chatter

xmas day013

Originally uploaded by swardraws

I am testing the blogging feature from Flickr. It wasn’t working before but it should now.

Here is this years holiday greeting. I put the ‘draw’ back in swardraws this year.

Christmas this year was lovely. As I finished up my wrapping late last night I felt guilty that the tree was too full for only us 3. After the wrapping paper blood bath this morning, it didn’t seem as bad.

Last night after we got back from Xmas eve service, we got big mugs of hot chocolate and watched Its a Wonderful Life while the rain washed away any chances of a white Christmas.

I grew up playing with her daughter and at one point her and mom were friends until her son and Paula or someone got in fight.

Lately weird little things are going on around the folk’s house. First it was a trail of dog food on the front porch. Then the shrub was trimmed (I was peeking out the front door looking at the shrub when she came out and seen me, I am sure that helped things!). Then there was one single black tennis shoe. There were a couple other things that escape me right now but the one disturbing one was when all four of us girls were home. There on the porch was an envelope with red paint on it under a rock that at first looked like a pile of shit. Once we determined that the rock was a rock and the red paint wasn’t blood we picked it up and opened it. Inside was two newspaper clippings of the word “DEVIL” and “ED”. It looked like a headline “deviled” cut appart. Bonnie’s ex husband’s name is Ed. A couple years ago Ed came over to use his new snow blower on her sidewalks and since he had a new toy, he did my parent’s sidewalk too. That sent Bonnie over the edge, she went ballistic. Another coincidence is that most of these oddities are tied around my visits home. I was home 3 times in November (Steely Dan concert, Thanksgiving and sister’s reunion). The year before while I was visiting, she left a message on my parent’s phone telling them the next time they mess with her car, she was calling the police. Dad says he never sees any of her kids ever over to visit. Of course he isn’t seeing her walk across his window to place her presents so who knows.

My parents went to the police to report the oddities after the envelope. Obviously they don’t have evidence it is her doing these things (and who know, maybe it isn’t her) but they did say they are aware of her and then did hint that it isn’t going to be getting better. So it looks like crazy lives next door. My parents better start locking their doors before she takes it to the next level and come in.

by the printer. I managed to get the Xmas cards out but only one calendar before I waved my white flag. I set up the other 6 calendars I needed to print and sent them to MPix. That cost me $60 so now I know it cost about $10 a calendar. Doing them myself I have no idea. It cost about $85 for a full set of inks. Normally I don’t go thru that much even tho the printer is thristy. Where I am really saving however is in my sanity. I can’t get a decent print printed so that means even more ink (and card stock) wasted. Tonight I had to go make a run for cyan ink. I shouldn’t of run out. That is the last ink I ever buy for that printer. In the meantime I will use whatever ink I have left on general printing but then will buy a new cheap printer after the ink is gone.

Next year I have to rethink how I print Xmas cards and calendars. I will go out and get it printed and save the headache. The only disadvantage is that I have to get my act together early so I can get my order out and printed before it is too late.

Today I finished the card and got it in the mail. I then moved to cookie making. I now have to wrap stuff up and hopefully we will be ready to go to Indiana on Monday.

I am off all of next week. This last week was a challenge because I was already stretched thin getting the year end bookings done when H falls ill. Apparently she may have an aneurysm. Eek, just what she needs. She had one hot project that she was in the middle of that I had to pick up and pretty much start from scratch because she used Swift 3D and I didn’t have time to figure out what she did and how to match it with what still needed to be done so I felt the only way to get it done before Friday was to do it my way from scratch. I did faux 3d and the client was very satisfied. Now I am behind on my regularly scheduled jobs. Putting it out of my mind until the next week.

The interesting thing about H’s aneurysm. The night before, I had a rare headache. I took some Advil and it seemed to get worse. Since I never get headaches, my hypochondria kicked in and I even tweeted “the bad thing about never having a headache is that when you get one you think you are dying or something”. The next morning I find about H’s aneurysm when her partner shows up at my desk. Me and H always talk about having a second sense about things like that, I think I just had one of those with her.

Wonder how long H will be out. I have a feeling it might be awhile before we see her. Thoughts and prayers going out to her.

that I am too busy to write. I am in the thick of getting ready for Christmas. And while I really want to tell you all about my reunion with the sisters and mom’s crazy neighbor and my co-worker’s aneurysm, I don’t have the time. Catch ya later!

well it makes me ADD at least.

Let see, right now I have 10 tabs open. Most of them are design inspiration sites and I am sucking them up. No I am not, I want to suck them up but as soon as one item grabs my attention I jump to another one and go “oh wow, cool” then I move to another tab. But wait, my new pocket camcorder I just got needs a firmware update. Wait there is a new photo project announced at Utata. It is based on a photographer featured in a Salon 11 months ago. I never read that one—off to read….I got too many tabs open. Lets close some but wait this design inspiration site looks cool, click that link—boing another tab opens—cool. Did that firmware update finish downloading. Why can’t I see the SD card for the camera on my computer? Open another tab so I can do a search on why that might be. Lets see, lets write a list of things I want to do this weekend. The weather is suppose to be nice, definitely plan on a walk. I need music but everything I have is distracting. Lets put on classical. Oooh, that design link has something on motion graphics. I need to fire up Lynda.com and do some tutorials right now. I still have 8 tabs open. Wonder how long after I start my tutorial before I fall asleep in this chair. Where is my storyboard for my planned video art. Didn’t I start a list at work of things I got to do. Oh yeah, I need to stock my purse with Tootsie Pops. Should probably do it right now. No put it on a list. Found the story board but I should look at the book I just got on goofy photo projects. I need to find some needlenose pliers so I can bend my cheap forks into photo easles (no kidding, found it in that book). RAW just dropped off two of his prescriptions that I need to get refilled on Caremark. Got to get to JCP to use my $10 coupon. Did I write that on my list. I think I will try and close those design tabs. Oh and while all of this is going on, I decide to take a moment to write about it here. It is going on 1:00 a.m. Time for bed. Yeah right now with my head swimming. Maybe I will put on a Lynda.com tutorial.

