Check it out!

New look for the blog!

I decided on a whim that I wanted tabs under my header Tuesday but Good Lord the HTML involved in that! Especially since I had pretty much created my blog template from scratch 3 years ago and have just done a bit of fiddling with the colors & things since then.

I didn’t even understand my own code anymore & after a couple hours of googling, trying to sort out what the hell I had done back then I gave up on adapting tabs to it and tweeked the heck out of one of Blogger’s templates instead.

Then I had to change the color scheme of all my widgets.

Then, since I was being all chang-y anyway I had to make some social icon thingys for some of my links. They are over there in the upper right.

I still have to update my labels..tags..whatever you call them but from a purely decorative standpoint I’m done.

What do you think?

Check back tomorrow for the horrors lurking in the pantry!

PS. Disqus has apparently been having some server issues the past week or so and it may or may not be the cause of the random vanishing comment box. I've contacted their support group about it & hopefully they'll get it sorted soon. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Words on Wednesday

What was the oldest thing in my pantry? Just how old was it?

Make your guesses below & come by Friday to find out!

What if technology really did help me?

I’ve mentioned before how frustrating I find ‘helpful’ technology.

Cordless phones for instance.

They are helpful because now you can have a phone ANYWHERE. The problem is that now you have phones that could be ANYWHERE & you can’t actually find them when they start ringing because whoever used them last set them down where ever they happened to be when they were done talking.

And an amazing number of people in my house seem to be in linen closets when this occurs.

Or under small tables with 2” of clearance.

Then there is my wireless router.

It helpfully scans the airways for a good transmission band to send my signal. Only half the time the phone likes that band too so when you actually find a phone & answer it, the internet cuts out.

Getting a phone that can be told to leave that band alone would solve that problem, but not the problem of locating it in the first place.

Plugging the router directly into my computer would also solve the internet problem, at least for me, others would continue to suffer, but I’m on the computer the most so it should be me that gets the cable connection. But I still don’t know where the phone is.

What I want, what would be really, honest and for true helpful, would be to combine these problems for a solution.

The phone & the router obviously use the same band. OK fine. So why can’t a caller ID box pop up on my computer when the phone rings? My DirectTV receiver does it on my TV so I know it can be done. This would let me know if it’s even worth making the effort of looking for the phone. And since they are exchanging this bit of information, why not put a chip or something in the phones that will also relay location information?

So I’d get a box that said

John Smith

800-555-1212

#1 Main bathroom linen closet

#2 Under kitchen table

when the phone rang and could then decide whether I really want to talk to John badly enough to get up and go to the main bathroom or the kitchen to answer the phone.  I’d also know which was closer, saving me time.

Obviously some set up would be required so the software knew the various locations in my house. Some form of highly localized GPS probably.

But it would need the internet to work so that particular disconnect glitch would need to fixed to make it work properly.

Here is the interesting thing…

I know people who could make this work if I could catch their interest with it. I just need to decide which approach would work better…appealing to their avarice by suggesting it could make a lot of money, or appealing to their need to be right by suggesting it absolutely cannot be done.

So for the sake of approach #1, would you be interested in this helpful bit of technology or would you be too worried that a security breach might let the whole interwebs know the exact location of your linen closet to give it a try?

Monday Ramble

It was a quiet weekend here at Casa de Demons.

There was football on tv Sat & Sun.  DH and Mayhem bonded while watching hours of it in the living room. Havoc and I watched random stuff on Discovery in the bedroom. Things about haunted places, underground places, hidden places and a Dirty Jobs episode that must hold the record for most swear words ever.

Havoc amused himself by trying to guess the words.

Idiot?

Stupid?

Wicked?

Nope, kid. Those are all words you can say on TV.

Then there were the explanations about why such and such a person killed themselves & is now haunting the lighthouse. And what’s a prostitute? And what is prohibition & how can I be drinking a beer now if alcohol was made illegal? And why did that guy build a castle in 1890 when castles were built in the middle ages? And what spirits was that lady so afraid of & how were those weird rooms supposed to make them happy?

