Shelley is almost done with the kids' Christmas shopping?!?!?! Ahhh... but does she have lights up? I do! I think practically the whole town was stringing up lights today. We have just one electrical outlet in the garage and none on the exterior of the house. That prevented me from doing as much as I wanted. Probably saved me from myself as I tend to go overboard when I do decide to decorate.
Todd's schedule at work is insane. He works eight hours then off for eight and then back for eight and so on. I knew that if I didn't kick it in gear and get everything done that needed done, he'd try to help me instead of sleeping. I think I got to everything he's been wanting to finish up outside. Sticks are gathered out of the yard, windows washed, dead plants pulled, and the cover is back on the boat. Lemme tell ya, covering the boat is a job best done by two (wo)men.
The boat has been at his mother's old house for years. No one has lived there for over a year but the boat stayed in the driveway. Over Halloween, someone cut the rope that held the cover. They didn't steal any of the depth finders, trolling motor or any of the small stuff that would've been easy to make off with. Just cut the rope and took the cover off. Probably the same assholes who turned the dome lights on in our vehicles and ran the batteries down but didn't take any cd's or anything. Anyway, after that I told him that boat was coming up here. We have nothing to tow it with so no way to use it but I still wanted it here where we could keep an eye on it. He bought new rope for the cover but hasn't had a chance to get it put back on yet.
It took me a lot of time and pulled muscles I didn't even know I had, but that sucker is back on there now. He was very happy when he came home and that chore was done. Anytime I do something like that, something that would normally be on his "to do" list, he looks at me like he is just overwhelmed that someone would do that for him. My mom was here when I did it and she said "You're probably not doing that right." I said "That's what is so wonderful about him. Even if it's totally wrong, he won't say so. He won't do anything but thank me and be appreciative that I tried to help." Yup, I'm a very lucky girl indeed.
Today is the last day of our 70+ degree weather so I've been washing windows around the outside of the house. I think I may go uptown later and see how much outdoor Christmas lights are. We have an evergreen tree at each front corner of the house and there are hooks around all the windows where the previous owners used to decorate. Today would be a great day to hang lights if they aren't too expensive.
I'm really not in any shape to go out in public though. Behind our house is an overgrown pasture that Dozer and I investigated this morning. Now that the leaves have fallen from the trees, the remains of a building are visible through the weeds. We climbed the fence... well I climbed... he ducked under... and we took an exploratory hike to see what was back there. The weeds are so thick that what would've been a two minute walk on a straight path took 20 minutes. Both of us were covered with burrs and I got my ponytail caught on a thorny tree. That was interesting.
Once we fought our way through to the building, I could see two old galvanized wash tubs. The stand that held them had rusted and twisted to the point of collapse but the tubs still looked new. On the back side of the building there was an old horse drawn hay rake. At least I think that's what it is. I had a brief thought of coming back for the camera but quickly dismissed it. I don't know that I could make the trek back in there again and if I could, there's a good chance the camera would get scratched or broken. Maybe I'll go again in the spring after the weight of the winter snow has knocked the weeds down.
Poor Dozer is completely zonked out. That's a lot of miles on short, stubby legs. Time to wake him up and go back out and enjoy the sunshine.
Now I have to thank Pat who had previously thanked me for assisting with Reblogger. Reblogger comments haven't worked for several days now so I hopped on over to Pat's to see what he was doing. Found he had switched to BlogBack so I'm trying that now. Thanks Pat!
Thanks to Patti too for offering some assistance with setting up Greymatter should I decide to ditch Blogger. Honestly, I'm just too busy to make the switch so Blogger will have to do for now. But hey, at least ya'll can comment again! ...now let's see how long it takes the RipperMan to switch his comments to BlogBack. Hurry up honey... I have a comment to make about your feeding the dog peas post...
I did get the laptop reformatted and installed Windows ME on it last night. My boss says "tick.. tick.. tick.." so I'm guessing I should've stuck with Windows 98. Anyone using ME? Any troubles with it? Right now it's downloading some critical installs. That's a potential crash point so I'll post this quick before something catastrophic happens.
Tonight, I had intended on wiping everything off the laptop, reformatting and reinstalling Windows 98. This thing has been humming along since 1999, working in excess of ten hours a day right along with me. It's so bogged down now that I have to reboot several times before the day is even half over.
Unfortunately, I forgot how long it takes to sort through 6 gigs of data, especially when a person is as sentimental as I am. Almost every file on here is important for work or I just can't get rid of it for personal reasons. I rediscovered some old MP3's from the Napster days, found photos I'd completely forgotten about and old letters I'd typed and never sent. Whenever someone pisses me off, I generally like to get all up in their face about it. When I turned 25, I decided it was time to grow up and stop acting like a raving lunatic. So piss me off now and I'll type you out everything I want to say to your face but you'll never get it. That's okay because I'll never get to shove you down and plant one foot on your chest while I scream either - so there! It's all part of being an adult. blah.
So anyway, I only managed to get everything backed up to my usb hard drive and will probably have to wait until next weekend for the reformat. It's Todd's fault. He shaved his goatee and traumatized me. Seriously, he blogged that I hated it and that's not true at all. It's just shockingly different. The really odd thing is kissing. We do lots of kissing... yes, still lots of kissing after all this time... but now when I kiss him, it feels wrong. Like it's not him. I held a scouring pad to his chin and then kissed him. Still wasn't right. I think I need some heavy duty sandpaper.
