upgrade!

I have a new phone!
Well, technically, it's an old phone but it's new to me! Father got himself infatuated with the Droid Eris a couple weeks ago, so he went out and bought one. Unlocked, for to stay on his current plan. That was about $500.
Clearly, father has too much money.
As he was raving about the specs of the Eris, sounding more and more like he would indeed be getting it, I told him if he did get it, I wanted his current phone, an EnV Touch.
FedEx left it at my door yesterday.
photo borrowed with thanks from here
I must hand it to Verizon- they make it quite easy to swap phones online. Much easier than I remember it being with Sprint, who I was with for 9+ years. Enter the ESN, wait about 5 minutes, and poof! Good to go.

Putting all my ringtones on the new phone was a joy, as always. Save everything onto hubby's SD card, then send them all to myself attached to a picture message, then save them all as ringtones on my phone. Actually, that is easy when doing 1 or 2. I was doing 15.
At least this time I didn't make hubby help. I've done that before when he's at work and I'm at home playing with sound editing software. He gets tired of it quickly.

Now I have to decide if I want to keep my Voyager around as a backup or offer to sell it to a guy at work who's son has broken 2 yes TWO Voyagers in the past year. His first one was replaced under warranty, the second was out of warranty so he's back on an older phone for now, until he's due for an upgrade in about a year.
I am also impatiently waiting on screen protector and case to arrive. Can't believe father didn't have a screen protector on the thing, especially since he left the factory protector thing on the inside screen.

friggin cheapskate kids

So my children were downstairs playing. Suddenly they came running up, saying "oh here's the store, let's get some fruitsnacks." They opened the pantry and stared longingly up at the fruitsnacks (on the top shelf, for what should be obvious reasons). Then they came to me, sitting on the couch reading. "We want fruitsnacks! We want to get some fruitsnacks!" I made them each ask nicely (adorable from the 2year old), and went into the kitchen. As I was getting down the fruitsnacks, I asked "How are you going to pay for these?" and the 4yo instantly answered "well, this is back to being our house now, not a store."

good tidings to you

For Christmas, the hubby gave me a 12 bottle wine cooler. He was quite pleased with himself. I was pleased also, though it is not quite the version I had envisioned when originally planning to get one. Naturally, on the 26th I had a fun time stocking up on wine now that I had somewhere to put multiple bottles.

Let's see... I have 6 in the cooler and 1 open up in the kitchen (or 'chitchen' as Boo says). What do I have? I will happily show you.

Top row:
Lindemans Bin 50 Shiraz, 2008. Dad enjoyed something else, possibly the Merlot, so I decided to try this. Also Lucky Duck Malbec, 2008. This is from Argentina, however Cahors wines are pretty much Malbec so I'm taking a chance on this. (Keep reading for Cahors.)

Middle rows:
Chateau Greysac Medoc, 2005. I saw this on special in the grocery store and texted my dad "Where's Medoc?" He replied it was "north of Bordeaux, try it you'll like it". So I got it. On the right is my ever faithful ever present Little Penguin Shiraz. I love this stuff. Their Merlot is very good too.

Bottom row: the good stuff
Cahors wines!! YUM! On the left is Chateau Grezels Prestige, 2004. I have a special place in my heart for Cahors wines and Grezels in particular. My aunt lives in Cahors. I've been there. Even better, my aunt is friends with the couple who own Chateau Grezels. I've been there. Dad and I were sent home with a case of their wine when we visited in 2003. The bottle on the right is something dad picked up in a Paris store during one of his visits a couple years ago. I consider Cahors wines my 'special occasion' stuff. (French geography lesson: Cahors is in south-western France on the Lot river, about an hour (40miles) north of Toulouse. From there you can easily drive to visit Toulouse, Rocamadour, Pech Merle, and other lovely places.)

In the kitchen:
Coppola's Syrah-Shiraz. I admit, I bought this for the novelty of who makes it. But this is GOOD. Really really GOOD. Typically a bottle of this lasts me 2 days. I've stretched this one, I've drunk from it 2 days and I have a small glass worth left.

And, for the evenings when wine just doesn't go well with dinner (like taco night), there is always always this in the fridge:

photo borrowed from here

Because you can take the man out of Texas but by golly, you better be able to get him his beer.

power issues

The streetlights in front of our house (and in the whole back section of our neighborhood) came on for the first time Friday night. They came on Saturday night at dusk, but around midnight they were off. In fact, all the streetlights in the whole place went off. They've stayed off since.
Hubby reported our power blinked 3 times Sunday while I was at work. I staggered downstairs a few minutes late this morning, calculating quite how long I could nurse my cup of coffee before leaving the house, and stared blankly at the coffeemaker blinking "12:00" at me. No coffee. That's not good.
I quickly set the clock(s) in the kitchen and hit Brew Now, but it's not the same. I feel rushed. I like to savor the morning coffee.
And to just top off this morning, my boss is gone. Starting his new position in Dallas.
Blah.