Makes me long for one of those WWII in Color shows.

I worked on my cross stitch project while all this was going on.

I also created two layouts

Mostly I laid around. I was sore from Body Pump Friday. It was the first Pump class I had been to since early October and only the 3rd time I had been to the gym since the Monday after Thanksgiving.

But!

I actually only had to back up my weights a small bit, leaving off the 2.5lbs for squats & the back track. Everything else was the same weight as last time. So I feel good I have been keeping up my strength training at home in my half assed workout way.

This week I need to clean the pantry out and I need to do it before Thursday. The kids have half days Thursday & Friday. Right now I always open the pantry door with some trepidation. I expect boxes of cereal or bags of goldfish crackers to come tumbling out on me every time I open it. So far it has just been plastic cookie cutters.

Look for a post about it later this week.

Weekly Winners – Duress Edition

Back in November I made the, apparently selfish, decision not to do a 365 Project this year.

I mean really. 3 years in a row is plenty.

But I failed to consider the thoughts & feelings of my favorite photographic subjects.

They were not pleased with my choice and for the last week have been badgering me non stop about it.

Every time I turn around I see this

C’mon take a picture

You have so many ways to take pictures

Maybe we can take a picture?

Dudes, that is a film camera. I haven’t bought film this century. Where did you find it?

And when I look up on my monitor I see this

“You will take a photo of us”

“No, you will take a photo of us”

AAACCKKKK!!!

So apparently I *will* still be taking photos this year.

Just not every day.

For more Weekly Winners please Lotus at Sarcastic Mom.

Thanks for stopping by!

Mayhem is worried

What is he worried about?

Things he’s done wrong in the past. Anywhere from last week to last year. Though it is hard to tell with him when the events actually occurred because his sense of time is not that keen and because his sense of guilt is so strong I think he tries to make things appear to have happened longer ago to lessen the likelihood of punishment.

It has been True Confession time around here the last couple weeks.

It seems to hit him suddenly. He’ll be playing a game or something & then start crying. I’ll ask him what’s wrong and we’ll go through this “I don’t want to tell you. You’ll be angry” bit & then he confesses that once, during the summer he put broccoli under his seat rather than eat it. Or that back in October he got into a fight with someone on the bus.

Now, I had found that broccoli long ago & since it never reappeared I never said anything and frankly it could not have been much of a ‘fight’ on the bus if no word was sent home to me about it, so it’s not like these are mortal sins. So far everything he has confessed to have been small transgressions, things he should not have done but did anyway and now suddenly feels bad about days, weeks or months later.

He also worries about things his brother may have done and get very upset that Havoc might get into big trouble for X Y or Z that he did.

It’s like the guilt switch has suddenly been flipped on in his brain.

Which, considering how Mayhem tends to make these developmental leaps is entirely possible.

I was getting rather worried about all this myself until one night DH says “It’s like he’s supposed to be Catholic or something. He needs to confess”

And then it hit me.

Mayhem is 3 weeks away from his 7th birthday. Being raised Catholic I know that 7 is the Age of Reason. You are now old enough & mentally developed enough to be responsible for your choices & accept the consequences of your actions. You understand right & wrong and are capable of making moral choices like “I was told to go right to class with no stopping at all but I came across someone who had dropped all their books & I decided it would be ok to stop and help them because that is a good thing to do but it isn’t ok to stop & play ball with someone” Children younger than 7 generally are not mentally ready to make that sort of call. There were a bunch of studies done about it 10 years or so ago in Britain that pretty much proved the Jesuits were on to something with that Age of Reason thing they had been going on about for centuries. Something happens mentally around the age of 7 regarding right & wrong & guilt & impulse control & all that.

