Posts Tagged ‘things around the house’

October!

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011

October hit on Saturday and it was like the weather looked around, blinked, and then went ‘Oh!  Riiiiiiight.  OCTOBER.  Sorta, kinda fall-like, right?  Riiiiiiiiight.”  And overnight lows started dipping into the 50s and 60s and the daytime highs dropped from 90 somethings to the low 80s.  The skies cleared up, the afternoon showers disappeared, and the sky turned such a brilliant color of blue that I can’t help but look at it every time I go outside.  Especially since the sun hasn’t been burning my retinas now every time I step outside.

Of course, this means that when I was outside on Saturday, the temperature was so wonderful I didn’t even think to put on sunscreen and got a toasting across my face.  And it also means that I’m driving to work in the dark, wearing a sweater or jacket in from the car, and then carrying that sweater out to the car over my arm when I leave work in the warmth of the afternoon.

It’s wonderful!  Granted, I miss the north.  I miss the colors of the leaves and the fact that you’ve all been wearing sweaters and enjoying this kind of cool weather for about a month by now.  I finally went and got soup at the store yesterday because it’s finally getting cool enough that I can really enjoy hot soup.  And people made fun of my arm warmers because they’re jealous.  Obviously.  I mean, my arm warmers are pink! And fluffy!  And, most importantly, keep my arms warm!

I’ve been opening the window on my side of the bedroom when I go to bed to let in the cool air at night.  It gets warm again during the day, but at night, that cool breeze is delightful.  Unfortunately, my allergies have been acting up since the weather changed, but hopefully it’ll pass soon.  Or, you know, I’ll refill my very expensive allergy pills.  But I’d rather not.

The change of the weather also means that we’re heading into a very busy couple months.  October started out with Family Day at my workplace.  It’s great for families with children who can go play on the moon walk rides and be entertained by the midway games and have the patience to stand in line for a burlap bag and slide down a big slide.  Justin and I stood in line for the Ferris wheel for more than an hour (toasting my face), got some cotton candy, and then went to eat at a local Mexican restaurant.

This coming Saturday we’re helping at the Habitat for Humanity building project doing yardwork.  The Saturday after that is book club, and since it’s the 1-year anniversary of the club, we’ll probably be hosting a movie party at our house.  The week of the 16th is the local Seafood and Arts festival.  And the Friday after that, the last Friday of the month, we’re having a game night party at our house with a bunch of our local geeky friends.

And that’s just October!   November and December are going to be even more busy, I’m sure.  But I don’t mind that much, so far.  I’m looking forward to spending time with my friends and enjoying this fantastically cool weather.  I hope you’re all doing the same!

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Stuff ‘n’ Things

Tuesday, September 27th, 2011

Since I got my hair cut on Saturday, 1 person noticed at church, 1 friend noticed when she came over Sunday evening, 1 person noticed at work, 2 people noticed at the chiropractor’s office.  That’s right — more people noticed at the chiropractor’s office where we go a handful of times a month than the people who I work with 40 hours a week, every week, for the last couple years.  This makes me surprisingly grumpy at my coworkers, but very fond of the people at the chiropractor’s office.

Justin is sick.  He caught something Sunday and has been down for the count Monday and today.  Which means he’s slept most of the day, up for about 3 hours during the day, and then he’s up in the evening for a while.  The sheets are in the washing machine as I type this.  They were smelling distinctly “slept in,” if you know what I mean.

I’m having one of those weeks at work where I wonder why I’m doing what I’m doing instead of something that actually might make a difference, like massage therapy.  Or teaching yoga.  Or running a book store.  Something that has a feeling of accomplishment involved, instead of this repeated frustration of doing the same task for every project that has to be checked off the list of requirements but that no one really cares to look through except me.  I’m getting really tired of it.  And I work for a good company that treats the employees well, with good pay and great benefits and I can’t complain that there’s any hardship involved with what I do at all.  It’s just that the whole points of what I’m doing for the company doesn’t seem to make a lick of difference and I’m tired of spending 40 hours a week doing something that doesn’t matter.

