the countdown begins

I was going through selections of things to watch from my recordings on my DVR. I record Ellen and Oprah every day, but I only watch them sometimes. Like today, when it is too early for anything but news to be on TV. I know that Ellen is current in its shows, and Oprah was in reruns the last time i tried to watch it. So i was looking through the listings of the last five days of Ellen, and her 50th birthday show was on her. I also have my 50th coming up, so i thought i should watch this show and see if she had any really good ideas for  a 50th birthday party that I could steal. she doesn't know me, so I really don't think she would care. I am watching, but I don't think Heart would come and play at my house, and I am pretty sure Ryan Seacrest is busy. I better just plan my own party.

I don't know what we are going to do on the real big day. I know, we are going away for the weekend on Presidents day, but there is still the real Big Day. I don't know what we will do that day, but I intend to do something. so this morning, as i was leaving work, I was talking to one of the guys I work with. I told him I was turning fity pretty soon. He said fourty, i said no fity. he again said fourty. What a sweety. We all need a friend like that. He is like 24 or 25. that just made me feel good. I need that every once in a while. Anyway, I have decide to countdown to the big day. I am excited about this birthday. I mean, you only get to be fity once ya know.

There was something else I wanted to tell you about last time, but I for got what it was. I will probably remember after I get this posted. anyway, I think i am going to try and snag a nap before I go in tonight. I keep waking up too early again, and that makes working all night tough. If I could just get back to sleep when i wake up at 3 or 4, it would make things much easier. so see ya l later. Hope your having a great week.

Still Raining

As we drove home last Monday, we followed a storm and drove in and out of it. Well, I don't know if it is making news anywhere else, but it hasn't stopped raining since. Every day since last Monday, with the exception of yesterday, it has rained. It did rain last night, and that may count as yesterday, but we didn't see it cus we were sleeping soundly in our 540 TC sheet bed. As i sit here tapping out these words to you, the news is now telling us to be ready for the next set of storms. Evidently, some people were without power for so long, they lost the contents of their fridge. We have dodged the power loss bullet. I don't know how, but we are thankful for it. Yesterday the wind blew so hard. It is starting up again right now. I don't know when it happened, but out neighbors fence is down. We had to replace ours about two years ago, he should have replaced his also at the same time. OH well.

Yesterday morning at around 2 AM I woke up with a screaming headache. I tried to sleep it away, but I know that wont work. at around 4 I got up and took three Excedrin Migraine and went back to bed. Soon after, I was sitting in the shower with the water massaging my head. when the water went cold, i had to get out and try to get back to sleep. then I realised i was hungry and nauseous from it, so i got up and slowly at a yogurt and a banana and then, and only then was i able to get back to sleep. I slept till 8, but still felt like crap for the rest of the day. Migraines do this to me. Even if they go away, they drain me of every bit of energy I may have had. I am gonna have to do some research on this and find out how to reverse this symptom. It sucks to waste a whole day, or even part of a day to a headache.

There is no football on today, and we have nothing planned. I think i will venture into my sewing room and work on the quilt I have started. I haven't been in there for around three weeks, and I really want to get this done, or at least show some progress. I spent yesterday looking into trying to price an Alaska vacation. John wants to have at least one day of fishing. He has always wanted to fish in Alaska. I want the cruise part. Amber sent me a link to help on this quest and also John wrote to alaska chamber of commerce and they sent us a link also. I looked into both pages, there is a lot to look at. He  would also like to spend part of  the trip on a train. I am going to work to incorporate all of this into his dream vacation.  He has wanted this for so long, and I think he should have it. So this is going to be my project to try and get him what he wants, at a really good price.

So that is it for today. I have to get on my merry way and start my day. don't work too hard this week, and I wont either.