I think that went well...

It's nice to be home.
I spent the day in Chicago O'Hare- fly in, wander for a half hour, have an interview for the Supervisor position at home, wander for another couple hours, fly home.
I don't like doing interviews. I don't like selling myself, I prefer to let my actions speak for me. This wasn't so bad, the hiring manager has known me since I started with the company almost 9 years ago, and she knows I know my stuff. The issue is can I control my mouth (I didn't, until a few years ago). The other manager she had sitting in was a maintenance supervisor, who had no idea who I was at all. That was almost a good thing. I think I gave good answers to the questions, as odd as they were. (Personal favorite: What level supervision are you comfortable working with? which at first I thought meant how close did I want someone looking over my shoulder, but turned out they meant am I comfortable working with base managers, regional managers, VPs, etc. Since the 'Managing Director of NorthEast Maintenance' is based in Columbus, and he & I get along fine, I said I'm good with most anybody, though the CEO is still a little intimidating.)(actually, his position and title are intimidating. The actual man doesn't impress me at all.)
There was one other interview today, and there are 5 tomorrow, and that's all. Our current supervisor's last day is Friday, then Monday he starts his new position in Dallas. The hiring manager hopes to select somebody and get them in right away, which in our company's timeline is about a month.
The flight home was fun, I was sitting next to a pilot who was picking up a plane in Columbus and taking it to Nashville. He and I spent a while discussing why on earth a plane would go from CMH to BNA, finally settled on something must be broken in Nashville and they need to cover a flight. Then he and I traded company gossip, because different departments hear different things. Then we just bullshitted for a while. On approach, we peered out the window looking for Les Wexner's house. Wexner owns the Limited Corp (Limited, Express, Bath & Body Works, etc). Seems every plane coming into Columbus has to do this huuuuge circle to avoid New Albany for noise issues, and flight crews have heard it's so Wexner doesn't have to hear airplanes. I can find the house (the driveway is all you can see) from the road, but we were too far south to see it from the air. I did see my house!

back to the routine

Gymnastics started back up today. We switched to the class just before the one we had been in (11:15 vs noon) so that Munchkin could be in the experienced 3-4 instead of new 3-4.
There's alot more kids now.
Last session, it was Munchkin & 1 other girl, and just Boo in the parent-tot class. Now, there are 4 parent-tot sets, while Munchkin still only has 1 kid with her (a boy, this time). I heard the coaches saying there were supposed to be 3 kids in the 3-4, no idea where the third one was.
Boo doesn't like crowds much. Or loud children running around (though she & Munchkin do it often enough). So she was a bit shy, but still did some great forward rolls. She did good on the balance beam too. I got to sneak some glances at Munchkin, and she was doing great on her stuff.
After gymnastics we went to Target for some supplies. I only spent $37!!! Woohoo!! $20 of that was a box of pull-ups, so I think I did good. When we came out of Target, the snow had started. Holy crap did it snow. We got 3-4 inches today, from 12:30ish through 5pm. It's still snowing now, though not as aggressively. Hubby had local news on when he got up, the weatherman announced this was our 12th consecutive day of snow.
I like snow, but enough already.

20010

Sorry, that was the subject on a mass email at work and it made me laugh.
It continues to snow, and be kinda cold. That's not much fun. I suspect there is ice under the snow on the streets, which means when I give in and take the dog out it will require much effort to not fall down. This will be a slightly different type of not fall down effort than last night, which was caused by one big glass of wine. Wine made from Concord grapes. I'll not be buying it again. My brain had a hard time with tasting grape juice & getting sloshed at the same time. Kinda like I used to be with all yogurt (now I can eat the whipped ones or the mix-stuff-in ones). There's sweet taste but a something underneath that just isn't right.

My father (who eventually made it home to his place in Texas late Monday night)(yea, only 4 days after he left France) texted at 12:42 talking about how he'd been playing Wii at his friend's place. Glad someone was having fun. I drank, and I read more of Under the Dome (that there new Stephen King book). Yee haw. Such an exciting life I lead. And I am so just rambling right now, aren't I? I should stop. Munchkin (with her hair cut!!! It's a little past her shoulders now) has claimed my recliner again, but has not turned on the massaging stuff yet. Oh, she's drawing patterns in the plush with her toes.
sigh. Happy New Year to all.

