Cold, cold go away

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.

Bubba, again …

I am a terrible tweeter lol. I need to tell a story and 140 characters isn’t cutting it.

Last night Bubba was yelping when he slept I assumed it was a dream until this morning when he started doing it when I think he’s awake. He definitely does it when he’s moving so I think the girls were a bit too rough, again.

I called the vet just to see what I could do to help. I was already on the right track with isolation. Which I had been doing since this morning but Samantha doesn’t listen so I had to resort to putting Bubba in his pen. He doesn’t like it much, but he he’s surviving, and actually a lot less noisy than I anticipated, but then the girls are sitting outside his pen watching over him. He’s whining now, but the kind that means let me out not a yelping painful kind of one.

I can tell he hurts, but he’s still a puppy. He’s eating and drinking to my knowledge and he’s going to the bathroom. I’m hoping that he’ll be fine in the morning if not I’ll call the vet and see about picking up some pain relief for him and to keep him isolated until he does feel better. I really hope that he’s okay we can’t afford any type of vet bill right now. This cold weather is kicking our financial butt. If Shea doesn’t work, Shea doesn’t get paid and that’s the short and sweet of it, nothing I can do about it.

So my tummy is in knots and its no fun. The only good thing is at 5pm or so the weekend starts and Shea is home for 3 days. Not that he wasn’t just here yesterday cause of a “cold out”. Released because they couldn’t do any hot work cause the fire mains were all frozen. Yeah, that’s the south for you. We are lucky he went to work today.

Trials and Tribulations of a new PC

Yesterday I got my new PC. It’s not paid for so hopefully it’ll last until its at least paid for. I’m thankful that I don’t have to worry about paying the bill as it will come directly out of Shea’s pay check on a weekly basis, no need to worry. I’m glad that we do our direct deposit through the credit union, it’s also how we pay off any hospital bills w eget during the year.

The PC came about 1-2pm ish. I don’t recall the exact time but I have a tweet that I posted just after it arrived. I started to the task of setting up my new computer with the constant. Mom what ya doing? and Mom are you fixing your computer? Basically the girls getting in the way. I’m thankful I didn’t drop it on them as we were moving things about.

Set up was the easy part. First task install my much needed software – Dreamweaver and Photoshop. Yeah that was fun. Dreamweaver was a cake walk, no problems what so ever, Adobe software not so much. After stressing out over for most of the day and after giving up at least twice I finally read a solution on the net. Try installing Photoshop in a different folder than the one supplied. Worked like a charm. Illustrator and InDesign aren’t so nice they installed, but they don’t run and I can’t uninstall them. I would like to install at least Illustrator so I will do research on how to do that but that is low priority.

I got the important software loaded yesterday and I got WoW installed as well. I finished up most of the software to day and I’m now in the process of trying to transfer files from the old PC to the new PC and praying the old one doesn’t crap out in the middle of the transfer. I guess it’s a good thing its so cold right now, at least it’ll take a bit longer to overheat.

Looking at the progress its being slow it’s seems to be stuck at 90% but the light on the new pc is is flickering away and so on the old, but that one always seems to flicker these days. So I’m crossing my fingers and hoping that this works as it’ll save me 40 bucks or so in trying to convert my HD to an external HD so I can do this. So I wait.

But so far I like Windows 7, and Dell provided a dock feature that is absolutely the best! Now to just figure out how to get my old norton key unlocked so I can add it to this PC and get rid of McAfee which I really don’t like even though I have 15 months on it. So far I’ve not had any real issues, but we’ll see what happens.

Two more recipies

I just did an analysis of two of my favorite soups already in my repoitoire – Taco Soup and Potato Soup. Both will do as a low cal dish.

Potato Soup

and

Taco Soup

So I’m at four definite and one possibility, only a few more to go.

As a side note I also did 30 mins of DDR today and burned 470 calories. And found another song I really like to use. I will probably start doing those favorite songs as I tend to like the faster ones, and the ones that are a bit harder even on beginner.

