YEA! I made it through my first full week of being back to work. It’s just part time, but right now, it’s 5 days a week, 5 hours a day of sitting in a chair listening to a trainer speak. It’s going by fairly quickly because there is a lot of information, but I’m looking forward to Saturday and not having to drive to the office!
To mark the end of the week, here’s my favorite meme, Four Foods on Friday sponsored by Valmg at Fun, Crafts and Recipes.
This weeks questions with my answers:
#1. Melon. What’s your favorite kind? I love honeydew and cantaloupe and I really enjoy them together.
#2. Orange citrus. What’s your favorite - oranges, nectarines, navel oranges, tangerines, etc. I love tangerines, nectarines and clementines, because they’re all easy to peel! Clementines are seedless, so that’s a bonus.
#3. Oreos. What kind is your favorite? (Don’t eat Oreos? What about olives?) Hmmm, Oreos or olives? That’s an odd alternative! I do eat Oreos though and I prefer the original ones. Yes, I do occasionally twist them apart and lick the frosting!
#4. Pot pie. Share a recipe. (No pot pie recipe? What about a casserole or some other hot meal you bake?) I do actually make a chicken pot pie from scratch, but I don’t have time right now to type the recipe. I’ll do that later. I also know there is a common pot pie recipe using Bisquick, I’ll have to find that one too.
I feel like a kid in school and it’s my first day. Tomorrow is my first day back to work after a year and a half of being at home. I’m a little nervous, but not too bad. I’m looking forward to the training, it will really tell me if this job is something I want to do or not. In the mean time, I’ve been working on setting up my home office. After my 7 weeks of training, I’ll be working from home. It’s going to work out well because I’ll be working at the desktop computer in the morning and by the time my daughter needs to use it in the afternoon for homework, I’ll be done.
Before my daughter went back to school a few weeks ago we did some clean up and upgrades on our desktop computer. The program I need will be provided by my new employer, but my daughter needed Microsoft Office 2007 to help her stay organized and be able to do the more challenging work advanced placement classes require. CostCaptain.com is a Microsoft authorized education reseller that sells 100% authentic Microsoft products at academic discounts to students and staff of schools and libraries. If you know anyone that could benefit from this software, you might want to consider giving them a Costcaptain.com gift certificate.
School is going along very well for her, so if I’m half as prepared for my new job as she was for school, everything is going to be just fine.
Just before we relocated, I bought my husband a new big screen television as a gift. Of course, then we had to go buy a new television cabinet for it to fit in. I’m not going to lie, we invested quite a bit between the t.v. and the cabinet. Then we found out we were moving. Our new home has a small built in area in the family room for a television and, because of its open floor plan, there was no wall where we could locate our basically brand new cabinet and big screen t.v. So, we put a small t.v. in our family room and the new cabinet with television went upstairs to the t.v./rec room.
Now for the reason behind a possible room makeover. My husband loves (and I say this strongly) having a fireplace. As soon as it’s cool enough, and for him that would be 75F, he has the fireplace burning, and it burns all winter and into the spring. He burns it from morning until night, he really loves his fireplace! We have a fireplace in our family room where he can burn beautiful gas fires, but that’s the only fireplace we have. We enjoy watching t.v. upstairs on our new television, especially when it’s football season, but there is no fireplace.
So, I’ve been considering installing either an insert fireplace or, maybe the newest thing, a wall mount fireplace. I’ve been doing some online shopping and found that Hotprice (www.hotprice.co.uk) carries fireplaces for both gas and electric fires and have a really huge selection with great prices. They carry all the leading brands and all different styles. They’ve even been featured on home makeover television shows in the UK. I’m sure to find the exact sytle at a price I can afford.
I am also looking for ideas for the walls in the room. I saw a great faux stone wall one time, I just need to figure out how it was done. That would be so cool to do around a fireplace!
My tackle is much less sophisticated than Jen’s who is the guest tackler this week at 5 Minutes For Mom this week. Please do go check out her incredible pie crust making with step by step instructions that make me feel that even I could make a pie crust from scratch!As for my tackle, I have a to do list that I really need to get done today, so here it is.
Load sewing machine with cotton thread and wind a couple of spare bobbins. Install a new sewing needle.
Pack sewing machine and all necessary fabrics and supplies and load into car.
Attend Beginning Piecing class #2.
Email Band Director
Call telephone company
pay a few bills
order checks
Now, I’m sure there are a few other items that should be on the list, but I seem to be having memory issues lately! In case you didn’t see my fabrics in my earlier post, these are the fabrics I’m working with to make my quilt. Last week, we spent the class cutting all the pieces, so we will begin sewing today.
Hurricane Ike will be making landfall tonight in and around Galveston. 60% of Galveston’s population has evacuated while the remaining 40% opted to stay put and attempt to ride it out. I hope they have a good boat because with a 17-20 ft. surge, pretty much everything on the island will be under water.
Upon making landfall, the hurricane is expected to take a slight turn and head north over Houston, the 4th largest city in the United States. We lived in Houston for many years, and still have friends there. We’ve been able to touch base with some and have even offered our home as a refuge if they need it, although, for their sake, I hope they don’t. They will suffer the most from the high winds which will cause trees to come down and power to go out.