Havoc didn’t go through this as much, but Havoc has always had a more gentle learning curve. If you were to graph Havoc & Mayhem’s mental leaps or development Havoc’s would curve up slowly over a period of a few weeks or even a couple of months. Havoc learned to read earlier than Mayhem but it was a gradual process over a period of months. Havoc’s progression through the reading levels of school started out at the top end but continued to climb up gradually, maybe skipping a level here & there but generally following the usual expected pattern.

Mayhem’s development graph would be a series of sharp spikes. I always say he is a perfectionist that just doesn’t share his progress but likes to surprise you with how he can do a thing once he has perfected it. Now I am not so sure. When I think back to how he learned to read and to walk etc.. it’s more like one day he just suddenly could. His curve only covers a few days or a couple of weeks of practice. He started 1st grade reading at level 2. He is now beyond the levels entirely & is reading chapter books, having skipped over big gaps of levels in his learning in just a couple months. (Comprehension is another matter)

His handwriting appears to be doing the same thing now.

So last night, when he came over all upset about something that he did in kindergarten, we had a talk about how this might be because he’s getting bigger & learning more & new thoughts are in his brain & about thinking about your actions & making the right choices & how it’s a normal thing everyone goes through & just wait until you are teenager with hormones…

I’m not ruling out there isn’t something else going on. I’m just as bad about Dr Google as the next person & things like this can be pointers to abuse or molestation & other horrific things & I can’t ignore the possibility, but after freaking myself out hard about it last week I’ve decided to just remain watchful.

His teacher sent him to the counselor Monday because he was worrying in class about something his brother had done. I know this because Mayhem told me, not because the school told me. Knowing a few things about how the school works with informing parents about ‘incidents’ I am guessing this was no big deal to the counselor. If she was worried she would tell me & so would the teacher. They have both been very good about communication. So for now I am chalking this up to a developmental phase. If he tells me he went to talk to the counselor again & I don’t get a letter about it, I’ll call her myself.

Mayhem said he was going to tell his teacher today that it was all ok, his mom had figured out what was wrong with him. I asked what he was going to tell her was wrong with him.

“My brain is growing.”

Final 365 pages

I completed the last page for my book. I was one page short so I had to make one more so there were no blank pages. I did a standard year in review page for it and then I put the cover & back page layouts together. The tricky part was coming up with 24 more photos that were not already in the book.

I know, I know…how could that be tricky with all those photos.

Yet somehow… finding photos that were not variations on the existing 365 photos was a challenge.

Which tells me that even my ‘regular’ photography was pretty much 365 driven.

I’ll be interested to see how many photos I have at the end of this year without 365 prompting me.

Oh, and yesterday? I went grocery shopping & took two photos of my full cart with my camera phone before I remembered I am not doing that this year.

The back cover

The front cover

The last page

Next up, finish the missing JYC pages, finish editing Oct & Nov photos & get them uploaded & then copy everything to my EHD and I’ll be ready for a new start.

3 days

That is how long it has been since I took a photo.

I KNOW!

How is that possible?  I keep looking at my camera as if I have forgotten something. There is a certain relief at not needing to take photos but there is also a certain unsettled feeling at not taking at least one a day. Something seems missing.

And I wonder just what the heck I am going to scrap without taking nearly 4000 photos a year. Without the daily photos I would have only taken 1500 photos last year.

Which is practically none at all when you think about it.

Everyone is starting 365 projects or 52 projects and I feel their excitement & start thinking “ah what the heck? what’s one more year?”

Then I remember September & October of last year.

It’s totally an ego thing but having completed 3 years of a photo a day I don’t think I could live with myself if I started a fourth & failed to finish it. And I don’t think anyone else could live with me while I forced myself to finish it.

I have my list of topics for a 12x12 project. Though I am starting with more than 12. Given my experience last year I know many topics will fall by the wayside out of boredom or lack of feasiblity. I hope at least 12 stick it out, more is ok, less would sound odd.