Three recipes down

I’ve got three low cal recipes to try, now just to do some pricing on these things so I don’t blow my budget.

Shrimp Tamale Casserole

Shea loves tamale’s we’ve never had good luck with them. THIS we might have luck with. I am going to definitely try this one but instead with a chicken “chili” filling and probably throw some corn in for added veggies. And maybe have a pico de galo topping for me, Shea won’t eat it but I love it. It’s kinda similar to my Mexican casserole so it might do real well or it might bomb lol. It’s 273 caloriess per serving so not too bad.

Quick Shrimp Enchilada bake

I have a low cal enchillada recipe, I’ll have to pull it out again and combare what the calorie intake is compared to this. I can probably throw some corn into this as well, but probably won’t. Why ruin a good thing with that kind of experiment.

Sausage Gumbo

Gumbo what more can I say, we’ve been looking for a good recipe that is easy to make, so why not try this one. I’ll attempt to try the okra in it, but we’ll see how things go. It’s not much different form Shea’s grandmother’s recipe, but the portions are much more reasonable for me lol. So I will definitely be trying this out too.

So two definite and one possibility but it’s also an old recipe so we’ll see.

Resolution #2

Resolution #2 revolves around my freelancing – the basics of it is to increase my cash flow from my freelancing.

This is rather generic resolution I know but again I want to do it in small steps.

#1- do at least one project and one update a week for HIT Web Design a week. This will gradually increase over time I hope but this is my starter goal. I can’t handle more than one project at a time, but updates I’m sure I can handle up to three with out a project so we’ll see how that goes.

#2 – make a new wordpress theme every month to give away or sell for money. This is a two fold increase in revenue. The first being actually selling wordpress themes to those who want it for a minimal fee. But even the free ones could lead to revenue by increasing traffic to my site and pulling in potential customers.

#3 – design something everyday. This is a smashing magazine challenge and I intend to try this once I get my PC up. I think my first stab at this task is going to the common icons I use in a blog for wordpress and then common category icons/headers to use for categories, starting first with my own blogs. This doesn’t bring money in and of itself, but by designing something everyday provides me with practice so that I can make more money with the graphical and/or design aspects of the freelancing. Posting it on my site can also pull in additional clientele which is a money maker.

#4 – learn asp.net C# version. This is something that I’ve already started and I’m working on chapter 3 of my book, and I’ll be writing the code here soon. This doesn’t increase cash flow persay but it opens up options not present otherwise.

With each of these there are minor little things I need to do to accomplish the larger task. But all in all this is as miniute as I want to get with my resolutions. And I don’t think of these as a new start or trying to do something I didn’t next year, these are more like guidelines into the new year. I seriously doubt I will follow through with everything but they are the goals I’m setting short term.

I have one more resolution for the family, but that is going to take a bit more thinking on my part as to what I want to include in this particular resolution. It’s the most important and yet the hardest to think of actions to take this year.

Sooner Rather than Later

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.

Resolution 1.3

Well today was the first day on trying to play DDR for an hour. While I made an hour of time from start to finish it wasn’t a full hour of exercise. According to DDR’s count it was about 32 mins. Which is probably what I’ll do every day for a while. It took about an hour to set up, deal with the kid interruptions and the dog interruptions, he decided he wanted to go out twice while I was in mid step lol.

So I will set my work out goal to 30 mins of actual activity. I’m exhausted now, I need a shower and I probably should eat, but my stomach just isn’t going to allow that this morning. I hate the first day back to work even though I’m not the one going to work.

Resolution #1

This is probably the only resolution that is about me (and Shea) personally.

Resolution #1 – lose weight. I am not going to put a weight limit on it. I’d like to be a minimum of 136 but I just need to lose weight period so I’m not setting a specific goal/time frame.

Instead I’m going to set small achievable goals.

My first few goals are meant to set us up for this particular resolution.

