to be.
So, here I am, stuck, living alone for another year. Blah.



or


This is the best!


OK, enough of that.

Here's what I'm going to do for my resolutions this year. (Nope, not going to tell you what they are, just how I'm going to do them.)

Do NOT Start On January 1st

Everyone starts at the same time, and that causes many problems.
a) Food related - heck, January 1st has left overs from two holiday, not to mention all those goodies associated with the Bowl games. There's no way to get a good clean start with that hanging over your head. Set January 1st aside for more partying, don't stress over it and start your diet on a day that you can be reasonably sure no one will be forcing three cheese nachos and German Chocolate Brownies onto your plate. And remember - the Bowl games run all the way through the 8th this year.
b) Exercise related - the sudden influx of people at the gym makes it crowded, and what's more, they're usually grumpy! I hate crowds and I don't need grumpy. Better to wait until everyone else has broken their resolutions or at least scaled back. Then I can waltz in and have a personal trainer all for myself (and no one staring when I hit the rowing machine).
c) Everything else. See a combination of a and b. Trust me on this.

Plan on starting somewhere around January 18th. Use the time between then and now to prepare yourself, your house and everything else so that you can effortlessly slide into your resolutions. That means you have to stop buying chocolate now, but you have two weeks to eat your backlog!

Make At Least Four Resolutions

The multi resolution tactic is not there to give you more to feel guilty about. It's there to give you an outlet.

If you flub up on one resolution, give it a break for a few days and concentrate on the success you are having with another resolution. And here's the kicker - make some of them FUN, not just work. You should have one "fun" resolution for every three "work" resolutions. These might be "Spend more time crafting" or "get a pedicure at least once a month". Come on - I know you can think of some fun ones!

Finally, Don't Do It Alone.

When gaming there is a spell called Resurrection (do not confuse this with real Resurrection. heh) Basically it means a friend can read a scroll or wave a wand and you get to come back to life and try it again! We need something like this for resolutions. But you'll notice that you can't do it alone. You need a friend to help.

Admittedly this one is the hardest one for me, but I really think it will be the key to my success. The idea is to find someone that you need to report to. It can be a friend, a support group, your blog, your Mom. You get the idea. Don't discount the option to report out to Heavenly Father on those resolutions that you need some extra support with. You know He will always have time to listen and will cheer you on!

That's it! Three steps to get me off to a good start!
Now I just have to think up the resolutions.
Yipes...

PS. We did have a nice time watching the New York Philharmonic's New Years broadcast. Any concert that features De Falla's "Ritual Fire Dance" and excerpts from "Carmen" has my vote for a ripping good party. It also drown out the real fireworks noise very well and the puppies only freaked out a few times. Thank goodness.