I just woke up from a 5 minute nap. I am trying to cram in as many Lynda.com tutorials as I can until the 23rd. I would make a horrible student. While I for the most part can live quite effectively on 6 hour of sleep and rarely nap, put me in front of someone trying to teach me something or a text book, I am out lickety-split! I don’t know how Sherry is doing it.

Yesterday while watching CBS Sunday Morning I discovered the virtual toast app call Toast It! (or something like that, I don’t have it in front of me). It is an app for my iPod touch that makes toast and lets you put on yummy (and not so yummy) toppings. I can now have my peanutbutter english muffin every day and not get fat!

Why I am bringing this up is because while playing with this silly little app I realized my video art projects don’t have to be so serious like I think I was envisioning with the poetry and such but quirky and fun like the storyboard I developed yesterday called Ode to Toast.

This weekend I spent lots of money online shopping. I have 10 packages coming soon and only one of them is a Christmas present. While I have a cool new watch coming and some Fiestaware dishes I couldn’t find in the stores coming, most of what I am expecting is printer related, ink for 2 printers and 13×19 card stock. Yes it is that time of year to gear up for the Christmas card and calendars! Seriously though, I am getting tired of putting the amount of money I have to for that printer. Next year I will have to rethink how I output the annual card and calendars.

My kid is spoiled. I am getting her addicted to having the cool, funky and fun stuff. This weekend we were on the hunt for an Ugly Doll, more specifically Ugly Dog. I don’t think I am sending the right message about wanting and getting stuff. I am sure I am messing up my kid. While I am reinventing myself in other ways, I need to do something about my parenting or teaching moments. I sense I could get heavy here with this topic and I need to but not in this quick post. Remember I just woke up.

Today went to Steak n Shake with Joann and her cronies. We went last week for Deb’s birthday and this week for Marilyn’s. Last week after some research I found the most WW point friendly meal that I had any interest in eating. I was looking forward to eating it again a week later. Wouldn’t ya know they changed the menus within the week and my burger wasn’t on it any longer! They made me one anyway but sheesh.

Today was my 17th anniversary at Abbott.

seriously, still love typing on this new keyboard and my nails are still short so here I go….wheeeee!

In my last post I mentioned something about wanting to get into poetry for my project. Everything I have looked at didn’t connect with me. Today me and the kid went to the mall. She was on the hunt for an Ugly Doll, or more specifically an Ugly Dog keychain. She only had so much money and it is the dog she really wants. No such luck. While we were in the bookstore who’s name escapes me right now (it begins with B like they all seem to do, it isn’t Boarders, it is the other one) I seen a poetry book, Best American Poetry 2009. The few pages I seen looked like something I can connect with and get and be visual with. I didn’t really look at it too long so I don’t know how I can tell I can connect with it or not but it looked promising. I will have to look it up online.

My objective to go to the mall was to go to Macys so I could get some more Fiestaware. I absolutely had to have a set in Lemongrass and while I was at it, I didn’t have turquoise. I also picked up a fruit bowl and a small dinner plate in the Lemongrass. I really need and want some more 9″ rimmed soup bowls. I have 4 and want at least 2 more. Macys didn’t have any. I just got done with some online shopping and was able to score me some other items I was looking for like one more jumbo mug and one more small dinner plate. Still no luck with the 9″ rimmed soup bowls. Megachina seems to have a wide variety of Fiestaware but their shipping is too high. Hopefully JCP has some. JCP in fact is where I got reinfected with the Fiestaware bug when a catalog showed up featuring the new LemonGrass color.

On Friday I was taking my walk when I was on a technology high. Everything was good, my iPod touch was perfectly sorted and I just discovered the Genius Mixes on there. I have been enjoying Genius Mixes on iTunes and didn’t realize they transferred to the iPod too, sweet. By Friday evening I realized my Genius Mixes on iTunes was blank, not showing. I did some online sleuthing and tried a few things to try and get it back online and now they are gone completely! I wasted a few more hours and am still coming up empty handed. No one out there seems to know how to restore it. I think it went bye-bye last week when I updated the OS to 10.6.2. I hope they come back.

Well I am off now to get some Lynda.com tutorials done. How funny is it that the last time I signed up for a month of Lynda.com was back in March. It is one of those deals that if you don’t cancel, it will keep billing you month after month. March was when my CC expired so I thought it was perfect time to sign up since it won’t auto roll over if I didn’t cancel in time. A couple weeks ago I wanted to do it again and got the ok to expense it to work but I would have to be careful with the roll over since my CC wasn’t going to expire this time.

Then I got a letter in the mail from my CC company. Apparently some CC info was compromised across the board so they are canceling all cards and sending us new ones. My card on file at Lynda.com will be expiring!

I think that is too ironic and too funny.