lists of things « Inking My Thinking

Posts Tagged ‘lists of things’

Too much to sort through!

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

So I’m having this issue where I want to write and I have no idea what to write about. There are so many possibilities!

I could write about my weekend, which was mostly fantastically dull and involved watching movies and sleeping and talking with wonderful people on the phone.

Or I could talk about work and how we’re going to attempt an “affinity diagram” tomorrow and I have never done it before and I really hope it works out well.

I could talk about how we’re flying to Burlington, Vermont, again because we’re going for a wedding. And I keep freaking out because Justin’s jacket is wrinkled and we haven’t gotten it dry cleaned yet. And we don’t have a rental car yet, and since we’re staying at Justin’s folks’ place, we need a car to get from there to the wedding and all that. And all these things about weddings keep stressing me the heck out so much that I haven’t even started thinking about freaking out about the traveling part of the whole deal.

I could talk about these books I’m reading about managing money and not undervaluing your worth and taking control of your finances and all the fun and exciting things I’m learning . . . that no one else thinks are fun and exciting at all. And I’m reading books about marketing and writing business plans and don’t those sound fascinating, too? No? They do to me!

I could write about how well we ended up with our finances last month–with Justin making more money than expected and us handling budgeting and saving really well and ending up so far into the black that it’s astonishing how much we could potentially put away if we spent every month not going out to dinner or spending money on fun things and sitting at home sitting on our thumbs. Which we’re not going to do but we might spend more time looking at the possiblities there.

Which would bring me into talking about our current situation with Justin’s car.

And dang it! I haven’t bought gifts for Erica or Dad, who both have birthdays in the next 10 days, or for the bride and groom on Saturday.

So what I’m getting at here is that I really have so much going on in my head right now that it’s completely overwhelming and while I’m really having fun with most of it (car stuff = not so much fun, and what the heck is up with my wedding anxiety when I’m not even involved!), I have no idea where to start with the discussing of it all.

But I hope that you’re all doing very well and having a better start to your week than I did (there were ants in my cereal!) and I will babble nonsense at you all again soon.

Cheers!

Tags: ain't technology grand?, babbling about nothing much at all, financial situations, having to do with work, lists of things, what i did with my day
Posted in Living! |

Last day of my “vacation”

Friday, July 24th, 2009

Okay, quick update because I’ve been lax lately. Working backwards!

Today:
I got up and went babysitting earlier than I expected, but it was only for an 11-month old and he slept the entire time I was there.

Yesterday:
I worked with the children’s pastor on the store room at the church office and made it go from total chaotic eyesore to a shining example of organization. Everyone is very pleased.

And then after grilling dinner and chatting with friends online, we drove Justin’s car to the mechanic’s while no one else was on the road.

Wednesday:
Relaxed, did some projects, made lots of phone calls about business license information and finding a mechanic. Babysat in the evening for a few hours for a house of sleeping children.

Tuesday:
Drove to Macon with my small group leader/friend with her 11-month old, 3-year old, and 9-year old to drop the oldest off with her grandparents and then drove home again.

Monday:
Babysat for several hours for those same kids (I’ve seen a lot of them this week). I swear I did something else on Monday but I have no idea what it was.

So, my last week of my vacation has been insane. I made a chunk of change (gifted, if the unemployment office asks) to help with possible fixes for Justin’s car.

He’s been driving my car most of this month because I have a/c and get better mileage. But also, for the last week and a half, because his brakes went out. The mechanic looked at it today and didn’t have good news for us. We’re going to chat about it tonight and go see the mechanic tomorrow morning.

And I didn’t do everything I’d hoped to do while I was off work, but I did have fun doing what I did and it doesn’t matter that I didn’t cross everything off my list.

Bills are coming due in the next couple weeks and if we managed to make it through this whole month without pulling from savings for anything other than paying for our plane tickets for next month’s wedding, then I’m a tickled lady. We’ll know for sure in two more weeks.

I’ve made some good progress on my small business, learned a lot about the paperwork and how much more I really need to learn.

I learned a lot about IRAs and different money and retirement things.

I’ve slept in later most mornings that I should have but I don’t regret it one bit.

It’s been a nice break, but I’m ready to get back to work again.

After the weekend.

Tags: financial situations, having to do with work, lists of things, organizing, things around the house, what i did with my day
Posted in Living! |

My Monday list

Monday, July 13th, 2009

Alrighty, it’s a Monday!

So, the weekend really wasn’t much to speak of. I spent most of it being luxuriously lazy. Serious slothfulness. It was fantastic. I read a book, I played games with Justin. I played games with friends online. It was really a very relaxing weekend.

Meaning I woke up this morning with a need to redeem the “lost” time over the weekend.

