Archive for the ‘General’ Category

Cold, cold go away

Monday, January 11th, 2010

And I know all my family and friends in the North are going to say “what are you complaining about,” but I really am tired of this cold weather. I want my 40s back thank you.

I would like to express to all those who are gritting their teeth and turning away saying she’s a wuss or something of that nature. I have lived in three different types of climates in my life in three different types of areas – completely land locked, northern but by the water, and southern by the water.

Colorado had nice winters. Yes it snowed, there were blizzards, but the cold was just that cold, it didn’t have the added chill that comes with the humidity in the air. I hated winters in New York – hated! The cold and the snow, no, I just can’t think of that as being “warm” or better than anything else. But the cold weather in the south, it just doesn’t get out of your bones. It has been below the 20s at night, one night we were one degree away from tying the record low, and while it’s not as “cold” as -7 degree I would much rather be up north in -7 degree weather than down here with 19 degree weather.

Sooner Rather than Later

Monday, January 4th, 2010

Oh wow. I checked my email and my new computer has shipped I should be getting it the 6th or the 7th. That’s like almost a whole two weeks sooner than expected. The estimated date of delivery was the 19th. So wow!

I won’t be completely up and running until a few days after wards and I may or may not have my personal business files I need to continue work, but most definitely will be able to start new work lol. So by next Monday I should be back to making some money. I guess it’s time to clean my desk off and find homes for the stuff on it, and start working on my design resolutions or more like business plan for the year.

3.5 days left

Monday, December 14th, 2009

There are only 3.5 days left of Shea working. Then he gets two weeks off. It’s pretty cool that he gets off the time but he’s only paid for like 3/4 of it. So it hurts but it’s nice.

End of the year sucks. It brings with it so many worries and so many financial concerns. The house land taxes are due, the car tag is due, have to file taxes. So very not a fun time of the year.

The holidays are always good though. My only concern is that we aren’t going to get to see Shea, Sydney and Gabriel for more than the 20 minutes we did last week. It’s really a heart breaker, and it really did break the girl’s hearts they didn’t get to spend more time with them. I can only hope they’ll stop by again sometime before Shea has to ship out again. He’s leaving in five days so the odds are not in our favor.

I really do hope they understand that they are part of our family and that we really do want to spend time with them. We want to know what is going on with their lives. That we aren’t going to make judgment on what they do, where they go or who they do it with, we just want to be included in their lives. Not to find out the backwards way, like they are sneaking around behind our backs. We just want to be involved.

I feel really bad that Shea’s not going to be able to see much of his grandson as it is.

All I can do is wait and hope things turn out for the better. Nothing more we really can do. As with all things in our lives.

Warm then cold

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

Weather is always interesting down here. It’s fall and it got way cold there for a while, and then it rained for a long while where we could have gotten snow. Now it’s like 70+ degrees.

Today was an absolute gorgeous day. It was hot enough that I would have turned the AC but we don’t have it so I did the best alternative which in reality is the better solution. I opened some windows to let some air in and cool the house down. It is nice.

However I will have to close the windows tonight as it’s going to get down to 30 degrees and be chilly tomorrow. I know that this doesn’t seem cold to most of my friends and family but here in the south that is like -7 below zero. The humidity gets in your bones and the only way to get it out is to take a hot shower. But then again it’s all relative. While I can tolerate much more cold like this than some people, my blood has “thinned” enough that it affects me alot more than it use it.

I feel for all you northern friends and family getting hit with all the bad weather. I wish ya’ll warmth and safety.

LJ take that :P

Friday, December 4th, 2009

I love Google Reader. I mean LOVE it. It’s been so awesome to keep track of my feeds and to do things, however it has one very bad drawback. It does not pick up Livejournal’s friend locked posts, which is very bad when I have friends who only post within the locks. So I’ve been searching for a solution and I found one finally.

It’s open source code that is the base of feed proxy, but LJ blocked it so it’s no longer usable. But the same open source code can work from your own server.

Here’s is the most awesome post lol. Follow the directions in the notes and you shouldn’t have a problem.

Though please do note that it will take a while for the feed to propagate. I did one yesterday and I didn’t get the feed until this morning. So let it sit and be watchful for it to show up if it doesn’t then take a look at it. And the subdomain is required if you read the comments in the post so don’t skip that step.

SO all you LJ friends out there, if you use your friend lock alot please let me know. Email me or post a comment and I’ll grab your feed that way!

Not a niche and ramblings

Friday, December 4th, 2009

I don’t know how people come here, or who subscribes to my feeds, all I know is my blog stats show a bit of activity so I just want to clarify a few things. I am not a niche blog. I talk about everything I’m interested in.

My sub heading is “My Family, My Life, My Journal” for that reason. I will talk design and programming, I will talk about my family, I will bore you to death with my girls and their growing up. I will write about my writing adventures about role playing and cooking. These are all things I like, all things I do. I am not a niche blog, unless I’m a niche lol.

I have a lot to say today lol, and it’s only almost 5am. *sighs*

I’m excited about getting a puppy. I really hope we can find one we all agree on. I’d really like to have a puppy sooner rather than later. Provided the weather holds out today we will try to go to the closest one, but we are under a winter weather advisory. What does that mean? WELL that means if it even starts to snow, doesn’t even have to stick to the ground, things will start to close. First and foremost being the high rise bridges over the various rivers around here. So guess what that means for us – we either stay home, or we go the very long way to get to things lol. The last time it snowed here it was my very first Christmas here. We were at Shea’s parents house and the bridge we needed to take was closed. We were like 5 to 10 miles from home and had to go 30 miles out of our way to get there. It probably would have been closer to go back to Shea’s parents house, but we didn’t, we went the long way home on Christmas night lol.