“You did a 9x12 project??? What’s THAT??”

My starting topics are:

me

DH

the boys

what I had for lunch

my book stack

the dinosaurs

the clone troopers

Legos

macro shots

groceries

cats & dog

beverages

things I bake

my manicure (or lack of)

what is in my purse

what is in my sink

I’m guessing beverages will be the first to be dropped. There are only so many photos of the same 2 brands of hard cider and 2 wines you can take before getting unutterably bored with it. Though this could be a good reason to try more wines. 

Cats & dogs also did not make it last year because really, how many shots of cats on sofas do you need? There are currently 4 permanent cats and 2-3 visiting cats, plus the dog, so there is 8 shots. Obviously I need a few more cats. Not grey though, 4 of the 7 cats are grey, 2 are black and one is black & grey striped. What I need is a white cat & an orange cat & possibly a calico or marmalade cat for variety.

What is in my sink could be problematic for my marriage. See, DH does the dishes. On his own schedule, not daily.  And I suspect that seeing a collection of photos of the sink full of various dirty dishes might be taken as negative commentary on his dish washing. It’s not. I’ve accepted the sink/dish situation as the price I pay for not having to do the dishes and I don’t mind

The rule in our house is if you feel the need to have something done a certain way or in a certain time frame – do it yourself. So it was either accept that dishes can sit for up to 3 days before making it to the dishwasher, or do the dishes myself.

I HATE doing the dishes, so I just periodically buy more silverware & bowls to make up for the lack of clean ones.

My kids each have two dozen pairs of socks for similar reasons.

hhmmm…maybe I’ll add ‘places I find balled up socks’ to that list.

Contented *sigh*

Do you know what the boys did today?

They WENT BACK TO SCHOOL!!!!

Yippee!!!

Granted it’s only for a week & half…they have half days Jan 13 & 14 and then have Jan 17 & 18 off … but it is still something. And by the 15th we’ll be happy to once again have some all day together time. I’ve got some color them yourself wooden toys as a project for the 4 day weekend.

I think I never really recovered my equanimity from those two snow days right before Xmas vacation. They threw me off & today I am still trying to get stuff done I was going to do those two days.

Like clean the pantry (blog post no doubt coming soon!)

Like reorganize the office (also a good source of blog fodder)

Like clean & scrub the utility room (not at all blog worthy)

oh, and like sleep in uninterrupted.

They have been up at 6am all vacation, including Jan 1, and except for Dec 31 when they got up at 4:05. I do lay in bed until 8 or so, but since I can clearly hear them fighting over toys or rustling around in the kitchen, I never really go back to sleep. This has made me no end of cranky the last few days as the insomnia plus lack of nap has caught up with me.

We did have a lot of fun though, making cookies with friends, shopping for gifts, having endless battles with dinos & clones, playing Wii and other games. 

But it has left me with a burning desire to nap until noon so I can feel rested.

Tomorrow I will be doing just that.

Today I am packing up the ornaments & trees and cleaning/reorganzing the heck out of the living room. We have sufficient board games, card games & Legos that we really need to revamp the toy keeping system in that room.

I felt a bit disoriented this weekend with no new daily photo project to work on. That is going to take a little getting used to I think after 3 years. But I did manage to finish nearly all my layouts for the 2010 photo book. Here are a few more of them:

With any luck I’ll get Nov & Dec done Tuesday & the whole thing sent off to blurb by Friday.

Then I just have to finish Journal Your Christmas.

Weekly Winners–last of 2010

Last of the holiday cookies

DS1 and his latest lego creation

New Year’s Eve bonfire from a distance

Bonfire up close with my new zoom lens

For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom

Thanks for stopping by!

Happy New Year everyone!

2010 recap

in data.

Because I love data.