I got up, poked at my computer reading comics, and then got dressed and went out to mow the lawn. Did you know I use a reel mower? I love my mower. Usually, since we moved into a place with a lawn, Justin snatches up the lawn chores as one of his things. A husband project. But since I’m home this month and it’s stupidly hot, I’ve been getting up in the morning on weekdays and taking care of the lawn. It’s hot, sticky work, but I love the snip-snip-snip sound of my mower and the work of the whole thing and the beautiful look of the lawn once it’s done.

So I did yard work for a while and then went for a walk around the pool to get a little straight-forward exercise in while it was still not terribly hot.

After getting cleaned up, I tidied the house, took care of a few projects, made some phone calls. I kept a list of what I did today. It started out as a list of things to do, and then ended up adding things that I’d done that weren’t on the original list just so I could see what I’d done.

This is what I ended up with:

DONE:

Mow the lawn
Weed whack, rake, and spray weeds
Go for a walk
Call the dentist to confirm my appointment
Call the town office about the extra trash can
Tidy the house
Make rice pudding (slow-cooker)
Clean the fridge
Put the boxes in the attic
Cancel the protection plan on the credit card
Take a break
Call Julie to apologize for missing last night (leave a message)
Email Kim to confirm our Wednesday appointment
Fold the clothes in my dresser drawers
Order tickets for the wedding in August
Go to the dentist at 4:00
Stop at the grocery store for a few things
Talk with Julie
Finish the movie I was watching while folding
Talk with Justin about car stuff
Start the grill to do the corn
Write a post

TO DO:

Read the “Publications” page on the business license page
Make a hurricane evacuation plan
Figure out the IRA information
Clean up MyMusic folder on my computer
Think of recycling sorting ideas
Set up the carbon monoxide alarm
Get the notes from the Orman book
Read the paperwork book for organizing
Talk with Audrey about the seamstress
Clip fingernails
Take a bath

I think I might still finish those last two, but the others are just going to have to wait until tomorrow.

Right now I’m grilling corn on the cob, in husks, on our little portable grill. It’s only big enough to fit a few things at a time, but it’s just the two of us, so that works out perfectly. We picked it up a few weeks ago and we’ve used it probably one or two times each week since then. I love it! This is our second time trying corn. The first time turned out so amazing, we had to find out if it was just a fluke or if they’re always that good. I’m using questionable corn today, which might be detrimental to the experiment. But if turns out good, we’ll know that it’s just that amazing to grill corn in husks.

And then we’ll have the rice pudding that I did this afternoon and probably should have added more milk when it was all gone in 1/2 the time the recipe said it should, but hopefully will be yummy anyway.

And then I’m going to relax my evening away!

I hope you all had a fantastic Monday! I’ll see you again tomorrow!

Tags: lists of things, things around the house, what i did with my day
Posted in Living! |

Babblings on a Thursday

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

It was raining this morning. It made getting out of bed really hard because it was so dark and the sound of the rain just made me want to snuggle back under the covers and sleep. But I didn’t. I still have a few more days before the weekend.

I wish I had rain boots. I was wet up to my knees by the time I made it to my desk.

I did get to use my umbrella, though. So many people use such drab-colored umbrellas, black and navy and they’re all so dark. My umbrella is white with multi-colored polka-dots. I love it.

In other news, I got to my desk and realized that my shirt was on inside out. This, apparently, is what happens when I try to make last-minute wardrobe changes in my rain-darkened bedroom. So I ducked into an empty cubical with a door and flipped it around.

A coworker and I had another discussion about how I don’t understand why he crosses off the days on the group calendar when we haven’t finished them yet. He does this all the time and it drives me nuts. Sometimes he’ll not only cross off today, but also the next couple of days, too. He’s already crossed off the first week of the furlough. He says he’s thinking ahead. I say that we haven’t finished the day yet. I’m tempted to steal his marker away, but he’s higher-up than me so I really just need to learn to deal with it.

My shoulders are starting to peel from the sun damage. Hopefully it’ll stick to the two red stripes that have persisted across my shoulders. The rest has faded to a dark tan, but these two stripes have stayed red. And now they’re starting to peel, despite my best moisturizing efforts.

I should write about the trip.

Okay, that’s done. I’ll post that separately, though, because it’s a huge long thing. So once you hit the end of this post, keep on scrolling and you’ll read the post about our trip to Vermont.

It’s not raining anymore. The sun has come out and it’s hot and humid. Welcome to summer.

I have today, tomorrow, and four days of next week left to work and then I’m off for four weeks. I’ve been thinking about how I’m going to handle meals over the next month. The plan is to conserve as much as possible, in both energy and food expenses. I can cook things in the crock pot and not have any heat seep into the room. I actually have a lot of options there, from what I read. And we have the wok for other options, and a toaster oven. We’re going to look into getting a tiny, cheap little grill for the back porch and that will open up a whole world of options. Plus, yea! Grilling! On a cute little $10 portable.