Merry Christmas!

Whee.... hubby & I were up until about 1am, him building gifts from Santa and me filling stocking and wrapping smaller Santa gifts.
My father spent the past 9 days in Paris (just as a way to burn up his vacation time from work), as he flies standby on my benefits he somehow got bumped off the direct to Dallas flight and wound up in Chicago last night. Then he got stuck. After an hour or so, as the snow came down like mad in Texas, we figured out there was no way he was getting home. So he talked to a nice gate agent and got put on the standby list to come here. He spent the night at some nice hotel in Chicago (on a distressed passenger rate), and is back at the airport this morning. The last agent he dealt with last night said it didn't look good for getting to Columbus, but Ohio looked better than getting to Dallas. So he's already on his second gate to try and get here. Supposedly his luggage went to Texas last night and will get sent up here this morning. I have my doubts on that, but we'll hope for the best.
Hubby & I got up around 7am, he got the girls up at 8. They had a blast. Everything from us & Santa was opened within an hour. There's a few gifts under the tree still, those will be going to my mom's house in a couple hours for the larger family event. (Not much larger, just adds mom, stepdad, aunt, and will possibly be crashed by an old family friend.)
Hope everyone has a wonder-filled day. Look through the eyes of a child if you need to. It's there.

we're back

It's nice to be home... where the weather station thingy on the desktop says 36, "Not As Cold".
Actually, that was yesterday. Today it's 35, cloudy with a bit of rain. I heard rain at some point early this morning, it's still raining now so I'm trying to convince the dog he doesn't really need to go out right now.
We made it to the grocery store, restocked all our staples that had expired while we were gone, and I made it through 5 or 6 loads of laundry. Everything but the towels. Yay me. Still need to figure out dinners for the week... ick.
My mom stopped by yesterday, gave back our garage door opener and chatted with the girls because they just had to show her their new toys and dvds. She said our dog was very well behaved and walking him all week wasn't bad, there was only 1 day that was icy but that darn portapotty across the street from our house blew over twice. I can't wait for that darn thing to go away, but if they intend to leave it until all construction is done it'll be here a while.

time to go now

It is 5:54am Central Time. We are up and moving. (well, 3 of us. We haven't gotten Boo up yet.)
We are checked in for our flight, hubby is about to get in the shower, Munchkin & I are dressed. I guess I should go raid the coffee (for me) and chocolate milk (for her).
This here new computer turned out very nice. We successfully networked them together yesterday, so all of MIL's pictures are now moved over. She didn't lose anything! YAY!
Hubby snapped at his baby sister yesterday, actually he didn't really snap she just took it as snapping and went out to the garage (where we smoke down here) to call middle sister "He says I'm gonna have parental controls on the new computer and he's an administrator and blah blah"
She never said anything to his face, but shortly after she left she called MIL to gripe some more.
For the record, baby sis is 2 or 3 years OLDER than I am. Plus she spent a couple evenings "Oh, I won't need to use mom's computer. We have 2 over here." (at her boyfriends place, where she pretty much lives, much to MIL's relief.)
yeah. Drama. Huzzah for going home!!

Actually, when hubby noticed Munchkin was waking up and went to give her a hug, she asked "is it time to go back to Ohio now?" he told her yes, and she said "Oh good."

ooohh- technology!

We are in Texas. Got here early Sunday morning, and the breakfast at Denny's almost made it worth getting up at 4:15. Not quite, but close.
Yesterday my father kindly agreed to drive out here to Mesquite (about 35-40 minutes from his place in Irving) to deliver our gift to my M-I-L. A new computer! and monitor! and printer! [Dad kindly agreed to purchase the set down here on Black Friday and we paid him back so that we wouldn't have to ship the darn things from Ohio.] Last night hubby, father & I spent 90 minutes trying to get MIL's firefox profile and her saved pictures off the old computer. Couldn't do it. Wouldn't recognize USB port (even after downloading 3 drivers it claimed it needed), downloaded 4 CD burning programs only to have the 1 that worked on that ancient system claim "no media installed" in the drive. Today hubby & I got it up and running. Tomorrow father will come over again and we'll try to network the systems to get her stuff moved over. She's so tickled at the modern system she doesn't care if she has to start over. She just leapfrogged from WindowsME to Windows7 (64bit). From a 10Gb harddrive to a 320GB. From 128mb ram to 3Gb. and from a cruddy old tube monitor to a 18.5" widescreen lcd.
Hubby went through and created multiple users- us and MIL as administrators, niece, nephew, and hub's baby sister as users. All 3 user accounts have parental controls turned on. Ha ha.
eeek, it's late. must get children to bed. we suck at bedtimes while down here. when you factor in the timezone change it's even worse. ooops!