And that’s all nothing but grumpiness.

I’ve been really wanting to decorate the house for fall (even though it’s still really hot here) so here are a couple pictures of ideas I saw and liked.

(I actually did these candles last year and they turned out super cute.)

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Favorite things: Candle

Sunday, September 25th, 2011

When I went out shopping with Justin’s grandma a couple weeks ago, I found this candle at a surprisingly expensive store with fantastically friendly women working the sales.  I kept being surprised that the prices were quite so high, and then finding something that was really adorable, and then having a delightful snippet of conversation with one of the ladies working the floor.  I found the candle in the back of the store in a section full of things on sale for 50% off.  I was looking it over when one of the ladies came over to tell me that she’d bought two of those and she *loved* them.  And when I couldn’t find a price on it, she ran over to find that out for me, and when she told me how much it cost and I said I had to think about it a little bit, she told me to think hard because it was a really nice candle.

I bought the candle.  And she’s right, it’s a REALLY good candle.

And here’s the fun bit:  it runs on two D batteries.  Yeah, it’s a completely fake candle.  On the bottom of the candle, it has an on, off, and timer function.  On and off are self-explanatory, but the timer bit is the really awesome thing about this candle.  When it’s turned on using the timer function, it will stay on for 5 hours before turning itself off.  And then 24 hours after the time it was turned on the first time, it’ll turn on again.  Which means that sometime between 7:15 and 7:30 every night, the candle turns on, and then it turns off five hours later.

It’s AWESOME!  I wander into my bedroom in the evening and find a cheery candle burning on my dresser.  I go to sleep to candlelight and don’t have to worry about burning the house down.  I don’t have to worry about smoke or chemicals being burned into the air of my house.  And I don’t have to think about lighting it or blowing it out!  It turns on by itself, a helpful, cheery little flickering sweetness.

It is, for certain, one of my favorite things in my house lately and one of my favorite things I’ve bought in a while.  And I really didn’t expect to like it so much.  I thought “Hrm, candle.  Looks pretty.”  And now I’m all “Battery powered candle!!!  Best invention ever!!!!  I want to have more!!!”

And I’ve seen some terrible fake candles, so to prove my point that this is awesome, I’ve made a quick 34-second video showing that it looks really realistic.  There’s no sounds — the whooshing sound in the back is just the air-conditioning blowing, and then clicks as I try to figure out how to stop my camera from recording.

(I’m not sure it’s working in Chrome, but it does work in Firefox. And I’m not checking IE because I hope none of you use that.)

Isn’t that great! There’s no way I’d be able to burn a real candle that close to a beloved childhood teddy bear. But it sure looks like I am!! :)

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Delicious day

Friday, September 23rd, 2011

Today I didn’t work overtime, which was what I was expecting to do all week until suddenly I wasn’t going to have to work overtime!  It really came as a surprise.  So today, instead of working overtime, I slept in.  Which was especially good because I was up in the middle of the night with an upset stomach that felt like I had swallowed tacks, either as a side-effect from my flu shot on Thursday or because I gave in to my craving for Cheetos.  (Delicious radioactive orange chemical and carbohydrate crunchies!)

But sleeping in felt wonderful and my stomach felt fine when I woke up.  I went downstairs and I did yoga for about half an hour, which is half an hour longer than I’ve done yoga in the last couple months.  My goal for the next couple weeks:  get back on track with the Couch to 5K program (we got out of that when I hurt my knee), walk three of the other days of the week when we’re not running, and get back to doing my yoga.  My flexibility is completely shot.