Working for the Weekend(the presidents day weekend)

Like I said in the last blog, we will be going back to Fort Bragg for another weekend. Well, John has a four day weekend on Presidents day, so I took the day i get for my birthday, and made myself a four day weekend. I called this morning to see if there was any of the deluxe rooms available for that weekend. There was one available, but since it is a holiday weekend, there is a two night minimum. I then called John to see if he wanted to stay two nights, and after a very short discussion, we decided we could stay two nights. I then called the hotel back and said book that last top floor room in my name. I am now so excited i cant stand it. Hopefully by the time we go, the weather will warm up a few degrees. It has been raining since Monday, and i don't think it has been above 50 degrees. i know those of you on the east coast may consider that still warm, but our lows are in the 30's and that is freaking cold. Anyway, that really doesn't matter, we are leaving town in a few weeks. woo hoo!

Before we left last weekend, i changed the sheets on the bed and put on some new ones we had just bought. thread count makes a world of difference. I was going back and forth with myself and John when we bought them, 500 count and save ten dollars or 540 count and love crawling into bed. We decided on 540. We were so happy when we got home and got to sleep on new crisp sheets. John even made a comments the next morning about how nice they felt. He is finally coming around to what it feels like to have nice stuff.

I don't think I have a whole lot more to talk about. So I will see ya next time a writable thought pops into my brain. See ya all later.

Fort Bragg

There are two boats out in the ocean here. They dive for Sea urchins and send them to Japan. these look like ghost ships

Our weekend trip

Not in any photoset

I think this is a little haunting. I love this pic. I may just blow it up and fram it for the Commander of the Post.

Not in any photoset

Califrnia travels

Fort Bragg Weekend

There was a sportsman's exposition this weekend that we were planning on going to. Saturday morning John said "Ya wanna go up to Fort Bragg instead of the expo? SURE! So I jumped out of bed, yes we were still in bed, and into the shower. John was wondering why I was crawling out of bed so soon, but it was a new adventure, and I wanted to go. It takes about four and half hours to get there, but the drive was nice. We had printed out hotels before we left, and I started calling on the way up there. We left hoping there would be open hotels. A lot of hotels up there have fireplaces ands spas, but none for us. We got a room reserved for Saturday night on the first floor looking straight out onto the beach. After we got up there, we realized the list we printed wasn't complete. I will go into that later on maybe.

We arrived about 2 or 3 in the afternoon. I want to tell you, it was freaking cold and windy. There is an Alaska storm blowing in, and bringing all the cold with it. From our room, with the door closed, it looked beautiful. Then we unpacked, opened a couple beers, and stepped outside. John said he didn't need his coat, till he sat out there for a minute or two. I took a walk down the paved path outside our room, and snapped a few pics of the waves, and beach. I love the ocean, no matter what it is acting like. We even saw a few whales out there. It is a whale migrating path right out in front of that part of the Pacific Coast.

It didn't take long after I stepped outside, that I had to Pee. John said it was because of the beer. OK, cut back on the beer, I only drank half of one, but who knows. Well, every time I stepped outside the whole time we were up there, i had to pee. I would make it a point to visit the bathroom before we walked outside, but as soon as we would get out of the car and into the cold again, I had to pee. I think it has to do with the cold constricting everything and making the bladder smaller too. We took a walk on one of the smaller beaches and when we took off, I was good. Halfway down the freezing beach, and I had to pee. I ended up having to squat in a secluded part of the beach. We were the only ones there, so I really didn't care. I figured it was better than peeing on myself. I wasn't gonna make it. I am doomed when we go to Alaska. I wont be drinking anything.

We had dinner Saturday night at a local place. They had a special of whole dungenus crab. It is brought in fresh daily there. I don't know if you have ever tasted it, but this is so freaking good fresh. We would both choose this over lobster any day of the week. It is so sweet when it is fresh. We stopped and bought four before we left town and that will be our dinner tonight. Before we left town, we stopped into a hotel that overlooked the harbor. The lady at the desk allowed us to check out two rooms, one an average room, and one a deluxe room. The deluxe room had a fireplace and a king sized bed. they both had private balconies, but the deluxe one was so nice, I think we may be returning there for a future weekend. I think I will put some of my pics on my flicker thingy if you want to look at them. I took a bunch at eh beach, and of a rainbow we saw Sunday morning before it started to rain.

