We're back

From North Carolina! Yes, we were total panzes and spent Thanksgiving by the beach. It was great. And I'm tired and cold... mur... it was sooo nice and sunny there. :)

Blessings.

Quiet week

I wished. :) Somehow this not very busy week got really busy, really fast.

We went to Dale and Meg's house for potluck on Monday night... except that none of the other couples could make it, so it was us and Kevin and Tim. Which was a pretty good alternative. :) I enjoyed it. And Meg made some yummy soup and bread pudding for dessert. So good.

Tuesday felt like a crazy day. Somehow we ended up with two copies of the latest RJ book so I returned one after work, and then dropped off all of our Christmas Shoe Boxes. Then, since there's a Kroger right next to Berean I got groceries there. I didn't know where anything was though, so it almost would have been faster just to go back to Morton... o well. It gets dark soooo early and I don't like it! It felt so late when I finally got home. We ate supper really fast and then went to Bob's double great- aunt Nancy's visitation. There was a long line and I am not a fan of visitations and funerals.... long day.

I got up and made a cake for a coworker this morning; then we went to the funeral, which was a blessing, and went straight home after the service. I made it to work by noon so I only missed half the day. woot woot. After work I went to my parent's... in time to grab a sandwich and change to go with them to my great uncle John's visitation. He's the last of my grandpa's siblings... kind of weird that there's nobody left in that generation. He had been at the home with Alzheimer's for a few years... Shelly probably knew him better than all of us. It was good to see his kids (and grandkids) again in person instead of just their Christmas cards. Yeah... some of them even live in t-town and I never see them. :)

Tonight I feel pretty wiped out. I think I will sleep really well.
Blessings.

computer

Well... we had a nice quiet weekend. We hopefully raked leaves for the last time and were pretty lazy otherwise. And now this week is shaping up to be kind of crazy. Woot woot. Much to do and food to make and not much time to do it.

And since nothing exciting happened and Bob refuses to guest blog..... this is Bob's computer while he was busy building it. He's so smart... it would have taken me days to figure all the diagrams out and he barely even had to look at them.


It took over the room for a few days... you can see Bonsai-san in the corner and my poor sewing machine with wiring diagrams on it.

If you look in the middle of the motherboard, I put in the CPU. It's the goldish square thingy. I was terrified that I would break it to bits. But I didn't, and his computer runs just fine.

We raced it against my lappy... shutdown to full start up... his took 30 seconds, my poor lappy was still trying to turn off. Maybe it is time for an upgrade. :)

Blessings.

Veteran's day

I'm grateful.

And I had the day off, which I love! I had big plans to get all kinds of stuff done... I got some of it done. :) I was going to re-caulk around the tub, since it has been crumbling away every time I scrub the floor, and try some cleaning stuff on the mildewy grout... in the process of pre-cleaning everything some tile gave way. Aaaahhh... minor freak out... Bob was in a meeting, so after a trip to Menards and a slightly panicked phone call to the farm for advice I got the hole patched up and hopefully watertight. eesh. I am never ever ever putting tile in a bathroom. I don't care if it is prettier.

The rest of the afternoon I made some cookie dough and relaxed.

OOOOOoooo, AND, there's going to be another 709-Shaker wedding! BJ and Gab got engaged! (finally, haha, Gab you're the one who used to remind me that it was 'yes' or 'no'....) Yay! I'm so excited for them. Close to squealing excited, actually. It just makes me smile a lot.

It's really hard to go back to work on a Friday when you didn't have to work Thursday. Ugh.
Blessings.

Slime and the DMV

Haha, not necessarily together. :D

Monday night I went and talked at the 4-H club meeting... it was really fun, once it was over and I stopped being nervous. Seriously, 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders are scary. And some of their parents were there. *grin* Poor Bob, he tried to calm me down... There were a few kids who were doing their demos, so I got to watch them and learned all about making pudgy pies, knitting, making a picture frame, and making cocoa mix. Then it was my turn. Yikes. I talked about the lab a little bit, and about single molecules and polymers and I'm pretty sure I kept talking faster and faster and faster. And then I put on my lab coat and goggles (completely unnecessary, but they make me look smart) and made slime for them. Which I think they liked, the boys kept calling it 'snot'. So lovely. I like playing with the leftovers.