Books I read this year in total – 130

from the library – 88

on my Kindle – 21

purchased new or used – 21

78 were mysteries – the Meg Langslow series was my favorite & I hated the Hannah Swenson series

9 were romances – Stephanie Laurens’ Black Cobra quartet was my favorite

4 were memoirs – I liked Tony Bourdain’s Medium Raw best

39 fall into ‘other’ – mostly historic fiction, straight fiction or humor with some non fiction mixed in. My favorite was the non fiction Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England

When I wasn’t reading I was taking photos.

I kept a whopping 2619 photos this year. God only knows how many I deleted in addition to those.

1505 were general everyday photos, both random and of events.

I took the most photos of that sort in April – 231 of them

and took the least photos of that sort in September – 24 of them

1114 photos (not including deletes) were needed to complete my 365 project.

68 of those were just of yours truly trying to get one decent photo a month.

December’s photo

Somehow, in between all the reading & photo taking I found time to

Start 11 craft projects – 5 crochet, 1 cross stitch, 3 sewing and 2 hybrid scrapping

Finish 9 of those projects, only the cross stitch and a pair of crocheted fingerless gloves remain incomplete.

Create 131 digital scrapbooking layouts,

and write 230 blog posts, including this one.

I had made some goals for this year. The big one being to take better control of my photo workflow & use more tags. I did manage most of that. I have a good system in place now to process my photos using Lightroom. But I did fail at the tagging.

2011 will the Year of the Tag!

I had a goal to comment more on blogs & respond more here and since ‘more’ is a rather loosely defined word requiring comparison to some other source & I have no way of keeping track of my commenting I can only say – it feels like I accomplished this goal somewhat. I think I’ll keep it around in 2011 as well because I think that while I did ok, I could do better.

The last goal, which has been hanging around as a goal since 2007, was to accept in my heart that veggies are more than just an inconvenient side dish to be microwave steamed at the last possible second. I believe I even foolishly said something about having one veggie meal a week by May.

hahahahahahahhaha!

I crack myself up sometimes.

I’m letting this one go. 4 years now I have tried to embrace veggies & it’s just not working well. My kids only eat raw veggies or pureed veggie soup, and zucchini frittatas. Which, granted is more than they ate 4 years ago but I think that is more a result of their growing up than anything I did. I’ll still experiment with some dishes but I’m not going to waste a lot of emotional & mental energy on it anymore.

I’d say something about weight loss, gym attendance, running a 5K, etc but it’d just be from peer pressure, not any great desire on my part. I go to the gym. I hate running outside. I like food, especially fatty food. This is who I am. Should weight loss happen…Yay! Should it not…meh.

I want too say thanks to all my readers this year, both the new and old. Seeing comments appear gives me a lift every day & I really do appreciate all of them & the friendships I have made from blogging.

I hope you all have a wonderful 2011.

Journal Your Christmas

I’m still way behind. I have prompts 6, 10, 12, 14-18, and 26-29 still to do but I am getting caught up slowly but I do finally have more layouts done than undone

Holiday recap

It’s been a …(insert adjective of the moment here) few days.

My kids have been on vacation since the 16th (thank you weather…not) so they reached brotherly love saturation by the 23rd and have been mostly getting on one another’s nerves, and mine, ever since.

On the 24th we got together with some friends to make cookies

That evening we set out some cookies and milk for Santa. We also said goodbye to our visiting elf Elvin. The boys were so sad Elvin was leaving they wrote Santa a note asking for Elvin to visit again next year.