The storm will, at some point, downgrade to a tropical storm and that is what we’re expecting to see here in the Dallas area sometime tomorrow afternoon. We have been instructed to tie down anything and everything that is remaining outside so that our patio furniture and trash cans don’t become projectiles in the high winds. This is one of the few times I’m thankful that we don’t have any tall trees, but I will be praying that we don’t sustain any damage, particularly to our home.
I’ve purchased fresh batteries for the flash lights, stocked up on bottled water and filled our gas tanks. At this point, the only thing we can do is wait. It’s times like these that I wonder why we didn’t buy a house on Maryland Golf Courses or in the mountains with a view.
By the way, were you aware that you can visit LocalGolfConditions.com to find a comprehensive database of all area public golf courses in Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Delaware, and the District of Columbia. These databases are interactive and reviews are created by other golfers. In other words, at they say at LocalGolfConditions.com, this is “a website for the public golfer, by the public golfer”.
Texas is under severe weather alerts and keeping a weather eye on Hurricane Ike, currently in the Gulf of Mexico.
Ike will more than likely make landfall sometime early Saturday morning and then move quickly north covering most of East Texas, including the Dallas area. While Ike is expected to weaken to a tropical storm as it moves across land, but Dallas can expect 4-6 inches or more of rainful, gusty winds and toranadoes may develop. We may expect sustained winds of anywhere from 30-50 mph.
Needless to say, we will be battening down the hatches and pulling in all of the patio furniture. We are receiving direction to tie down or put away anything that is not permanently attached. Right now, we are definitley experiencing the calm before the storm.
I want one of these babies so bad! Pictured are 3 of the DYMO Labelmakers and I would love to have any of the 3. There are so many uses for a label maker, it would be a valuable asset in this house.
First of all, my daughter could use a label maker for school. It would have made her life so much easier had she been able to simply print out name labels for all of her school supplies, binders and folders. And, because the state of Texas requires that all school text books have book covers on them, labeling the outside of the covers would make finding the right text book, in a locker crammed full of books, a snap.
As for using a label maker at home, the question is, what can’t you label? Living in Texas, I have to keep all of my pantry foods in airtight containers to keep the bugs out. That means all of my dry goods like pancake mix, flour, sugar and cereals are in sealed containers. It would make my life so much easier if I could just slap a label on the outside of the container so I would always know what’s inside. It would also help my husband out because he never knows what I’ve put into which container.
My husband could also use the label maker for labeling all the DVD’s and CD’s he burns. How about all those boxes stacked on shelves in the closet. Wouldn’t it be nice to have them labeled so you don’t have to take them down just to see what’s in them? What a time saver!
We used to have a label maker, but, since we relocated, we haven’t seen it. I really miss it and need a new one!
Today just really got away from me. I had such good intentions when I got up this morning, but it was so very nice out, comfortable enough to actually enjoy being outside without being IN the swimming pool. I just had to take advantage and spend some time cleaning up after our 3 straight days of wind storms. We had branches and leaves in our pool that made it look like it hadn’t been used in a very long time.
I also spent the afternoon at a lab having an MRI and CT scan done of my head, brain and sinuses. I am, along with my doctor, on a mission to find out what is behind the constant headache I have had for the last 6-8 months. Hopefully, we’ll get to the bottom of it soon. As I said to my doctor the other day, I actually don’t remember what it feels like for my head NOT to hurt.
So, I apologize for not making good on my good intentions of the day. I had big plans for things I wanted to get done with my blog, but they all too a back seat to life away from my computer. I feel fairly confident that tomorrow may see more of the same. I have a few errands to run and the weather may be too nice for me to sit inside.
One thing is for sure, I’ll be back in the morning for Four Foods on Friday! See you then.
I am so thankful that in all the places we’ve ever lived, we’ve never had a nosy neighbor like The Sproutwells do. In fact, in the neighborhood we’re in now, it’s so quiet that we rarely even see our neighbors. That’s okay, that’s the way I like it. As for the Sproutwells, I guess they just have to learn to live with it! These videos are a reminder to me to eat my fruits and veggies which is good time, now that I’m battling high cholesterol. The Sproutwells were developed by freshfunds and simply by collecting points from Chiquita and Fresh Express products, I can bid on great prizes from FreshFunds.com. The prizes change weekly, but I’m hoping they offer some Calphalon kitchen products, I’m trying to build up my pots and pans.
I said yesterday that I had received the results of my blood test and they showed my cholesterol level as being too high. I’ve since been doing a little bit of research on it and find that yes indeed, the total cholesterol level is in the High Risk area. Everything else falls in to normal levels, LDL and HDL both are okay. It’s all very strange to me because I’ve never had a problem before.
I don’t eat much fat in my diet, but, it’s possible that something I had eaten as a meal a day or two prior was in my system and through it out of whack. I am going to monitor what I eat over the next several weeks before having the test done again. I’m keeping track of total fat, saturated fats, trans fat, protiens, cholesterol and calories. I think it finally sunk in to my husband that I am concerned about this. He fixed dinner tonight and, while it was steak, it was pretty lean. We also had baked potatoes and he didn’t even get the sour cream out of the frig so that I wouldn’t be tempted!
I will make sure to have another test done in a few weeks. It’s possible that it’s genetic, my sister has the same problem.