My sort of not stoned drivers license picture is no more... I went to go get it renewed and not only did they make me take the test, they made me take a new picture. While I was there I saw all sorts of people, plus a little dog that was hanging out with the mother of a 16 year old while he took the car on the road test. Inside. um.. ok. And I didn't get lost, which is always a good thing.

So... while I was writing this we had to evacuate the building. woot woot. And spent an hour outside in the beautiful weather while they figured out why the alarm had gone off. And tomorrow is a federal holiday. I love my job.

Blessings.

There are things that I like about fall and winter... the darkness is not one of them. Anyway.

We had a good weekend. Saturday Bob and I raked up some more leaves... woot woot. There's still some on the trees so we'll probably have to do them again. O well. I don't mind a little hard work. We spent the afternoon listening to Trans Siberian Orchestra... it was cool, but very loud and much flashing lights. Bob really liked it; I liked it, but I think I'd rather listen to a CD and not have all the lights and high decibels. My head started to hurt a little bit later while we were eating at Monical's.

Sunday we went to W-ton for a change. It was good to be there... although hearing about how we "never" come gets really old really fast. Such is life I guess, but it doesn't make me all that anxious to visit. I know, I know, it's a bad attitude... but it makes me wonder if they actually like seeing me or just like scolding me. Anyway. And then we went to my parent's to check out the new carpet and for Sunday afternoon snack, which I love. :D

I'm doing a presentation for the 4-H club tonight... I'm kind of nervous.
Blessings.

Friday

I love Fridays. And Thursdays for whatever reason.

And Christmas. However, I refuse to listen to Christmas music or decorate before December 1st. I'm all about living in the moment, or something like that, since I maybe have already sent my family my birthday list and our Christmas lists. There are only 42 shopping days left.... haha. And I've started my list of ideas of what to get people. Hooray! I love Christmas shopping.

So I was browsing around amazon last night looking for cool possible gift ideas.... and as much as it hurts to admit it, I bought myself a ceramic pilgrim couple. I like it. Me, who always said my mom's were cheesy. I will now sit here sheepishly and contemplate the fact that I ordered pilgrims. :)

Oh, and my little sister has a blog. Go check out her pictures of taking piglets to the south side daycare she volunteers at... mkwyss.blogspot.com

We Voted!

Huzzah!

Bob made me wait until after work so we could go together... I suggested we take a camera... he looked at me funny. :)

And then I got to wear two "I voted" stickers for the rest of the night.

Can Chicago just secede already?

a series of unfortunate events...

Ok, so the weekend wasn't quite that dramatic. :) It felt like it a few times, though. Thursday evening, we had one couple call to cancel because of a funeral so I tried to call a few people who we don't know very well, or don't see very often, or who don't have kids that they would need to get a last minute babysitter for... yeah, they were all busy. Which is ok, we'll just have rotating potluck with 8 people... and I'll quick come up with a vegetable. (I was already making meat and rice.) And then one couple called to say they had sick kids so we were down to 7 people. Aahh. It ended up being a really fun evening so all was well.

Bob accused me of wanting to host so I have an excuse to buy flowers. He might be partly right. *grin* What can I say? Fall flowers just look so pretty! I did change the water... some of that fall color must be fake!



Saturday morning Bob got up early and went to help on a ACWR roofing project... and I slept... hehe. Actually, I got up before 8 (shocking, I know) and raked leaves. I filled the truck bed twice and there are still a bunch on the trees.

That afternoon I went and watched Derek and Leann's kids for a few hours. I was reminded why I never babysat... It was ok, we played play dough and played in the yard.

I got to hand out candy to trick-or-treaters Saturday night. The swat team told me to "drop the candy and nobody gets hurt." Other than a kid in a costume from Avatar, there weren't very many creative ones this year. And we were down to four pieces of candy so I turned off the light early. Maybe we shouldn't have opened them before Halloween.... hehe.

Grandpa and Grandma Beutel are letting me keep their beautiful geranium in our sun room until it dies... it looks so healthy next to my poor plants that I didn't bring in soon enough.

Sunday was pretty quiet... except Bob decided he was really hungry for Chinese for supper. I'm not overly fond of Chinese, but Oriental Palace in Pekin has Thai and Japanese food too. So we went there and got excellent service because we were the only customers in the whole place. Which is really kind of weird, but it was fun and the food was good (and fresh).

Blessings.