OK, that is it for now. If I think of something else to tell you about this weekend, I will add another blog. Have a great week.

I remembered some more

I did remember a few things I wanted to talk about. I don't usually talk about this either, and i get scolded for it. But this time, I'm talking. Next month is my 50th birthday. I have been thinking about this, and then thinking some more. I am kind of looking forward to 50. 50. 50. 50. Each one of those is a statement. I used to think of fifty as a huge number. Half a century. I am coming to terms with it now. I keep saying it out loud. I keep telling people. I am going to be fifty years old. I don't think I look like I am fifty, whatever that looks like. I just wanted to say I'm turning fifty next month.

Also, another thing i realised when Alex and Claire was out here at Christmas. Alex was my baby for the longest time. I felt like he still needed me. Then, when they came out here, I got slapped in the face with the fact that he is growing up. He has Claire, which he should have, to help him with his problems and to go to. He no longer needs me like he did. I suppose i should be happy he is growing up. I miss him needing me, but now I will have a more mature son who I will now look at as a responsible adult. I have been happy to be a childless parent again, but I guess I still wanted my baby. We are both growing up, and that is a good thing.

Now, for one last thing. I went to the movies today and saw Mad Money. I went all by myself, paid too much for a soda and threw most of it away. I did enjoy the movie though. I kept wanting to comment about different things, but there was no one to say it to, so I just kept the thought to myself. It wasn't a bad experience, so I may just go do it again next friday. I want to see 27 dresses and the bucket list. Mad Money was pretty good by the way.

Now this is really it. We have plans for this weekend. There is a sportsman's exposition up in Sacramento this weekend, and John really wants to go. He also might want to go to the coast again. It is a three day weekend, and we intend ot make the most of it. I hope you do too.

Finally A NEW Post

Its been a week since I have been here. I have been working, and been really tired. yesterday, I read a few blogs, then just turned off my lappy. I just couldn't even really even respond to the two blogs I did read. Crap, i hate it when i get like this. Anyway, let me tell you what has been on my mind this week.

I am gonna get a little on the adult side in this paragraph, so if that bothers you, move onto the next paragraph. Not really, really adult, just a little. OK, here goes. Did you notice the gap in time just there, where I had to figure out how to say this. OK, really, here goes. For those of you who are married, have a man in your life, or did have a man in your life at one time or another, do you tell them when you are feeling a little on the horny side. I don't know how else to say that. Do you ever want to just strip down and tell him to get into the bedroom or where ever it is you want to get your fix on? This happens to me at the strangest times. Like in the middle of the afternoon, for no apparent reason, I just want some, really bad. Now, for the second part, if he is not around, do you self medicate. This is really a big thing for me to even write this. I know it may sound sort of prudish of me, maybe even naive. I just never talk about sex, my sex life in print or to another person other than John. This is more of an experiment to see if I will leave it here. This is me being a little bit out there.

Some good news from John. John is a school bus mechanic. A damn good one too. This has been his occupation ever since we met. That would be twenty something years. Well, about a month ago he ordered a new tool box from Matco. That is a tool company like SnapOn that delivers tools to the work site, and you can purchase tools right off the truck. This tool box is what John has been longing for for way too many years. Well, finally it arrived at his job site yesterday. I may go over there and take some pics of it. John was so happy. He ordered it in canary yellow, cus everyone else has red or black. He said everyone came out and was looking at it. He was so proud, and I am so happy for him.

One last note. Once again I went to breakfast all by myself this morning. I have gotten use to that now and it isn't so bad. I am now going to attempt to go to the movies all by myself and see a movie that I want to see. John hates going to the movies, andI hate going by myself. But I don't see why I should do without because John wont go with me. I also need to post a pic of the quilt I made for my D/L. I guess she liked it. it took her three days to call and say thank you after I made it for her. That is a different rant.

I will try not to have such a gap between blogs. If I think of something else to say, you know you will be the first to hear it.