We showered, dressed, breakfasted, relaxed a couple minutes, and then tidied up the house a little bit.  I sat down to write the post here about credit reports (you really should check yours) and watched some TV with Justin.  And then we went downstairs and cleaned the kitchen, which we’d put off earlier in our tidying, and I started a loaf of bread in the breadmaker and worked on making a pie.  We had apples and pears that were past their prime, so I baked them into a pie following this recipe.  Delicious!  And I love baking.  I love the patience of it and the intricacies of it and just the movements that go into pealing and slicing apples and mixing that with sugar, flour, and spices, and filling in a pie crust.  It’s like singing, except I get to eat it in the end.  And that analogy probably doesn’t work unless you understand how I feel when I’m singing.

Moving on.  I got that started and asked Justin to make sure it got out of the oven okay, described what it should look like in the end, and then I went for my walk.  See?  Goal:  yoga and walking.  Accomplished!  I took an umbrella with me because it looked like rain and about 10 minutes away from getting back to the house, it did start to rain.  I ran into three women who were sheltering beneath a tree, waiting to see if it would stop.  I told them I didn’t think it was going to end very soon, and they started back to their homes.  We ran into Justin about a minute later, coming to look for me with the biggest umbrella we own.  Because he’s wonderful like that and he wasn’t sure if I’d taken an umbrella with me.

We got home and I changed into dry clothes so we could go to our chiropractor appointment, saw an enormous rainbow on our way, and then we came home and started meatloaf for dinner and caught up more on television shows that started last week.  He’s been catching up on How I Met Your Mother and Modern Family and I’ve been watching NCIS and NCIS: Los Angeles.

And then, finally, we got a piece of that pie!  It was amazing!

And really, I’m just writing all this because it was a wonderfully relaxed, delicious kind of day and I wanted to write it down.

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Highlights from my weekend

Tuesday, September 20th, 2011

I didn’t work on Friday! So I got up early-ish and went outside to do yardwork. We got an email from our landlady saying that the Property Owner’s Association (POA) had contacted her to say that the front yard was a patch of weeds. So I weeded it up and now it looks great.

I also mowed the back yard until I found the BIG SPIDER that had moved from where it was previously living near the trash bins to up in between two bushes along the side of the property. At that point I decided that Justin could do the weed whacking and I quickly cleaned up everything and went inside to shower. Where I tried not to imaging large spiders crawling up the shower curtain and failed.

And then had to read a book for Book Club and forgot to call Erica. :(

We didn’t go to Game Night because Justin wasn’t feeling well.

We did go to Book Club on Saturday where we once again disappointed our friend Elizabeth, the leader of the club, by not enjoying one of her favorite books. And we were the only ones who showed up. So when they told us they had double-booked the room, we introduced her to a burger at Five Guys and then invited her back to our house where we watched the new Star Trek movie and an episode of Sherlock and basically hung out chatting until it was almost 10:30 and she needed to head home.

And then she came over after church the following afternoon to watch the second episode of Sherlock with our friend Julie. Our friend Becky eventually made it over as well and we all ate pie and chatted for a while until it was time to decide whether they were going to stay for dinner or head home and do their jogging for the day – they went home. Elizabeth, however, fell asleep on the couch. She woke up around 9 and we fed her and made sure she was awake before sending her home.

Earlier in the afternoon on Sunday, Justin decided that since I’d done so much work on the yard while he wasn’t feeling well on Friday, he would tidy up the house for me.  And that made him the best husband ever because I could focus on paying the bills and then hang out with my friends in a clean house.

Monday, which I know is past the weekend, but I didn’t get around to posting this yet, was a fairly easy day at work and then we started up our running again in the evening, making for a tired and cold Kylene for the rest of the evening with very little cogitating power.  One of these days I’ll figure out why I drop so fast after exercising.

And today was another pretty easy day — I’m just waiting for the shoe to drop at work.  I know it’s coming.  I just don’t know when.

And I finally went to the Christmas site and put up my votes.  Justin will, hopefully, vote on that tomorrow and we can get that moving again.

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