But what do you all think? Do you have recommendations on foods that I could make over the furlough? Length of cook time isn’t a concern—I’ll have all day to work on meals. But I’m looking for meals that are super cheap and don’t cause a lot of heat in the house (air conditioning is expensive).

Ideas I’ve thought of so far are:

Crock pot:

Roast chicken
Chili
Soup
Pasta

Wok:

Stir fry
Fried rice
Scrambled eggs

Cold:

Salads
Sandwiches/wraps

Grilled:

Hamburgers
Hotdogs/brats
Kabobs
Baked potatoes
Chicken
This thing called “Poor man’s lunch” that I can’t quite remember but I’m going to search until I find it.

Leave me comments with suggestions of other meals I could make!

And keep on reading if you want to read the post about our trip to Vermont.

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Tags: babbling about nothing much at all, lists of things
Posted in Uncategorized |

Traveling jitters

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

I’m dealing with some anxiety today. The cup of coffee this morning probably wasn’t the best idea ever. I’m awake, but now I’m a little bit jittery.

We’re flying to Vermont tomorrow morning. Our flight is around 11:30 out of Jacksonville, Florida, so we’re leaving home around 7:30 so we have plenty of time to navigate our way there and check in and navigate our way around the airport.

I don’t like airports.

They’re big and loud and confusing. There are people everywhere, rushing around, waiting around, running, sitting, talking on cell phones, typing on laptops. Garbled voices on overhead speakers make announcements from underwater, decrypted only by other employees of the airport, but they’re not telling. Planes are late, delayed, routed to different gates. Stone-faced security people run wands over my limbs that beep at the underwire in my bra, they pull everything out of my luggage, they examine the bottoms of my feet.

Flying doesn’t bother me. Once I get on the airplane, I’m better. I have a seat, I have my luggage, I’ve accomplished everything I needed to accomplish to complete my part of the deal. All the other people in the plane have their own seats, have their own business, and we can all sit there, neatly organized in rows and columns, and wait. There’s no chaos. No rushing and waiting. Just sitting and watching the familiar routine of the flight.

And I am getting much better about it. There was a while there when something would happen to me every single time I went to the airport. Usually I was pulled aside for extra security checks. Because a short, blonde chick is apparently a security risk.

This will be my second flight with Justin. Flying with someone is so much better than flying alone, except I tend to worry about both of us, then, instead of just me. And if I don’t watch it, I’ll let myself get worked up because I know that he’s there to handle everything. When I was traveling alone, I had to hold it together because no one else was there to help me. I very much prefer flying with Justin than flying alone.

So, once we navigate our way to the airport, get to our plane, fly to Vermont, and collect our luggage from the Burlington airport, the next several days will be spent with Justin’s friends, family, and family friends. There’s the graduation and the parties, rubbing elbows with people I know pretty well, kind of well, and know not at all. And I know that, really, it’s all going to go perfectly well. I get along with his friends and his family, and I can mingle with strangers just fine.

I’m just dealing with pre-travel jitters.

My computer is lying in pieces on the floor of my office. Justin is trying to get something working and it’s not been going very well. Yesterday, I went into my office and my computer was running in loops—turning on, booting up, starting to load Windows, freaking out, turning off . . . turning on, booting up . . . . In the end, it should run much better, but it’s going to wait until we get back from our trip.

We have one load of laundry sitting in the dryer and one more load going in today so we have full drawers of clean laundry to choose for our luggage. The luggage is sitting on my trunk in my office, pulled out from my closet yesterday evening so I could look at carry-on and purse options. The purse options left me sitting on the bed reorganizing my purse to see if the wallet-insert would work well, while the carry-on bag sat in my office with a magazine and a couple books waiting to be packed.

Today, I have to make sure that everything I need to accomplish gets done before I leave at 6:00. The biggest project, a document out for review by the guys for the project completion on Tuesday, is out and waiting for comments or signatures of approval. I have to review a document that’s up for discussion at a meeting I’m going to miss tomorrow and hopefully pass on my comments. I’m supposed to find information for an article for the department newsletter. I need to find information about a Lean project I’m chairing so I can get started on that as quickly as possible. And find out information on an expense report that I need to get submitted.

When I get home, I need to:

Unload the dishwasher
Load the dirty dishes
Water the plants
Unplug my fountain because it’ll dry up and run on empty and that’s bad
Fold the laundry in the dryer
Ask Justin to wash the last load of laundry
Dry and fold the last load of laundry
Charge all my electronic devices
Pack
Remember to pack Jessi’s card
Remember to pack the stuff Rose wanted from the attic
Find a way to print off the directions and travel stuff
Eat
Sleep