I am doubting...

I was just browsing some things on Amazon. My recent history now shows 2 versions of Into the Woods (London cast & Original Broadway cast), plus some "Legends of Broadway" Bernadette Peters album. The 'picks' based on what others with my recent history have bought?
4 count em 4 fantasy/erotica novels.
Yes, I know they are fantasy/erotica novels because I already have 3 of them on my Kindle. As the Kindle is still tied into father's credit card (thanks again Dad!) my weird-ass literature choices show up in HIS history. I feel bad about that sometimes. For a while. Then I buy another MaryJanice Davidson book and laugh until I forget. (Seriously. Her stuff cracks me up. The Queen Betsy series, the Fred the mermaid stuff, even Hello Gorgeous is funny.)
We fly to Texas stupidly early Sunday morning. Let's see, scheduled departure is..... 35hours and 6 minutes from now. I think. It's 21:34 Friday night, we leave at 06:40 Sunday morning.
Personally, I think the hubby's on crack thinking we'll get us AND the girls up and to the airport that early. He's trying to bribe me by pointing out we'll get to Mesquite around 9:30am so we can stop for breakfast at Denny's. I love Denny's. There are no more Denny's anywhere around central Ohio. They all left. It makes me very sad. Also making me sad, my dumbass put the rental car reservation in my own name, meaning I'll have to drive. I hate driving in Texas. I can do it, I just really really don't like it. (I will not ever try to drive in NYC. That I flat out refuse. Or LA. Dallas & Seattle were bad enough.)
OK, time for a different holiday beer (Shiner "Cheer" is awesome!!! Buy it if you see it!)(tonight I'll try the one from Columbus Brewing Co) and then crash. Trying to shift bedtime earlier in preparation for Sunday. ugh.

dinner conversation

Boo: Mommy how old is you?
Me: Twenty nine.
Boo: Mommy how old is Daddy?
Me: Forty.
Munchkin: Wow that's BIG!

Perhaps luckily, Daddy was not in the room.

hope we can put it back together....

So we noticed a few weeks ago the truck has a leak. Hubby identified it as the water pump. This is a bad thing (I'm told) because while the parts are not terribly expensive to replace it, it is a very labor-intensive task. (translation: he's semi-scared to do it, but it would cost a gazillion dollars in labor fees to have a shop do it.)
So, now that the puddle on the garage floor is larger each day, today he started tearing my precious truck apart. I dutifully helped [hold flashlight, read manual, hand him tools, occasionally suggest different method to get STUPID plastic hose clamps off, and oh yea the unspoken task: be ready to call 911 if he gets hurt].
My truck's engine is in many more pieces now than it was 3 hours ago... the radiator shroud is off (both pieces, not just upper as expected), the fan is off (now we need to find a 1 7/16" crowsfoot to put it back on), and since for some STUPID reason the radiator does not have a drain valve (seriously GMC, what the fuck???) he had to cuss a previously-mentioned plastic hose clamp off to drain the booger. Now he's out there flushing it [supposedly I am searching for stores that carry the crowsfoot since we really want to put this back together tomorrow so I can drive it to work Sunday].
All this fun.... and I've only barely gotten through grown-up laundry this weekend so far. I haven't started the girls' stuff. Ick.

AUGH!