Sunday kind of chat

Do you think things happen for a reason? sometimes i do. I cant give specifics, but I think think sometimes this is true. Sometimes, I see things or read things that put my current life into perspective. It makes me appreciate how my life is currently going. It doesn't always go so great. After 24 years, we get bored with each other, and sometimes I think we really hate each other. Lately though, things seem to be really happy.by lately I mean in the last six months or so. I don't know why this happens, but I am happy when it does. Everything gets better, I really mean everything too.  Recently we spent some time with Johns brothers and sister. Not that they are in such bad situations, cus they aren't. But they still have to deal with their grown children and their issues. We do too, but our grown children live out of state and it isn't in our face so much. I guess we have grown into childless parents, and now we are having fun again. I am liking it.

Another question. Are routines always so bad. Do you have any routines you follow that you love or you hate. there is the get up and go to work routine, the buy the same thing every time you go grocery shopping routine, and the always incredibly painful pay all the bills routine. We have a routine that I absolutely love and hope never ends. On the weekends, one of us gets up, makes coffee and comes back to bed until it finishes brewing. After its done, we fill the carafe and bring two cups into the room and watch good morning sacramento until we decide to get up, or until ten when it is over. On sunday, we watch in bed for a while, then get up and make breakfast. We always have a bottle of almond champagne with breakfast, and that kinda makes the morning celebration a little better. it is our special time, and we love it. I may be the only one thinking of it that way, but it works for me.

One more thought. Now keep in mind, I am on my third glass of almond champagne. If you read another blog, does it get your mind thinking in different directions that you don't normally think in. One person in particular has this effect on me. Believe it or not, I am not one to reveal a whole lot here as far as personal feelings go. If you happen to think you are reading something deep about me here, it is just the tip, I only go so far in print. the Divine one has the ability to get my brain going in many different directions. Sometimes she writes about stuff I cant even talk about. I wish I could do that. This is not something bad, not by any means. I bet she doesn't even know it, but I have grown in personal strength at times just by what she decided to write about. Thanks Em. Just thought I should finally say something.

Ok, I think I am done for a while. OH WAIT! One more thing. I have checked every setting I can think of on my comments blog. I messed up my page on edits then had to figure out how to get it back to where I liked it, but I have no idea what the heck happened to my current comments on my page. Amber said to check settings and see if I have it se for reverse order, but I don't have that option any where. If someone knows how to fix this, please tell me. I even wrote to the Multiply group for help. Lets see if that will help.

Now that is really the end of this post. See ya all later.

Just stopping in for a chat

Its been a while since I stopped in here. I really don't have a lot to talk about though. I have just been working, and I have been really tired. I open up this lappy, look at a few pages, and then shut it down. We all go through this, it seems i go through it often. I also and still torn between this page and 360. 360 is still in glitch mode though. I have noticed that when i click on blogs, I keep getting blogs from december. I have to try a few times to get the current blog post. OH WELL.

It is still cold and damp here. the rain has stopped for a few days, maybe a week I hope. the cold and damp just gets old after a while.

Has anyone noticed that even though the writers are on strike, there has suddenly been a rash of new shows on tv? this is my theory on that. Every season hollywood makes a bunch of pilots. some make it, some are cancelled without notice or maybe without ever even being aired. Well, here comes the opportunity to fill in the gaps. Canceled shows are put back into their time slots, no explanation necessary. New shows are taken out of cans and put on the air, and Hollywood goes on. No one is working, but some people are getting paid. Believe it or not, that strike is really effecting a lot of people. Not only the studio folks, but the community also. I wonder how long this is going to last.

OK, that is all I have to talk about today. I probably should get my house cleaned. Maybe I will just make my bed and call it a day. I have a headache that keeps coming and going, it is getting on my nerves. OK, see ya all later.

I screwed up while cleaning up

I was doing a little house cleaning on my lappy the other day. I decided to go through my address book and get rid of all the duplicate names and people that I don't know. These would be people that at one time were on my friends list, that for some reason had some kind of listing in my address list. So there I was, going through hitting delete delete delete. I deleted the names that didn't have an email next to them, or that I knew was a duplicate. In doing so, I am embarrassed to say, I deleted very important people from my messenger list. I had no idea was doing this. I still have the email info, but I don't have the people in my messenger list. I am missing Amber, Em, and Bear. I know I don't do IM's as often as I used to, but it is comforting for me to see those names there when I open my messenger. I still have the other very important people on my list. I tried to send an invitation, but I didn't do it right, it came back to me. it has been so long since I invited anyone to be on my list, I forgot how to do it. If you think you may be missing from my list, please send me an invite, I want you back.