I would like it to snow, but I’m not counting on it. If it does it’ll be late, and dark and the girls won’t really be able to go out and play in it. But hopefully they’ll be awake to see it snow. It’s a late TV night for us so it’s possible they might see snow.

Today we go sign paper work for the girls ER trip for their overdose of children’s tylenol. I’ve been meaning to get that paperwork set up so the payments come out of Shea’s pay check, but it’s just one of those things that went by the way side. But tomorrow after Shea gets home from his over time we’ll go sign the paperwork and then hopefully go look at puppies. I really don’t care what we get, I just don’t want a yipper. I can’t stand little dogs or over hyper ones.

It passed

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

Well the union’s passed the not so great contract extension. Shea did his part and voted against it, lol, mostly so he could complain about it’s crappiness.

On the 17th we will get the bonus, while it’s much appreciated it’s not the best end result. One plus, no strike in March for Shea to have to cross the picket lines to get to work. No rise in health insurance premiums for the next two years. So those are the pluses, I just hope that we can survive the next two years on this extension.

With the news that it passed, we will probably be going to the Gautier Human Society (30 mins away) to see about getting a puppy. If we find one we like it’ll be fixed the following Wednesday and we’ll be able to take it home on Thursday. Shea wants to know if we can pick it up on Friday, it doesn’t matter too much to me. I can put the puppy in the back of the van on a sheet with a baby gate keeping it out from under my feet.

That will give us time to get the crate from Mam and Pawpaw’s house, clean it up and buy all the necessary items. Thankfully we have a dog dish that is nice and tip proof, water on the other hand is not so neat and easy. I think we’ll deal with either a rabbit water bottle or get one of those water dishes with a bottle on top to house the water. The latter is much more dangerous with my twin tornadoes. I’m sure I’d find water all over the house.

I’m excited to get a new puppy and a bit scared. I really want a furry kid, even if it means more work and frustration for me lol, but I’m hoping that the puppy will help add some responsibility to the girls if they want their toys to survive lol. But we’ll see.

If we don’t find one in Gautier we may have to go to Gulfport or Mobile. Hopefully not because that is a bit far away for us to go run and pick the pup up after fixing it.

Oiy…

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

testing LJ cross posting. It didn’t work with the last post, check LJ ppl check my blog to see the post

Testing something

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

I’ve changed the way some things work on my journal so I’m just testing to make sure things work.

AC is shot

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

It sucks two nights ago the AC ran all night set at 72 and it never got cool. So yesterday we turned it off to let it thaw out and cleaned the filters and when we turned it on about 5ish it didn’t cool. I’d been okay up to that point, but the girls were getting cranky and I was too. I took a cold shower and I never take cold showers. Kathleen joined me and Samantha played a little bit but didn’t get too wet, but more than I had expected.

At 7ish, we drove up to Hurley to the inlaws to get three window units. We’d used these after Katrina and had just a few months back taken them up to there for storage. Shea’s dad met us about 3/4s of the way up with them and we drove home, installed the units. We have two in our room and one in Samantha’s (which will end up being both of the girls room again here soon.)

At first the one in Sam’s room wasn’t cooling it wasn’t set right but at that time I had already started blowing up the air matress and the girls were set to sleep on it. So we let them stay in here with us. I’m not sure if they will sleep in Sam’s room alone, Kathleen isn’t big on the door being shut and it’ll have to be so we don’t kill the electric bill.

So today the big AC is off, and we’ll be spending all day in our room. Thankfully the room is nice and big and we can all be comfortable. I’ve got most of my stuff to work on for one of my clients set up on my laptop. It’ll be a bit difficult to do but it beats sitting at my desk in the heat.

I’ll be calling the AC guy today to get a price estimate on 2-3 pounds of freon and we hope that’ll get us through the rest of the summer. Hopefully by the end of the week we’ll have our AC back and things will get back to normal. But if I can stay cool but stay in one room most of the time I can manage it, we’ve done worse and I can move the PCs into the bedroom. We’ve plenty of room. We already have our queen bed, one small desk, a dresser drawer system with the TV on it, two smaller dressers with the girls clothes in it, and the queen blow up matress and still enough room to walk and pile clothes etc up in the corner lol. One more desk won’t take up any more room, we’ll just have to rearrange some of the “piles” to get it in here, but that won’t be an issue if we have to do it.

We will probably have to replace the AC in whole next summer so we pray that we’ll be able to save money to do so. Wish us luck cause we don’t currently have that kind of money to save up.

On a side note, it was much cooler outside last night than it was in the house, so we spent a hour or so cleaning up the back porch and if it is not to hot out today I’ll take the girls out on the porch to do some swimming. Unfortunately there will be no swinging or anything out in the grass. It’s not been dry enough to mow so the lawn is too high and the moment you step out into the grass you get eaten alive by whatever little bugs like to live in tall grass. But the pool will be more than enough for Kathleen and if it’s too warm Samantha as well.

While we were cleaning, one of the share was sporting a very dangerous friend. We were cleaning it off with the hose to get all the dirt and cob webs off, and as Shea set it down there was a huge spider on it. As we were in the process of getting it off to squish it we both noticed that it was a black widow. I was more concerned at that time to kill it before it got near the kids to realize that I’d just moved the chair and was paranoid the rest of the evening while cleaning and moving things around. I do not like spiders and I most definitely am afraid of black widows, I’m just glad it’s dead and hopefully didn’t lay any eggs. What’s funny is that Rae and I were discussing spiders and I had mentioned that I was pretty sure I could identify one (black widow), and yep I sure enough did. I am very thankful that I was tired enough last night that I didn’t have nightmares about them.