Then Santa came

Great gifts were had by all

DH got books and a Jedi robe bathrobe

The boys got movies, Wii games, books, board games, some Kung Zhu pets & Star Wars Legos

Santa brought the whole family a set of Snap Circuits, which are this geeky engineer toy that let you create electrical circuits that do various things – run a fan, make assorted noises, record voices, etc

I got some books, both Kindle and dead tree versions, plus $50 to spend on books and I also got this lens,

    

which was a drama of it’s own involving Fed Ex’s inability to deliver a package for 5 business days. I’m over an hour from the distribution center, which received my package on the 16th. Weather kept it from being delivered the 16th and the 17th (though UPS was delivering the 17th just fine). Then due to the ‘backlog’ it wasn’t delivered the 20th, 21st or 22nd. Backlog is another way of saying ‘we just couldn’t get to you because you are so far out, maybe tomorrow’. Which is total crap. UPS is also an hour away from me, though in another direction and they showed up 3 times in those 5 days. They also got cookies. I’m 100% positive it only turned up the night of the 23rd because I made such a pain in the butt of myself on the 21st, 22nd & 23rd to their service center. The distribution center called me at 5:30pm that night & said ‘oh I talked to the driver, he said he’s on his way there & should arrive in about an hour’. In other words someone finally realized they had been delaying delivery of my stuff for a week and made some guy take a truck out with it. He did not get cookies. Fed Ex always seems to have some issue or other when they have to deliver to me so I try to avoid them whenever possible.

We laid around & played with our new stuff mostly on the 26th. Though I did venture out to get my hair cut. It was supposed to snow an inch, or 2-4 inches, or  just flurries. Depends who you ask. The snowstorm blew east of us though and all we had were some flurries Christmas morning & a few more Sunday afternoon. Monday was very very windy & affected my internet. The main tower I get my signal from had a pole blow over and it won’t be fixed until Wednesday so I had to wait for DH to get home and reorient our eyesore to another tower.

Now I am getting caught up on some Journal Your Christmas layouts and getting ready for the New Year’s Eve party we are hosting on Friday.

DH will be 45 that day.

How was your Christmas?

Merry Christmas!!!

Journal Your Christmas

Some more layouts. I have 13 out of 14 done. I’m waiting on some photos for a couple more.

Cookies

I really don’t know why I make cookies before Christmas. The only people around are us and while I certainly think we should have cookies, perhaps it would be best to have fewer cookies. Or to just wait until after Christmas. I end up having to make twice as many cookies now.

We have a big party on new year’s eve every year, ‘big’ being a relative term of course. Anywhere from 6 adults and 7 kids to 10 adults and 7 kids. Plenty of people to spread the cookie calories around.

I made these Friday

Cocoa peppermint cookies.

There was one left when I went to get one Monday.

The boys and I made these Sunday

Gingerbread cookies. Trees, stockings, gingerbread men, dinos  & storm troopers.

Cuz that’s how we roll.

Maybe a quarter of them are left

I also made these Saturday

Peppermint bark crackers.  About half these are still around because I am the only real fan of peppermint bark in the house. Oh DH will eat them & now that the cocoa cookies are gone he is focused on them but they are low on his cookie list.

Friday my friend Mel & I are getting together with the kids to decorate sugar cookies, which is something of a tradition now. The kids only decorate the cookies. Mel & I are a both bit OCD about cutting out the cookies, getting the most cookies cut per rolled out round of dough is something of an obsession & small kids who don’t put the cutters close together or worse – press the cutters into already CUT dough – drive us bonkers. So we send the kids down to their den to play Wii while we roll out & bake the cookies and then mix up icing & call the kids up to decorate when the cookies are cool enough.

Last year we made so many cookies we each had 4 dozen to take home.

I need to make more of the cocoa peppermint cookies for the party.

But I want some now..

But if I make them now I will end up making a 3rd batch on the 30th because we will have eaten them all.

And I have to make chocolate truffles & buckeyes for the party as well, but they will wait until the 29th.

Maybe the 30th.

Or it might be best to make them the actual day of the party, just to make sure some are left.

Damn.

Now I am hungry.

Holiday card photos–take 3

I’m starting to think that, all things considered, it really might just be easier to photograph the boys than it is to photograph their toys.

Little boys, in matching clothes, with Santa hats, in front of the tree, smiling & hugging one another, radiating Peace Love & Joy.

How hard can it be really?

or you know, maybe bounty hunters with candy canes will work just as well.