#1. Get a scale that does not rely on batteries to work. While the digital are more accurate when the batteries die you are kinda out of luck until you replace them. And they have a weight limit that isn’t quite so visible as your scale maxing out.

#2. Find at least one weeks worth of low cal recipes that fit into my weekly budget. These recipes should add vegetables to the diet that aren’t otherwise in my current repertoire of foods. I’m looking at soups, stews and other dishes in which I can puree and/or hide the veggies from my very picky husband. If he sees them he won’t eat them. This does two things, adds veggies to all our diets and stretches the bang for the buck on the meat.

#3. Try to play Disney Groove for an hour a day with or with out the girls. While I’m still working the very easy setting I think this is by far the best way for me to get extra exercise. As long as I sweat then I’m happy with the activity.

#4. Do a little research on EA Active to see what it has on it for “games” and activities and see if its worth the money to buy for both Shea and myself.

And finally #5. Stop drinking non diet soda. While this may seem like the easiest of goals it is probably my hardest one to achieve. I don’t like diet soda, I’ve tried and tried to drink it but I can’t get it down. But unfortunately I am drawn back into soda for the flavor of Dr. Pepper. Also unfortunately my caffeine intake at this current moment is way to high to it cold turkey. I cannot manage a day with the caffeine withdrawal headache I will get if I stop cold turkey. I have a few cans of regular Dr. Pepper left in the fridge, I will from my next purchase be buying Diet Dr. Pepper if it’s still on sale, if not I’ll find another suitable caffeinated diet soda to begin the slow down turn of caffeine intake. Diet soda’s will do two things, remove the caffeine intake slowly as I won’t drink as much and two keep the calories down until I can limit my drinks to Crystal Light and/or flavored water. But this is going to be the hardest of the small goals to achieve.

Resolutions

It’s that time of year again to reflect on the goals of last year. To refresh my memory

1. Remove the final credit card from our budget and build my credit to a better score
2. Lose weight. 136 is still my goal, but exercise is going to be needed to reach it and maintain it. Now just to find a way to do this.
3. Learn something new or improve more of what I know – jQuery and AJAX or .net (C# variant)
4. Potty Train Kathleen!
5. Finish at least one personal project.
6. Finish my business website and begin writing weekly on it’s blog.
7. Begin a “beginner” programming blog
8. Play daily with my girls with their lincoln logs, tinker toys or building blocks.
9. Color with the girls daily
10. Help Kathleen (and Samantha) learn her ABCs, colors and shapes.
11. Learn how to make yeast rolls

#1 – still in negotiations, but almost done with this I hope.

#2 – don’t think I’ve managed to do that but we’ve been out of a scale for a while and I keep forgetting to buy one that doesn’t require batteries.

#3 – the only thing I can really think I learned this past year was cakePHP. I dabbled more with jQuery and Ajax and poked around with C# and .net but I don’t think I learned much more than I already knew.

#4 – Well it’s better than last year. We’ve had our good weeks and our bad ones. In order to remind both Kathleen and myself to remind Kathleen I’ve started a timer, it seems to be working, every 20 to 45 minutes depending on what I think she’s doing at the time seems to be helping to remind both of us. Now to start working on Samantha.

#5 – Nope, no personal projects completed I started about a billion again.

#6 & #7 – I haven’t done any design blogging. I should but I don’t have the ideas to push enough through right now.

#8 & #9 – I don’t so much as play with the girls as let them build with them. Kathleen loves to build. Granted the toys are all over the house, but they enjoy them. I don’t color much with them either, but Kathleen loves to draw, Sammi just goes with the flow.

#10 – we started this and Kathleen can identify some letters and knows what sounds others make, but we still need to work on that, we bought alot of Christmas presents this year to assist with that process.

#11 – well I did make yeast rolls this year, but they weren’t very good, I will have to try again.

I will make some resolutions for next year, but not tonight. Later will be better while I sit down and go through my business stuff and try to see where I want to go from there.

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