Now, onto other stuff. It has stopped raining for today. We are still supposed to get some more rain this week, but the really bad stuff is done. Its still cold here though, so John has lit the fireplace one more time. We had more wood than I thought we had. Its taking a long time to burn.

I spent today cleaning the room the kids slept in while they were here and the other room that turned into the room that everything got thrown into. I ended up going through some of the boxes of fabric from my moms huge stash. So much of it was old and way too stiff to use. there was fabric that could be use to reupholster furniture or even make house coats out of, or was it bedspreads. there was a lot of stuff i will never touch, POLYESTER, IN THREE DIFFERENT COLORS!!!!!! AAAACK. I made a stack of stuff to take tot he goodwill, and threw it in my car. I also found a bag of clothes we had designated goodwill sometime in the past and threw that in my car too. I will drop it off tomorrow. I still have a lot of fabric to use in boxes. I need to really try to use that stuff up. I am supposed to make a baby quilt for my great niece, maybe I will try to use only the stuff I already have. I could make a bunch of scrap quilts with all the fabric I have.

So that is it for now. Don't work too hard this week. Even you Amber, who has to go back to work after way too much time off. Poor thing only gets 7 1/2 weeks off a year. pity.

Winter Storms are here

As I sit here typing and pecking away on my lappy, the rain is coming down in buckets around my house. This is the first set of really bad storms to hit California in quite a few years. It all started Thursday here. And they came rolling in as three separate storms. The first was just rain, the second was wind and rain, now this one is very very cold rain.

Well, let me retrace time here a bit. This was John last week of vacation. He had two weeks off, and wanted to go back to Occidental for Crab ciapino on Friday night. We had seen the sign on the side of the restaurant when we were there last week, and it sounded too good to pass up. I got tot come home early from work on Thursday night, so I went straight to bed and got some sleep so we could leave. It was raining when I left work, and the wind was starting to pick up. According to the forecast, the wind should have died down by the afternoon. So we packed up and left town.

We drove through torrential rains and wind out to the coast. We could feel the car blowing on the road and wondered about the people that sped by us, going way too fast for the conditions. Cars had skid off the road so many times, you would have thought that would give people a clue. But no. So John drove carefully and we had to detour around some water blocked roads, but we finally got tot our destination.

We hadn't heard about the weather conditions in Occidental, but I don't think it would have changed our minds. When we got to the hotel, we saw way too many cars in the parking lot. I had called Wednesday to see if we needed to make reservations and we were told no, we should be good. ahahhahahahaha. there was no power in the whole town, and if a light was on, it was because the people in that home or place of business had a generator. Our room had lights, but no heat. I did bring my laptop and the Planet Earth Set. So we had something to watch for a while. We also brought extra blankets, just in case. Good thing we did, cus it was cooooolllld.

Trees fell all over the place. One huge Douglas fir fell and landed on three separate homes, yes, it was that big. It came up out of the ground and literally landed on top of three homes. No one was hurt, Thank God. Only one family, a mother and daughter was in the third home. The mother had fallen asleep on the couch, and woke up at around 5:30 to the roof of her house about a foot from her face. Very scary stuff. It was a miracle she wasn't hurt. Her and her daughter were staying in the hotel. There were a lot of locals staying in the hotel. When we lefty this morning, they still had no power. From what I heard, there is around 100,000 people in California without power.

As we watch the news, we keep hearing about trees falling on homes and businesses. I hope none of the levees break up north this year. This happens every year, and it is very hard to correct.

OK, this is getting too long. Sorry about that. I could have gone on even more, but I will stop for now. John tells me it stopped raining. Yay. So see ya all later.