After an oh-so-fun evening feeling like crap, I eventually chugged a glass of wine I'd nearly forgotten I had poured, laughed heartily at a Dirty Jobs shark week episode, and headed to bed. I was in the bathroom doing what I do, when CHIRP! the smoke detector announced the battery was low.
I was less than pleased.
I headed downstairs, rummaged in the junk drawer, found a 9volt battery, got the roughly 2ft stepstool from the garage, went back to my room (furiously texting hubby who is at work on overtime) and stretched as tall as I could- to discover I had NO IDEA how to change the battery in the damn thing. I finally found the battery compartment, but I was just a teeny bit too short to get the old battery out. Stupid 9ft (or is it 10ft?) ceilings.
So I took the stepstool back down to the garage and retrieved the ladder. Which hangs on the wall. In front of the truck (hubby took car to work). Above the lawnmower.
That sucked.
Almost as much as getting the ladder up the stairs without damaging myself or the walls.
By the time I was setting up the ladder, I had hubby on speakerphone going "what's happening? It's doing what?" and I managed to get the old battery out, put the new one in, and the damn thing STILL CHIRPED so I had to go back up the ladder (which hurts in bare feet, btw) and jiggle the battery some more.
I got it to stop chirping. I got the ladder back downstairs. I told hubby HE could put the darn thing back on the wall I was NOT climbing over the lawn mower again tonight.
Now I am all fired up, no longer sleepy at all, and it is very nearly 1am. If left alone, I get up at 9. Somehow, I was awake at 6:30 and off and on until getting up at 7:30 this morning. I am very tired, but still ALL TICKED OFF and thusly not ready to sleep.
bleah.
Why yes, I am willfully ignoring the load of whites in the dryer ready to be put away, thank you very much. I am also not going back in the garage in search of the small bucket to drain my washing machine, which yesterday developed a musty odor. Yes, the load of whites in the dryer is the last load of laundry in the house, I washed everything else over the last 2 days. (For the record, the washer smells LESS now than it did before I did laundry. I did run it through it's "Tub Clean" cycle, which took 1hour 9 minutes, holy crap.)
On the plus side, this morning before the children got up I watched the doe eat from my birdfeeder to the point I opened the back door and told her that wasn't her food. She didn't run as fast as I expected. She looked up when I undid the deadbolt, looked harder when I opened the door, but only backed off when I stepped outside and spoke. Didn't see the buck today.

not what we expected to be feeding...

How cool is this? I finally was home during daylight to refill the birdfeeders this morning, and this afternoon I glanced out the window and was shocked to see these two.
Explains a few things about our seed usage, and why the tube feeder was on the ground this morning...
I hope the buck doesn't wander in the wrong areas, it's currently hunting season here. He'd make a nice trophy for someone inclined to those things.

Once I got over my surprise (and got my pictures) I just kept thinking "I love where we live!"

if you feed them, they will come

How many do you see in this picture? I've spotted 4 on the tube feeder, 1 on the suet, 1 on the lamppost feeder, with 2 more enroute & 1 just watching from the background.
There were a good 2 dozen more in the background. It's ridiculous.
My bluebirds stopped by this morning, had me quite excited, as well as a few woodpeckers again- 1 we hadn't seen before with an excellent scarlet cap (according to my book, he'd be a Red-bellied). We have a pair of Downy woodpeckers, the female cracks me up because she comes up to the house much more often- I spotted her on a deck balustrade, and as I called the girls to come see, she hopped over to a handle of the grill, then to the deck rail and finally flew to the woods.
I haven't seen the male cardinal today, but the female has been out quite a bit.
I must remember to buy more food when we're out this afternoon- emptied the bag without totally filling the feeders this morning. Once I realized just how many birds are coming, I'm no longer surprised at the amount of food we go through.

watch the birdie!

Apologies for not having pictures of actual birds at our birdfeeder- It now gets dark as I arrive home, and I didn't think last weekend to sit with camera at the ready.



So the birdfeeder was erected in hopes of keeping the bluebirds around. Husband swears he saw them during his weekend, right after we put up the feeder, but I haven't seen them yet. I did enjoy lying in bed this morning, wishing I didn't have to get up, watching the birds come to the suet. I saw a bluejay, a woodpecker, and some other little things...

chirp cheep tweet!

Twice now I've seen blue birds (Eastern Bluebirds, specifically) sitting on the railing of our deck. Yesterday I sweettalked the hubby into putting up a birdfeeder. He surprised me by willing to put up a larger feeder than I had envisioned.
We set it up late yesterday evening, right about at sundown. It looked like this picture.
He texted me early this afternoon to say the tube feeder was empty and the top thingy was under half. By the time I was leaving work, he had refilled them, so I got to take what can pass as a 'before' picture. I did get to see a pair of cardinals already. Hubby reports there was a woodpecker, lots of my bluebirds, the cardinals, and he has no idea what else found the seed already but there were "A LOT OF BIRDS".
I'm pleased.

my little grape

Seriously. I commented to her on how lovely all her purple was or how she was all purple, something like that, and she responded "Yea I is a grape!"
Now I wonder if her Daddy jokingly told her that earlier today or if she came up with it herself. 50/50 chances.
and doesn't she look lovely sprawled on the dog's bed (which is more often the cat's bed, but we figure if the dog ever actually wants it, he's big enough to claim it).